Faithful Nobodies: An Ode to Obscure Lives (Titus 3:12-15)

It's nice to see you. If we have not yet met, my name

is Cole. I'm the lead pastor here.

I get to preach on the majority of the Sundays.

If you've got a Bible, though, let's jump right into it for the

last time. Go ahead and turn that open to

the book of Titus. We are at the very end of the

book of Titus. We are just going to preach on

the last couple verses, which are the verses that you

generally skip over. It's a few obscure names, a

couple peace be with yous, and that's, that's really it.

But 18 weeks in the book of Titus and we're crossing the

finish line. So thank you so much for your

patience. If you have sat underneath my

leadership for a while, you know that I absolutely love the army.

Cross slowly through the word of God and explore every every

little nook and cranny that God's word has to offer.

And that requires us to get nerdy sometimes.

So I appreciate your patience and even the positive feedback

we've had in the book of Titus. As you're turning there, let me

poke you. I hope, I hope that you do not

exclusively come to Jesus for the forgiveness of sins.

Exclusively. I hope you do.

That's one thing that Jesus offers, but it's one thing of

many. Amen.

And so I hope that you don't own.

I think the temptation is, I think the temptation is to

shrink Jesus down to like 10% of our life, to delegate him to

like one day out of the week Sunday, or to delegate him to

like one need that he meets. He's the forgiveness guy.

And when we do that, we essentially reduce Jesus to like

10% of our life. And I think that every

relationship with Jesus begins with us coming to him for the

forgiveness of sins. And that's a wonderful thing.

Maybe that's true for you. Maybe one night you woke up in

the middle of the night and your soul just felt like a sore

tooth. There was something wrong with

it. It was throbbing with pain while

the rest of the world slept. That night you tossed and

turned. There was the weight of sin on

your heart. There was this weight, this

suffocating weight of pain, this dread of some terrible thing

that you've done because human beings do human things.

And what I hope this pain did was I hope it drove you rightly

to the cross of Jesus where it can and will be forgiven.

But I also hope that you know that everything you could ever

need is in Jesus Christ, right? We've already sang that this

morning. If I thirst, I want to go to

Jesus. If I fear, I want to go to

Jesus, right? He's the beginning and end of

all things. He's the Alpha and Omega of all

things. He created all things, sustains

all things, and in Him are all things.

So yes, in Jesus there is forgiveness, but also in Jesus

there is righteousness. In Jesus there is life.

In Jesus there is hope. In Jesus there is growth.

In Jesus there's power. In Jesus there's meaning.

In Jesus there's fulfillment. Like, what do you need?

Just be honest with yourself this morning.

Like what's the thing that you need?

That thing is, in Jesus everything you could possibly

need is in Jesus. In Jesus there's joy.

In Jesus there's happiness. In Jesus there's treasure.

And when you start to understand Jesus as the fulfillment of

anything you could ever need, then you are only dipping the

very fringe of the distal edge of your toenail into the sea of

all the riches that are in Jesus.

And I'm bringing this up because this morning what we need to

explore is that in Jesus alone there is significance.

Significance because we're going to walk into these last couple

verses and we're going to see a couple small, obscure,

insignificant names. And I think these small obscure

insignificant names pose a question, which is do you feel

insignificant? Do you feel like I nobody,

sometimes I feel like the vast majority of your life is hidden

and like nobody sees it. Because if you do, what does

Jesus have to say about that? If you're able, let's go out and

stand for the reading of the Word of God, verse 12 of chapter

3. Again, a few verses.

Paul's farewell has greetings at the end of the letter.

I don't think anybody in our church has these verses tattooed

on them. Paul says when I send Artemis,

you guys know Artemis or Tiki Kiss to you.

And then we got a few people in our church named after Tiki

Kiss, right? A couple of ties.

Do your best to come to me at Nakopolis, for I've decided to

spend the winter there. So do your best to speed Zenith,

the lawyer and Apollos on their way, see that they lack nothing.

And for like the seventh time let our people learn to devote

themselves to good works so as to help cases of urgent need and

not be unfruitful. In fact, all who are with me

send their greetings to you. Greet those who love us in the

faith and grace be with you all. Artemis, it's the first name.

Tiki Kiss, that's the second name.

Zenus, that's the third name In Apollos, that's the fourth name.

