Doug McMasters: Amen.
Doug McMasters: Sake your Bible and go to the book of Titus.
Doug McMasters: Titus chapter three.
Doug McMasters: Before Paul ever wrote a single command to Titus about the church there on Crete, he wrote something about that place.
Doug McMasters: He quoted one of their poets who said about them, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.
Doug McMasters: And that's not an outside criticism of the culture of the Cretans.
Doug McMasters: It is written from the inside, from someone who was one of them, their own poet.
Doug McMasters: I wondered if the Greeks were still saying the same things about the Cretans today.
Doug McMasters: And so I went on to Google and I put in a search.
Doug McMasters: What is the reputation of Crete today?
Doug McMasters: And this is what it said.
Doug McMasters: Cretans are widely stereotyped within Greece as proud, fiercely independent, and passionately traditional.
Doug McMasters: Is that right, Konstantinos?
Doug McMasters: No, he's saying no.
Doug McMasters: They're viewed by some as the Texans of Greece.
Doug McMasters: I'm not sure exactly what they had in mind there, but they said they're known for their strong regional identity and warrior history.
Doug McMasters: Well, that sounds a lot better than always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.
Doug McMasters: Well, last week, after I was service was over and I was walking back, uh, Konstantinos caught me.
Doug McMasters: And Konstantinos is not from Crete.
Doug McMasters: He's from the northern mountainous regions of Greece.
Doug McMasters: And he said, he said, the Cretans are still like that.
Doug McMasters: In fact, I think they're even worse.
Doug McMasters: But what a di what what three phrases, right?
Doug McMasters: Can you imagine that being said about your society?
Doug McMasters: These three words of diagnosis.
Doug McMasters: You know, when you sit down and you think about these words and you spend some time with them, it really does get uncomfortable.
Doug McMasters: And not just uncomfortable about thinking about Crete, but uncomfortable about thinking about our society.
Doug McMasters: Always liars.
Doug McMasters: A culture that's organized around the management of the truth, a culture that is crafting a narrative and deploying it for the service of preferred outcomes rather than the truth.
Doug McMasters: You know, you've been reading the news this week, and it doesn't matter which outlet you've been getting your news from, some of that's in there.
Doug McMasters: Evil beasts, aggressive, self-willed, driven by appetite and dominance, a culture whose posture is combative, who rewards the sharpest edge, who applauds those who are willing to fight.
Doug McMasters: Lazy gluttons.
Doug McMasters: A culture in which appetite is primary and where self is the center.
Doug McMasters: An economy that's developed not in order to fulfill needs that people actually have, but in the manufacturing of things that they tell people they want and want and want some more.
Doug McMasters: No, he's doing something completely different here.
Doug McMasters: He's saying that the church needs to be a community of people whose visible public life is a credible demonstration of the gospel, that the gospel does what it says it does.
Doug McMasters: It changes people.
Doug McMasters: That they are to be a people whose reputation in the society is one of gentleness, graciousness, honesty, and service.
Doug McMasters: And when the church's proclamation and the church's life melds together in that kind of concert effort, amazing things happen.
Doug McMasters: You see, the world is seeing arguments, and the world is tired of arguments, and they have their own arguments.
Doug McMasters: But what the world has not seen enough of is a genuinely different kind of person.
Doug McMasters: The church is not to be a subculture in our society, nor are we supposed to be a counterculture in our society.
Doug McMasters: Rather, we are a people who are transformed from within, who present to this public a different kind of person altogether.
Doug McMasters: A person who is capable, against all cultural odds, to be always gracious.
Doug McMasters: Now, the cultural conditions that we're in have often been called a culture war.
Doug McMasters: And that says something, that phrase, that the stakes are real, that the conflicts are real.
Doug McMasters: And if we started to list all the things that are parts of that cultural warfare, we could easily find ourselves several areas in which all of us lay on one side of the war rather than the other.
Doug McMasters: It doesn't take long to do that.
Doug McMasters: But the temptation is this the temptation is to respond to that war as a combatant, to fight the culture on its own turns, and to fight the culture with its own weapons.
Doug McMasters: But Paul has something to say about that.
Doug McMasters: Listen to what he says in 2 Corinthians.
