The Good Life (Week 1)

This Sunday, Lead Pastor Joe Valenti teaches that the good life is not found in comfort, success, possessions, or achievement, but in surrendering to Jesus, anchoring ourselves in His truth, and living as part of His family. We learn that when we trust God’s unbreakable promises, allow His Word to transform us, and build our hope on the finished work of Christ, we experience the lasting life He intends for us.

PDF Resources: ( Sermon Notes )

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good morning, everyone. It's great to see you. As Lori mentioned, we are in the book of Titus starting a new series this summer entitled The Good Life. And I'd be curious to know what you sort of view as the good life. I don't want you to yell out loud, but maybe just put that vision in your brain. When you think of the good life, what are the things? What are the pictures? What are the places, the people, the things that pop into your brain? Maybe for you the good life is really fixated on places. Maybe your happy place, your good life place is the beach or on the water, or hiking on a mountain, or maybe you'll take the sun and the water, but sand's the sand, and you're like, put me on a cruise ship. Maybe for you the good life involves specific people. So it doesn't matter where you're at, as long as you have the right people with you. Maybe it's family, maybe it's great friends, maybe it's the grandchildren, maybe it's your son or daughter or the person sitting next to you. Maybe that's the good life. Hey, it doesn't matter where we're at as long as I have you. Or maybe it's things. Maybe there are things that you think, now, if I had this, that would be the good life. Maybe for you, the good life is the smell of a new car. Or the smell of rubber from said new car as you speed down the highway. Maybe it's the smell of fresh paint in a new home. Maybe it's something that you wear. Maybe you get a new pair of clothes or a new suit or a new dress, and you think, now this is the good life. Or maybe it's achievement. You finally get that promotion at work and you think, this is the good life. I make what I think I should make. I have a few more weeks of vacation. Or maybe for you, high school or college students, it's that you achieved straight A's or a scout came to watch you hit a ball or swim in a pool. Maybe for some of you, the good life is that your financial advisor just gave you a call this week that said you can retire early. And you're like, finally, the good life. And you could do some of those things that you had hoped that you could do. Well, you might wonder, okay, I've seen the book of Titus before, and I know what it's about. Why are we talking about the good life and the book of Titus in the same sentence? If you're unfamiliar with the book of Titus, the book of Titus was written by a man named Paul to one of his apprentices. Paul was a prolific church planter and teacher in the first century, and Titus was one of his apprentices, and he left him on the small island of Crete, and it's really about putting that small church in order. Elders and theology. And it doesn't seem to describe the good life. It's like, hey, Paul, where are all the parts about the cruise ship? Where are all the parts about my bank account? Where are all the parts about finding that person that I love and sailing off into the sunset? Titus doesn't seem to talk about the good life. But our aim throughout this series is to help all of us recalibrate our hearts and our minds around what the Bible actually communicates is the good life. And Titus is kind of broken into three major overarching sections that communicate to us the true good life. The true good life is experienced when you finally stop being your own master. When you step off the exhausting treadmill of self-preservation and rest in the authority and saving grace of Jesus Christ. The good life is experienced when you anchor your soul in truth that does not change. Right? We live in this world where honestly I don't know what's true half the time. I was watching, this is not in my notes, but I was watching, I was watching this Instagram post the other day, and it was an old man, and he was mixing like honey and turmeric and all this other stuff, and he was like, this is what you need to take every night to be healthy. And so I followed the guy, because surely this old farmer-looking guy knows how to be healthy. That's what I was thinking. Well, the next day I'm watching it and I'm looking at his face, and I'm like, this is AI. This is not a real human being. This is somebody in some far-off place telling me to put turmeric and honey in hot water and drink it. I don't even, maybe this is gonna poison me. We don't know often what's real and what's fake anymore. So the good life is actually having something to root our lives in, to have some truth that we know does not fail, that's not AI generated, or some person on a computer in a basement somewhere trying to deep fake us. The good life is about stepping out of isolation into a real spiritual family. And that's not to take anything away from our blood family, but we need to find deep, battle-tested relationships that will endure our mess alongside us and continue to point us back to truth when we get sideways. These are the things that define the