The Grace of God - Titus 2:11-14

This last week we've had a lot of rain and there's a rainy,

cold day Monday, and I went to my community group gathering and

it was a lovely night. But I noticed that something has

been missing through our study of Titus, and it came to me that

night as we were sitting around, we'd eaten some real good red

bean chili, which went perfect with the the kind of colder day

that we'd had. And we eaten this this chili.

We sit down. We'd start to discuss the

passage from last week. In last week's passage, if you

were here or in a community studying it, you know, is all

about how to be a man or a woman who is discipling younger men

and younger women. If you're a younger man or a

younger woman, how to find someone, how to look for

someone, how to be trained up to be kind of in, in earnest, A

respectable person, a respectable man, a respectable

woman. And our conversation kind of

turned that way. How do you become or really what

is the characteristics of people that you respect in your life?

We talked a lot about that. I talked about men and women

that that we look up to and want to be like.

And as the discussion wind wound down, I started to just feel

like we were kind of missing a big part of what we needed to

talk about that night. The question that was in my

brain was, was how, how do you become that?

And you may have noticed the, the lack of this thing that

we're talking about today, as we've studied through especially

the, the first part of this letter, we had John Whitaker

preaching on the 1st 4 verses. And he shared, if you remember

the, the table analogy. And he said there's four things

that Paul instructs Titus in that are really the

fundamentals, the foundations for faith in God, for following

Jesus. And he said those four things

really make up if it's a table, the, the table legs.

And he said that the first thing is faith, the second is truth,

the third is hope and the 4th godliness.

Now, if you guys maybe ordered a, a table from IKEA or maybe

drove down to Salt Lake City and drove back, you would open,

imagine opening up a package of a table from IKEA and it's

missing this thing, this thing that John, not in his theology

and his sermon, but in the four things he talked about the, the

tabletop. There's no tabletop.

Imagine open up a package and realize, oh man, I should

somehow return this and have to get this back because there's no

tabletop. The tabletop that we're talking

about today. The thing that holds everything

together, the four things that John talked about, the whole

really letter of Titus that makes this not just sound wisdom

for a culture or a religion or a world, but makes it particularly

Christian because really these things, faith scientists have

faith in what they believe in truth.

They're after truth. Hope and godliness are words

that get thrown around in our culture.

Godliness just being, you know, morally superior or right,

things that the world cares about, things that definitely

other religions care about. But what makes this, what makes

our mission and what makes the message of Jesus in particular

different? What sets it apart?

And it's this idea of grace, grace.

And so if you felt this, and my guess is that most of us have

throughout this study that all these things I've talked about

wanting to be a reverent, respectable man or woman, you

might say that's a great idea, but how do I get there?

Maybe you've wondered that. How do I get from where I'm at

as somebody who is a little godly to being someone who

others look to as a person of faith, a person of godliness?

Or maybe you're on the outside looking in saying, you know, I

don't. I hadn't really begun that

process of faith. I'm new to church.

I've just joined in the last several weeks.

I don't really know the message totally, but how do I begin this

process? It seems like others are way

further along. This message of grace is for

you. Grace is what gets us into the

Kingdom and what continues to help us become more and more

like Jesus's Kingdom people. So we'll be in Titus chapter 2,

Titus 2:11

verse 11 to start if you'd like to turn there.

And Paul connects this with this word 4.

So this word stands there to say.

Everything that Paul has said previously is leading up to this

moment. Everything that he said from

verse 1 of chapter 1 to now is pointing towards this 4 Like why

does all of this matter? How does all of this work?

Why does it matter to raise up elders who are above reproach

and the husbands of one wife who can manage their households

well? Why does that matter and how do

you get there? Why does it matter to be a

person who disciples other people and how do I do it?

It all comes back to this four he says the grace of God that

brings salvation has appeared to all men.

Now, as we get into this, you might be wondering what

salvation is in particular, and Paul will explain to this to us

in a bit. But in particular, what's

difficult about this passage and anytime you talk about a word

like grace is that when I say we're going to talk about grace

today, some of us sit back and say, great, I already know about

it. This will be an easy one for me.

Some of us sit back and say, oh, I'm a little bit nervous because

the church that I was a part of or the movement I was a part of,

or teachers that I've followed have used grace in a way that's

been hurtful to my heart and my mind and my soul.

