The responsibility of being a Christian

It's good to see you guys if you can just put that quote up from

that I underlined Ricky, I sent you a photograph just of the yes

life. So that Lady who wrote that

book, Tessa, who's coming out to do her book launch.

This is in the beginning of her book.

I first encountered the idea of a God, of a big yes and a small

no when our friend and pastor Rory Dyer said his thoughts

about the essence of the Genesis story and 2011.

It changed my life. People throw the term life

changed around flippantly, but this is a defining moment for

me. I won't forget because it

shifted the trajectory of what I believe and I know of God.

It is the foundation and inspiration from which this book

flows. So it's called the yes life.

And I'm really, really excited. And as I I got the book, she

sent me a copy because I inspired her book.

I felt God say this to me. I also say no.

And so when we get visiting speakers that come to church,

they always speak about the yes of God.

Most of them do. I travel around the world and

they're two parts of God. There's the grace of God and and

then there's the responsibility of being a Christian.

And when you travel, most of the guys, you see them, it's you

feel really good when you leave their presence because they've

spoken about the grace of God, which is what we should be

speaking about. But I preach the grace of God in

such because this church was birthed in a lounge and Durban,

of which I happened to be there 30 years ago.

And, and our leader got up and said we need to plant churches

around the world. And a guy called Ashley Bell

said, my wife and I will leave and go to Pretoria to establish

a New Testament church in Pretoria that will train and

raise people to serve God radically.

And we will multiply ourselves and use our resources to change

and impact the world. But the emphasis was on radical.

I looked around at the worship. It's become conservative.

That's the reality. Now.

We're not going to let 2000 new people come to our church decide

whether we're going to serve God radically or conservatively.

God called us to serve him radically.

Now that's a journey. And I don't want to chase you

away, but that's a journey. But it's not just already about

you, you God. The Bible says God adds you to

the church. And if God has added you to this

church, this church has got a history and it's got a sense of

values and we and we highlight servanthood and we we trust God

for manners and honor and generosity and all of those

things that. And, and so you need to be here

for three to six or eight months before you actually decide what

we're going to pray for or not pray for, Amen.

I mean, that's surely that's got to be just good manners and and

and so we have to this this is I preach grace.

I think grace alone. I believe in grace alone.

And this is the feedback I started getting from the home

bridge. Rory, people believe that they

can continue to sin and Rory, who preaches on Sundays from the

front, says when you sin, you just lean into the grace of God

and the credited righteousness of God sets you free.

I firmly believe that. I completely and utterly believe

that that when you sin, you sin under the sheet that God puts

upon you. And if you watch porno on a

Saturday night, you run to church, you come in here, you

look full into the face of Christ and you trust the

credited righteousness of Jesus. I firmly and utterly believe

that. And I have not changed.

But then people started saying to him.

But Rory, they are saying in our home groups that you actually

preaching in such a way that we have the license to sin.

I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that.

And So what I want to show you today from the book of, of, of

Titus is that Titus says that the grace of God teaches us to

say no, say no. So, so God in in Genesis

chapter, chapter 2, chapter 3, the man and his wife are naked

and they're unashamed. And then the devil comes and he

starts knocking in the door. He said, so God says you can eat

up any tree in the garden. Big yes, Say big yes, put your

hands out. Big yes, big yes, that's the God

we preach here. Big yes, have a go.

Are you welcome? Big yes, big yes and small no.

But you can't eat of this tree that is in the middle of garden,

because if you eat of it you will surely die.

Small no. You can drink milk, you can

drink water. You can drink whiskey.

You can drink tequila. You can drink tea.

You can drink coffee. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go.

But don't get drunk. Oh God.

Why? So that if you get drunk, you

might have an affair at your office and lose your marriage

and then completely break up your family.

So I'm putting in this in place so that you can save your

family, not because I'm trying to stop your party and because

when you drive and you drunk, you could wrap your tree, your

car around a tree and then your family loses their provider or

their father or their mother. And so when I say no, it's

because I'm good, not because I'm bad.

Amen. And so the book of Titus is a

book of no, but it's not a book of killjoy.

It's not a book of some kind of biblical or, or some kind of

holy restriction. I can't do it.

God is. When God says no, it's because

he's good, not because he's bad, Amen.

It's very important to understand that.

And so let's have a look at, at. And so for those of you who

continue to sin under my preaching, I say, you've

misunderstood me. You should not feel guilty.

You should trust the power of God.

You should draw on the credited righteousness of Jesus.

But if your habits are exactly the same as when you walked in

here three years ago and have listened to, I believe the very

depths have plumbed of the grace of God, and you are still formed

in those habits, then you have not understood the gospel.

And so this is going to be a little series on no.

God says no, Amen. And it says this Paul, a servant

of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ for the faith of God's

elect and the knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness,

say, leads to godliness. So we are on a journey.

