The Gospel: You Will Grow

If you have your Bible with you, I'd encourage you to turn to the book of Titus, chapter 2.

Titus 2 · chapter mention

I will read verses 11 through the end of the chapter, and the page number should be located there in your bulletin.

I don't have my bulletin with me.

I think it's 899.

I'm sure somebody will correct me if that's wrong.

But turn in uh in uh the book of Titus, and I'd encourage you if you don't have uh if you don't have a Bible with you, there should be a shelf right there in front of you, uh, and there should be a Bible located there.

Uh I'd encourage you to turn there with us, read along.

And um also if you don't own a Bible, you don't have ready access to one, uh, maybe uh it's your family Bible, your roommates, uh, feel free to take that Bible at the end of the service and take it home with you.

Uh it's it's our privilege to be able to give away Bibles every week, and we would love for you to have it.

So uh please take that home and it'll be replaced next Sunday.

Titus chapter 2, beginning in verse 11.

Titus 2 · chapter mention

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness, and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

Declare these things, exhort and rebuke with all authority, let no one disregard you.

Have you ever wondered why you still struggle with temptation?

Has it ever crossed your mind in thinking about the Christian life of thinking about your spiritual growth?

Uh why is it that God has allowed sin and temptation to remain in our lives?

You know, I think about it, and very easily, God is all-powerful.

Very easily, the moment that we came to Christ, uh, we could have been raptured.

It'd be hard to witness, but but God could have done that.

Um, God could have immediately given us glorified, renewed bodies, um, but he didn't.

And so throughout this entire life, we we we slog our way through and we struggle with sin and temptation.

It really came home to me early in my Christian life uh when I was a new pastor, I worked at a retirement community.

I've mentioned this before, average age was 78, uh, average age of the choir was 81.

Took a while to get involved, you know how that is.

Um and I was doing a Bible study at an at the nursing facility.

They had apartments and then they had assisted living, then they had the nursing care.

And I was doing a Bible study, and the average age of these of these ladies must have been uh around 90.

And one of the little old ladies raised her hand and she said, Pastor, I have a question for you.

And she said, and so I asked her what the question was, and she said, I struggle with sin and temptation so much.

What do I do to battle in the Christian life?

And I was about 25 years old at the time, and I'm sitting there thinking to myself, you're 90, what do you battle with?

Like, like I covet my neighbor's jello.

I really want her jello.

I mean, it really just it kind of shocked me in a way, but but that's the Christian life.

It's a life that God has uh has called us to.

We know, and we've talked about the gospel, that the that the penalty for sin has been paid for.

We just celebrated the Lord's table.

We're reminded that that we are completely free from the penalty for sin.

The power of sin, the Bible says, has been broken.

We are no longer slaves to sin, and yet the presence of sin has yet to be removed.

We long for the redemption of our bodies, we long for the return of Christ, we long to see him, for we will be like him when we see him as he is.

And we're not there yet.

God has left us here.

Why?

What is it that God is doing?

What is it that he wants in us?

What is he doing in us?

What is he teaching us through this Christian life?

Well, I want to talk about that and I want to wrestle with what Paul is saying here in this passage, because the whole of the Christian life, what I want us to see at the end of the day, is all by grace.

Um that it's not us trying harder.

Um sometimes we think we're saved by grace and and we're going to heaven by grace, but right now it's just our effort and we need to try harder.

Uh we need to do more.

Um sometimes we base our Christian lives on our emotions, and we have, you know, if if we did our devotions, we're gonna have a good day and God's gonna bless us.

If we didn't, or if we messed up and we sinned, we're gonna have a bad day and God's gonna break our legs.

Um but we have this good day, bad day theology.

We have this idea that one friend of mine called a daisy theology.

You know, that, you know, it's like a daisy.

He loves me, he loves me not.

And we wrestle with how do we view this Christian life?

And sometimes we go to despair.

Uh sometimes we just lie and we fake it, thinking we'll fake it till we make it.

Uh sometimes we just put ourselves under a bunch of rules and regulations, and we think that if we can just, like the ascetics of old, if we can just come up with a bunch of rules and regulations and all of these safeguards, that somehow that's going to help us.

But but the Bible tells us that rules and regulations and laws have no power to change our hearts.

They never have, and they never will.

So, how do we grow?

That's what I want to talk about this morning.

I want to wrestle through with you of thinking about uh the Christian life.

