Doug McMasters: And go to the book of Titus.
Doug McMasters: We continue our study in the book of Titus together.
Doug McMasters: And today we're going to be launching into the last chapter of Titus, chapter three.
Doug McMasters: I've titled this message, and I don't often give you the titles of the sermons.
Doug McMasters: Always gracious.
Doug McMasters: That's a beautiful phrase, isn't it?
Doug McMasters: Always gracious.
Doug McMasters: You say it slowly, always gracious.
Doug McMasters: And you can almost imagine it being framed, can't you?
Doug McMasters: You know, that you might walk into a Christian bookstore or happen into your online Christian uh retailer, and you'll see these inspirational posters, and a little black-bordered, beautiful scene of the Rocky Mountains.
Doug McMasters: And then sitting above the Rocky Mountains would be in this wonderfully uh developed typeface, always gracious.
Doug McMasters: And you you look at that and you think, you know, that's that's pretty much me.
Doug McMasters: You know, it's you know, it's it's meant to be aspirational for some folks, but you know, it's uh it's there, and I think I'll get that poster just to remind myself that you know I'm one of those kind of people.
Doug McMasters: I'm always gracious.
Doug McMasters: And then Monday arrives or Tuesday or Sunday afternoon with the parking lot still in your rear view mirror, and all of a sudden, things have come into your life that are going to pressure test whether or not you're always gracious.
Doug McMasters: And maybe you can consider going home and meeting one of your neighbors.
Doug McMasters: No, not the worst one, but the most persistent one.
Doug McMasters: The one that's come to you four, maybe five times, and uh they've come with the same issue, with the same tone, with the same persistence, and you open up the door, and there they are again.
Doug McMasters: And you say hello, and you smile, but the space between your thoughts and your smile on your face, that's a distance you'd rather not articulate.
Doug McMasters: Or maybe you could consider one of your coworkers who, in what could only be described as professional attribution, has in a meeting taken credit for something you've done at the workplace.
Doug McMasters: And you've sat in the meeting and you've just sort of smiled and you're thinking, always gracious.
Doug McMasters: And so you just let it slide for a little bit.
Doug McMasters: Until a few hours after the meeting, another one of your coworkers just excitedly talks about what that co-worker's accomplished.
Doug McMasters: And all of a sudden you're realizing that always gracious needs a pretty big top-up.
Doug McMasters: Too often we feel the gap between the things that we affirm here on Sunday and the moments that we live on Mondays, Tuesdays, or Sunday afternoons.
Doug McMasters: And today we're going to hear that phrase again, always gracious.
Doug McMasters: But it's meant to come into our actual lives.
Doug McMasters: It's meant to be how we interact with actual people and living in this actual world.
Doug McMasters: And we can feel the gap between those two things, and the Lord knows this, and that's why he's written these things for us, because what Paul is going to direct the church and what he's directing us under the inspiration of God is something vital for us.
Doug McMasters: And I want to say right at the front that what Paul doesn't say is try harder.
Doug McMasters: He's not just here calling us to try harder at being always gracious.
Doug McMasters: He's got something far better and far more interesting to say about that.
Doug McMasters: And so if you stay with this until verse 3, we'll get to that point where he tells us what that far better and far more interesting way of being always gracious lies.
Doug McMasters: But before we get there, I want to make two observations.
Doug McMasters: First, an observation about where we're at.
Doug McMasters: This is something we need to remember because we can only understand what is being directed here when we understand where it's happening.
Doug McMasters: And here we see that it's in the middle of a church plant on the island of Crete.
Doug McMasters: And we've noticed that before when we went through chapter one.
Doug McMasters: And in that chapter, the Apostle Paul quotes a Cretan poet who says this about his own people.
Doug McMasters: That they are evil beasts and lazy gluttons.
Doug McMasters: Now, that's not an examination from somebody on the outside who thinks that their culture is better than the Cretan culture.
Doug McMasters: This is one of their own.
Doug McMasters: This is their own poet.
Doug McMasters: It's a cultural self-assessment.
Doug McMasters: And the Apostle Paul is quoting it without irony, as a matter of fact.
Doug McMasters: And so Paul is not surprising the people of Crete about these things.
Doug McMasters: This is home for them.
Doug McMasters: They know they're in a culture that is self-oriented, that is antagonistic, and that is hateful and greedy.
Doug McMasters: And it's into this context of Crete that Paul sends Titus to serve.
