Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Turn in your Bibles this morning to the book of Titus.
[00:00:03] That's in the New Testament.
[00:00:06] That's in the New Testament. That's towards the back of your Bible. In fact, Titus is after the t's 1 Thessalonians, second Thessalonians, and first and second Timothy. And then you'll find Paul's letter to Titus in the New Testament. We're taking a break from First Samuel this morning, and Sam will begin a new series next week on who is your one? He sent an email about that, so looking forward to that. But today's sermon is a standalone sermon, which means I get to pick my own text, which is daunting.
[00:00:38] It's good and it's bad. But Sam encourages us when we have these opportunities to preach standalone sermons, he encourages us to preach either from what God is doing in our own hearts or what we feel God is leading us to talk about that might be pertinent in the life of our church. And sometimes those two things coincide, Right? And I'll let you guys be the judge of that. This morning in our text of Titus, in chapter two, we will be in verses 11 through 15. And here's how I want to approach this text this morning. I'm going to take a drink real quick before I go on.
[00:01:14] Here's how I want to approach this text this morning.
[00:01:17] You all are aware of our mission statement here at Emmanuel. You hear it every Sunday.
[00:01:23] Sam mentioned it again this morning. As the love of Christ pours into us, that love will pour out of us, right? It's that idea that Sam said. And we say every week of overflow ministry.
[00:01:35] That's what that means. Christ in, Christ out. And your pastors desire that all of us, us included, would have hearts so full of the love of Christ that it spills out into our everyday, everyday lives. Now, we also have values in our church or experiences, right? Lived experiences in our lives here in Emanuel that we call our values. Values shape our lives.
[00:02:02] You have your own set of values, personal values, and they shape your lives, our values. We sacrifice time for our values. We sacrifice energy for our values. We sacrifice money for what we value, right? And so here at Emanuel, we value experiences like what we're doing this morning. Our weekend gathering is one of our values.
[00:02:23] The importance of scripture in the life of the believer obviously is one of our values. We value connection, right? Connection that you experience on Sunday mornings in the family of God. Connections that we encourage you to participate in in gospel communities and discipleship.
[00:02:40] That is something that we value deeply. Connection. We Value safety. You've heard that before.
[00:02:45] Not just physical safety, although we are very intentional with regard to that in our church, but emotional safety, spiritual safety, both from a perspective of your pastors, but also in the individual believer. To foster a sense of safety for others in your life and in the world. That you would be a place of safety for them to run to and to confide in.
[00:03:07] Gives us opportunities to share the love of Christ. That's a value that we, that we deeply value. And finally, mission. Mission is one of our values. Christ's love pouring out of us is our mission to those around us. This overflow ministry, all of these are our values. All of these are experiences that we desire, all of us in greater measure, to experience. However, it's with that in mind that we understand as your pastors when we preach and we pastor, that we all live, us included, busy lives. We all live busy lives. Some are more busy than others, but we all have busy lives. And in our busy lives, we tend to at times kind of run our life and live with our heads down, so to speak, right? In a metaphorical way, but also in a physical way, in a posture Christian, sometimes just not paying attention to the world. We're paying attention to what's right before us, heads down, focused on the minute by minute things in life that are immediately in front of us, trying to get through the day. Important things, right? Most of them, some of them are not. Sometimes we have our hearts and our minds and our heads focused on the wrong things. But we do live busy lives. And it's our job as your pastors, and indeed your job as the people of God collectively, to remind one another, to exhort one another, that as a disciple of Jesus Christ, that we are missionaries and we are ambassadors, right? We are ambassadors of Christ and that God desires, you've heard this before, to make his appeal through us.
[00:04:38] As we live our lives with our heads up and our eyes open, right? And when we live that way, are we not blessed? When we live our lives with our heads up and our eyes open and we experience God's love and that love flows out of us, we are immensely blessed in a number of ways in our lives.
[00:04:56] And then we return to head down living.
[00:04:59] Because life happens, right? Things draw our attention and rightfully so. Sometimes we do need to focus the matters right in front of us. And we realize, though, when we live with our lives with our heads up and our eyes open, we realize that that takes away time from our personal agenda when we're focusing on what's around us and we're willing to sacrifice.
