Well, as you're probably aware, the way of the world during the time of the New Testament
was utterly wicked. You understand that even if you grew up in the secular school system,
you will understand that to be the case in your studies of world history, or maybe once you got
to college and took history of civilization, the consistency of that time frame was nothing other
than wickedness. And that's not to say that our world is without such depravity now.
Events even this week have proven to us once again that sin is as pervasive as it's ever been,
as we think on the tragedy in Nashville this week and other things that have taken place.
But there is somewhat of a difference between our experience today, at least in Western culture,
versus the experience of Titus and the Cretans at the time that Paul wrote this letter.
Our modern Western culture, at least, is influenced by the historical testimony and teaching of
Christianity. In fact, even the secular arguments of morality and ethics often ignorantly have to borrow
from the biblical ethic in order to make their point. Our world is so influenced, at least in its history,
the Western world is so influenced, at least in its history of Christian teaching and Christian influence,
that atheists and agnostics who would try to convince us that their way is right have to actually borrow
from the Christian ethic to even get started. And they do that ignorantly often.
That's really the difference between what our experience is today versus what the experience of
the Cretans would have been in that day. But Christians in the early centuries,
they're immersed in a culture that was in total rebellion against all that God is, all that he commands
in his law. And this led, of course, to tremendous hostility toward those who stood out in the world.
And these early believers were constantly in need of encouragement to remain faithful,
to trust the Lord, to hope in his return, and to continue in godliness. And think about this for
just a moment. As their leaders and the people that they loved were martyred, as their lives were
continually under the threat of death and persecution, the temptation that these Christians faced was
either to abandon the faith, completely isolate themselves away from the world in total seclusion,
or it would be to become embittered and abandon righteous attitudes towards unbelievers.
And we see that all through the New Testament. Constant instruction, constant encouragement,
and exhortation as to how these early Christians were to think about the world outside of their
church, how they were to act towards those people and towards those systems, and how they were to live
and to function in a society that was alien to who they now are as people of God. So the New Testament
is replete with these exhortations regarding how they're to live and act in response to the world.
Let me give you just a few references that show this. We could give many. Let me just give you three.
In John chapter 16, Jesus actually helps us. He provides encouragement.
In this lecture that he's giving to the disciples where he essentially says,
I'm going to leave you, and the world's going to hate you,
and they're going to kick you out of the synagogue,
a thing that would have meant something significant to those men.
And eventually they're going to kill you.
Okay, Jesus is telling the disciples all of this.
And then he finishes with this.
I have said these things to you,
that in me
you may have peace.
Do you see what Jesus is getting at there?
Even if your life is easy in this world,
and for many of us it often is,
but even if your life is easy in this world,
your peace does not come from the ease of your experience in the world.
Jesus says,
I'm telling you these things so that when those times come,
your peace would not be found in what you experience in this life,
but that your peace would be found in me.
And he goes on to say,
in the world you will have tribulation,
but take heart, he says,
I have overcome the world.
Now that's a significant instruction from our Lord.
It's encouraging.
And there's times when we're going to face the hostility of the world.
And what we need to do is go back to John 16.
And we need to think about what Jesus was saying.
Our peace does not come from our experience here.
Our peace comes from Christ.
To the Philippians,
the men that have been gathering with us on Wednesday mornings at Chick-fil-A,
we just looked at this a couple of weeks ago.
Paul gives an instruction in these regards.
In Philippians chapter one,
he says,
only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ.
And then he continues on,
for it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ,
you should not only believe in him,
but also suffer for his sake.
Paul speaks of this as if it is a grace from God.
That's the language he uses.
It has been granted to you that not only you should believe in Christ,
but that you should suffer for his sake.
Now, that's not an easy thing to hear, is it?
But it at least helps us in at least this experience of suffering and persecution
that we may face to know that things haven't all of a sudden just completely,
you know, went down the pipe on us here.
That God hasn't stepped away.
That there isn't anything that we're facing that all of a sudden he's kind of lost control
or he's forgotten us.
No, because he's actually told us already,
you need to live your life worthy of the gospel
because it's been granted to you actually to suffer.
This is going to happen.
You will suffer in some way.
And we all are aware of that.
We get to 1 Peter.
The entire letter is really focused on this idea of Peter instructing and encouraging the church
as they were facing persecution and dealing with suffering of their own.
And in this passage, he tells us to endure with hope.