Doug McMasters: Though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh.
Doug McMasters: For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but are mighty from God to the pulling down of strongholds.
Doug McMasters: You see, the church is in a kingdom battle for souls, and that is primary and most important.
Doug McMasters: If we were to shift the cultural temperature one or two degrees further closer to us and leave those people lost in their eternal damnation, well, we've lost the battle.
Doug McMasters: Because we're not to engage with the same things that they engage with.
Doug McMasters: We're not here with the same weapons, and we're not to measure our engagement with the same outcomes.
Doug McMasters: We don't operate with a logic of conflict.
Doug McMasters: We don't operate with the economics of outrage, and we don't applaud the most aggressive person in the room.
Doug McMasters: There is something different God wants us to be.
Doug McMasters: And let me give you a picture of that by talking about a man who is a professor at Oxford University, a believer.
Doug McMasters: His name is John Lennox.
Doug McMasters: And he's probably the most composed person in a room where everybody showed up to watch a fight.
Doug McMasters: And over the past two decades, he's walked into the debates with hostile conversations being thrown at him.
Doug McMasters: He's had debates with Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens and Peter Singer and Lawrence Krauss.
Doug McMasters: All of these men have written books that explain with their considerable confidence that anybody who believes in God has simply not thought carefully enough.
Doug McMasters: And John Lennox has come into the room with these guys.
Doug McMasters: He's come into auditoriums filled with people who've come to watch somebody lose.
Doug McMasters: And they think they know exactly who that's going to be.
Doug McMasters: And he's engaged these men and these audiences respectfully, rigorously, yes, but without anger and without the sharpness that says he's more concerned about winning the argument than engaging the person.
Doug McMasters: And the people who have watched him have noticed a difference.
Doug McMasters: And the reason why they've noticed it is because he acted in a way they never expected anybody to act.
Doug McMasters: And this is exactly what Paul is saying here in Titus chapter 3.
Doug McMasters: He's not telling us to have fewer convictions, by no means.
Doug McMasters: He's not telling us to soften our theology.
Doug McMasters: What he's telling us is that our engagement in this culture is to be an engagement, the kind of engagement that this culture has no category for knowing.
Doug McMasters: That's what he's telling us.
Doug McMasters: And once you realize that and you start to look for how to have that posture, Paul is very clear in saying that the only way that you can engage culture in the way that he introduces here in this chapter is if you know exactly who you were before grace reached you.
Doug McMasters: It starts there.
Doug McMasters: And it's imperative because every person that we meet is an eternal soul.
Doug McMasters: Every person who's on the other side of whatever conflict is in public debate today, every person who is hostile to everything that we believe and cherish, every person whose moral choices are absolutely repugnant or bewildering to us.
Doug McMasters: Every person, even inside this congregation that is testing the limits of your patience, they're never dying souls.
Doug McMasters: Every single one of them.
Doug McMasters: And so that is the proposition of this passage.
Doug McMasters: And that is the proposition of this message this morning.
Doug McMasters: Because Paul is not giving Titus just a doctrinal summary to post up on the congregation's wall.
Doug McMasters: He's here to give us the content of a memory that we are to carry with us.
Doug McMasters: Because if we remember who we are before grace and we remember what grace is like when it reaches us, then we're capable of being the kind of people that God wants us to be in our society.
Doug McMasters: If you could distill all of this down to one phrase, the memory of all of that is not the background of our engagement in society.
Doug McMasters: The memory of all of that is the engine of our engagement in this society.
Doug McMasters: Last week we looked at verses one to three, and there we saw the content of what it meant to be or what we're to meant to show and demonstrate in our society, to submit to rulers and authorities, to obey, to be ready for every good work, to slander no one, to avoid fighting, to be kind, to always show gentleness to all people.
Doug McMasters: But we also introduced the memory, part one of the memory, the memory that we're to lay into our hearts deeply and keep in front of us as the engine of our engagement.
Doug McMasters: We ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, enslaved to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hating and hating one another.
Doug McMasters: That's part of the memory that we need to keep in place.
Doug McMasters: This morning we're going to look at verses four to seven, and we're going to see the positive side of the memory that's to be locked in as the engine of our engagement.
