Titus 1:1-5 • A Prayer for Grace Lived
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
Let me ask if you would look in your Bibles at the first chapter of Titus. Titus, the first chapter.
Now, as difficult as your evening may be, think of how difficult my evening is ahead. I have to go home and tell my wife who was raised in Alton, "Honey, the service was late because I got lost in your hometown, trying to go to the place I've been to how many times, Dale?" I don't know. I was over there on Humbert Road thinking, "My, this town has changed. I don't see any familiar landmarks." I pulled in somewhere and they said, "You're not even close." Well, in the book of Titus, the Apostle Paul is a bit closer to our task. For what he is doing is he is speaking to one who will be appointing leaders in the Church of Jesus Christ. And he is saying to Titus, "Here's what you are to do in appointing that leadership." But as he not only gives instructions to that one, he begins to unfold also to us what is expected as a Church where leadership comes to minister of Christ.
This is what Paul says to Titus, Titus 1, verses 1 through 5.
"Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ for the faith of God's elect and the knowledge of truth that leads to godliness, a faith and knowledge resting on the hope of eternal life which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time.
And at his appointed season he brought his word to light through the preaching entrusted to me by the command of God our Savior."
To Titus, "My true Son in our common faith, grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.
The reason I left you in Crete was that you might straighten out what was left unfinished and appoint elders in every town as I directed you."
Let's pray together.
Father, we thank you for the beauty of the task to which you call us this evening.
An appointment and installation of a man called by you to a Church of Jesus Christ for the building up of that Church, for the equipping of saints, for the proclamation of your inerrant word inspired by the Holy Spirit and continued in its effect upon our hearts and mind by that Spirit yet at work opening hearts and minds to the truths that you would give.
We pray for that continuing miracle even in these moments that we would be made aware of all that you ask of us, humbled by it, made repentant and fathered by the working of your Spirit, transformed, forgiven and made new, empowered for the work of this Church
by the word that you give us.
We appeal to you acknowledging the weakness of men, but we claim the grace of God and ask for its abundance yet again. In Jesus' name, amen.
My boys were in trouble.
Ages 14 and 16, wonderful kids, not perfect kids.
They were in trouble.
As my wife and I retired from a time of discipline to our bedroom to talk about what had just happened, she said, "You know, I feel so troubled that we would have to deal with these things in our house with our children."
I said, "I feel strangely different. I'm not happy at all about what's happened, but I have this strange feeling of exhilaration.
I feel like I have been preparing for years for the talk that I just had with our sons
to be able to say to them, though in trouble, I love you.
While you have done something that is not right, that's never going to change.
I want you to know that I'm a man like you are, and I can be tempted by things such as you are and your friends have been.
This is an opportunity for us to talk about the grace of God, about His forgiveness of things like this, about His empowerment for things in the future, for us to confess to one another our mutual weakness and our need for accountability among each other.
Of all things to tell you that as much as I love you, the Lord loves you more, and He will forgive this, and we can move forward in the fellowship of God's Spirit."
It really was an exhilaration to be able to speak in a time of trouble about what I view as the absolute beauty of the gospel in my own family.
I recognize here now as you come as a church to install a pastor, that you come recognizing just what the Apostle says here, that you are coming to ask one to continue a work yet unfinished, people not perfect yet wonderful people, good people, not perfect yet.
There is still work to be done and a gospel to be proclaimed.
In these words that the Apostle says to Titus, he is not only just explaining what the task is, he is in some ways explaining what we are to learn from that one who is appointed to the task. What after all should we learn from this one that God calls to this place?
I hope first of all that you will learn from this one to embrace grace.
The heart of the gospel is made plain.
The heart of the gospel is much in evidence here. As the Apostle begins first by measuring out that grace, in words that go by so quickly, we hardly recognize their significance. Verse 1, "Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ." The word "apostle," a chosen messenger, but think, Paul, a chosen messenger of Jesus Christ.
