SPEAKER_00: Would you bow your heads with me one more time?
SPEAKER_00: Lord, enlighten our minds as we now study your word.
SPEAKER_00: Do your work of sanctification.
SPEAKER_00: We pray, Lord, for anyone here who does not know Christ as Lord and Savior, that you would open their eyes to the truth of the gospel and that they would be saved.
SPEAKER_00: We pray, Lord, that you would do that miracle of regeneration this morning.
SPEAKER_00: We pray, Lord, that you would speak through me in the power of your Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: In Christ's name I pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Well, if you would open up your Bibles to the passage that I read earlier, Titus chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: And we are going to do a series within a series.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to do a mini-series on Titus chapter 2 called The Culture of Christ's Kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: The culture of Christ's Kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: And what we're going to do this morning is we're going to do a flyover of all of Titus chapter 2, and we're going to notice certain things, but it's not going to be an in-depth exposition of the chapter, but we're going to look at it and seek to understand the culture of Christ's kingdom in general.
SPEAKER_00: One of the ways to think about the church here on earth is that it is an embassy of the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: An embassy of the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: If you've ever been in a foreign country and you lost your passport or you needed to speak to an American, you make your way to the embassy, and Marines are out front guarding it.
SPEAKER_00: And when you step foot in the embassy, are you still in France?
SPEAKER_00: Are you still in Japan?
SPEAKER_00: Where are you now?
SPEAKER_00: You're on American soil.
SPEAKER_00: And as soon as you walk through the door of that embassy, everything that you now see, everything that you experience, is American.
SPEAKER_00: The culture, everything in that embassy is a reflection of the United States of America.
SPEAKER_00: In many ways, that's what the church is to be for the kingdom of God is when you enter the fellowship of the kingdom of God, you have entered into an otherworldly experience.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, it's a transcendent experience.
SPEAKER_00: It's a transcendent experience of God's kingdom here on earth.
SPEAKER_00: Really amazing to think about.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps one of the best illustrations of this that I can think of is going to Disneyland.
SPEAKER_00: I remember when I was four or five years old.
SPEAKER_00: We were out in California, and this is when my father, Preston, was dating my mom.
SPEAKER_00: And so they took me to Disneyland.
SPEAKER_00: And I remember going through those gates, and you begin to smell the aroma of what is it?
SPEAKER_00: Chocolate chip cookies that they're pumping through the entire place.
SPEAKER_00: And you go ride Pirates of the Caribbean and It's a Small World and all these rides.
SPEAKER_00: And what is it, what does it do?
SPEAKER_00: It takes you to a land of enchantment.
SPEAKER_00: That's why people love to go to Disneyland or the Magic Kingdom at Disney World.
SPEAKER_00: It's not because the roller coasters are better than what you get at a Six Flags or something.
SPEAKER_00: That's not it.
SPEAKER_00: It's because you are entering into rarefied air.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what Walt Disney designed it to be.
SPEAKER_00: He designed it to be a place that reflected the enchantment that you experienced in Snow White and Pinocchio and all those movies.
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's what the church is to be.
SPEAKER_00: The church is to be, as one of my friends said, the loveliest place on earth because it is an embassy of Christ's kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: When you come to a biblical church, that's what you are supposed to experience.
SPEAKER_00: Now, let's be honest with ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: Is that all of our experience in various churches?
SPEAKER_00: Like, think about the various churches.
SPEAKER_00: If you've been a Christian long enough, think about the different church experiences that you've had.
SPEAKER_00: There's even a thing now called church hurt, where people have experienced pain and difficulty in churches.
SPEAKER_00: People go to various churches and they don't experience the sweetest place on earth.
SPEAKER_00: Why is that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, uh, I'm not going to have you turn there, but Jesus, of course, gives us the answer to this.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew 13, he gives us the parable of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: He says, the kingdom of God is like a farmer.
SPEAKER_00: He goes and sows seed.
SPEAKER_00: And then he says, but an enemy comes at night, and what does the enemy sow?
SPEAKER_00: Tares.
