Doug McMasters: Take your Bible to go to the book of Titus.
Doug McMasters: The book of Titus.
Doug McMasters: We're going to hear that for the next few weeks.
Doug McMasters: We're just beginning today our study on the book of Titus.
Doug McMasters: And I want you to see this in context.
Doug McMasters: This is not just a book chosen randomly, but that it's a book that follows what we've been looking at for the past several years.
Doug McMasters: Four years ago, we started a study on the book of Matthew.
Doug McMasters: And as we went through the Gospel of Matthew, we walked with Jesus through his incarnation, through his teaching, through the demonstrations of his compassion and his miraculous power.
Doug McMasters: We walked with him through his suffering, his death, and his resurrection.
Doug McMasters: As we went through the Gospel of Matthew, we saw the servant of God revealed in all of those ways.
Doug McMasters: That God's promises were standing before us in flesh and blood, God incarnate.
Doug McMasters: After we finished Matthew, we stepped into the book of Isaiah, a book many of us had never ever really explored in depth.
Doug McMasters: And there, amidst all of its poetry and prophecy, we saw the Savior promised.
Doug McMasters: Not revealed, but promised.
Doug McMasters: We listened to God as he spoke to his people in the midst of their confusion, their bewilderment, their disobedience, their fear, their alliances, their idolatry.
Doug McMasters: We understood that God was speaking his sovereignty not only over them, but also over the nations.
Doug McMasters: And as we went through Isaiah, we also discovered something about the servant, the servant of God who was coming.
Doug McMasters: And his identity as we went through Isaiah became clearer and clearer.
Doug McMasters: He would be the one who would do what Israel would not and could not do.
Doug McMasters: He would be the one who would restore not only his people, but also gather the nations.
Doug McMasters: And he would be the one who would save by his suffering.
Doug McMasters: And yet his suffering wasn't the end of the story.
Doug McMasters: He would be exalted, and so also would be his people.
Doug McMasters: So over the past four years, we've seen two aspects of the servant.
Doug McMasters: We saw him promised in Isaiah, we saw him revealed in the book of Matthew.
Doug McMasters: And now we book turn to the book of Titus, a short pastoral work.
Doug McMasters: But in this, we're going to see something about the servant also.
Doug McMasters: We're going to see the servant embodied in his people.
Doug McMasters: If Matthew shows us the king who came near and Isaiah shows us the servant who is coming to save, Titus shows us what it looks like for a community of people that are formed by the gospel, where the servant embodies them and his life takes root in their lives.
Doug McMasters: Titus will show us what grace does when it trains the people.
Doug McMasters: It'll show us what the servant's life is like when it's visible in our households, when it's visible in our church life, when it's visible in our workplaces, when it's visible in our friendships, when it's visible in every way we conduct ourselves.
Doug McMasters: There were older men and younger men.
Doug McMasters: There were older women and younger women.
Doug McMasters: There were people who were masters of their households, and others who were servants within their households.
Doug McMasters: There were people that had responsibility over jobs, and all of them had a reputation in town.
Doug McMasters: And at the center of all of that was one commonality that they and we are people whose lives have been shaped by the gospel.
Doug McMasters: That all of us are being trained by grace to be a people zealous for good works and always watchful for the realization of our blessed hope, the coming and appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: And just like the church there that Titus was serving, we need to learn some things.
Doug McMasters: We need to learn, as they did, what the embodiment of our Savior means to us.
Doug McMasters: And that when the gospel reigns over his people, it also brings order.
Doug McMasters: We are a church that needs to be filled with truth, just like they were.
Doug McMasters: We're a church that needs to be anchored by stable and godly leadership, just like they needed to be.
Doug McMasters: We need to be a church like they who understand that we who are older have a responsibility to those in the congregation who are younger.
Doug McMasters: We need to be a church that understands within our households what the beauty of grace looks like as we conduct ourselves as the people of God.
Doug McMasters: We're a church that needs to know that godliness affects our family, godliness affects our work, and godliness will have an influence in our wider society.
Doug McMasters: Titus will show us all of that.
Doug McMasters: As we read the book of Titus together and study it together, I want you to see it as much, much more than just a letter from one church leader to another church leader.
Doug McMasters: We call it the past one of the pastoral epistles.
Doug McMasters: And sometimes we think, well, I'm not a church leader.
Doug McMasters: What business do I have to pay attention to this book?
Doug McMasters: But it's a letter filled with practical wisdom.
Doug McMasters: It's a letter that helps our lives be aligned with the gospel of Christ.