Umtice what he says here, beginning in verse 11.

He says, For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people.

Let's stop there for a minute so we can think about what Paul is saying here.

He's saying that God's grace has been made manifest to everyone.

Uh he says, bringing salvation for for all people.

He is not saying here, and the Bible very clearly elsewhere, uh, tells us that not everyone is going to be saved.

Not everyone is going to heaven.

He's not saying that everybody, uh, regardless of their lives, regardless if they repent and come to Christ, is going to go to heaven.

That's not what Paul is saying here.

Paul is reminding us that the gospel is preached for all.

It is all that we share the gospel with everybody.

We go to the ends of the earth to share the gospel, and that all who come to Christ will be saved.

That it is all without distinction.

It's not all without exception that we'll come to Christ, but all without distinction the gospel is presented.

Because God is going to bring people in from every tribe and tongue and nation.

And it doesn't matter what your socioeconomic status is, rich or poor, uh, black, white, yellow, brown, God is going to bring in a great multitude, and the gospel is preached to all without hesitancy, because that is uh that Christ came to provide salvation.

So let's talk a little bit about what the grace of God is.

First, we're gonna talk about what the grace of God is, and then we're gonna talk about how the grace of God works out in our lives uh in order to propel us towards godliness, what that looks like, and some of what it doesn't look like.

Um so, what is the grace of God?

And I'm just gonna summarize, we've been on this series for the past six weeks, so I'm just gonna summarize what we've talked about over these last five sermons, over these last six weeks, about the grace of God.

Um, and again, we just celebrated that.

The Bible says that heaven is a free gift.

Salvation, forgiveness, is a free gift of God.

It's not as a result of works, so that no one can boast.

It's not by works of righteousness which we've done, but it's according to his mercy that he saves us.

And we talked about how the gospel uh, how Christ on the cross uh rescued us, that it was, as some have called it, this double transaction.

Uh Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5.21, for our sakes he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

And so what Paul tells us and what the Bible teaches is that the full penalty for all of my sin was paid for by Christ on the cross, so that uh that the cup of God's wrath, as it were, that I deserved to receive was poured out in full on Christ, so that every drop of penalty undiluted was poured upon him, and that he absorbed all of the punishment that I deserve.

So there's not one drop left for me.

He suffered, he experienced within his body the sense of separation from God that that I deserve to experience for all of eternity.

That he cried out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

But more than that, and we've talked about this uh the first Sunday, in addition to that, positively, he fulfilled all righteousness.

He kept the law, he did everything that we could never do and we never will do, he fulfilled all righteousness, lived a perfect life, and his righteousness was credited to my account so that when I stand before God, I am not only forgiven, but I am positively righteous.

I am clothed with the righteousness of Christ.

And the reason why I stand before God isn't because of anything I've done, it is solely on the basis of Christ's righteousness alone.

It's the reason why I can stand confidently before God today.

It's the reason why when I stand before Him in the day that I go home, that I know that I am clothed with the righteousness of Christ.

And that is the gospel.

It is this double transaction.

And that God accepts us fully and completely because of Jesus.

That we are in Christ.

We have been regenerated, we have been made alive, we have been converted, we have been adopted into his family, he calls us his own.

We are the objects of his affection, we are his children, we have been set apart by him, and we have been indwelt by his Holy Spirit.

That is the gospel.

The gospel tells us that uh that God isn't angry with you.

You know, we feel the stinging weight of sin and the struggle with temptation, and maybe you feel like a failure because you're not as far along as you think you should be, or you're dealing with issues in your life and the lingering guilt of ongoing sin.

But the gospel tells us that what God requires, Christ provided completely.

That he isn't angry with you, that he loves you, that he likes you a lot, that you are the object of his affection, that he delights in you, that he's not disappointed in you, that you're forgiven and accepted.

The gospel tells us that we never have to hide from our heavenly Father.

He knows everything about you, he made you, he knows your struggles, he knows your sins, he knows your past, he knows your present, he knows your thoughts, he knows your future, he knows everything, and he has chosen to place his love on you in Christ.

And there's no limit to the love that God has for his children.

Your sin cannot break the bond of love that your father has for you.

No matter what you do, God's love doesn't change.

Your effort doesn't make him love you more.

No matter what you do in this life, he will not love you any more than he does because his love is complete in Christ.