SPEAKER_00: And so the tares, Jesus says, grow up alongside the wheat.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, he goes on to explain, who is the enemy?
SPEAKER_00: Satan.
SPEAKER_00: So the church is planted.
SPEAKER_00: Christ is building his church.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, he goes on to say that the kingdom is like leaven, that it continues to expand and grow.
SPEAKER_00: It's like a mustard seed.
SPEAKER_00: It grows into a great tree.
SPEAKER_00: And so Christ is building his church.
SPEAKER_00: The kingdom is expanding, but it's expanding over enemy territory.
SPEAKER_00: It's expanding in the midst of terrors.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's very, very, very difficult to have a biblical church that completely reflects the kingdom of God on earth.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, are we glorified yet?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: We're sinners.
SPEAKER_00: And so as long as we're in the church, the church is not going to be perfect.
SPEAKER_00: Have y'all heard the old Baptist joke about the man who was discovered on a deserted island and he had three houses?
SPEAKER_00: And they said, Well, what's the first house?
SPEAKER_00: He said, Well, this is my home.
SPEAKER_00: They said, What's the second house?
SPEAKER_00: He said, This is my church.
SPEAKER_00: And they said, Well, what's the third house?
SPEAKER_00: He said, Well, that's my old church.
SPEAKER_00: I had to leave it.
SPEAKER_00: Well, in many ways, that's our experience.
SPEAKER_00: But yet, what Paul is commanding Titus to do as a church planter and evangelist is to build as best he can by the grace of God a culture in the church that reflects Christ's kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: And that's Titus chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: It reflects Christ's rule on this earth.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we are to be about.
SPEAKER_00: Is Jesus Lord?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, he is.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, this place, the church, must be under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And what happens when you do this, this is why it's so important.
SPEAKER_00: It's important, one, because the church must reflect the lordship of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We must give praise, honor, and glory to him.
SPEAKER_00: But secondly, it's important because the culture of the kingdom is transformative to our lives.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just what we teach, although teaching is of primary importance.
SPEAKER_00: But it's what you experience when you come into the church.
SPEAKER_00: We can teach the truth, but if everybody's angry and dour and upset, do you think that's gonna impact the world?
SPEAKER_00: Of course not.
SPEAKER_00: So it's more than just what it's taught, it's not less than, but it's the entire culture of the kingdom reflected in the church.
SPEAKER_00: So what are the artifacts of that culture?
SPEAKER_00: One of the things we sometimes say is it's one thing to say that you have a culture, but what what artifacts prove that you have that culture?
SPEAKER_00: And I want to show you this morning, just fly over.
SPEAKER_00: We're not gonna look at each of these very long, but four cultural artifacts that should be present in the church.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: So artifact number one is Christ-like leadership.
SPEAKER_00: Christ-like leadership, leadership that reflects Christ's rule in word and deed.
SPEAKER_00: Notice this.
SPEAKER_00: This is interesting.
SPEAKER_00: In Titus two, the chapter begins with an exhortation to Titus as a leader.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse one.
SPEAKER_00: But as for you, Titus, teach what accords with sound doctrine.
SPEAKER_00: Now notice verse 15, how the chapter ends.
SPEAKER_00: It's bracketed with another exhortation about leadership to Titus.
SPEAKER_00: Declare these things, exhort and rebuke with all authority.
SPEAKER_00: Let no one disregard you.
SPEAKER_00: So where does Paul begin?
SPEAKER_00: He begins with leadership with Titus.
SPEAKER_00: Where does he end, Titus 2?
SPEAKER_00: He ends with leadership.
SPEAKER_00: Do you think that's enough?
SPEAKER_00: No, he puts it in the middle as well.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 7 and 8.
SPEAKER_00: He comes back to Titus right in the middle.
SPEAKER_00: Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech, so on and so forth.
SPEAKER_00: Do you think leadership's important?
SPEAKER_00: Leadership is massively important.
SPEAKER_00: History proves this.
SPEAKER_00: You study the scriptures, it proves this.
