Titus 3:4-11

We all see things dimly.

Our ability to see things for what they are is greatly diminished by our sinful and fallen nature.

The Bible actually says that those who are unbelievers are blind spiritually, and in many ways to how God is working.

But no doubt those who are even believers, our sight is yet still dim.

God has given us sight.

We praise Him for that, but we see things dimly.

This is true about everything in life.

We don't see ourselves clearly, we don't see our sin clearly, and we don't see God clearly.

Even with all the science and all the knowledge and all the books and all these things, we still see things dimly.

Praise God, though, that he has given us sight and he has begun to illuminate us to the things around us through his word.

He begins to teach us about who he is, about his plan for the universe, and about how who we are, and our sinful nature, and our need of a savior, and that Christ is that savior.

He begins to reveal our rebellious heart and how we want to push away from authority.

And he has revealed to us how merciful and kind he is.

And it's through his word that we begin to see things as they truly are.

So let's read this morning out of Titus chapter 3.

Titus 3 · chapter mention

We're going to begin in verse 3 through verses through verse 11.

For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.

But when God the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy.

By the washing of regeneration and the renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

The saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things so that those who have been who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works.

These things are excellent and profitable for people.

But avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless.

As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful, he is self-condemned.

This is the word of the Lord.

God's word has shown us that he is loving and that God is gracious by saving us from our sins and adopting us into his family and then giving us good works to do.

That's what God's word tells us.

So we see that.

We see it dimly, but we're in God's word to see it more clearly.

This morning I want to begin with God's nature, talking about verse 4, that God reveals his kindness and love to us by coming to save us.

Now, this is where we left off last week in verse 4.

I stopped at verse 4, and my challenge to us all was to meditate on this verse, to think about it, to pray about it, not to the exclusion of the rest of the Bible, obviously, but I want us to sit there for a moment and understand and think about what it means that salvation has come for us.

That God is good and loving, and he has appeared bringing salvation.

Couple of things I want to note about the nature of God, God's nature.

First of all, God's nature is that He moves toward us.

See, nobody kind of wandered in one day and just kind of wandered into a relationship with God.

No one just kind of meandered around.

God came to you, He made His presence aware, and as a matter of fact, you couldn't even resist Him.

He was after you and He has redeemed you.

He moves toward you.

This is a gracious, merciful thing to do.

Because even as Ephesians 2 says, in our rebellion, we were enemies of God.

We didn't want to move toward God.

He came for us.

That's God's nature.

He moves toward us.

He sees us and he chooses us.

People often want to debate and argue about these things, but the reality is that God is the one who does the saving.

God is the one who does the redeeming.

It is through the blood of Christ on the cross that we are believers.

It is through the work, through the atoning work of Christ that you are regenerated, born again, that Christ has redeemed you.

This wasn't just kind of an abstract or just kind of a blanket, like, hey, just for whoever wants it, it's out there.

And then we show up one day and we're like gonna introduce ourselves to Jesus.

Like, hi Jesus, my name's Rick, big fan.

You know, I'm glad I can meet you in person.

You know, if we can you sign my Bible?

It's not what's gonna happen.

He knows us.

He's aware, he he moved, he came after me.

He's coming after you.

He sees you, your life, your sin, your failures, the things that you keep going back to and again and again looking for fulfillment.

He knows about all these things, and he moves toward you.

This is his loving kindness, his mercy in action in your life.

Then I want to show you that God does the work to make us godly.

This doesn't mean that we just kind of sit back and say, Well, God's gonna make me holy.

Let's see this happen.

I'm excited.

Can't wait to wake up one day and not struggle with lust.

I can't wait to wake up one day and have a healthy, amazing relationship with my wife and not struggle with food or with the things of the world.

That day is gonna be great.

No, that's not how it works.

But he is the one who equips, he puts the Holy Spirit in us.

He's the one who does the work as we submit to him.

If it were any other way, then you can say, hey, I am making myself holy.

And I'm just kind of progressing myself along at this kind of self-paced rate, and it's going well, I think.

It's not the way God works.

We submit to his word, we submit to the to the church, to the brothers and sisters in Christ, and we see the Lord graciously, sometimes painstakingly slow, sanctifying us, making us more and more godly.

But this is his nature.

He sees us, he moves towards us, and then he works in us, redeeming us.

