Titus 1:1-3
Paul, a servant of God and an
apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God’s
elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with
godliness in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies,
promised before the ages began and at the proper time manifested
in his word through the preaching with which I have been entrusted
by the command of God, our Savior. Pray with me. Oh, Lord, your
word tells us that the one whom you esteem is the one who is
humble, the one who is contrite in spirit, and the one who trembles
at your word. Lord, as your word is read today
and proclaimed, as we sing it, as we pray it, as we preach it,
as we confess it, as we hear it spoken back to us, as it assures
us, as it greets us and calls us to worship, and as it gives
us benediction, as it gives us blessing, may we tremble at your
word. Lord, so much in this world is
offered to us. And sometimes your word can become
to us just another thing, just another noise, just another voice.
But we ask now that it would be the very voice of God into
our very lives and that it would be powerful, that it would be
pleasant, that it would be purging, that it would be good for us
and good for your glory. We pray all this in the name
of Jesus, our great savior. Amen. Some of you have family
heirlooms. Maybe it’s a set of your grandmother’s
china or it’s your mother’s silver. Maybe you’ve inherited a piece
of jewelry that you wear. Maybe you have your father’s
favorite chair or his walking stick. You have heirlooms. These are family treasures and
they are passed down to you. And they are passed down to you
that you might care for them, that you might steward them.
and that you might pass them down to yet another generation. Over the Christmas season, you
probably bump into those heirlooms. It’s during these holidays, we
use our China, we use our silver. It’s during these times when
family and nostalgia sort of come to the forefront. And so
these heirlooms are front and center in our minds and in our
hearts and in our family rituals. And when we are given a stewardship,
when we are entrusted with these family heirlooms, we are to care
for them, we’re to clean them, we’re to store them carefully,
we’re to make sure that they are held intact, that they remain
useful yet to another generation, that we might pass them from
one generation to the next. Some of you probably have things
that were your grandparents or your great grandparents or Maybe
they even traveled over on a boat when your family immigrated to
this country. There are things that are valuable
and important to us. And I want us to see in this
little letter to the apostle Paul, that that is the sentiment
that Paul is speaking about in this little letter when he says,
I am entrusted with the gospel. I am a steward of the mysteries
of salvation. I have been entrusted by the
command of God, by the will of Jesus. To be a steward, a caretaker
of the family heirloom and that family heirloom in this case
is the gospel of Jesus promised before the ages began and revealed
in real space and time to real people, to real humans on the
island of Crete. Jerusalem and Judea and to the
ends of the earth and even here in Burlington or wherever it
was when you sat under the ministry of God’s Word and came to saving
faith in Jesus realizing that you were a sinner in need of
a Savior and Jesus was freely offered to you in the gospel
and by the grace of God you received him and are now resting in him
alone for salvation the Apostle Paul The church of Jesus Christ
ministers like myself, the elders of the church. We are stewards
of this great heirloom of this great stewardship of the gospel
of the Lord Jesus Christ. This sentiment, this thought
in Paul’s letter to Titus, his salutation to Titus is important. Notice how it appears in verses
one and three. The apostle Paul says, I am a
servant of God. I’m an apostle of Jesus Christ.
And verse three, I have been entrusted with the preaching
of the gospel by the command of God, our savior. The apostle
Paul is, he opens this letter as he gives a salutation or a
greeting to Titus and to the churches who will hear this letter
read aloud in their hearing and to us today who read the book
of Titus. Paul is saying in this salutation, I am a slave or a
servant to God. I have indebted myself to him. He is my master. I am the servant.
He sets the rules. I do the labor. He also says,
I am an apostle of Jesus Christ. An apostle literally means a
sent one. An apostle is one sent by one
greater. The terms are set by the greater.
The message is set by the greater. And the apostle, the sent one
speaks on behalf of the one who sent him. Now he’s saying a couple
of things here. One is I’m a servant of Christ.
I’m humble. I serve at his disposal. But
I speak on the authority of heaven itself. And it’s something we
ought to recognize in this world and culture. Oh, everybody can
have a Twitter handle. And some people ought to have
it taken away. Everybody can get a social media presence.