Let me read it to you in 1 Peter chapter 5.
After you have suffered a little while.
Some of you are thinking,
my suffering does not feel like it's been a little while.
It may be the duration of your life, to be honest with you, from a biblical perspective.
What Peter seems to mean here is that the little while is just this life,
this life that is but a vapor that appears for a moment and then it vanishes away.
The suffering is the same thing.
It goes along with your life.
You will experience it, but it too is like your life.
It's a vapor.
It will appear.
It will vanish away.
And then he goes on.
And he says, after you've suffered a little while, the God of all grace,
who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ,
will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.
And this causes Peter to immediately go into doxology.
And he follows it up with, to him be dominion forever and ever.
Amen, he says.
That's amazing, isn't it?
He says, you're going to suffer.
And he's talking about this life.
He says, but the God of all grace, he's going to return.
And when he returns, he will restore you.
He will confirm your salvation.
He will strengthen you.
He will establish you.
Give him dominion because all dominion actually belongs to him.
It's amazing, isn't it?
And so the Bible really helps us here, doesn't it?
It helps us to understand the reality of suffering.
It helps us to understand the dynamics of hostility that we will face
living in a wicked world that is against God.
And it teaches us on how we're to act, how we're to think,
and what our attitude should be.
Well, our immediate culture may not be as imminently deadly
as was the case for the Cretans here.
But it is becoming increasingly more hostile toward Christians,
toward our faith, toward our mental life.
There's no question about that.
The only reason this woman went to that school on Monday
was because they were Christians who stood for truth and against unrighteousness.
To be sure, it's far worse in other places around the world.
We can think about Christians in Afghanistan who today, on the Lord's Day,
it might be that two or three men have to sit in their car and drive around the city
and play the radio.
But as the radio is going, they're singing hymns to one another
and they're speaking the truth of God to one another,
hoping that the people outside will not pick up on what they're doing.
There are some people around our world who are worshiping that way today.
There are some places in Asia today where Christians will gather in apartment complexes
and they'll pack into these apartments and they'll whisper hymns to one another
rather than sing them.
For fear that if their neighbors were to hear and were to turn them in to the government,
they would face persecution.
We don't live under that kind of persecution here.
Sure, it's surely worse in other places around the world.
But undoubtedly, there is enough hostility toward Christianity now in the United States
that we will inevitably face the same temptations that our forefathers in Rome and Philippi
and Ephesus and Crete experienced.
And what we need to ask ourselves and what we must consider this morning in light of this text is
how the Bible instructs us to think and act towards those who seek to destroy us,
who hate us, who hate our God, who live in defiance to Him.
How is it that we're supposed to think about them?
How do we treat them?
What are we supposed to do?
Does the reality of their wickedness change the way that we should behave in any way?
We may ask ourselves a few questions as we come to this text.
Does the wickedness of our government absolve us of the responsibility to submit to its authority?
Do the injustices of our criminal justice system justify rebellion against the agents tasked with enforcing the law of the land?
Does the insanity of worldly ideas of gender and sexuality free us from God's demands regarding kindness, meekness, and the pursuit of peace?
Those are the questions we need to consider.
Because this section of Titus provides us with very helpful and practical and theological answers to those questions.
The exhortations of these verses reflect even the attitudes of believers who,
through a form of elitism, spiritual arrogance,
use their Christianity to justify civil rebellion, community isolation, and a general attitude of harshness toward outsiders.
That's what Paul is confronting here.
These verses expose Christians who have stopped living daily in light of the gospel of grace.
And they instruct believers who are rightfully angry and frustrated about the deep depravity of our world.
Paul's instruction to Titus in leading and teaching the Christians in Crete is what gives us the form for the study this morning.
He says in verse 1, Titus was to remind the Cretan believers of certain things.
He is to remind them of certain things that they are to believe,
and remind them of certain practices that they are to adopt and continue in,
in order to please and represent Christ.
And if we're to please Christ and represent Him well in our world,
we must remember these things as well.
Three of them I'd like to point out to you, okay?
The first thing is this.
Remember how to live in the world.
Verses 1 and 2, remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities,
to be obedient, to be ready for every good work,
to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling,
to be gentle, to show perfect courtesy towards all people.
Like I said a moment ago, these two verses are the main clause for most of this final chapter.
Everything that follows in verses 3 through 11, as we'll get to in the next few weeks,
falls beneath the scope of what Paul introduces here.
