Titus 3:1-11
Well, if you have your Bibles,
I would invite you to turn to Titus chapter 3. We’re going
to be exploring verses 1 through 11 this morning of Titus chapter
3. In your Pew Bible, that’s on
page 998. So, I want to invite you to turn there with me. So
as I mentioned at the beginning, I am the minister to the state
capitol with Ministry to State, which means that my role is to
serve as a minister and missionary to those who serve in government. And over the past several months,
especially culminating in the election, No doubt government
has been on the mind upon, of those who are even the most politically
apathetic amongst us. It’s certainly been a front burner
issue. We’ve had an election, and as
you look at the election, some of you may be somewhat overall
happy with the way things have turned out, and some of you no
doubt are very much not happy. with the way things have turned
out. And it has brought about a lot of spiteful disunity in
our country, and perhaps for many of you, it just has worn
you down. And it’s worn many people in
the church and outside of it down. So no doubt we could spend
a whole bunch of time this morning belaboring our thoughts and feelings
about what has happened over the past several weeks, what’s
currently happening, what’s going on, and what will happen in the
future. But for our purposes, what I want to do is ask and
seek to answer from Scripture the question, what now? What
now? How do we live in light of what
is unknown to us, or perhaps of what we think that we might
know, and which for many of us is profoundly concerning? How
does God, through his word, direct us in these times? That’s what
we’re gonna explore together this morning. So with that in
view, I want to pray and ask God’s blessing upon his word,
and then we will read Titus chapter three, beginning in verse one.
Let’s pray together. Father, this is your word, every
jot and tittle of it. We thank you that you are not
a God who is silent, but a God who indeed speaks, and who speaks
to us today audibly as we hear your word read. We pray that
you would open the eyes of our heart, that we might behold the
wonderful things that are in your word. And we ask this in
Jesus’ name, amen. The Apostle Paul is writing to
the missionary and church planter Titus, and he says this. Remind them to be submissive
to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for
every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling,
to be gentle and to show perfect courtesy towards all people. For we ourselves were once foolish,
disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures,
passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating
one another. But when the goodness and loving
kindness of God our Savior appeared, He saved us. not because of works
done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy. by the washing of regeneration
and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us richly
through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His
grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal
life. The saying is trustworthy, and
I want you to insist on these things so that those who have
believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good
works. These things are excellent and profitable for people. But
avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and
quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless.
As for a person who stirs up division after warning him once
and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing
that such a person is warped and sinful. He is self-condemned. Amen. This is God’s holy, inspired,
and inerrant word to us this morning. May he write its eternal
truth on all of our hearts. Well, in the church, it’s common
to hear phrases such as, Jesus is Lord. or Christ is King. And when we hear such things
or we say such things, we’re not just rattling off Christianese,
kind of insider language. We’re actually affirming biblical
truth. We’re affirming the language
of scripture and that truth is that Christ is Lord over all. He reigns and he rules and he
is the sovereign over every president, every prime minister, every king,
every government, every church, every authority on heaven and
earth, big and small. It is a gargantuan political
statement that we are making when we say that Jesus is Lord
or Christ is King. And there’s a sense when we make
such a statement and we affirm such a truth and we actually
believe it that we are being placed in a bit of a challenging
position because what we also see in scripture is that while
we are called to ultimately honor Christ, we are also called to
honor authorities that God has placed over us in this world.
Governing authorities. The authorities that we have
at work. The authorities that we have
in society. The authorities that we have at home. And we see that
in passages such as Romans 13. We see it in passages such as
this. And that’s a difficult position to be in at times because
sometimes governments and authorities make unjust decisions. They make
unwise decisions. They make policies that are oftentimes
at odds with God’s will. And they may even compel us at
the risk of crime, of imprisonment, of fines, that if we were to
obey such laws, we would actually end up disobeying the Lord. And when that’s the case, what
are we to do? Then you add to the mix our own native rebellion. People naturally rebel against
authority. If you have children or have
you ever even been around children, you don’t have to be a parent
to know this, you know that from birth, there’s a natural bucking
against authority. You change your infant child’s
diaper, you’re working in her best interest and she arches
her back in protest. And the reality is, is that adults
are just more sophisticated children. We’re doing the same thing. We
have a native resistance to want to obey and submit to and honor
authority. Now, we have just had a election,
a presidential election, election on all different levels, and
the feelings that we have are myriad, they’re all over. Some
of you are very angry. Some of you are very afraid.
