The School of Christ

Well, thank you, choir, for that beautiful rendition of Amazing Love. And I know you're proud of them. They did an excellent job this morning. Bruce put together those medleys and they were inspirational to us. We want to also recognize we had Dee now, and it's already been indicated by Caleb.

This is something that is extraordinary to have 45 students. I think it was 40 to 45 students, and I know it was a concentrated time of discipleship and fellowship. We can't forget that part. We also need to give a Purple Heart to Kathryn this morning. Kathryn Thomas.

She was doing her job of walking across the street and one of your fine men saved her from a bad situation so she'll be able to tell grandchildren about the brush with the accident with a car going by as she's trying to cross the street. I do like. I feel like I'm going to school, but I do like those gentlemen out there helping us across. Don't you agree? I mean, it's just very good now.

Yeah.

Now, I do have a sense of humor. Some people think it's strange, some people are surprised by it. But I must tell you, as I'm looking at empty spaces here, I've got an idea. We're going to give a. You should give a $20 gift certificate for people who will sit in this section.

And so that it's not an encumbrance on the budget, the people in the balcony ought to pay for it, don't you think?

This is the jury pool over here. As I look at them, I'm reminded they look like they could probably pull in the case. Well, it's great to be back with you again. I think I'm having two more Sundays in October, so perhaps we will look toward cooler weather we will have by then. But today I want to thank you for being the family of faith, walking in footsteps of Jesus and doing what you need to do in order to serve Him.

That is something about. We want to talk about this morning as we have re entered that time when the children and the youth are in school and college students. I think we want to look at what it really means to be in the school of grace. Now, I have to remind a lot of us it's a long time since we matriculated in college, attended elementary, elementary, middle school and high school. So I want you to think like a student this morning, the best you can.

We ought to do that all the time because we are disciples of Christ, meaning learners from Christ. So I invite your attention to Titus, chapter 2, verses 11 through 15. Now let me set the stage for a moment. Titus is on the island of Crete and that is not the garden spot of service. It is a difficult place.

Titus 2:11–15

In fact, one of their own, verse five of chapter one, one of their own even said that the Cretans are liars, evil beasts and slow bellies, meaning gluttons. Now how would you like to have a church full of liars, evil beasts and gluttons? Well, that's the way he described their own people, that prophet from the island of Crete mentioned by the apostle Paul. But the main thing is what I think is happening here with Titus, which happens to all of us, is that he's discouraged. He could even be, you could use the word, depressed.

Paul had left him there on a previous missionary journey and told him that he is to keep the thing going, he's to do the work there. And it got to be kind of lonely. You could imagine, like some of our international missionaries and even our church planters in the non south, how they might feel the sense of loneliness that might pervade. Well, I can imagine. Now this is my imagination, no scholarship in this whatsoever.

It's just my little imagination. I can imagine that prior to the letter of Titus going to Titus, that he wrote something like this. Dear Paul, you have placed me on the island of Crete and I want you to know that this is a tough place to serve. They. There's antagonism outside the church and apathy on the inside of the church.

And I am fatigued by it all. I'm frustrated by it. Would you recommend me to the First Baptist Church of Athens? Well, that would be kind of my view of what's the interchange here? Because Paul says in chapter one, for this reason, after the salutation, for this reason I left you on the island of Crete, that you should set in order the things that are wanting and that you should train leadership on the island of Crete.

And then in chapter two, verse one, he says, and I also want you not only to tie up the loose ends and to train some leadership, but to teach and sound doctrine. There's always a need in the age in which we live, in every age which has ever existed, for the teaching of sound doctrine. Because doctrine can be toxified, it can be adulterated. And now Paul is saying to him, let me give you another charge that you stay on an island of Crete. And then in verses 11 through 15, he does something that I think is extraordinarily beneficial not only to the early readers, including Titus, of the book of Titus, the letter of Titus but also to us today.

Listen to these words. Verse 11 is almost like John 3:16. You can lay it alongside John 3:16 as one of those great christological statements about Jesus. He said, for the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all people. Now that may sound like a read over statement.

