Micah McCormick: Hopefully you have a copy of the scripture.
Micah McCormick: If you don't, you can find it there in the Pew Bible, page 1058.
Micah McCormick: Titus chapter 2, we're continuing on through this epistle.
Micah McCormick: Text for this morning is Titus chapter 2, verses 11 through 15.
Micah McCormick: Here's God's word.
Micah McCormick: For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, instructing us to deny godlessness and worldly lust, and to live in a sensible, righteous, and godly way in the present age, while we wait for the blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.
Micah McCormick: He gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to cleanse for himself a people for his own possession, eager to do good works.
Micah McCormick: Proclaim these things, encourage and rebuke with all authority.
Micah McCormick: Let no one disregard you.
Micah McCormick: Let's seek God's help again.
Micah McCormick: Oh Lord, we need grace.
Micah McCormick: We need the grace of Jesus Christ.
Micah McCormick: We need his presence here among us.
Micah McCormick: We need the grace to understand these words and not just to understand these words, but to apply these words to our lives, to our hearts.
Micah McCormick: And we know the Spirit Himself is the author of this book and the very best applier of Scripture.
Micah McCormick: So, Spirit of God, help us as we consider your word today.
Micah McCormick: In Jesus' name, amen.
Micah McCormick: We've all known people who always seem to be looking backward.
Micah McCormick: They'll tell you all about where they used to live, what they used to do.
Micah McCormick: We've also known people who always seem to be looking ahead.
Micah McCormick: They'll tell you the plans they have for the future, the things that they hope to accomplish.
Micah McCormick: Sometimes older people are more prone to looking backward.
Micah McCormick: And other times, younger people are sometimes more prone to looking ahead.
Micah McCormick: What about our lives in the here and now?
Micah McCormick: Well, the the people that like to look back will say, if you don't know where I'm from and what's happened to me in the past, you can't really know what I'm all about right now.
Micah McCormick: And the people who love to look ahead will say, Well, we don't have a goal in mind.
Micah McCormick: If we don't know where we're going, life in the present doesn't really make any sense.
Micah McCormick: Both of those perspectives are valuable.
Micah McCormick: Both of them are necessary in some sense for living our lives in the day-to-day, in the here and now.
Micah McCormick: But here's our problem.
Micah McCormick: We're prone to fixating on what we've accomplished in the past, or maybe even how we've failed in the past.
Micah McCormick: We're prone to fixating on what we are going to do in the future.
Micah McCormick: The Bible calls us to center our heart on what God has done in the past and what God will do in the future.
Micah McCormick: Look at our passage.
Micah McCormick: Verse 11 says, the grace of God has appeared.
Micah McCormick: Something's already happened.
Micah McCormick: He's already accomplished salvation.
Micah McCormick: And it's God's grace, it's not us.
Micah McCormick: Verse 14 begins, He gave Himself.
Micah McCormick: Christ did something in the past.
Micah McCormick: Along with that past activity of God, we have His future activity.
Micah McCormick: Verse 13 says, While we wait for the blessed hope, the appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.
Micah McCormick: That's talking about his second coming.
Micah McCormick: So it actually hasn't happened yet.
Micah McCormick: He will return in power and glory.
Micah McCormick: According to our passage, God's work in the past means everything for our lives right now.
Micah McCormick: And God's work in the future means everything for our lives right now.
Micah McCormick: We've got two weeks to cover these verses, verses 11 to 15.
Micah McCormick: The title for the message this morning is Looking Back and Living Now.
Micah McCormick: And the title for next week's message is preview, Looking Ahead and Living Now.
Micah McCormick: In order for us to live for God now, we have to embrace what He has done in the past.
Micah McCormick: Let me say that again.
Micah McCormick: In order for us to live for God now, we have to embrace what He's done in the past.
Micah McCormick: Two encouragements for you this morning.
Micah McCormick: Look back to God's grace and live now in light of God's grace.
Micah McCormick: First encouragement: look back to God's grace.
Micah McCormick: Verse 11 says, the grace of God has appeared.
Micah McCormick: Grace is God's unmerited favor.
Micah McCormick: It's Him giving us what we don't deserve.
Micah McCormick: He sends His rain on the just and the unjust.
Micah McCormick: We say grace before our meals because even food is an undeserved gift from God.
Micah McCormick: He sends breezes through open windows.
Micah McCormick: That's God's general grace.
Micah McCormick: But here in verse 11, Paul's talking about something more specific.
