Titus 2:11-15 - God's Grace and Pastor Dennis Knows Where He Is

Welcome back to Strength of the Day, and we are now in December.

Can't believe it.

It has been, I think, about six months or so.

I think we released our Season 2 starter in Colossians, was the first Monday in July.

You would know that. I don't remember that far back.

I know you don't.

Stop it.

You were at... You are in Moses Lake Baptist Church in the basement. Your name is Dennis Fountain.

Pray for Bryon.

He might be missing in the next couple of hours.

Yeah.

Because he's mean.

I was hired to be mean to him by Pastor Robert Elliott, whose name was needlessly defamed last week because I said that he didn't want to join in.

He was here and he wasn't even here.

I know. Well, no, that's what I'm saying, is that I defamed him and so now I had to do something to get in his good graces again, and the best thing that I could do was harass you.

Okay.

That made him happy. Turns out it was Deacon Mike Gazelle that didn't join in, but he sends his greeting to our stream for the day family.

Greetings.

So, hi Mike. Hi Mike. Good to see you here in the future.

Can you see him?

I assume, actually, that I will see him.

All right.

If you're still with us, we are in Titus.

Yep. Great book. Excellent book.

Written to a pastor making pastor. And he was going around the island of Crete at the behest of his good friend, the Apostle Paul, one of our friends. Wow.

Bryon's in a mood today.

So whether you're listening or watching, I just want to apologize.

Please do.

I don't know. Have you had too much coffee today?

I just downed a lot of caffeine.

You just drink a Monster.

I did. A Monster Zero. So no sugar.

I'd rather have cancer than sugar. I don't know. That's horrible.

All right.

So anyway, we're in the book of Titus. Paul writing to Titus for Titus to set things in order for the believers on the island of Crete. So, Bryon, with the monster inside of you, can you still tell us what has Paul said already?

Yeah.

So chapter one, he encourages them, hey, God's with you. He's for you in this mission. I want to remind you about the parameters of your mission, just so you can have some encouragement and some certainty in what you're doing.

He said, I left you in Crete so that you would set up pastors in every city. And specifically because there were a lot of false teachers and evil teachers that were greedy of financial gain.

They were encouraging the believers there to live just lawless lives. Crete was kind of a routier culture back then. And so to that point, we've laughed every week at this particular verse in verse 12.

One of their own, a prophet of their own said, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons. This testimony is true.

And so Paul is helping Titus and saying, okay, find guys that are convincingly, wholeheartedly, truly Christians, and have those people be leaders and pastors in the church.

Don't have just maybe an eloquent speaker or someone that says what people want to hear. Find a faithful, good Christian man who's living the Christian life.

Yeah, and what Paul talks about is find them who are doing that, not just outside in the appearance of people, but their home life. Everything matches.

And he talks about the office of a leader should look like, and what the marriage should look like, and kids, and all of that.

Because sometimes we think, I mean, we've all had this, and we all can be this, but we have people that we may admire and look to and think, wow, what a great leader.

Only to find out, like, man, the home is a wreck, the marriage is, there's this hidden thing going on. And again, I love how one pastor friend of mine put it, you know, there's a little bit of Pharisee and a little bit of hypocrite in all of us.

So before we condemn and say, yeah, I can't believe somebody else would do that, we want to search our own life and say, like, is my life matching up what the testimony of Jesus would look like?

And of course, Paul writing to Titus saying, this is what it should look like in public and in the private life.

Yeah.

So what did we cover last week?

And then last week, he continues and says, okay, this is what you're supposed to tell kind of the pastors. These are the kinds of people that you want to have in church leadership.

And then he goes into the home lives of the individual Christians there in Crete and kind of gives this overview of don't live like all of the worldly people that are around you as Cretans.

You need to have really the Gospel and the Word of God lived out in your everyday life. So everything that you do, everything that you say, how you conduct your life should proclaim Jesus there in the chapter.

He mentions multiple times that they would behave in a Christlike, in a godly way so that the Word of God will not be dishonored, so that the opponent will be put to shame having nothing bad to say about us, so that they will adorn the doctrine of

God, our Savior in every respect. So that was what we kind of looked at last week of seeing discipleship and older men teaching younger men, older women teaching younger women, Titus teaching everybody, the pastors teaching, all of that discipleship

is taking place, so that God looks good because he is good, so that the Word of God will be honored because it is honorable and kind of accurately reflecting the nature and word and work of God.