Here he was all of Tarsus the same, breathing out threats against God's people, a persecutor of the beloved, a murderer of God's own people, and now he is chosen of God. God has forgiven. God has had his grace cover and wash the sin. And now this one who knows so fully the forgiveness of God is the chosen messenger despite a despicable past.
We get some measure of grace.
It is great even able to cover such sin.
But we understand in these words not only the measure of grace but the means of it as well. For this apostle of Jesus Christ comes for the faith of God's elect and the knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness. Those wonderfully compact but rich in their meaning. He comes with a message for faith.
A reminder that what we claim of God is not the claim of our own hands, not what we have done. What we claim is a matter of faith and what God has done, his accomplishment through the work of his son, that same Jesus Christ, the anointed one, the one appointed to die. It's faith in what he has done. It's emphasized over and over again in those short little words for the faith of God's elect.
Those chosen by the work of God's hand, not made right by their own hands. And to drive the point home we are told the order as it were by which people come to have this claim upon God.
He comes, Paul says, for the faith of God's elect and the knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness.
I want you to notice the import of the order.
It's not godliness, good works, good conduct that leads to faith that puts us in the household of God.
It's faith first. It's the acknowledgment of what God has done.
It's the wonderful acknowledgment that it's by his mercy alone that we are made right. It's faith in what he has done that God's elect claim. That leads to godliness.
But notice it is God's work first. It's faith in what he has done first. God is not waiting for us to be good enough for him.
What is after all the means of grace?
Mercy alone. No goodness in us.
Mercy alone.
We're also told the duration of grace here. Paul talks in verse 2 about a faith and a knowledge that is resting on the hope of eternal life which God who does not lie promised before the beginning of time and at his appointed season he brought his word to light through the preaching entrusted to me by the command of our God. It's at the crossroads of his own life that the Apostle Paul stands. He reminds us that the promises by which this grace now comes began before time looking back past.
It's a hope not only that goes backwards it goes forward to eternal life. And it even has a present consequences he said but it came at an appointed time through me. I'm speaking what God commanded. This grace as it were is timeless. It goes back to time immemorial. It moves forward into time immemorial but it takes effect now. It's a immediate forever grace. It has a duration beyond our capture beyond our imagining. This grace is forever.
And then we are also told the effect of this grace. It's in verse 4. Paul writes to Titus, "My true son in our common faith." Well what's the effect of this grace which ultimately says it is not the effect of your hands. So you're measuring yourself against someone else as the basis of your standing before God doesn't count. It's not something you can claim is what you have caused. It's God's mercy that has brought you to this place and put you in the kingdom.
Comparisons fall away.
Antipathes fall away.
We begin to recognize however good we may think we be. That's not the reason God calls us his own.
It does no good to compare ourselves to others and say we are better than. That's why we're here or why we're in the kingdom.
But for the grace of God we all would fall.
Paul speaks to Titus, "My true son." Do you recognize the significance of the word?
Paul a Jew speaking to Titus, a Gentile of the Isle of Crete where there had been historic and ancient antipathes and prejudices and hatreds that Paul will even quote a little bit later in the same letter whereas it was noted that all cretins are liars.
And yet he says of Titus, "But you're my son in our common faith. You're part of my family now. Whatever has been between us, whatever wrongs have been between our peoples, whatever sin has been in our lives, however better I may think I be, we're part of the family of God. The effect of grace is to unify."
You know as you begin to move through these dimensions of the grace of God what you're really doing is saying to those who are appointed to be leaders in God's church, here is the message for every plaintive cry among God's people.
For that person who may say, "I can't measure up."
The leader is to say, "But God's grace is great."
To the one who says, "But I can't maintain the standard."
The leader says, "But God's grace is forever.
But I can't do it all. I'm not able to.
But His grace is by mercy alone, not by any word of your hands."
And for the one who says, "But there are people here so much more fit, more able, longer in the faith, I don't fit," he says.