Doug McMasters: And he's given a mission, a mission that I think a lot of us would look at and go, well, thanks for the offer, Paul.
Doug McMasters: I hope you can find somebody who could do this.
Doug McMasters: This is a mission that's somewhat like Mission Impossible, you know, where Titus receives this message.
Doug McMasters: If if you choose to accept this, kind of thing, it's difficult.
Doug McMasters: He is to establish elders, he is to oppose false teaching, and the primary thing is he's to ready the church for engaging that kind of culture with the gospel.
Doug McMasters: And what he is telling the people here, and what he's telling us, because our culture, I think, could be identified quite quite a bit along similar lines as the Cretan culture, is that the proof of the gospel isn't simply a proof of argument, it's a proof of presence as well as argument.
Doug McMasters: And what Paul is doing here is telling these people that it is significant the way they live, the way they speak, the way they serve, the way they conduct themselves within the context of this culture is going to have an influence for the gospel.
Doug McMasters: And so he leads them to understand that sound teaching, sound doctrine leads to sound living, that what you believe shapes how you live.
Doug McMasters: And so this is chapter three.
Doug McMasters: Paul is digging in here to the people in Crete to help them understand how to interact in this society and culture and the way it is with the gospel that's now come to them.
Doug McMasters: I want you to notice one other thing before we dig into the text here, and it is to mark out what Paul says right there at the beginning of verse one in chapter three.
Doug McMasters: Remind them.
Doug McMasters: Just pause there for a second and think about that.
Doug McMasters: The word is not instruct them.
Doug McMasters: The word is not instruct them as though these are people who don't have this information and are now in a place of needing to receive the knowledge.
Doug McMasters: It's remind them.
Doug McMasters: Reminding people who have already received this message, who have already understood it, who have already agreed with it, who have perhaps patterned their life for a time in it, but now have laid it aside and it needs to be strengthened.
Doug McMasters: They need reminded.
Doug McMasters: Some of them have set it aside, like perhaps I do too often, my keys when I get home.
Doug McMasters: And the next time I have to go somewhere, I'm scrambling around the house going, where did I put those things?
Doug McMasters: And there's some folks in the church here who are doing the exact same thing.
Doug McMasters: They're going, Oh, I'm about to go outside, I'm about to meet my neighbors, I'm about to go into the workplace, I'm about to go into the marketplace.
Doug McMasters: Uh, what do I need to bring with me?
Doug McMasters: How do I get there?
Doug McMasters: There's a difference between a congregation that doesn't know something and a congregation that's forgotten something.
Doug McMasters: One needs a teacher, the other one needs what Paul is telling Titus here: reminding, to keep something always in focus, to ensure that it stays at the forefront of our understanding, that it becomes the leading edge of our interactions.
Doug McMasters: That's the reminding that Paul's talking about here.
Doug McMasters: And that's what this message is going to be for all of us: a reminder for all of us to take the things that Paul is saying to Titus to give to this church and to keep those things front and center as we step outside these doors and as we interact with each other inside these doors.
Doug McMasters: So we're going to look at three points this morning.
Doug McMasters: We're going to notice, first of all, the reach of gracious living.
Doug McMasters: And then, secondly, we're going to see the behavior of gracious living.
Doug McMasters: And then we're going to talk about the ground or the basis for gracious living.
Doug McMasters: How far grace reaches, how grace behaves, and how we can actually be gracious in our interactions.
Doug McMasters: So the first one, the reach of gracious living, and we find this in verse one.
Doug McMasters: Paul doesn't begin where we think he might.
Doug McMasters: He doesn't open with the community of faith here when he talks about being gracious.
Doug McMasters: He doesn't start with a gathered congregation, with the people who are committed by covenant relationship with one another.
Doug McMasters: And he's not calling us to be gracious with people with whom we might have a minor theological difference, with whom we might have a stylistic difference of whether or not we like modern songs or ancient hymns.
Doug McMasters: He's not talking about gracious of people who say, Well, I like the NIV and you like the King James Version or you like the SV or whatever.
Doug McMasters: He doesn't start there.
Doug McMasters: Look where he begins.
Doug McMasters: He begins on the outside.
Doug McMasters: Remind them to submit to rulers and authorities, to obey, to be ready for every good work.
Doug McMasters: And what Paul does here is he begins to show us the reach or the extent to which gracious living goes.
Doug McMasters: And it goes well outside our walls.
