Intolerant grace

My mother in law's coming, so I'd like you to all come to the

prayer meeting on Tuesday, please, because she's coming for

a really long time, which worries me endlessly.

So please, if you could pray for me.

She's coming for weeks at a time.

They they say when an in law comes to visit you, you should

buy a fish and you put it on the mantelpiece.

And when the fish starts to smell, it's time for your

mother-in-law to leave. But I think I'm going to have to

buy a fridge because she's coming for a long time.

But this book of Titus is in Titus there were households that

had at least three generations and sometimes 4 generations

living in the same household. And so when the scripture is

written, you know the tensions of Christmas, don't you?

Grandkids are really awesome until they draw on your new

wallpaper. It's a, it's a, it's not easy

for two generations to live together, then three

generations. And in the book of Titus, they

say up to four generations living together in the same

household. And so the book is written for

that. The book is written to Pretoria

East. And this is how it works in the

Bible. As much as you'd like to think

your heritage is Afrikaans, it's not.

The Bible says in Acts 17 we all came from one man, every one of

us came from one man. So our heritage is here.

And then God sends us into different places like this.

Only we should put the English the only we should put at the

top. Oh, you flip you Indian, Indian

at the top. Let's put the Afrikaners here.

Let's put the English socks here.

Let's put the Zulus here. And now God says the difficulty

with culture is that this thing is unbelievably powerful and

unbelievably amazing, but inside of every culture is sin as well.

Amen. Yes, it's true.

The way we treat each other, the way we speak about each other,

some of the things that we do, they're culturally acceptable,

but biblically they're not right?

Amen. And so we inherit these things

and then we come into the life of the church.

And not only do we have two generations, but you saw in the

baptism of Paul, you saw an Afrikaans man and his wife at 72

getting baptized. Then you saw a 12 year old

getting baptized. Then you saw a black girl

getting baptized. And it's one baptism, eh?

It's A1 baptism, but you've got to know just to look at that

picture, there's a whole lot of cultural stuff that's actually

taking place here. So what the Bible says is that

in Ephesians chapter 2, it says I've taken these people who are

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

far away and those who are near the Israelites.

I've taken them and I've made them into one person.

I've made them into one new man. Yeah.

And so the beauty of Christianity is not that

Afrikaans guys hang around together and eat together.

The beauty of Christianity is that God takes this diversity

and he makes it one. But in order for that to happen,

you and I need some stuff to happen in our lives because that

is my preference. Does that make sense, friends?

And so the Book of Titans is written and saying, hey guys, if

you're going to make this thing work together in Pretoria,

you're going to have to invite some other people to your house.

I've seen you all standing outside there in our socio

economic groups with our people that we like.

But that is not the beauty of Christianity.

The beauty of Christianity is not suit, suit, suit.

The beauty of Christianity is suit, suit, suit.

The beauty of Christianity is that we find the common ground

in Christ at the expense of my say, Rory, are you preaching

against culture? I'm not preaching against

culture at all. But I want to tell you that the

culture that God is building is a Kingdom culture.

And that will violate the culture that you grew up in.

And if you say to me, but you don't understand where I come

from and say you don't come from there.

You come from. Yeah, you're beautiful.

And So what God does by the gospel is that he takes many

bypasses that process and he says now I'm putting it into a

family, but there are some household rules.

He said, well, it's all by grace.

Yes, it is all by grace, but there are some household rules

that you've got to live by. So you imagine 4 generations

living in a house as my mother in law's living in a house and,

and we'll have to adjust our eating time to her because she

likes to eat earlier and, and we've got stairs in our house,

but she's got a sore back. And so we have to rearrange our

house so that she can sleep downstairs and we sleep upstairs

because actually we need to honor all the people and we need

to learn how to treat them. And so we change our household

in order to make sure that my mother-in-law somehow is

comfortable in our household. Amen.

And there's certain foods that she doesn't like.

And, and So what we do with each other is we actually learn how

to prefer one another. And women are really worried

about this thing of submission because Titus talks about it.

But submission, friends, was never, ever God taking his

daughter and subjecting her to some form of male chauvinistic

power. Submission in the Bible is

before you even get there. It says #1 you must be filled

with the Spirit. Secondly, you must have a gospel

understanding deep with inside of your heart.

