Grace in Action

Amen.

Well, that was a blessing this evening.

I don't know about you, that was awesome.

I personally vote that between her and Ms.

Haley, we just let them take care of the specials from now on.

Right.

Well, if you have your Bibles this evening, turn to Titus, chapter number two.

Titus, chapter number two.

It's hidden right there in the New Testament, right, With the other books that start with the letter T.

I want to do something that is a little bit new to me before we really dive into it, but I think it'll help understand the context and the point of the passage that we're going to be looking at tonight.

And so if you'll bear with me for just a second, I'm going to try to explain some of the context behind the Book of Titus for just a minute before we get to chapter number two.

Titus was of course written by Paul and it's addressed to a man named Titus.

Real groundbreaking stuff there, right?

Titus was a trusted co worker and co laborer with Paul.

And Paul gives him a very, very important assignment.

Paul says, hey, there's a church over there in Crete and there is some bad stuff going on and I need you to go and I need you to help work on that church and help straighten it all out.

And so Paul sends him with a big, big task.

It's important to look at this book as a book that builds upon itself because it really does not one chapter is independent of the other.

It's all one logical thought all the way through the first chapter.

Paul introduces the book and then he starts laying out Titus instructions.

He says, hey, go to this church, get you some faithful men and start to work on that church there.

He sends them, of course, to Crete.

And it's important to know for us tonight that Crete is the, I don't know the right way to put it, a very bad place.

In fact, Crete is known for being a den of liars and a place of violence and promiscuity and all sorts of stuff that's going on there.

Witchcraft, just.

They're in the thick of it.

In fact, the Cretes believed very heavily in Greek mythology to the point where they believed that Zeus was born on their island.

And so they decided to pattern their whole life after him.

Not a good guy to pattern your life after, right?

I find this interesting as I was looking through it.

In Greek, the word kratizo literally means to be a liar.

What a great place to be from, right?

So Paul sends Titus here and he gives him, in chapter one, he gives him all the layout of what he should do there.

And of course, we see some of the repeats from first and second Timothy about the offices of a bishop and a deacon and some of the ways that the church should be set in order.

And then in chapter number two, Paul opens up and he starts talking about what it means to have a Christian household.

What does it mean to be a godly husband, what does it mean to be a godly wife, a godly elder in the church, a godly young woman, a.

A godly slave, Right?

And he starts to begin to flip on its head, if you will, the way that Christian culture works versus the way that Christianity culture should work.

And we get all the way down to verse number 11, which is where we'll start tonight.

The Bible says, for the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men.

Let's pray and then we'll get started this evening.

Dear Lord, thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight, Lord.

It's not something that I take lightly.

I pray that you would hide me behind the cross, Lord.

I pray that you'll give me the words to say.

I pray that I'll only say the words you want me to say.

I pray that you would help me as we dig into this passage.

I pray that you'll help me expose the truth that's within it, Lord, and communicate it clearly.

In Jesus name I pray.

Amen.

God's grace is evident in all of our lives.

That's a statement we would probably all agree with.

We know that mercy is giving us some or not giving us something we do deserve.

And grace is giving us something that we do not deserve.

And as I sat down trying to think of a few illustrations about this, I realized that every illustration I could think of, every personal story I could think of in my life, just about was mercy.

It was my parents not giving me the beating I deserved, right?

It was my boss not firing me when I probably should have been, right?

Whatever the situation may be, most of the things I came up with were mercy.

They weren't grace.

And it kind of got me to thinking that grace isn't as memorable as mercy is.

Because we don't do anything for it, right?

Sort of the old principle, if you don't do anything for it, you're not going to take care of it, right?

And so anyways, my mind was brought to a story that I remember from my like 3 or 4 year old age, real young.

And we had taken me and my parents, we took a weekend trip to Las Vegas, best place to go as A four year old, right?

And we got to, I'm pretty sure we stayed at Circus Circus, which by the way is an awesome hotel.

And we stayed there in Circus Circus.

And I think that first night we stayed there and like went to like the little shows and stuff they have downstairs.

They had like, you know, trick dogs and other stuff that 4 year olds find awesome and very memorable.

And we got back to the hotel room that night and my parents were like, hey, we have a few things to do tomorrow, but we're gonna let you choose the last activity for our trip.

So I was ecstatic, like, yeah, what we got?

And they said, you can either go see Santa in the mall, you can go to the racetrack and see Jeff Gordon, he's doing like a little fan event there, or you can go back down to the circus downstairs and we'll play some arcade games.

