Titus 1:2-3

So if you will please turn with me to Titus chapter one.

And I'm going to ask Ron if he can kill the the heaters.

I cranked the heat up a lot this morning because it was cold in here.

If they run for the next 40 minutes, it's going to be really warm in here.

So Titus chapter one.

The first three verses.

Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness, in the hope of eternal life, which God who never lies promised before the ages began.

And at the proper time, manifested in his word through the preaching with which I have been entrusted by the command of God, our Savior.

As we covered last week, Paul is writing to Titus and to the church that Titus is overseeing to encourage them and to build them up in their faith and say, listen, you need to believe the right things.

Your doctrine, it really, really matters.

And also your devotion, your behavior, the way that you live your life really matters.

You cannot just claim to believe these things and then at the same time not walk them out and live them out.

So he's writing to them and saying, listen, I am a servant, a bond servant of Christ.

I'm an apostle of Christ.

This is God calling Paul to his work.

We covered last week that Paul is this missionary with this message, right?

So he's a missionary called by God.

He's an apostle because he witnessed Christ's ministry on the earth and the resurrected Christ, and then he was called by Christ.

We know in Acts 9 that Jesus shows up.

His name was Saul at the time.

He doesn't have a conversation saying, hey, I have some ideas.

You're interested in being an apostle, maybe.

He shows up and he says, You will be my servant, and you will carry my message to the nations, and you will pay for this.

You will suffer much, but it'll be for my glory, it'll be for your good, and the Lord will honor that.

And so then Paul is writing to the church saying, Listen, as a servant of God, as an apostle of God, hear what I'm saying to you.

Hear the message I have for you.

He begins talking about the faith of God's elect, right?

Those who have uh put their faith in God and whom God has redeemed.

These are his people, he has saved them.

God has chosen them to save and to sanctify them.

So he's writing to encourage the elect in their faith, that there would increase their knowledge of the truth.

And that this would then translate into godly living.

For the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth.

This is his message to them.

So he talked last week about the elect and their faith.

And this week we're gonna dive into this idea of their knowledge and truth.

We're gonna cover the rest of this verse through verse 2 and verse 3.

But Paul's saying, listen, I'm writing to you for your sake that you know the truth.

Not just that you can say, well, hey, I'm a part of God's people, but that you know what he's doing, that you recognize this word knowledge means to recognize, to understand, to comprehend.

One of the heresies of the day was Gnosticism that said, listen, you're not really, you just need to kind of begin to absorb this higher knowledge.

And there's things that you just won't understand.

There's things you just can't, you just gotta kind of just kind of graduate to.

Even though you don't understand those things, this knowledge kind of comes and it's ambiguous, and you can't really wrap your mind around it, and you don't need to worry about that.

You just need to kind of just trust the Lord and don't worry about those things.

If you have this higher knowledge, then you have it.

You don't, you don't.

We know there is mystery around God.

We can't wrap our minds completely around God, but he has revealed himself to us.

He is not completely unknowable.

So Paul's saying, listen, you must have this knowledge of the truth.

You must recognize and understand the truth.

The truth being that God has revealed his plan for his people.

That God has done a work to pay the price for our sin.

To understand that the reason that Christ didn't pay a price for our sin is because God is holy, perfect.

We have fallen short of that.

We have fallen short of what He what He's called us to.

So this truth that Paul is talking about, this truth that Titus needs to be telling the church about, this isn't optional, these are optional things.

In John chapter 14, verse 6, Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

John 14:6

No one comes to the Father except through me.

So when Paul says, Listen, it matters that you know the truth, he's saying, it matters because it is the only way of salvation.

Not only is it the only way to eternal life, but it's also the only way that to know the Father.

It's the only place that your soul will find rest.

It's the only place that you can turn to that will bring healing, that will bring life.

So Paul says, I'm writing to you.

He says, I'm a servant, I'm an apostle for this sake, that you would know the truth.

That you would know that apart from God, excuse me, apart from God, there is no life.

John 8, 32 says, and you will know the truth.

And the truth will set you free.

And this is the message that Paul is proclaiming.

Excuse me, that we must know the truth.