It's a long journey that remember, the book of Acts is

written over 40 years. So, so I'm not saying to you

stop this and stop. I'm just saying we're on a

journey. But the journey is godliness.

We are going for something. We, we are, we are going after

something. Not by legalistic righteousness,

not by rules, but we are going to go for something.

It's godliness. We, we, we want to create a

community in Pretoria that looks different from every other

community. There's servant heartedness,

there's humility, there's generosity, there's kindness,

there's hospitality, there's selflessness.

We're on a journey, a faith and knowledge resting on the hope of

eternal life, which God who does not lie, promised before the

beginning of time, and that is appointed season.

He brought His word to light through the preaching entrusted

to me by the command of God our Savior to Titus.

So this is a little church that's taking place on an island

called Crete and and the church is not behaving properly.

They've got two major problems in them, like every church has.

We've got some guys who want to obey the law and some guys that

are using the license of God to sin.

That's happening here. And Paul sends Titus.

Let's read for times sake, verse 12.

Even one of their own prophets has said this.

Cretans. Cretans comes from the Bible.

Ah yeah, Cretan. It's actually writing to the

church. You Cretans are always liars,

evil brutes, lazy gluttons. It's writing to the church in

Afrikaans that says this Allah lich, Allah's loss and Allah's

lay, evil brutes. It's like you've got animal

instincts in your sexuality. That's what it says.

Allah. Allah's lost and Allah's lay.

So yeah, be it that I'll upstart my mind in Priya, you better get

up there and preach. Because I want to take them into

godliness. I want to take them into

holiness. I want to take them into

something that is different. And if you're getting worried

and think Rory's preaching the law, go back and listen to the

last three years of my preaching.

You'll be free. Amen.

And just for all the lawyers and advocates who I love so dearly

and deeply, for those who have stayed, it says this in chapter

3 and verse 13. Do everything that you can to

help Zenus, the lawyer and Apollos on their way and see

that they have everything that they need.

So all lawyers and advocates, please send me your requests and

I will make sure that you have everything that you need

according to the Bible. And so we're going to deal with

some stuff. There's bad leadership taking

place in the in the in Crete. And so God does a number of

things in the book of Titus. He appoints good leadership and

I want to tell you that this church is run by non eldership

couples. If you're new to the life of the

church, I would like to introduce them to you.

The problem with the church and including this church is that we

highlighted eldership and it became the pinnacle of what

Christianity looked like. And so people sacrificed

exceptionally to become elders in the church, including this

church. And so it became an idol to be

an elder in this church. I think after the 12 years I've

been here, I don't think we've even spoken about it once, but

the Bible speaks about it. And so there are 9 couples in

this church that look after you. And I want to show you why God

appoints elders and what their job is.

Because part of the elder's job is to take, it says in Peter,

look after the people that are under your, under your care.

And so when you come to church, you should be cared for, you

should be looked after. And so I'm going to introduce

you next week to the non eldership couples that care for

you. We pray for you every single

week. We get together, we pray for

you, we love you, we counsel, we marry doing a wedding next week,

I'm doing a week wedding the week after.

I'm doing a wedding the week after.

I have two weeks off and doing another one in January, another

one the end of January. Because they're young people in

the church and we serve them and care for them and look after

them and prepare them and love them.

It's our job. And then he starts talking to

the different generations of people.

In the book of Titus, it says, you old guys, you've got to show

endurance stop fizzling out. You've got to actually dig deep

and show some endurance. Say no to retirement and yes to

God. Give up Nazda and start serving

Jesus properly. Amen.

And then it says you old ladies must teach you young ladies.

I mean, now we've got the now it's all the young people

teaching the old people. But when you look at Titus, it

says your old people must teach you young people.

Hey, dad, TikTok. You have TikTok.

TikTok? Yeah.

TikTok. TikTok.

No, no, Dad. Dad, TikTok is different.

What's TikTok? The TikTok is an online platform

which deals in memes. I beg your pardon, but you've

got a link to the Internet. What?

And so we have young people teaching old people.

But the Bible is old people teach young people.

There's some guys who have been here for 30 years.

Sit with them, take them out for coffee, say, hey, what?

What? Why do we pray together in this

church? Why do we pray together?

Why do we meet together? Why do we worship together?

Why do we do baptisms publicly? Why do we do that?

Beautiful, Amen. And then six times in the book

of Titus it says so that you might do good.

You think, yo, as a grace guy, you think yo, I don't want the

law on top of me too much. Don't tell me what I must do,

but let me put 2 trees up for you, put 2 trees on the board

for you. And I want to tell you this

friends, the best way to describe the Bible in the New

Testament, Ephesians, Romans, Colossians, their roots, ROOTS

and those roots determine roots ROUTES.

The belief system that we have keep the picture up.