[00:05:22] Sometimes we do. We kind of get clicked back into understanding. This takes a little bit too much time in my life. I need to live back with my head down and my eyes closed or focused on something different rather than on the world around us. So here at Emanuel, we desire to foster a community value of interruptability.
[00:05:40] Right. We want to be interrupted. We want to be able to be interrupted, specifically to be the kind of people who live with our heads up and our eyes open in order to care for the lostness in the world that's around us.
[00:05:53] The lostness that's out there, the lostness that's in here. Right. There are lost people sitting in our church most likely right now. Right. It's just. That's the odds of it. Right. Lostness inside and outside of our families as well. We want to be a people who live with presence and awareness of the needs around us. Because we need to realize that when life happens in those moments when our head's down and life is happening to us through the good, the bad, and the ugly, that God is in those moments, and he's working in those moments.
[00:06:24] So what does that have to do with the Book of Titus? Well, it's this.
[00:06:28] What creates and what sustains the posture of being a people who are interruptible is found in our text this morning. We've already sung about it this morning. And it is grace.
[00:06:40] It's the grace of God that allows us to be an interruptible people. And isn't grace a wonderful word?
[00:06:48] It's a great word. It's like humility.
[00:06:51] Those are fantastic words. You know grace when you see it. You know humility when you see it, when you experience. And it's compelling. It's compelling. Those are compelling traits that we experience.
[00:07:05] Grace and humility.
[00:07:07] It's the grace of God that both creates and sustains a heart that's willing to be interrupted. After all, if you're a Christian, hasn't God interrupted your heart at one time in your life?
[00:07:21] Your dark and sinful heart was interrupted by the grace of God.
[00:07:26] Of course it has.
[00:07:28] So I've been thinking and pondering about God's grace in my own life for some time. I mean, like years has been something that has been just on my mind and in my heart. What is it? How does it work?
[00:07:40] Why can't I live out the grace of God more faithfully and consistently in my life? These things have been on my mind, on my heart for a while. Because it's only by the grace of God. That his love has been poured into us. And that same grace enables us to live a life where we live, heads up, eyes open, and let that grace flow out of us into the lives of others. And grace is powerful.
[00:08:03] Grace is powerful. And we see this this morning in Paul's letter to what he calls his true friend in the faith, Titus.
[00:08:13] So my main point this morning is God's grace is the foundation for godly living. Or kind of a subtitle is God's grace is saving grace. So let me pray for our time, and then we'll get into our text. Father, we're grateful for this time this morning. I'm grateful for the worship, grateful for the prayer of confession, the prayer of mission, grateful for the way that all of these things are tied together.
[00:08:37] Lord, it is certainly by intentional planning by us, by people, but it is the spirit of God that ties this all together.
[00:08:48] And we are so grateful. Grateful for hymn writers that write the hymns that are based on Scriptures that we read and teach from and preach from, Lord, that we can use those in our gatherings to reinforce the gospel message. And Lord, we leave on Sunday mornings with songs in our hearts and the words in our hearts intended for that to pour out of us. And so I'm grateful for that, Lord, this morning, may your love and your grace pour into us in new and fresh ways. Open our minds and our hearts to the truth of your word and to the truth of the meaning of grace in our lives. This morning we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.
[00:09:25] So before I read our text, let me provide just some brief context for. For Titus, our text. In chapter two, Paul has planted a church on the island of Crete, and he's left a fellow by the name of Titus behind to help that church. And he writes a letter.
[00:09:43] This is more of a letter than a book.
[00:09:46] We call them books, but it's a letter to Titus, and it contains practical advice, practical advice to how to lead, how to organize a church, and how to teach new believers in that church how they are to live as Christians.
[00:10:02] And Paul has a specific reason to write this way, because false teaching has found its way into this church.
[00:10:13] And so Paul focuses primarily on false teaching as he weaves into this letter. Initially, as we read in chapter one how the church is to be organized, we read in chapter one of Titus the biblical qualifications for elders. That's one of the couple of places we read about those qualifications for leaders in the church, biblical elders. Paul contrasts the characteristics of an elder, a leader in the church, with those of the False teachers.