And maybe you don't know where you stand on grace because

you've been conditioned in one of two ways to believe something

false about grace and you're saying, OK, great, a message on

you think you know what grace is, but you really don't.

So to get us started, first I want to talk about two false

definitions of grace. Two things that our culture, if

you talk to most people in Boise, they might say one of

these two things. So you might have heard this,

especially if you're from a Mormon or Uber like religious

self-righteous background. I'll read to you a verse from

the Book of Mormon, just to be clear from the Book of Mormon.

So don't take a a screen picture of this and say that's my new

life verse. This is from second Nephi and

this is what it says. It's going to start off really

good for we know that it's by grace that we are saved.

Sounds pretty good so far, right?

And for those of us who are seasoned in the faith who say

yes and Amen, maybe the the Mormon church isn't that

misguided. But we read on after the comma,

after all we can do now, hopefully that makes most of us

cringe. And some of us, probably more

than others of your experience is one of being a part of a

church or religion like this. Grace, after all, you can do one

staff member here at Calvary, we're going through the verses

together this week and she's an ex Mormon.

And she said the way that I always understood grace as it

was taught in the Mormon church was after everything that I did,

grace was the little bit that covered it.

But I had to do everything that I could have done.

So in other words, if God looked at my life and said you could

have done 80%, but you only did 60% or even 79%, grace will

cover that extra bit, but it won't cover what you didn't do.

And so you're out. Grace in the Mormon faith and in

people's minds like this is that extra little bit that gets you

there. So if you do everything you

everything correctly, grace will add that little bit because

God's so perfect that we, even if we do everything perfectly,

we can't quite get there. And his grace is sufficient to

cover that little gap. So like a booster to getting to

godliness in the Protestant faith, you might have heard this

people say something like God helps those who have helped

themselves. So after you've done everything

you can to bring yourself to God and to write your life, then God

will help you out and he'll give you the grace that you need.

And it's really the same, the same thing.

So grace isn't a booster, doesn't just cover that last

little bit. Grace covers everything.

But it's also not the opposite of this.

Some people and then maybe the less religious context,

especially in a city like Boise, this would be maybe the

definition of grace that you'd hear from somebody on the

streets. This comes from Dietrich

Bonhoeffer and it's not what he believed, but he's pointing out

he's a German theologian, the problem of what he called cheap

grace, grace that doesn't cost everything.

He is famous for his book Cost of Discipleship, and this is

what he says about cheap grace. Cheap grace is without

discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus

Christ living and Incarnate. And so cheap grace is when we

say, you know what? You can have grace to live

however you would like. And I know we've all have heard

people who, and we've probably been tempted because this kind

of sounds fairly nice. Well, I can have grace and I can

get that that card that gets me into heaven.

But my life on earth doesn't have to change.

I can enjoy all the pleasures that I want to enjoy.

I can do all the things I want to do.

I can enjoy all the things that the world has to offer and then

know that I'm covered by the grace of God.

But bond offer says that grace needs to come with discipleship.

It comes with Christ dying and then calling us to take up our

cross and follow him day after day, month after month, season

after season, life, afterlife. And So what is grace in in

Paul's mind? Here's a biblical definition of

grace. The word that Paul uses is

charis, and it literally means that God in his kindness gave to

us an undeserved and active favor.

So God looks on us and says you don't deserve this, but I'm

going to actively and the keyword actively, it's not just

in the past, but it's currently happening, Have favor on people.

In other words, I'm going to give you this beautiful gift

that when I look at you, instead of seeing brokenness and sin,

I'm going to see my son Jesus going to see him.

And So what Paul, Pauls definition of grace or idea of

grace is 1 of incongruency. So what that means is that God's

grace is so lavish and so beautiful and so good that his

gift could never be matched by anything that we could bring.

So God's gift is up here, our gift is down here.

But as we respond to grace, there is something that happens

in us. So grace does a work in US.

And so Paul says that grace has appeared.

So it's showing up. And he says this grace has

appeared to what? To who?