So me being the four year old, when we got to the mall to see Santa, I was just figuring it'd be the best return on investment.

You know, we get in line and remember the time period.

So every man in the mall is wearing a pair of jeans.

And we get up there and the line is, I don't know how long.

Unbelievably long.

To my little mind, I thought I was going to die.

And we get up there and I grab my dad's leg and I'm off.

I'm in oblivion.

I don't know what's going on.

I can't tell you what I was thinking about.

I don't know what I was looking at.

I don't know.

Well, apparently I overestimated how fast that line was moving because I would let go of my dad's leg, take a few steps forward as the line was moving, and then reach up and grab the jean again.

Important detail.

Like I said, every man within a hundred mile radius is wearing a pair of jeans.

After a few minutes of this, I really can't tell you how long because as you will see, this story quickly goes downhill.

After a few minutes of this, I walk forward and I grab the jeans and I look around and all of a sudden I hear hello there.

And I proceed to efficiently and effectively lose it in the line.

I mean, it's gone.

I'm screaming, I'm hollering, I'm crying, I'm swinging for my life, man.

I don't know this guy.

I grabbed onto your leg, but I'm.

Time to fight, right?

So I'm throwing a massive fit and all of A sudden, my parents step up, seemingly out of nowhere.

Of course, you know how, how your early memories work, right?

I'm sure they were right behind me watching the whole thing, laughing.

We didn't have camera phones, thankfully, but no doubt that would have been on video.

And so they step up and they start to console me.

And my crying of panic and scaredness turns immediately into fury and rage and embarrassment in a tantrum of catastrophic proportions.

And I remember my parents saying, if you don't stop, we're going to leave.

I didn't stop.

It's not a threat, right?

And so they sure enough got out of line, marched me to the restroom, had a little bit of correction, marched out to the car, got in the car, and then this is when it got real.

The parents got in the car.

We're actually leaving.

So now my tears of embarrassment and rage and sadness and everything else is now full blown sadness.

I mean, I'm weepy.

This was my thing.

I was supposed to do it the whole way, right?

And we get in the car and we start driving.

And I'm sure I had lost my voice because I don't remember saying anything.

And I just remember sitting there crying.

Just.

I'm done yelling.

There's nothing to yell about.

I'm just going to cry until someone gives me something that is worth not crying about, right?

And sure enough, a few miles down the road, my dad pulls into McDonald's and stops and gets me an ice cream.

And as I thought about that story and I was reminded of it, that is really the way God's grace works in our life.

No matter how bad our behavior, no matter how bad our attitude, God's grace is there to give us exactly what we don't deserve, right?

It gives us the forgiveness and the restoration and the power to live a Christian life.

And we don't deserve any of that, but there it is to give it to us, right?

Tonight I wanted to look at three elements of grace as we see here in Titus.

And the first element I see here is the whosoever will salvation.

In verse 11 here it says, for the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men.

I want you to notice the author of salvation.

It's interesting when you look at the wording here.

It says, for the grace of God that bringeth salvation.

What's funny is you think of grace as a thing or as an action that doesn't bring you anything.

A person does.

This reference here, I believe it's talking about Christ, the literal embodiment of God's grace, right?

The grace of God Jesus Christ bringeth salvation and gives it to all men here, right?

Romans, chapter number five, verse 15, put it this way, but not as the offense.

So also is the free gift.

For if through the offense of one, many be dead, much more the grace of God.

And the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ hath abounded unto many the author of salvation.

I'm thankful tonight that I know the author of salvation, and I hope that you do too.

Not only do we see the author of salvation, we see the achievement of salvation.

It bringeth salvation and it hath appeared to all men.

The achievement of salvation is simply provision for our sins through his Son, plain and simple, right?

The word appeared here is a word that you will miss if you just skim over it.

And it's really a really cool word.

The word here means to give light, to shine upon, to become clearly known and show oneself.

I'm reminded in my brain right now of the little minion screaming, illumination, right?

Illumination, right?

He hath appeared to all men.

You know, Jesus made his purpose and his identity known to all that were here.

It wasn't something that he had to like later on, after he was off the earth, he didn't reveal it then to the disciples.

He was very clear and upfront about it when he was here on earth, right?

You remember him saying to the disciples in John 14, he.

He said, I am the way, the truth and the life, right?

No man can come unto the Father but by me.

In other words, I'm the Messiah.

Look at me, right?

He's revealing himself to the disciples there.