[00:10:42] Then he draws a contrast between these putrid works of false teachers and the good works of believers. Specifically, this is where we read about how older Christians are to disciple younger Christians. Older women discipling younger women, older men discipling younger men. That's where we read about this discipling aspect, because they're immersed in an immoral culture. And then we have our text that we'll read this morning. And then after our text, Paul continues on with these instructions. So you've got instructions, our text, and then more instructions, because our text, as we'll learn, is the foundation of all of those instructions.
[00:11:24] And we, we live here in our lives in immoral times as well, don't we? When have we not lived in an immoral and godless culture?
[00:11:33] We always have.
[00:11:35] And this side of Christ coming back, we always will live in a moral culture, immoral culture.
[00:11:42] But when false teaching, or when is false teaching both overt and subtle, not permeated our culture?
[00:11:52] And it's important for us as a church to know some of these things that Paul has taught, even the subject of biblical elders. You need to know what biblical elders should look like. You need to hold us accountable. You need to know what they look like so you can identify when we feel that God is calling us to more men to be elders in our church. So these are important teachings for us all to know.
[00:12:16] How are we to engage those who have bought in and believe lies? How are we to engage a world where false teaching permeates so deeply? How are we to engage the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ?
[00:12:32] How are we to understand this?
[00:12:34] Are we repulsed by the people who buy into false teaching?
[00:12:38] Do we wring our hands? Do we, do we complain about people who think a little differently than we do, who have the gospel wrong or who flat out don't believe the gospel and are living immoral and ungodly lives?
[00:12:51] Do we withdraw from the culture? Do we avoid certain people? Do we boycott businesses?
[00:12:57] Is that the solution to the problem?
[00:13:00] Do we point fingers?
[00:13:02] Do we lecture?
[00:13:04] Do we spread gossip?
[00:13:07] Or maybe, just maybe, the question that we should ask ourselves is this. How do I live in a godly culture and live a godly life when my own heart is still so susceptible to the enticement of sin and forgetting and misbelieving the gospel and not living that gospel out rather than pointing a finger?
[00:13:30] When you point a finger, there's at least three pointing back at yourself. It said so in our text this morning in chapter two and 11, 11, 15. What we read in Our text is a foundation for godly living. It's a foundation for the instructions. Paul writes to Titus before our text and after our text, he's giving instructions.
[00:13:51] We see imperatives in this text.
[00:13:54] In this letter, we see commands. Those commands are based on what we're going to read today. So read with me. Beginning in verse 11 through 15, Paul writes this letter to his friend Titus. And he says, for the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, instructing us to deny godliness, godlessness and worldly lusts, and to live a sensible, righteous and godly way in the present age, while we wait for the blessed hope, the appearance of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.
[00:14:27] He gave himself for us, to redeem us from all lawlessness and to cleanse us for Himself, a people for his own possession, eager to do good works.
[00:14:37] Proclaim these things, encourage and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you, Paul writes. What I want us to see in this text this morning are two things. One is I want us to see that the grace of God fundamentally changes us. And the second thing I want us to see is that once it changes us, its work is not done in us. It actually trains us. So let's talk first about the grace of God fundamentally changes us. Verse 11. For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people. What does this mean?
[00:15:13] Well, it means that the age old question of how does mankind connect to the living God? Has finally been resolved. Or more accurately, I should say it answers the question of how does mankind reconnect to the living God?
[00:15:28] Because in the beginning, way back in the beginning, when God created, He said it was good, didn't he?
[00:15:35] He said creation was good, mankind was good. They were already connected to God. Adam and Eve walked with their Creator and it was good. There was harmony, there was peace. There was unity between God and man and between man and woman, between relationships. There was peace, there was harmony. It's hard for us to think and believe of a world like that right now.
[00:15:59] But something catastrophic happened. Sin entered into the world. We know it as the Fall.
[00:16:05] Man and woman believed Satan's lie, that they could live in God's creation without him. They believed that they could rule their own kingdom, that they could be their own God.
[00:16:16] What about us many years later?
[00:16:19] Well, in our pride, in our arrogance, and by our own sin, which each of us is personally responsible for, the Bible says we are separated from a holy God.
[00:16:32] The catastrophic result of the Fall is there was a separation between creation and God.
[00:16:39] We are rebellious.
[00:16:41] We are at war with God. The Bible says that we are dead in our trespasses and sin, meaning we are enemies of God.