good life. And my hope is that as we work through Titus, that you will begin to believe that those things are true. It's one thing for me to tell you, hey, you've got this version of the good life. The Bible gives you a different version. It's one thing for you to go, okay, sounds good. But to actually live that out is a completely different set of issues that actually only comes as the Spirit of God transforms our affections and our minds. And so let's begin. Let's dig into the book of Titus, Titus chapter one, verse one. And we're only gonna do the introduction today. And I was gonna do the first nine, but as I read through this, I go, man, Paul has this tendency to pack some deep theology into his introductions. And this is one of his longest introductions, and so we're gonna linger here for a bit because it will build the bedrock under the remainder of Titus. Titus 1, beginning in verse 1. 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, to Titus, my true child in a common faith, grace and peace from God the Father and Jesus Christ our Savior. If you're an English teacher or an otherwise an educator, you will notice that most of this is one giant run-on sentence. And he packs quite a bit into it. So we're gonna try and answer four questions this morning from Titus 1, 1 through 4. Very simple questions. The first is who is this guy? Who is the author of Titus? We need to know that because it's important to know the source. Where is he coming from? What's his background? How does he have the right to tell us what the good life is? Well, the book of Titus was written by a surrendered servant. A surrendered servant. This is how Paul introduces himself. Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ. Two titles. The first, well, we'll work sort of backwards, he calls himself an apostle. An apostle was a specially an especially charged and sent out messenger of Jesus. So Paul, along with the twelve disciples, are the apostles. And they were the ones who had learned from Jesus and who were then charged to take that message out into the first century. We didn't have the New Testament at that point. So this was all word of mouth. Jesus had taught them, and they were charged then to go to teach others about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the new life that could be offered through the transformation of our heart by accepting Jesus Christ as the leader and forgiver of our life, that his death on the cross is a substitutionary atonement. Jesus trades his perfection for our sinfulness and that entrance into the family of God only comes through faith in that Jesus. This is what Paul and the disciples, the apostles, the sent-out ones, are to do, to share this message and to start the church as we know it. But what's interesting is that Paul had spent very little time with Jesus. The other twelve, well, they spent upwards of three years with Jesus, learning from him, watching him do miracles, living with him, doing daily life with him. You would think, well, they're well prepared then to take this message and to and to share it with others. But Paul, during all of that time that the disciples and Jesus were spending time together, you know what Paul was doing? Paul was actually a part of the Pharisees. Paul was a part of the religious sect within Judaism that were constantly butting heads with Jesus. In fact, Paul was so convinced that Christianity and Jesus and his message were wrong that he had dedicated his life to arresting and killing anybody who claimed to follow Jesus. So, how did he get into the club? And why should we be listening to him to define what the good life is? Well, Paul, the story goes, that he was headed to a town called Damascus, where he was actually hunting down Christians. And on the road to Damascus, Jesus encounters Paul. We don't know if Jesus actually came back, if it was a vision. In some supernatural way, Jesus appears to Paul. And he asks him a really important question. Paul, why are you persecuting me? And Paul ends up being completely transformed by the power of God. In the matter of a couple of days, Paul goes from being the number one enemy of Jesus to being what he describes here: a servant of God, an apostle of Jesus Christ. And this is important for us to know because it actually has bearing not only on understanding Titus, but on understanding how we too are changed. See, Paul believed that the good life, Paul wasn't interested in the American dream. Paul wasn't interested in nice things and fancy cars and new houses. Paul was interested in being an elite in the religious world. He thought if I can be smarter than everyone, if I can pray more than everyone, if I can fast more than everyone, if I have better theology than everyone, then God will accept me. In fact, he had taken it to such a degree that he thought Jesus and Christianity were opposed to God. And so he was willing to go so far as to kill those that were following Jesus. Paul had a definition of the good life, and Jesus interrupts his life and completely transforms his heart and his mind in an instant. And Paul goes on to be one of the greatest church planters and theologians and preachers and missionaries that the world has ever seen. Now, why does it matter to you? Well, not only is it great that we can see a little bit of ourselves in