You know, it's funny if you look at this in context of having a Christian home, having Christian mothers and fathers in a Christian home, it's impossible to have that without salvation.

This is the key element that makes all of chapter two work.

And having the godly society that he's trying to bring about, the godly culture he's trying to bring about there in the church in Crete.

It can't possibly happen without salvation.

So that's why it's mentioned here first.

It's the first step.

You have to be saved or else you can't understand it.

You can't live the life that we're asking you to live if you're not knowing the salvation that hath appeared to all men, right?

Not only do we see the whosoever will salvation, but I want you to notice verse 12, the work of sanctification, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts.

We should live soberly, righteously and godly in this present world.

The word they're teaching us is the Greek word padeo.

It's a fun word to say, and it literally means teaching us.

But get this, it's the same word used in the Septuagint in Proverbs when it says, train up a child in the way that he should go.

In fact, if you wanted to look at it quite literally, you could say teaching us and training us to deny ungodliness and worldly living.

I find the aspect of teaching and training very interesting to me, right?

If you teach something, you say it many times, right?

Repetition is the key to good teaching, right?

So you repeat something.

Maybe you have a textbook and you're reading from the textbook and then maybe you'll give an illustration or something to help understand and illuminate what you're teaching about so that they understand, right?

Training brings about the idea of correction with it, right?

When you train up a child, there's a little bit of correction there.

As mentioned in my story beforehand, I learned that firsthand, right?

There's a little bit of correction that's involved in training.

The training here very specific.

It's training us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, ungodliness.

So grace guides us here from ungodliness.

And a lot of times you'll hear verse 12 here preached pretty much on its own because it really can be right.

You can sit here for weeks and talk about ungodliness and worldly lust because that's kind of a broad category.

You can kind of fit a whole lot of stuff in there.

Specifically, this evening, I'm reminded of First John 2:15.

Love not the world, neither the things in the world.

For if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

For he that is first, excuse me, for all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world.

You see, I have a feeling.

I love the way the scripture comes together and harmonizes together.

Because here you see that word to deny ungodliness and worldly lust.

And you're like, well, what is that?

Well, one John answers it, what is it?

It's all summarized into three things.

It is simply the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life.

And that's something that we all deal with in one aspect or another because again, that's pretty broad.

Categories Right.

When you think of the lust of flesh, you think of what a fleshly society we live in now, right?

Think about the things you see on tv, the things you see people talking about on tv.

Me and Brother Wiggins went to the hospital to see Brother Gross this morning, and he had Fox News on the tv.

And you see them reading a graphic book that they found in a school library, in a courtroom.

What are we doing?

It's fleshly.

It's a pride of the flesh, right?

The lust of the eyes.

Satan knows that one gets us a lot, doesn't it?

All you have to do is make something look enticing enough.

And we're in, especially with food.

I got in trouble yesterday with my wife because Instagram has this thing now, and it's like three tabs over where if you just.

It's the reels, and they go forever, and they cover the time on your phone, so you don't know how much time you've been on them.

And they go forever.

And it's based upon the stuff that you like and the stuff that you'll watch, right?

So in that way, social media is really a mirror of your life.

And I don't like my mirror right now because I sent my wife yesterday while she was teaching in class, no joke, probably 40 in a roll, that were just people showing how to cook food or showing off the food that they cooked.

But they make it look good, don't they?

Then you send one, you're like, can we make this?

Can we go get this?

Can we go buy this?

Right?

Because they make it look good.

That's why they do it.

They know that if you can see that food and you already like fried chicken, and they show you a really good fried chicken, ooh, guess where we're going?

We're going to go get fried chicken, right?

The lust of the eyes and the pride of life.

Pride is a.

It's a nasty booger, isn't it?

As soon as you think that you're done with pride, you're right back in it.

Pride is one of those aspects of life that really, really, it affects every single person.

Partly because we don't want others to think negatively of us, and partly because we don't want to think negatively of ourselves.

Right?

You have the power and you can do good.

Yeah, right?

That's what we like to think of ourselves, but that's not the reality.

Teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lust, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world.

It teaches us and guides us towards godliness.

Grace does.

If you think about the first part of the verse, teaching us what teaches us, who teaches us grace?

That's the context of this verse.

Grace teaches us that we should deny ungodliness and cling to godliness.

It gives us two thoughts here.

To be sober or of a sound mind.

Right.

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and love and of a sound mind.

So we should live soberly.