Doug McMasters: And so, as Paul brings us into this, as he starts his letter to Titus, he begins with what is the longest introduction in any of the pastoral epistles.
Doug McMasters: This is different than how he writes to Timothy.
Doug McMasters: And all of this is going to matter, as you'll see, because before Paul talks to Titus about what needs to be done in the church, before he talks about elders, before he talks about households, before he talks about good works, he establishes four verses that lay out for us a framework for how to understand everything that comes in the three chapters of Titus.
Doug McMasters: Let's read those four verses together.
Doug McMasters: Paul is servant of God and apostle of Jesus Christ, for the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness, in the hope of eternal life that God who cannot lie promised before time began.
Doug McMasters: In his own time he has revealed his word in the preaching with which I was entrusted, 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.
Doug McMasters: This is not how we normally open up our letters.
Doug McMasters: Our letters are often filled with just a personal welcome, maybe a hope that you're doing well kind of statement.
Doug McMasters: But what we're entering into here is much, much more than just those sort of perfunctory statements or even sincere remarks that we might put at the top of a letter.
Doug McMasters: Paul is giving Titus and us a lens through which we are to see everything in this book.
Doug McMasters: Every conversation, every appointment of an elder, every correction of false teaching, every moment of order within the household of faith.
Doug McMasters: It's all wrapped up in these four verses.
Doug McMasters: Why?
Doug McMasters: Why does he do this?
Doug McMasters: Well, before Titus can be strengthened to lead the church in Crete, he must remember whose representative he is.
Doug McMasters: Before the people are going to be formed by the truth, they need to know what that truth is.
Doug McMasters: Before they're going to stand firm in the middle of a deceptive culture, they need to be able to rest in a hope that comes from a God who does not lie.
Doug McMasters: Before we can live as people who are trained by grace, we need to see how that grace has come through the merciful, loving activity of God our Savior.
Doug McMasters: And before we can live together as a church in unity, we need to know what the common bond is of us as God's people.
Doug McMasters: So all of this comes in these four verses.
Doug McMasters: Paul gives all of us this before he provides us any command.
Doug McMasters: He wants us to begin with what God is doing and what God is building.
Doug McMasters: So let's look at these four verses as a blueprint, if you will, for what it means to be a faithful church.
Doug McMasters: A blueprint for a faithful church.
Doug McMasters: And as we go through these, we'll see that the blueprint leads us to understand that a faithful church is one that is formed by God's truth, that is grounded in God's hope, and is shaped by God's gospel.
Doug McMasters: Now, those won't be my three points of the message, but they are really going to bleed through all of the points.
Doug McMasters: So the first thing that God does in order to build a faithful church is he sends a faithful messenger.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verse 1 in the first part.
Doug McMasters: Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: Paul begins this letter to Titus by telling him who he is.
Doug McMasters: Now he doesn't do this to elevate himself.
Doug McMasters: Don't you know, Titus, I'm an apostle and you're not?
Doug McMasters: But to anchor everything that he's about to say to Titus.
Doug McMasters: Because before Titus hears all the instructions he's about to receive, he needs to hear this.
Doug McMasters: He needs to hear that where the source is of the message that he's about to carry into the life of the body.
Doug McMasters: And Paul does that by introducing two titles, two titles that hold a very significant weight.
Doug McMasters: He begins by calling himself a servant of God.
Doug McMasters: He's actually owned by God, and he is meant to do the bidding of God, that he belongs to God, that he's bound to God, and that he is commissioned by God himself.
Doug McMasters: And Paul, by stating this, is putting himself in the line of Moses and Paul or David and men who spoke, the prophets, and even the Lord Jesus himself who took up that servant role.
Doug McMasters: He's not operating on his own authority for his own purposes and his own will and his own desires.
Doug McMasters: He's serving God in all that he's doing.
Doug McMasters: So when Paul writes to Titus, he's not writing as a strategist or he's not writing as some sort of church consultant.
Doug McMasters: He's writing as one who belongs to God himself.
Doug McMasters: And that comes across in the next title that he offers.
Doug McMasters: He's not only a servant of God, he's an apostle of Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: And this is the other side of the identity.
Doug McMasters: Paul is not only under God's authority, but he is also commissioned with Christ's authority, as he offers these instructions.
Doug McMasters: He is one who is commissioned by the risen Lord Jesus himself.
Doug McMasters: And so what he's offering to Titus, and what Titus is to bring into the life of the church, and what we're to receive in this letter that's passed down to us, is that these things are not mere personal preferences, or ministry ideas, or things that are doable because they work, as though simply being functional was the focus.
Doug McMasters: What we're receiving is the authoritative directives of God Himself through his appointed means.