And it seems like one of Paul's main concerns is that the Cretans were behaving in such a way
that they were causing political agitation,
persecution, which made the gospel and the church suspicious and brought them under more intensified
threats of persecution.
You can understand that, right?
Persecution wasn't hard to find in those days.
Paul here, in one sense, is actually instructing the people,
don't make it worse.
Don't make it worse than what it already is in the way that you act,
in the way, in the attitudes that you have.
Another concern that seems to be on Paul's mind here is that
the spirit of these Christians towards unbelievers
would actually discredit the gospel,
leading the world to hate Christians for their arrogance
and immediately dismiss the message of salvation
before even really giving it a chance to hear it.
Do you see the difference there?
That it's one thing to stand for truth,
but if the way that we're standing for truth
is immediately a turnoff to the world
so that they never hear the truth that we're actually proclaiming,
what good is it?
Paul's confronting these things.
That's the purpose behind what he's saying.
In the Old Testament, it's often said that
the actions of certain people caused the Israelites to, quote,
stink or become a stench.
In the minds of other nations.
And there is a sense here in which Paul is commanding behavior
that will prevent Christians from becoming an unnecessary stench to the world.
But even more important than that
is the fact that these behaviors demonstrate true righteousness.
They mimic the attitudes and actions of the Lord Jesus in his ministry.
That's the most important of these things.
If we are going to live like Christ lived,
then we're going to have to adopt the things that Paul is instructing here in these verses.
And in the end, it all boils down to one thing.
Living with grace towards others.
That's really the key word here.
Grace.
So let me, instead of just going through all of these details,
it would take us forever to do that.
I'll leave it to you to examine each word individually if you'd like to do that on your own.
I've broken them up into two categories that I think will be helpful for us.
Here's the first one.
We are to show grace through civic responsibility.
Look again at verse one.
Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities,
to be obedient to those rulers and authorities,
and to be ready for every good work.
So the items listed here in this first verse,
they all have to do with the Christian's engagement in the life of the community.
And it answers the question,
does the wickedness of our governing rulers justify our rebellion against their general authority?
And the resounding answer is no, it doesn't.
It wouldn't be surprising that the Cretans are actually dealing with this either, would it?
Because as we learned in chapter one,
there were false teachers that primarily belonged to the Jewish sect,
perhaps the party of circumcision,
that were coming into the church,
they were distorting the gospel,
and part of their mindset was an anti-government insurrectionist type of view.
It's the same thing that Jesus dealt with in his ministry,
and this is only a few years later.
This letter is being written only a few years before actually
an ultimate rebellion comes in in Israel,
and Rome comes in and absolutely decimates Jerusalem.
So this is a common mindset among Jews,
this insurrectionist type of mindset.
Remember, one of the reasons that the Jews continued to reject Jesus
is because he did not come to be that messianic ruler that they thought he would be,
but he actually came to give his life for our sins,
and so many of them turned away from him.
But Paul says Christians are to be submissive to rulers and authorities,
that they are to be obedient to them,
because, as he says in Romans 13,
they have been instituted and ordained by God.
We're to pay our taxes.
Jesus said that.
We're to obey the rule of law.
We're to comply with the government's demands insofar
as they do not lead us to violate the commands of Scripture.
This is a part of how we're to obey and live and think in the world.
The final statement in this verse,
to be ready for every good work,
it moves us from passive obedience to active and positive engagement.
Donald Guthrie is helpful here.
He says the Christian should be ready to do whatever is good
in the community in which he lives.
Where good citizenship demands communal action,
he must always be cooperative,
provided no question of conscience is involved,
which confronts our temptations to completely isolate ourselves
from the community where God has placed us.
Whenever we can do good to our neighbors and for our neighbors,
whether they're believers or not,
we must be ready for every good work.
Remember, Jesus, it seems contradictory,
but it's what Jesus said.
Jesus said,
you are not of this world,
but I'm actually sending you into it.
And I'm sending you into it,
not so that you would isolate away from it,
but that you would stand out in the midst of it.
That people may see you in their midst
as his kingdom people.
And if we're not willing to graciously serve our community,
we'll fall short of Christ's desire
and we'll ultimately inhibit the work of evangelism in our lives
and through our church.
You say, well, how am I supposed to be involved?
It may be as simple as casting your vote when the election comes.
Thinking I want to do something that is going to be good for my community.