Doug McMasters: And what we see here is grace as an event.
Doug McMasters: Grace is something that's happened to us.
Doug McMasters: Grace is what we keep in front of us as we meet people.
Doug McMasters: Because the moment our memory of who we were and what God has intervened to do in our lives fades away, we become useless for the work of the kingdom in our public engagement.
Doug McMasters: This is vital that we keep this locked in.
Doug McMasters: So this morning I want us to see grace in three different aspects: grace that appeared, grace that is applied, and grace that anchors.
Doug McMasters: Let's look at verse four and we'll see the first part that grace appeared.
Doug McMasters: But when the kindness of God, our Savior, and his love for mankind appeared.
Doug McMasters: I want you to take note of those first two words.
Doug McMasters: But when?
Doug McMasters: Notice that grace here is appearing, and it's not doing so by invitation.
Doug McMasters: And it's not doing so by being in a place where the response is ready for its arrival.
Doug McMasters: He's not saying that grace has appeared when the darkness has finally prepared itself to be at a level in which it can receive grace.
Doug McMasters: Grace just shows up.
Doug McMasters: Grace arrives.
Doug McMasters: Think about the sunshine when it comes, the sunrise.
Doug McMasters: The darkness of the night is not gradually improving until it's worthy of the sun showing up.
Doug McMasters: It doesn't cooperate, it doesn't prepare itself for welcome.
Doug McMasters: The sun engages that darkness, and the darkness has nothing to contribute but to yield itself to the presence.
Doug McMasters: And this is what Paul is talking about here.
Doug McMasters: This is the kind of word he uses.
Doug McMasters: That grace doesn't just show up as human, the human condition gradually develops itself up until the place in which it could get a little extra boost from God's help.
Doug McMasters: No, the goodness and the loving kindness of God appeared in the middle of a dark world.
Doug McMasters: It appeared in the middle of an enslaved, hating, and hated darkness.
Doug McMasters: And in the middle of all that, it shows up.
Doug McMasters: What shows up?
Doug McMasters: Not his judgment, not his anger, not his wrath, not his what is it?
Doug McMasters: The goodness and loving kindness of God.
Doug McMasters: It's astounding.
Doug McMasters: Because in the face of verse three culture, I'm not sure goodness and loving kindness would be our first impulse.
Doug McMasters: And Paul reaches for a wonderful word here.
Doug McMasters: And if you want to know more about it, you can talk to Konstantinos.
Doug McMasters: His love for mankind appeared.
Doug McMasters: And that's a great word.
Doug McMasters: In fact, the Greeks had a particular use for it in ancient days, and they never, never used it for their gods.
Doug McMasters: They never talked about their gods as having a love for humans.
Doug McMasters: A person who actually cares for the people that he has charge over, that shows up among the people that he's managing, who feels and moves into the needs that they have in order to find the answer for them.
Doug McMasters: That's the word that he's using here.
Doug McMasters: And he takes that word, and for the first time in Greek culture, they hear it put on God.
Doug McMasters: His love for mankind appeared.
Doug McMasters: That means when God showed up in this verse three lifestyle that everybody was living in, in that always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons culture, that he wasn't just tolerating them as he was executing his plan.
Doug McMasters: He was moved by what's happening to the human race.
Doug McMasters: That he looks down.
Doug McMasters: Just as the scriptures say that God takes no delight in the death of the wicked.
Doug McMasters: As Jesus cried to rebellious Jerusalem, oh Jerusalem! Jerusalem! How I would have gathered you, but you would not.
Doug McMasters: Hold on to that.
Doug McMasters: That's the love of God speaking in the face of rebellion.
Doug McMasters: And hold on to it because this is not just what opens up our personal testimonies.
Doug McMasters: This is the posture of our engagement with our culture.
Doug McMasters: This is the posture of how what determines how we interact with people every day.
Doug McMasters: That means the person who is combative and difficult, is a person that God came into the world with his love for mankind for.
Doug McMasters: That the person whose moral choices are bewildering is in that same category.
Doug McMasters: A person into whose life and culture God, because of his goodness and his loving-kindness and his love for mankind appeared.