Your sin doesn't cause him to love you less because his love is complete in Christ.

You're fully accepted right now, where you are, unreserved, because of Christ.

And the reality is that all of us are in process.

None of us has arrived.

If you've arrived, you don't need to hear this message.

If you don't struggle with sin, if you don't struggle with temptation, you you never get angry because everyone in Grant in Grand Forks drives five miles under the speed limit.

Okay, that's me.

You never mutter under your breath.

We all, we all are in process.

And we will be until the day we die.

But God loves us.

That's the gospel.

Because he loves us based on Christ.

He loves us because of what Christ has done, not what you or I do.

It's all of Christ's work and none of ours.

So here's the question: that's the gospel.

So what keeps me then?

If I'm loved and accepted by God and it's not based on my works, it's not based on my performance, it doesn't matter what I do, I'm loved in Christ by the Father, and all of my sins have been paid for, all the penalty for my sins have been paid for, then there's no wrath left for me.

So then what keeps me from just going out and living a life of flagrant sin?

Do you ever think about that?

What's the motivation?

Why not just go and party it up?

If I'm free and it doesn't matter what I do, and it doesn't matter if I sin, I'm forgiven, then why not just go out?

Well, Paul addresses that here.

Because the gospel instructs us.

The gospel teaches us.

Grace, it says here, notice what he says in verse 11.

For the grace of God, verse 11, for the grace of God, drop down to verse 12, for the grace of God trains us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age.

The gospel is what motivates us and what empowers us to be holy.

So let me explain a little bit of how that works.

Let me begin with an illustration.

So, so we we understood the grounds of our salvation is the grace of God that brings salvation.

But the grace of God that brings salvation also teaches us to say no.

It teaches us to say no to sin.

Abraham Lincoln went to a slave market.

There he noted a young, beautiful African woman being auctioned off to the highest bidder.

He bit on her and won.

He could see the anger in the young woman's eyes and could imagine what she was thinking.

Another white man who will buy me, use me, and discard me.

As Lincoln walked off with his property, he turned to the woman and said, You're free.

Yeah, what does that mean?

She said.

It means you're free.

Does that mean I can say whatever I want to say?

Does it mean, she asked incredulously, that I can be whatever I want to be?

Does it mean?

Yes, you can be whatever you want to be.

Does it mean, the young woman asked hesitantly, that I can go wherever I want to go?

Yes.

It means you are free.

And you can go wherever you want to go.

Then, said the young woman with tears welling in her eyes, I think I'll go with you.

You see, that's the gospel.

That that is the gospel.

Grace motivates us.

It moves in our hearts.

We begin to see God's love for us.

And we're overwhelmed by it.

Well, how does God's grace teach us to say no to sin?

Yeah, I mentioned the reality that we're all in process.

The penalty of sin has been paid, the power of sin has been broken, but the presence of sin still remains.

God saved us, but he left us with sin in our lives, with temptation in our lives.

As one author said, we're genuinely new, but we're not totally new.

And we won't be totally new until either we die and go to be with Christ, or Christ returns and we're transformed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye.

Until then, until then, we groan, longing for the redemption of our bodies.

So, how does grace teach us to say no to sin?

And let me try to unpack this for you a little bit and cause us to think together, maybe cause us to think differently about the Christian life and differently about the gospel.

In 1 John chapter 4, verse 19, John says this phrase.

1 John 4:19

He says, We love because he first loved us.

And there's actually a very profound truth in what John is saying there.

Because oftentimes what we think is, well, it's my love for God, and I need to generate love for God.

And maybe it's through singing more songs or reading the Bible more, and those are all good things, but we think that it is my love for God that comes first.

And that's not what John says.

John says, we love because he first loved us.

Our love, this is what we need to understand, our love is always a responsive love.

God loves us, for God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten Son, God loves us, he pours out his love in our hearts.

We're overwhelmed with the grace of God, with the goodness of God, with the love of God.

We're overwhelmed with the reality that God could rescue a mess like me, exactly the way I am, and begin a work of transformation.

We're so overwhelmed by the grace of God that in response we love Him.

And this is how God intends for it to work.

Our love for God is always a responsive love.

So that we look to the cross, we look to grace, we consider the gospel, we begin to look at who Jesus is and think about the love of the Father.

You know, I mentioned several weeks ago we think of God wrongly.

We think of God the Father wrongly.