God's nature for us.

So before we kind of get in onto the rest of the passage, we have to see that this begins, this whole process begins.

Because God is good, because he's loving and he's kind.

These are not things that we are on our own.

We're not naturally just loving and gracious and kind people, but God is, and he displays that in the way that he comes for us.

The next thing I want to see is our salvation.

If you're a believer in Jesus Christ, this is true, that we are saved by Christ, adopted into God's family and regenerated through the work of the Holy Spirit.

So look in verse 5.

It says, He saved us.

To believe that, you have to believe that you needed saving.

You should never get past, you should never just see that and be like, yep, that's great, I'm saved.

He saved you.

If you're a believer in Jesus Christ, you are saved because of him.

If you are not a believer in Jesus Christ, you've keep resisting him, he is the only way of salvation.

Says he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and the renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out unto us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

He saved us because he is merciful.

It's his nature to show mercy, not because of our works.

And we're going to see how, as he talks about regeneration, he's not talking about baptismal regeneration.

You're not now born again because you've been, you have decided I want to be baptized and you've gone and been baptized.

That would be works.

But rather, it's not because of works done by us in righteousness.

It's interesting, it's not even your good works, it's not even the righteous works that you do that are like accredited to your account as salvation.

Those are faithful things we're to do, but they do not regenerate us, they do not bring life.

He saved us because he is merciful.

He has made us alive because he has chosen to do so.

It's an interesting thing as we talk about being born again.

That means being a new life.

You're new in Christ.

2 Corinthians 5, 17 says, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation.

The old has passed away.

Behold, the new has come.

Now, if you're a Christian, there are times in your life where you're like, I don't feel new.

I don't feel like I'm a new creation.

And I just want to challenge you to begin to examine your life over the last six days, six months, and if you've been a believer, six years.

Do you see your desires changing?

Do you desire the Lord more?

Are you dying to sin more?

You love the church more?

Do you love God's word more?

Not is it just amazing for you all the time, but over the course of your life, do you see the Lord changing your heart and your desires?

I want to encourage you that you're a new creation.

If you think about those things, you're like, man, I think I'm pretty much the same person I was 20 years ago.

My desires, my affections haven't really changed.

My lifestyle, for the most part, hasn't changed over the last five to ten, fifteen years.

Don't really desire anything new from God.

Take it or leave it.

I appreciate Sunday mornings, but that's about where it stops.

Just want to challenge you that maybe you're not born again.

Either you're living deceived because you think you are, because you're here, or you know you are.

And either way, you need to repent and trust the Lord.

See his goodness.

It talks about us being renewed through the Holy Spirit.

This language of renewal.

Romans 12, 2 says, Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God and what is good and acceptable and perfect.

See, there is this renewing of the mind as Christians were to do, or to be in the word.

But you can you can open these and you can read these all day long, but if you don't have the Holy Spirit, you will not be renewed.

So we as believers who have been given the Holy Spirit at conversion, at regeneration, we have the Holy Spirit, or to be in the word, following the things of the Lord.

For it is the Holy Spirit who renews us.

There's this washing of regeneration that's made new.

One thing that we need to understand at new birth, although our desires and our affections begin to change, we know that we still struggle with our old nature.

Old things are kind of still hanging around.

But what has happened for us is we have been made new in Christ and we've been regenerated, we've been washed clean.

Our sins washed away.

No more does God look at us and see all of our sin and all of our depravity and all of our wickedness.

He sees the righteousness of Christ.

I know is what it means to be washed by the atoning blood of Christ.

So we're renewed.

We're to be sanctified.

The Christian word, which means to grow in godliness.

John 17, verse 17 says, Sanctify them in your truth.

John 17:17

Your word is truth.

We say this a lot, how the culture is kind of, they don't know what to do with truth anymore.

At first, truth was relative, it didn't really matter.

Now we're like, well, maybe it kind of does matter, but we're not sure what to do with it or whose truth we're gonna follow and what we're gonna do with these things.

The Bible is the word of God, it is true, it's firm, it doesn't change, it doesn't waver.

We do, but it does not.

But not only is it the source of truth, it is also the source of our sanctification.

It's through God's word and God's Spirit in us, working, that we are made to be like Christ, that we grow in godliness.