Some of you may be happy. Some of you may be ambivalent.
They’re mixed feelings and we have questions like what will
happen to this state and this country and the rights and privileges
that we enjoy? as American citizens? What kind
of world will our children grow up in? Especially in light of
the way things seem to be trending in our culture and in our government. Some of you are more than just
a little concerned. Maybe you are downright angry. You feel perhaps that this country
is the Titanic and we’ve just hit the iceberg. Are you angry? Are you afraid? Where do we go from here? I think
a passage such as this actually helps us answer some of these
questions. How is a Christian to reflect
the beauty and the holiness of God in the context of a world
that is unquestionably at odds with the things of Christ? How
are we to do that? In the context of a world that
may not be interested in tolerating you anymore, but may in certain
instances be out to silence you, to marginalize you, and maybe
even to cancel you. In this letter, in this passage
of scripture that we’ve just read, the Apostle Paul is writing
to Titus, to a group of believers, first generation believers, who
are seeking to live out their identity in Christ in a world
that is hostile to the things of God, that is not open to it,
that is not following Christ. And what you need to know about
these Cretans, Paul is writing to this new church on the island
of Crete, and these Cretans, these people who lived there,
were notoriously insubordinate and rebellious people. Not that
we have any problems with that in our country, but it certainly
was the case for these people in Crete. They were people who
who rejected all forms of authority. They were masters of their own
fate and captains of their own soul. In fact, if you look back
into chapter one of Titus, Paul actually goes back and quotes
a secular poet. He quotes this poet and this
prophet, his name was Epimenides. He was a Cretan poet and he said
that Cretans are always liars evil brutes and lazy gluttons. It’s a fine group of people here.
That’s what we see in chapter one, verse 12, Paul quoting this.
And you know what the Holy Spirit has done here on the island of
Crete with this new church is he started to make inroads with
the gospel. He’s started to chisel away the
hardness of the hearts of these people who lived on this island. And it was through the preaching
of the good news and the investment and the imparting not only of
the gospel but of their lives unto the lives of these people
that Folks begin to turn away from their godlessness. They
turned away from their sin and they began to, however imperfectly,
turn to Christ and begin to walk in His ways and reflect His beauty
and His glory and His grace in the midst of a hostile world
politically and culturally. Their lives were starting to
bend more and more in the direction of Jesus, despite the fact that
the angle of the world was going in a different direction. And
so Paul here was directing Titus as to how to instruct this new
church to live in light of this context. And he zeroes in, in
this passage, on four things in particular, which I think
were immensely practical, not only for them, but are also for
us in our day and age, 2,000 years later. And so, let’s take
a look at these four things that Paul is focusing our attention
upon this morning. In verses one and two, first
thing that we’re to discover is that Paul wants us to recognize
our duty. Recognize our duty. And in just
two verses, he points out seven areas of duty that we’re to recognize. Now, before I even mention those,
let me just be honest with you and say that duty is not a popular
or even particularly palatable concept in the life of the Christian
these days. Duty seems very legalistic. It
seems something like we’re trying to merit our standing before
God or keep our standing before God on the basis of the law.
And when we talk about duty from a Christian perspective, that
is not at all what we mean. What we mean is that the grace
of God has so worked itself out in our souls, it’s so woven into
the fabric of who we are that we begin to display love and
gratitude and thankfulness to God in practical ways. We realize that we have a gracious
and joyful obligation to honor Him and to love our neighbors. And that’s the way that duty
reflects itself in the Christian’s life. And so that’s what he’s
talking about here. That’s the context in which he’s
displaying this. And so these seven areas, what
does he say? Seven areas of duty that we can
begin reflecting. One, submit to rulers and authorities. Two, be obedient to God and to
them. Three, be ready for every good
work. Four, speak evil of no one. Five, avoid quarreling and arguments
and the nya-nya-nya dissension that so often happens. Six, be
gentle in our speech and thought and behavior. And seven, show
perfect courtesy towards all people. Now I gotta tell you
something. I am not so sure that your favorite
cable news network or your social media feed is helping you with
this. It’s not. And I wonder if in
our cultural context, the gospel The beautiful gospel has so often
been associated with disparagement of people who are on the other
side, disparagement of even people in government with whom we disagree
who may be dead wrong. Think about it. Submission to
government and authority. Ready for every good work. How about our speech? How do
we speak about the other side? Do we speak in evil ways? Ad hominem attacks? The very worst and most extreme
ideas of what they hold to? How do we speak of our enemies?