What do these names mean to us, Heavenly Father, right now, in

this moment, I ask that your Holy Spirit would stir.

He would stir our souls. And my heart feels far from this

sermon right now. It feels kind of cold, kind of

tired, kind of exhausted, and kind of indifferent.

I don't feel like you have any surprises for us in the sermon.

I fear it will be insignificant and do nothing.

And so I just, I'm taking my heart, Lord, and I'm putting it

before you and I'm asking you, would you change it?

Would you put my heart on the edge of its seat?

If our hearts are far away from the Word of God, would you grab

our hearts by the shoulders and pull them in clothes and make

divine eye contact with us and just do something amazing in our

hearts? Maybe we've just never even

thought that Jesus had anything to offer us besides forgiveness.

Maybe nobody told us that He is the fulfilment of every desire

the human heart could ever have. Maybe nobody's told us he's the

beginning and end of all things, and whatever our need is, we can

come to Jesus for that. Maybe nobody ever told us that

he makes us significant and infuses our mostly invisible

lives with purpose and dignity and value.

And so change our hearts this morning.

It's in the precious name of Jesus that all God's people

prayed. And then you can have a seat.

I'll go ahead and I'll give you the main point of the sermon,

right, right up front. You don't have to wait for OK,

this text, like you just read this text is Paul's conclusion.

And like most of Paul's conclusions in most of his

letters, it's really just a couple throwaway phrases and

some names that are hard to pronounce.

But here's the main point that's going to come across these

couple of names from these few verses.

I'll give it to you right up front.

Here's going to be the main point of the next 30 minutes.

The work of changing the world for the gospel.

The work of changing the world for the gospel is mostly done by

faithful nobodies. Faithful nobodies look at verse

12. Paul says when I send Artemis,

if you've got a pen, go ahead and circle the name Artemis

right there. Now, you probably went to

school, high school with an Artemis, So I'm guessing that

you're probably familiar with that name.

And of course, if you know your Bible, then obviously you know

who Artemis is. Artemis is the faithful leader

of the people of God, who speaks to God in the burning Bush and

like George Washington in the Delaware crossing, give me

victory or give me death. Artemis is the man who

faithfully led the people of God out of slavery in Egypt and

through the parting of the Red Sea to the Promised Land.

That's Artemis right now. That's Moses.

The name Artemis appears in all 66 books of the Bible Exactly.

And I'm being exact when I say this exactly 0 other times

besides right here, it's not in any other book of the Bible.

This is the one and only time we see the name Artemis.

We know nothing about him. We don't know if he had a

family. We don't know if he had a

spouse. We don't know where he was born.

We don't know how he died. We know nothing about him.

And one of the most helpful phrases I've heard on this comes

from Philip Towner, one biblical scholar.

Philip Towner says quote. What strikes the reader is how

little we actually know about these Co workers at the end of

the book of Titus. Their anonymity in the

historical record only underlines how many faithful

believers labored behind the scenes to support and extend

Paul's mission. Artemis is a nobody, but he was

a faithful nobody. Are we learning this morning or

what? Artemis is a nobody, but he's a

faithful nobody. Look back at verse 12 when I

send Artemis or Tiki Kiss to you, If you have a pen, go ahead

and circle Tiki kiss right there.

We're just going to call him Ty when I sign.

When I send, we're just going to westernize it like we do

everything. When I send Artemis or Tie to

you, do your best to come to me and Acopolis for I've decided to

spend the winter there. Pause for a second.

What's happening is Paul is writing Titus this letter to

help Titus lead these churches on the island of Crete.

And we don't know where Paul is writing from.

We've got some guesses, but at the end of the day, we don't

really know. But what's happening here is

there's some sort of ministry swap that's going on.

It's like the trade deadline in the MLB.

He's sending a few people to go help out with the church plants

over in Crete and Titus over and Crete is going to send Paul a

couple people to help out Paul with whatever it is that Paul is

doing. And so Paul's going to send

Artemis. I know buddy.

And he's also going to send Ticky Kiss, Ticky kiss tie Ticky

kiss. Ticky Kiss was my nickname in

high school. Don't ask me why it wasn't, but

it's obvious why ticky Kiss is in this verse, right?

It's because Tikikis is the man who slew the giant Goliath and

warfare and established the worship of the people of God and

wrote many of the 150 psalms in the Old Testament, right.

Joseph Levi looked it up for Joseph.