Doug McMasters: A person who's openly hostile to the faith, hostile to our church, hostile to us personally, same condition.
Doug McMasters: The person who's been genuinely difficult to live with, who's wounded you without a word of trying to repair the relationship, the person who is committed to test you every day, same condition.
Doug McMasters: And that's us too.
Doug McMasters: Because we're saved.
Doug McMasters: We're saved because the love of God appeared.
Doug McMasters: That's it.
Doug McMasters: And this appearance that Paul's talking about in his day, when he's talking about this first century Cretan culture in which he showed up with loving, kindness, and goodness and a disposition of love and compassion toward people, it's the same God who's interacting with our generation and our culture.
Doug McMasters: No, his goodness and his loving kindness has moved to people who are still in this condition.
Doug McMasters: And remembering that is what keeps our posture engaged in the way God wants it to be.
Doug McMasters: It's not sentiment that changes how we interact, and it's not a motivational framework that operates in how we interact.
Doug McMasters: It's the remembrance of the grace of God.
Doug McMasters: Now, you might be in this room today wondering if the gospel has any word for you whatsoever.
Doug McMasters: And perhaps you've come into this morning, into the service this morning, and you've been asking yourself some serious questions.
Doug McMasters: And you've been looking upon this congregation with more skepticism than hope, watching whether the gospel is real.
Doug McMasters: And I want to say something to you.
Doug McMasters: The God who has appeared to save has appeared not to ask you to brush yourself up or to clean yourself up.
Doug McMasters: He is coming into the middle of who you are right now.
Doug McMasters: He has come just as he's come to each of us who could look at verse 3 and say, That is.
Doug McMasters: Me if I want to be honest about myself before a holy God.
Doug McMasters: And the word, but when is just as relevant to your life as it was to these people that day and to us today.
Doug McMasters: Let's move to point two.
Doug McMasters: Not only the grace that appeared, but the grace that applied.
Doug McMasters: And take a look at verse five.
Doug McMasters: Such beautiful words.
Doug McMasters: He saved us.
Doug McMasters: Not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his mercy, his own mercy, through the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Spirit.
Doug McMasters: And if verse 4 tells us what the character of God is like, verse 5 tells us what that character did.
Doug McMasters: It saved us.
Doug McMasters: God's goodness, God's loving kindness, God's love for mankind, his grace saves us.
Doug McMasters: And it tells us what happened and what it didn't need in order for us to be saved people.
Doug McMasters: And he starts off with that negation.
Doug McMasters: He says, not because of works done by us in righteousness.
Doug McMasters: Just think about that for a second.
Doug McMasters: Paul is clearing the air in an instant with just a few words and saying, look, this is not about whether or not your works are sufficient or insufficient.
Doug McMasters: This is not about whether you've contributed or not contributed some meaningful portion to your development toward salvation.
Doug McMasters: What he's saying here is that the ground of salvation is located completely outside of who you are.
Doug McMasters: There is no level, no proportion, no degree, total exclusion of any contribution that you make to that salvation.
Doug McMasters: Not by works done by us in righteousness.
Doug McMasters: You are not saved by being a good person.
Doug McMasters: You're not saved by saying, I'll be a better person.
Doug McMasters: You're not saved by some religious activity or form.
Doug McMasters: You are not saved by anything that you could do in any way, shape, or form.
Doug McMasters: This is what saves you, according to his own mercy.
Doug McMasters: And that is a level ground all of us can be on.
Doug McMasters: His own mercy.
Doug McMasters: And it's interesting he chose that word mercy here.
Doug McMasters: He doesn't choose the word grace, he uses the word mercy.
Doug McMasters: Now, grace is responding to a judicial need, giving us something we don't deserve.
Doug McMasters: Giving us a person something to a person who has no standing, no right to be in the room.
Doug McMasters: But mercy responds to something different.
Doug McMasters: Mercy responds to misery.
Doug McMasters: Mercy responds to the wretchedness of a person who is suffering, who is stuck, and who doesn't have the ability to get themselves out of the ditch.
Doug McMasters: That's mercy.
Doug McMasters: And that's what we need.
Doug McMasters: In fact, we need them both.
Doug McMasters: They're not meant to be held in opposites of one another.