All men, all women. And this is key because in a

culture like ours, just like Titus, remember Titus is on an

island called Crete. And imagine Titus stepping foot

on this island, knowing that there's a few enclaves of the

gospel, a few churches and houses scattered throughout the

the island, but that most of the island does not know about the

gospel of grace, doesn't know about Jesus.

And if they do, they've maybe perverted it in some ways.

Remember what he says about Cretans, what Paul says about

Cretans earlier. They're liars and evil beasts.

And it can be tempting for Titus and it can be tempting for us to

say, well, you know, there's some things in the gospel that

are kind of hard. So I'm going to, I'm not going

to include those when I preach the gospel here.

And there's some things in the gospel that aren't quite there,

but I'll add them because the people on this island will

really be helped if I just soften the blow there and give

them a bone and allow them to have those things.

And I'll still preach Jesus. His name will still be included.

And it'll still be a message of, of, of God's Kingdom, but

slightly changed. And we look at that saying, you

got to stay true to the gospel message.

And the temptation is true for all of us to say, hey, Boise, I

know there's some things in the gospel that are really hard, so

let's change them. And Paul says it's one gospel

for all. There's not a gospel that comes

through any other person other than Jesus.

He's the way. He's the truth and the life.

Now grace is this kind of transactional thing.

So those outside the Kingdom receive grace to enter the

Kingdom and it's beautiful and we rejoice in it.

That's what he means by saying that grace has that God brings

salvation. Grace that brings salvation has

showed up. It's bringing it.

It has arrived, but it doesn't stop there.

Paul continues verse 12 and he says grace teaches us grace

teaches us. So grace is this kind of

transaction where you once were a Sinner, you once were outside

of Christ and now you're a child of God, but it doesn't leave you

there. Grace is not simply a moment in

time that you said I I believe in Jesus.

I prayed the prayer at the front of a stage with a good friend

and I got baptized. Now I'm good.

It's also an ongoing process of transformation and change.

So grace teaches us, Paul says, that denying ungodliness and

worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly

in the present age. Now, how does grace teach us,

right? We think about grace as a

concept, as a word, as a doctrine, and that's beautiful.

But how does grace act as a teacher?

Well, one, Paul is saying two things.

He's saying that grace is a teacher in that you cannot learn

anything outside of grace. Grace is what saves you and

grace is also what helps you to see anything that you need to

improve and change and see in your life.

And helpful way to think about this is the second way Paul

means this is that grace has appeared, he says, and what he's

pointing to is that grace has appeared in the person of Jesus.

God has always been a gracious person.

Look back to his descriptions of himself all throughout the Old

Testament and you see God is a gracious God.

You see, that's the way he acts and moves and responds to

humans. He's gracious.

And yet Paul says that grace appears and he's meaning Jesus.

Jesus has appeared, He's lived, he's died, he's rose, and he

brought grace in his appearance. And so one way to think about

this, grace teaches. In other words, the Holy Spirit

teaches or Jesus teaches. So how does grace, how does the

Holy Spirit, how does Jesus teach us?

Three ways that I'll highlight this morning, Revelation,

correction, and direction. So the first is revelation.

Now as we go from many of us putting our faith in Jesus years

ago to stepping foot year after year into church and into life

with God, it can be sneaky, but the enemy wants us to believe.

Our flesh wants us to believe that we somehow got ourselves to

God just a little bit. So maybe when you gave your life

to Jesus, he said, yeah, it's all God and none of me.

But as you've gotten further away, you do remember.

Yeah, I did read all those books that helped me research the

resurrection, you know, and I did.

I did show up to church several times, reach out to several

people. You know, I did start to prime

my heart in my life to get me ready to, to receive God.

And the grace, grace teaches us that apart from Christ, we could

never know God. And grace reminds us that apart

from God calling us, we would have never felt the need to

Google, to search, to read, to show up to a church, to ask a

friend about their faith. We would have never given our

lives to Jesus. We would have never not just

given our lives to Jesus, but no one about him.

And this is what we leave as Christians.

The Bible is clear that we serve for God who is outside of time

and space. He created everything.

He's the maker of all things. He's infinite and uncomparable.

And our minds could never comprehend God and we could

never find God unless what? Unless he had made himself known

himself, unless God took the initiative and said, there are

people in this world that I want to know and I want to know me,

and so I will make myself known. And he's made himself known in

two particular ways, he says, through nature.