Right, so so he's carrying this message of eternal weight, and he's saying to the church, man, this is the message that you need to understand, you need to work into your life and to wrap your mind around, to to um be able to then communicate it and share it with others.

But it's not enough that you just know the message.

It's not enough that you just cognitively say, okay, I understand the message.

For the next thing, the next part of the verse says, which accords with godliness.

So our uh knowledge of the truth and our election, our being Christ's people, it is to accord with godliness.

This is the mark.

This is the indicator, the mark that we have heard the message and our faith is in the message.

There is a godliness that comes about.

One of the best ways to kind of sniff out false teaching and heresy is do these doctrines lead to true godliness?

Do they lead you to thinking less about yourself, to thinking less about your just your life and your needs, and do they tend to help you think more about God, to think greater things about God?

So as we understand the truth, as we grow in the truth, there should be a growing in godliness.

No doubt we live in a day and age where it is easy to ascend to the truth.

Say, I believe these things.

I believe the scriptures.

But then so quickly we our lives aren't displaying godliness.

We are we're consuming very ungodly things without any kind of um any kind of indicator or any kind of burden on our conscience.

We're consuming things in the world that are very ungodly and they don't seem to bother us.

We're just kind of like we're numb to these things.

We must remember that he has called us to godliness and not just called us to it, but this is an indicator that he is at work in us and that the truth of the gospel is in us.

See, the mark of a Christian is their faith in God, which is derived from their knowledge of the truth, which is bared out in godliness.

Let's say that again.

The mark of a Christian is their faith in God, which is derived from the knowledge of the truth.

It's not derived from just anything we want, it's from the truth, it's from scripture, and it bears itself out in godliness.

You take one of these elements away, you have someone who's who's proclaiming a false truth, or someone who's not living out the truth.

So they may claim to have faith in God, and they may claim to know the truth, but there's no godliness.

Or they may try to be acting godly, they may try to be behaving correctly and claim to know God, but there's no truth that's regenerated their soul.

They don't understand that what Christ has done for them on the cross.

They're holding, like, hey, I believe in God and I'm trying to behave very well, but the reality of the gospel, that Jesus Christ has paid the price for their sin, that their new creation in Christ has not become alive in them, and their striving and their straining is false.

So we need to trust the truth.

We need to ask ourselves hard questions.

Does my knowledge and my understanding of who God is lead to godliness?

Do I see growth in my own life?

We have to be honest about these things.

If we're going to show up on Sunday mornings and we're gonna claim to be Christians, we're gonna claim to believe the Bible, then we better be willing to let the Bible examine us.

We better be willing to be honest with ourselves and ask the scriptures, okay, where am I really at?

And we need to listen.

What do our words, what do our words reveal about our desire for God and to grow in godliness?

What do what does your calendar or your bank account reveal about your desire for God and to grow in godliness?

What uh what do you do your relationships with your coworkers and your family, members, and your neighbors, what do they reveal about your desire for God and your desire to grow in godliness?

These are questions of the heart.

These are hard things to ask, these are hard things to examine.

Because we will not come to a place where we we ask these things and we're like, hey, I think we're great.

This is good, that was easy.

Check and move on with life.

If you've allowed the scripture to examine your heart and you're feeling pretty good about yourself afterward, that's an indicator that you have not allowed scripture to truly examine your heart.

But likewise, maybe there is encouragement because your heart towards your neighbors or your co-workers, or what you do with your money, or how you use your words, it's it's not where you want it to be, but by God's grace and you're not where you were.

You're still striving, you're still you're still failing, but you can see evidence of God working in you.

We must be willing to ask ourselves these questions.

For some will ask this question, and you'll think, man, I just um I don't know if I really even care.

Like, sure, I can use the scriptures to examine my heart, but I'm not really sure if I care what I find or what the scripture says.

And to that person, I just I pray for you.

I pray that your heart would be broken before the Lord, that you would be repentant, you would see your need for a savior, that you would see your sin that brings death, that you would see the life that Christ has.

For some, we may ask this, we may ask these questions and we'd say, I want to do better, I I want to grow, but but I also still want my sin.