Is our speech gentle or is it callous? Is there a patient kindness
that you show towards people who may be woefully misguided? Are you open to a closer examination
of your own views? Are you open to looking within
to see if your life is reflecting Christlikeness as you engage
in a world that’s hostile to the things of God? See, if the
answer to those questions is no, then what kind of collective
witness to the gospel are we actually displaying to the world?
What are we displaying? What difference is there between
just being a convert and a conservative? What difference is there between
being a person who lives for the praise of God or someone
who’s just progressive in their politics? And on what level are
we showing that Jesus is really King, that Christ is Lord, like
we profess to believe, that we trust Him as our King, that as
the great hymn says, that though the wrong seems oft so strong,
God is the ruler yet. We actually believe those words
that we sing. And see, as we search forward in the midst of
uncertain times where we don’t really know what the next few
months or few years are gonna look like and how that’s going
to affect our collective lives and individual lives as followers
of Christ, we still need to live as the aroma of Christ in the
midst of all the stink that’s out there. In other words, our
lips and our lives must display the wisdom and holiness and love
and goodness and truth and grace and meekness and a valiant attempt
to live at peace with our neighbor as far as it depends upon us.
Because that’s how people who live who have an existential personal
knowledge of Jesus go about living amongst their neighbors. They
recognize their duty because they’re people who’ve received
God’s grace. Secondly, what Paul wants us
to remember is our depravity. We remember our duty, we also
remember our depravity. And we discover that in verse
three. And you don’t need me to stand up here and talk to
you about how polarized our nation is. You already know that. People
celebrate that which is evil. They malign that which is good.
There’s a lack of well-reasoned, thoughtful engagement with issues. There’s no holes barred vitriol,
hatred. People are retreating into their
little tribes. They don’t even have to really
interact with folks outside. of their network of beliefs,
and their understanding of others based on caricatures of the other
side. And when you think about that,
and then you’re faced with what you see in verse 3, you start
to understand the condition of the human heart. Paul says here,
verse three is this, he says, for we ourselves were once foolish,
disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures,
passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating
one another. And so he’s saying that prior
to his conversion on the Damascus Road, prior to the conversion
of these people in Crete, this was the description of their
life. They were fools, colossal fools, disobedient. They made
active, volitional choices that lacked sense, that lacked wisdom,
that were made from a fundamentally rebellious heart. They were passive victims, even,
of darkened hearts. They were so entranced in darkness
that they couldn’t even tell light from darkness. They were
deceived and enslaved in that way. They actually were malicious
people too. They wished evil upon others. They wanted the worst things
to happen to their enemies. They weren’t about love for their
enemies, they wanted evil to happen to them. And they resented
it when something good happened to them. That’s the kind of people
that they were. Their lives were full of giving
and receiving hate. And to various degrees, this
is all of us. This is all of us, to various
degrees. And if you can’t have the humility
to admit that verse three is who you are by human nature and
by choice, you’ll never ever move past it. You’ll be stuck
in verse three. That’ll be your life if you can’t
admit that that is your life. You’ll spew out a whole lot of
heat, but there won’t be a lot of light. There won’t be a qualitative
difference between the church and the world as far as our thoughts
and speech and behavior goes. But notice what Paul says here. He says in verse three about
these things that they’re all part of their past. He uses the
past tense. They’re part of their history.
We were once foolish. We were once all these things.
We were once callous and godless. Why does he speak in the past
tense? He says that because Christians, people who are tied into who
all that Jesus is for them in the gospel, are new people. We are new people. We speak in
ways that display a fundamental trust in the fact that Jesus
is Lord. Our politics are kingdom of God
politics. In other words, the characteristics
of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords Things like love and joy and
peace and patience and kindness and goodness and gentleness and
faithfulness and self-control, the fruit of the Spirit, all
of that begins to emanate from our life, however imperfectly.