And so the grace of God has allowed us to go out on a hike

in the foothills and to see the way that nature functions and

say, wow, this really teaches me about some of the nature of God.

This teaches me about who God is, the greatness of God, the

beauty of God, whatever those lessons are that you draw from

nature. But then we step foot into

Scripture and we see, we get a very particular revelation, very

clear picture given to us by God through the authors of the

library of Scripture about who he is.

And it's only by grace that we pick up the Bible and read it

and can understand and know and picture what God is like in some

little tiny ways that he makes available to us through these

writers. So grace teaches by giving us a

revelation of who God is, but also giving us a revelation of

who we are. Any time we've had a

recollection of, oh man, this thing in my life needs to go, or

this thing in my life is really cool, I should work on that

strength. Anytime we've had that, that

comes from God, it comes through grace and that leads us to the

next thing. Grace teaches us through

correction, teaches us through correction.

Paul says this denying ungodliness and worldly lust.

Grace teaches us to deny things, and we all know what the denial

is like. And I just want to camp there

for a moment because it's very important that we get the first

part right to then get the second part right, because grace

gives correction and then direction.

But first, Paul says it gives correction and the denial of

these things, ungodliness and worldly lust, that word is

important. It's not the I'm going to, I'm

going to be ungodly less or more.

I'm going to be ungodly a little bit, a little bit less in my

life or a little bit less around those people, or I'm going to

give in to the worldly less, a little bit, a little bit less.

It's that we're going to deny those wholesale.

But now how does that work? Because I've talked to several

people in the last few weeks that have kind of been

struggling with this. They've been believers for a bit

and they're still struggling with not denying some of these

things. And Jesus gives us a really

clear picture as we've studied his way, the way of Jesus, the

sermon on the plain, as he talks about how we deal with the

heart, he says to the people standing around, he says, do

not, you've heard, he said do not murder, do not murder.

And Jesus says that that that in some ways is kind of an easy

thing to do. I look around and probably most

of us in the room are going to take a guess, are not murderers

and don't necessarily struggle with the temptation to murder.

But then Jesus says that might be easy.

Uh, but what's harder is he says, you've heard of said don't

murder. But I say to you, even if you

are angry in your heart towards your brother, you have committed

murder in your heart towards him.

And you hear that and you say, oh man, I'm real.

I'm realizing now that man, I don't struggle with with the

temptation to murder, but I definitely do struggle with the

temptation to be angry. And maybe the Spirit begins to

work on your heart to heal you of that and to point you out at

times when you're angry and you need to repent and seek

reconciliation. And then there's a kind of a

third level to this. And it's the level that we all

know by the people that have been walking with Jesus for a

long time, some of us in the room, who when you look at their

lives and when things happen to them that the average person

would be angry about. And you're looking at them and

you're wondering, are they going to, are they going to get angry?

And you look in their eyes and you look at their demeanor and

it seems like not only did they restrain themselves from getting

angry, but that their automatic response was not anger, but was

forgiveness, was love. And that's what the Holy Spirit

is, what grace ultimately does. It gets down into our bones and

begins to change the way that we automatically respond to people.

And so actually it's the grace of God.

Every time the Spirit brings up something in your life that is

is off some sin, something in your mind, something in your

heart, ungodliness, worldly lust, it's the grace of God that

shows up and says that thing, thing that that you think you

enjoy or want or the way that you think you should respond.

Actually, I have a better way. And this is a beautiful

doctrine, the doctrine of grace. At first it might sound like,

oh, that's kind of tough. And there's a lot of tough

doctrines in Christianity, right?

There's a lot of things that it's kind of tough to talk about

at school or at work or amongst people who aren't believers.

You know, doctrine of sin is tough, doctrine of hell

difficult. You know, sometimes maybe feel

like, oh, I don't want to necessarily go straight there

with people. The doctrine of grace, the fact

that God would give himself for people like us and would not

just leave them, not just say, hey, you're good where you are,

but would say I love you so much that I'm going to bring you into

my Kingdom and all of the brokenness of your life.