Everybody can speak their mind or their whatever. They can speak and they can have
a platform. And they can say whatever it is they want, but
only an apostle, only a sent one by God can speak with such
great authority. Now, why is it that the apostle
Why is it that he must give his credentials here? So to speak,
why does he need to give them? Well, he’s not really giving
them to Timothy. Don’t you think, uh, or Titus probably say that
a lot during this little series. Don’t you think Timothy or here
we go again. Don’t you think Titus knows good
and well who Paul is? I mean, they’ve traveled together,
they bump together, they’ve eaten together, they’ve preached together.
They’ve, they’ve been in gospel ministry side by side together
for months and even years. It’s so that the people on the
island of Crete, to whom the apostle who sends Titus, to whom
the minister Titus will minister to, they will say, this is from
God. This is not from that guy. This
is not from next door. This is not from this country.
This is from God himself. He comes with authority. And
so the apostle Paul gives his credentials here. What is his
purpose? His purpose is this. He is in
service to God’s chosen children whom God has gathered from the
nations of the earth into Christ Jesus as the gospel has been
proclaimed. Why is it the apostle Paul is
an apostle? It’s to minister. to the elect. It’s to minister to those chosen
by God, gathered from among the nations into the name of Jesus
Christ, through the preaching of the gospel. He doesn’t exist
to do anything but to preach and to proclaim and to gather
God’s elect through the ministry of the preaching of the gospel.
We’ve sung in recent weeks, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Glory
to the Newborn King. In a sense, we must think of
Paul’s task as a King’s herald. He goes into the world of the
Gentiles and he proclaims that Jesus is King, Jesus is Lord,
Jesus is Savior. Jesus is the great one who can
save us from our sins. And he makes his way around the
Mediterranean Sea. Eventually, we believe making
it all the way to Spain, proclaiming, heralding the good news that
Jesus has come to take away the sins. of his children who come
to him by faith and receive and rest in him alone for their salvation. Now he’s going to speak of three
important things in our passage today. He’s going to speak of
faith. He’s going to speak of knowledge,
and then he’s going to speak of hope. And we want to look
at those three things and see how they help us in our walk
with the Lord and our growth and grace in the Christian life.
But I want us to think big picture for just a moment before before
we see how these things impact us, I want you to think big picture
for just a moment. What is the purpose of the Church
of Jesus Christ? What is the purpose of us gathering
together as Christians to hear God’s Word, to pray, to fellowship
together in these things, to have missionary endeavors into
the world? What is the purpose of us doing these things? Well, Titus, in a sense, will
be a compact guide for us as Christians on how to live a word-centered
life that is an effective witness out in the world. Now think with
me for just a moment. Think about your understanding
of the Bible. Where in the Bible does Jesus fuss at seven churches? It’s in the book of Revelation.
It’s in chapters two and three. And he’s gonna fuss at the church
of Ephesus where Timothy is the pastor. He’s gonna fuss at six
other churches, but he’s gonna fuss at them for not being word-centered. He’s gonna tell them they’re
doing some good things. You’ve got some zeal, you’ve
got some energy, you’re doing some wonderful things. But I have
this against you. Correct it, fix it, do it. and
I’ll bless you. But if you don’t, I’ll take away
your lamp stand and things won’t go well with you as a church. And so Titus is in a sense, a
compact guide to a local church on how to live a word centered
life in such a way that it’s pleasing to Jesus, but it has
a witnessing effect to the world. Now think again with me, if you
will, about the language Jesus uses when he speaks to the seven
churches. He either says you are a faithful lampstand or a
synagogue of Satan. And to which do we want to make
converts? You see, that’s the critical
thing he’s going to say to the churches at Crete. Do you want
to be a synagogue of Satan, as it were, and make converts to
that and to say Jesus is all this or Do you want to make converts
to the great shepherd Jesus and show the world what heaven must
be like through your character and your conduct and your theology? So that’s the big picture. But
let’s zero in on these three things the apostle speaks of.