SPEAKER_00: Remember when the children of Israel came back from exile, things were in a shambles.
SPEAKER_00: A fellow named Tobias had gone into the temple and taken up residence even in the temple.
SPEAKER_00: And a man, uh, he was the shortest man in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Nehemiah.
SPEAKER_00: Nehemiah came back.
SPEAKER_00: He grabbed Tobias by the collar, threw him out of the temple, he organized people to build the walls, and he raised up a man, a priest named Ezra, to begin reading the Word of God.
SPEAKER_00: It hinged on leadership.
SPEAKER_00: And so there's a sense where if you have the right leadership in place, biblical leadership, any church can be salvaged.
SPEAKER_00: Any church can be salvaged.
SPEAKER_00: Herschel York, who I work for in Kentucky, uh pastor at Buck Run Baptist Church, he used to say, if you have the pulpit, then any church can be led in the right direction.
SPEAKER_00: Because ultimately the pulpit and the leadership is going to drive the church.
SPEAKER_00: Now notice what Titus's leadership is to be about.
SPEAKER_00: This is important.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just secular leadership, it's not just generic leadership, it is a word-centered leadership.
SPEAKER_00: Look at Paul's instructions in these three verses.
SPEAKER_00: They all involve teaching.
SPEAKER_00: Teach what accords with sound doctrine.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: Declare these things, exhort, and rebuke with all authority.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 15.
SPEAKER_00: Then in verse 7, in your teaching show integrity and dignity.
SPEAKER_00: So the teaching of the word of God is massively, massively important for this culture.
SPEAKER_00: And that's important because the word is given by who?
SPEAKER_00: Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're going to have a Christ culture, then it's going to be saturated in the word.
SPEAKER_00: And let me say this.
SPEAKER_00: I think the degree that the word of God is taught in the church is the degree that the church will be submitted to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So some churches, it's not so much.
SPEAKER_00: And you say, is the gospel there?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, the gospel is there.
SPEAKER_00: But is it is the culture of Christ's Lordship fully reflected in that church?
SPEAKER_00: Not so much.
SPEAKER_00: And sadly, if I might say a word about our denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention.
SPEAKER_00: This is what has happened over time, is so many Southern Baptist churches aren't really going deep in the Word of God.
SPEAKER_00: And so now we're having a disagreement about the ordination of women.
SPEAKER_00: Well, you have to go a long way.
SPEAKER_00: You have to move a long way to be having that disagreement.
SPEAKER_00: If churches are really teaching the word of God, there's no disagreement.
SPEAKER_00: Because it's very clear.
SPEAKER_00: We studied this in Titus 1 about the office of elder being being reserved for men.
SPEAKER_00: So leadership, so important.
SPEAKER_00: And let me just say this the culture of the church is really a culture of the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: The culture of the kingdom is a culture of the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: I uh been reading this book.
SPEAKER_00: It's by a Lutheran, Lutheran theologian pastor named Harold Sinkbill, and the book is called The Culture of the Word.
SPEAKER_00: And here's a quote.
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you this quote.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Faithful mission in a chaotic world builds on this New Testament template.
SPEAKER_00: People in every context, every nation, tribe, and language should be acculturated by the Word of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Did you hear that word?
SPEAKER_00: Acculturated?
SPEAKER_00: People from different places, different cultures, they need to be acculturated.
SPEAKER_00: They become part of this culture by the word of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: For two millennia, Christians have held that the church cultivates its own transcendent culture in a rapidly shifting social context.
SPEAKER_00: And it's the culture of the word.
SPEAKER_00: Don't you love that?
SPEAKER_00: The field is the world, the seed is the word.
SPEAKER_00: The word grows and cultivates its own unique culture.
SPEAKER_00: You could put it this way: as the word is sown, the culture is grown.
SPEAKER_00: The word creates its own unique and transcendent culture that undergirds, shapes, and directs the mission and life of the holy Christian church on earth until Jesus comes again.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we want.