Then it says submit to one another.

I would never tell a woman to submit to a man who doesn't have

an understanding of the gospel or have an understanding of the

Holy Spirit. You'd be setting yourself up for

disaster. And then God says, now what

you're going to do is you're going to form a partnership, and

it's going to be a partnership of mutual submission.

You're going to be the captain. God says that you think, well,

we don't like that. Well, ask Francois Pinoch.

Could he kick a drop goal? No, he couldn't.

That was left to Joel Stransky. There was a captain, but there

was a hero, too. His name was Stransky, and he

wasn't. The captain was the guy who

could kick the goal. And so God says, I want you to

be captain, but this is how you're going to captain the

team. You're going to lay down your

life for her and then what does she do?

She's going to submit. And then what are you going to

do? You're going to lay down your

life. Then what is she going to do?

She's going to submit. Then what you're going to do,

you're going to lay down your life.

And then So what you're going to do is you're going to spend the

next 50 years trying to out serve each other in death and

submission. And you're going to create a

gospel reorientation that when people look and think, how does

Jesus and the church work? He said, well, just look at Rory

and Mel. It works like that.

Amen. And the beautiful thing in

Titus, it doesn't say the elders must teach the young woman.

It says the mothers must teach them.

Thank God I don't have to teach some of you young girls this

stuff because you will shoot me and said that's so outdated.

Friends, the Bible is not outdated.

You've got to ask if God is saying it, why?

And as we do this thing the the I said to you when we start the

Titus, I am your servant, but you're not my boss.

My job is to serve and then you serve and then I serve and you

serve and the Bible says in Titus and then we make the

teaching about God our Savior attractive.

You see, while we fight for this, while we fight for that,

while we fight for this, the teaching of our Savior is not

attractive because it's easy just to worship in an English

church. And I'm so humbled that many of

you Afrikaans people come here and worship.

It's it completely humbles me because every week I think I

listen to that flipping English guy again, but it is a

demonstration of humility so that we can make the preaching

of Christ attractive and somehow to the world.

Amen. That's the book of Titus.

So let's have a look. For times sake, we're going to

go to verse 11 for the grace of God.

You can put my book of Titus up there please.

My Bible. So that's what my Bible looks

like. So Saviour appears 6 times, good

appears 7 times, and grace appears four times.

You'll see on the left hand side it says grace.

On the next page you'll see the book ends with grace.

So let's just keep it up. So it starts with grace and it

ends with grace. But here for the grace of God

that brings salvation has appeared to all men.

The grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all

men. It teaches us to say no, say no,

no. We have been doing it for years

now, friends. The grace of God saves me.

The grace converts me. I don't live with a list.

I don't live with the law. I am not a Pharisee.

But God says if you want all these thousands of people to

live together, you're going to have to learn how to say no to

some things. And I want to ask you this

question, not legalistically, but when lost did you walk out

of a movie? You say, ah, Rory, don't put

that stuff on us now. I'm not putting it on you, But I

want to ask you this question. When lost, did you walk out of a

movie? When lost, did you move out of a

conversation that was not godly? Or have we been so infiltrated

by the system of the world and we tried to make Jesus so trendy

that we are not prepared to stand for what we really

believe? Amen.

I wrote this in my notes. I don't know where I was just

sitting at my desk and and I felt this quickly come to me.

Our marriages are formed by Hollywood, our drinking habits

are formed by Harlequins, and our language is formed by

hooligans. Because 97% of every sexual

encounter that happens in a movie is between unmarried

people, 97%. And so I want to ask you this

question when lost that you actually, were you so violated

by that that you actually got up and left and say, Rory, what?

What are you saying? I'm saying no, the grace of God

has saved me. I'm not under the law.

I will not be judged. I'm standing in righteousness.

But God says, listen, I want you to present something at three CI

as we did last 210 years of marriage between this elders of

teen friends who are not perfect.

But are you learning your sexuality from Hollywood?

Are you learning your sexuality from the leaders that God has

given to you? Because I've been married for 31

years. I've not been unfaithful and nor

has my wife and I stand up there every single Sunday bleeding

from the bottom of my heart to say hey guys, there is another

way then just meeting the girl in the bar and jumping into bed

with her. The Holocoons is the rugby club.