He talks here in verse 7, so that being justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

Just for a moment on justification to be justified, to be made right with.

You probably heard this before, but you hear it again.

This is a legal transaction.

When Christ atoned for your sin and that he gave you new life, he justified.

You are justified with God, made right with all the things you have done wrong, paid for.

We talked before last week about the wages of sin in Romans 6.23.

It's death.

But Christ has paid the wage.

So it brings justification.

You're now made right with God.

You're now become an heir.

This is our eternal hope.

This is a theme throughout the book of Titus that our hope is our eternity with Christ forever.

1 Peter verses 3 and 4 says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

To an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, unfading, kept in heaven for you.

It's not kept in heaven for it's just kind of whoever wants to show up and lay claim to it.

This is an inheritance to the family, into the family of God.

Romans 8, 16 and 17 says the Spirit Himself bears witness with our Spirit that we are the children of God.

And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him, in order that we may also be glorified with him.

If we're heirs of Christ, we've been adopted into his family.

This is an inheritance, it's not gonna go away, it's not fading.

Our wavering does not affect our inheritance.

We will not be kicked out of a family.

He holds us secure.

Our spirit bears witness with this.

And just as we belong to God's family, and just as we're co-heirs with Christ, Christ suffered, and so we are called to suffer.

If your heart is saying, I want to be an heir with Christ, I'm all for that, I'm all for the justification stuff, I'm all for that sanctification stuff.

Bring it on.

The suffering.

Just wait a second.

Just just let's stop there.

This is America.

We don't we don't do that here.

It's not really our thing for us.

This is what it means to be a Christian to suffer with Christ.

Now we don't have to go out looking for suffering.

We don't need to go out and start kind of saying ridiculous things or start trying to get people to persecute us so that we can suffer for Christ.

Listen, there are those who literally give their lives because they're Christians.

There are those who lose their homes, they lose their jobs, they lose their children, they lose their parents because they follow Christ.

And if you're like, well, I don't see those things coming at me right now, maybe wait a while.

But the other thing you need to know is that when you begin to deny yourself, this is what Christ is talking about.

Denying yourself.

Might be denying yourself kind of the thoughts and judgments you want to leverage towards someone else, it might be denying yourself comfort or just kind of, I just want to sit back and just kind of watch things happen.

I don't want to really get involved with things.

Denying yourself, laying your life down for others and for Christ.

Denying yourself and loving your spouse as you ought to, denying yourself and attending to your family as you should.

Saying, you know what, I think I think what's more important here is that we value our family.

So we're gonna say no to the extra income because it's extra.

It's great to have.

But maybe you don't need it.

It's denying yourself and saying, hey, hey, you know what?

I know it's great to have the weekend just fully open.

That's our time to rest as a family and just kind of rejuvenate.

That's I get that.

But maybe it's saying, hey, we're gonna take some of that time and we're gonna give to other people.

We're gonna serve, we're gonna meet needs, we're gonna lay down our desires.

I don't want to pray with my spo.

Maybe it's you saying, you know, I'm tired tonight.

I don't want to pray with my spouse.

I just want to sit here and watch some TV.

Just want to kind of chill out.

Deny yourself.

Press into what God has called you to.

There are so many we're called to lay down our life.

And if we're not willing to do those things here and now, then we're not prepared to suffer the way Christ suffered.

We're not prepared to lay down our life as He has called us to, because we won't even do that in the small things.

See, God has done the work of saving us.

This is not to say that we're absent from this or from our salvation, but that God is sovereign over it and he holds it secure, and we rest in that, and we seek to do good works, to live as heirs, co-heirs with Christ.

I want to look now to the rest of the passage and talk about the mission of the church that God has redeemed his people for good works.

Verse 8 says, The saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things, so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works.

These things are excellent and profitable for people, but avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless.

As for a person who stirs up division after warning him once and then twice, have nothing to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful, and he is self condemned.

So much here that the church is to, as God's redeemed people, or to do good works.

So, this question came up in our community group this week.

What does it mean to glorify God?

What does it mean to glorify God?

This is a really important question to ask, and it's a really important question to try to answer.

And as we discuss this, the consensus is that we're to kind of live in obedience to God from the heart, from a heart that loves God.

And that's how we're to glorify Him.

Now, the very first question in the Westminster Confession of Faith, or the Westminster, excuse me, Westminster shorter catechism, is just this.