But God has made you part of his family. He unites you in the common faith and calls you his child with the inheritance right of everyone else who is here. It is the grace of God that we are to embrace.
As we begin to think of the wonder of that, there is an effect upon us.
Just a few weeks ago I went for an eye exam because my glasses were beginning to fail me and I went through that procedure by which the ophthalmologist begins to drop in the lenses one after another. Is that clear or is that clear? Some of you have been there.
And you must remember what God is doing in this passage. He is in showing us these dimensions of grace, dropping in another lens by which we may see Him.
He is the one who is merciful. He is the one who is forever. He is the one who makes us his family. In essence, every dimension of grace is giving us a clearer and clearer sight of God.
But always something happens when you see God.
Do you remember Isaiah?
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. And what did Isaiah do when he clearly saw the Lord? He said, "Woe is me, I am ruined. I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips."
Job, when he was finally confronted with a true, right understanding of God, ultimately cried out, "With my ears I had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you, and I repent in dust and ashes."
Yes, we are to embrace grace because it is giving us clear vision of who God is. But when our vision becomes clear, something inevitably happens to the Christian heart that sees God clearly. We begin to love godliness.
We cannot stand sin in our lives. The radiance and the beauty of God's glory, even the grace that reveals it, makes us more and more aware of the sin in our lives, makes us more and more desirous of the godliness that God wants. It is after all precisely what Paul says. Remember in verse 1, he was an apostle of Jesus Christ for the faith of God's elect and the knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness.
There is an effect upon the people of God when they truly understand the grace of God. It's counterintuitive.
The world says, "Oh, if you speak of grace, what that means is anything goes. We can do whatever we want now because God is gracious. Nothing really matters anymore."
But the perspective of Christians and of the Scriptures is this. When we really understand grace, when it has made us seek God for all the glory and beauty that He is, we change.
Grace does not excuse us from a separated life.
Grace does not mean it's okay to be like the world.
It is that clear vision of the grace and the wonder of God that makes us long more and more to be heaven-like than world-like.
Therefore we are called to say to the leaders of God's people, "Teach us to embrace grace
because it will teach us to love godliness and it will change us in that way." The point is made here over and over again. The point that is tied to this was to appoint elders. Verse 9 characterizes what those elders are to be like.
We are told of an elder in verse 9. He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine. Oh, yes, he's supposed to have the truth down, Pat.
Back up into verse 8 and see what else is to characterize an elder.
He must be hospitable.
Someone who loves what is good, who is self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined.
Yes, he knows the truth, but the truth has changed him.
He lives a godly life now.
It's actually the opposite of what happens to those that Paul is refuting in this same book. If you look at verse 16, he is claiming that there are those who are teaching a false gospel. And of them, he says in verse 16, they claim to know God. They claim to know all about grace, but what characterizes them? By their actions, they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient, and unfit for doing anything good.
If our actions are not matching the godly message, then the godly message is not rightly captured us. It's mentioned over and over again in various ways. In verse 6, an elder must be blameless, the husband of what but one wife, a man whose children believe.
Even the children are to claim the truth.
But it's not just what they believe in their heads. They're also not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient.
Even the children of the leaders of the church are to have this character about them. They don't just know the truth.
It's reflected in their lives. It's not enough to say, "I believe in grace." If it has led to excuse for evil, it's not properly understood yet. Now we're all going to struggle with this. I just told you my kids have been in trouble too.
But part of my responsibilities as an elder is to make sure they know these standards and that their lives are being conformed more and more to them.
And by the way, folks, it's not just the elders.
If you move into the second chapter, if you'll just let me do that for a moment, you'll remember that Titus is being told there, "You must teach what is an accord with sound doctrine."
To whom?
"Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled, sound in the faith."
What is believed is to be lived.
By the way, women, it's not just the men. If you go on into verse 3, "Likewise teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live."
And by the way, younger people, it's not just older men and older women.