The belief system we have determines the behavioral

patterns that we participate in. That's the that's the simplest

way to explain the Bible. When visiting preachers come

here, most of them preach on the root system underground.

What God has done for us, who He is, our standing in Christ, all

of those things, the problem with us is we have to be here

for the rest of the time, and we've got to deal with the

decisions that the branches make, where they go, and when

they get out of line, we've got to prune the branches.

And that's not the nice part of Christianity.

And Titus is dealing with the branches.

Amen. And so I want you to read it as

such. Now what we do, you can

sometimes look at the world and you look at the church and you

think I asked them to do different fruits, but the AI

didn't work this morning. But you can't with the tree on

the left. You can't with the tree on the

left with the root system, point towards the tree on the right

with the fruit system and say, but you guys are not producing

fruit. Remember, our job in Pretoria is

not to deal with the people on the right.

Our job in Pretoria is to deal with the people on the left.

I only behave as I do because I believe what I believe.

So that's my root system. And because of that root system,

Titus says, then you must start to do good and produce fruit in

keeping with repentance. So if you believe this, then

actually it's got to outwork itself in fruit.

And Paul is saying, hey, Titus, there's some stuff going on

there where it looks like we're producing fruit from the other

tree. So you've got to come and tell

them, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, no, no, yes, husband.

Yes, husband. Yes, husband.

Yes, husband. No, husband.

No. Yes, young man.

Yes, young man. Yes, young man.

No, young man, it's the book of Titus.

It's not the last part of the gospel.

I don't like this part of it, but I realized to take this

massive group of people on the journey that God originally

called us to, we have to line up with the expectation that God

wants us to produce leadership. Friends is not That's why you've

I've heard this many times. I do not preach on the stage.

I even asked our guest speakers not to preach on the stage

because we're not trying to highlight somebody up at the

top. They're drawing attention to

themselves. We are on a journey that God has

called us to. Leadership is not from the top

down. It's not some guys at the top

dictating down. That is a worldly mindset of

leadership. And every time people talk

leadership in the church, they start to get nervous.

That is my nature. I love control.

I love to be in charge. But when I read the Scriptures,

that's not the biblical nature. The problem with that is there's

a complete reversal of that where some poor pastor sits down

at the bottom and he's got a demon possessed board.

So I mean, Deacon possessed board.

They tell him where he must live, what he earns, what he

must preach, and if they don't like and they fire him.

And so we go from this control system to that manipulation

system, and that's not biblical. And then and then and then we

just leave the church. And so we just kick out of the

church and we think, are we tired of all that stuff, the

power play and the life of the church?

The Bible says that the Holy Spirit makes us overseers.

I'm here because God called me from Durban to be here.

God told me to come here. I didn't appoint myself.

And so we kind of leave and we go into home church scenarios

where everybody just goofs around and you think, but God,

the whole, the whole Bible is full of leadership being

appointed so that God's people will be safe and we'll go on a

mission. But it's example based

leadership. God says, OK, I want you leaders

to set an example, not like this where you control and dominate

people, not like this where they control you, not where we just

kind of goof around, but give them some kind of idea where

we're going. Lead the way, set the example,

let them follow, and we'll change the world.

Are you with me friends? And So what kind of guy, what

kind of guy would you like to listen to to make this?

So let me tell you about Titus. Just five things about Titus.

And then we finished along with me in 20 minutes.

Sorry, let's go to Two Corinthians chapter 2.

And so if I highlighted this series, it would be called Titus

the Guard who says no, Two Corinthians chapter 2 and verse

12. Now when I went to Troas to

preach the gospel of Christ and found that the Lord had opened

the door for me, said the Lord opened the door.

The Lord has opened the door. He's opened the door for us at

in Pretoria. The Lord has opened this

unbelievable door. I still had no Peace of Mind

because I did not find my brother, say brother relational.

I did not find my brother there, Titus.

So I said goodbye to them and I went to Macedonia.

So God has opened the door. Titus is not there to help us

walk through the door, so he said goodbye.

What kind of guy writes this letter?

The guy who writes this letter is the guy who actually helps us

walk through open doors. I was recently, this week, you

heard Eugene say this. I was in Cape Town.

Some friend of mine opened the door for me to go and speak to

Christian investors. I went in and I spoke and then I

heard two guys getting interviewed.

They managed 250 billion Rand. Between the two of them they

managed 250 billion Rand. And I'm there speaking on

finances, I think, and I spoke on kind capitalism.

I said the problem with you rich people, the Bible says that God

gives us wealth as a sign of the covenant.

So you've got all this money as a sign of the covenant.

Then you take that money and you enter into contractual

situations with very high interest rates.

I said that's wrong. God gives you that wealth so

that you can actually implement some kind of new system from the

Kingdom which God will show you about so that you can actually

start redeeming people and. And that's what those two men

do. They use their capital to redeem

people, to set up businesses that put people on their feet.