SPEAKER_00: You enter this fellowship and you experience the culture of the Word of God.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, it begins with leadership, but it doesn't end with leadership.
SPEAKER_00: It keeps going to the people that are within the congregation.
SPEAKER_00: That's the second artifact.
SPEAKER_00: The people, Christ-like people.
SPEAKER_00: If you go back to the to the Walt Disney illustration, when you go into Disneyland, what do you see walking around?
SPEAKER_00: Little girls, who do you see?
SPEAKER_00: The princesses, right?
SPEAKER_00: You see, you see the character actors.
SPEAKER_00: And those character actors are to be a reflection of the vision, the vision, the story, the enchantment that Disney had in mind.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, do you go get character actors from Universal Studios or from other parks?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: You get the character actors that are trained in Disney and they are to be a reflection of that enchantment.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: When somebody comes into the church and they see a member of the church, what is that member of the church to be a reflection of?
SPEAKER_00: Answer the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: When someone encounters you, and it doesn't have to be just in this building, by the way, but when somebody encounters you at Walgreens and you're upset at the pharmacist, you're saying a few mean things to the pharmacist because they messed up your medication.
SPEAKER_00: What do the people behind you in line think?
SPEAKER_00: Man, that person's a curmudgeon.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want anything to do with that person.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: What we're to be is we're to be a genuine, bona fide reflection of Jesus Christ here on earth.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, Jesus said, You are my body, you are the hands and feet.
SPEAKER_00: When people see us, they are to see Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Christ in you is the hope of glory.
SPEAKER_00: And so the people that are making up the church should be a reflection of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is all over this chapter.
SPEAKER_00: All over this chapter.
SPEAKER_00: So if you look, notice the different way that Paul addresses different groups in how they are all to reflect Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 2.
SPEAKER_00: He addresses older men.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, so on and so forth.
SPEAKER_00: Older women, verse 3, are to be reverent in behavior, not slanders or slaves to much wine.
SPEAKER_00: They are to teach what is good.
SPEAKER_00: Younger women, next verse, verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: He says, So train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.
SPEAKER_00: Younger men, verse 6, likewise urge the younger men to be self-controlled.
SPEAKER_00: Bondservants, slaves, verse 9, he says, bondservants are to be submissive to their own masters in everything.
SPEAKER_00: They are to be well pleasing, not argumentative, not pilfering, but showing all good faith that in everything, and underline this phrase, it's an important phrase because I think it's true of all people in the church, that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that beautiful?
SPEAKER_00: You think of an adornment, you think of something that beautifies something else.
SPEAKER_00: And what Paul is saying is that the actions and the virtues of Christ's people adorn the doctrine of God, our Savior.
SPEAKER_00: If I were to ask you why you became a Christian, almost everyone's story involves a Christian who was kind to them and invited them into the Christian life.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody came along at some point and said, I want you to know something.
SPEAKER_00: They took an interest in you.
SPEAKER_00: They said, Look, you know, I think God can work something in your life, and they invite you to a Bible study, or they invite you to be a part of a group.
SPEAKER_00: And along the way, you see something different in that person that's compelling.
SPEAKER_00: You say, What is it?
SPEAKER_00: What is it that's so compelling?
SPEAKER_00: And they say, Let me explain it to you.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus has changed my life.
SPEAKER_00: You say, Wow, would you like your life to be changed?
SPEAKER_00: And that's our introduction to the gospel so many times.
SPEAKER_00: And so, in the people that we encounter that are Christians, we see who we want to be.
SPEAKER_00: And so this cult the reason why this is so important for the culture of Christ's kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: Think about a new Christian coming into this church.
SPEAKER_00: Now I can teach them from the pulpit who they're supposed to be.
SPEAKER_00: We can give them the exhortations, just like we're doing.
SPEAKER_00: Young men, you are to be self-controlled.
SPEAKER_00: I can give the exhortation.
SPEAKER_00: But what else do they need to see?
SPEAKER_00: They need to see other men exercising self-control.
SPEAKER_00: Because in so many ways, Christianity is caught just as much as it's taught.