I want to be ready for every good work,
which means I will exercise the voice that God has allowed me to have,
at least in a local, in a state, in a federal election.
I think that's an implication of this text for us.
It may be advocating for better education in your kid's school.
It may be volunteering in some way,
maybe in the community like we're doing this afternoon.
This is the town's event that we're involved with this afternoon,
not our event.
We are volunteering to help them,
and in response, they are so gracious
to let us influence the people that are coming to their event,
trying to do good in the community.
Maybe it's when natural disasters come
and you find a way to help your neighbors,
find ways to help them get along,
whether they're believers or not.
This isn't a command for political obsession.
That's actually something that we need to avoid.
It's actually seeking good for our neighbors.
And Paul says, this is the way we live in the world.
So we show grace in doing that.
We show grace in civic responsibility.
Number two, we show grace by communicating courteously.
Communicating, is this not the most difficult thing in this passage?
Verse two, to speak evil of no one,
to avoid quarreling,
but to be gentle,
to show perfect courtesy toward all people.
Notice that all of the items here in this verse
are connected to how we speak.
We are to avoid slander,
foolish argumentation,
and instead show gentleness and perfect courtesy
toward all people.
So that no matter how great our frustration,
our stand for truth,
and our stand against sin,
must be wrapped and clothed in
kindness and courtesy
and the love that was modeled by our Lord.
Who Peter writes in 1 Peter chapter two,
when he was reviled,
did not revile in return.
When he suffered,
he did not threaten,
but continued entrusting himself
to him who judges justly.
Is Jesus not our pattern here?
He did not curse those
who nailed him to a cross.
He said instead,
Father, forgive them.
They don't even know what they're doing.
Paul would later on say that
before his conversion,
in the way that he breathed out
threatenings to the church,
he did so in ignorance.
It's the same thing Jesus was saying
from the cross about the Romans
who nailed him there and crucified
and Father, forgive them.
They don't even know what they're doing.
Paul says,
I didn't even know,
I didn't even know how sinful I was
in what I was doing.
I thought I was pleasing the Lord.
I wasn't doing any of those things.
So that when Jesus was reviled,
he didn't revile.
When he suffered,
he didn't threaten.
That's our pattern.
Rather than engaging in spiteful rants
and hateful rhetoric,
we should be discerning in our speech,
seeking to show grace
in our communication of the gospel.
And I've said this,
if I've said it once,
I've said it a hundred times
on Sunday mornings here,
if the world must hate us
and they will,
Jesus said they will,
let it be for the truth
that we proclaim
rather than the way
we communicate that truth.
If they are to despise us,
let it be for the gospel consistency
of our lives
that brings conviction
to their own
rather than an ungracious manner
that actually contradicts
the message of grace
that we say
that we believe and proclaim.
Colossians 4,
walk in wisdom
toward outsiders,
unbelievers,
in the world.
Walk in wisdom.
And how are we to do that?
Letting our speech be gracious,
seasoned with salt,
so that you may know
how you ought to answer
each person.
We can't allow our frustration
with the wickedness
of our culture
to lead us
to respond sinfully
towards them.
Neither must we allow
the wickedness
of our culture
to silence us
from speaking
the truth of God
and calling them
to turn
from their wickedness
to the grace of God.
But in calling them
to turn,
we must do it
in a way
that is gracious,
loving,
kind,
and courteous.
someone may say,
why should we care
to act this way?
Why should we care
to be involved
in a world system
who hates us?
Why should we care
at all
to actually be
of any benefit
to a community
who hates our God
and hates our message?
They don't deserve that.
And you're right.
But the answer
is in the next few verses.
The answer
for the reason
for us to show grace
to the world around us
is because of all the grace
that we have received
when we didn't deserve it.
That's what Paul moves to
in the next thing.
So first,
we are to remember
how to live in the world.
Number two,
remember what you were.
Remember what you were.
Verse three,
for we ourselves.
Remember,
I told you a few weeks ago,
this word for,
often,
it's a grounding statement,
meaning that whatever follows
from this conjunction,
from this particular
turn of phrase,
is going to establish
the motivation
for what has just been said.
So Paul says,
do this,
live this way in the world,
and here's why.
For we ourselves
were once foolish,
disobedient,
led astray,
slaves to various passions
and pleasures,
passing our days
in malice and envy,
hated by others,
and hating one another.