[00:16:49] We are incapable of meriting any kind of favor with God.
[00:16:56] We are spiritually dead and dead people. I don't know if you knew this. Dead people don't respond to things because they're dead.
[00:17:04] It's a simple truth, but it's a profound truth when it comes to how God works in the unrepentant heart.
[00:17:12] Spiritually, dead people cannot respond. And left in our spiritual deadness, we will, we will be led to physical death.
[00:17:20] And we will experience in that physical death eternal, eternal separation from, from the living God.
[00:17:27] Hell is real and it will not be pleasant.
[00:17:30] But there is good news at a particular point in time. The grace of God, we read, has appeared, bringing salvation for all people. While we were still sinners, incapable and unable, Jesus Christ was willing and able, and he came down to dwell among us. Ephesians 2 says, But God, who is rich in mercy because of his great love for us, made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in our trespasses. You are saved by grace through faith. And this is not of your own doing. It is a gift from the living God, not from our own works.
[00:18:10] By the work of Jesus Christ on the cross, God forgives us of our sins and he buys us back. And he reconnects us to himself, to the living God, according to the riches of God's grace, His unmerited favor that he richly pours out on us by the power Spirit. And he continues to do so.
[00:18:32] And yet we still fall back, don't we? What do we fall back in? We fall back into sin in our best attempts. We fall back to religion.
[00:18:40] We fall back to rules and regulations, to do's and don'ts, to morality. And we think that's our saving grace.
[00:18:48] Those works will somehow save us.
[00:18:52] Jesus simply says, when he was asked what must we do, he said, believe in me. That's the work of the unrepentant sinner, is to repent and believe in Jesus Christ. And that belief, that faith itself is a gift from God. It's all God's work.
[00:19:10] Literally. Grace is, as I said, unmerited favor by God. It is also enabling grace. And the first work that enabling grace does in us by God's grace is opens our eyes to who we really are, apart from Christ, that we are dead in our sin and that we are in need of saving. That's the first thing faith does. It turns that light on and sheds the light on the fact that we indeed are sinners.
[00:19:38] We are under his wrath. It is not good news. But when we repent of our sin and we turn from it, we trust in the work of Jesus on the cross. We are made alive by God with Christ. And it is the grace of God, which has a name, Jesus Christ, that has appeared that brings about this salvation through his life, his suffering on the cross, his death and his resurrection.
[00:20:01] And in God's mercy, which is his compassion, he withholds what we deserve, which is the condemnation for our sin. He gives us all the blessings by grace in Christ and they're rooted in his presence that we are now reconnected to, that we now experience through Him.
[00:20:21] And with that, God's power is literally unleashed in our lives.
[00:20:27] And that power is God's training. Grace. This is the good news of the gospel.
[00:20:32] This is the good news of the gospel.
[00:20:35] God's grace fundamentally changes us, bringing us from death to to life. And so there are four ways that God's grace trains us. The first is that God's grace trains us in how to live. And verse 11 again says the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people. Verse 12 instructing us to what? To deny godlessness, worldly lust, and to live a sensible, righteous and godly way in the present age.
[00:21:04] God's grace instructs us.
[00:21:07] I like the word some of your Bibles may say trains. I like the phrase that God's grace trains us. Paul says that it trains us on one hand to deny godlessness and worldly lusts and then to conversely to live sensible or self controlled righteous and godly ways. In the present age, which is an important point now. We could spend the rest of our time today talking about good Christian behavior, couldn't we?
[00:21:33] We could talk a lot about Christian behavior and what it is and what it looks like. But I think what happens is we too often look at the Bible, both Christians and people who are non Christians, as simply a book of virtues, right?
[00:21:47] Righteous rules to live by.
[00:21:50] And if that's how you read scripture, I would suggest you're misreading scripture. The Bible is God's story of redemption for the sinner.
[00:21:57] And this verse provides us with more of a principle for living. So we're not going to unpack what Christian living should look like. I think if you're a believer, you pretty much know what that is. You can look in your Bible to what that does look like.