Doug McMasters: It goes well outside our covenant community.
Doug McMasters: It goes not even into the workplace or the marketplace.
Doug McMasters: It goes into the relationship that we have with authorities and governmental places.
Doug McMasters: And so these three commands that he offers in this verse are like concentric rings of water.
Doug McMasters: We've got our posture, and then we have our disposition, and then we have our actions.
Doug McMasters: And here he says that our posture is to be one of submission.
Doug McMasters: Submission to rulers and authorities.
Doug McMasters: Now take a look at that.
Doug McMasters: How stark it is.
Doug McMasters: Submit yourself to rulers and authorities to obey, to be ready for every good work.
Doug McMasters: Paul doesn't add a caveat here.
Doug McMasters: He doesn't add a qualifier here.
Doug McMasters: He doesn't add a modifier here.
Doug McMasters: He is not saying this is a command that you are to follow when you live under the authority of philosopher kings of exceptional virtue.
Doug McMasters: These are Cretan authorities, by the way.
Doug McMasters: The always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.
Doug McMasters: Guess what?
Doug McMasters: They get elected or they get appointed to office.
Doug McMasters: These always liars, these evil beasts, these lazy gluttons, are in places of authority as much as they're in places in the marketplace.
Doug McMasters: And what Paul is saying is that these Cretan authorities, these people under Roman governance, whatever their character, or whatever the quality of their decisions, or whatever their personal conduct, regardless of that, we are to be in a posture of submission.
Doug McMasters: And it doesn't say submit yourself to those people who have deemed by their behavior to be worthy of that tip of our hat to them.
Doug McMasters: It simply says be submissive.
Doug McMasters: And here's why.
Doug McMasters: Because our posture of submission to governing authorities is not determined by the quality of their authority.
Doug McMasters: And because we're members of a different kingdom while still living within the context of this one, we can act differently than anybody else.
Doug McMasters: And so Paul in Romans 13, as we read together, gives a fuller theological rationale for all of this.
Doug McMasters: Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there's no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.
Doug McMasters: And there, Paul is talking about the functioning of civil society and the necessary constructs that make civil society happen by putting people in place to award what is done that is good and to punish that which brings destruction to that civil society.
Doug McMasters: And within the economy of common grace, we are to be those who would help promote the common good and to submit ourselves to those structures that allow for us to live a quiet and peaceable life.
Doug McMasters: And so a believer who's securely rooted in the kingdom of God, who understands that we're genuinely free, because no matter what happens in this world, we are loved by God, and nothing can separate us from the love of God that's in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Doug McMasters: Because of that, because no earthly power can threaten any of that, we can live as free men and women in this context.
Doug McMasters: We can live even in a submissive posture because we know a freedom that nobody else knows.
Doug McMasters: They are bound by the dictates of those rulers.
Doug McMasters: We are not.
Doug McMasters: And so in civic engagement, we can be submissive when there are others who would think that the differences call for warfare.
Doug McMasters: Let's move on.
Doug McMasters: He says obedient.
Doug McMasters: He moves from posture to disposition.
Doug McMasters: And what he's calling for here is the kind of disposition that's not compliance, like maybe parents you've seen in your children who uh you know go to do what you told them to do, but their face shows you that they're not exactly happy about doing what you just told them to do.
Doug McMasters: We've all observed and probably offered that kind of disposition.
Doug McMasters: But here is an obedient disposition that engages legitimate authority and serves the real purposes that God has given that authority for, so that the world will not unspool into chaos, that there will be a civil structure and a society that protects the common good, and that we are participants in making sure that God's common grace operates well and we don't stand against it.
Doug McMasters: And then he says, ready for every good work.
Doug McMasters: Now look at the context again.
Doug McMasters: This is in the context of verse one where he's talked about civil rule, where he's talked about obedience to them.
Doug McMasters: This is not private holiness that's practiced behind drawn curtains.
Doug McMasters: This is public contribution.
Doug McMasters: This is, well, let's paint a scenario.
Doug McMasters: There's a need in the town.
Doug McMasters: Perhaps there's been a flood or there's been a fire, and people's homes have been destroyed, and it's been weeks, even months, and they haven't gotten on their feet.
Doug McMasters: Maybe it's an organization in the town that's run out of volunteers, or maybe there's people that are in need that need tutoring or help in the area of expertise that you have.
Doug McMasters: Maybe it's a place of meeting those who are down and out where they could get food and help and clothing.