Doug McMasters: They're bound together as one.
Doug McMasters: Grace and mercy.
Doug McMasters: And what we have here is a portrait of a people who are exactly that.
Doug McMasters: And this condition that verse 3 describes: enslaved people.
Doug McMasters: And they're miserable.
Doug McMasters: They're miserable.
Doug McMasters: They may not tell you they're miserable.
Doug McMasters: And the kind of car they drive around the neighborhood doesn't look like they're miserable.
Doug McMasters: And the size of their house might tell you something far different about whether they're miserable or not.
Doug McMasters: But I want to say something.
Doug McMasters: They're miserable.
Doug McMasters: I worked at the Towers of Chestnut Hill in the Boston area.
Doug McMasters: And at the time, those condominiums were going for, well, far more than my security guard imagination could reach.
Doug McMasters: And every day I worked there, I interacted with that community of people who lived in those twin towers.
Doug McMasters: And every day I walked away and said, These are the grumpiest people I've ever met in my life.
Doug McMasters: Especially when I had to have their car towed off of the front semicircle.
Doug McMasters: They didn't like that a bit.
Doug McMasters: But enslaved people are miserable people.
Doug McMasters: People led astray, can't find their way back, they're miserable.
Doug McMasters: People passing their days in malice and envy, hated and hating one another, they're in a group of guilty parties and they're miserable.
Doug McMasters: What's amazing about this is this is exactly the mercy of God moving toward that.
Doug McMasters: Wow.
Doug McMasters: We need to keep that in view as we think about people and as we engage people.
Doug McMasters: We need to think about them as more than just in a particular moral category.
Doug McMasters: We need to remember their plight.
Doug McMasters: That not only are they experiencing misery, their eternal destination is one that is most miserable.
Doug McMasters: That beneath whatever they're presenting is a person in turmoil because they are not right with God.
Doug McMasters: And we have to ask ourselves this question: is the way that I'm interacting with people, have I unwittingly, or perhaps even wittingly, brought into my way of thinking about others as I interact with them some system of merit?
Doug McMasters: Am I saying, have they earned the right for me to be kind to them?
Doug McMasters: Have they earned the right for me to show them mercy?
Doug McMasters: Have they done something that's allowed me to soften my posture toward them?
Doug McMasters: And we've re-engaged this idea of merit into how we operate with people.
Doug McMasters: And what Paul is saying here is we in our misery have been saved because we have been saved by that mercy-loving God who's moved toward us in our misery.
Doug McMasters: Amen.
Doug McMasters: And so let's see what this mercy does, because it's a beautiful passage.
Doug McMasters: When the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, he saved us, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy, through the washing of regeneration and the renewing by the Holy Spirit.
Doug McMasters: Now, Paul, when he describes the work of the Holy Spirit here, he uses the same word that's the root of the word of the very first word of the Bible.
Doug McMasters: This regenesis in the beginning, this recreation of us.
Doug McMasters: And he's telling us that our salvation is not about building a revised edition of who we are, some new and improved product for the world to enjoy.
Doug McMasters: We have not simply been redirected to better habits.
Doug McMasters: We've been recreated from the very root of who we are.
Doug McMasters: The God who said, Let there be light into the darkness of Genesis 1 has said, Let the light of the glorious gospel of Christ shine in your heart.
Doug McMasters: And he's made you new.
Doug McMasters: And Paul is pulling out of the Old Testament when he does this, not only in Genesis 1, but also out of the book of Ezekiel in chapter 36.
Doug McMasters: Because Ezekiel was writing to a people in exile.
Doug McMasters: Just think about that.
Doug McMasters: People who have been pulled out of Jerusalem, whose temple has been completely destroyed, and for 70 years they're going to be in a place of slavery because of their sin.
Doug McMasters: And there they are, back there in that land, foreign, strange land, broken, without a temple, without a land, without any visible reason to think that God has done nothing other than to just leave them forever where they're at.
Doug McMasters: And into that condition, God makes a promise that Ezekiel proclaims.
Doug McMasters: Listen to it, because it resonates with what's said here.
Doug McMasters: I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all of your uncleannesses, and from all of your idols I will cleanse you, and I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh, and give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes.