Paul, but it's a wonderful reminder, just as we saw in the baptism pool this morning, that we don't get into God's family, we don't transform our lives, we don't have the hope of heaven because we can somehow earn it. Because we somehow deserve it. Because you or I woke up one day and thought, you know, I think I ought to start following Jesus today. I was talking with Alex just before we got into baptismal, and she said, it was just way too many years of doing things my way. And Jesus has done a transformative work in her life and in her heart. And that's how every single person changes. Sometimes, like maybe you've been in church for a long time and you know this. I know it. I know this truth. I know that I don't earn or deserve the grace of God. And yet, it seems every day and every week I can find myself getting back into a place where I'm trying to earn it, where I'm trying to be good enough, where where my theology slips in practicality, and I start thinking, well, maybe it's a little bit of God's grace and a little bit of God's mercy and a little bit of Joe's stick toitiveness. Paul reminds us here that if he is a servant, if he has been transformed to be a servant of God, then that is who we ought to be as well. You cannot modify your behavior enough to change your heart. You cannot turn over enough new leaves to fix the dead root of the sinfulness in our heart. Every one of us needs a genuine encounter with Jesus, where he takes away the old life and he gives us the new. Second question, why is it written? The aim, Paul's aim, is that Titus would be transformative. Paul's aim is not just for you to get some good information. Next week we're going to talk about church elders. And Pastor Rick, I was talking to him, Pastor Rick's preaching next week, and he goes, I don't want to go through every single item in church eldership. It's really easy to read. It's not about the information. Titus is not about just the information of church order. It really is about the good life and how these things change truly who we are at the deepest parts. So look again with me. Paul, a servant of God and 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 the hope of eternal life. This is loaded. I'm telling you, man, when you read Paul's introductions, when you are, you know, go into Philippians, going to Romans, don't sleep on the introduction. For the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness in the hope of eternal life. I remember when I came back from my first semester of my undergrad. I came back for Christmas break, and man, did I think that I was smart. I had just finished the first semester of my undergraduate degree, after all. And neither of my parents went to college. And so I was like, oh well, you wouldn't know that. Because you didn't go to college. Like, I remember, I I I still remember. I was such a jerk. And and I say that, like, I say that because the way that Paul lays out his argument here is really, really important. There are few incredible realities here that can either puff us up or they can humble us. And it's important that we get it right here in the beginning. A couple things. The faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth. I'm not here this morning to have an argument with you about the doctrine of election. It is all over the Bible. You've got to deal with God on that one. The issue, I think, that I want to speak about here in Titus is what is it that the doctrine of election produces in you? So the doctrine of election would say this. In its simplest terms, you did not choose God, God chose you. That your heart and my heart were sin sick and in rebellion against God, and that something had to happen in order for my heart to change, for what I love to change, to want God's way instead of my way. The Bible tells us that the Holy Spirit does a work of transformation. It takes something that was dead, spiritually dead, and makes it alive. That God does that work and then causes us to be freed from the bondage of sin and from our own selfishness such that we can respond to Him. So it's not that we don't have a role in it, it's who initiates that. Do you just wake up one day and think, well, I've got what it takes to make my way back to God? Or does God do a work in your heart where he shows you your need for him, takes out the old heart of stone, puts in a heart of flesh, so now you can see your need for him and repent in faith. That's in a nutshell the doctrine of election. It means that before the foundation of the world, based on nothing you had ever said or done, God chose you to be in his family. This is extraordinary truth. Each of us to some degree, there's some part of us that goes, mmm, I'm pretty lovable. I'm pretty likable. Surely God looked down the corridors of time and thought, man, that Andrew, like, he's the man. I want him for my team. Right? We we kind of think that way to some degree. But the doctrine of election says, no, no, no, no, no. Just God and his infinite wisdom, based on nothing you had ever done or said, invited you into his family and made a way through Jesus Christ for that to happen. And we can respond to that in one of two ways. We can, like Joe Valenti, after his sophomore or after his first semester as a freshman, think, well, I'm a really big deal. Which is a horrible