Doug McMasters: Be ready for every good work means showing up in those places.
Doug McMasters: It means going into those areas of need.
Doug McMasters: And the town is not wondering if the people of God will show up.
Doug McMasters: They know they will, because they're people ready for every good work, not scrambling to get ready, not going, should I do this, but ready for every good work, looking for needs within the context of our civil society and being an agent for good in those places, not just in our posture toward ruling authorities and not just in our disposition toward the things that lay down upon us as laws, but ready to enter into the community and to do good.
Doug McMasters: To do good.
Doug McMasters: Now let's back up just for a second and reinforce this.
Doug McMasters: What Paul is telling Titus is to help the church and Crete, who live in a society where people are always liars, evil beasts, and lazy gluttons, that the significance of the gospel needs to be demonstrated not just by rhetoric, but by our reputation.
Doug McMasters: Our reputation.
Doug McMasters: To know that because we're in Christ, we are free to be a good neighbor, that we're free to be a good citizen, that we're free to be those who can offer a credible witness for the gospel by entering in and engaging our society in a way that's ready to do what is good.
Doug McMasters: And so the question we have to ask ourselves as we look at this is this is my engagement, is my engagement with the public world consistent with a person who knows that they're a member of another kingdom?
Doug McMasters: Is my life genuinely ready for every good work?
Doug McMasters: Or has the culture entered in?
Doug McMasters: Has the cultural moment and the political atmosphere, with all of its legitimate questions and all of its genuinely difficult ones, entered in in such a way that it's turned my public posture into one of a combatant rather than a Christ-like presence?
Doug McMasters: That's what Paul's calling us to ask ourselves.
Doug McMasters: And the antidote is this we belong to a kingdom that cannot be shaken.
Doug McMasters: No election, no policy, no failure of civic leadership, no evil person in any city or any nation can touch what Christ has permanently secured for us.
Doug McMasters: We belong to.
Doug McMasters: To that kingdom.
Doug McMasters: And that settled identity is what leads us to be able to do this, to be able to look at verse one and say, okay, I can be in my posture submissive.
Doug McMasters: I can be in my disposition obedient.
Doug McMasters: I can, in my action, be ready for every good work.
Doug McMasters: Because I live like a person who's already free.
Doug McMasters: I'm not bound by these things.
Doug McMasters: I don't need culture to affirm me before I step into it.
Doug McMasters: I could be distinct because I'm already owned by God.
Doug McMasters: So let's look at the second point here.
Doug McMasters: The first point talks about the reach of gracious living, and the second one leads us into the manner of gracious living.
Doug McMasters: This second movement gets pretty close to home.
Doug McMasters: To slander no one, to avoid fighting, to be kind, always showing gentleness to all people.
Doug McMasters: He's taken our posture toward governing systems and institutional authorities, and he's now moving to our manner to all people, with actual people, with the people that we meet every day, meeting them in convenient and unconvenient times, good and bad moments.
Doug McMasters: And the first thing that Paul says is this slander no one.
Doug McMasters: I want you to hear the Greek word.
Doug McMasters: I don't often give those out, but I want you to hear it because I think you'll you'll understand.
Doug McMasters: Blasphemo.
Doug McMasters: Does that sound like an English word we have?
Doug McMasters: Do not blaspheme other people.
Doug McMasters: Now we narrow this word, blaspheme, and usually use it only in the context of talking about God.
Doug McMasters: You've blasphemed God.
Doug McMasters: But here Paul is taking it away from just that narrowed understanding and applying it to everybody.
Doug McMasters: Do not speak in a blasphemous way about anyone.
Doug McMasters: What does that mean?
Doug McMasters: Do not slander anyone, do not defame anyone, do not speak in a destructive way about anyone's reputation.
Doug McMasters: That's what he's talking about.
Doug McMasters: It's broad and it's unqualified.
Doug McMasters: And the reason it's broad and it's unqualified is because there are a lot of people who try to wiggle into the place where we'd make an exception about it.
Doug McMasters: There are a lot of people whose behavior, whose conduct, whose personality is such that we would say, well, that person I can blaspheme.
Doug McMasters: That person I can speak evil about.
Doug McMasters: That person's reputation is such that I could, oh, I'm just being accurate here, is this.
Doug McMasters: Paul doesn't give us that kind of wiggle room.
Doug McMasters: Don't speak evil, don't slander, don't destructively talk in a way to deconstruct anyone's reputation.