Open door, you got to walk through it.

A friend of mine at Durban suggests that I preach.

He came down with me, he booked my accommodation.

He sat with me, he introduced me to his friends.

He opened the door. I used the door, I went through

the door and I had an incredible time.

God has given us this opportunity, Titus, you and me

have to help God and this church walk through this open door of

creating a radical New Testament church in the heart of Pretoria

without allowing our preference or upbringing or pain to stop us

from walking through this open door.

Amen. Secondly to Corinthians 7, verse

6. But God who comforts the

downcast comforted us by the coming of Titus and not only by

his coming, but also by the comfort you had given him.

This should be a comfortable church, not comfortable like in

we don't do anything but the the best way to describe, and you've

heard me say this many times, the best way to describe the

word comfort is the Fort has come come Fort.

So we're going to deal with the know of God.

What kind of person should be bringing that?

A comfort person, a person who is safe.

So when you come here into this church, it doesn't matter what

you hear. You should feel safe.

You should feel Rory speaking today, Stephen speaking today,

Eugene speaking today. I feel safe Even while we deal

with difficult subjects, You should feel safe.

Verse 13. By all this, we are encouraged.

In addition to our encouragement, we were

especially delighted to see how happy Titus was.

Say happy, Not joyful, not peaceful, not dudding happy.

Say happy, I'm HAPPY, I'm HAPPY, I'm HAPPY, I'm HAPPY, I'm HAPPY.

The church is a happy place. Even only dealing with difficult

things, it should be a happy place.

And Paul knew that he could speak to Titus to go and talk to

the Cretans who were lazy liars and evil brutes, and their

sexuality was out of control because he knew us.

He would help them walk through an open door.

He would bring unbelievable comfort into their brokenness.

And he was actually a happy guy. So it's not going to be a sad

series. It's going to be a happy series

even when God says no. And for the first time in our

lives, we're going to start to say no to some of the stuff.

A lady came for counselling with me this week.

Her and her future husband came to me, said, you know, Rory,

when I was a little girl, I was part of Glassy, Glassy.

And I watched this Ouija board. And I watched the enemy's power

and said, since that day, I have been attacked by the devil late

at night with visitations in my bedroom, my door being broken.

And as I was preparing this series, I felt no, no, not

allowed, not allowed. So no is not just no stop

watching pornography. No is that the enemy is not

allowed to have access, you know, And so this series is

about no, all the things that have haunted, you know, the

history that you come. No, no, chapter 8, verse 16.

I thank God who put into the heart of Titus the same concern

I have for you, for Titus not only welcomed our appeal, but

he's coming to you with much enthusiasm and on his own

initiative. Say enthusiasm.

That word in Greek is in theos. You can understand in theos.

Theos is God theology. Theology is the study of God in

Theos is the power that we get when we are in the presence of

God. And so I trust as I preach the

series over the next three or four weeks, I will be

enthusiastic, not I will be enthusiastic.

I will be in God. And and the reason that Paul

could trust Titus with his message was because he knew how

to walk through open doors. He bought comfort when he came.

He was a really happy guy, but he was in Theos, he was in God.

He was in God when I read it, and I read Titus and I read

Timothy and I read about marriage.

I just think, husbands, stop being selfish and lay down your

life for your wife. That's what the Bible says.

Are we under the grace of God? I can lose my temper.

I can do it. No, you can't lose your temper

with your wife. No, no, no, no, no.

You can't violate her conscience in bed.

No, you can't. She doesn't have to submit to

that. No, no, in God, no.

Galatians chapter 2 and we close.

Galatians 2 · chapter mention

We only read the first verse of Titus, but Galatians chapter 2.

Galatians 2 · chapter mention

Did you have it? Let me read it to you.

Galatians chapter 214 years later I went up again to

Jerusalem, this time with Barnabas.

I took Titus, say Titus. I took Titus along also.

I went in response to a revelation and set before them

the gospel that I preached amongst the Gentiles.

But I did this privately to those who seem to be leaders for

fear that I was running or had run my race in vain.

Yet not even Titus, say Titus, yet not even Titus, who was with

me, was compelled to be circumcised, even though he was

a Greek. He was completely and utterly

free from the law. He was free.

So you Cretans, you Galatians are not going to get me

circumcised because I'm free in Christ.

So this is not an application of the law.

Who should be teaching the no message to the church?

People who can open doors, people who will comfort you,

people who are happy, really happy.

I'm not trying to breed some kind of holiness church where we

grumpy and holy and we don't watch porno.

People are enthusiastic, full of God, people are completely and

utterly free that the pressures of man will not dictate to me

what I should do and shouldn't do to make me more culturally

acceptable. I'm acceptable in Christ.

When we preach this gospel, it will do one thing.

It will lead us towards godliness.

God bless you.