That was good. That was good, bro.

No, that's King David. Who's Tikikis.

We know almost nothing about Tikki kiss.

He doesn't show up and several different places in the New

Testament 3 or 4 times, but whenever Tikka shows up, he

never shows up as the star of the plot.

The most specific thing we learn about him is when Paul is

sending him to Ephesus and calls Tikka kiss in the book of

Ephesians quote. A beloved brother and faithful

minister in the Lord. That's it.

We know nothing about his family, nothing about his wife,

nothing about his story. He is mostly strangely absent

from the rest of the biblical drama.

Here's what biblical scholar John Stop says about him.

Quote the very obscurity of these men.

And Paul's final greetings in Titus reminds us that most

Christians service is unspectacular and unnoticed.

Yet God uses such obscure believers to accomplish his his

purpose. What is ticky kiss?

Ticky kiss is a nobody, but he's a faithful nobody.

Look at verse 13. Paul goes on to say, do your

bet. Here's the trade.

I'm going to send you Apollo's and Tiki Kiss to help you plant

this church. But you got to do your best to

give me Zenus the lawyer speed, Zenus the lawyer my way.

Pause. This is name #3 Zenus.

We do know something about Zenus.

Zenus was the towering historical theological figure

who over the course of his life, preached 3500 sermons that

filled over 65 volumes of books and preached to up to 20,000

people in a single setting. Right Right now, that's Charles

Spurgeon. Zenus wasn't a towering

theologian or preacher. Look at the text.

What was Zenus? You can say it.

He's a lawyer. Why would Paul need a lawyer?

Because Paul's always getting in trouble, always, right?

It's like he gets to go do the fun stuff and preach about

Jesus, and then Zenith is like, oh gosh, more paperwork, right?

That's their relationship, probably in a nutshell.

If you Leopold's ministry in the New Testament, he's constantly

travelling, getting arrested, being pushed into hearings about

Jesus. And I don't know if you know

this about charismatic authors or teachers or even some

preachers, but sometimes the reason why some preachers are so

good at teaching is because they're so bad at everything

else. Paul was a brilliant preacher,

but he did not know how to run QuickBooks or fix the boiler.

You know how to do that. So for his mission, for Paul's

mission, Zenith was probably carrying legal documents

connected to Paul's defense and providing him with the legal

help that Paul clearly didn't know how to do on his own.

Paul needed this guy. The mission of God needed this

paper pusher. I was, I was talking to

somebody, I know somebody who started a bookstore.

And a couple of weeks ago, I was in a bookstore and I was, I

needed some recommendations. So I was asking about some books

and she was sharing some recommendations.

It's a beautiful bookstore in downtown Des Moines.

And I, I stepped back and I was like, I was like, hey, is this

what you thought it would be like when you thought about your

expectations of what it would be like to start your own coffee

shop or not to start your own bookstore?

Like, is this what you thought it would be?

And she laughed at me, Right. I've actually, I've been asking

people that question a lot the last couple months.

I'd say, hey, is your life what you expected it to be?

Almost everybody laughs at that question.

So I said, is this what you thought it would be like to run

and operate and own your own bookstore?

And she laughed, and she said, you know, when I imagined myself

opening my own bookstore, what I imagined was me spending all day

talking to lovers of literature about plot devices and rich

character development and our love of extraordinary

literature. And for the most part, I spend

most of the day in the backroom behind a computer.

Isn't that? Isn't that adulthood?

Isn't that just adulthood right there?

You just spend most of your days in the backroom behind a

computer. That's Zenith.

One mention in the Bible. One mention Other than that, he

just spends a lot of time in the backroom behind closed doors.

Zenith was a nobody, but he was a faithful nobody.

Look at verse 13 again, do your best to speed Zenith the lawyer

and Apollos, that's name #4 Apollo's on their way.

See that they lack nothing and let our people learn to devote

themselves to good work so as to help cases of urgent need and

not be on fruitful. So time out for a second,

Apollos. Now Apollos, we actually do have

some information on him. I'm not making it up.

I know I've misled you the last couple names, but Apollos was a

brilliant orator and teacher that Paul took on the road with

him to be on mission for the gospel.

His name does roughly show up 10 times in the New Testament.

And in the book of Acts, Luke refers to him as quote, an

eloquent man competent in the scripture.

So Apollo's he does get some airtime in the Bible.