I want to heal. That leads us to the direction

the Spirit through the grace of God directs us to live a certain

way. I have a good friend who's often

would say that getting rid of the baddest stuff in your life

is important. But it's equally as important to

fill those new voids with good stuff, otherwise the bad stuff

will come right back in. And so the spirit, the grace

gives us correction, tells us those are the things you need to

get rid of. But he also gives us direction.

And he directs us in three ways. The first, Paul says, is to be

sober soberly, teaching us to live soberly.

And I love this, as one commentator says this about

soberly. He says you are a real human

being, so don't diminish your humanness by drunkenness or

other kinds of behavior that make you more like an irrational

animal. You're a creature designed to

find fulfillment and being generous and kind to others.

Drunkenness and similar behavior results first in you being

selfish and then in your being harmful to your own self in

return. So in short, the spirit through

grace teaches us to make the best decisions every time, to be

self controlled to the point that we can always see clearly,

to know what exactly to do. Now imagine today as you're

watching football. That's your cup of tea or

whatever you watch. Imagine if Eli Lilly put out a

drug that could do this pill that you took.

It could give you the the ability to see clearly into

every decision of your life and make the right choice.

How many people in our world would would buy that?

This is the beauty of grace. Grace is that thing that gives

us the ability to say, I'm going to learn how to be the person

that can choose the right thing every time.

The right thing that brings flourishing to my life, but also

to the lives of those around me. Next, Paul says it teaches us to

live righteously. And sometimes we can kind of

view righteously as this negative thing, like, I'm going

to get all these bad things out of my life.

But the idea here is much more full.

It's not just getting bad out of your life, but it's about

getting bad out of your life and the lives of those around you,

as well as bringing in justice and goodness.

And maybe a fuller idea here a better word would be to talk

about living justly in this present age.

The Christian who understands this understands that that grace

allows us to be God's agents God's Kingdom people in this

world and to bring our lives into alignment but also the

world around us. Why Jesus praise godfather your

will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

If a nonprofit or an NGO had this kind of report that itself

was perfectly righteous, perfectly just, and that every

continent, every nation, every people group, every situation it

put itself towards always got perfectly and righteously

justice done, how many people would want to give to that

organization? It'd be the organization to end

all organizations. And yet that is what Grace does.

It brings justice to the lives of those who are controlled by

it and by the lives of those who are around those who are living

in grace. And by grace it changes the way

that we interact with those around us.

Finally, Paul says that grace directs us to be godly, godly.

And we can really look at the whole Titus up to this point.

It's the markers of being godly. And you can break godly really

into two particular things. One being devoted to God, so

godly people are devoted to to the King, they're devoted to

Jesus. And we all probably would, would

nod our heads yes, I'd like to be a devoted person to God, but

I need the grace because lo and behold, Monday, Tuesday comes

and I love the Lord. But as I wanted to dedicate my

life to Him and be on fire for him every day and be devoted

fully to Him, the temptations and the lusts of this world

sneak in. I get lazy, I get tired, I make

bad decisions. I become devoted to myself or to

the passions of my life. And instead of being godly,

devoted to him, I become devoted to other things.

We need the grace of God to keep us devoted to God, and we also

need the grace of God to be godly, In other words, to become

like Him, to become like Jesus, Jessica said.

Like our goal in Calvary communities and as a church as a

whole as we gather on Sundays, is to overtime be a community

who looks more and more like a Jesus looks more and more like

if Jesus were us individually with our unique personalities

and skills and families and jobs, he would do the things

that we would do. Like we're making the same

choices that he would make. And that's, that's our goal.

What a beautiful thing that is, that grace teaches us to be like

Jesus. Read the gospels as we've done

and imagine being Jesus. Imagine that kind of life, the

kind of peace, the kind of joy, the kind of love that he had for

others. And who wouldn't want to be like

him in that way? So grace directs us, and grace

not only directs us in how we should live, but also directs

our eyes. Verse 13 says Paul says this

Titus looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of

our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.

And I love these words looking and with hope for the glorious

appearing. So as followers of Jesus who

have received the grace, grace reminds us that this world we

see is not the way that things end up.

It's not the way that things will be and God through his his

word has given us pictures through the teachings of Jesus

of what that future world looks like.