John 3:16 John 3:16

It may look like an amber light, but actually that's a stop sign, not a read over, not an amber light. Stop right there. For the grace of God in the mind of God became the person of God, Jesus Christ. And the word here in the Greek transliterated into English because we have an English word for it is the word epiphany. Jesus epiphanied in our age in order to bring salvation.

For Jesus Christ is salvation. And trusting in him and knowing him, you become a believer. Then the first word in verse 12 says, the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all people. Teaching us. Now that's where the school comes in the grace of God, of Jesus Christ even to this very day.

And living in, in the living word he was in the printed word we have in the faithful following of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he is still teaching us. Now if he's teaching, there are some lessons to be learned. I want to articulate real briefly four of those lessons. In verse 12 he said, teaching us to deny ungodliness and worldly lust in order that we might live soberly, righteously and godly in this present age. So he's trying to teach us students and adults.

He's trying to teach us how to live in this present world. It's almost like some of us get the idea that what we're really made to do is to become a Christian. Kind of put that on the shelf and right along other things we do. And yes, we're looking forward to heaven, but we're not really ready to go there. And we're not wanting to learn very much.

We just want to just kind of get along in life. Least resistance, a line of least resistance. But he is giving us what not to do and what to do. We're not to live ungodly. We're not.

That's the diametrically opposed to who God is, who Jesus is. Don't live ungodly in this ungodly world. No, you be different, you stand out, you live godly, you exemplify godliness, Christlikeness. And he said, the worldly lust. Now, we could camp down here for a long time, but the negative idea is that we turn away from worldly lust.

The means of distractions. Now Some of you may identify with me, but I had to change automobiles recently. I'm a Toyota person, not a commercial. I don't have any stock, don't worry about that. But they've been reliable for me for decades.

So this Highlander that I have now does something that just truly aggravates me. If I don't sit up straight, it will say, sit up straight. And if I turn my head to the right or to the left or put my arm here or arm there on the steering wheel, it will say, ding, ding, ding. Driver attention. Attention, driver.

Inattention detected. Well, we need those kind of things in living for Christ because the worldly luster out there, and if we don't have something to ding, ding, ding in our hearts and minds, we'll be drawn to those attractive things of this world which are nothing more than pernicious and evil in nature. Therefore, we will be caught up in the, what he calls in the new King James, the worldly lust. Now, that's what not to do in terms of living in this world. But then another thing, he says, this is what I want you to do.

This is what you need to do. Live soberly. Now, that has a whole lot of meanings today. And the first one is, in other words, don't go around like an intoxicated individual. But actually this word is much broader than that kind of usage.

It's the idea of being sober minded, the idea of being focused, the idea of living with clarity and not allowing everything to be in fog your life. If we follow the light of the world, Jesus Christ will never be without illumination. So live that way. Live with focused clarity. Live soberly, live righteously.

Now, the Bible uses the word righteous in three different ways. And the first one is God is righteous. He epitomizes it. He's the perfect form of righteousness. And we're unrighteous.

Of course, the second is there stipulated in the Sermon on the Mount when he says, unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you'll not enter the king kingdom of heaven. That's one of the hard sayings of Jesus. Let me tell you why the Pharisees and scribes were outright in their effort to be righteous by their standard. They had a standard, a to do list to be righteous. And they worked hard, they labored with intense effort to live righteous life.

The problem was it was man made. So that comes us to the third way righteous is used. God is righteous. We're unrighteous. We'll never be able to live up to his standard.

But the verse that Caleb mentioned earlier, 2nd Corinthians 5:21. For he who, Jesus, who knew no sin, none whatsoever, became sin for us. Now try to figure that one out. A perfect, sinless Jesus became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God. Like he said, it's the exchanged life.

No sin, our sin. He takes our sin and he goes to the cross for us, for us to be redeemed. So we live that way, we live soberly, we live righteously, we live godly in this present age. That's how to live in the present. That's the first lesson.