That Jesus is Lord, that Christ is King, that’s your political
identity. That’s your number one political
identity and it shapes the way in which we live amongst those
inside of the church and the way in which we live with those
outside of the church who don’t know Jesus and who are galvanized
by some other political identity. And let me tell you something,
whether you consider yourself to be a progressive or a conservative
or a moderate or wherever on the political spectrum, Our political parties in this
nation are fundamentally shaped by what you see in verse three
here. fundamentally shaped by it, manifesting
itself in different ways, but at the end of the day, it’s the
same kind of thing. And I can’t think of a better description
of how we are being conditioned to view our political opponents
than what Paul describes here in verse 3. But we get to the
next few verses, right? Verses 4 through 7, and this
is what Paul says here. He says, when the goodness and
lovingkindness of God our Savior appeared, He saved us, not because
of works done by us in righteousness, but according to what? His own
mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit,
whom He poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior,
so that being justified by His grace, we might become heirs
according to the hope of eternal life. See what Paul is calling
us to do here is he’s calling us to rejoice in our deliverance. That’s the position of the Christian,
to rejoice in the fact that by his grace alone we have been
delivered from what is due to us, from our rebellion and indifference
to God. The Christian’s life is entirely
a life of grace. Think about it, think about the
number of churches that you have passed by over the course of
your life that were called Grace. There’s a whole bunch of them
out there. Why did they do that? Well, it
wasn’t just a bunch of guys who got in a smoke-filled room and
couldn’t come up with a name, they just got late at night and
they wanted to go home and they just said, okay, we’ll just call
ourselves Grace. That’s probably not what happened. The reason
why they call their church grace is because they understand that
that is what fuels the whole Christian life. The grace of
Jesus Christ to them in the gospel. Our life is informed by his grace,
it’s energized by his grace. He gives us what we don’t deserve. He gives us the forgiveness of
sins. He imputes to us and credits
to us His perfect record of righteousness. He adopts us as His children. He gives us all the inheritance
that comes with being His children. All the protection, all the promises,
all the hope. And then on the other side of
the coin, He doesn’t give us what we do deserve. In other
words, He gives us mercy. He doesn’t give us His unmitigated
wrath. He doesn’t give us eternal condemnation,
abandonment, hopelessness. And that comes to us not by our
merit, but by His mercy, by His grace, by the grace of Jesus
Christ credited to us in the gospel. And when you know something
of that grace, when you know that, And it’s penetrated your
heart, your life begins to take on a posture of humility. You live a humble life and humility
is what is almost completely missing from how we view people
who voted the other way. You see the world differently
from us who may see the world wrongly, and I would suggest
to you that this is the case because it is so easy to lose
sight of the grace of God. We’ve been justified by His grace,
but we justify others to us on the basis of their works on the
basis of a law that may not even be Scripture. On the basis of
a litmus test that we’ve declared that they should pass. We’ve
lost sight of what we’ve been saved from. That we’ve been saved
from the wrath of God due to our sin. Life is so frequently void of
gratitude. And now it’s a matter of sizing
people up to see where they stand politically in order to understand
how they look before us. And to the degree that you understand
God and that you understand yourself and you understand the world,
you need to remember this. The degree that you understand
any of those things rightly is purely by the grace of God. Yes,
he’s given us all various degrees of intellect and background and
so forth, but the reason why you understand anything rightly,
you believe anything rightly, you do anything rightly, is purely
by the power of the Holy Spirit and the grace of God in your
life. And knowing that has got to humble
you. It’s got to humble you. It’s got to transform the way
in which we relate to other people. to live toward the world in love,
not where you compromise the truth, not where you capitulate
to the spirit of the age, but with a measure of humility and
compassion and ultimately love. So how is that working out for
you? How is it working out for you?