[00:22:09] But what we're talking about more, I think is Paul's Talking about a principle of living. So just as we were once incapable of living a godly life, and then God's grace interrupted us, our dead hearts and transformed us. And in that then we willfully, because of God's grace, repented and and believe the gospel. And we now follow Jesus just as how that happened once in our lives. So now that should be our lifestyle, the lifestyle of repenting and believing. Repenting and believing should be an ongoing process in the life of the believer. Because we so easily forget the gospel, we forget the enabling power of God's grace in our daily lives to do this. And we live and react too often, too often in our flesh rather than our renewed spirit.
[00:23:00] That's the behavior. That's how we are enabled by grace to live by. There are Christian virtues that we embrace. There are certain activities and behaviors that you once did before you knew Jesus Christ, that you no longer do.
[00:23:16] But those works don't save you.
[00:23:19] They are an evidence of the faith that God has given you by his grace.
[00:23:23] We're talking about how grace changes the posture of our awakened heart and gives us new desires.
[00:23:32] I'm reminded of the Bonhoeffer. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German theologian who wrote a book, the Cost of Discipleship, that I recommend to you. And he says this, and we sang this as well. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.
[00:23:47] When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.
[00:23:52] So think of it this way. God's saving grace brings us from death to life and enables us to then die to self.
[00:24:00] That's what we're called to do as a Christian. That's what our heart should be. That should be our heart posture. The daily task of the believer is to die to self and to live for Christ.
[00:24:12] Because in our flesh we're not naturally inclined to the things of God, to His work, to his will, to his word. And it's a daily battle to renounce the godliness, godlessness that Paul talks about, to renounce the lust of the flesh that the world offers seemingly at every turn. Now God's grace trains us to live out the fruit of the spirit.
[00:24:34] Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self control. These are hallmarks of a heart that has been changed by the grace of God.
[00:24:45] And this is evidence that the spirit of the living God resides in your heart. God's grace trains us and empowers us to live this way, as Paul writes, in a sensible way or in a self controlled way.
[00:25:00] And then Paul says at the end of verse 12 that we are to live this way in the present age, which I think is important.
[00:25:07] We have a unique.
[00:25:09] We need to hear this because we're missing out. We have a unique opportunity as the transformed people of God to live a distinct lifestyle in the here and in the now.
[00:25:23] One that is marked not by virtue alone, but an ongoing willingness. To do what? To admit our wrongs, to seek forgiveness from God and from one another. Not just in the church, but the people that we know that don't know the Lord.
[00:25:41] This is the attractiveness of grace that I mentioned earlier. That when we see humility, that kind of humility and grace in someone's life, it is attractive. And we live that way with a heart posture that we're willing to admit our wrongs and seek forgiveness. That is attractive. If I were to name one biblical virtue that points to the lifestyle that we're talking about, it would be humility.
[00:26:06] And the way we live today in this present age is the only opportunity that we have to make that impression while pointing to Jesus Christ, who does this work in us. Because when we get to the other side, when Christ returns and God then renews creation and it's the new heavens and the new earth, when we won't need to do that anymore because we will all be the redeemed people of God.
[00:26:32] We will be the people of God in the place where God has now put us back to restored Garden of Eden, heaven on earth. It's not an ethereal place. This is a physical representation, a physical place that we will live in eternity with the Lord. We will not need or get to live this way before other people because we will all be redeemed. So today is the opportunity for us to live this way. The time is now.
[00:27:01] The second way God's grace trains us is it trains us where to look.
[00:27:05] Verse 13 says that while we wait for the blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, there are two appearances in our text this morning. In verse 11 we have the appearance of God's grace. And in verse verse 13 we have the appearance of God's glory. Both of course, referring to Jesus Christ.
[00:27:27] Living in the weeds.
[00:27:29] As we live our lives with our lives head, our heads down and our eyes focused. Living in the weeds of God's training grace, right? Striving to live a life that where our heads are up and our eyes are open, that can be toilsome.
[00:27:44] And sometimes it feels futile and it feels fruitless and it's difficult to understand what God is doing.
[00:27:51] And yet the Appearance of His present grace in our lives trains us to fix our eyes on his glory that is yet to be revealed as our one and only present future hope. And it is with this hope that we can live our everyday lives in every circumstance in our lives. As Christ's ambassadors, we look forward to Christ's return because we know that God is working in us and that he is working through us. And he doesn't waste a single moment.
[00:28:20] No moment is wasted on God.