And I shared with you how, you know, for so many years I thought, well, God the Father is disappointed and disillusioned, and Jesus is kind of running interference.

But the fact of the matter is, is God the Father loves you.

And if there is anything that you are thinking of about God the Father that you do not see in Jesus, that's wrong.

Because Jesus came to fully reveal the heart of the Father.

Jesus says, when you see me, you have seen the Father.

And so that when if there is any idea that you have that doesn't jibe with Jesus, you need to wrestle with your doctrine of God because God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit are co equal, co eternal.

They share all of the attributes.

They are not in conflict with one another.

And so if you have any idea about God the Father that you don't see in Jesus, You need to reevaluate your understanding about God.

Because Jesus came to reveal the God who loves his children.

And this is what we need to understand.

This is what we need to be gripped with.

We need to be in the grip of grace.

Not in rules, not in regulations, not in laws, not in all of these other things that will never change our hearts.

We need to be in the grip of grace.

And then we find that grace is what changes our hearts.

We find when we fall in love with the God who loves us, that there is a transformational reality as we behold the face of Christ, we are transformed into his likeness because we begin to see how much he loves us and we see him for who he is.

And God, by his grace, does a work of transformation.

And as we see the love of God, love is generated in us, and that love that God has for us, that is working its way in us, is worked out in our obedience.

And this is why Jesus says, He says, if you love me, you will keep my commands.

John 14, 15.

Now we may take this and we say, well, what he's saying there is if we keep his commands, Jesus will love us.

But that's not what he's saying.

He says, if you love me, if you love me, the result of that love will be obedience.

It will be the natural, necessary, immediate response of this love that God is putting in our hearts.

And so what we need to understand is obedience, then, is the result of grace.

This is what Paul is saying here in Titus chapter 2.

Titus 2 · chapter mention

For the grace of God is what teaches us to say no.

It isn't the wrath of God, it isn't the laws.

The law will tell us what is right and wrong.

The moral law that's a reflection of God's character, of who God is, when we look to Christ and see what Christ's likeness is, his character.

It can tell us what is right and wrong, what we should and shouldn't do, but it doesn't have the power to change our hearts.

It never did, it never will.

That's not how rules work.

But it does tell us what is right and what is wrong and what God does require of us, what he does command of us, what are his imperatives, the oughts and ought nots of the Bible.

We see it throughout the New Testament.

In fact, if we were to look at Titus and read verses 1 through 10, it's filled with imperatives of things that you ought to do and ought not to do.

Older men and younger men, older women and younger women.

It goes through the entire Bible.

But if we don't understand that the ground of obedience is grace, we're just going to think it's up to us and try harder.

And we're going to think that we need to come up with a way to try to change our hearts, and we can't do it.

We can't will ourselves into change.

We can't try harder.

You know, sometimes we we have all of these different strategies that we come up with, uh, but none of them work because they have no effect on the heart.

You know, some people take a passive approach of let go and let God and think, well, if God wants to change me, He'll change me.

And if not, well, you know, that's his problem.

You know, God has called us to an active faith of pursuing him, of pursuing holiness.

It's God's will, your sanctification.

But here's the problem.

We have indwelling sin.

We have sin that resides with us.

God made us genuinely new.

He didn't make us totally new.

Paul talks about this in Romans 7.

He talks about the battle that he faces, the things I want to do, I don't do, and those things I don't want to do, I do.

Wretched man that I am, who can save me from this body of death?

That's the reality of the Christian life.

At the end of Paul's life, he says, Christ Jesus came to save sinners of whom I am chief.

I read a book recently, and I want to use an illustration, but give a caveat first.

Um it was a book by John Lynch called The Cure.

Um I I there are there are parts of this book I really love.

I think he uh there's one, I have one major uh problem with the book in that he conflates justification and sanctification in his description.

If you don't understand what that means, come and talk to me later because everyone else will be bored.

But he conflates justification and sanctification.

But he gives this really great illustration.

And he says, our problem is, is we think of here I am on one side, and sin is in the middle, and Jesus is on the other side of sin.

And that this is how the Christian life is.

And so it's always me trying to deal with my sin so I can get to Jesus.

So that somehow if I do something I can get to Jesus.

But what he says is we get it wrong.

And I think he's right in this illustration because what it is is it's Jesus next to me looking at my sin, and together, together, God is going to enable us to deal with our sin.