I'll hurry. The second one, the second lesson. He teaches us how to look to the prospects of the future. Look at verse 13. Verse 13 says, looking to that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Now that sounds like majestic terminology, and it is. But let me bring it down to what we're talking about. This is the word hope. Never in the Bible means uncertainty. Hope is as certain as, as anything we know that has happened in the past.

It's almost like when God promises the certainty is out there. It is as if it's already happened. It is a certainty not based on wishful thinking. It is a complete certainty. So when Jesus said, I will come again, absolute certainty.

The uncertainty is we don't know when and it's really none of our business. But the word blessed in front of it is the word coming from the Beatitudes. And the word blessed, makarios in the Greek literally means talking about an island that has self sufficiency. There's nothing needed to be imported into that island. It is self sufficient.

There is no need for that kind of receiving of goods and products. Well, you can translate that into the blessed hope. It is the self. No, better yet, the Christ sufficient, the God sufficient hope which is certainty. So we know then the prospects of the future.

We can live fighting our anxiety, fighting our fear with the blessed hope that he's going to come again. But notice how he describes him. He said, our great God, there were a lot of gods in the first century. Not any of them great, not any of them true. But he says he's our great God and Savior and his appearing is going to be glorious.

His first coming, his first epiphany mentioned in verse 11. He came and very few people recognized him. When he comes again, everyone will. When he came the first time, he was treated with ridicule by so many. The next time, every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess Jesus Christ is Lord.

That's the difference. That's what we look forward to. Now. You have a lot of things in life we look forward to. Those of you have years ahead.

You're already strategizing, mapping your life. For those of us who, in the autumn or winter of life, we're looking at the end of the fourth quarter and hoping for overtime.

But everyone has something to look forward to, that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. The third lesson we learn is how to be liberated from the past. All of us need to be liberated from our past because sometimes our past will give us a lot of trouble. Our past haunts us, the guilt, the shame of our past. And you can talk to people.

You don't have to get in depth with people who are having difficulty in life. And they've not overcome the bumps and the bruises, perhaps, of childhood, a failed marriage, or some other catastrophic, tragic event in their lives. And in all honesty, they need to be liberated from that. So here's what's most important about your past. He gave himself for you.

That's what's most important. Voluntarily. The purpose of his life was to give himself for you. I remember many, many decades ago now, I was a pastor at First Baptist Cullman, and I'd had a funeral on Sunday afternoon. Let me tell you, back then, we had Sunday nights.

And I want to tell you, Sunday afternoon was not a good time for me to have a funeral. My mind was mush from the morning and trying to get refreshed for the evening. And there I was at that funeral. It was a grave site. And I had a deacon, dear friend of ours, live down the street from us.

He pulled me over and he said, I want to show you something. And we went to a grave site and he just started bawling. This grown man that I looked up to is kind of the macho man in many ways, wise and strong. And all he could do was point to that grave that said, 1922 to 1944. And the only thing he could say was, this man gave his life for me.

Now, why did Jesus do that? So that he might redeem us from all of our lawless deeds, all of our sins, and purify us so that we'll become, as we talked about last week, his special people. Keep in mind the ancient kings of the first century. And before they had kings and kingdoms, you had those who were right close to the king and the rest of the people. But a king owned everything.

But he always kept a treasure chest of his very special things. And he'd get them out and look at them and. And that's what our God has in mind when he talks about in First Peter and here in Titus. About us being the peculiar or special people. Yes, all the people he created.

But those who know him are his children, and we're to act like it. One more quick lesson. How to live in the present. How to look to the prospects of the future. How to be liberated from the past.

And then he says in verse 15, some interesting little staccato terms like a trumpet blast. He talks about how to lead people to Christ. And he says, speak. Now that's the idea of declaring voluminously, speak, speak. These things exhort stronger than encouragement, but not quite getting in a person's face.

And then he said, rebuke with all authority. Now, rebuke is correction. So we declare it, we encourage it, and we correct behavior and unsound doctrine. Then there's one last little statement in this chapter as we have it. Let no one despise you.

Now, the word despise in the Greek means to look down. It's not the idea I despise, like hate. It's condescending. Let no one look down upon you. Yes, it's the same word used about Timothy, Let no one despise your youth.