response. Or we can allow the weight of that reality to land on our hearts and just be absolutely floored and humbled by it. I think of this all the time. God, why would you choose a knucklehead like me? And the answer is just according to his infinite wisdom and his sovereign plan. Nothing I did to her. I was running away from him intentionally. And in a moment changed my life, it can change my heart. What is the doctrine of election doing in your heart if you're a follower of Jesus? Here's what happens sometimes. We can become a Christian if Follower of Jesus, and then what we begin to do is expect other people to come to Jesus in a different way. I'm gonna use just briefly the issue of homosexuality as an example. Now, the Bible is really, really clear on all sorts of sexual sin. The church, in some ways, not our church necessarily, but the church holistically has kind of grabbed onto this issue. And what many churches have started to do is either one side or the other. One is you don't need to repent ever of your sexual sin, whether heterosexual or homosexual. On the other side of things, and this is this is where I want to get to my point, so many churches now are saying you need to change, and then God will accept you. That's not the gospel. Whether it's with that issue or another one, addiction, lying, you you pick your issue. The gospel is not change, and then God will accept you. That's heresy. Come to Jesus, He'll figure it out. I guarantee if you come to Jesus, if you're truly transformed in the heart, he will figure out, he will change who you desire to sleep with, what you desire to do with your money, where you want to hang out, how you treat your spouse. This is so, so important that we understand the nature of the gospel clearly. It is not nor has ever been or will ever be. Get your life figured out, and then you'll be welcome in God's family. Oh, goodness gracious. May we never be that way. But that's what sometimes happens. We allow this doctrine of election. I've been chosen and I'm a Christian, and now I have expectations on other people that God does not have. Well, you need to change, then you can be welcome at my church. May God guard us from that false gospel, and may CVC be a place where everyone is always welcome to come in these doors, and we trust our sovereign God to transform hearts, just like he did with Paul and just like he has done with those of us in the room. The second thing that happens is the danger of knowledge. So we can be puffed up by just the fact that we're elect, that we're in, that we're in God's family, then we can get we can get puffed up with knowledge. For the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth. Which accords with godliness. That's the other thing that happens in the church. Is we think, well, if I have all of the Bible knowledge, I'm holy. Wrong answer. What Paul is aiming at here, again, is knowledge. So here's here's here's the movement of his thought. The faith, trusting Jesus Christ of God's elect. So what election should be is it humbles us. What does it humble us under? It humbles us under his word, the knowledge of his elect. Why? So that we might live differently. Which accords with godliness. See, one of the dangers in the church is knowledge accumulation without knowledge application. I know what I'm supposed to do. I just get out of church and go into Monday. I don't want to do it. And Paul's reminding us here that's not why Titus is here. Titus is not here so that you could get a different definition of the good life. Titus is here so that you can actually so that your affections would be changed, your thinking would be changed, and you would actually embrace the good life and live differently. Spend your time differently, spend your money differently. Things that come out of your mouth are different, things that you think, things that you watch. This is the aim of Titus. We are in such grave danger that that pride would swell up in us. And we begin to think that I'm a pretty big deal and I'm pretty smart, just like one semester Joe Valenti. And then he says, Man, his thought process, which accords with godliness in hope of eternal life. So this is where Paul's aiming. Want you to have faith as God's elect, that you would be humbled by that election, that you would come under God's word, that it would transform your heart and your mind so that you would live differently, because that's the root of your hope of eternity. See, otherwise, if you if you if you don't get the order of Paul's giant run-on sentence, you miss the foundation that gives you and I the hope of eternity. What guarantees that you'll be in heaven someday? We battle with this all the time. I don't know. Am I in or am I out? We're scared. Well, the root here, Paul gives to us. See, if the good life is about accumulating religious information, I got really smart at church. I know all the answers in Bible study and Sunday school. I got I got really, really smart. Well, then, if that's the case, the bedrock of your assurance is the capacity of your brain to remember things. I literally, the last service, I said a sentence and then I asked everybody in the room, what did I just say? I am not kidding. I I was I was talking about something and I paused and my mind had gotten tangled up because I was looking at my notes and