Micah McCormick: He's talking about a specific revelation of the grace of God.
Micah McCormick: And that grace isn't a thing, it's a person.
Micah McCormick: The grace of God is revealed supremely in the coming of Jesus Christ the Son into the world to bring salvation.
Micah McCormick: John says he came full of grace and truth.
Micah McCormick: That's the Lord Jesus Christ.
Micah McCormick: He came as the way, the truth, and the life.
Micah McCormick: Whenever you need more, you just go get another scoop.
Micah McCormick: There's something to that.
Micah McCormick: God's grace is inexhaustible.
Micah McCormick: It's sweet to those of us who have experienced it, but it doesn't tell the whole story.
Micah McCormick: God's grace is not just leniency.
Micah McCormick: God's grace is not a giant pixie stick.
Micah McCormick: It's a person, the person of his son, the Lord Jesus Christ, when we experience grace in that saving way.
Micah McCormick: We've got to spend time meditating on the undeserved kindness and the glory of Christ appearing in history.
Micah McCormick: It's an amazing thing that God could take on human flesh.
Micah McCormick: God could come through a woman.
Micah McCormick: Spurgeon reminds us: though creation may be a majestic organ of praise, it cannot reach the compass of the golden canticle, the incarnation, word became flesh.
Micah McCormick: There is more melody in Jesus in the manger than in the whole sublime oratorio of the creation.
Micah McCormick: John 1, verse 18 No one has ever seen God, the one and only Son who is Himself God and is at the Father's side.
Micah McCormick: Grace comes through the person of Jesus Christ.
Micah McCormick: And the passage tells us when we look back to grace, we see that grace saves all kinds of people.
Micah McCormick: Verse 11, you can see that there.
Micah McCormick: God's grace is incredibly generous.
Micah McCormick: No one deserves to be saved.
Micah McCormick: And yet God offers salvation to all.
Micah McCormick: The good news is for everyone.
Micah McCormick: Whoever comes to me, Jesus says, I will never cast him out.
Micah McCormick: If you're here this morning, you're part of that whoever.
Micah McCormick: If you haven't trusted, you can trust in Christ and find grace and salvation, not from your own works, but from his glorious work alone.
Micah McCormick: And although it's true that God's grace is freely offered to all, it's not true that every single person who has ever lived will experience saving grace and find eternal life.
Micah McCormick: Second Thessalonians chapter 1 speaks of those who don't respond to the gospel, and it says they will pay the penalty of eternal destruction from the Lord's presence and from his glorious strength on the day he comes to be glorified by his saints and to be marveled at by all those who believe.
Micah McCormick: You must trust and receive grace.
Micah McCormick: Not every individual will be saved.
Micah McCormick: Yet all classes of people will experience salvation.
Micah McCormick: And that's especially Paul's focus here.
Micah McCormick: He's just been talking earlier in the chapter about older women, younger women, bondservants, masters, older men, younger men.
Micah McCormick: He's going to talk in the next chapter about rulers, authorities, citizens.
Micah McCormick: Every class of people is reached by the Lord Jesus Christ.
Micah McCormick: He didn't come just for Jew and not for Gentile.
Micah McCormick: He didn't come for women and not for men.
Micah McCormick: He didn't come for this tax bracket or that tax bracket.
Micah McCormick: Every kind of person needs saving grace, and Jesus accomplishes salvation for all kinds of people.
Micah McCormick: That's good news for us.
Micah McCormick: It's good news in a world that we live in that sometimes tends to accentuate and set different classes of people over against each other.
Micah McCormick: This gender is set against that gender.
Micah McCormick: This ethnicity is set against that ethnicity.
Micah McCormick: This age group is set over against that age group.
Micah McCormick: Some of you, you go into the city and you come back a little frustrated.
Micah McCormick: All the advertisements and the billboards, everything is all about youth, youth, youth, youth.
Micah McCormick: They don't care about older people at all.
Micah McCormick: And the things that are geared for older people, it's like they just want to make us somehow feel and look younger.
Micah McCormick: Like old is this terrible category.
Micah McCormick: I know it can feel like companies don't care about older people.
Micah McCormick: It can feel that way.
Micah McCormick: Here's the truth: they don't care about older people.
Micah McCormick: You're already set in your ways.
Micah McCormick: You're gonna buy what you want to buy, you like what you like.
Micah McCormick: They don't really care about you.
Micah McCormick: That's that's the bottom line.
Micah McCormick: That's not the Lord Jesus Christ.