It's the first H that came to my mind and I want to ask you this

question. As December comes and party

after party after party happens. Do you have the grace of God

inside of your life that can teach you to say no?

Because I think we've lost it. I think we've lost the grace to

say no. Not the law, not the letter, not

the list, just the grace of God to say no.

And I'm appealing to you as your pastor.

I'm appealing to you. Say no, say no is a man sitting

in this auditorium today he's sitting here today he was

sitting next to me at a function that had got nothing to do with

the church. And he got up and he raced out

of there. He said sorry, I'm leaving.

I said it doesn't bother me. It's not my function, it's not a

church function. It doesn't really matter.

But the conviction of God came upon him and I met him outside.

He has parked his car outside the the front gate at 10:00 in

the morning when he should have been in his business, tears

pouring down his cheeks and he that I have become an alcoholic.

I said the safest place for you to run is into a community of

grace. Amen.

I'm telling you, friends, some of you are functional

Alcoholics. You're functional Alcoholics,

and there's got to be somebody brave enough to stand up to you

without you feeling any form of legalistic righteousness,

without you feeling any form of judgement or condemnation to say

enough is enough. Stop.

The grace of God teaches me to say no to ungodliness and

worldly passions and to live a self controlled, upright and

godly life in this present age. Say this present age, the only

thing I could tell you, so you've got ungodliness and

godliness. The only thing I could say to

you is this is the woman that I'm married to.

I am in covenant with her. I wrote down in my Bible, there

is no word like this, Unmelaniness and melaniness.

I'm married to her however I behave.

But what will affect it, what will affect the intimacy is how

I treat her. And so there are some things

that I've realized in my marriage that are unmelanliness.

They don't bless her. And there are things in my

marriage that are melanly. And it says you've got a choice

by the grace of God, ungodliness or godliness.

You see, when when David sinned, no one can take away my

salvation. No one can take away your

salvation. Don't worry about that.

I'm not talking about salvation. I'm saved.

People ask me this question, can you lose your salvation?

I say I can't. I don't know about you, but I

can't. You cannot lose your salvation,

but you can lose intimacy. You can lose intimacy by God's

grace. I've got other problems, but

pornography is not one of them by God's grace.

So when I say this, I'm not a porn addict, I've not watched

pornography, but I know this, that this woman is a pure woman.

She has got a pure conscience. She's got a clean conscience.

She's got a beautiful conscience.

If I have a choice of being intimate my with my wife or

pornography, I've got to say God, I will choose Melanie

versus unmelanly every day of the week.

So the problem friends, is the Bible says be careful of your

worldly passions, your worldly desires.

The devil didn't give it to us, God gave it to us.

Our sexual desire is given to us by God, is not given to us by

the devil. But what he does is he creates a

counterfeit. For everything that God declared

pure, he creates a counterfeit. And so money, we need money, we

need businesses, we need to make money so that we can pay for our

kids education. But the devil creates a

counterfeit called greed and the love of money.

And So what we do is we work really hard and we start ducking

and diving. We take backhanders because that

which was real becomes counterfeit.

And God is saying no. The grace of God says no to the

counterfeit and yes to the real. Are you with me, friends?

I know it's a tough word, but I think it's a good word.

As we go into December, it says so that you can live.

So we say no to a whole lot of stuff and then we say yes to a

whole lot of stuff. Say yes to self-control.

The Bible actually says sober mindedness.

Say yes to sober mindedness. Just stand and think.

What is a good decision? Now?

What is a good decision? Say yes to sober mindedness.

Don't let Harlequins or whoever your rugby club or your drinking

mates are, don't let them determine how many drinks you

have. Let the soberness of your power

under the grace of God, let that determine it.

Inside of there is the ability, inside here is the ability for

me to make good decisions in God.

The Puritans say this. The best way to describe this is

if you look at an oak tree in winter, there's some leaves that

keep sticking. You see that you know that you

drive past and you see those dead leaves sticking.

It says our job is not to go and pull the leaves off the tree so

that the tree is bare. Our job is to preach in such a

way that when the new life starts to rise inside of me, the

new leaf will push the old one off and the new one will come.