Look again, if you will, at verse one. He says, Paul, a servant
of God and an apostle of Jesus for the sake of the faith of
God’s elect. their knowledge of the truth
which accords with godliness in hope of eternal life which
God who never lies promised before the ages began and at the proper
time manifested in his word through the preaching with which I have
been entrusted by the command of God our Savior. First let’s
think for a moment about the faith of God’s elect. One of the Great purposes of
the apostle Paul is to work faith, to preach faith, to teach faith,
to strengthen faith in God’s elect. What does it mean for
us to have faith? Faith is an instrument. It’s a tool that God uses for
us to believe that we are centers. that we are in need of a Savior
and that that Savior is Jesus Christ. And so what might you
say is one of Paul’s missionary purposes? It’s to preach sin
and salvation. It’s to preach creation and fall
and redemption. It’s to preach Jesus. It’s to
preach the possibility of becoming a new creation in Christ and
to cast aside the old and to live by the Holy Spirit in such
a way that you grow in grace and holiness. And by God’s grace,
you reach heaven. He’s preaching the good news
of God’s redeeming and curse reversal through Christ Jesus. And he’s preaching to a people
who are happy living just as we have once before, living in
sin, loving our sin and living in an unrighteous way, but but
going blindfold into hell, happy about it and blessed by it until
God, as chapter three of Titus says, comes into our lives and
he saves us and he rescues us from that way and from that lifestyle. Now, how is it that most people
think a person is saved? If you ask a regular Joe on the
street, they’ll say something like this, I’ll do my best and
I’ll hope that God We’ll see that. And he’ll see my sincerity. He’ll see my effort. He’ll see
my, my trying as it were, and he’ll let me into heaven. You
hear this on the opposite side. You hear when people speak of
their dearly departed, they’ll say something like this. Well,
if anybody deserves to be in heaven, you know, it’s old Billy,
it’s old so-and-so. And friends, that’s not what
the gospel teaches. The gospel teaches us that we
are sinners, that we are in need of a salvation, and that without
that salvation offered in Christ, we are destined not to heaven,
but to hell. That our disobedience, our sin,
our lawlessness is held against us by the God of the universe,
and he condemns us for it. But there is a way out. And that
is putting that sin on Jesus and letting him pay that penalty
for that sin. You see, there’s a difference
in what some people believe and what the Bible teaches. Some
people believe that I’ll do my best and God will accept that,
because why wouldn’t he? But the Bible teaches we get
Christ’s best. And in fact, the Bible teaches
us that that is the only thing God can accept. He can accept
nothing less than perfection. And he offers that perfection
to us through Jesus. We said a few moments ago during
our confession of sin, that justification is God seeing us just as if we’ve
always obeyed and just as if we’ve never sinned. That is the
only way that is the gospel way. And so the apostle Paul is preaching
justification by faith. He’s preaching salvation through
Jesus alone. We’re living in a day and time
that preaches. Things like, just do your best and God will probably
accept it. We’re hearing also this message
of be good. God exists if you need him. Oh,
and by the way, feel good about yourself. That’s not in the gospel
either. We’re hearing also or seeing
or experiencing in the church in America, anomalism. Oh yes,
I go to church. does it happen to be Christmas
and Easter or it may happen to be every Sunday but nominalism
you know what that means it’s in name only I go I check the
box I put in my offering I make it look like I’m singing the
hymns or maybe I really do sing them but there’s no heart in
it there’s no emotion in it there’s no experience in it of the Holy
Spirit working in us there’s also a place in this American
culture for people in the church who say, I know everything, right? I’m a Calvinist. I believe the
Bible is true. I know salvation is by grace.
I got my doctrine, my tulip, my Calvinism, my theology straight,
but it has no effect in their daily living. So we need to be
aware of that error as well. But what is it that we want?
What is it that Paul is preaching when he preaches faith? He’s
saying, I come empty. I come empty and Jesus fills
me full. I come humble and poor and needy
and Jesus gives me everything that I need. It’s not my best.
No, it’s my worst, but he gives me his best. And so Paul’s evangelical
desire is to proclaim faith. Well, there’s a second thing
that he speaks of in these verses. He speaks of their knowledge
of the truth. What does Paul want to proclaim? He wants to
proclaim faith, trust in Jesus. But he wants us to know knowledge.