Micah McCormick: He came for four-year-olds and for 94-year-olds.
Micah McCormick: The spirit's at work in John the Baptist in his mother's womb in some mysterious way, and the Lord doesn't abandon you no matter how old you are.
Micah McCormick: You might have heard the story of a man named Luke Short.
Micah McCormick: He grew up in Britain, and as a teenager, he sat under the preaching of John Flavelle.
Micah McCormick: This is a few hundred years ago.
Micah McCormick: Not a story in the Bible, but a story that's reported as a true story by the publisher.
Micah McCormick: He came to travel and eventually came to America, came to New England, settled down as a farmer, this Luke Short.
Micah McCormick: God gave him longevity as a 100-year-old man, as the story goes, he's sitting in his field.
Micah McCormick: He remembers a sermon he heard when he was 15 years old.
Micah McCormick: That if you die apart from Christ, you'll be cursed.
Micah McCormick: And he turned from his sins and trusted in Christ.
Micah McCormick: God saved him.
Micah McCormick: John Flavelle was long dead by that point, the preacher from his teenage years.
Micah McCormick: So, as a side note, let that be an encouragement to you.
Micah McCormick: You don't know when you testify of the grace of the Lord to somebody, you never know how God might use it in their lives.
Micah McCormick: God's grace in Christ saves all kinds of people, comes with the person of Christ.
Micah McCormick: And the text here in Titus tells us that grace redeems us.
Micah McCormick: It's another more specific way of how it saves us.
Micah McCormick: Verse 14.
Micah McCormick: Mark 10, 45, even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.
Micah McCormick: 1 Peter 1, 18 to 20.
Micah McCormick: You know that you were redeemed from your empty way of life, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of an unblemished and spotless lamb.
Micah McCormick: To redeem is to buy something back.
Micah McCormick: Slaves in this time could be redeemed out of the marketplace.
Micah McCormick: They could have their freedom purchased for them.
Micah McCormick: The Lord uses this language and imagery when he speaks of his rescue of Israel from Egypt.
Micah McCormick: He redeemed them out of Egypt.
Micah McCormick: He purchased them.
Micah McCormick: Israel was sinning against their spiritual husband, the Lord.
Micah McCormick: And so Hosea has to enact this kind of visual parable that reflects in some way Israel's sin.
Micah McCormick: And he's and he marries a woman that would prove to be a prostitute.
Micah McCormick: Chapter three of Hosea begins this way: The Lord said to me, Go again.
Micah McCormick: This is after they've had children, some time has passed.
Micah McCormick: Go again, show love to a woman who is loved by another man as and is an adulteress, just as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods.
Micah McCormick: So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and nine bushes of barley.
Micah McCormick: I said to her, You're to live with me many days, you must not be promiscuous or belong to any man, and I will act the same way towards you.
Micah McCormick: Then it goes on afterward, the people of Israel will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king.
Micah McCormick: So apparently this woman had left, Gomez, the woman had left Hosea, and he has to go buy back his own wife.
Micah McCormick: That's difficult.
Micah McCormick: But he does it, he redeems her.
Micah McCormick: And the Lord says, I'm gonna do that with my people, I'm gonna buy them back.
Micah McCormick: When's the last time you just stopped for five minutes and said, Let me reflect on what has the Lord redeemed me from?
Micah McCormick: That's one of the reasons we take time each week for our confession of sin.
Micah McCormick: We want to just pause and remember what has God actually rescued me out of amazing grace.
Micah McCormick: How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.
Micah McCormick: Grace buys us back, grace also cleanses us.
Micah McCormick: Look again at verse 14.
Micah McCormick: He gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to cleanse for himself a people for his own possession.
Micah McCormick: When Hosea bought Gomer back, there's a sense in which she's she's still a dirty person.
Micah McCormick: She hadn't changed overnight.
Micah McCormick: But the Lord goes above and beyond to cleanse us.
Micah McCormick: And he gives another picture of that with the nation of Israel.
Micah McCormick: So many pictures in the Old Testament of spiritual truths in our own lives.
Micah McCormick: Ezekiel 16.
Micah McCormick: The word of the Lord came to me, son of man, confront Jerusalem with her detestable practices.
Micah McCormick: Once again, it's a nation sinning against God, just like we're all sinners against the Lord.
Micah McCormick: And then Ezekiel is told, Your father was an Amorite, your mother a Heathite.