Doug McMasters: No one.
Doug McMasters: Why is he telling this?
Doug McMasters: Because our voice is to be shaped by something other than contempt.
Doug McMasters: As believers, we have something better to do with our speech than to be destructive and contemptuous with it.
Doug McMasters: It doesn't mean that we have no voice in public issues.
Doug McMasters: It doesn't mean that we stay absolutely quiet about things that are of moral consequence.
Doug McMasters: There's a big difference between what is truthful speech, what is insightful speech, what is evaluative speech, and speech that is meant to be destructive.
Doug McMasters: There's a big difference between the two.
Doug McMasters: He goes on to avoid fighting.
Doug McMasters: ESV says quarreling.
Doug McMasters: And it's literally non-fighting.
Doug McMasters: And it's not talking about being a pacifist here, but we are not to be a person that's oriented toward being controversial and full of conflict.
Doug McMasters: We don't run to the fight.
Doug McMasters: We're not a person who's perpetually ready to tangle in a fighting controversial way.
Doug McMasters: And this for us, I think, is an extreme temptation.
Doug McMasters: Because we live in a cultural moment that rewards contentious point making.
Doug McMasters: All you have to do is turn on any one of the news broadcasts that are cycling 24-7 all over.
Doug McMasters: Pick any of them, it doesn't matter.
Doug McMasters: More liberal leaning or conservative leaning, it doesn't matter.
Doug McMasters: And you get two or three people in the room, and guess what they do?
Doug McMasters: The cameras pan back and they just watch.
Doug McMasters: How contentious is this going to get?
Doug McMasters: Who's going to voice over the other one?
Doug McMasters: Who's going to be so argumentative and point making that they win the moment?
Doug McMasters: Nothing gets resolved, but everybody's emotions have just ratcheted up about five steps.
Doug McMasters: Let us break for a commercial.
Doug McMasters: They haven't fixed the problem.
Doug McMasters: They haven't worked through the rationale for any of those points.
Doug McMasters: They've simply got you agitated.
Doug McMasters: So you'll come back after the break and be ready for the next one, which they're going to sell to people who want you to buy what they're offering.
Doug McMasters: That's what it's about.
Doug McMasters: But we live in a culture that is full of emotional heat and not reasoned arguments.
Doug McMasters: We live in a culture where the sharpest edge is the one that wins.
Doug McMasters: We live in a culture where the social media algorithms, if you spend even five minutes thinking about them, are rewarding the things that cut through it all.
Doug McMasters: They measure and they reward the quarrelsome.
Doug McMasters: And there's a version even in Christianity where that's the case.
Doug McMasters: Where faithfulness is substituted by a willingness to fight.
Doug McMasters: Where the person who's most ready to engage every controversy, where the person who's ready to challenge every wrong person, or the person who sits there in discernment ministries, who is ready to be engaged in conflict itself, seems like the most committed in the room.
Doug McMasters: But that's not how Paul's ordering it here.
Doug McMasters: He's saying not the passive person, but the non-combative person is the one who's the most committed in the room.
Doug McMasters: Third, to be kind.
Doug McMasters: And I'm going to mention the SV a couple times here because in these next two there's a little bit of a flip-flop.
Doug McMasters: But to be kind, the SV says to be gentle.
Doug McMasters: And this is a very, very rich word, and it it resists easy translation.
Doug McMasters: Aristotle used this word when he was describing a person who decided not to take advantage of rights that they had, and was able to relinquish those rights even though they were in a position of pushing for them.
Doug McMasters: So being kind and being gentle in the English language doesn't quite get there, does it?
Doug McMasters: A person who chooses not to enforce every right that they legitimately are entitled to.
Doug McMasters: And you think, ah, that's a lifestyle choice.
Doug McMasters: That's not a right.
Doug McMasters: But they'll stand there and say, This is a right.
Doug McMasters: And Paul is telling us not to be just another subculture, but to be a counterculture.
Doug McMasters: By being some some in someone and some people who are distinctly different than those who are saying, This is my right.
Doug McMasters: You can afford to be, because you belong to a different kingdom.
Doug McMasters: The fourth one he says here in our manner of gracious living is to show gentleness to all.
Doug McMasters: And again, this sort of bleeds over into what the ESV said about the previous one.
Doug McMasters: And the ESV puts it this way: show perfect courtesy toward all people.
Doug McMasters: I like that.
Doug McMasters: Show perfect courtesy toward all people.