[00:28:24] Romans 8:28 is very familiar. We know that for those who love God, all things work together for good.
[00:28:29] For those who love God and are called according to his purpose. All things Church.
[00:28:35] All things.
[00:28:37] God's training grace enables us to live with our heads up and our eyes open towards Jesus. Return when we when all things will be made new.
[00:28:47] God's specialty isn't making good from good, but it's to bring good from bad.
[00:28:54] And we can trust him through our toil and our pain and our tears and our trials that no event is meaningless.
[00:29:04] No event is meaningless. No situation is purposeless, no condition is hopeless. And I would say the no relationship. As long as we are living and breathing, no relationship is unreconcilable because God's grace is that powerful.
[00:29:20] So if you think in your life as someone that you are unreconciled with, you are disconnected with. And I'm not saying that boundaries aren't a thing, but reconciliation with someone is the power of God.
[00:29:33] Our part is a willingness to be given over to that and be used by God for His purposes. And the glory then goes to him, not to ourselves. God is working out his good, his goodwill, in spite of dark days. And his grace trains us in that. Which means we're going to go through some hard stuff in this life right now. We see a reflection, we see a hint of his purposes. We see a glimpse of his glory in the world at times, right? And sometimes that's hard to see.
[00:30:02] But we look forward to the day when his glory appears and we see him face to face face.
[00:30:08] What are you going through right now, Church?
[00:30:11] What are you going through right now that needs the present grace of God to lift up your heads towards the reality of his future glory?
[00:30:20] What are the all things in your life that in this very moment of your life he is working for good, even if you can't see it because he is the third way grace trains us. God's grace trains us is in the nature of our redemption or our identity.
[00:30:37] God's grace trains us in our identity. Look at verse 14 he gave himself for us, to redeem us from all lawlessness and to cleanse for Himself a people for his own possession, eager to do good works.
[00:30:51] The power of God's grace is constantly moving, constantly in motion, continually reminding us of the Gospel and empowering us to live that gospel out. And here in verse 14, we're given a portrait of sorts of Christ's work for us and how his work redefines who we are as creation. New creations. We're given a new identity. We're given a new purpose in that identity. And grace trains us. What that took, we must not forget. What it took Christ, what it took God to actually save us, to actually give us a new identity. It's worth dwelling us. It took Christ to redeem us, meaning he paid the price for us. There was an exchange. You've been bought. You've been purchased by the blood of Christ. Jesus suffered and died on the cross. Listen. In your place.
[00:31:45] He died in your place. When you meditate on the cross, we sang the Wondrous Cross. That's a meditation on the cross. It's worth going back and reading that. That singing, that meditating on the cross. When you do this and consider what happened there, remember that it was you that deserved that fate.
[00:32:02] It was you that deserved that judgment.
[00:32:05] But God's mercy, His compassion, kept that from you.
[00:32:11] We were redeemed. We were purchased by Christ, who is our substitute on the cross.
[00:32:17] It took Christ cleansing us. Sin makes us dirty and it makes us guilty. Grace makes us innocent and clean. And there are some of us today that we need to hear that.
[00:32:29] The way that you've been treated in the past, perhaps even now, the way that you've been sinned against by others, has left you with feelings of anger and guilt, feelings of shame that define you. And that is not to be so.
[00:32:43] Because Christ has purchased you and he has cleansed you. God literally looks at you and he sees His Son. He sees you as clean. He sees you as pure. He sees you as holy, spotless, blameless.
[00:32:58] That's how the God of the universe who created you, that's how he sees you in Christ.
[00:33:04] Our new identity necessitated Christ's possession of us. When Christ possesses you, he will not let you go.
[00:33:13] You were dead and now you're alive.
[00:33:17] You were under God's wrath.
[00:33:19] Now he's pleased by you. You were orphans.
[00:33:23] Now you're adopted into his kingdom and you are a co heir with Christ. This is, and there is eternal security in knowing that the King of the universe possesses you.
[00:33:36] No other Belief system claims that, but it is true. Finally, the way God's grace trains us in our new identity is to prepare us and to prepare us for good works and with a zeal to do those good works. I think God's great God was zealous in his grace to save us. And we are to be zealous for the good works that come out of those, for the good works that comes out of God's grace in our lives, Right? And so it is with zeal that we are to do them. In chapter one, Paul refers to the people of Crete and he calls them Cretans. And they claim to know God, but they deny God, he says by their works he says that they are detestable, disobedient and unfit for any good work.