Micah McCormick: And as for your birth, goes on, on the day you were born, you weren't washed clean with water.
Micah McCormick: No one cared enough about you to do one of those things out of compassion for you.
Micah McCormick: You were thrown into the open field and despised on the day you were born.
Micah McCormick: Listen to this.
Micah McCormick: But I passed by you and saw you thrashing around in your blood.
Micah McCormick: And I said to you, as you lay in your blood, live.
Micah McCormick: Yes, I said to you, live, and I made you thrive like the plants of the field.
Micah McCormick: You're like an abandoned, bloody baby.
Micah McCormick: No one's there to clean you up.
Micah McCormick: I cleaned you up, I adopted you.
Micah McCormick: What God did for the nation of Israel, He's done in an even deeper way in our own hearts by cleansing us from the defilement of sin.
Micah McCormick: That is grace.
Micah McCormick: Ephesians 5.
Micah McCormick: Christ loved the church and gave himself for her to make her holy, cleansing her.
Micah McCormick: There's our same words we have here in Titus, cleansing her with the washing of water by the word.
Micah McCormick: He did this to present the church to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or anything like that, but a holy and blameless.
Micah McCormick: I belong to the Lord.
Micah McCormick: Oh, I am not my own.
Micah McCormick: I belong to the Lord.
Micah McCormick: I'm gonna press on to living now.
Micah McCormick: Look back at God's grace.
Micah McCormick: Think about the incarnation.
Micah McCormick: Consider what God has brought you out of.
Micah McCormick: Just sit with grace.
Micah McCormick: And as you do that, you'll want to walk with your Savior each and every day.
Micah McCormick: The more and more we consider what God has done in the past, and the more we look at that subject in Scripture, we'll see how often in Scripture the Bible connects God's past grace with our present living.
Micah McCormick: And you can see that now in the passage as well.
Micah McCormick: So look back to God's grace, but live now in light of God's grace.
Micah McCormick: Verse number 11 begins with a for.
Micah McCormick: For the grace of God has appeared.
Micah McCormick: He's connecting God's grace in the past in Christ with what he's just been talking about.
Micah McCormick: Well, what is that?
Micah McCormick: He's just got finished telling bondservants, submit to your masters.
Micah McCormick: He just got finished telling older men, younger men, this is how you live.
Micah McCormick: Be sober-minded.
Micah McCormick: Older women, teach younger women to love their husbands, to love their families.
Micah McCormick: You could submit to your employer because you're a recipient of grace.
Micah McCormick: You can love your family today because God's grace has already come to you in the past.
Micah McCormick: You see those connection points.
Micah McCormick: Verse 14 gives us the same pattern.
Micah McCormick: Christ gave himself, he redeemed us.
Micah McCormick: So the conclusion is we should be eager to do good works according to verse 14.
Micah McCormick: We're not saved by our good works.
Micah McCormick: But we are saved for good works.
Micah McCormick: We've got to get the order there.
Micah McCormick: The order's critical.
Micah McCormick: If we say that we're saved by our works, we're confusing the gospel.
Micah McCormick: But the Lord has redeemed us for good works.
Micah McCormick: We should never conclude that God doesn't care at all about good works.
Micah McCormick: Romans 6, 1, shall we continue in sin that grace might abound?
Micah McCormick: By no means.
Micah McCormick: This book of Titus is at pains to urge on us the importance of good works and to connect that with our life in Christ.
Micah McCormick: Chapter 2, verse 7, you can look back.
Micah McCormick: Make yourself an example of good works.
Micah McCormick: Chapter 3, verse 1, look ahead a few verses.
Micah McCormick: Remind them to submit to rulers and authorities, to obey, to be ready for every good work.
Micah McCormick: Chapter 3, verse 8.
Micah McCormick: This saying is trustworthy.
Micah McCormick: I want you to insist on these things so that those who have believed in God might be careful to devote themselves to good works.
Micah McCormick: Chapter 3, verse 14 Let our people learn to devote themselves to good works for pressing need so that they will not be unfruitful.
Micah McCormick: True Christians should be known as those who preach grace more than anyone else, and those who love good works.
Micah McCormick: More than anyone else.
Micah McCormick: According to verse number 12, chapter 2, God's grace instructs us.
Micah McCormick: So, yes, there's an element of grace that's God's forgiveness.
Micah McCormick: Grace is also this power at work in us.
Micah McCormick: Christ Himself, through the Holy Spirit, lives within us if we know Him, and He has transformed us, and He is transforming us.
