Titus 1:1-4 - Greeting Titus... A Blueprint For A Faithful Church

Take your Bible to go to the book of Titus.

The book of Titus.

We're going to hear that for the next few weeks.

We're just beginning today our study on the book of Titus.

And I want you to see this in context.

This is not just a book chosen randomly, but that it's a book that follows what we've been looking at for the past several years.

Four years ago, we started a study on the book of Matthew.

And as we went through the Gospel of Matthew, we walked with Jesus through his incarnation, through his teaching, through the demonstrations of his compassion and his miraculous power.

We walked with him through his suffering, his death, and his resurrection.

As we went through the Gospel of Matthew, we saw the servant of God revealed in all of those ways.

That God's promises were standing before us in flesh and blood, God incarnate.

After we finished Matthew, we stepped into the book of Isaiah, a book many of us had never ever really explored in depth.

And there, amidst all of its poetry and prophecy, we saw the Savior promised.

Not revealed, but promised.

We listened to God as he spoke to his people in the midst of their confusion, their bewilderment, their disobedience, their fear, their alliances, their idolatry.

We understood that God was speaking his sovereignty not only over them, but also over the nations.

And as we went through Isaiah, we also discovered something about the servant, the servant of God who was coming.

And his identity as we went through Isaiah became clearer and clearer.

He would be the one who would do what Israel would not and could not do.

He would be the one who would restore not only his people, but also gather the nations.

And he would be the one who would save by his suffering.

And yet his suffering wasn't the end of the story.

He would be exalted, and so also would be his people.

So over the past four years, we've seen two aspects of the servant.

We saw him promised in Isaiah, we saw him revealed in the book of Matthew.

And now we book turn to the book of Titus, a short pastoral work.

But in this, we're going to see something about the servant also.

We're going to see the servant embodied in his people.

If Matthew shows us the king who came near and Isaiah shows us the servant who is coming to save, Titus shows us what it looks like for a community of people that are formed by the gospel, where the servant embodies them and his life takes root in their lives.

Titus will show us what grace does when it trains the people.

It'll show us what the servant's life is like when it's visible in our households, when it's visible in our church life, when it's visible in our workplaces, when it's visible in our friendships, when it's visible in every way we conduct ourselves.

There were older men and younger men.

There were older women and younger women.

There were people who were masters of their households, and others who were servants within their households.

There were people that had responsibility over jobs, and all of them had a reputation in town.

And at the center of all of that was one commonality that they and we are people whose lives have been shaped by the gospel.

That all of us are being trained by grace to be a people zealous for good works and always watchful for the realization of our blessed hope, the coming and appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And just like the church there that Titus was serving, we need to learn some things.

We need to learn, as they did, what the embodiment of our Savior means to us.

And that when the gospel reigns over his people, it also brings order.

We are a church that needs to be filled with truth, just like they were.

We're a church that needs to be anchored by stable and godly leadership, just like they needed to be.

We need to be a church like they who understand that we who are older have a responsibility to those in the congregation who are younger.

We need to be a church that understands within our households what the beauty of grace looks like as we conduct ourselves as the people of God.

We're a church that needs to know that godliness affects our family, godliness affects our work, and godliness will have an influence in our wider society.

Titus will show us all of that.

As we read the book of Titus together and study it together, I want you to see it as much, much more than just a letter from one church leader to another church leader.

We call it the past one of the pastoral epistles.

And sometimes we think, well, I'm not a church leader.

What business do I have to pay attention to this book?

But it's a letter filled with practical wisdom.

It's a letter that helps our lives be aligned with the gospel of Christ.

And so, as Paul brings us into this, as he starts his letter to Titus, he begins with what is the longest introduction in any of the pastoral epistles.

This is different than how he writes to Timothy.

And all of this is going to matter, as you'll see, because before Paul talks to Titus about what needs to be done in the church, before he talks about elders, before he talks about households, before he talks about good works, he establishes four verses that lay out for us a framework for how to understand everything that comes in the three chapters of Titus.

Let's read those four verses together.

Paul is servant of God and apostle of Jesus Christ, for the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness, in the hope of eternal life that God who cannot lie promised before time began.