We should have that sound mind in us and righteously, which means to live uprightly and to do right.

Again, pretty broad categories, but it's applicable in almost every single area of our life.

I like the way the great late theologian Patch the Pirate put it, do right till the stars fall, do right till the last call.

Do right.

When there's no one else to stand by you, do right.

When you're all alone, do right.

Though it's never known, do right.

Since you love the Lord, do right.

Do right.

You see, Patch the Pirate understood this thing called integrity in our lives, and it's doing right when there's no one else around and there's no one else looking.

And that's the sort of Christianity that Paul is advocating here in the church in Crete.

He's saying, look, if you're going to live a Christian household, if you're going to have this Christian family that I am portraying here in the church, this is what you're going to do.

You're going to do right.

You're going to live with integrity.

You're going to be different than the others, right?

Looking for that blessed hope, verse 13.

And the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ.

I'd be amiss if I didn't at least mention, aren't you thankful that we have that blessed hope this evening?

When you think about.

I've always heard this verse as a proof text for the premillennial rapture, and it absolutely is, because there's no preconditions given here, right?

It's not saying, well, if you're denying ungodliness and you're denying worldly lust, and if you are doing this, then you can possibly, you know, if it's a good day, then you can look forward to that blessed hope.

No, it says, no.

Looking forward actively to that blessed hope, the glorious appearing of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Right?

It's important when you look at that in context, because that is the end goal of any Christian home, of any Christian family, of any Christian person.

The end goal is not death, although if it is, it is.

The end goal should be that we are living and working and striving together for the sake of the gospel.

When Jesus returns, that should be the hope and prayer of every Christian here tonight.

Not only do we see a whosoever will salvation, we see the work of sanctification.

We see a wonderful separation.

Look at verse number 14.

Who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.

This is a passage.

To be honest, I've misunderstood my whole entire life.

My whole entire life I have read this, and the first thing my mind went to was not what it was meant to be.

I read this verse or I have read this verse in the past, and I would say, okay, he would redeem us from iniquity and purify unto himself peculiar people.

All right, so that means we have to be so different from the world that people look at us and think we're weird.

Done.

That was easy, right?

Easier for some of us than others, right?

Not necessarily what's going on here?

Not necessarily the thought that's coming through, although there is a little bit of that.

Right.

Remember, in context, he's talking about a church in Crete.

This is a culture that is known and literally has the word liar named after them.

This is a bad place to live.

Paul is essentially saying, in one sense of the word, if you do right, just barely, you're going to be super weird to those people in the Cretan culture in the time there was lots of slavery.

He addresses how a master is to treat their slave as equals.

That's a radical idea 2,000 years ago.

And what was happening in the church here is the people were living in the same way that they were before they were saved.

And it was making the gospel unappealing to those in their community because there was no difference.

He said, if you are going to live a godly life, if you're going to have that Christian household that I am advocating for here, you're going to be different.

That doesn't mean you have to try to be different.

You're going to be different enough.

Right?

There is not much in the Bible that uses the word peculiar.

It's a peculiar word.

It's only used a few times.

However, the root word is used a few times, and my favorite is in Exodus, chapter 19.

You don't have to turn there.

I'll read it.

Exodus, chapter 19, verse 5.

God says, and I want you to listen to the similarities in this passage.

It's interesting as we know, Paul is a very educated man when it comes to the Old Testament.

And I just can't help but think that maybe he had this verse on his mind when he wrote this.

Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people, for all the earth is mine.

That same root word there is translated as a phrase.

Peculiar treasure.

That's an interesting way to look at it.

Not sure if that's a title I'd wear with honor, but think about that for a minute.

Grace appeared and brought salvation to all men through Jesus.

That grace now trains us to live a life that denies ungodliness and worldly lusts and trains us to live soberly and righteously, looking forward to that great and glorious appearing of Jesus.

Verse 14, who gave Himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity, from all sin, from all that unto Himself.

You see, the separation, this wonderful separation is not necessarily a separation from.

It's rather a separation to.

You're not necessarily separating yourself from the world.

Separation from the world is a byproduct by separating unto Christ.

Right?

In other words, the closer you get to Christ, the further you get away from the world.

And that shows.

Amen.

When you think of the Word here as a peculiar treasure, he says he redeemed them from all iniquity and purify unto Himself.

You don't ever really think of Christ having any sort of self motive when he died on the cross for our sins.

But there was in that the self motive was that he might redeem us unto himself.

Right?