Millions are celebrating, millions are in distress right now. How
is what Jesus has done for you in the gospel shaping the way
that you see those on the other side? How is it informing how you speak
to them and about them and listen to them? Grace has got to change
you because if it doesn’t, you’re just gonna sound like a cable
news pundit. You’re not gonna sound like a
person. who’s been changed by the grace of God. And it’s something
to reflect upon as we move into this next chapter as a church
and a nation. And then finally in verse eight,
Paul calls us to render good deeds. Render good deeds. We see it in verse eight all
the way to the end of the chapter. So the question is, where do
we go from here? How do we live under this, probably
new administration that we’re facing, we render good deeds. We devote ourselves to honoring
Jesus and loving our neighbor as we reflect on the wisdom and
the holiness and the justice of God, as we zero in to his
truth and grace and his love. We avoid foolish controversies
and dissensions and worthless quarrels because they are worthless
and unprofitable. It says it right here. We know
that by scripture, we know that by experience. We don’t have
to affirm our rightness all the time, or what we think is right. We can talk about things and
process it together. We should do those things, but
we do that with Jesus in view. And it means that you give serious
thought to how you pursue the unity of the Spirit and the bond
of peace even in this church, particularly with those who may
see things differently than you. Maintaining the purity and peace
of the church is actually so essential that Paul says here
that those who violate it shouldn’t have anything to do with them
after being warned. Paul is calling the church and
he’s calling us to pursue purity, he’s calling us to pursue peace
and love and the fruit of the spirit because when Jesus has
influenced your life, when he shaped your life, then your life
shows that amongst those you love, amongst those who are even
your enemies. Now let me just say one final
thing before we go. Too often, too often, the church
has approached politics in a way that’s no different than the
world. Not different in any meaningful
way. It’s like the party platform shapes our understanding of the
world more so than the scripture. We have all this access to news
and information, and it preaches us a message all the time. It
preaches us a message that we need power, and you are a victim,
and we need to own the other side, and so often the world
is shaping our understanding of God and the world, rather
than the scripture is. But the problem isn’t that the
church has become too political, that’s not what the problem is.
The problem is that the church is not political enough. We’re not political enough, we’re
not seeking first His kingdom and His righteousness and living
as if Jesus were Lord, and honoring Him first as King. And instead,
we become too apolitical, or we’ve sought hope in lesser kingdoms,
in parties, political parties. It’s good and right to be involved
in the things of politics and I pray that more people, young
people in particular, who love Jesus and honor Him would go
into that and serve God’s world for His glory with distinctiveness
and integrity and Christ-likeness because God has created government
to establish order and justice and righteousness in the society.
institution that he’s created, but there’s a substantial difference
between being involved and interested and being fully engulfed and
consumed by it. And if it dominates you, if the
political dominates you, then you’re not going to recognize
your duty to others. You’re gonna expect that they
ought to render duty to you. And you won’t be a person who
remembers your depravity. You’ll be very well aware of
the depravity of your neighbor, but you won’t be super aware
of your own depravity. And you won’t be a person who
rejoices in your deliverance. You’ll be gloating when your
enemy gets defeated. And you won’t be a person who
renders good deeds. You’ll render that which is politically
expedient. See, the Christian has a different
privilege and it brings with it a different calling. And it’s
the privilege of having received the good news that Christ has
come into the world to save sinners. The privilege of having received
grace upon grace, the calling to live with humility and mercy
and love towards our enemies. And in this time in which we
live, you and I have a wonderful and an incredible opportunity
to live with such character and integrity before a dark and decaying
world. What a beautiful witness to the
world it would be for the church to not be fundamentally associated
with a political agenda, or seen as a voting block, but to be
known as a people who truly believe in Jesus, who honor Him as King,
and who seek to honor their governing authorities, and who seek to
live at peace with their neighbors, and in love towards them. That
would be a beautiful thing. That would be an unusual thing
to see. But may God bear witness to himself
through us and display his glory as we begin to think and live
and speak in ways that show we believe that Jesus is King. Amen. Let’s pray. God, we thank you for a challenging
word to us that strikes against our own native inclinations. We need your power to live it
and believe it, and we don’t have that within ourselves. So
we pray that you would change our hearts and minds so that
we might display your beauty and your glory and your grace,
so that the church might be edified, so that those who don’t know
you might come to know you, and that in all things you might
receive the glory. And we pray it in the name of
him who came such a distance for us, our Lord Jesus Christ,
amen.