Well, and I'll say this before we even look at today that we need to remember that that's the motive that should be the driver of all of this.

Yes.

I'm reminded of, oh, I did a devotional for a men's group online that we know, and just talking about the motive behind everything we do should be love, and that's even this as well.

Paul's not saying it just so we as listeners and those viewing today, like Paul isn't saying, okay, you better put on a good front because you represent Christ.

I remember going to youth camp, people would be like, all right, remember the name that's on the side of this church van, and you represent the church, and I think I even said it as a youth pastor in Newfoundland. There's some truth to that.

Sure.

It's like, hey, don't be an idiot or something.

You don't want to bring shame on anything.

Right. But the motive is, I think in a lot of those situations, the motive is like, give us a good name. But in this, Paul's not saying like, okay, Jesus, you know, if you, if you don't do this, then things are going to be really bad.

It's like, no, like he's done so much for you and he loves you. So your life ought to show what he's done. Yeah.

And so the motive in this is like you can live a life that just makes Jesus look good, not to make you look good. And people go, wow, what type of Christian are you? But you have a good God.

And you make people go, wow, if God can do that in their life, maybe he can do it in my life.

Yes.

And I think there's a good reminder of the motive of why we do what we do in the Christian life. So, well, let's do this. Let's jump into our passage today.

So how about this? How about you read it? And then you give a couple of thoughts and we'll kind of do it that way.

Sounds good.

All right.

In verse number 11 of Chapter 2, for the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all people, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and in a godly manner in this present age, looking for the

blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, who gave himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed and to purify for himself a people for his own possession, eager for good deeds. These things speak

and exhort and rebuke with all authority. No one is to disregard you. So here he kind of goes from some of the ground level practical things that he's giving for individual household people, whether it's old men or young women or masters or servants.

He's been speaking to those things, and now he kind of waxes eloquent. And he reminds Titus of kind of the baseline of all of this is that God's grace, his unmerited favor, his loving gifts to all of mankind has appeared in the person of Jesus.

And so because Jesus has appeared that he died for our sins, he died to redeem us, to buy us back, and he bought us so that we would be a people for his own possession. It says eager for good deeds.

That the Christian life isn't intended to be a kind of drudgery or a man. I guess I gotta be kind to people today.

I guess I gotta do whatever the good deed might be, but that the Holy Spirit's work inside of us, that Christ's suffering and dying and raising and interceding for us is meant to make us eager to follow the Lord, that we would be eager for good

deeds, not in a forced way, but genuinely when we see how much God loves us and how much He's done for us, it motivates us that we have that desire, that okay, well, I could be doing these things, I could be there with the young man. I guess I can be

an example of good deeds, I guess I can have purity and doctrine, I guess I can be dignified or sound in my speech. We can either have an I guess attitude or we can be eager and wholehearted for it, going, well, this is who Jesus is and he saved me

and now I have the opportunity to be able to be that. That we view it as an opportunity. I see there in verse number 11, the grace of God is a period, it says, bringing salvation to all people.

And I think to the island of Crete, that could be a great encouragement that God can even save Cretans. And as we look throughout the rest of scripture, God can save Corinthians.

I think of the one list, you'll have to remind me, is it in first or second Corinthians that he goes through the list of like the immoral, the drunkards, abusers of themselves, of mankind.

He gives that whole list of all of these people will not inherit the kingdom of God. And he says, and such were some of you, but you are washed, but you are sanctified.

And I think that can bring great encouragement to our hearts and our lives that we don't have to worry about if God can save us or if God wants to save us. The testimony of scripture is very clear that he does want to save all people.

There's no one that he goes, well, I really like Pastor Dennis, I'll save him, but Brian, I'm not so good with, or Pastor Rob, I'm not so good with. You're just saying that because of the rip and you got it. That's right.