Micah McCormick: Some of your versions might say that it trains us or it teaches us.
Micah McCormick: There is no school like the Academy of God's grace.
Micah McCormick: And you can be a student of that academy, and we're all, if we know the Lord, lifelong students.
Micah McCormick: There's no teacher like the Lord's grace.
Micah McCormick: Let me give you an example.
Micah McCormick: Let's say that you adopt a 12-year-old boy from a war-torn country.
Micah McCormick: Bring him back.
Micah McCormick: You get the paperwork.
Micah McCormick: He's got your last name.
Micah McCormick: He's in your home.
Micah McCormick: And the first day he says, I just want to tell you, I'm going to work as hard as I can.
Micah McCormick: And hopefully, by the end of my life, you will be willing to adopt me into your family.
Micah McCormick: Say, no, no, no, no, you don't understand.
Micah McCormick: You're already adopted.
Micah McCormick: You're part of the family.
Micah McCormick: We love you.
Micah McCormick: You don't have to work and earn it.
Micah McCormick: And let's say the next day you come home and he's got a gun and he's cleaning it out.
Micah McCormick: He said, What are you doing?
Micah McCormick: Where did you get that?
Micah McCormick: And he says, Well, I'm hungry and I'm gonna go rob someone.
Micah McCormick: That's how they do it where I'm from.
Micah McCormick: No, no, no, that's not that.
Micah McCormick: No, no, no.
Micah McCormick: If you're hungry, just ask.
Micah McCormick: We'll give you food.
Micah McCormick: We love you.
Micah McCormick: Put that away.
Micah McCormick: Now let's fast forward 10 years.
Micah McCormick: Let's say you come home, he's on the couch, he's on YouTube, 22 years old.
Micah McCormick: Did I get the math there at 12 to 10, 22?
Micah McCormick: Yes.
Micah McCormick: And you say, What are you gonna do with your life?
Micah McCormick: He says, Well, I'm gonna be famous.
Micah McCormick: And you say, Well, how are you gonna be famous?
Micah McCormick: And he says, Well, I'm gonna complain a lot.
Micah McCormick: That's how they do it in this country.
Micah McCormick: You say, No, no, no, no, no, no.
Micah McCormick: Listen, go out and get a job, serve other people.
Micah McCormick: You're wanting your love to transform him and transform the way that he thinks.
Micah McCormick: That's what grace does.
Micah McCormick: Christ freely accepts us.
Micah McCormick: We're part of the family.
Micah McCormick: He provides all our needs, but he wants to transform us so that our passions, our desires will reflect his passions and his desires.
Micah McCormick: Not what we came out of, and not even first what's around us, but first and foremost, him.
Micah McCormick: Grace does two things here in the school of grace.
Micah McCormick: Only two tests.
Micah McCormick: You gotta say no to certain things, and you gotta say yes to certain things.
Micah McCormick: Look at verse 12.
Micah McCormick: Grace instructs us to deny godlessness and worldly lusts.
Micah McCormick: There's the no.
Micah McCormick: And to live in a sensible, righteous, and godly way in the present age.
Micah McCormick: There's the yes.
Micah McCormick: And do you see how this is present tense again?
Micah McCormick: Grace has come, it has appeared in Christ, but it's transforming our lives now because we're united to Christ, that we're gonna want to say no to ungodliness and say yes to godliness.
Micah McCormick: Grace, truly understood, doesn't give us liberty to do whatever we want.
Micah McCormick: It puts a power in us to actually be able to say no.
Micah McCormick: Those living apart from grace, they don't say no to the world.
Micah McCormick: Not from the heart, not consistently.
Micah McCormick: They're slaves of sin.
Micah McCormick: We were all there.
Micah McCormick: We're free.
Micah McCormick: We could we can say no by God's grace.
Micah McCormick: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
Micah McCormick: Everyone else is bowing down to the idol.
Micah McCormick: They're told you have to bow down.
Micah McCormick: They say, no, we can't.
Micah McCormick: Because we love and honor God.
Micah McCormick: It's not just about saying no.
Micah McCormick: Grace is not teaching us to be ornery people.
Micah McCormick: But we say no because we love the Lord so much.
Micah McCormick: For those of you who are married, you took a vow to forsake all others.
Micah McCormick: That's a lot of no's.
Micah McCormick: But it's for an amazing and glorious purpose so that you can say yes to your beloved one.