Doug McMasters: I don't know if you could do the arithmetic while I was reading that, but count the subjects there and the verbs.
Doug McMasters: I will, I will, I will, I will, I will, I will.
Doug McMasters: Divine commitment on God's part, and not a single verb that asked us to contribute.
Doug McMasters: The grammar has left no room for a co-author for our salvation.
Doug McMasters: Not a one.
Doug McMasters: And Paul here in Titus 3 is announcing that this promise of God's I wills is being worked through the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit.
Doug McMasters: He's saying, This is the answer, the gospel.
Doug McMasters: The God of this passage of this ancient promise is a God who's alive today.
Doug McMasters: And this renewal has not finished.
Doug McMasters: Continuing to begin that work that he started with his own initiative and one he says he'll finish.
Doug McMasters: All of this matters.
Doug McMasters: All of this matters for how we engage every person we encounter.
Doug McMasters: This memory of who we were and what God has done in his mercy is the engine that drives our engagement.
Doug McMasters: And if we live our life as if we are asking others to merit our kindness and our mercy, if we're thinking, I'll return in kind what you I've gotten from you, we are in the place of having forgotten what God has done.
Doug McMasters: Because if we forget, consciously or unconsciously, we're going to give more of a pass to the person who's gained some merit with us rather than the one that has no merit to offer us.
Doug McMasters: We're going to find ourselves more patient with the person who's earned some of those markers than someone who's never even tried.
Doug McMasters: We're going to be more willing to extend grace whose verse three condition is just seen in more quiet ways rather than the more blatant ways.
Doug McMasters: Because we have to operate out of grace, not out of merit.
Doug McMasters: Because we've been given grace, not judged according to merit.
Doug McMasters: Let's take a look at the last point.
Doug McMasters: I'm going to skip over a few things just to bring us to this last point.
Doug McMasters: And I want us to just understand just how anchoring this grace is.
Doug McMasters: This grace that appeared, this grace that's applied to us, this grace that's now anchoring, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by grace we might become heirs to the hope of eternal life.
Doug McMasters: Think about that for a second.
Doug McMasters: What is this salvation?
Doug McMasters: What is this mercy?
Doug McMasters: What is all of this that he's given us?
Doug McMasters: It's poured out.
Doug McMasters: You know, not like uh, you know, three grams.
Doug McMasters: Well, let's make it four.
Doug McMasters: Poured out, poured out, effusive, not dispensed carefully, not measured with exactness, poured out richly, abundantly, nothing held back.
Doug McMasters: Through Jesus Christ our Savior.
Doug McMasters: Now that's an important phrase.
Doug McMasters: Think about what we've just heard here.
Doug McMasters: We've talked about the love of the Father, we've talked about the work of the Spirit, and now we're talking about the Son who is pouring out this salvation.
Doug McMasters: This is a triune salvation, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit and one rescue.
Doug McMasters: Now, let's stop here for just a moment and let me just leave aside for a second our main thesis of the engine that engages.
Doug McMasters: I want to talk to perhaps someone in this room who wakes up at 3 a.m.
Doug McMasters: and is filled with anxieties and doubts about whether or not God loves you, who sits very quietly wondering if you've done something or failed in somehow, or haven't quite measured up in such a way that you could live with grace covering everything.
Doug McMasters: I want you to hear what this text has to say.
Doug McMasters: Your rescue doesn't unravel based upon how consistent you are, or how good you've been, or what you've accomplished.
Doug McMasters: In order for salvation to fall apart, the Father would have to give up his promise.
Doug McMasters: And the Spirit would have to stop his renewing work.
Doug McMasters: All three of them, all at once.
Doug McMasters: The Trinity is not a committee that occasionally gets misaligned with one another.
Doug McMasters: They work in concert with each other, and it is one God and three persons who executes one rescue.
Doug McMasters: And he's made a determination that what he's begun, he is going to finish.
Doug McMasters: And so, yes, your 3 a.m.
Doug McMasters: doubt might be very, very real.
Doug McMasters: But it's not meant to be a load-bearing guilt or doubt, because the load-bearing your salvation is based upon God and his activity.
Doug McMasters: Now, let's look back in the text and see just how this grace anchors us, because he talks about two gifts that we receive.