So in all of those things, we can know that as we follow the admonitions in Chapter 2, that as we show Jesus with our life, as we seek to adorn the doctrine of God, our Savior, as we seek to honor the Word of God, that it can make a difference, that

God's grace that was enough to save you is enough to save the people that you are praying for and that you care about and that you are witnessing to. So this week, as you are living for the Lord, have confidence that God might just have you be able

to witness to someone this week that might get saved. God might have you plant a seed in someone that might get saved. Something kind of cool happened, what was that?

What was that Sunday? Last week, yeah.

Yeah. We had a guy that had called up our church about a year and a half ago, I think, and had just asked some details about the church.

I had, I forget if I had answered that first call and then gave him kind of a follow-up call and invited him and he ended up coming to the church a year and a half later and accepted the Lord after one of our evening services.

And you never know what God might do with just little seeds, but his grace that was enough to save you and me is enough to save everyone. So try and spread a little of that grace around because it's a wonderful thing.

Yeah, I think there's a great thought there about understanding God's grace, appearing to all men to believe. But I love the fact, and this is what I want to kind of look at is God's grace doesn't stop there.

If you look at verse number 12, it says God's grace, verse 11, has appeared to everyone, and God's grace gives us some lessons, teaches us.

So the grace of God, the unmerited favor of God, when I view it correctly, I'm going to learn some things from it. I'm going to learn from God's death, burial and resurrection, his grace, his gift, this forgiveness. I'm going to learn from it.

What am I going to learn? Here's your alliteration is we learn what to loathe, what to hate, we learn what to live, and we learn what to look to. And so if you look at it, what do we hate?

Well, he says you're denying ungodliness and worldly lusts. You're denying things that don't look like God. We're going to hate those things.

That word deny means put away, get away from, get out of. So God's grace, when God, so okay, I'm going to remind me if I don't come back to this. Here's what I'll tell you.

As a Christian, sometimes we think that God's grace is good for us for salvation, but we forget that it's good for us for every day in our trials and our challenges and our living.

And if God's grace is really working in me, there's some identifying marks. And here's what those identifying marks are. Do I have a hatred, a desire to get away from things that are ungodly and that worldly lust?

It's cultural, cultures... Draws. Yeah, draws and sins and things that just are easily captivating to culture.

Do I find that stuff repulsive, or am I easily drawn into it? I was thinking about this today back in college, and you know, I went to a public high school. Of course, I grew up in a pastor's home, but I went to a public high school.

And you know, going to a public high school, like, you kind of learn what's culturally acceptable and things like that, and of course this is a very long time ago, even though I know I only look like I'm 25. I'm actually older than that.

I knew you knew I was only about 27, but I was thinking today when I went to Bible College for the first, you know, my first year, I remember being around guys that they also had gone to Christian or to public high schools.

Yeah.

Some of them had gone to Christian schools.

And because of me, and I was a pastor's kid, but because I had come from the educational side in a public school and the, I'm not, not dirty jokes and stuff like that, but just like the, the cultural humor and things like that.

I remember thinking and being with guys in the college and in the dorm and somebody to say something. And I would think to what my public high school friends would have said.

Yeah.

And I remember one time, you know, saying something and again, it wasn't a crude joke or anything. It was just cultural. Yeah.

And I said it and they all looked at me. And they were like, dude, like, we're not in public high school anymore. And in my, in my mind, I'm like, oh, man, I don't ever want to come across like I'm holding on to that.

And again, this is 22 years ago.

But you know, in the Christian life, I think sometimes we don't allow God's grace to work in us because we can't differentiate what is a cultural appropriate, you know, like what's culturally appropriate and acceptable.

And that sin that's luring, we don't look at it as a sin. You know, and again, does that make sense? And I think that sometimes in our Christian life, we don't see God's grace working in us because we're not moving away from things that we should be.

So it says what we should loathe. It says what we should live out. And it says there in verse number 12, we should live soberly or sensibly.

That word soberly means paying complete attention or sensibly. I have all of my senses engaged. That's what that word would be.

We live righteously and we live godly. So if God's grace is working in me, I'm not just kind of coasting. Yeah, I'm tuning in to God's word and God's spirit, and I'm asking the Lord for those opportunities to witness and be a good testimony.

And then that last thing is God's grace teaches us to look for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. And again, we bring all this back in the context.

Paul is saying to Titus, like, hey, listen, you are living in a corrupt culture. People are reprobate around you. And it has infiltrated into Christianity there.