But here's the thing, not a lot, not a lot.

He didn't write any of the books in the Bible.

Some people will try to attribute Hebrews to him.

I don't think that's the case. Maybe I'm wrong.

I don't think he wrote any books in the Bible.

There's no Bible verse that calls us to imitate Apollos's

life. Growing up in the church, you

didn't sing any songs called Be Like Apollos.

You didn't have any sermon series that were titled Be Like

Apollos the way that you had Be Like Esther or Be Like David.

Netflix isn't making any animated series on the life of

Apollos. I haven't seen any summer Bible

camps called All In Like Apollos.

Maybe we should do that, though. No VBS camps called all in like

Apollos. So despite his 9 or 10 passing

references in the New Testament, that's what they are.

They're passing. He's mostly well.

Here's William Barclay, an academic theologian, on the

presence of his name in this letter, Barclay says, quote,

these final names and Titus belong to the great company of

the unknown soldiers of Christ. That would make a great metal

band name. Tell me we shouldn't do that,

Joseph, the unknown soldiers of Christ.

OK, we shouldn't do it. You're right.

They did their work. They rendered their service.

Then we know nothing more about them.

And yet the church could not have survived without such men.

Apollo says mostly a nobody, but Paul needed him.

He was mostly a nobody, but he was a faithful nobody.

In fact, the whole island of Crete, this little letter was

written to Titus, who's on the island of Crete, and he's

learning to lead these new churches.

And this island of Crete in the ancient world is an undesirable,

insignificant, small, immoral little island.

Even geographically, that's true.

It was the butt of all the jokes.

It was filled with literal pirates and immoral soldiers for

sale. It wasn't Jerusalem, that great

and holy city of God. It was just Crete.

It wasn't. It wasn't even Rome, the great

horror of Babylon. It was just Crete.

It wasn't even good at farming. Crete had bad soil.

They couldn't even do that right.

Like those football signs at the game of Nebraska versus Iowa.

Crete has bad corn. They can't even do the farming

piece right. We're not good at anything.

Crete was, and it is just an island of nobodies that nobody

really cared about. In fact, when this letter was

written, less than 1% of the island of Crete knew Jesus.

It's actually much less than 1%. It's like .001% of the Cretan

island were Christians. Less than 1% of this whole

island were Christians. They were nobodies, but Paul

still loves them. All right.

Look at his greeting. Look at his conclusion.

Verse 15, the last three sentences in the book.

All who are with me, we're thinking about you.

We're praying for you guys. We love you guys.

All who are with me send greetings to you.

And so greet those who love us in the faith and grace.

Be with you all. And then the letter ends.

Grace be with you all. Was it was the grace of God with

them? Was Jesus with them?

Did they win? Because by all modern accounts

of measuring success, these little churches in Crete that

Paul is writing to by modern accounts have been failures.

Consider there are 0 known martyrs from Crete in the first

3 centuries. There are 0 celebrity preachers

or church fathers that came out of Crete.

No ecumenical councils were held on Crete where they determined

important decisions for the future of the Christian Church.

None of that happened on Crete. No major theologian represented

it. When this letter was written, no

church on the island of Crete was bigger than 30 people in

attendance. These churches were about the

size of your community group. They seemed irrelevant.

They seemed insignificant. I think that's the hardest thing

about growing up. I think the hardest thing about

growing up is feeling like with each and every passing year,

part of what maturity is, is it's actually just growing more

and more insignificant, isn't it?

It sure feels that way when you were a kid.

When you're a kid, bro, the whole universe revolves around

you and bows its knee to every single need of yours that

emerges. Even when you're in high school,

they have parades for you when you win the football game.

They they throw assemblies for you if the band wins the

competition. Even when you're done with high

school, young adulthood is kind of similar.

You still kind of feel like you're in the center of the

universe because at least you have your expectations.

And young at all, you can sit around and spend so much time

and energy imagining and daydreaming about what you might

become someday and who you might become someday.

No doubt an important CEO or an entrepreneur, or if not those

things, at the very least a manager at a reputable,

fast-paced company where you wear a casual tweed blazer with

elbow patches and people ask you to be on their podcast.

Obviously that's your future. And then adulthood hits and

you're just mostly insignificant.

Most of your life is behind closed doors in the backroom,

with you spending time behind the computer.

The older you get, the more irrelevant you feel.