SPEAKER_00: And this is true in all of life.
SPEAKER_00: It's true in all of life.
SPEAKER_00: When I was at AM, I would go to the different sorority houses for different events and things like this.
SPEAKER_00: All this, you know, they would have dances and socials and all that thing.
SPEAKER_00: One thing that was curious to me, you go to the Pi Fi house, they all talk the same.
SPEAKER_00: They all would kind of have the same mannerisms.
SPEAKER_00: You go over to the the Tridelt house, a little bit different.
SPEAKER_00: There's some unique aspects to the different groups.
SPEAKER_00: And what had happened over time is an influential girl in those various sororities had been there, and other girls started to.
SPEAKER_00: Model how they talk and how they dress and how they look after that girl.
SPEAKER_00: And before long, what's going on?
SPEAKER_00: Everybody in the whole group is like that person.
SPEAKER_00: Now, did uh somebody in the sorority stand up and say, hey, you got to wear your ponytail like this and you got to talk like no, they didn't do that.
SPEAKER_00: It was just kind of caught.
SPEAKER_00: Same thing in the Marine Corps.
SPEAKER_00: What do we do in the Marine Corps?
SPEAKER_00: When I was at Paris Island, what we would do is you get the best Marines and you send them to Paris Island to train the new Marines.
SPEAKER_00: Now, these Marines, you know, a lot of them, their waist is like this, their shoulders are like this, they're walking around, and everything that they do is definely perfect in the way that a Marine should do it.
SPEAKER_00: How they wear their belt, how they wear their uniform, how they salute, how they do all of this.
SPEAKER_00: And so what you want is the Marines, you're teaching them, the recruits, but they're seeing it.
SPEAKER_00: And that's how the church is supposed to be.
SPEAKER_00: They're to people, the the younger believers are to look at you and see it modeled.
SPEAKER_00: So that's the the second artifact is that there's Christ-like people who model Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Remember what Paul says, follow me as I follow Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Philippians 3, 1.
SPEAKER_00: The third artifact, and you see it all through the chapter, is Christ-like training and instruction.
SPEAKER_00: Christ-like training and instruction.
SPEAKER_00: So the word of God is taught, the word of God is modeled in its people, and then what should take place in the church?
SPEAKER_00: What you should see is training.
SPEAKER_00: Training.
SPEAKER_00: People teaching and coaching and mentoring and bringing other people along so that they become more Christ-like and godly.
SPEAKER_00: Notice, for example, you see this in verse 15.
SPEAKER_00: Paul tells Titus, exhort and rebuke with all authority.
SPEAKER_00: Now, a rebuke, when you rebuke someone, does that mean that they were doing it right or that they were doing it wrong?
SPEAKER_00: It means that they were doing it wrong.
SPEAKER_00: So somebody was doing something wrong, and Paul says to Titus, you are going to have to give them a rebuke.
SPEAKER_00: Notice also the qualities that Paul gives to older men.
SPEAKER_00: There's various virtues.
SPEAKER_00: He says sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, love, set fastness.
SPEAKER_00: Notice what he says about younger men.
SPEAKER_00: What's the quality he mentions for younger men?
SPEAKER_00: Just one.
SPEAKER_00: Self-controlled.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the idea is that the younger men who are self-controlled need to add virtues.
SPEAKER_00: They need to become also sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, so on and so forth.
SPEAKER_00: Or dignified sound in faith, etc.
SPEAKER_00: Notice verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: What are the older women to do with the younger women?
SPEAKER_00: So train the young women to love their husbands and children.
SPEAKER_00: So in the life of the church, there needs to be training.
SPEAKER_00: What did Jesus do with his disciples?
SPEAKER_00: The 12 and the 70.
SPEAKER_00: Did he just teach the sermon on the mount?
SPEAKER_00: Did he just teach the sermon on the plane?
SPEAKER_00: Did he just teach them in the upper room?
SPEAKER_00: What did he do with the 12 and the 70?
SPEAKER_00: He trained them.
SPEAKER_00: He taught them.