I got lost a little bit, and I just like, I don't know what I just said. What did I just say? And and Santina Murphy goes, Um, you just said that we were gonna start doing that in September. I go, thank you. Thank you, Santina. Can you imagine if the if the if the bedrock, if the foundation, if the hope of your eternity is based on how well your mind functions? What you can remember when you're 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, good luck. Or if the good life is about our moral performance, then your eternity is not based on the capacity of your mind, but the strength of your will. Ha! This is where bad theology leads. This is where we get to at the end of the road. We find this is why we get worried. This is why, when somebody asks you the question on a scale of one to ten, if you were to stand before God today and he would say, Why should I let you into my heaven? You so many people go, Mmm, I don't want to be overzealous and say ten. I also can't go to the other side and say one. So we're gonna swim in the four to seven range. That sounds really good. This is that's where bad theology leads to people who don't know, who don't have any security in their salvation, because it's somehow tied to my brain or my willpower. When the gospel is tied to the finished work of Jesus, that we might be humbled under the reality of our being chosen to be in God's family, under his word, which accords with life change, godliness, in the hope of eternal life. Whew, I have two more points. I'm sorry I got out of hand on that one. We're gonna move quickly. Number three, on what grounds? So, on what grounds is like if we're building our eternity on this, what's the what's the down payment? What's the grounds? What's the what's the what's the bedrock under all of this? How can I make sure that this works? Maybe that's the question. How can I make sure that that works? I don't want to get to the end and go, puh, we were wrong about that. The grounds is an unbreakable promise. Look again at verse 2, in the hope of eternal life, which God who never lies, promised before the ages began. This is gonna blow your socks off. The actual Greek is that God promised before times eternal. See, I think if if I were to ask you like the trivia question, where do the promises of God begin? You might be like, eh, I know that one. Genesis 3. In Genesis 3, Adam and Eve sinned, God pronounces a curse, and then he sneaks this promise in that that the offspring of the woman will crush the head of the snake. Got it? A plus. I think that's maybe where we think the promises of God begin. But that's not what Titus tells us. Titus tells us that the foundation of our faith, the hope of eternity, that all of this works, is actually built into the fact that God, who never lies, made a promise in times eternal. So before he even spoke the Son into existence, before he separated land and sea, before Adam and Eve or you were even a figment of God's plan, in times eternal, God was never created, he was always existent into eternity past. Think about that all afternoon, that'll blow your brain apart. Somewhere back there, God in perfect harmony, Father, Son, and Spirit, made a promise and a plan. They knew it all from the very beginning, that they would build that which is beautiful and good and glorious, and that humans would ruin it, but out of the overflow of their great love and grace, that they would send Jesus, the Father would send Jesus to live the life we could never live, to die the death we deserve to die, to raise from the grave, to give us the hope of new life, both now and forever, and send his spirit into the people that he had then saved, so that they might continue to tell more people. That he would in the end win against death and against evil in eternity past. Yeah. If you want to just think about the goodness and the grandeur and the glory and the sovereignty of God, read the first few verses of Titus and just meditate on it. Try and figure that out. That in eternity past, God looked to eternity future into the book of Revelation. We'll study it this September. The plan is that at the center of the book of Revelation is not a timeline or figuring out what world powers are happening. At the center of the book of race of Revelation is that Jesus Christ, the lion and the lamb, has overcome, and he wins, and he will finally do away with evil, and he will usher all of those that are in his family into the new creation where we will live with him forever. In eternity past, God planned it all. If that doesn't humble you, I don't know what will. This is the grounds of this is the ground of believing that God's definition of the good life is actually true. Finally. How? So who? A surrendered servant, why, a transformed life, on what grounds? An unbreakable promise. How? With a powerful word. In the 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. There are a lot of ways that we get information. Maybe you like to read books, maybe you like to watch YouTube videos, maybe you're into lectures, maybe you're into iTunes U, maybe you like to have good conversations with smart people. There are a lot of ways that we can consume information. Information in Christianity is really, really good. I don't want to take anything away from education. It's really important. We need the right