It's slower climbing up the corporate ladder than you

thought. Your resume is less attractive

to the sexy startups in Des Moines than you thought it would

be. Maybe you even have kids.

And suddenly, most of your life, it seems, it's changing diapers

and having wars over bedtime routines.

Right, dads? As a dad, sometimes you feel

like Pluto. You were never at the center of

the solar system, and you knew that, but at least you were like

on the poster. And then suddenly you're not

even a planet anymore. You're just an icy rock doing

your best, forgotten in some third grade school classroom.

Not even a planet. Nobody even seems to notice that

you eat the heel of the loaf of bread so that they can have the

middle slices. Such insignificance doesn't even

get noticed. And yes, I do use the pulpit to

air some of my personal stuff. Suddenly, generic questions

don't feel generic anymore, and they arrive in your life with a

force that you didn't expect. Suddenly you find yourself

asking the question, Does my insignificant life even matter?

Nobody seems to notice. All I do is clock in and clock

out at work and my boss doesn't even know I exist.

Just seems like I'm raising kids.

Nobody sees what I do. What makes me sad about this is

that what makes me very sad about this is that we live in a

world where we constantly hear, implicitly or explicitly or

both, from pretty much every strand of pop culture, music,

movies, news, social media. The messaging we constantly hear

is that hidden, obscure, small lives don't matter.

Do you feel this way? Do you feel insignificant?

It's tough. And don't act like this isn't a

big deal. Sometimes Christians act like

this isn't a big deal. You you are designed with a need

within you to be significant for your life, to matter, for it to

count, for it to count for something.

And sometimes Christians take the topic of significance and

they place it on this tertiary shelf and they're like, well,

it's not as important as the forgiveness of sins or avoiding

the wrath of God or making sure you don't spend an eternity in

hell. It's not as important as those

things. Are you sure about that?

Are you sure about that? Read Genesis 3 really closely

and what you'll notice is that if you don't have your need for

significance met in the person and presence of God, you will

make some very foolish decisions with your life.

Did you see Satan's strategy? He didn't get Adam and Eve to

bite the apple by making it look red, juicy and delicious.

It was the promise he attached to it.

Hey, if you eat this thing, what's what's the temptation?

If you eat this thing, you'll become like God.

What did Satan appeal to? He appealed to Adam and Eve's

need to be significant. Oh my God.

So if you don't think about this, if you don't think about

what's does it look like for me to go to Jesus and have my

significant significance met in him, then you will make some

foolish decisions in your life like that.

For me, like my main sin temptations in my life, it's

it's me failing to have my significance met in the Lord and

me thinking, well, if I do X&Y, then I'll finally be important.

Like is that is that not true for you?

Like if your significance is for sale and Satan will buy your

soul. Being insignificant sucks.

Being a nobody is brutal and there's only one way I think

people can embrace this cosmic insignificance.

It's possible there are people who make peace with the fact

that they are in the words of the Bible, but a miss that

vanishes after a short time. There are people who are secure

and even joyful in their recognition that all their life

is is just briefly a name that gets mentioned once in the book.

We are Artemis, right? We are Zenus.

We are ticky kiss. We probably won't be Apostle

Paul's, who plant dozens of churches and become towering

theological figures in Christian history and have statues built

in our likeness and festival days named after us.

We will probably spend most of our time clocking in, clocking

out, doing invisible work, changing diapers, laboring to

put our kids to sleep at bedtimes, struggling to come to

church. Most of us, that's who we are.

We're mostly just nobodies. How do you make peace with that?

How do you make peace with that? And the answer to that question

is so overwhelmingly simple that you know it's true.

How do you make peace with that? You find your significance in

Him. That's it.

That's all I can tell you this morning.

This is all I know how to do is you find your significance in

Jesus. I don't know if you have ever

looked at the cross of Jesus and said to your soul, I have

everything I could ever need hanging on that cross right

there. Have you ever done that?

Have you ever looked at the cross of Christ and said to your

soul, there could be nothing in this entire world that could

give me close to what Jesus Christ gives me, right?

If the recent scientific speculations are accurate, and

who knows if they are about the nature of the earth as merely a

speck of dust existing in a black hole, or true, then there

could be nothing even in the entire cosmos that would give me

close to what Jesus Christ has given me.