SPEAKER_00: He said, No, you don't do it like this.
SPEAKER_00: You do it like that.
SPEAKER_00: He sent them out by two.
SPEAKER_00: And then he said, Come back, give me a report.
SPEAKER_00: Then we're gonna we're gonna reflect back on what you did.
SPEAKER_00: There's training involved so that people begin to know, oh, this is what I'm doing wrong, this is what I'm doing right, this is how I need to grow.
SPEAKER_00: One of the places that I saw this best in a church, uh, one time I went and visited there, there was a church that that one of my friends pastored in Dallas called Watermark Church.
SPEAKER_00: And I I walked in just on a weekday.
SPEAKER_00: This is right in the middle of Dallas, right inside the Central Expressway.
SPEAKER_00: And um they had a big open lobby in this church.
SPEAKER_00: Lots of tables, lots of chairs, coffee shop right in the middle.
SPEAKER_00: You got to have good coffee, some caffeine.
SPEAKER_00: But what was amazing to me is everywhere I looked, men were meeting with men, women meeting with women, businessmen, and everywhere I looked, people had open Bibles.
SPEAKER_00: And they were talking one-to-one, one to two, and people were training one another.
SPEAKER_00: See, that's the picture here that we're talking about.
SPEAKER_00: We're talking about this culture where training takes place.
SPEAKER_00: Now, most churches sadly do not do this.
SPEAKER_00: This is something that the parachurch ministries took up because the churches were not doing it.
SPEAKER_00: So many churches, we have a responsibility to teach the Word of God on Sunday morning, to worship the Lord, all those things.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's a challenge to add on to that this culture of training, because it's more than just that.
SPEAKER_00: So, for that reason, so many churches over time fail to carry out the training that they should be doing.
SPEAKER_00: But this is what we need to be doing is to be training men and women to godliness.
SPEAKER_00: Here's why I think churches don't do this.
SPEAKER_00: First, because training people means that you admit that you need to grow.
SPEAKER_00: It means that we admit that we all need to grow.
SPEAKER_00: We admit that we have not arrived.
SPEAKER_00: That's hard.
SPEAKER_00: Have I arrived?
SPEAKER_00: Have I figured all everything out?
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: I need to grow.
SPEAKER_00: I make mistakes, I need to be trained.
SPEAKER_00: Peter says, jot down this verse, 2 Peter 3.18, grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We all need to grow.
SPEAKER_00: So a willingness to train or be trained is a willingness to admit that I need to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So we need to get there.
SPEAKER_00: Second, this requires a word called patience.
SPEAKER_00: Patience.
SPEAKER_00: Because if you are going to train someone, it means that you're training someone who is less mature and Christ-like than yourself.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if we have many parents here this morning, but have you ever gone on a road trip with your kids?
SPEAKER_00: What does that require?
SPEAKER_00: When you have to pack the car, you get going to your destination, within 30 minutes, you hear, are we there yet?
SPEAKER_00: Dad, can you stop?
SPEAKER_00: I have to go to the bathroom.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you're you're driving and you're like, it's patience, right?
SPEAKER_00: That's what's required to have a culture of training.
SPEAKER_00: What does Paul say?
SPEAKER_00: 1 Thessalonians 5.14, he says, We urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the faint-hearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.
SPEAKER_00: Be patient with them all.
SPEAKER_00: We have to be patient.
SPEAKER_00: But in order for us to be a type of church that produces the people that we're talking about, we have to be willing to take steps forward in order to train.
SPEAKER_00: Notice I put we put the blueprint for discipleship in the handout this morning.
SPEAKER_00: You notice that second column, what kind of church?
SPEAKER_00: The church is transcendent in its worship, it teaches the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: We've talked about that with the leadership.
SPEAKER_00: It reaches out, it touches people, creates warm fellowship, evangelizes, but then it trains its people, it trains its disciples, and then it gives them time to succeed or fail to be fruitful.
SPEAKER_00: Because kingdom fruit takes time.
SPEAKER_00: So that's the third artifact that the church trains.