And it's also used in First Corinthians, chapter 11, verse 22, to talk about, do not despise the church of God. In other words, don't let anyone look down upon you. Now, you might think, well, how can I prevent that? Well, here's how you prevent it. They may do it, but you don't receive it.

1 Corinthians 11:22

You just keep on speaking, keep on exhorting, keep on rebuking with all authority, recognizing that the best way for people to come to know Christ is to see Jesus in you. Now, many of us would simply say, I don't have the gift of evangelism. I'm not very good at personal witnessing. And I'd have to say, it doesn't come naturally for me. And I've been in ministry all these years, decades upon decades.

But I can tell you this. We may not all have the gift of evangelism, but we all have been called to do the work of evangelism in this day and time. Hear me. And I don't mean this to be negative. But in this day and time, evangelism has become a negative word, almost like a four letter word.

As we think about reaching people, we do so understanding that the Great Commission has been given us to make disciples, to be disciple makers. And the best way to do that is to share Jesus. Share him now, share him tomorrow, share him in the future. Okay. Last week you already determined that.

I'm a bit of a history buff. I want to tell you about someone that you know, but you really don't know. His name is Noah Webster. He was born in 1758. He died in 1840s.

Lived me a long, long life. He paralleled his young life, paralleled that of the revolution that we've been celebrating, the Declaration of Independence and our freedom. But although he was Yale trained, Yale University, and although he came from a good family, though not educated, they provided for him. And although he received a law degree, he never could practice law because he was not good at it. He started some businesses and failed in every single one of them.

He had two ladies he proposed to and both of them rejected him. And finally one said yes. And they live a long life together. Noah Webster. Now, he's not a household name, but back in my day, and some of you, we can remember him because Noah Webster decided after we became a nation, after we became our own country, that we needed our own dictionary.

And the Mr. George Merriam helped him publish that. And a 70,000 word Webster dictionary became the standard for American English. He didn't like the way the Brits spelled things, so he made Americans spell it differently. And I could give you some interesting words that sound alike but spelled differently. What people don't know about him is in the midst of all his failures, when he was real low and DownToRodden, not the first, but the second great awakening was going on.

You've heard about the first one with the movie about the Great Awakening, George Whitefield. No, he was in the second because he was younger when it was coming along. His daughters were the first ones. They get wrapped up in the second awakening. And they went to a meeting and both came home declaring that they are now followers of Jesus Christ.

They've been saved by his grace. And it made him so mad he scorned them until his wife dragged him into the meeting. And in that meeting, this intellectual man whose mind had given us the dictionary or will do so, in that mind it had felt so defeated. He came to know the one Jesus Christ, the grace of God, which appeared to all people, including him. And from that the trajectory of his life went straight up.

It had been going straight down. But from that point on, his life totally changed. And I'm telling you, only the grace of God can do that.

I'm going to ask you to stand. We're going to bow our heads in prayer for a moment. In a minute, your vice chair of deacons will be down front to welcome anyone when it comes to a moment like this, with a rich text that we've been able to explore together this morning. When we come to this kind of situation, we ought to really realize that the Holy Spirit of God is doing his work in the lives of people in their hearts when they hear the gospel. Now, this morning, you may know Christ, but you've grown cold.

You may need a rededication or recommitment. It may be that you need a church home. And First Baptist Selma has been here all these many decades, serving the Lord faithfully. Or it could be this morning. This is the time for you to first realize in your own life, first time that you need to embrace his grace.

Whatever you do, there are people here to want to talk to you. Let's pray together. Father God, we thank you for these moments. Together in worship, we claim the promise of your presence. We thank you for your goodness and greatness.

We realize now more than ever that your grace is what we need to embrace, that your love is the only love that counts because it's agape love. It's pure love. It's perfect love. And in these moments, may we just closet ourselves off, exclude ourselves from the clamor of the world and the thoughts that grab our attention and the distractions that mislead us. And may we turn our eyes upon Jesus and look full on his face and understand we need to embrace his grace.

In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.