Doug McMasters: And that would mean a lot for Titus because when Titus comes to Crete and serves this church and serves among this community, he's going to face a mountain of difficulties.
Doug McMasters: He is going to face an island that's marked by instability, that's marked by confusion, that's marked by deception.
Doug McMasters: He needed something to cut through all of that.
Doug McMasters: He's going to face resistance inside and outside the church.
Doug McMasters: He's going to have to confront false teachers who are already in there and bar them from coming in if they're on the outside.
Doug McMasters: He's going to help to establish order within the households that are there and try to encourage the believers toward godliness.
Doug McMasters: And what he needed to know that when he was serving this word, he was doing more than just representing himself and his wishes and desires.
Doug McMasters: He was not trying to stamp his influence on the body, but God's Himself.
Doug McMasters: Now the church here needed it too.
Doug McMasters: They needed to realize that when they listened to Titus, they weren't just listening to him.
Doug McMasters: Yes, it had his tone, it had his inflection, it had his vocabulary, it came out of his mouth, and it looked just like him.
Doug McMasters: But what it was was actually the very word of God.
Doug McMasters: That God was speaking to bring his order to bear in their life.
Doug McMasters: So Paul is here giving in these two titles a stabilizing force to a young minister and to a church that needs to be mature.
Doug McMasters: And we need it today.
Doug McMasters: We need to understand that what we're receiving today as we go through Titus comes from a person who is a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: Because we live in a world in which truth is simply personal preference.
Doug McMasters: You've got your truth, I've got my truth, none of us have truth, what is truth?
Doug McMasters: And we sound like Pontius Pilate all over again.
Doug McMasters: And what we need to remember is that this word that's meant to shape us doesn't originate from us.
Doug McMasters: This is something that God has given to us.
Doug McMasters: And yes, it's going to cut through the shifting winds of our culture.
Doug McMasters: It's meant to be counter-cultural.
Doug McMasters: And we also need to know that God has given this in order to shape those who are going to be in places of influence among us, that those who lead must be, first of all, servants of God before they carry the authority of Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: And so this is not only for Titus and the church in Crete and us as a whole, but it's also a message for each of us as believers.
Doug McMasters: Because each of us go into this world, and there are two things that we should think about ourselves as we go out.
Doug McMasters: I am a servant of God, and I am commissioned by Jesus to be his representative.
Doug McMasters: That we are the church embodied, we are the servant embodied in our society.
Doug McMasters: And so we go out, not simply saying, This is my faith that I want to introduce you to, this is my lifestyle that I think would be better for you, that we are actually presenting God Himself to this world.
Doug McMasters: If you're here this morning or maybe listening later, these opening lines tell us something.
Doug McMasters: They tell us God is not silent, that he speaks into our day, and that he speaks into our day through a message that he gives people just like us.
Doug McMasters: And that he has sent us a wonderful word.
Doug McMasters: It's called the gospel, which means good news, that he sent us Jesus Christ into this world.
Doug McMasters: And we'll talk more about him, but we need to know that this message is not just a message among messages in this world.
Doug McMasters: This is God's word being declared to every one of us.
Doug McMasters: So let's keep going through this.
Doug McMasters: Not only does God form a faithful church by sending faithful messengers, but he forms a faithful church through the truth.
Doug McMasters: Through the truth.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verse 1 and the second part of it.
Doug McMasters: Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness.
Doug McMasters: Now, Paul has just identified himself as a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, but now in this second part he tells us why he serves and why he's been sent.
Doug McMasters: His ministry exists for this purpose, and Titus' ministry exists for this purpose, and all who minister the word, their ministry exists for this purpose.
Doug McMasters: For the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness.
Doug McMasters: That's why we have ministers of the gospel.
Doug McMasters: Because God is affecting through that ministry two key things.
Doug McMasters: First of all, it is meant to bring about the faith of God's elect.
Doug McMasters: Faith, contrary to the way we talk about it in our generation, is not some vague spirituality.
Doug McMasters: It's not some general belief about God.
Doug McMasters: It is not a personal ideal.
Doug McMasters: My faith.
Doug McMasters: What he's talking about here is the faith that God awakens within the heart.
Doug McMasters: A dependence that rests upon Jesus Christ as the only Lord and Savior.
Doug McMasters: And a reception of his promises, of the forgiveness of sins and the hope of eternal life.
Doug McMasters: The receiving of God's love and mercy so that we are no longer condemned but children.
Doug McMasters: Titus is to remember that when he serves the word, when he offers them these truths, that he's serving among a body that is chosen and called and brought to God for himself.