In his own time he has revealed his word in the preaching with which I was entrusted, by the command of God our Savior, to Titus, my true son in our common faith, grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus, our Savior.

This is not how we normally open up our letters.

Our letters are often filled with just a personal welcome, maybe a hope that you're doing well kind of statement.

But what we're entering into here is much, much more than just those sort of perfunctory statements or even sincere remarks that we might put at the top of a letter.

Paul is giving Titus and us a lens through which we are to see everything in this book.

Every conversation, every appointment of an elder, every correction of false teaching, every moment of order within the household of faith.

It's all wrapped up in these four verses.

Why?

Why does he do this?

Well, before Titus can be strengthened to lead the church in Crete, he must remember whose representative he is.

Before the people are going to be formed by the truth, they need to know what that truth is.

Before they're going to stand firm in the middle of a deceptive culture, they need to be able to rest in a hope that comes from a God who does not lie.

Before we can live as people who are trained by grace, we need to see how that grace has come through the merciful, loving activity of God our Savior.

And before we can live together as a church in unity, we need to know what the common bond is of us as God's people.

So all of this comes in these four verses.

Paul gives all of us this before he provides us any command.

He wants us to begin with what God is doing and what God is building.

So let's look at these four verses as a blueprint, if you will, for what it means to be a faithful church.

A blueprint for a faithful church.

And as we go through these, we'll see that the blueprint leads us to understand that a faithful church is one that is formed by God's truth, that is grounded in God's hope, and is shaped by God's gospel.

Now, those won't be my three points of the message, but they are really going to bleed through all of the points.

So the first thing that God does in order to build a faithful church is he sends a faithful messenger.

Take a look at verse 1 in the first part.

Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ.

Paul begins this letter to Titus by telling him who he is.

Now he doesn't do this to elevate himself.

Don't you know, Titus, I'm an apostle and you're not?

But to anchor everything that he's about to say to Titus.

Because before Titus hears all the instructions he's about to receive, he needs to hear this.

He needs to hear that where the source is of the message that he's about to carry into the life of the body.

And Paul does that by introducing two titles, two titles that hold a very significant weight.

He begins by calling himself a servant of God.

He's actually owned by God, and he is meant to do the bidding of God, that he belongs to God, that he's bound to God, and that he is commissioned by God himself.

And Paul, by stating this, is putting himself in the line of Moses and Paul or David and men who spoke, the prophets, and even the Lord Jesus himself who took up that servant role.

He's not operating on his own authority for his own purposes and his own will and his own desires.

He's serving God in all that he's doing.

So when Paul writes to Titus, he's not writing as a strategist or he's not writing as some sort of church consultant.

He's writing as one who belongs to God himself.

And that comes across in the next title that he offers.

He's not only a servant of God, he's an apostle of Jesus Christ.

And this is the other side of the identity.

Paul is not only under God's authority, but he is also commissioned with Christ's authority, as he offers these instructions.

He is one who is commissioned by the risen Lord Jesus himself.

And so what he's offering to Titus, and what Titus is to bring into the life of the church, and what we're to receive in this letter that's passed down to us, is that these things are not mere personal preferences, or ministry ideas, or things that are doable because they work, as though simply being functional was the focus.

What we're receiving is the authoritative directives of God Himself through his appointed means.

And that would mean a lot for Titus because when Titus comes to Crete and serves this church and serves among this community, he's going to face a mountain of difficulties.

He is going to face an island that's marked by instability, that's marked by confusion, that's marked by deception.

He needed something to cut through all of that.

He's going to face resistance inside and outside the church.

He's going to have to confront false teachers who are already in there and bar them from coming in if they're on the outside.

He's going to help to establish order within the households that are there and try to encourage the believers toward godliness.

And what he needed to know that when he was serving this word, he was doing more than just representing himself and his wishes and desires.

He was not trying to stamp his influence on the body, but God's Himself.

Now the church here needed it too.

They needed to realize that when they listened to Titus, they weren't just listening to him.

Yes, it had his tone, it had his inflection, it had his vocabulary, it came out of his mouth, and it looked just like him.

But what it was was actually the very word of God.