Doug McMasters: He said that we receive through the pouring out of Jesus Christ abundantly on us by the Spirit, that we receive justification by his grace and heirs with the hope of eternal life.
Doug McMasters: I can't think of two better gifts to receive than those two.
Doug McMasters: Justification.
Doug McMasters: Think about that.
Doug McMasters: What is justification?
Doug McMasters: It's a legal term.
Doug McMasters: It's God examining the full case of who we are, the full case of what our life deserves.
Doug McMasters: And he's not looking at some highlight reel of our activities or some curated list of things that we wanted to present.
Doug McMasters: Everything inside and outside of us, every unflattering detail.
Doug McMasters: And what is his verdict about us?
Doug McMasters: Not just not guilty, declared righteous.
Doug McMasters: Declared righteous.
Doug McMasters: No, hey, we're gonna hold off until you improve a little bit.
Doug McMasters: No, we'll wait till the next quarter is finished and see how you do, and we'll give you probation until then.
Doug McMasters: No, declared righteous, justified by his grace.
Doug McMasters: The verdict is in, the gavel has fallen, and the case is closed, and he says, declared righteous.
Doug McMasters: What a gift.
Doug McMasters: There's no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, Paul said.
Doug McMasters: None.
Doug McMasters: And the second, the inheritance of what?
Doug McMasters: The inheritance with the hope of eternal life.
Doug McMasters: Now there's a distinction that's worth making here.
Doug McMasters: Because there are two things that can look similar from a distance, but they are categorically different at the very core, and they are absolutely not to be mixed.
Doug McMasters: There is a wage that is earned, and there's an inheritance that is received.
Doug McMasters: And here what says that we are heirs, we are recipients of an inheritance.
Doug McMasters: A wage is earned.
Doug McMasters: You work, you produce, you perform, and you expect to get some remuneration based upon the effort that you've put in.
Doug McMasters: That's work.
Doug McMasters: It's a logical system and it's calibrated to push our performance.
Doug McMasters: But an inheritance, on the other hand, is something totally different.
Doug McMasters: It's received because of whose family we're in.
Doug McMasters: And the air doesn't earn a place at the table.
Doug McMasters: We're born in.
Doug McMasters: We are adopted in.
Doug McMasters: We are acted upon.
Doug McMasters: We are given what belongs to the head of the family who makes it generously available to us.
Doug McMasters: And what God has given us by adopting us as one of his own is he's given us an inheritance of the hope of eternal life.
Doug McMasters: What a wonder that is.
Doug McMasters: So our standing before God is one of inheritance, not debt.
Doug McMasters: We're not here to earn our way, we're here to receive all that he has for us.
Doug McMasters: So let's talk about that according to who we are today.
Doug McMasters: If we're in this room and we're thinking we need to perform, that we're doing the work, that we're trying to be faithful, we're trying to be consistent, we're trying to be present, and we carry this low-level anxiety of whether or not we've done enough.
Doug McMasters: Let me tell you this: there's no way these gifts are going to be yours because they are not earned, they're granted.
Doug McMasters: The verdict is not about whether or not you have become righteous enough.
Doug McMasters: It's about whether or not God has declared you to be righteous.
Doug McMasters: And perhaps you're in this room and you've been filled this week with a lot of failure.
Doug McMasters: That you've gone through things this week that you would rather not anybody notice or examine.
Doug McMasters: Your standing with God is not performance contingent.
Doug McMasters: It's not based upon whether you had a good week this week.
Doug McMasters: What it is meant to do when we have those times is to drive us back to the mercy of verse five and to remember what we really are and who God really is and what he's really done for us.
Doug McMasters: And if you're in this room today and you said, you know, I have been operating with others in this sort of mechanism of merit, and I have been measuring my mercy based upon what I'm getting from them.
Doug McMasters: You're acting like a wage earner, and you're making others act like wage earners.
Doug McMasters: You're causing them to have to earn what you give them.
Doug McMasters: And this passage is all about God giving us something in complete contradiction to who we are, and not once asking us to do something in order to gain his mercy or his loving kindness or his goodness.