To restore that fellowship that was lost in the fall, he might purify unto Himself a peculiar people, a peculiar treasure.

When we live a godly life and we have godly homes as redeemed individuals, it makes us a peculiar treasure to God.

Something special, something unique, something different than what he could find 7 billion of elsewhere in the world.

It's someone who knows and loves him and lives like it.

In closing, I have an illustration that, as I was thinking through it, helped me realize this on kind of a personal level.

And I'm sure it's one that most everyone in this room will probably understand and relate to in some form or fashion.

I was super close to my grandpa growing up.

Super close.

In my mind, there is nobody cooler than my grandpa.

He always had a cowboy hat on.

He had a big black cowboy hat and he had a big old heavy leather vest.

Come to find out later on, it's because he liked to carry a few guns in it.

That's why it was always so heavy.

It's also why he didn't let me carry it and go get it for him for the first few years of his life.

First few years of my life.

But he was super cool.

He had a big old leather vest on, and he had the hat and he had the boots.

And he was the whole cowboy garb through and through, man.

He loved it.

He lived for it.

He loved it.

And he competed in cowboy shooting, if any of you know what that is.

You have a six shooter, and you shoot six shots, and then you do the bolt action, and then you do the six shooter again.

And it's a speed and an accuracy thing.

And I guess he was pretty good to me, he was the best, right?

My grandpa was the coolest person that I knew for a long time.

And we were super close for a while.

We lived in the same town.

We lived pretty close to each other.

And I remember literally begging my parents to go see grandpa.

Like, what are we doing today?

Nothing.

Cool.

Let's go get in the car, right?

We're gonna go see grandpa.

He did some gunsmithing and stuff like that.

So he had all the big machinery in his shop.

And I like to go out there and he would show off and come to realize now all he would do is shape an empty bullet casing.

But to me, I'm like, my grandpa made this.

You don't understand.

He made this with his own hands, right?

It was super, super cool to me.

He passed away last summer, I believe.

Maybe the summer before that.

Last summer, I believe.

And he let a lot of that stuff go.

He moved into an RV after my grandma died and spent the next several years with him and, like, 500 guns in his RV and his dog.

And that's the way he was happy with it.

Before he died, he set aside a few items to give to me as an inheritance before he passed away.

And he gave me a set of knives that he won in a competition, and he gave me a toy train that his dad had built.

Super old.

Pretty cool, actually.

The point being, it's just a few things of his stuff.

And it is just stuff.

And to most of you, it's junky stuff.

It's a knife set with a broken case.

Maybe the pawn shop will take 50 bucks for it, right?

If that's most of you.

The difference being, because of my relationship with my grandpa, that is a treasured possession to me.

Man, I love Those things, I think they're so cool, right?

I open up and I look at the little knife and open it.

It says, Colton.

And I'm like, man, that's cool.

Put it back.

Put it back in the case, right?

I look at the little toy train that my great grandfather built, and I'm like, that's cool.

I could never do that.

But that's cool, right?

It's treasured possessions to me.

Why not?

Because it has any sort of value.

Maybe.

Maybe we should look into that.

No, it doesn't have any sort of value.

The difference being why it's important to me, why it has value to me is because before my grandpa died, he took all of his stuff and he said, boom.

And he took these three items or these four items, and he separated them from the rest.

For me, that's pretty cool.

That's what Jesus does for us.

To purify and redeem unto himself a peculiar people separated unto himself.

Right?

As I close, I have four questions to ask, and I'll ask if the musicians want to make their way up, and we'll stand and pray here in just a second.

Four questions, and I really want you to take a few minutes and a few seconds or, you know, just take some thought, and I want you to really digest and think through these questions because it really walks through each statement of the message tonight and brings it down to a practical level.

Question number one.

Do I have a relationship with the Lord?

Can I point to a time and place that I accepted the free gift of salvation?

Am I training to live righteously in this world?

Or am I simply living to please myself?

Do I look forward to that blessed hope?

If not, is it because I am not living right or because I love the present world?

Am I zealous of good works?

This is the mark of being a separated, peculiar person.

Do you love good works and the good work with heads bowed and eyes closed?

Let's all stand and we'll pray.

And we'll have a verse of invitation after we pray.

Dear Lord, thank you for this day.

Lord, thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight.

God, I pray that you would have helped me, said something that was some value to someone here tonight.

Lord, I pray that you would help us to be a peculiar treasure for you.

Lord, I pray that you'll help us to live separated lives.

Unto you, in Jesus name, I pray Amen.