I mentioned before
that the undergirding,
undergirding this section
is the problem
of spiritual arrogance
and elitism
elitism
that can sometimes
pervade the Christian heart.
And it's Paul's appeal
in verses three through five
that leads me to believe
that was the force
behind the issues in Crete.
He could have easily
instructed the things
of verse one and two
by a direct appeal
to the commandments
of the scripture,
but that's not what he does.
Instead,
he told Titus
to remind the Cretan believers
that their motivation
is their life
before Christ.
That's what he says.
Do this
because this is
what you once were.
It's as if they had forgotten
how desperately sinful
they were
before being shown
the grace of God.
They had stopped living daily
in the light
of the gospel of grace
and had begun
thinking of themselves
more highly
than they ought to think.
And again,
I'll leave it to you
to think through
all the details,
but the opening item here
is what shapes
the rest of the list.
He says,
for we were once foolish.
And by foolish,
Paul means that
we were at one time
without spiritual understanding,
which meant that
we were in bondage to sin,
bearing the fruit of wickedness
in the world
and in our lives.
We were as dead
in our trespasses and sins,
according to Ephesians 2,
as everybody else is dead
in their trespasses and sin.
But these Cretans
seem to have
begun to forget
their utter lostness
without Jesus.
And instead of looking
at the world
with compassion
and sympathy
towards their plight,
the general attitude
had become arrogant
and condescending.
Look at where we are.
We're so much better than you.
And that shapes the way
that they look
at the rest of the world,
putting themselves here,
pushing everyone else below.
And they begin,
at least in their minds
and their actions,
to abandon
the gospel of grace.
You see,
this is why
we talk about disagreements
in structures
and formats
and frameworks
for the gospel
and things like that.
But this is one of the reasons
it's so important
for us to care about that
and to have those discussions.
Because at the moment
that we begin
to insinuate
that our salvation
has anything to do with us,
we're going to start
letting issues like this
creep into our behavior
and into our thoughts.
If we decided
to give the world
what it deserves
and demanded
that God do that,
we would also need
to receive what we deserve.
And what we all deserve
is the wrath of God.
But God is so gracious
even to the most vehement
of sinners
reserving His wrath
for a future judgment.
We look at the world
around us and say,
why does God
let any of us live?
Forget even for a moment
the question of
why would God
save any of us
and just think
for just a moment,
why would God
let any of us live?
That's what R.C. Sproul
was getting at
in that famous statement
he made.
People laugh about it
and they've made
t-shirts out of it
when he says,
what's wrong with you people?
He meant that
because he was seriously angry
about a question
where people were questioning
whether or not
God was just
in condemning Adam
for his sin,
a sin that to us
seems like such a little thing.
And Sproul says,
what's wrong with us?
Adam was a creature
of the dirt
who defied
the living God
and it was only
of God's grace
that he breathed
another breath
and when we begin
to understand
the grace of God
we see it is only
by God's grace
that we take
a single breath
in this life.
Matthew 5
Jesus said,
for he makes
his son to rise
on the evil
and on the good.
He sends the rain
on the just
and on the unjust.
And if this is
how God responds
to unbelievers,
shouldn't we be concerned
to do the same thing?
Rather than to be like
James and John
asking to
call down fire
from heaven
to consume the people
who offend us,
should we not instead
respond with the same grace
that God has shown to us?
we should remember
what we were
and in remembering
what we were
it will shape
the way we think
and live in this world
and it should produce
a gracious compassion,
a desire for
the conversion
of the lost
rather than
the condemnation
of the lost.
And I'm not convinced
that conversion
is always
what our hope is.
At least in the way
that we think
and the way
that we speak.
It's as if we relish
the fact
that people will spend
an eternity
away from God.
Why would we desire
that for anyone?
Thirdly,
he says,
remember the goodness
of God.
Remember the goodness
of God.
Verse 4,
but when the goodness
and loving kindness
of God our Savior
appeared,
he saved us
not because of works
done by us
in righteousness
but according
to his own
mercy.
We're going to return
to this verse
in a couple of weeks
but I at least want
to consider it
in light of these
first three verses.
Again,
the fact that Paul
appeals to this dynamic
of works versus grace
helps us understand
what the general problem
must have been in Crete.
The longer we're saved,
the more prone we are
to forget the crucial work
of God's grace
and salvation.