Have you ever done that? If life gave me all the lemons

I've ever wanted, All the stupid lemons I've ever wanted.

The admiration that deep down I have craved from people.

The attention from social media that sometimes I have itched

for. A perfect group of angelic

friends who never offended me. A couple kids who always obeyed

on a first commandment. A paycheck with a number that I

wouldn't even know what to do with.

If the world gave me everything in it, I would leave it all

behind for Jesus, and leave it all behind on the coldest night

of the year and walk 100 miles barefoot for the mere sight of

Jesus. There is more to be gained in

one gazing at Jesus than in ownership over the entire world.

There's more there for you. You could never thank God enough

for the riches that he has hidden from you in this world

and revealed to you only through Jesus.

It's all in Jesus. He's the beginning, He's the

end. He's the Alpha, is the Omega.

Create all things. He's sustaining all things.

All things are in him. In Christ alone, you have

everything. Yes, in Christ alone you have

the forgiveness of sins, all that guilt deep down inside of

you that keeps you tossing and turning at night, driving you to

destroy your relationships, that list of terrible things that

you've done, because frankly, every human being has that list.

Every single penalty for every single sin perishes in the body

of Jesus. You have the forgiveness of sins

in Jesus for those who trust them.

There will not be one sin. Remember, if you trust in Jesus,

there will not be 1 objection raised to you sprinting into

glory on the day of your death. You have that.

That's just not it. That's one 100th of what you

have in Christ. In Christ you have the

forgiveness of sins, but in Christ you also have the gift of

righteousness. It's not merely that you've been

forgiven and restored to some neutral state of at least she's

not a Sinner. No, you're not neutral putty.

You're not merely sinless. You are righteous because of the

gospel. You've been clothed in the

achievements of Jesus and the prodigal son.

The Son doesn't just welcomed back and forgiven, He gets his

Father's ring on his finger. He gets to enjoy the feast that

his Father paid for. To be in Christ means that God

sees you as he sees Christ. He sees you with the merits of

Jesus. He sees you with the

achievements of Jesus. He sees you with the robe of

Jesus. He sees you with the

righteousness of Jesus. In Christ alone you have the

gift of righteousness, and in Christ alone you have the joy of

the Lord. Like the very pleasures of God.

Like think about that. There is more to praise in Jesus

than there is time in your life to do it.

There's more to enjoy in Jesus then you have time to enjoy it,

right? This, oh man, I love this.

The joy of the Lord is my strength, is what he says, not

the joy that the Lord gives. Although that's true, it's not

the joy that the Lord gets. What is it?

It's the joy of the Lord. It's the joy that's within the

Lord. It's the joy that the Lord

experiences. It's the joy that the Lord has

within himself. Think about this.

This is the joy that has existed forever in God through Jesus,

and it now exists in the end in you.

This is the joy that has no beginning or end.

This is the joy that's always existed between Father, Son, and

Holy Spirit. Before the sparkle of a single

star, before the creation of a a single Adam, there was God

rejoicing in himself for eternity.

God the Father rejoicing in God the Son, God the Son rejoicing

in God the Spirit, God the Spirit rejoicing in God the

Father. And through the death of Jesus

on the cross, you get invited into that party.

The Bible says it makes you a this is God's word, not mine, a

partaker in the divine nature. You participate in his nature.

That's why when you worship God, you sense a joy that's origin is

not in your own strength, a joy that has its roots not in you

but in The Fountainhead of God. That's why when you experience

the joy of the Lord, you experience what scientists call

flow, this transcendent experience of time melting away,

right? That experience of thinking,

whoa, how much time has passed? The reason why time disappears

in moments of joy is because you do step outside of time, and you

step into the God who exists outside of time.

You participate in the divine nature of a joyful God who

exists outside of time. That's given to you in Jesus.

And in Jesus you have significance, he says.

I was reading this this morning. He says, aren't 2 sparrows worth

a penny? Even two sparrows for a penny

worthless, Jesus said. Aren't 2 sparrows worth a penny?

And yet not one of those suckers drops to the ground outside of

the sight of God. Why would Jesus be talking to

you about the value of sparrows? He goes on to say, Are you not

worth more than sparrows? Not one hair on your head

escapes the attention of God. Think about that.

That's the most ridiculous thing Jesus could say.

What's the most insignificant thing about a human being?

One single hair? OK, in Christ that one hair has

significance to the Lord. So what about your whole life?