Yeah, I there's a part of me that really wants to be more godly, but there's really a part of me that doesn't really want to leave this relationship I'm in, or what I'm how I'm kind of using the things in my life, my position or my power or whatever, to get things done.

I don't want to change those things.

So, yeah, I want God, but I think I still want my sin more.

To that person, I would just encourage you.

Repent of your sin, regardless of your feeling.

Confess this need to a brother or sister, to a Christian around you, and then to pray and read in the scriptures, asking the Lord to change your heart and your desires.

That you would begin to hate your sin, that you would see your sin for the wickedness that it is.

There may be some who, when they examine themselves, to say, Man, am I growing in my knowledge?

Am I growing in godliness?

And there might be, I see growth, but I'm I'm weary.

I'm tired.

I'm just tired of fighting the sin every day.

I'm tired of waking up and having to overcome again and again.

I just I just want to kind of give up for a few weeks.

I just want to chill out for a few weeks.

I want to be able to watch whatever I want to watch on TV or say whatever I want to say or think.

I don't want to have to guard my heart and guard my words and do all these things.

I'm weary.

I'm weary, Lord.

Again, my encouragement to you turn to the revealed word of God, to his truth.

For it is his truth that instructs us, that gives us life.

Even though you don't feel like it, there this is where life is.

This is what will sustain you, nothing else.

This is what will give you energy and strength to overcome.

Nothing else is God and what he has revealed in his word.

So we we pray, Holy Spirit, may you give us a heart for your word.

Holy Spirit, may you uh may you help me understand this passage.

May you make it alive in my life and help me to follow you.

We cannot just read scripture habitually, kind of with kind of as a way of doing it as a second nature.

We're not even thinking about it, we're not even intentional with it, and still expect it to bring life to us.

We turn to it praying and asking the Lord to make it alive to us, to bring life for this is our hope for eternity, our hope for eternity.

Ecclesiastes 3 11 says, He made everything beautiful in its time.

This is God, and he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

So God has done this wonderful thing where he has put eternity in our hearts, and not just our hearts as believers, but all humanity, all creation, all humankind, he has put the desire for eternity in man's heart.

He hasn't revealed how he's doing everything or the beginning from the end, but he's put this desire in us, a desire to be with our Creator, a desire for all things to be new, a desire for all things to be right.

And so, even in our straining towards godliness, even in our efforts to grow in knowledge, they are not just so we can understand more for the sake of understanding more.

It's for the sake that we can spend eternity with Christ.

It's for the sake that we know our hearts will be made fully glad, our joy will be made complete, all things will be satisfied in God in eternity.

It is a hope that we can barely wrap our minds around.

It is a hope that all the weariness, all the wickedness, all the things that weigh on us and all the darkness around us will be taken away.

And we will be in a position where our hearts have longed to be, in a position we were created to be, with our Creator, worshiping him, adoring him, being satisfied completely by him and him alone.

Our hearts long for eternity.

John chapter 5, verse 24 says, Truly, truly I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life.

John 5:24

He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.

Jesus is giving us wonderful instruction here.

Whoever hears and believes the message of the gospel, not just that Jesus on the face of the earth, or right to those he's speaking to, but they don't believe in God the Father, whoever puts their faith in God has eternal life.

And he passes from death to life.

As believers, we're no longer in this fear of what happens when I die?

Did I do enough?

Did I do enough good?

Did God approve of me?

If we have put our faith in him and we can be encouraged by that, and that's affirmed by our godliness, we pass from death to life.

We will give an account for how we stewarded our life, but we are not dying, going standing before God saying, Man, is my name in the book?

We can take confidence in what he has done.

And again, this is our hope.

Eternal life.

So Paul was the missionary.

He brought a message.

He said, This is the mark that you're you're hearing the message and you're following the message.

And this is the means.

This is how the Lord works this in.

Verse 3.

And at the proper time manifested his word through the preaching with which I have been entrusted by the command of God our Savior.

God uses his word proclaimed.

This is the means by which God brings faith.

You've heard me say this again and again many times, but this morning, you're weary, you're doubting, you're not sure what you believe, you're not sure where you're at.