This is verse 4, "Then those older women can train the younger women to love their husbands and children to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, to be subject to their husbands so that no one will malign the word of God." And young men, it's not just young women. Verse 6, "Similarly encourage the young men to be self-controlled, and everything set them an example by doing what is good."
Now all I've said thus far is that grace yields godliness, properly understood. Now you've got that from the moment I said it, and I'm expecting you to say, "Preacher, we got it. Move along."
You have to hear this. We all do.
That grace does not excuse us from godliness. It does not promote laxity.
Grace calls for the separated life, or it creates great damage.
I received this letter just a week ago from a good friend.
It is with a heavy heart of discouragement that I write this letter. I have not been able to talk with anyone concerning these things.
I am so troubled at the number of men who are falling in ministry.
I always knew this happened, but these are no longer statistics. They are my close friends and mentors.
I look at these men who have walked far longer and deeper with God than I have, and I wonder how in the world will I be expected to make it if they did not.
Most fell because of sexual immorality.
Others left under clouds of suspicion. In the last three weeks, I have been told of four ministers, all friends of mine, who have had to resign from ministry. I am not even sure that I make sense right now. I am not sure that there are any answers to the questions of my heart. Please forgive me for dumping these burdens on you.
But at this point, I doubt myself so much that I am not sure what is true and what is not.
If grace has become a reason to sin, if grace has become an excuse to not really worry anymore about the godliness that God requires, it will lead to great ruin, terrible hurt, and terrible doubt among the people of God.
The grace that speaks of the beauty of God calls us to the beauty of the life that He designs for us, and we are to be taught to embrace grace as well as to love godliness. Now, you must understand that is tough. That is tough in the Church of Jesus Christ because always there are these two great cross currents.
There is one group of people that will be in the Church of Jesus Christ that is just learning what it means to be a Christian. And those people are as it were putting on the clothes of what it means to be a Christian. And they are learning what it means to be a Christian in terms of how they operate in their families and how they operate in their business and what entertainments they partake of and what language they use. And all places they go, they are deciding and watching us and examining and they are putting on as it were a Christian lifestyle. And those people are always in the Church somewhere.
But at the same time, there is another group of people. They are putting on clothes, they are putting off the baggage of another type of Christianity. The Christianity that says, you know, you are really more acceptable to God if you are just a little bit better than the next person. And God won't really love you as much if you haven't lived up to His standards.
And they have perhaps for years tried to live a code of Christian conduct believing that the code is what makes them right with God. And they are now putting away the baggage of Christian performance as the basis of their standing before God. So you have got both these groups in the Church, those who are putting away the baggage of the codes that are supposed to make them right and those that are putting on the clothes of simply what it means to live according to the design of God. And you can get caught in the cross currents and say, well, so what is it? What are we supposed to do? And the Apostle Paul I think is giving us clear understanding here of how we make choices as we begin to recognize ultimately what he is saying is to happen here. Remember what he came to do in verse 5. The reason Titus came to Crete, Paul said, "I left you in Crete was that you might straighten out what was left unfinished and appoint elders in every town as I directed you." The great tendency in the Christian Church today, particularly in this country, is to think of my Christianity as something that only feeds me. I am here for me.
And you feed me and I hang around. You don't feed me, I am gone.
I mean I heard a teenager say not too long ago to a youth group leader, I will give you six months to get this youth group straightened out and if it is not straight by then, I am out of here.
Now that sounds terrible. It sounds terribly consumer oriented. And yet you must understand it characterizes the great scope of American Christianity. You please me or I am out of here.
And yet the perspective of the Apostle was I am here, remember those opening words? For the faith of God's elect.
I am here for other people. And that wasn't just true of Paul, it was to be true of Titus and it wasn't just to be true of Titus. It was to be true of the older men and the older women and the younger men and the younger women. Everybody was to be seen that they had a role in the serving of the Gospel for other people.