And I think that's a great illustration of the Christian life.

But let me explain how this works.

Uh because hearing that, we could think that spiritual growth is a 50-50 proposition, that it's me doing 50% and Jesus doing 50%.

And that isn't how spiritual growth is.

There's a paradox in the Christian life.

And a paradox is a seeming contradiction.

It's not an actual contradiction, but it's a seeming contradiction.

Um let me explain.

Uh, we think that the Christian life is a 50-50 proposition.

You know, that I'll do my part and Jesus will do his part, and then together we'll get this job done.

Um, it's kind of like moving furniture.

Let's say I'm gonna move my house.

And I'm gonna take all the furniture and I'm gonna move to a new house.

Um, you know, I'm one of these guys that buys a new house every five years.

Um, and so I'm I'm I'm gonna move into a new house, and I realize that most of the stuff I can move on my own.

So I begin to take the tables and the chairs and the lamps and all of the boxes, and then I'm left with the refrigerator and the couch and the big stuff.

I'm left with all the big stuff.

And so then I call up a friend and I say, Hey, uh, can you come over?

I need some help with some of the big stuff.

Can you help me with the couch?

Can you help me with the refrigerator?

And you see, that's how we view the Christian life.

We think that that, okay, Jesus, I can handle the little stuff, but when I get a really big thing, I'll come and get you.

And then you can help me move that.

But you see, the problem is that we are quadruplegics, spiritually speaking.

We can't move anything on our own.

Remember what Jesus said?

He says, apart from me, you can do less.

No, is it you can do almost as much.

Apart from me, you can do what?

Nothing.

We can do nothing in the Christian life.

I cannot change my heart that needs to be changed.

But what I can do is I can run to the one who has all power, admit my weakness, admit my inability, admit my struggle and my trial, and run to the one who has all power that can enable me to do and can do in me what I can't do myself.

And so I can cry out to Jesus and say, I am weak, but you are strong.

I can look to the cross and see the grace of God that's been provided for me.

You see, Paul never thought it was himself doing the work.

I mean, he was he was given the effort, but he never thought it was his strength, excuse me.

He never thought it was his power at all.

It wasn't 50% Paul's power and 50% God's power.

It was 100% God's power in everything that he did, but it was an act of faith.

He moved forward, he put to death sin.

He lived for God.

Listen to Galatians 2.20.

He says, I've been crucified with Christ.

It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

And the the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

You see, Paul says, Well, it's me, but it's not me.

It's Christ.

But it is me.

I'm going forward in faith, but I'm going forward completely dependent upon God's grace and strength to enable me to go forward.

Or Colossians chapter 1, verses 28 and 29.

Colossians 1:28

He says, Him proclaiming, warning everyone, teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may present everyone mature in Christ.

He's talking about ministry here.

He's saying that he's going and he's proclaiming the gospel.

He's doing Christian ministry.

He's a missionary going around Asia and Europe, telling them about Christ.

But then this is what he says.

For this I toil.

For this I toil, struggling, Colossians 1.29, for this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works in me.

All of his energy.

And so the Christian life is us, as Paul says, toiling and struggling, but it is not self-effort.

It is not powered by ourselves.

It is the grace of God through the cross of Christ.

So how does this work out practically?

How do we put this into our lives?

And think about your the struggles in your own life, and you and you just try harder, or maybe you try to come up with all these rules and strategies and it and it's not working.

What do you do?

Well, Paul tells us here it's the grace of God that trains us to renounce and godliness.

Well, how does it do that?

Well, the gospel tells you that you're weak and powerless and you can't change yourself.

There's nothing you can do to save yourself, and there's nothing you can do to change yourself even now.

And that Christ is everything, that we look to Christ not only for our salvation, but for our spiritual growth, for our sanctification.

And that we understand that our standing before God is always in Christ, and so he loves me completely.

And until we understand our standing, until we understand the indicatives of the Christian lives, this is who you are, the imperatives of the Christian life don't make sense because we'll try to do them on our own.

God does call us to obey.

They are commands, they're not suggestions.

We do them to please God, but we don't do them to earn God's love or favor.

We need to understand how weak we are.

You know, there's a there's a theology that's been around for about 150 years coming from Keswick and the higher spiritual life and uh coming from a lot of different areas uh of saying that all you need to do is reach a certain point and then you'll be propelled to a new level of spiritual life.