And if we aren't careful
to preach the gospel
to ourselves
every day,
we'll start to think
that our salvation
has something to do
with us.
That we made ourselves
savable
and in return,
God introduced
his grace to us.
And when that happens,
we'll start to speak
to the world
as if their path
to salvation
is to be more like us.
Be more like us.
Think more like us.
Talk more like us.
Do the things
that we do.
Vote the way we vote.
Do all the things
that we do
in our lives.
We'll start to think
that your path
to righteousness
and peace with God
is to be like me
because look how good
I've done
at obeying God.
We'll become evangelists
for conservatism
that is influenced
by Christian ethics
rather than
preachers of the gospel
of grace.
And Paul very quickly
reminds them
that when the goodness
and loving kindness
of God our Savior
appeared,
he saved us
not because of works
done by us
in righteousness.
righteousness.
It wasn't because
you just figured it out.
It wasn't because
you were more savable
than anyone else.
But it was according
to his own mercy
that he shows
on whomever he wills.
Titus was to remind
the people
that they weren't saved
because they got
their lives
put together
in a certain way
and they weren't saved
because they were smart
enough to choose Jesus
when others didn't.
No, they were saved
because the goodness
of God's grace
shone in Jesus Christ
awakened in their heart
by the Spirit of God.
You see,
the gospel of grace alone
ultimately shapes
our attitudes
and our actions
in this life.
It is our hope
of Christ's return
and his eternal rule
that helps us endure
the sufferings
of this world.
That's what Peter
was getting at
in the earlier passage
we quoted.
It's the goodness
of God shown to us
that drives our desire
for others to be saved
rather than destroyed.
That's what Paul's
just made a point of
in verse 3.
And in the end
the gospel
will always,
always,
always
produce humility
not arrogance
and hatefulness.
And if your struggle today
is to live in humility
toward outsiders,
it's because you either
don't understand
or you're not living
in light of
the gospel
of God's grace
because the gospel
always produces humility.
Which is why
it's so important.
We must not think
of the gospel
as something
that is useful for us
at the moment
of conversion
but is just the milk
of the word
that we leave behind
and go on to greater things
like what exactly
will it be like
when Jesus returns
and which millennial
perspective is right.
We think those are the,
we think that those
are the significant things.
We think that's
the meat of the word.
No, the meat of the word
is the gospel.
It's the gospel.
And no matter
how much you dig into it,
no matter how many years
you spend as a Christian
thinking on the gospel
of grace,
it will never grow tired.
It will never grow old.
And even after years
of being a Christian,
you'll have moments
where the spirit of God
awakens your mind
and enlightens your mind
to the reality
of his goodness
and of his grace
towards us.
It always produces
humility.
And if what it's produced
in you is some type
of arrogance
or hatefulness,
it's not the gospel
of grace
that you've come
to believe.
Really,
there's two ways
that we must
think of responding
to this text.
There may be more,
but I'm going to give you two.
And the way
that you respond
really depends
on which side
of the but
in verse four
you find yourself on.
You see that?
Verse four,
but when the goodness
of God appeared to us
in the person of Christ.
And there may be
someone here today
that has never
actually experienced
the saving grace
of God.
of course,
the very fact
that you're here
and that you have breath
and that you're not starving
and that you're not
on the verge of death
is evidence
that you have
in some sense
received
the grace of God
that is given
to every single person
out of the
loving kindness
of God.
What we would call
common grace.
But you may not
have ever experienced
the saving grace
of God.
you're still living
your life
in verse three.
Foolish.
Chasing after passions
and pleasures
of this life.
Filled with malice
and envy.
Hated by others.
Hating one another.
Now your behavior
may be
conservative.
It may perhaps
generally conform
to a Christian ethic
or it could be
the opposite of that.
It could be notoriously
set against everything
that God says
and that God is.
But in either case,
you're resting
your eternal hope
on self-righteousness
rather than the grace
of God.
You're hoping
you'll make it
because you have
the right mindset
and the right worldview
and you're doing
the right things
and since you're doing
the right things
then how could God
ever turn you away?
And you've received
common grace
but you haven't
actually experienced
saving grace.
And this week,
if you would just
look to the cross,
the cross of Christ
exposes
the complete error
of that way of thinking.
If there was anything
good you could do
to be at peace
with God,
then there was no reason
for Jesus to suffer
and die
and be crucified
on that cross.