If we don't perceive it that way, if all we are here is for what I get out of it, believe me the times will come when we won't be here long. I will tell you I have never been hurt worse than by people in the Church. They are the ones who have hurt me the worst in my life.
But I recognize that by virtue of my position, decisions that I have had to make that they are people who think that I have hurt them. I didn't mean to, but they think I have hurt them.
Hurts will come, bumps will come, boredom will come, difficulty will come. But if what we perceive is the reason that I am here is for the building up of the body of faith, I am here not primarily for me but for others. It is what keeps us long and strong in the work of the Gospel. For ultimately you see what we are here for is not just to embrace grace, not ultimately just to love God in us but to share Christ.
Now you think I am going to give you some evangelism pran and I will tell you that is not what I am trying to do. I am trying to make you understand that we are all responsible for community.
Every one of us.
I think of a young woman who came to our campus two years ago and Jim Hatch knows who I am talking about here but she came from behind the iron curtain. And I will tell you that when students come to our campus from former Eastern European countries we often dread it because when they have been under nations of oppression they are very suspicious of authority. Typically they are hardened and often very bitter.
This woman on our campus has been this ray of sunshine. She has been just absolutely wonderful. I asked her about mid-summer because I was at a social there. Why are you different? She smiled and said I wasn't. She said when I first came to this campus I was newly married to an American and I didn't even know English.
When I came here I was so angry at being brought to this country I knew that all American Christians were hypocritical in their use of material goods, in their sexual habits and the things that they do for entertainment. I knew that you were all hypocrips. I hated being here. I didn't want to be here.
What happened?
She said the Lord showed me my own sin of judgmentalism and broke me.
And what I began to do she said because the Lord was working in my heart is I began to look for other lonely people on the campus. Now think of this. She doesn't even speak English.
And she is saying who in the midst of God's people needs my help.
She understood that she was to share Christ first among the community of God's people perhaps in great difficulty of her own but her primary task was not just to be a hungry little bird taking in everything but to help minister to others.
And that's why racism won't occur. We won't take the gospel out there somewhere.
First of all we don't begin to see ourselves as being responsible for this community not just the pastor not just the elders. We see ourselves as responsible for the community of Christ here enduring the hurts dealing with the difficulties forgiving one another building one another up in grace because if we can't form a heart of grace here how in the world can we transmit it out there.
I spoke this morning this afternoon to a man many of you know Clifford McIntyre. He's an elder in Sparta and he's been an elder I don't know 70 years long time.
Clifford has terminal lymphoma. He's been diagnosed about two weeks now.
Do you know that this church is here in many ways because of Clifford McIntyre because
he was an elder and what historically has been the largest church in this presbytery who kind of kept things together when there was a fledgling work of the presbytery and churches were being started across Illinois and Indiana.
You know I look at that and I marvel at the ministry of Clifford because he's watched no young preachers like me come and go.
He's seen church division and turmoil. He has looked at difficulty. He struggled at times with his own family in the church but I'm telling you there are people in the church of Jesus Christ that are bedrock and they don't move. They know the church of Jesus Christ requires their commitment and their long suffering and he is such a man and there are such people in this church right now and I praise God for them but I know this church will continue to be built and it will prosper and will go forward from this place as there are more and more people who are saying you know I'm not just here to be fed.
I am here because of the grace of God and to learn of the godliness that he requires
and to share Christ beginning here, beginning here and then moving outward.
I pray that is your commitment that from this place, this leader who carries this message,
the grace of God may multiply more and more for the glory of Christ's kingdom.
Let's pray together.
Father, we thank you that you give us wonderful guide not only of what Jesus has done but in seeing it and humbling us by that, learning what you require of us. Ultimately it is to recognize the beauty of the grace of God that transforms us and is wonderful to share with others, transform us. We pray that you would take Pastor Mallory, these elders, these people, their families
and make them a wonderful church of Christ.
The gospel would be powerful here among them and then beyond them.
May they embrace grace, love godliness, and share Christ.
We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.