What is the chief end of man?

And the answer, a man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.

To obey God and do it from the heart, right?

The theologian John Piper is famous for saying that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

That we bring God the most glory possible when we're satisfied in him.

We find our contentment in him.

When we look to him and say, as Christians and as the church, it's our desire, as God's people, to do good works from a heart that loves him, that is grateful to him, and that is satisfied.

We need to strive to be satisfied in the Lord.

So to glorify God is our aim as Christians.

And Jesus made this clear in Matthew 22, verses 36 through 40.

Matthew 22:36–40

It says, love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your mind.

This is the first and greatest commandment to love the Lord with all of your being.

This is the call.

This is how we're to bring glory to God.

Jesus is not after just simple obedience from you.

His desire is that your heart desire him and that you be genuine in your love for him.

And it is from this position of God, I want to glorify you, I want to obey you, and I want to do it from a heart of obedience.

That we then move to what's the church supposed to do?

How's the church to operate?

Man, it's we're to we're to insist on these things.

Right?

We're to be devoted to good works.

Devoted to good works.

Well, we know that from the passage that the works don't bring us salvation.

So we got that square.

We're not doing the good works because we need something, we're trying to earn favor, but out of that, we're then doing good works.

And if your question is, well, what are good works?

It's a good question.

Let's look at Titus chapter 2, verse 2.

Titus 2:2

Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in the faith and love and steadfastness.

Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine.

They're to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.

Likewise, urge the younger women to be self-controlled.

Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame having nothing evil to say about us.

Bondservants are to be submissive to their own masters in everything.

They're to be well pleasing, not argumentative, not pilfering, but showing all good faith, so that in everything they may adore the doctrine of God, our Savior.

These are good works.

We need to begin with the good works that God is clear about.

Man, as we read this passage, where do you fit in here?

Are you old?

Are you young?

What's your status?

And seek to do good works.

This is the work that we're as believers to be doing.

If you're wondering, man, I just don't know what God's purpose is for my life.

What's his calling on my life?

How can I serve the church?

Where do I plug in?

This is it.

Read Titus 2.

Where are you at?

Begin to live that out.

This is the call of Christ on the church to do good works.

And then to avoid worthless arguments.

Now, this part is a bit tricky because you have to discern what argument, what's an argument or a disagreement that is worthless, and what's something that is actually worth us standing up for.

So this kind of goes both ways because some people will say, hey, look, God has called us to be unified and to stop arguing about these little doctrinal things, and we just said we need to honor one another and get along.

Well, it's not kind of unhelpful when you begin to realize all the division and all the kind of different doctrines that people begin to take.

So we can't just lay down all of our preferences and say, well, if you use the name of God or Jesus, then we're to be unified.

And that's not what Paul's saying.

Paul, as we know, the church having deals a lot with false teachers.

He's very serious about the church.

One of the most helpful doctrine, knowing what to believe and sticking to it.

It's one of the most helpful things as a church is to be clear and strong on our doctrine.

This is what protects us from division.

But we are all to be unified and we're to be humble in that.

We're to not be talking about, well, you know, the gifts that I have compared to the gifts that you have and all these different things.

And in this day, Titus is dealing with people who are arguing about things, and we're just, we probably just step back and you're you're talking about lineage and genealogies?

Like, are you guys arguing about these things?

And then we zoom into our day and we're arguing about things, and they would step back like you guys are you guys are arguing about all these kinds of things, and you're you're splitting.

And just be clear, what's God's word say?

Submit to God's word, seek his counsel.

One of the ways we know that we're we're talking about worthless things is because in those conversations, Christ is either absent or he's diminished.

Genealogies.

Why are we talking about why are we talking about that?

We don't need to talk about genealogies, we need to talk about Jesus Christ and what he's done and what his word tells us to do.

The same scriptures quarrels about the law.

Christ has fulfilled the law.

He committed He shares that clearly in Scripture.

So asking ourselves, what is profitable?

What is worthwhile that we begin to discuss and to work through?

And we do that with great humility.

We do that with a heart that is contending for unity.

Contending for unity.

Talks about a person who's stirring up division.

This isn't someone who has opinions.

It's one thing to have an opinion and share your opinion, and that's great.

It's another thing to stir up division.