Doug McMasters: Not people who deserve our courtesy are to be the recipients of our courtesy.
Doug McMasters: Not people who've reciprocated our courtesy are to be the recipients of our courtesy.
Doug McMasters: Not people that share our convictions or our background or our neighborhood or our political positions deserve our courtesy.
Doug McMasters: No, perfect courtesy to all people.
Doug McMasters: A Christian witness that's warm and generous to everyone.
Doug McMasters: A Christian witness that is warm and generous to everyone and not cooler to those on the outside than we are to those on the inside.
Doug McMasters: Again, what is Paul doing here?
Doug McMasters: He's telling us that the gentleness that we have to all people, in the middle of cultural temptations that would drive those things out of our head if we paid any attention to what the cultural pressures are, is that the credibility of the gospel is on the line.
Doug McMasters: That the community in Crete needed to see a distinct people who swam a different way than everybody else, who lived their life in completely distinct ways that would catch people's attention.
Doug McMasters: Because it's exactly the opposite of what they would expect someone to say.
Doug McMasters: And so he's saying here that we are to live this way, not with the people that it's easy to live this way with, but to live this way with the people where it's hard to live this way with.
Doug McMasters: To live this way with those people who have given us every reason to write them off, to live this way with them.
Doug McMasters: He's getting into a far deeper reason why we do that in just a second.
Doug McMasters: And if you're here this morning and you're thinking, I just need to be better at this, we're going the wrong direction.
Doug McMasters: Because it's more than this, it's about a person who's been reached by something that makes the difference in how we conduct ourselves.
Doug McMasters: And that distinction matters because it changes everything.
Doug McMasters: If you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you have been graciously spoken about in Christ.
Doug McMasters: You're not described with contempt, you're received as a child of God.
Doug McMasters: You are spoken about in language by God that's different than any language you've heard people talk about other people in this world.
Doug McMasters: God speaks to you and about you in ways that are far different than the break room at work or the locker room at the gym or in the quiet spot where the gossip happens.
Doug McMasters: God speaks to you that you are in Christ, that you are delivered from destructive judgment, that you're a child of God, that you're the son or daughter of the Most High, that you are one of his chosen ones, that you are saints, and the list goes on and on and on of beautiful names that God puts on us by grace.
Doug McMasters: And it's from that reality that we can be specific in how we address other people.
Doug McMasters: And this is substantiated by our last point, the ground of gracious living in verse three.
Doug McMasters: Why do we offer our posture toward civic authorities with submission and obedience and engage in our culture with readiness to do every good work?
Doug McMasters: Why do we handle every single person in a respectful, courteous manner?
Doug McMasters: Why do we uphold their reputation with words that aren't slanderous?
Doug McMasters: Look at verse three.
Doug McMasters: For it's the Greek word gar, which means not and or therefore, but because.
Doug McMasters: Because it is the reason behind everything verses one and two talk about.
Doug McMasters: Why do we live that way?
Doug McMasters: Because.
Doug McMasters: And verse three is not a command, it's a memory, because we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived, enslaved by various passions and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, detesting one another.
Doug McMasters: How can I live with a posture of submission and obedience and readiness to good work?
Doug McMasters: How can I be kind?
Doug McMasters: How can I not rebile?
Doug McMasters: How can I be in a place where I'm courteous to all?
Doug McMasters: By holding a memory in place.
Doug McMasters: Just take a moment to run through these.
Doug McMasters: They're not abstract, and they're definitely not comfortable words.
Doug McMasters: But we need to hear them.
Doug McMasters: We too were foolish, not uninformed, but people who knew what life should be lived like, but don't do it.
Doug McMasters: That's what foolishness is.
Doug McMasters: Disobedient, refusing to do the things that should be done.
Doug McMasters: Not out of ignorance, but because of our preference, to do it our way.
Doug McMasters: And we would justify it in such a degree that it just seemed like the right thing to do.
Doug McMasters: But it really was nothing more than our own self-will.
Doug McMasters: Deceived.
Doug McMasters: Now this one rubs us wrong because we don't ever like to think of ourselves as deceived.
Doug McMasters: We have participated, however, in being led.
Doug McMasters: We have offered ourselves in subjection to forces and patterns and habits and cultural currents that run contrary to God and his express purposes.
Doug McMasters: And those things have been a current and a stream far larger and swifter and more powerful than us.
Doug McMasters: And we've said yes to it, and guess what?