So here's how you can help set things in order. Encourage your leadership to step up and lead. And then encourage all Christians.

Let God's grace work in you. How? By teaching you that there are some things that are ungodly that I used to be involved in, that, man, I was a Christian, I shouldn't be involved in that.

There are some things I should be separated unto, like righteous living and sensibly thinking, actually thinking through life. And then I should be looking to the coming of Christ.

God's grace working in me is gonna be identified in those three areas. And so I don't know, I know I took five minutes to talk through that, maybe longer, but anyway, I just see that.

There's a great, God's grace not only saves us, but it works in us. So I don't know, any thoughts that were sparked in your mind as we talked through that?

Yeah, I think a great encouragement is that loathing and living and looking doesn't just come about by human effort, that it's God's grace working in you, that we ought to allow God's grace to work in us.

And I think one thing that we could take even from, I know we were in the Book of James several years ago in Strength for the Day. You can look up those episodes. That God, he gives grace to the humble and rejects the proud.

And I think when it comes to these tasks, that it takes humility to be able to maybe go to a friend or go to a spouse, go to a pastor or a spiritual friend and say, hey, I know I'm not perfect. What am I not loathing that I need to loathe?

What am I not living that I need to live? It takes humility to be able to say that, but oftentimes I think we, our heart is desperately wicked who can know it, and yet we always assume I'm fine. I'm holy.

I'm doing great. And there comes a point where we have to go, okay, God, I'm gonna ask you to show me me as I'm reading in your word.

Well, let me show some humility and talk to an older man, talk to a younger woman, talk to a boss or a friend, and say, hey, is there an area?

And when we hear about some things, it's not then just, okay, well, I'll put that on my checklist of things that I'm gonna do or not do. It's go to the Lord, pray, ask for him to work in your life, because he will.

As we ask for his grace to work, he's not going to tell you, no, he's not gonna say, no, no, I've given you all the grace you're gonna get. You're gonna get tapped out. He has grace for us.

So a reliance on him, having a humility to even be able to go to other people and ask for them to speak into our lives is a wonderful thing. And then I think verse 13 is just so encouraging to my heart. And Jesus is coming again.

And that has been, as you read through the New Testament, it is in almost every single book, that particular hope and that aim that Jesus will return and we ought to live our lives in that light.

That we are never to just assume, ah, well, he's not coming back today. Ah, he's not coming back this month. No, no, no.

Everything we do could be the last time that we do that thing.

As we've been preparing to move over to Maryland, that's been one thought that I have had consistently, is every time I complete a task for the last time that I'm doing here at MOBC, is just kind of the weightiness of it.

And I think if we carried that kind of sobriety, that sensibility into our everyday living, that what we do is important and matters, and it could be the very last time we witness to a person.

And it could be the very last time that we show kindness to a person. It could be the last time that we get to sing in church.

I think it motivates us in all of our aspects that because Christ could come at any moment, it ought to spark just a wholehearted devotion and fervency in what we do.

That's so good. So we're out of time today, but I just want to encourage you, when you look at this, ask yourself today, this week, is God's grace working in me? Is it identifiable in how I'm living?

Not in the sense of I should be living good just to look good, like no, I should want to live right to make Jesus look good and recognize that He has saved me.

His grace has worked in me, causing me know what to hate, know what to draw closer to, and then know that I look to His coming. I close with verse number 15. It's a great verse.

He says, speak these things, exhort and rebuke with all authority. So hey, like Titus, keep telling people all of this. And then that last phrase he says, let no one despise you.

The idea there is like there's going to be people, right? He's been talking about people who are speaking non-truths, lies. He said, like, not everybody's going to love to hear this, but you speak it.

You're on the authority, Titus, to stand up before children of God and say, hey, God's grace saved you and God's grace wants to work in you right now. And so let it. Allow God's grace to be evident in your life.

So I hope that'd be a help to you this week. And we look forward to continuing our study. Just two devotions left as we wrap up the Book of Titus.

And then on Christmas Day, we're going to have a special time. And then we'll let you know the next couple of weeks kind of what we're kicking off for next year and looking forward to what God's going to do there.

So have a great week living for Jesus and letting God's grace work in you.