And so as Christians, we get to say by grace, we no longer are

defined by anything other than what the future holds for us in

the Kingdom of God. If you ask most people, I guess,

probably even in our church, but definitely on the streets of

town. And you said, tell me about

yourself. We probably all would start

with, while I was born in such and such a place and I grew up

with these parents and this is what they're like and these

siblings. And maybe if you're close with

this person, you'd share some of the ways that you had gone

through some tough times in your life, some of the trauma or sin

that has been done to you or around you.

And you just talk all the way through, probably to your

present day. And then you would stop and say

that's who I am. What Grace teaches us is that

the most true thing about you and I is not what's brought us

to this point, but it's about that that future world.

What's most true about us is what we will be who we will be

for an eternity in Christ in his Kingdom.

And so we have the ability to say, you know what, my life may

have been hard and I may have been misformed and misinformed

in different ways, but I know that in the end I made to rule

and reign with Christ in his new creation.

And so I can have what Paul says, blessed hope knowing

knowing that's what hope is. It's not just the the way that

we use it often is like wishful thinking.

I hope I get that bonus at the end of the year or I hope I get

this to get for Christmas. Like I kind of hope it's going

to happen. I wish it's going to happen.

I think it might, but it might not.

It's this confident expectation this will happen.

So it's as true for me as my past is.

And it's actually more true because it's what God has done.

And this is what the idea of, of the blessed hope appearing to us

is. And I love the, the word that

that is used here for, for looking for waiting.

It's not just the idea that like, hey, I'm going to going to

kind of keep my eye out, but it's waiting expectantly.

And not just waiting expectantly, like, oh, I can't

wait for them to get here. But almost as if you've invited

someone over for dinner. And as you are waiting for them

to come over, what do you do? Well, you prepare the meal and

you vacuum the floor and you clean things up and you tidy the

house. And this is this is the idea

they were looking. We're waiting for Jesus

appearing. And we're not just waiting like

I hope it happens today. It might, it might not, who

knows, but we're getting things ready.

We're saying, I'm going to get my life ready.

I'm going to get the world around me ready.

I'm going to be a Kingdom person looking to the heavens, waiting

for the coming of the Lord, but also knowing that in the waiting

to have a job to do, I have a things to put my hands to and

all the way looking continually to that good and perfect future

of a new life with Jesus, knowing that that future is more

true about us than anything in our past.

Next Paul says it says this about who Jesus is.

So this Jesus who has appeared gave himself for us.

Now, apart from eternity defining us, the most defining

moment of our lives, of your life, is this one defining

moment that happened for Jesus. He gave himself for us that He

might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for

himself His own special people, zealous for good works.

Look what grace teaches us to see, and this might, you know,

as you read through it, the idea that Jesus gave himself as

people who have been in church maybe for a bit, they can feel a

bit like, yeah, yeah, I know that.

Just imagine stepping into this building for the first time.

Imagine being here and you're coming from another religion or

background that is unreligious and hearing that there's a

creator God who made everybody who made you and me the, the

world we live in, the universe, the cosmos has all been

fashioned in his handiwork. And then some humans messed it

up and God's solution was to give himself to them to say, you

know what, even though you messed up, I'm going to give

myself for you. And we see on the pages of the

gospel is what that giving looked like.

Looks like Jesus coming as a baby to poor parents in a small

town. It looked like Jesus living a

hard, difficult life and during all the things that you and I

have to endure. It looked like Jesus going to

the cross and enduring the punishment that we deserved for

our sins. It looked like him giving

himself to the tomb for three days as he waited.

And it looked like him giving himself to resurrection and

being resurrected from the grave and living again with his people

for another 40 days before he gave himself to be ascended to

the right hand of the God the Father, where he's sitting now,

still giving himself for us as he intercedes for us before the

Father. This God stepped into time, this

great God and our Savior Jesus Christ gave himself for us.

Let that not be lost on us. And He did this to do what?

To redeem us from every lawless deed.

The idea of redeem here is one of like buying out of something

literally to pay a price for. And so Jesus says, I showed up

and you people were enslaved to something.

That something is sin. Lawless deeds is the word that

Paul uses here. And I bought you, I paid the

price for you. And so you're no longer owned by

those things. And so the gospel, the grace

says that you are free now from sin and you're free now to not

do sin. He paid the price and he's given

us the power to live differently because we aren't just freed

from sin, but we are now together, slaves to Christ bond,

servants of the Lord who live every moment by the grace of

God, devoted to the king. And so he does this.