The very fact
that he did
shows that you are
utterly lost
on your own.
and I beg you
to leave
your self-righteousness
and turn
finally
to the grace
of God
in Christ.
Trusting in him
alone,
clinging
to his work
of mercy
and grace,
abandoning your sin,
abandoning your
selfish pursuits
and the efforts
that you have
burdened yourself
with.
Leave the burden
alone.
Leave it.
Others here,
you know
the grace
of Christ.
You know
the glory
of it.
There's times
in your life
where you're
overwhelmed
when you begin
to think of it.
The fact
that God
has so ordained
the steps
of your life
that he would
be so gracious
that you would
not only hear
the gospel
because there's
many people
who don't,
but not only
that you would
hear the gospel
but that he
would open
your heart
to believe it.
But the truth
is you're not
living in light
of that gospel
day by day.
And it may be
that your general
attitude towards
unbelievers
is kind of
condescending,
!
A little hateful!
And if you're
to be real
honest with
yourself,
you'd have to
say,
my persona
in my community
or maybe
online
or whatever
it is
or with my
family,
I've actually
probably
made the gospel
stink
to a lot
of people.
And if that's
you,
can I just,
if you'll just
reconsider day
by day
the gospel
of grace,
preach to
yourself the
gospel every
single day.
Start your
day by
asking yourself,
what is the
gospel?
What is the
gospel?
And if you
really understand
it,
you'll begin
each day
in praise
that God
would love
you,
that he would
save you,
and that will
shape the way
that you respond
to the other
people that
frustrate
you at
your work.
It will
shape the
way that
you post.
It will
shape your
isolation
versus
engagement.
It will
motivate
evangelism.
It will
do all
those things.
When I
was growing
up,
anytime I
was going
somewhere,
if it was
to a
friend's
house or
maybe on
a youth
activity,
wherever
it was
that I
wasn't
around my
dad and
he couldn't
see me,
he would
the last
thing he
would say
to me is
he would
make me
say my
name.
He didn't
care about
my first
name.
He wanted
me to
hear myself
say my
last name
knowing that
it's also
his last
name.
That was
really the
purpose of
that.
And then
he would
make this
statement.
It's the
last thing
he would
always say.
He would
say,
remember
who you
are and
remember
whose
you are.
And what
dad meant
by that
was two
fold.
Because he
was a
Christian,
he wanted
me to
remember
the fact
that I
belonged to
Christ and
that that
mattered in
the way that
I lived and
the way that
I treated
others and
the whole
thing.
The other
thing that he
wanted me to
remember is
that I
belonged to
him and
that wherever
I went,
I carried
his name
with me.
And that
if I
were to
act in
a way that
was
disrespectful
or sinful
or dishonorable,
it would
not only
reflect my
attitudes and
actions,
but it would
be a reflection
on him because
I belong to
him.
And there
is a sense
in which this
passage,
Paul is telling
Titus,
just gather
the church
together and
just tell
them,
remember who
you are
and remember
whose you
are.
And who
are you?
If you
know Christ,
it's the
song that
we used
to all
probably sing
growing up,
I'm just
a sinner
saved by
grace.
That's all
that I
am.
I told you
a couple
of weeks
ago a
little bit
about Martin
Lloyd-Jones.
When it
came to
his dying
days,
the young
man that
was doing
his funeral,
he told
him,
he said,
when you
stand before
that congregation
at my
funeral,
just tell
them I
was a
sinner saved
by grace.
That's all
I was.
And his
point was
don't make
it about
any accolades
that you
may want
to give
me or
about anything
that perhaps
that I
have done
in my
life.
Just tell
them at
the heart
of it,
I'm just
a sinner.
That's all
that I
am.
That has
been shown
the wonderful
grace of
God.
And if you
know Christ,
that's what
you are.
That's who
you are.
You're just
a sinner.
Remember
what you
are.
But now
remember
what you
are.
You're
saved.
Saved
by grace.
And remember
whose you
are.
You are
not your
own.
For you
have been
bought with
a price.
Therefore
glorify God
in your
body,
in the way
that you
live,
in the way
that you
think.
Because the
things that
you do
are a
reflection
on him
to whom
you belong.
And we
don't want
to make
Cornelius
plug their
noses when
they see the
Christians come
by.
Because the
Christians are
the most
arrogant of
us.
No.
They may
hate us.
But let it
not be because
we're continuing
in the sin
that we've
been saved
from.