You know you're doing this because you're doing it intentionally if this is happening.

People are stirring up division.

They're trying to kind of pull people away.

They're spreading rumors or false information.

What's the response of the church to do?

To act swiftly and clearly.

Warn them once, stop it.

War them a second up, and then you have nothing to do with them.

Because the church is to be unified and we're to protect the unity of the church.

But it's good for us as Christians to know, like, man, how do we how do we handle people who just have different opinions?

So it's not that someone's trying to sow disunity, but they're just working through a conviction or a belief or something that's different.

We don't want to push them out.

We don't want to be strictly, we want to love them and help understand.

How do you understand these things to be?

And there is a term that's called theological triage.

It's helpful for this, theological triage.

Triage being a medical term, it's a French word for kind of priority of care in a medical emergency situation.

So this tells us, well, that's timely, isn't it?

Anyway, medical emergency siren.

It's cool.

Um theological triage.

The first thing being, and these are the things that make us Christian.

Orthodox.

Not in the sense of Eastern Orthodox, but this is what the Orthodox Church holds to.

You disagree with this, you're not a Christian.

Right?

You disagree that Jesus Christ died and rose to the grave, you're not a Christian.

You disagree that in the Trinity, you're you're not a Christian.

You disagree that Christ is returning, you're not a Christian.

There's more you can add to that.

You're just not there.

Okay?

So that's the first level.

The second level being, okay, we're all Christians, we hold to the first level, but we have different views.

We have different views on the ordinances of baptism and communion.

We have different views on men and women and their role in the church.

Or we have different, but we're on missions and how we're gonna do evangelism.

So these are things that we're all still Christians, but we're gonna probably fellowship in different churches.

We wanna contend for unity, so we're gonna gather with people who think like we think.

We think that if you're gonna be baptized, you need to be an adult who can make a credible and a credible profession of faith, that you know what you're doing.

As someone who has that ability, we're not gonna baptize infants.

But there are those who who hold to the Christian doctrine, all those things on tier one, who do baptize babies.

Praise the Lord.

We love them, they're Christians, but we're not gonna operate that way, so we're gonna be in just different fellowships.

We're not gonna like speak ill of them or just look down on them, but we are gonna be in different fellowships.

And then the third level being that Christians who have differences but can still agree and can still be in the same church.

So these are things we would say, like, and we can we can kind of differ on on um like the end times, right?

Uh is the Lord coming back before the tribulation?

Is he coming up in the middle of the tribulation or after?

Is the millennium?

Is that thousand-year crain of Christ?

Is it is it literal?

Is it is it yet to happen?

You know, is it just kind of a metaphorical?

Some of the different kind of ways that people interpret scripture.

I don't mean like specifically, I mean like broad structures.

We can differ on those things, but we're gonna be in the same fellowship.

We're to be humble and to be wise, to contend for unity.

And part of contending for unity is like, man, what do I believe about scripture?

And is it is it orthodox?

Are there godly, faithful Christians who believe this who have own thing, and connect this uh to church history so we're not just new people showing up doing our own thing?

And then if if the answer is yes to that, find a godly church and and jump in and be there, be humble and seek to be wise, because God has called his church on a mission to do good works, he has saved us.

We begin we began the sermon looking at verse 3 about our old nature: sinful, foolish, disobedient, slave to passion, hated others, being hated.

But God came to us, showed us his goodness and his kindness, and saved us, renewing us with the power of the Holy Spirit, justifying us and bringing us into his family, giving us the hope of eternal life.

We will spend eternity with him, and then he calls us because of all those things, he calls us to do good works, to be faithful in these things, to contend for unity.

See, God, listen, God has done great work and he's redeemed us.

He's come for us.

He's given us a family and a work to do.

We see this all the long for this all around us in the world.

People longing for deep relationships, relationships that are that are have meaning and truth and bring healing.

We long for that.

People are starving for a way out.

They know that they're broken, they know that the road they're on isn't bringing fulfillment or joy or satisfaction.

They're longing for some kind of salvation, something to come and give them life and to save them from the emptiness of their life.

People are longing for meaning and purpose in their work, to give themselves to something, to strain and to strive for something with meaning and purpose, things that really matter.

God has come bringing life, bringing healing, redeeming us, adopting us into his family, and then giving us good works to do.

Let's pray.