He purifies us and is listen to this, his own special people.

This is important because yes, each individually you are

special, we are special and God chose you and he has a unique

story in your life bringing you out of sin into redemption.

But Paul is makes it clear here that this people is Jesus

people, and that this people is is plural, that we most fully

represent the family of God when we are together.

We most fully represent the special people of God when you

and I are functioning together, helping one another, reminding

one another of grace, giving one another grace, and ultimately

pointing each each one of us to the grace given to us by God

himself. And then Paul closes with this

line. Zealous for good works.

Over the last several weeks as a church, we've been talking a lot

about zeal. And if you or a man who went to

the men's gathering a couple weeks ago, really the last

couple of them, or it's a man's retreat, you know that we've

been talking a lot about zeal. Zeal to do good, zeal to be men

and women who live godly lives. And the important thing to note

from this is that zeal has to be in the right place.

Grace begets zeal and zeal begets good works.

Grace leads us to zeal. Zeal before grace creates all

kinds of problems. Zeal after grace, zeal in

response to grace. Zeal by grace leads us to good

works, zeal to good works. And so if you're lacking zeal,

or as you've gone through this passage, if you're lacking hope,

or if you're lacking the ability to feel loved by God or by

others, you're feeling the, the, the question in your bones, do I

really belong to this people? They all seem so good.

They all seem so right, or they've really been making me

mad. What do you need to focus on?

None of those things. It's the grace of God.

The grace of God brings hope. The grace of God brings you

grace brings belonging and hope, freedom from the lust of this

world. Grace points us to where we are

going. And so as we close, this is my

encouragement for us this week because there's a lot of great

verses in Titus, a lot of great ones, a lot of great verses in

the Bible as I've read through this one this week.

And I don't think that I'm that I'm being biased just because

it's one of the ones I got to teach on.

I think this might be the best verse of all of Titus.

And I think it's the verse that powers all other verses in

Titus. And I think it's a sneaky kind

of life verse. You know, I've never talked to

anybody and said, Hey, what's your life verse?

And they said Titus chapter 2, verse 11 through 14.

Titus 2:11–14

I've never, I haven't heard that ever.

Maybe that's you. That's awesome.

But my encouragement to us is this because the grace of God is

so important, because the grace of God is key to everything

we've talked about and we'll talk about.

And it's key to not just your life now, but your life here on

out. The enemy wants to come in and

confuse us as to what grace is, wants us to go to the right or

to the left and not understand the true doctrine of grace.

And so my encouragement to us is this week to to really think

about this verse. Run it over in your mind again

and again to the point that you memorize it.

The point that this gets so deep into your brain that it gets

into your bones and becomes something that that as John

Whitaker said when he was teaching on truth in the first

week of Titus, he said, I, I want to, if I get cut, I want to

bleed Bible. And this is a great verse to

bleed when we are cut. And so I'll ask that you guys

would stand with me as we close and have us do a little exercise

this week. We'll try to memorize this

verse. And if it's very simple, it's 4

verses. If you took a verse a day and

memorized it, rolled it over in your brain, you could memorize

it by Thursday and you take 2 verses a day and memorize it by

Tuesday if you'd like. But what I want us to do to kick

start that process, to kick start this in our brain, to get

just rolling over as we leave, that it might stick and you

might remember not any of the words that I've spoken, but

simply the words that of Paul to Titus about the grace of God.

That we might have a clear picture as a Church of what

grace is and isn't. We're going to read it together

out loud and my encouragement to us is to read it as joyful and

as happy as possible. This verse is, you know, we've

studied some hard stuff like being reverent people and how do

you get to be a leader and all that stuff.

This verse is 1 to read with joy, to read with a smile on

your face, a Hallelujah if you would like, hands raised,

clapping however you'd like. But let us read this verse

together. These verses, together with joy

for the grace of God that brings salvation, has appeared to all

men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lust, we

should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the

present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious

appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave

Himself for us that He might redeem us from every lawless

deed, and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for

good works. Thanks for joining us today.

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