Doug McMasters: These are not simply people to leverage for his purposes or to stand over as if he could exercise his authority in order to gain some influence, not only among them, but among a wider populace.
Doug McMasters: He is actually representing God, he is bringing God's truth, and he is serving God's people.
Doug McMasters: But it also tells us something here.
Doug McMasters: This is the faith of God's elect, God's chosen ones.
Doug McMasters: And this should comfort us because it tells us that our salvation is not fragile.
Doug McMasters: It's God given, God granted, God sourced, God awakened.
Doug McMasters: He is the one who provides it.
Doug McMasters: And our identity as his people is now rooted in God's eternal purposes.
Doug McMasters: And he goes on to tell us in this second part that the faith of God's elect comes through their knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness.
Doug McMasters: Now, this is one of the most important phrases in the whole letter.
Doug McMasters: If you wanted to get one phrase, if you will, that would stamp the identity of the whole book of Titus, it would be this phrase right here.
Doug McMasters: The knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness.
Doug McMasters: What is Paul saying here?
Doug McMasters: He's saying something that a lot of us forget is that truth and godliness are inseparable.
Doug McMasters: Inseparable.
Doug McMasters: Truth that is merely known but not lived is not truth in a biblical sense.
Doug McMasters: And godliness that is not rooted in truth is no godliness at all.
Doug McMasters: This pairing of truth and godliness is the backbone of Titus.
Doug McMasters: It explains why elders must hold the sound doctrine.
Doug McMasters: It explains why false teachers are so dangerous.
Doug McMasters: It explains why older believers, men and women, have responsibility toward the younger to train them up in specific ways.
Doug McMasters: It explains to us why godliness in our homes matters.
Doug McMasters: And it explains why good works in every sphere of life is essential.
Doug McMasters: Why?
Doug McMasters: Because God forms his people through truth.
Doug McMasters: A truth that is meant and does, if it's received, shape their character, changes their speech, revises their habits, forms their relationships, and gives them strength in every step of their conduct.
Doug McMasters: This is essential.
Doug McMasters: Church at Crete needed it because they were living among a society where deception was normative, where moral boundaries were fluid, and where religious ideas were mixed and confused.
Doug McMasters: Does that sound like us?
Doug McMasters: It does, doesn't it?
Doug McMasters: We live in the same kind of culture where deception, where fluidity of morals, where religious ideas are just simply opinions.
Doug McMasters: They needed to cut through all of that.
Doug McMasters: What did that church need?
Doug McMasters: They needed an anchor of truth.
Doug McMasters: And they needed an anchor of truth that was going to affect their life so that they could live distinctly the middle of that society.
Doug McMasters: They needed a truth that was going to confront them before they confronted anybody else.
Doug McMasters: They needed the truth that was going to produce with them a distinctly Christian life before they called others to a different kind of lifestyle themselves.
Doug McMasters: We need this.
Doug McMasters: Sadly, our world thinks that truth is just a personal preference, that feelings are something that are actually more important than scripture itself.
Doug McMasters: And where godliness is just reduced to being, you know, a nice person or a sincere person.
Doug McMasters: Sometimes godliness looks rather rough and rugged.
Doug McMasters: But we need to know that that truth and that godliness are in that moment to be displayed that way.
Doug McMasters: And so what this is telling us is that our discipleship is not simply information, it's actually about transformation.
Doug McMasters: It's truth that changes us, truth that leads us to be more like our God and our Savior.
Doug McMasters: And so the truth that God gives us is a truth that leads us to see this world like He sees it, a truth that calls us to love the things that He loves.
Doug McMasters: A truth that calls us to reject the things that He rejects.
Doug McMasters: And so we can live a life that reflects His character.
Doug McMasters: And so as we go through this, we need to be constantly submitting ourselves to this truth that leads to godliness, to be shaped by it.
Doug McMasters: And so it's my responsibility and all who stand behind this pulpit to make sure that that truth is uttered clearly, that it's uttered firmly, and that it's lived visibly, so that you have not only the sound of it and the understanding of it, but you also have the model of it.
Doug McMasters: So you know how you can conduct yourself.
Doug McMasters: If you're not a follower of Jesus Christ yet, these words speak to you as well, because this is a message about people that God has called into relationship with himself, not based upon any works of righteousness that they have done, but as we'll see in Titus, according to his wondrous mercy.
Doug McMasters: And this message of truth that leads to godliness, even though godliness might seem the furthest thing from your life right now, is something God has already acted and enacted in every person here who's a member of New High Park Baptist Church.