[00:34:20] But with our new identity in Christ, Paul says in Ephesians 2 that we are God's workmanship.
[00:34:26] We are created in Christ Jesus for good works that God listen, prepared beforehand for us to do.
[00:34:35] Grace gives you the ability. Grace gives you the eyes. If we're looking for it, it gives you the eyes to identify the good works that God has for you to do today.
[00:34:48] With that, Paul concludes his thought regarding how the grace of God changes and then trains us.
[00:34:54] And as I wrote this, I was thinking of the Protestants, the Protestant reformers cry where they say we are saved by grace alone, through, through faith alone in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone. This always points or should to the glory of God. So Paul picks up in verse 15 with more instructions. Remember I said earlier we have our text today that we just went through 11 through 14 in the middle of this letter.
[00:35:22] That is the tipping point, the propulsion of what Paul says we should do and how we should be in those verses that come before it and come after it.
[00:35:34] And so here today, for what the Christian life should look like, he says that Paul picks up in verse 15 for what the Christian life should look like. He says that what has been done to you by God. Verses 11 through 14, the appearance of God's grace. Christ pouring his love into us and the Holy Spirit taking up residence in our heart. We only have one option left and that's for the love of Christ to pour out of us.
[00:36:00] Verse 15. Proclaim these things, encourage and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you.
[00:36:08] In verse 15 there's a sense with this word proclaim of an ongoing rhythm in the life of the Christian right. It's not just a one time proclamation. It's like when Christ gives us the commandment, he says Go make disciples. Disciples. It's as you are going.
[00:36:24] We don't just do it once and then stop. It's a continual proclamation of our lives. It's a heart posture, but it results in an action.
[00:36:34] It's an ongoing rhythm. And these things refer to the sound teaching that Paul has written before our text and after our text, and indeed in our text. And I would say that it's the sound teaching that we read in all of Scripture.
[00:36:48] Because God's grace is not just saving grace and training grace, it's illuminating grace as well, right? When we engage in God's Word, the Holy Spirit trains us. The Holy Spirit disciples us in the meaning and the application. And the more and more God's Word permeates our hearts and we avail ourselves by the grace of God, of the Holy Spirit that resides in your heart. If you are a believer, the more faithful we will be to proclaim that word.
[00:37:18] Paul then says, in that proclaiming, do so to encourage, rebuke with all authority and let no one disregard you.
[00:37:29] There's weight and there is authority that comes from Scripture itself.
[00:37:35] We are not the authority. You are not the authority. I am not the authority.
[00:37:40] God's Word is the authority and there is power in that authority. We are not to be the authoritarian in letting the love of Christ pour out of us. That would be a dichotomy, right?
[00:37:53] More than often that would come across as what? As legalism, as religion. We're to be humble, we're to be kind.
[00:38:00] We're to be grace filled.
[00:38:03] Jesus, the Word made flesh. The gospel will be for some Scripture says a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.
[00:38:10] We are not to be that stone of stumbling. We are not to be that rock of offense. We are his ambassadors, Christ making his appeal through us. We are to be like him. And Jesus says in one of the only times in scriptures that Jesus describes his heart, he says he is gentle and humble in heart. As we proclaim these things, the word of God is what is the authority we are to have the heart of Christ.
[00:38:37] This is the dynamic nature of the grace of God that has appeared, bringing salvation for all people. God's grace changes us and God's grace trains us. The question for us this morning, and there are three questions and as I, as we, as we close out here, I would invite the band to come back up. There are three questions this morning that I have for us all this morning and that for some of us. Have you embraced the saving grace of God?
[00:39:03] Right. Whether you're in the room watching Online listening or watching at a later date. The question for some of you is, have you embraced God's saving grace in your life? I remember when my eyes began to be opened to the truths that the Holy Spirit was teaching me, open to the gospel. In my life, sin was no longer just a theory, a conceptualized notion. In my life, it had become real. I mean, I knew that I sinned. I knew enough about faith, about Christian life. I grew up in a home that went to church.