Doug McMasters: We got washed down the river like everybody else.
Doug McMasters: Deceived.
Doug McMasters: Enslaved by various passions and pleasures.
Doug McMasters: Well, I just thought this was a lifestyle choice.
Doug McMasters: Or this was something I want to do with my buddies after work on a Friday.
Doug McMasters: Or this is, no, it's slavery.
Doug McMasters: Slavery.
Doug McMasters: Not merely influenced by our appetites, shackled by our appetites.
Doug McMasters: Living in malice and envy.
Doug McMasters: Living in such a way where there's a disposition toward others that would rather we be better off than them.
Doug McMasters: And if they're better than we are, then we are not happy for them.
Doug McMasters: And I had just given my first wedding, uh officiated my first wedding at Ohica Castle.
Doug McMasters: I had no idea what Ohica Castle was until I showed up there.
Doug McMasters: I thought, what a weird name for a building.
Doug McMasters: What is Ohica Castle?
Doug McMasters: And I get there and I realize where I'm at.
Doug McMasters: This is the second largest private home in the United States ever, besides Biltmore.
Doug McMasters: Kudos to Carolinans.
Doug McMasters: And I get there and I and I came away from that and I saw what a Long Island wedding was like.
Doug McMasters: And I said to my friend, I said, I don't think the Long Islanders want to keep up with the Joneses.
Doug McMasters: I think the Long Islanders want to be the Joneses that everybody else has to keep up with.
Doug McMasters: And that was how it felt.
Doug McMasters: And our society calls us toward that.
Doug McMasters: Hateful and detesting one another.
Doug McMasters: A reciprocal relationship in society where we're always positioned with guardedness or antagonism.
Doug McMasters: Because we're in this combative relationship.
Doug McMasters: Now notice what Paul does with this.
Doug McMasters: This is the grounds upon which gracious living is to be enacted.
Doug McMasters: And he starts by exposing where we were.
Doug McMasters: Very much like Ephesians chapter 2.
Doug McMasters: You were dead in trespasses and sins in which you walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that's now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and mind, and by desire by nature were children of wrath, even as others.
Doug McMasters: This is Paul writing the same thing in a different place.
Doug McMasters: And what he is describing is not a subset of particular people.
Doug McMasters: He's saying, all of us, and he's including himself.
Doug McMasters: Paul, this religious, pharisaical, obedient, law-keeping person, is saying, That is me too.
Doug McMasters: And what the Bible here is describing is what we in theological terms call total depravity.
Doug McMasters: And it's not total in the sense that we are the worst that we possibly can be, but total in the sense that there is a pervasiveness about sin that affects every dimension of who we are, internal and external.
Doug McMasters: That it affects our will, it affects our emotions, it affects our thinking, and it definitely pervades into our behavior.
Doug McMasters: That's what total depravity is.
Doug McMasters: And what Paul is saying by pulling us into this diagnosis is to help us to realize that the remedy is not inside of us.
Doug McMasters: The remedy lies outside of us.
Doug McMasters: And this is not pessimistic.
Doug McMasters: It's the only reason for hope.
Doug McMasters: Because if you understand this diagnosis, you know it's not just about try better tomorrow.
Doug McMasters: It's not about I'm going to turn over a leaf.
Doug McMasters: It's not about, well, I'll just start going to church now and things will start working.
Doug McMasters: It's not that.
Doug McMasters: When you Understand this diagnosis, you say, I need a doctor.
Doug McMasters: I need someone who can do something for me.
Doug McMasters: That's the only way I can be reached with any benefit.
Doug McMasters: A person who feels himself hearing all these things and says, Well, you know, I'm just slightly unwell.
Doug McMasters: I could probably do a little better tomorrow.
Doug McMasters: Is not going to go the place they need to go for true help.
Doug McMasters: This person who looks at this diagnosis and goes, Oh, yes, I do remember.
Doug McMasters: Oh yes.
Doug McMasters: Who calls out to the Lord and says, Lord, it's not my brother, it's not my sister, it's not my mother, it's not my father, it's not the stranger, it's not the neighbor, it's me, it's me, it's me, oh Lord, standing in the need of prayer.
Doug McMasters: That is where the next verse reaches.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verse four.
Doug McMasters: When the kindness of God, our Savior, and his love for mankind appeared, he saved us.
Doug McMasters: What's the ground upon which we are able to be in a place of submission and obedience and readiness in public action and discourse?