Doug McMasters: And he can do it in your life too.
Doug McMasters: He can bring that truth in a moment into your life and radically, radically transform you.
Doug McMasters: Now let's continue on.
Doug McMasters: We see that in order to form a faithful church, God sends faithful messengers.
Doug McMasters: He forms his people through the truth, but he also grounds them in eternal hope.
Doug McMasters: Look at verse 2.
Doug McMasters: In the hope of eternal life that God, who cannot lie, promised before time began.
Doug McMasters: Paul, who identified himself by titles, Paul, who talks about the why of his ministry, has spoken about faith and truth, but now he sets our eyes on hope.
Doug McMasters: And it's not just a hope-so hope.
Doug McMasters: It is the hope of eternal life.
Doug McMasters: And it is a hope of eternal life that is anchored in the character of God who cannot lie.
Doug McMasters: That's the heartbeat of our Christian life and hope.
Doug McMasters: This is the anchor that holds us steady in all the winds and waves and movements of our age.
Doug McMasters: It's an anchor the churches needed there on Crete, and it's an anchor we need.
Doug McMasters: Paul says this hope was promised before time began.
Doug McMasters: But here is a promise of eternal life that God has already established for those or His chosen elect, that they might believe and they might be anchored in an eternal hope because it comes not out of circumstances, but out of God's eternal plan and purposes before time ever began.
Doug McMasters: Promise before time began.
Doug McMasters: Capture that thought.
Doug McMasters: Your hope was established before a watch was ever needed.
Doug McMasters: Your hope is older than the world.
Doug McMasters: Your hope is older than your sin, older than your failures, older than your doubts.
Doug McMasters: That's how strong your hope is.
Doug McMasters: And your hope's not going to waver because of those things, because it's anchored in the God who cannot lie.
Doug McMasters: Our hope is not an answer to human brokenness.
Doug McMasters: Our hope is the expression of the eternal God.
Doug McMasters: And so this is not just a theological statement, and it's a great one.
Doug McMasters: It's a pastoral one for us.
Doug McMasters: This church on an island known for deception, whose own poets talked about it, where lies were normal, where promises were cheap, where words were nothing but slippery ways to manipulate.
Doug McMasters: They needed to be anchored in something.
Doug McMasters: And Paul says, You can be anchored in this.
Doug McMasters: The God who does not lie, who made the heavens and the earth, has already called you to himself and granted you an eternal anchor of hope of life.
Doug McMasters: And he gives it to you because he's God who does not exaggerate, he's a God who doesn't deceive, he's a God who doesn't mislead, he's a God who tells you the truth.
Doug McMasters: And when he says you have an eternal hope, it's a certainty.
Doug McMasters: It's a certainty.
Doug McMasters: And this hope is meant to structure us, as we'll see.
Doug McMasters: It's the foundation beneath which we live our lives.
Doug McMasters: It's the shape how we endure our sufferings.
Doug McMasters: We do so because we have an eternal hope.
Doug McMasters: It shapes how we resist temptation, because we have an eternal hope of a life with God.
Doug McMasters: It shapes how we persevere, because at the end of it all, we will be with God Himself.
Doug McMasters: It shapes how we live in this world, as unstable and as untrue as it is, because we will have our feet planted in the presence of God in an unshakable eternal kingdom.
Doug McMasters: So hope is not a feeling.
Doug McMasters: It's actually a reality we're meant to stand on.
Doug McMasters: And this hope explains the urgency of this entire letter.
Doug McMasters: Why is Paul so concerned that elders need to be godly?
Doug McMasters: Because the church needs to be anchored in the truth.
Doug McMasters: Why must false teachers be silenced?
Doug McMasters: Because their lies are going to destabilize these people who should be anchored in the truth.
Doug McMasters: Why must older men and women teach younger men and women how to be godly?
Doug McMasters: Because they need to establish for their generation what a display of this eternal hope looks like in every aspect of life.
Doug McMasters: Why must believers adorn the doctrine of God, our Savior?
Doug McMasters: Because we are meant to reflect the hope that we live in.
Doug McMasters: Joyful, stable, consistent, faithful people.
Doug McMasters: The middle of our world that's filled with uncertainty of all sorts: economic instability, cultural confusion, relational fractures, people filled with personal anxieties, where we live in the world where the papers are talking about the escalation of war and the disruption of world trade, we are a people who are steady, stable, anchored in hope from a God that does not lie.
Doug McMasters: So no matter what shifts, our careers, our relationships, our health, the political outcomes of the elections that we go through, personal achievements that we gain or miss out on, no matter what those might look like, we are people that are built not on those shifts, but on the truth of God's hope.