You turn to the scriptures, for it is through this word alone that life comes.

Through the preaching, Paul is entrusted to proclaim this message.

It is through us being in the Word, it's through God's word and God's spirit in us that he brings life, that he brings us from death to life, he regenerates us.

It's through God's Spirit and God's word in us that he brings sanctification.

He's growing us to become more and more mature in our faith, more and more like Christ.

When we were planting the church in the early kind of phases, we had to pick a name for the church.

This is not an easy task, surprisingly.

It's not easy to name things.

But we we all eventually agreed on the name proclamation, not because we think, man, this is gonna be amazing preaching.

We don't ever want to come hear the preaching, or we just want to be known for the place where there's just preaching.

But we want to be rather we want to be a place that just proclaims Christ.

We want to be a place that clearly, lovingly, and boldly are proclaiming Christ.

First and foremost, in our gathering as a body on the Lord's Day, but then as we scatter, as we scatter out, that as a church, as a body, as a bride of Christ, we're going to our neighbors and to our coworkers and to our families and to our children, and we're proclaiming Christ.

We're bold and we're loving, but we're saying this is the way of salvation.

And it's through God and through Christ alone that we can find and have life.

And we know that through his word, the scriptures, we are to be a people who are proclaiming Christ in every area of our life.

I want to talk to you for a second.

If you are, if you feel again, weary, and there's always talking about us proclaiming Christ and going to our neighbors and our coworkers and our family, and we're just proclaiming Christ.

But then you're like, I can't even wake up and proclaim Christ to myself.

You feel weary.

You feel tired, your relationship with Jesus, and it just kind of feels distant or cool.

I just want to encourage you this morning to spend more time in God's word.

To spend more time praying his word, meditating on his word.

We are to call on the Lord for our faith.

We're not to wake up and then and to somehow just call on our own strength.

But how often do we do that?

We wake up, we think, man, I've got to somehow muster the strength to get through the day.

What a better way to live.

We wake up and we say, Lord, I don't have much desire to read this morning.

I don't have much desire to serve my family today.

I don't have much desire to work hard today.

Lord, God, you I need you to encourage me.

And then we turn to his word, despite our feelings, despite our emotions, we turn to his word, we read it, we meditate on it, we pray.

We are to call on the Lord for our salvation.

We're to call on the name of the Lord to sustain us, to carry us through.

It is through the preaching, the teaching of God's word that brings life.

Romans chapter 10, verses 13 through 15.

Romans 10:13–15

For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

How then will they call on him whom they have not believed?

And how are they to believe in him whom they have not heard?

And how are they to hear without someone preaching?

And how are they to preach unless they are sent?

As it is written in Isaiah, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news.

Paul was sent as a servant and as an apostle to encourage the church in their faith and in their knowledge of the truth, so that, so that they would grow in godliness and that they would remember their hope and understand their hope for eternal life.

Let us turn, brothers and sisters, from our sin and let us follow Jesus.

Let's pray.

Father, we are we can be keenly aware of our own shortcomings.

And they can be the loudest thing, the loudest voice in our head, the ways that we come up short.

It can be the brightest thing in our mind, the ways that we are failing, and how we're missing the mark again and again and again.

And we just confess, Lord, that although those things very well might be true of us, if we are in you, Jesus Christ, that's not who we are.

And we have a faulty understanding of grace.

A poor understanding that you have died for us to pour out your love for us, that we may walk in newness of life.

That we are covered in your mercy and grace.

The grace that you have so lavishly poured on us.

So again, Lord, we confess that as we are oftentimes we hear these faults and these failings, is the loudest thing.

Lord, may that change for us as we fix our eyes on you, as we take our eyes off of ourselves and our failings, and we're simply looking to you, author and perfecter of our faith.

We're looking to you, our redeemer, our sustainer.

We're looking to you, our Lord and our master, our shepherd and our king.

We're looking to you instead of ourselves.

We trust that you will sustain us, you will build us up as we desire to grow in the truth, desire to grow in godliness, and we remember our hope that we will spend eternity with you.

May you sustain us, we pray.

And may we walk in grace, Lord Jesus.

Amen.