That God was speaking to bring his order to bear in their life.

So Paul is here giving in these two titles a stabilizing force to a young minister and to a church that needs to be mature.

And we need it today.

We need to understand that what we're receiving today as we go through Titus comes from a person who is a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ.

Because we live in a world in which truth is simply personal preference.

You've got your truth, I've got my truth, none of us have truth, what is truth?

And we sound like Pontius Pilate all over again.

And what we need to remember is that this word that's meant to shape us doesn't originate from us.

This is something that God has given to us.

And yes, it's going to cut through the shifting winds of our culture.

It's meant to be counter-cultural.

And we also need to know that God has given this in order to shape those who are going to be in places of influence among us, that those who lead must be, first of all, servants of God before they carry the authority of Jesus Christ.

And so this is not only for Titus and the church in Crete and us as a whole, but it's also a message for each of us as believers.

Because each of us go into this world, and there are two things that we should think about ourselves as we go out.

I am a servant of God, and I am commissioned by Jesus to be his representative.

That we are the church embodied, we are the servant embodied in our society.

And so we go out, not simply saying, This is my faith that I want to introduce you to, this is my lifestyle that I think would be better for you, that we are actually presenting God Himself to this world.

If you're here this morning or maybe listening later, these opening lines tell us something.

They tell us God is not silent, that he speaks into our day, and that he speaks into our day through a message that he gives people just like us.

And that he has sent us a wonderful word.

It's called the gospel, which means good news, that he sent us Jesus Christ into this world.

And we'll talk more about him, but we need to know that this message is not just a message among messages in this world.

This is God's word being declared to every one of us.

So let's keep going through this.

Not only does God form a faithful church by sending faithful messengers, but he forms a faithful church through the truth.

Through the truth.

Take a look at verse 1 and the second part of it.

Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness.

Now, Paul has just identified himself as a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, but now in this second part he tells us why he serves and why he's been sent.

His ministry exists for this purpose, and Titus' ministry exists for this purpose, and all who minister the word, their ministry exists for this purpose.

For the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness.

That's why we have ministers of the gospel.

Because God is affecting through that ministry two key things.

First of all, it is meant to bring about the faith of God's elect.

Faith, contrary to the way we talk about it in our generation, is not some vague spirituality.

It's not some general belief about God.

It is not a personal ideal.

My faith.

What he's talking about here is the faith that God awakens within the heart.

A dependence that rests upon Jesus Christ as the only Lord and Savior.

And a reception of his promises, of the forgiveness of sins and the hope of eternal life.

The receiving of God's love and mercy so that we are no longer condemned but children.

Titus is to remember that when he serves the word, when he offers them these truths, that he's serving among a body that is chosen and called and brought to God for himself.

These are not simply people to leverage for his purposes or to stand over as if he could exercise his authority in order to gain some influence, not only among them, but among a wider populace.

He is actually representing God, he is bringing God's truth, and he is serving God's people.

But it also tells us something here.

This is the faith of God's elect, God's chosen ones.

And this should comfort us because it tells us that our salvation is not fragile.

It's God given, God granted, God sourced, God awakened.

He is the one who provides it.

And our identity as his people is now rooted in God's eternal purposes.

And he goes on to tell us in this second part that the faith of God's elect comes through their knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness.

Now, this is one of the most important phrases in the whole letter.

If you wanted to get one phrase, if you will, that would stamp the identity of the whole book of Titus, it would be this phrase right here.

The knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness.

What is Paul saying here?

He's saying something that a lot of us forget is that truth and godliness are inseparable.

Inseparable.

Truth that is merely known but not lived is not truth in a biblical sense.

And godliness that is not rooted in truth is no godliness at all.

This pairing of truth and godliness is the backbone of Titus.

It explains why elders must hold the sound doctrine.

It explains why false teachers are so dangerous.

It explains why older believers, men and women, have responsibility toward the younger to train them up in specific ways.

It explains to us why godliness in our homes matters.

And it explains why good works in every sphere of life is essential.

Why?

Because God forms his people through truth.

A truth that is meant and does, if it's received, shape their character, changes their speech, revises their habits, forms their relationships, and gives them strength in every step of their conduct.