Doug McMasters: So take encouragement from this.
Doug McMasters: That your hearts are being given grace from God.
Doug McMasters: That's not dependent and fragile.
Doug McMasters: It isn't based upon your outcomes.
Doug McMasters: It doesn't waver because of your failures.
Doug McMasters: It's not threatened by your weaknesses, it's not overthrown by your circumstances.
Doug McMasters: It rests on God who keeps his word, who does not lie, who can not lie.
Doug McMasters: That's beautiful, isn't it?
Doug McMasters: It's just absolutely glorious.
Doug McMasters: And if you're here this morning, you don't know Christ is your savior, this should give you some hope.
Doug McMasters: Because what happens after death is not based upon how much you might be filling yourself with wishful thinking about what it could look like.
Doug McMasters: You're not here to try to drum up some religious optimism and think you could rest your soul, your eternal soul, upon it.
Doug McMasters: This is the promise of eternal life from a God who is the judge of all of us, who means to save the worst of us.
Doug McMasters: He means to give us a real life, a lasting life, a continuous life, an eternal life in his very presence without condemnation, but nothing but eternal joy.
Doug McMasters: And he invites you to trust him, to receive this promise of life that's found only in Christ Jesus through his death on the cross, by simply believing on Christ Himself.
Doug McMasters: You can be a partaker of this eternal hope.
Doug McMasters: Let's continue through these four verses.
Doug McMasters: Paul establishes a faithful church by, first of all, sending faithful messengers, by forming people through the truth, by grounding them in eternal hope, but also through the revelation of his saving word in verse 3.
Doug McMasters: In his own time, that's God, he has revealed his word in the preaching with which I was entrusted by the command of God our Savior.
Doug McMasters: He says that God has chosen the opportune moment in which this word would be revealed, and done so in his own time.
Doug McMasters: But what it tells us is that God is never hurried and God is never reactive, that he goes about doing his plan according to his divine purposes and counsel, apart from circumstances and apart from situations.
Doug McMasters: He's not a God who simply responds to all the complexity of human life.
Doug McMasters: He's a God who speaks over all the complexities of human life.
Doug McMasters: He's a God who is sovereign and in control of even the distribution of his grace.
Doug McMasters: This gospel doesn't appear randomly, it doesn't appear accidentally, and it isn't a knee-jerk response to human rebellion.
Doug McMasters: It's something God has ordered in a time frame in which he sees fit to bring about.
Doug McMasters: And how does he reveal this saving message through the foolishness of preaching?
Doug McMasters: Foolishness of preaching.
Doug McMasters: The very simple fact that there is one person who has received and embodied the truth, expressing it to another person, so that they might hear that message and find it taking root and implanting life in their heart as well.
Doug McMasters: God saves people through the proclamation of his word.
Doug McMasters: And boy, don't we need to hear that time and time and time again.
Doug McMasters: Because it's so easy to think, well, perhaps God needs our ingenuity, or perhaps God needs our our cle cleverness, or perhaps God needs us to have a certain atmosphere that will make everybody feel like they're part of something large and glorious.
Doug McMasters: It doesn't come through human speculation, it doesn't come through mystical experience, it doesn't come through human discovery, it doesn't come through ecstatic emotional experiences, it comes through preaching, it comes through the clear, authoritative declaration that this is what God is doing in Christ.
Doug McMasters: And Paul says here that this preaching was something that he was entrusted with.
Doug McMasters: That word entrusted carries the idea of stewardship.
Doug McMasters: Paul was saying here in this phrase that he didn't invent this message.
Doug McMasters: He's not going to modify it, he's not going to soften it, he received it, and it's his responsibility to carry it and to deliver it as it was given to him.
Doug McMasters: It was entrusted to him.
Doug McMasters: And he was done so by the command of God, our Savior.
Doug McMasters: What does that tell us?
Doug McMasters: The gospel is not a suggestion, the gospel is not good advice.
Doug McMasters: The gospel is something divinely commissioned by God Himself in order to enact his purposes in time and space in order to deliver people from their eternal damnation and to grant them the hope of eternal life.
Doug McMasters: And so, in the middle of a place where Titus was, with all of the voices that were trying to command attention, false teachers and cultural influencers and religious speculators, Titus needed to know that the message that God was going to bless was the simple, glorious statement of Christ as Savior and Lord.
Doug McMasters: That through the death of Christ and the resurrection of Christ, people can be transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light.
Doug McMasters: And we need that today.
Doug McMasters: We need to understand that the gospel is not going to be bettered by our innovation, it's the very word of God that is revealed at the right time.