Micah McCormick: Verse 12 mentions how grace trains us to live godly lives, and then it further describes what that looks like to say yes to godliness, living sensibly, term we've seen before in Titus, thoughtfully and righteously, living according to God's rule and standard.
Micah McCormick: The word godly is not a word that's used an awful lot in our day and age, even among Christians.
Micah McCormick: It's a great word.
Micah McCormick: You find it there in scripture.
Micah McCormick: Sometimes I think that word is not used because people have a certain idea of what that is that's kind of negative or limited.
Micah McCormick: You know, sometimes people hear the word godly and they think, hmm, that must mean the more starch you put on your clothes, the godlier you are.
Micah McCormick: That's probably what it is.
Micah McCormick: And I mean, if you if you starch your underwear, that's like a super saint.
Micah McCormick: You're like godly to the next level.
Micah McCormick: Godliness is not austerity.
Micah McCormick: And if you if you use starch on your clothes, fantastic.
Micah McCormick: If you don't, fantastic.
Micah McCormick: It's not about that.
Micah McCormick: Godliness is loving God and loving the things that He loves.
Micah McCormick: Godliness is living the way God wants us to live.
Micah McCormick: It's a beautiful thing.
Micah McCormick: And our God is a God of holiness, He's a God of justice and righteousness.
Micah McCormick: He's not aloof, he's not austere in those negative ways.
Micah McCormick: He's a God that beautifully has in himself perfect justice and righteousness, perfect grace and mercy and love.
Micah McCormick: And the list goes on and on and on.
Micah McCormick: So if we're going to live godly lives, we have to look at this book and see what he loves and what he wants us to do.
Micah McCormick: We can't be looking to cosmopolitan or to Pixar for what God values.
Micah McCormick: We got to look in this book for what God values.
Micah McCormick: Let's pray that God's grace would be at work in our hearts so that we'd have a passion to love the mystery of godliness, that we'd have a passion to live like our Savior.
Micah McCormick: For those that come tonight, I'll maybe ask: what are some ways that we can say no to ungodliness and yes to godliness?
Micah McCormick: I'll leave you to think about how you can take this home.
Micah McCormick: But in your own life, how can you say no?
Micah McCormick: And how can you say yes?
Micah McCormick: In order to live for God now, we have to embrace what he's done in the past.
Micah McCormick: Look back to God's grace, live now in light of God's grace.
Micah McCormick: Next week we'll come to looking ahead and living now.
Micah McCormick: But I want to close with 1 Timothy 3.16 and go ahead and turn there if you would, please.
Micah McCormick: While pushing us to consider that theme in relation to Jesus himself and especially his coming into the world, just like the passage in Titus did.
Micah McCormick: 1 Timothy 3, verse 16.
Micah McCormick: And most certainly, the mystery of godliness is great.
Micah McCormick: And then look what Paul goes on to say.
Micah McCormick: He doesn't go on to say, Wow, that mother Teresa, how does she do it?
Micah McCormick: That pastor Doug, how does he do it?
Micah McCormick: Well, we do have godliness modeled by genuine Christians that we know and love in our lives, but he goes actually to the incarnation when he talks about godliness.
Micah McCormick: He that is Christ was manifested in the flesh.
Micah McCormick: You want to know what God is like?
Micah McCormick: Look to Jesus Christ.
Micah McCormick: Look to his appearing in the world, look to the way that he lived and act and talked and walked.
Micah McCormick: That's what godliness is.
Micah McCormick: Vindicated in the spirit, still speaking of Christ, seen by angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.
Micah McCormick: Christ has shown us all that we need to see.
Micah McCormick: May He be our teacher throughout this week and the rest of our lives.
Micah McCormick: Let's pray.
Micah McCormick: Father, how glorious and kind you are to reveal yourself in Christ, to reveal undeserved favor in so many ways.
Micah McCormick: Lord, help us to take time to turn off distractions and to sit with your grace, to sit in the school of grace.
Micah McCormick: The grace that saves, that redeems, that cleanses, and the grace that training us right now to say no and to say yes.
Micah McCormick: We want our lives to be a glorious testimony of all of the yeses that we live before our Savior, the one who cleansed us with the washing of water through the Word, the one who gave Himself for us, the one who owns us.
Micah McCormick: We delight to be able to belong to Him.
Micah McCormick: And as we leave one another today, as we sing these songs and hear your words, would grace resound in our hearts all throughout this day.
Micah McCormick: We ask this in the name of Christ.
Micah McCormick: Amen.