Now, I imagine most of us didn’t like school. And for those of
us who didn’t like school, we also don’t like theology. We
say theology is for the preacher. Theology is for the theologians.
Theology is for the person who retired and has free time to
sit around and read R.C. Sproul. That’s what we think.
No, theology is for every one of us. And the apostle Paul is
saying here in these couple of verses, I want people to know
the knowledge of the truth. What is knowledge? It is accumulated
information, but it is accumulated information that is not just
simply stored up. Our hard drive is full. It is
accumulated information that leads us to live and act in a
specific way. And for us as Christians, we
must know the character of God, the actions of God, the promises
of God, the truth of salvation, the way of Christian living.
We must know our theology, but it must lead to praise. It must
lead to service. It must lead to obedience. It
must lead to action in life. And so our faith leads us to
seek, to learn more about God and his ways. In fact, this knowledge,
it says, this knowledge of truth, which accords with godliness
is going to be one of the great themes, one of the great emphases
of the book of Titus. And the apostle Paul is going
to say to us over and over this. If you have faith, you must build
your knowledge and that knowledge must lead to godliness. And that godliness has to affect
your living so that when people look in your living room windows,
when they see you at your dining table, when they bump into you
at the doctor’s office or in the workplace, or in traffic
when you’re a little testy, they say that person must know Jesus
and have been touched by the gospel because of their character
and their conduct. and their theology. You see,
knowledge can just puff us up. I know my theology, pat me on
the back. No, knowledge must lead to living
a godly life. And the third thing this passage
speaks of is the hope of everlasting life. He speaks in verse two
in hope of eternal life, which God who never lies promised before
the ages began and at the proper time manifested in his word through
the preaching, which I have been entrusted by the command of God,
my savior. Tomorrow is 2018. We’re living
in a pretty exciting set of times, but we’re living in a pretty
rotten set of times. And so what is the apostle Paul
gonna say to us through Titus? If you’re living in rotten times
with a rotten culture, don’t be a rotten church because a
rotten church won’t be a faithful witness to the rotten culture
in the rotten times. You see what he’s getting at?
Be a bright light, be a shining example. And Jesus tells us in
first John chapter five, I write these things to you, little children,
so that so that you may have hope. So why come to preaching? Why read your Bible? Why read
your Bible through the year in 2018? Why read table talk? Why
listen to sermons? Why grow in the knowledge of
grace? It’s because we have to know
the hope of everlasting life, which God has revealed to us
through Jesus and has proclaimed to us through the preaching of
the word. God gives us truth. He gives us knowledge. He gives
us faith in order that we may live out of those things and
show the watching world why we have hope And so he speaks, he
speaks here of the hope of everlasting life. The message that God in
eternity past has set his affection upon a people and that throughout
the Bible, throughout the history of the Christian people, throughout
the history of this world, God has been graciously gathering
a people out of the nations to himself. He’s gathered them out
of paganism. He’s gathered them out of rotten
cultures just like ours. He’s gathered them out of families
who generation after generation have not walked with the Lord.
He’s gathered them from even the far reaches of the earth
where we didn’t think people existed. The message of God that
in eternity past, he’s been gathering a people to himself because of
that wonderful eternity past decision he made. And through
his actions, he’s been looking for a people and redeeming them.
When did that start? When did that begin? When did
we see God first pursuing somebody and saying, I want you to believe
me and trust me. It started in the garden when
rebellious Adam and Eve, after sweet fellowship, which fellowship
with him, listened to Satan, ate the fruit. were naked and
ashamed and hid. What did God do? He came looking. He came preaching gospel. He
came providing gospel. And since that day, he has come
to men and women and boys and girls like ourselves who’ve shaken
our fist at God, who said, I hear your word, I hear your law, I
see your gracious provision, but I think I want to wallow
in the mud and go to a far country and sow my wild oats and spend
my inheritance the way I want to and not live under your thumb,
heavenly father. This is the hope of everlasting
life that God pursues and chases and redeems sinners. I probably performed a hundred
funerals in my ministry. Half of them, joyful events,
half of them events where the people in the congregation, remembering
their loved one and giving them a good send off to heaven, literally
blew the roof off the church building, singing praise to God.