Does that make sense to you, friends?

So this is not some law of picking dead leaves.

This is the law of releasing the grace of God deep inside of me

so that the new leaves would push out the old.

You think, wow, the next verse says so.

So say no to ungodliness. Say yes to soberness and to

uprightness. Uprightness.

Is the word justice how all of us love justice, all of us love

righteousness where we get the word righteousness from?

I had my my favorite meeting is I had many wonderful meetings

this week. I actually opened a new pizza

shop as well. Besides pastoring and preaching

and pizza shops, but my favorite meeting, I went into the

chambers of a few advocates who in the life of this church, I

had a meeting with them. I was sitting at, at the desk

and it's a desk. They're working on one case, The

three lawyers, 3 advocates working on one case.

And they've got all these files and, and they've got all this

the, the law books are open and the computer's open and, and

we're having coffin. You could hardly find a place

for coffee because there's so many books.

And I thought, these three men are applying all of their

training so that in one case of one person in this country,

righteousness and justice might come.

It's a set. That was incredible.

I said, can I pray for you guys? And then we started to pray.

And I actually realized, you know what?

These are the best advocates in the country, but there's a

better advocate. His name is Jesus and He goes to

court for us and He helps us to live upright righteous lives and

godliness. You with me in this present age.

We can do it in this world while we wait for the blessed hope,

the glorious appearing of our great God, say great God and

Savior Jesus Christ. So, so Rory, how, how do we pull

this off? I mean, Christmas is party time,

Christmas is tequila time. Christmas says, how do we pull

it off? He says this is one of the ways

you pull it off. You got to think about the

second coming. Now the people that you think

about the second coming are those guys who stand on the

street where they say repent for the Kingdom of heaven is near.

They don't brush their teeth or shave because they think Jesus

coming that afternoon. They've been thinking that for

years. And so they're very scraggly.

Repent for the Kingdom is near. But God says, I tell you what,

if you want to work this out, you've got to think about the

second coming, I think. But geez, Lord, how does that

work? It's not very probable.

Do you think God, I've been serving God.

I've, I've been in the church for long.

And Matthew 24 says this, the angels don't know when he's

coming back. He doesn't even know.

Only the Father knows. But 300 times in the New

Testament, God speaks about the second coming.

Every 13 verses in the New Testament, God speaks about the

second coming and he says, I want to tell you what Gods get

your lives in order because I'm coming back again.

So make sure you're unmailing. This is go and you're mailing.

This is come. So when I come back, son, you're

treating her properly. You think, but Lord God, it's

not very probable you're going to come in my time.

He says that, but still think about it.

I said it's not very practical because if it was practical, I

wouldn't pay my car insurance because Jesus coming back, you

stop paying your car insurance, write your car off and you see

what happens. So saying, well, it's not

practical and not problem. And So what do you think then

what talk about this thing because the Bible says you must

think about the second coming. Yes, and this is going to happen

in the twinkle of an eye. There's going to be a trumpet

sound. Then he's going to come back and

you know, the Bible says it's going to be lost and it's going

to be reward. It says if you have built

according to the world, wood, hay and stubble, you won't lose

your salvation. You will go to heaven, but

everything has to be done, be burnt up with fire and thrown

away. But if you've built according to

the ways of God, gold, silver and precious stones, it will

stand. So what's God saying?

You know what, I sent my son to die.

I read this amazing story this week in one of the commentaries

of when El Nino passed through Southern California, there was a

family there. And the wife said to the

husband, I think our bank is going to go.

And the husband said, no, our bank's all right.

And the next split second, their bank went with a river of mud

that went straight through their front door, straight out their

back door and straight into the river of mud.

It went down there. And they held on for dear life.

And they said, but what about our baby?

And they ran into the baby's room and the mud had gone into

the baby's room, had swirled around, taken the baby and the

cot out the door and down the river.

And for the whole night. The mother went searching and

came back in the morning and showered crying at the loss of

her child. And at midday, a man in rescue

garments came in full of mud carrying a live baby in his

hands and said, does this child belong to you?

What was the first thing the mother did?