But the Bible tells us that we're weak, not strong.

Paul says this in 2 Corinthians chapter 12, that he recognizes how weak he is so that Christ's strength can be made manifest in his life.

2 Corinthians 12 · chapter mention

And so in our weakness and our inability, we cry out to Jesus for the grace and the strength we need.

And in humble dependence upon him, we rely on that grace and strength that he provides, and we rest in it.

We trust God at His word that He'll meet us in our time of need, and then we step out in faith and do what He's called us to do.

Well, what do you do if you're struggling with sin and you really don't want to obey?

Have you ever been there?

I know I have.

You just don't, you there that in your heart you just find this coldness and deadness and hardness of heart.

What do you do?

Um, to the degree that God has caused you to recognize your sin and your hardness of heart, you begin to cry out to Jesus.

You begin to admit what you see.

You begin to say, God, I see the hardness of heart.

I see my unwillingness to want to follow you, but I repent of that sin.

I ask you to forgive me.

Help me to begin to see your love.

Help me to begin to see the gospel.

Help me to begin to see the cross.

Help me to begin to look to Jesus for who he is and what he's done.

You cry out like that man who brought his son to Jesus and say, I believe.

Help my unbelief.

And you look to the love of the Father and the cross of Christ, and you remember whose you are and what God has done for you in the gospel.

And ask God to stir your heart, ask God to convict you of your sin.

Ask God to move you in a direction that you need to be moving in.

You know, Paul says in Romans chapter 2, verse 4, do you presume upon the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that it's God's kindness that leads us to repentance?

Romans 2:4

When we begin to consider how much we're loved, when we begin to consider that all of my sin, the sin that I want to do, and the sin that I struggle with, that that is the sin that Christ died to pay the penalty before, penalty for.

And he did it out of love that we are in Christ, that we are beloved of God, that the gospel begins to change and shape our hearts from the inside out.

And so you look to Jesus, you cry out to Jesus, you remember his love for you and the and and his love for you that drove him to the cross.

You remember that for every sin that you desire to commit, that he died to pay the penalty for that sin.

You consider his love for you is so deep and permanent that nothing can separate you from it.

And you ask God to give you a greater love for him than for the sin that you desire.

You know, every time you sin, it's because you love sin more than you love God.

And every sin, every sin you have, every temptation is a temptation to idolatry.

It's to love and worship something more than you love and worship God.

But but the strategy isn't just to hate the sin, which you ought to do, but it's to love God even more and let that love of God constrain you.

That's what Paul says.

It's the love of Christ that constrains me.

So you begin to cry out to Jesus, ask others to pray with you and for you.

God never meant for this Christian life to be a life of isolation.

And to the degree that we hide and we live lives of isolation, trying to do it on our own, we need one another to speak the gospel into our lives.

We need one another to challenge us and exhort us and to encourage us and to inspire us.

We were never meant to do it alone.

When he saved you from your sin, he placed you into his body, the church.

We are a part of God's people.

And pray to ask God to change your heart.

Only He can do it, only He can take the taste of sin out of your mouth, only He can transform your desires so that you respond to His love with loving obedience and response.

Listen to what I want to say in closing.

The goal of the Christian life, the goal of the Christian life isn't to use God to be changed.

You catch that?

The goal of the Christian life isn't to use God.

God is not a means to an end of our holiness.

God is the end.

God is our goal.

But when we begin to realize that we are pursued by God and loved by God, when we begin to respond to God in love, we find that He changes our hearts.

He doesn't leave us the way we were.

He changes our motivations and moment by moment, he gives us grace and strength that we need to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live lives self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age.

Would you pray with me?

Father, as we think of our own lives, help us to think of the gospel, of your great love for us, that the gospel, grace teaches us to say no to ungodliness.

Grace teaches us to turn away from sin.

Grace teaches us how weak we are and how frail we are, and that we need to run to you moment by moment, day by day, drawing our strength from you, not from ourselves.

That we don't just come to you once a week to get plugged in like a battery and then go and do it on our own, but that we need to cry out to you every day and every hour and every minute.

That apart from you we can do nothing.

But that it is your grace that is powerfully at work in our lives, and that you have called us to holiness.

You have enabled us by your grace to live the lives we could never live on our own.

May we see that we are weak and in our weakness see that you are strong.

Help us, Lord, to see our Christian lives in the light of the gospel.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.