But the other half were sad. They were sad because they were
hopeless. They were sad because they did not have a hope of the
everlasting life. They thought this was it. This
is final. This is over with. I will never see my loved one
again. Friends, don’t live in that darkness. Don’t live in
a place where you have no hope and you think God is not living
and at work. We have hope. Hope of everlasting
life. And that hope is we face 2018.
That hope is we face our hardships. That hope is we look around at
culture and say it’s going to hell in a handbasket and faster
than ever. That’s what we say, isn’t it? That hope can help
us have perspective. Friends, our sacred trust, the
sacred trust of the Apostle Paul, the sacred trust of Timothy,
the sacred trust of First Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church.
My sacred trust as a minister is to proclaim the gospel, to
preach and teach faith, to preach and teach knowledge of the truth,
and to proclaim hope of everlasting life. You know, sometimes I’ll
get in a situation where people will say, what do you do? Well,
it’s not every time you want to say to somebody, I’m a minister.
Sometimes you want to say, I sell life insurance or fire insurance
or, you know, some kind of euphemism for, giving people a way out
of a difficult situation. Well, I have a colleague in the
ministry that when he’s asked, he says this, he says, I’m an
everlasting life coach. Oh, you are. I mean, that sounds
really intriguing, doesn’t it? You are. Tell me about that.
He says, I tell people every week, thousands of them. I tell
people every week, what it is to come to faith in Jesus and
what it is to live out of the resources of heaven and what
it is to be a new creation in Christ Jesus and what it is to
have the Holy Spirit in me, the church to feed and nurture and
to guide me and what it will be like to live eternally in
bliss and glory and joy without pain and sorrow. And boy, by
the time you give that answer, it’s, Way better than, well,
I’m a preacher. Because, you know, that’s a conversation
stopper in most situations. And so what is our job as a church?
What is our job as Christians? What is my job as a minister?
It’s to proclaim faith and knowledge and hope. And it’s to gather
together week after week, Lord’s Day after Lord’s Day, and to
celebrate and to deepen our knowledge, to deepen our joy together in
these things. And friends, let me tell you
something. If you let the word of God dwell in you richly and
you let the Holy Spirit reform and reshape your life and you
go out into Burlington and Greensboro and the triad and the triangle,
all the places you go during the week, people are gonna say
to you, who are you and where did you come from? And you’re
gonna be able to say, I’m a follower of Jesus. And let me tell you
who I used to be and what Jesus has done and who I am now and
that he can save you as well. You see, the church is really
simple. It’s not rocket science. We don’t have to have big this
and big that and high numbers that. We just simply have to
be faithful to the truth of the scripture. and let the light
of the gospel in us so shine before men. And when they ask,
we tell them and we speak of the grace. Pray with me if you
will. Lord, help us to be faithful in our living, to be faithful
in our example, to be faithful in our proclamation of Jesus.
What a sacred trust we have been given as a church, as ministers
of the gospel. Lord, find us faithful and in
2018, May you give us many opportunities to tell people of the glories
of Jesus, the wonders of salvation, the power of Jesus to save the
power of the spirit to transform and may are transformed lives
are daily living. be pleasing in some strange way
in the sight of those who do not know you, so that we can
give an account of Jesus, the hope within us, and that men
and women and boys and girls may come to faith in Jesus and
rest in Him alone for their salvation. Help us, give us courage, and
we ask for your grace and your power in this in Jesus’ name.
Amen. Let us stand together and sing
the hymn that is listed in your bulletin This is a hymn to the
tune of The Church’s One Foundation. You’ll recognize the tune, I
believe. And these four stanzas are from a Keith and Kristen
Getty hymn called Facing a Task Unfinished. There is a refrain
attached to the song. Some of you who are familiar
with it know of that refrain, but we’re gonna sing it in a
little bit more of a hymn-like way. So let’s stand and respond
to God’s word with this song.