[00:39:37] I understood religion. I knew that I sinned. But for me, it was a behavioral issue rather than an incurable condition in my heart that needed to be healed by Christ.
[00:39:48] The Holy Spirit was opening up my eyes to that. I realized that I was a sinner. My heart was melting from the love of God and His Amazing grace Grace. And he opened my eyes.
[00:39:59] By His Holy Spirit, he awakened me. He opened my eyes. Now, it took a while.
[00:40:05] It took a while for me to take a step of active faith. Because there does come a time in a Christian's life and someone who is having their heart opened up to faith for the first time. There comes a time when a sinner must do the work of repenting, repenting of your sin problem and trusting and submitting to Jesus Christ.
[00:40:27] When God opens up our hearts by the Holy Spirit, that is the work we can do. Jesus himself said it's to believe.
[00:40:35] So I exhort you today, if you haven't done that, to do that.
[00:40:39] If the Spirit of God is in you and he's been working in you and you have an inclination to the things of God, that is no coincidence. If something is holding you back, it's yourself, it's not God.
[00:40:50] God's arms are open. Your work is to repent of your sin and believe in Jesus Christ and then follow to turn from your godlessness and worldly lust and to embrace God's saving grace. Number two.
[00:41:04] Are you engaged in God's training grace? For those who are believers, are you engaged in God's training grace? God's training grace is there, in a manner of speaking, for the table.
[00:41:14] If God has changed your heart, he's brought to you, brought you to new life in Christ, his training grace is available. The Holy Spirit, as we said, is there to disciple you in this. But engaging in this is up to you.
[00:41:26] When God saved you, he didn't zap you with all wisdom and knowledge.
[00:41:31] As much as we'd like to think he did. He didn't do that.
[00:41:34] But he gave us minds.
[00:41:36] And by his grace, he did introduce us to the one who is grace and and in whom all are the hidden treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Jesus Christ and here at Emanuel. To be engaged in his training grace is in part to be engaged in those values that I mentioned earlier. Sunday gatherings, Scripture intake, discipleship being a person of safety for others, emotionally, spiritually, physically.
[00:42:01] Part of what we mean when we say take in our next steps is we are asking you to embody the training grace that God has for you in your life.
[00:42:11] Lastly, do you realize that you are a gallery of God's grace?
[00:42:16] The profound nature of God's grace that has been on my heart so long is probably because I understand I'm in so in desperate need of it.
[00:42:27] I used to think that possessing grace meant to be nice to people.
[00:42:30] I thought it was just to be kind to, especially if they annoyed me or they were particularly troublesome people, right? Did me wrong that I should just be patient with them. I should be kind to them, right? Even if they hurt me.
[00:42:45] And it is that.
[00:42:47] But it's so much more than that.
[00:42:50] Grace is a willingness to live as a Christian with your heads up and your eyes open and to be interruptible.
[00:42:56] Because when God's grace interrupted your dead heart and brought it to new life, when his grace turned your life upside down and gave you a new perspective, a new paradigm of how to think, how to live, how to see life, when he gave you that eternal perspective, if you can say that has happened to me, when God did that in your life, that should not have been the last time that your heart was willing to be interrupted.
[00:43:24] That's the impetus for our life and our heart to be continually interrupted.
[00:43:32] God has created you in Christ to be a gallery of his grace.
[00:43:36] And we can be that more faithfully when we live with our our eyes open and our heads up.
[00:43:43] In his daily devotional New Morning mercies, Paul Tripp, one of my favorite writers, he writes that as a Christian, he says, our heart, your heart, has been festooned with God's glorious artwork of redemption, but it can only be viewed if the lights are on.
[00:44:02] When you became a Christian, you have a heart that is festooned with God's glorious artwork of redemption. But it can only be viewed if the lights are on. And then, he explains, artwork in a gallery, if you go to an art gallery, can only be enjoyed and have an impact if the lights are on. When the lights are off, the artwork is still there, but it cannot be seen.
[00:44:24] It's no less different for us when we live too hyper focused on what's in front of us. When we live with our heads down and only fixated on ourselves.
[00:44:35] It's like as a Christian lighting a lamp and putting it under a basket.
[00:44:41] And you, church, are the light of the world, let your light shine.