Doug McMasters: God means to save, and he means to form, and he means to train and to produce godliness through that word.
Doug McMasters: So we live in a day with all the voices that are speaking, people that are speaking in podcasts and on video logs, influencers, commentators, experts, entertainers, and they're all loud because they want to they want to get a following.
Doug McMasters: And many of them are persuasive.
Doug McMasters: But there's only one voice that saves.
Doug McMasters: It is the voice of God in the message of Christ.
Doug McMasters: It's the only one.
Doug McMasters: And so we as a church must anchor ourselves in this gospel.
Doug McMasters: We talk about ourselves being gospel-centered, and that means the gospel must affect not only our preaching, but our behavior as God's people.
Doug McMasters: It means that we shouldn't be a people that are trying to build a number through an emotional pull or through music designed to stir the feelings.
Doug McMasters: That we are not to build services that are intentionally non-threatening to everybody's lowest common denominator.
Doug McMasters: That we are not to be a people that lean on business strategies or management techniques in order to move and influence people.
Doug McMasters: But God hasn't entrusted us to emotional manipulation or consumer-friendly environments or to corporate models of leadership.
Doug McMasters: He's entrusted a message to us.
Doug McMasters: His word.
Doug McMasters: And what a powerful word it is.
Doug McMasters: It's a word so strong it can take a dead soul and make it alive.
Doug McMasters: And put the life of God into a human body.
Doug McMasters: And grant them a transfer from a dark kingdom to a kingdom of light.
Doug McMasters: And put them from hopelessness to hope-filled joy and confidence.
Doug McMasters: We don't need a smoke machine.
Doug McMasters: We don't need uh different colored lights moving around.
Doug McMasters: And you don't you don't need me wearing some slick clothing that make you feel like I can identify with the pastor at this time.
Doug McMasters: You wear what you want to wear, and let me wear what I want to wear.
Doug McMasters: So long as we speak the truth together.
Doug McMasters: This is how the church is formed and how it's shaped, how it grows, how it gets healthy.
Doug McMasters: All of these things.
Doug McMasters: God forms a faithful church by sending faithful messengers, by forming a godly people through the truth, by grounding them in eternal hope, by revealing his saving word, but last of all by uniting us in a common faith.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verse four to Titus.
Doug McMasters: My true son in our common faith.
Doug McMasters: Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.
Doug McMasters: And Paul ends his introduction with a very deep and personal line, right?
Doug McMasters: It's such a beautiful statement of their relationship.
Doug McMasters: Titus, my my true son in our common faith.
Doug McMasters: I love that.
Doug McMasters: It's a tender, tender phrase.
Doug McMasters: But it's also a very rich one.
Doug McMasters: Because Paul is not just expressing his affection for Titus, he's identifying the bond that holds the two of them together.
Doug McMasters: You see, Titus was not Paul's biological son.
Doug McMasters: He was someone he got to know when he was an adult.
Doug McMasters: But he was a son of the faith.
Doug McMasters: He was one who had been brought to Christ, one who had trained to walk with Christ, and one who was shaped by Christ, with the influences of Paul in all of those places.
Doug McMasters: And now he's put into a service of strengthening churches on the island of Crete.
Doug McMasters: And what this phrase teaches us is not just how affectionate the gospel is, but just how unifying the gospel is for us.
Doug McMasters: Because it shows us that our relationship is created in a whole new way by being a member of a spiritual family.
Doug McMasters: You see, the church is not held together by the unity of our ethnicity.
Doug McMasters: It's not held together by the unity of our backgrounds.
Doug McMasters: It's not held together by the unity of our personality and the persuasion of our preferences.
Doug McMasters: It's not held together by how rich or poor we might be, and we hold that same strata of the social economic ladder.
Doug McMasters: It has nothing to do with those things.
Doug McMasters: In fact, it's a core unity that's found, despite how different all of those things might be.
Doug McMasters: It is the sonship and the brotherhood of a common faith, a shared confession that Jesus is Lord and Savior.
Doug McMasters: And so Paul is here talking to Timothy, or Titus rather, and saying this, we are bound together in this, the common faith.
Doug McMasters: And so when you tell older men to talk to younger ones, and you tell older women to speak and to example and give an example to the younger women, when you shape those who are going to be in places of leadership, when you talk against those who are trying to bring deception and false teaching into the life of the church, remember that you're talking about people who have a bond together, not because of their age gradation or their leadership capacities, but of their common faith.
Doug McMasters: Their common faith.
Doug McMasters: That's what binds us together.