Doug McMasters: How are we to be the kind of person who's always kind, who's always courteous, who doesn't slander by remembering, by locking in in front of us a recognition of who we are apart from God's intervening mercy and grace in Christ.
Doug McMasters: That's it.
Doug McMasters: The reason why we can be gracious to that neighbor who's persistent, who's brought up the problem four or five times in a row to us, because we were once a person who couldn't manage ourselves.
Doug McMasters: The reason why we can be gracious to that uh professionally attributive co-worker is because we were also people who were self-oriented.
Doug McMasters: The reason why we can not speak evil of others is to recognize that we too were once organized by the passions and pleasures of our own desires.
Doug McMasters: The reason why we can be gentle, where we can relinquish rights that are naturally owed to us, is because God hasn't spoken to us according to what is right, but what is merciful?
Doug McMasters: And the only reason we can stand here this morning has everything to do with what God has done rather than what we have done, and it's grace.
Doug McMasters: And so, what is that first main word, that chief perspective, that always in front of you lens that you're to have when we step outside the walls of the covenant community of Christ?
Doug McMasters: When we reach into the workplace and the marketplace and the neighborhoods and our social functions.
Doug McMasters: What is that one thing?
Doug McMasters: Remember.
Doug McMasters: Remember the grace of God, keep it always in front of you.
Doug McMasters: Let that guide you.
Doug McMasters: Now, next week we're going to unpack verse four and following.
Doug McMasters: But we need to see the front side of the diagnosis before we see the power of the remedy.
Doug McMasters: And part of being the kind of believers that God is calling us to be in a society like we have is by recognizing that we were part of that society also.
Doug McMasters: We were very happily members of that kingdom, but now we're members of a different one.
Doug McMasters: And remember from whence you've come and remember where you are.
Doug McMasters: Let's pray.
Doug McMasters: Father, these words have not been comfortable for us to hear, but they have been very clear, and they have been very pointed, and they speak to all of us in our vulnerability.
Doug McMasters: Because, Father, it's easy for us to be swept up in the tide of the culture, to sit with a difficult person and have an internal eye roll, to hear about a person enslaved to things that are destroying them and be impatient, to look in this world and become part of the contentious.
Doug McMasters: And so, Father, give us a memory.
Doug McMasters: Give us a memory, not one that produces guilt within us, but a memory that produces compassion from us.
Doug McMasters: That remembers that we're not two steps ahead in some moral progress, that we're not up the ramp in gradual improvement, or recipients of grace, that we've been found.
Doug McMasters: And help us when we engage with our society to remember that we were there, right where they are, to remember that we've been reached and that the grace of God has found us in the middle of our foolishness and our slavery and our days spent with greed and malice.
Doug McMasters: And so, Father, help us to embrace that phrase, always gracious, because you have been gracious to us.
Doug McMasters: And Father, I want to pray for someone in this room who's not a believer, who came in this morning, and they've been listening to this message and they've recognized something.
Doug McMasters: And Lord, I pray that it hasn't been some aspirational aspect of it that they need to walk out of here and try to be always gracious.
Doug McMasters: But, Father, that they would recognize what we all need to recognize.
Doug McMasters: That the self we present, that the self we prefer to be, that the self that we show in public is not who we really are.
Doug McMasters: That we're foolish, enslaved, hated, and being and hating.
Doug McMasters: And I pray, Father, that this wouldn't be a motivation for them to feel simply judgment and condemnation, but a recognition that this is a diagnosis of their need, and that you're a God who in your goodness and your loving kindness has appeared precisely for people that verse 3 describes.
Doug McMasters: And I pray that they would not think that they have to resolve who they are before they come to you.
Doug McMasters: But Father, they would come just as they are.
Doug McMasters: The only way that that happens.
Doug McMasters: And Father, that they would recognize what we're going to look at next week, that the kindness of God, our Savior, and his love for humanity has appeared.
Doug McMasters: And he saved us, not by works of righteousness which he have done, but according to his mercy.
Doug McMasters: Lord, awaken them to that mercy, that saving power, that reach that you give to sinful people.
Doug McMasters: And so, Lord, I pray for us that we wouldn't just be aspirationally gracious, occasionally gracious, but that you would give us the architecture of gracious living in remembering who we are, and remembering whose we are, and remembering what you've done for us in Christ.
Doug McMasters: And we pray this in Jesus' name.
Doug McMasters: Amen.