Obviously hug the child, mud and all.

The grace of God has appeared to all men.

And the second thing she did is she washed her child and she

said, I don't want you to go in the mud again.

That is the Scripture. There was a moment when the

mudslide of Harlequins or Hollywood gripped to my

sexuality and rushed me down the river of mud.

And Jesus, standing at the right hand of the Father, said, Oh

God, I cry out to you on behalf of Rory.

And by the grace of God, somebody came and rescued me,

picked me up, took me back to the Father and said, here's this

dirty, rotten scoundrel. And God said he'll be saved by

grace. I love him by grace, and now I'm

going to clean him up as a display of my intervention in

his life. Amen.

If you're visiting here, it's nice to have you.

I've been passing this church with a group of pastors for 12

years. I've never preached on this in

my life because I wanted you to have a foundation of grace.

But I'm saying to you friends, if you have lost the ability to

walk out of a movie that you don't agree with in today, may

you find the courage to stand again with a no in your heart

and a yes and a yes to godliness and to uprightness, to sober

mindedness by thinking about the second coming of Christ.

God, for those of you who live with bad news, I know some of

you live with bad news. Your whole lives are bad news.

The second coming of Christ. Instantly your bad news will

turn to good news instantly. For those of you living in

unjust situations, the moment Christ comes, instantly, for

those of you who are misunderstood and

misrepresented, when he comes again, instantly it will change.

And so when we think of the second coming, we think with

hope, we think with joy. And if you think that's not

enough, in in 2 minutes, kind of, he says, I'll tell you what,

while we wait for the blessed hope, the glorious appearing of

our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.

And he says, I just want to give you another reason.

It's not the second coming. Let me give you another reason.

Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all

wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his

very own, eager to do what is He says that the law.

No, that's not the law. That's a response to Christ.

This is what it says. This is what it says.

He gave himself for me. I was in the river, I was in the

mud. So he dived into the mud.

He went and swam in the mud. He pulled me out of the mud and

he took me back into the presence of God where it says in

Titus chapter 3 where he washed me, the message Bible says he

Titus 3 · chapter mention

gave me a bath. Don't go back and wallow in the

mud, the second thing it says, and keep it up there to redeem

us from all wickedness. Say redeem.

Some of some of you will hear your Bibles will say to ransom

us. To ransom us.

There's a man in this church who runs AIT company and his

speciality is ransomware. So the Russians and those guys

and the Ukrainians and all those guys, they specialize in

ransoming or or taking captive your IT department.

It happened in my business. Some Russian guys took my whole

business, IT department, all my finances, my accountants

finances, they, they held them ransom.

And then I just got this. No, dear Mr. Dyer, please pay $1

million. The guy were telling me last

week he's had to pay at times 40 million Rand to get that stuff

back. You see what happened, friends,

is you and I got kidnapped. We got kidnapped by sin, we got

kidnapped by abortion, we got kidnapped by pornography, we got

kidnapped by we got kidnapped by the mud.

We got kidnapped and Jesus says and I came and pay a ransom for

you. I'm going to pay the ransom so

that your kidnappers will let you go.

And actually the kidnappers, you held on so tightly, the ransom

was so powerful, the ransom was so valuable, the ransom was so

supernatural that the kidnappers had to let go of their hands.

And God said, now I'm taking you back to redeem us from all

wickedness, say all wickedness. Jesus Christ is coming back for

a pure spotless bride, all wickedness.

The grace of God is not a license to continue to sin.

The grace of God teaches us to say no to ungodliness, to purify

for himself a people. He wants to clean us.

Sometimes it takes time. He wants to clean us of some of

this stuff, prejudice and racism and preferences, and he wants

the cleanest of some of these things to purify for himself a

people young and old, 72 white man and a 16 year old black

girl, 72 white man and a 12 year old white boy.

He wants to redeem for himself. He wants to ransom, he wants to

buy a group of people that will be clean.

That are his very own, say very own.

In the book of Exodus it says that are His treasured

possession. I want to tell you 3 CR.

You are God's treasured possession.

You are God's treasured possession, which He bought with

the price He wants to wash us clean and say to the world.

Three CR makes the teaching of Jesus Christ attractive.

Amen.