This is essential.

Church at Crete needed it because they were living among a society where deception was normative, where moral boundaries were fluid, and where religious ideas were mixed and confused.

Does that sound like us?

It does, doesn't it?

We live in the same kind of culture where deception, where fluidity of morals, where religious ideas are just simply opinions.

They needed to cut through all of that.

What did that church need?

They needed an anchor of truth.

And they needed an anchor of truth that was going to affect their life so that they could live distinctly the middle of that society.

They needed a truth that was going to confront them before they confronted anybody else.

They needed the truth that was going to produce with them a distinctly Christian life before they called others to a different kind of lifestyle themselves.

We need this.

Sadly, our world thinks that truth is just a personal preference, that feelings are something that are actually more important than scripture itself.

And where godliness is just reduced to being, you know, a nice person or a sincere person.

Sometimes godliness looks rather rough and rugged.

But we need to know that that truth and that godliness are in that moment to be displayed that way.

And so what this is telling us is that our discipleship is not simply information, it's actually about transformation.

It's truth that changes us, truth that leads us to be more like our God and our Savior.

And so the truth that God gives us is a truth that leads us to see this world like He sees it, a truth that calls us to love the things that He loves.

A truth that calls us to reject the things that He rejects.

And so we can live a life that reflects His character.

And so as we go through this, we need to be constantly submitting ourselves to this truth that leads to godliness, to be shaped by it.

And so it's my responsibility and all who stand behind this pulpit to make sure that that truth is uttered clearly, that it's uttered firmly, and that it's lived visibly, so that you have not only the sound of it and the understanding of it, but you also have the model of it.

So you know how you can conduct yourself.

If you're not a follower of Jesus Christ yet, these words speak to you as well, because this is a message about people that God has called into relationship with himself, not based upon any works of righteousness that they have done, but as we'll see in Titus, according to his wondrous mercy.

And this message of truth that leads to godliness, even though godliness might seem the furthest thing from your life right now, is something God has already acted and enacted in every person here who's a member of New High Park Baptist Church.

And he can do it in your life too.

He can bring that truth in a moment into your life and radically, radically transform you.

Now let's continue on.

We see that in order to form a faithful church, God sends faithful messengers.

He forms his people through the truth, but he also grounds them in eternal hope.

Look at verse 2.

In the hope of eternal life that God, who cannot lie, promised before time began.

Paul, who identified himself by titles, Paul, who talks about the why of his ministry, has spoken about faith and truth, but now he sets our eyes on hope.

And it's not just a hope-so hope.

It is the hope of eternal life.

And it is a hope of eternal life that is anchored in the character of God who cannot lie.

That's the heartbeat of our Christian life and hope.

This is the anchor that holds us steady in all the winds and waves and movements of our age.

It's an anchor the churches needed there on Crete, and it's an anchor we need.

Paul says this hope was promised before time began.

But here is a promise of eternal life that God has already established for those or His chosen elect, that they might believe and they might be anchored in an eternal hope because it comes not out of circumstances, but out of God's eternal plan and purposes before time ever began.

Promise before time began.

Capture that thought.

Your hope was established before a watch was ever needed.

Your hope is older than the world.

Your hope is older than your sin, older than your failures, older than your doubts.

That's how strong your hope is.

And your hope's not going to waver because of those things, because it's anchored in the God who cannot lie.

Our hope is not an answer to human brokenness.

Our hope is the expression of the eternal God.

And so this is not just a theological statement, and it's a great one.

It's a pastoral one for us.

This church on an island known for deception, whose own poets talked about it, where lies were normal, where promises were cheap, where words were nothing but slippery ways to manipulate.

They needed to be anchored in something.

And Paul says, You can be anchored in this.

The God who does not lie, who made the heavens and the earth, has already called you to himself and granted you an eternal anchor of hope of life.

And he gives it to you because he's God who does not exaggerate, he's a God who doesn't deceive, he's a God who doesn't mislead, he's a God who tells you the truth.

And when he says you have an eternal hope, it's a certainty.

It's a certainty.

And this hope is meant to structure us, as we'll see.