If one hair has significance before the Lord, what about your

whole life? Are you seeing the like?

You're so significant in Christ. This is the God honest truth.

You're one single hair of yours has more significance to the

Lord than your whole life does to the world.

And how, how can you taste that? How can you experience that and

still feel insignificant? Test me right now when you go to

the Lord in prayer, asking for something, anything.

I don't care what it is, a spiritual need.

Maybe you just want me to stop preaching.

Try it, try it, pray for it, pray for anything.

In this moment. Right now God is in glory,

seated on his throne surrounded by angels and seraphim who are

worshipping him and have 6 wings and weird eyes and these

incredibly majestic and powerful creatures.

When you pray, God on his throne raises his hand up to those

angels and says quiet, my daughter is speaking, my son is

speaking. You have an intimacy with the

Lord through the gospel of Jesus that even the angels don't have.

Do you still feel insignificant? You can't, because when you find

your significance in Jesus Christ, you make peace with

living your life as mostly just a faithful nobody.

Because that task, if we really do have all of our significance

in the Lord, then that task of just being faithful to Him is

enough to infuse like every square inch of your life with

significance. And that's a mission that's

worth giving all the attention that you can give to it for the

rest of your life. And that's more than enough,

even if nobody sees it. And then you can finally just

live your life for Jesus and draw people to him and tell

people about him and make his name famous and win the world to

Jesus. And all of a sudden all those

gnawing questions that arrived at your life with a force you

never imagined finally have answers.

Nobody seems, nobody seems to notice.

My life doesn't even matter. It feels like I'm just punching

in and punching out at work feels like I'm just raising

kids. I'm just showing up work.

Nobody sees what I do. Not in Christ, not in Christ.

In Christ. There's not one thing you can do

that goes on notice to God. All those things, they matter

more than you could ever imagine.

When you change diapers for the glory of God, or when you fill

out spreadsheets for the glory of God, or when all you can do

was walk into church 15 minutes late and sit in the back row at

church and chase your kid around for 60 minutes, that is

eternally significant. When you do it in the sight of

God and for the glory of God eternally.

And this ordinary experience of being faithful nobodies matters.

It matters because it was these faithful nobodies who just by

being faithful nobodies won the entire island of Crete to Jesus,

right? Think about, think about Crete

again. Think about this these churches.

Paul is writing to our smaller than your community groups.

There are 0 known martyrs in the first 3 centuries that come from

Crete, 0 celebrity preachers, 0 church fathers from Crete.

When this letter was written, no church on Crete was bigger than

30 people in attendance. When this letter was written,

less than 1% of the population on Crete knew Jesus.

Do you know what that percentage is today?

Couple years ago they did a census.

By the estimates of that census, the percentage of people on the

island of Crete that now identify as being Christian as

95%, 95%. These nobodies, they did it.

They did it. They were faithful to Jesus.

They won the island to Jesus. They won the island of Crete for

Jesus. So why can't we win the Des

Moines area for Jesus? We can.

And to do it, you don't need to be somebody.

You don't need followers. You don't need a cooler job.

You don't need more significance.

You don't need to be more remarkable.

You don't need to be more important.

You just need Jesus. So be a faithful nobody.

For the glory of God, read your Bible, pray.

Be a good husband, be a Good Wife, be a good father, be good

at being a mom, be good at being single.

Build the church, tell people about Jesus.

Do everything you do for the glory of God.

To quote Count Zinzendorf a long time ago.

Preach the gospel, die and be forgotten.

Amen. Preach the gospel, die and be

forgotten. That's as close as I can get to

a summary on the book of Titus. Hope you've enjoyed these last

18 weeks in it, because the good Lord knows I have.

Heavenly Father, make us into faithful nobodies.

We don't. We don't need anything that the

world can offer us. Our souls are not for sale.

Our need for significance has been met and the person of

Jesus. And so the only thing that

matters, the only thing that could give us life, joy, eternal

significance is Jesus. And so if someone in here

doesn't know Jesus, I pray that your Holy Spirit would wake up

their heart, shine upon their heart, illuminate the person of

Jesus, and spark a new faith journey this morning, 1% to 95%

on the island of Crete. Oh, I pray that you would give

us that vision for our city. It's in the precious name of

Jesus that all God's people prayed.

Let's stand and let's worship this Jesus together.