Doug McMasters: And Paul reinforces that with these closing words grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.
Doug McMasters: Grace that is the source of it, and peace that is the result of it.
Doug McMasters: This wondrous news that we have all received something from God together.
Doug McMasters: And we need this today.
Doug McMasters: Our world is crying for these things, though it doesn't know how to gain them.
Doug McMasters: We live in a world that is fractured by differences, a world that is fractured by political divides, cultural uh enclaves, generational aspects, and economic ladder.
Doug McMasters: It is separated in so many different ways.
Doug McMasters: And it's easy, even within the church, to let those things drift into the places of influence, to drift into camps and preferences, into factions and alliances and parties.
Doug McMasters: Paul wants to remind us here that we are people who have simply received grace and have wondrously been granted the peace of God.
Doug McMasters: And that we share the same savior, that we live because of the same hope, that we've been brought to the life through the same truth, that we're experiences of the same grace.
Doug McMasters: Our unity is not sentimental, it is doctrinal and rooted in the gospel.
Doug McMasters: And so the church here, to be a faithful church, must be a place where all of our relationships are shaped by that grace, where all of our differences are held together with humility because none of us deserve to be saved by a holy God.
Doug McMasters: Where older believers invest in younger ones, and younger ones are eager to hear the older ones, to learn, where households are strengthened by gospel order, and where the gospel creates a family that would never exist the way it does on earth, apart from his work and his redemption.
Doug McMasters: And so we gather not as consumers, but as brothers and sisters, and we can join together in protecting this unity because it's one produced by God Himself.
Doug McMasters: So let's just sort of back up from Titus for just a second and see in these first four verses that blueprint that lays out for us the whole letter itself of what it means to be a faithful church.
Doug McMasters: Because in these few verses, God is showing us who we are, he's showing us what God has done for us, he shows us what God is building among us, and he shows us where he's bringing us, and he shows us how to be faithful until we get there.
Doug McMasters: Let's pray.
Doug McMasters: Father, we want to come to you with gratitude in our hearts for this living word, the gospel, that doesn't shift with the times and isn't bent by our preferences.
Doug McMasters: It is a word that stands firm because it's rooted in you, the God who cannot lie.
Doug McMasters: And thank you for reminding us this morning that you're the one who builds your people.
Doug McMasters: And you do so by sending faithful messengers and bringing us to life through the truth and anchoring us in your eternal hope, revealing your saving word, and uniting us together in a common faith.
Doug McMasters: All of this is your work, and all of it's a display of your grace.
Doug McMasters: So, Lord, as we begin this journey in Titus, I pray that we would be shaped into this kind of church that you desire us to be.
Doug McMasters: Lord, make us a people who love these things, that love your truth and rest upon your promise and live with confidence in light of the hope of eternal life that you granted.
Doug McMasters: Make us a people, Father, who adorn the gospel, who make it beautiful in our homes, in our friendships, in our workplaces, in the way we talk, and the way we serve, and the way we love.
Doug McMasters: Father, we'll pray that you would guard us from the temptations of our age, and trying to build on anything other than you, to guard us against the temptation of chasing emotional highs instead of godly character, of softening the truth to make it more palatable, and trusting strategies rather than the Spirit of God.
Doug McMasters: Lord, keep us anchored, we pray.
Doug McMasters: Father, we pray for those who are serving as elders in our body, and those who in the days to come will serve, that they be men who first see themselves as your servants, men who hold firmly the trustworthy word, men whose lives will reflect the grace that they speak about.
Doug McMasters: Lord, strengthen them, protect them, and use them for the good of your people.
Doug McMasters: And Lord, for those of us in moments of weariness and weakness, encourage our hearts and steady us with the realization that we have a hope from you who cannot lie.
Doug McMasters: And Father, for those who are wandering, I pray that they would know that they can walk in truth.
Doug McMasters: They don't need to wander.
Doug McMasters: For those who are searching with their hearts to wonder what life is all about, I pray that you would reveal your saving word to them.
Doug McMasters: May they hear your voice, may they respond.
Doug McMasters: Father, as we enter into this study, we're grateful to know a bit of what we're about to receive.
Doug McMasters: That you're gonna make us a people that reflect the life of the servant, our Lord Jesus.
Doug McMasters: And it's going to affect us in ordinary, everyday places of our daily living.
Doug McMasters: That you're going to make us a people trained by grace, that you're going to make us a people zealous for good works, you're going to make us a people who shine with the beauty of the gospel.
Doug McMasters: And Lord, as you do so, may all of it be to your praise and glory, we ask.
Doug McMasters: In the name of Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: Amen.