It's the foundation beneath which we live our lives.

It's the shape how we endure our sufferings.

We do so because we have an eternal hope.

It shapes how we resist temptation, because we have an eternal hope of a life with God.

It shapes how we persevere, because at the end of it all, we will be with God Himself.

It shapes how we live in this world, as unstable and as untrue as it is, because we will have our feet planted in the presence of God in an unshakable eternal kingdom.

So hope is not a feeling.

It's actually a reality we're meant to stand on.

And this hope explains the urgency of this entire letter.

Why is Paul so concerned that elders need to be godly?

Because the church needs to be anchored in the truth.

Why must false teachers be silenced?

Because their lies are going to destabilize these people who should be anchored in the truth.

Why must older men and women teach younger men and women how to be godly?

Because they need to establish for their generation what a display of this eternal hope looks like in every aspect of life.

Why must believers adorn the doctrine of God, our Savior?

Because we are meant to reflect the hope that we live in.

Joyful, stable, consistent, faithful people.

The middle of our world that's filled with uncertainty of all sorts: economic instability, cultural confusion, relational fractures, people filled with personal anxieties, where we live in the world where the papers are talking about the escalation of war and the disruption of world trade, we are a people who are steady, stable, anchored in hope from a God that does not lie.

So no matter what shifts, our careers, our relationships, our health, the political outcomes of the elections that we go through, personal achievements that we gain or miss out on, no matter what those might look like, we are people that are built not on those shifts, but on the truth of God's hope.

So take encouragement from this.

That your hearts are being given grace from God.

That's not dependent and fragile.

It isn't based upon your outcomes.

It doesn't waver because of your failures.

It's not threatened by your weaknesses, it's not overthrown by your circumstances.

It rests on God who keeps his word, who does not lie, who can not lie.

That's beautiful, isn't it?

It's just absolutely glorious.

And if you're here this morning, you don't know Christ is your savior, this should give you some hope.

Because what happens after death is not based upon how much you might be filling yourself with wishful thinking about what it could look like.

You're not here to try to drum up some religious optimism and think you could rest your soul, your eternal soul, upon it.

This is the promise of eternal life from a God who is the judge of all of us, who means to save the worst of us.

He means to give us a real life, a lasting life, a continuous life, an eternal life in his very presence without condemnation, but nothing but eternal joy.

And he invites you to trust him, to receive this promise of life that's found only in Christ Jesus through his death on the cross, by simply believing on Christ Himself.

You can be a partaker of this eternal hope.

Let's continue through these four verses.

Paul establishes a faithful church by, first of all, sending faithful messengers, by forming people through the truth, by grounding them in eternal hope, but also through the revelation of his saving word in verse 3.

In his own time, that's God, he has revealed his word in the preaching with which I was entrusted by the command of God our Savior.

He says that God has chosen the opportune moment in which this word would be revealed, and done so in his own time.

But what it tells us is that God is never hurried and God is never reactive, that he goes about doing his plan according to his divine purposes and counsel, apart from circumstances and apart from situations.

He's not a God who simply responds to all the complexity of human life.

He's a God who speaks over all the complexities of human life.

He's a God who is sovereign and in control of even the distribution of his grace.

This gospel doesn't appear randomly, it doesn't appear accidentally, and it isn't a knee-jerk response to human rebellion.

It's something God has ordered in a time frame in which he sees fit to bring about.

And how does he reveal this saving message through the foolishness of preaching?

Foolishness of preaching.

The very simple fact that there is one person who has received and embodied the truth, expressing it to another person, so that they might hear that message and find it taking root and implanting life in their heart as well.

God saves people through the proclamation of his word.

And boy, don't we need to hear that time and time and time again.

Because it's so easy to think, well, perhaps God needs our ingenuity, or perhaps God needs our our cle cleverness, or perhaps God needs us to have a certain atmosphere that will make everybody feel like they're part of something large and glorious.

It doesn't come through human speculation, it doesn't come through mystical experience, it doesn't come through human discovery, it doesn't come through ecstatic emotional experiences, it comes through preaching, it comes through the clear, authoritative declaration that this is what God is doing in Christ.