content. Preaching is something uniquely different than just information transfer. God has ordained preaching, and it's a little weird for me to talk about this because I happen to be the one preaching it. But God has ordained the proclamation of his word to his people as one of the primary ways for life transformation and heart transformation to happen. I don't know why. God in his infinite plan has made it to be so. We see it in the life of Jesus, we see it with the Old Testament prophets, we see it with Paul, and he commends it to Titus. This is how the church should function. Because we are prone, as I've mentioned many times before, we are prone to forget the truths that are in this book. And so gathering together with like-minded believers in different stages of life and sitting under the preaching of God's word is one of the core ways that God has ordained to transform our lives and our hearts. See, Paul's really answering the question: well, if all of this stuff is true, in these first two and a half verses, how do I learn it all? And how do I learn it all in a way that's truly transformational? The proclaiming, the preaching of the word of God, because hopefully something supernatural is happening when myself or whoever else steps into this pulpit. It's not just me transferring information to you, it is the power of God working through the Spirit, and he just happens to use me or Rick or Tony or Dean or who else to do that. And there is something, is there not, to sitting under the preaching of the word that is a supernatural experience. Preaching is not a lecture designed to fill our notebooks with information, though we can fill our notebooks with information. It is a proclamation designed to confront our heart and experience the living God. And so that's why we continue to do this on Sunday mornings, and not to do it some other way. Because we believe Paul not only says it to Titus here, but he says it to Timothy as well. Keep preaching the word, proclaiming it because that is God's plan to encourage and change his people by his word. Church. See, here's the problem. Here's the problem that Paul's trying to solve and that we're trying to solve in this series. The world's version of the good life is fickle. And it fades. Everybody knows that moment. Howard, you guys know this moment. You just had to come back from vacation. Right? Vacation's over. And now we gotta dr now we gotta drive back 20 hours from Disney World. And I'm more tired than I was when I left on vacation. The company that gave you the raise, you're flying high for a few months, now falls on difficult times, and they have to downsize. The scholarship that you were so excited about, you're gonna go play soccer at Ashland University or Cedarville. You blow out your knee in the last couple weeks of your senior year, and the scholarship is gone. You can sing like an angel, and all of a sudden you've got a problem with your voice, and your whole life has changed. You thought it was gonna be your mind. Oh, you're smart, you're gonna be an engineer, or you are an engineer, and that's the way that you're gonna get ahead, and then all of a sudden you start misremembering things and your engineering career is over before you thought it was going to be. If your definition, if our definition of the good life can be taken away with a phone call from your boss, or a letter in the mail, or an accident on the football field, then it's not really the good life. The good life that Titus has for you is being humbled by being God's elect and your knowledge of the truth which accords with godliness, the foundation, the hope of eternal life, which God who never lies, promised before the ages began. That, my brothers and sisters, is the good life. And my hope and prayer is that throughout Titus, you will begin not only to know that, but to believe it and live it out in your daily life. Let's pray. Jesus, we I think of the old hymn, I need thee every hour. Because every hour I am prone to wander. I'm prone to foolishness. I am prone, Joe Valenti will be tempted today to walk out those doors and start buying in again to the world's vision of the good life. I'll get on Wallings Road and I'll see somebody drive by in a really nice car, and I'll be tempted to think that's the good life. I'll be cruising down the street and see a nice new build on the side of the road and think, oh man, if I could just have that house, that's the good life. I'll see an Instagram post of friends that are going on vacation, and I'll think, if I could only go there, that's the good life. These, you have given us all good things, but all of these good things are not ultimate. And Satan, Lord, we know that Satan would take good gifts like friends and family, like a home or a good meal, or a scholarship, or a raise, that Satan would take those good things and would slyly manipulate our hearts and our minds to think that those things are ultimate, such that our affections would chase after them and run after them and leave you, Jesus, at the bottom of our priority list. May it never be. And so, God, by the preaching of your word and the power of your spirit, as we walk through this summer series, might you redefine the good life and might everything about our lives be changed because of it? We ask this in Jesus' powerful name. Amen.