Doug McMasters: You see, if you operate in this mechanism of merit, you're going to hold it tight because you've only got so much you can give out.
Doug McMasters: And you're going to protect it.
Doug McMasters: But when you operate out Out of the abundant eternal well of God's love and mercy who's been showered upon you, you don't have to protect anything.
Doug McMasters: You know what God has done for you.
Doug McMasters: He has poured out all of that love and mercy and inheritance upon you.
Doug McMasters: And you you don't need to see if you've got the reserves to be merciful, because you've got eternal mercy that saved you.
Doug McMasters: And you can operate out of that.
Doug McMasters: And you can be always gracious.
Doug McMasters: Always gracious.
Doug McMasters: You can extend to others what's been poured out on you.
Doug McMasters: And this is what this passage has been about.
Doug McMasters: It's been about how we interact in a public way.
Doug McMasters: Because the public is not just waiting for the right argument, they're looking for a different person.
Doug McMasters: And God tells us that the gospel makes us different people.
Doug McMasters: And when we bring the good news and the transformation of that good news in our life together, and we bring them together in concert, what a difference that's going to make.
Doug McMasters: We're going to engage the kingdom battle in the way that God wants.
Doug McMasters: And the way to do that is to keep that memory fresh.
Doug McMasters: Not in the background, but as I've said, the engine of our engagement.
Doug McMasters: Let's pray together.
Doug McMasters: Father, I pray that you would watch over us.
Doug McMasters: Lord, that you would help us to remember the thing that you've asked us to keep alive.
Doug McMasters: And Father, we want to confess that we too often let go of that memory.
Doug McMasters: And we do so more often than we'd like to admit.
Doug McMasters: Lord, we live in the world in which verse 3 is loud and proud.
Doug McMasters: And the pressure to become a combatant in that culture is very, very real.
Doug McMasters: And the temptation to forget the condition of your loving kindness and what it appeared into, our condition, is a temptation we yield to more often than we should.
Doug McMasters: So remind us, Lord.
Doug McMasters: Remind us that what appeared into our darkness was not something in response to our readiness, but you who could not look at us and leave us where we were.
Doug McMasters: That your mercy reached us in a condition of being just like everyone else.
Doug McMasters: Lord, help us to remember that and to look at every soul and every person we encounter this week, whether they're difficult or hostile or just filled with the things that verse 3 talks about.
Doug McMasters: We ask, Lord, that the washing that regenerated us would keep renewing us, keep pouring out on us richly, and would produce in us what we need to be.
Doug McMasters: To be the kind of people that move through this broken world with open hands.
Doug McMasters: That we don't interact as combatants that are protecting us side, but as heirs that are extending a mercy that can't be spent down.
Doug McMasters: Father, I also want to pray for every person here who's not feeling very stable this morning.
Doug McMasters: And remind them that the title of salvation is held by you, not by them.
Doug McMasters: And that the gavel of declared righteousness fell on a verdict that you rendered.
Doug McMasters: And that the ground beneath them is not how they perform, but according to your mercy.
Doug McMasters: Father, I also want to pray for anyone in this room who does not yet know of this inheritance that can be theirs.
Doug McMasters: Father, we pray that you would show them by the awakening of their mind and their heart and their conscience of that gracious door that you opened, made to be visible, that the loving kindness and goodness of God has appeared into the lives of people just like they are right now.
Doug McMasters: And it's still moving and it's still drawing and it's still reaching need and their need.
Doug McMasters: And I pray, Father, they would open their heart to you.
Doug McMasters: And Father, I pray that as we go out today, as we step into our families, as we interact with celebrations, some of us amongst our family for the fathers, as we remember those fathers who are no longer here.
Doug McMasters: And Father, as we remember you as the good Father when we have no good memories of our own, we pray, Father, that all of our hearts to be filled with gratitude, that you're a God who is full of kindness, that you're a God who's full of goodness, that you're a God who is saved, you're a God who has given us, according to your mercy, a renewal of heart and a washing, and that you've poured all of this out abundantly on us so that we might be justified by your grace and be declared heirs with the hope of eternal life.
Doug McMasters: And we pray this in the name of Jesus.
Doug McMasters: Amen.
Doug McMasters: Let's stand in.