And Paul says here that this preaching was something that he was entrusted with.

That word entrusted carries the idea of stewardship.

Paul was saying here in this phrase that he didn't invent this message.

He's not going to modify it, he's not going to soften it, he received it, and it's his responsibility to carry it and to deliver it as it was given to him.

It was entrusted to him.

And he was done so by the command of God, our Savior.

What does that tell us?

The gospel is not a suggestion, the gospel is not good advice.

The gospel is something divinely commissioned by God Himself in order to enact his purposes in time and space in order to deliver people from their eternal damnation and to grant them the hope of eternal life.

And so, in the middle of a place where Titus was, with all of the voices that were trying to command attention, false teachers and cultural influencers and religious speculators, Titus needed to know that the message that God was going to bless was the simple, glorious statement of Christ as Savior and Lord.

That through the death of Christ and the resurrection of Christ, people can be transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light.

And we need that today.

We need to understand that the gospel is not going to be bettered by our innovation, it's the very word of God that is revealed at the right time.

God means to save, and he means to form, and he means to train and to produce godliness through that word.

So we live in a day with all the voices that are speaking, people that are speaking in podcasts and on video logs, influencers, commentators, experts, entertainers, and they're all loud because they want to they want to get a following.

And many of them are persuasive.

But there's only one voice that saves.

It is the voice of God in the message of Christ.

It's the only one.

And so we as a church must anchor ourselves in this gospel.

We talk about ourselves being gospel-centered, and that means the gospel must affect not only our preaching, but our behavior as God's people.

It means that we shouldn't be a people that are trying to build a number through an emotional pull or through music designed to stir the feelings.

That we are not to build services that are intentionally non-threatening to everybody's lowest common denominator.

That we are not to be a people that lean on business strategies or management techniques in order to move and influence people.

But God hasn't entrusted us to emotional manipulation or consumer-friendly environments or to corporate models of leadership.

He's entrusted a message to us.

His word.

And what a powerful word it is.

It's a word so strong it can take a dead soul and make it alive.

And put the life of God into a human body.

And grant them a transfer from a dark kingdom to a kingdom of light.

And put them from hopelessness to hope-filled joy and confidence.

We don't need a smoke machine.

We don't need uh different colored lights moving around.

And you don't you don't need me wearing some slick clothing that make you feel like I can identify with the pastor at this time.

You wear what you want to wear, and let me wear what I want to wear.

So long as we speak the truth together.

This is how the church is formed and how it's shaped, how it grows, how it gets healthy.

All of these things.

God forms a faithful church by sending faithful messengers, by forming a godly people through the truth, by grounding them in eternal hope, by revealing his saving word, but last of all by uniting us in a common faith.

Take a look at verse four to Titus.

My true son in our common faith.

Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.

And Paul ends his introduction with a very deep and personal line, right?

It's such a beautiful statement of their relationship.

Titus, my my true son in our common faith.

I love that.

It's a tender, tender phrase.

But it's also a very rich one.

Because Paul is not just expressing his affection for Titus, he's identifying the bond that holds the two of them together.

You see, Titus was not Paul's biological son.

He was someone he got to know when he was an adult.

But he was a son of the faith.

He was one who had been brought to Christ, one who had trained to walk with Christ, and one who was shaped by Christ, with the influences of Paul in all of those places.

And now he's put into a service of strengthening churches on the island of Crete.

And what this phrase teaches us is not just how affectionate the gospel is, but just how unifying the gospel is for us.

Because it shows us that our relationship is created in a whole new way by being a member of a spiritual family.

You see, the church is not held together by the unity of our ethnicity.

It's not held together by the unity of our backgrounds.

It's not held together by the unity of our personality and the persuasion of our preferences.

It's not held together by how rich or poor we might be, and we hold that same strata of the social economic ladder.

It has nothing to do with those things.

In fact, it's a core unity that's found, despite how different all of those things might be.

It is the sonship and the brotherhood of a common faith, a shared confession that Jesus is Lord and Savior.

And so Paul is here talking to Timothy, or Titus rather, and saying this, we are bound together in this, the common faith.

And so when you tell older men to talk to younger ones, and you tell older women to speak and to example and give an example to the younger women, when you shape those who are going to be in places of leadership, when you talk against those who are trying to bring deception and false teaching into the life of the church, remember that you're talking about people who have a bond together, not because of their age gradation or their leadership capacities, but of their common faith.

Their common faith.

That's what binds us together.

And Paul reinforces that with these closing words grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.

Grace that is the source of it, and peace that is the result of it.

This wondrous news that we have all received something from God together.

And we need this today.

Our world is crying for these things, though it doesn't know how to gain them.

We live in a world that is fractured by differences, a world that is fractured by political divides, cultural uh enclaves, generational aspects, and economic ladder.

It is separated in so many different ways.

And it's easy, even within the church, to let those things drift into the places of influence, to drift into camps and preferences, into factions and alliances and parties.

Paul wants to remind us here that we are people who have simply received grace and have wondrously been granted the peace of God.

And that we share the same savior, that we live because of the same hope, that we've been brought to the life through the same truth, that we're experiences of the same grace.

Our unity is not sentimental, it is doctrinal and rooted in the gospel.

And so the church here, to be a faithful church, must be a place where all of our relationships are shaped by that grace, where all of our differences are held together with humility because none of us deserve to be saved by a holy God.

Where older believers invest in younger ones, and younger ones are eager to hear the older ones, to learn, where households are strengthened by gospel order, and where the gospel creates a family that would never exist the way it does on earth, apart from his work and his redemption.

And so we gather not as consumers, but as brothers and sisters, and we can join together in protecting this unity because it's one produced by God Himself.

So let's just sort of back up from Titus for just a second and see in these first four verses that blueprint that lays out for us the whole letter itself of what it means to be a faithful church.

Because in these few verses, God is showing us who we are, he's showing us what God has done for us, he shows us what God is building among us, and he shows us where he's bringing us, and he shows us how to be faithful until we get there.

Let's pray.

Father, we want to come to you with gratitude in our hearts for this living word, the gospel, that doesn't shift with the times and isn't bent by our preferences.

It is a word that stands firm because it's rooted in you, the God who cannot lie.

And thank you for reminding us this morning that you're the one who builds your people.

And you do so by sending faithful messengers and bringing us to life through the truth and anchoring us in your eternal hope, revealing your saving word, and uniting us together in a common faith.

All of this is your work, and all of it's a display of your grace.

So, Lord, as we begin this journey in Titus, I pray that we would be shaped into this kind of church that you desire us to be.

Lord, make us a people who love these things, that love your truth and rest upon your promise and live with confidence in light of the hope of eternal life that you granted.

Make us a people, Father, who adorn the gospel, who make it beautiful in our homes, in our friendships, in our workplaces, in the way we talk, and the way we serve, and the way we love.

Father, we'll pray that you would guard us from the temptations of our age, and trying to build on anything other than you, to guard us against the temptation of chasing emotional highs instead of godly character, of softening the truth to make it more palatable, and trusting strategies rather than the Spirit of God.

Lord, keep us anchored, we pray.

Father, we pray for those who are serving as elders in our body, and those who in the days to come will serve, that they be men who first see themselves as your servants, men who hold firmly the trustworthy word, men whose lives will reflect the grace that they speak about.

Lord, strengthen them, protect them, and use them for the good of your people.

And Lord, for those of us in moments of weariness and weakness, encourage our hearts and steady us with the realization that we have a hope from you who cannot lie.

And Father, for those who are wandering, I pray that they would know that they can walk in truth.

They don't need to wander.

For those who are searching with their hearts to wonder what life is all about, I pray that you would reveal your saving word to them.

May they hear your voice, may they respond.

Father, as we enter into this study, we're grateful to know a bit of what we're about to receive.

That you're gonna make us a people that reflect the life of the servant, our Lord Jesus.

And it's going to affect us in ordinary, everyday places of our daily living.

That you're going to make us a people trained by grace, that you're going to make us a people zealous for good works, you're going to make us a people who shine with the beauty of the gospel.

And Lord, as you do so, may all of it be to your praise and glory, we ask.

In the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.