SPEAKER_00: You should see it everywhere you go in the life of the church, this training in godliness.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, that means that we have to be willing to speak the truth in love.
SPEAKER_00: We have to be willing to speak the truth to one another, but also do it in love.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, fourth and finally, the fourth artifact, and this is the most important, is the grace of God.
SPEAKER_00: Because the kingdom of Christ here on earth can ultimately only be created by the grace of God.
SPEAKER_00: And that's so important.
SPEAKER_00: I believe that with all my heart.
SPEAKER_00: We cannot pull off the church as the embassy of the kingdom of God in and of ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: It requires the grace of God.
SPEAKER_00: What is the grace of God?
SPEAKER_00: It's God's unmerited favor given to us in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: But if you think about everything that we've talked about so far, what is Christ-like leadership?
SPEAKER_00: What produces Christ-like leadership in the church?
SPEAKER_00: Answer the grace of God.
SPEAKER_00: What produces Christ-like people in the church?
SPEAKER_00: Answer the grace of God.
SPEAKER_00: What produces Christ-like training where people are transformed as people are training and mentoring one another?
SPEAKER_00: Answer the grace of God.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what that means.
SPEAKER_00: Can we pull this off in our own strength, in our own ingenuity?
SPEAKER_00: That right there is the great weakness of the church growth movement.
SPEAKER_00: Is the church growth movement said, if you do the right formula, if you welcome people the right way, if we can just figure out where the entry point is into someone's heart, we can pull this off.
SPEAKER_00: You do this type of music over there, you do that type of music over there, you have that fog machine right there, you have the lighting just right.
SPEAKER_00: If we get the lighting just right, you know what?
SPEAKER_00: The young people will come.
SPEAKER_00: We can pull this off.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what Paul says.
SPEAKER_00: He puts this section in here.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 11.
SPEAKER_00: Notice that word for.
SPEAKER_00: It's the Greek word gar.
SPEAKER_00: And it means the cause.
SPEAKER_00: What's the cause of all this?
SPEAKER_00: Why is Titus to teach what accords with sound doctrine?
SPEAKER_00: Why are we all to be godly and virtuous?
SPEAKER_00: The cause of all this, he says, is for the grace of God has appeared.
SPEAKER_00: That word appeared is where we get our English word epiphany.
SPEAKER_00: What's an epiphany?
SPEAKER_00: It's when all of a sudden you realize something, you have an epiphany.
SPEAKER_00: It's when you see it for the first time.
SPEAKER_00: You're like, whoa, I see it.
SPEAKER_00: I have had an epiphany.
SPEAKER_00: Who appeared in history manifesting the grace of God?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: The eternal Son of God appeared.
SPEAKER_00: That's the response to the shepherds, right?
SPEAKER_00: The angels come and they tell them the Messiah is here.
SPEAKER_00: They go, they meet the boy, they go praising the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: We have encountered the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: The grace of God has appeared, and the grace of God has a name.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus of Nazareth.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, John says, from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace.
SPEAKER_00: The entryway into grace, the transformation of grace is Jesus Christ alone.
SPEAKER_00: So you'll notice Jesus Christ, it's the grace that saves.
SPEAKER_00: He brings the grace that brings salvation.
SPEAKER_00: If you look at verse 11, look at this: bringing salvation to all people.
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean all people without exception.
SPEAKER_00: We're not universalist.
SPEAKER_00: It means all people without distinction, both Jew, both Gentile, both people of highest state, both people of low estate.
SPEAKER_00: Salvation means that you are rescued.
SPEAKER_00: Rescued from what?
SPEAKER_00: The penalty of your sin.
SPEAKER_00: This is explained.
SPEAKER_00: If you just turn over to chapter 3, Paul gives an explanation of what he said in verse 11.
SPEAKER_00: But when the goodness and loving kindness of God, our Savior, appeared, notice the pronoun, he saved us.
SPEAKER_00: Not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus saves us.
SPEAKER_00: To be saved, to enter into this kingdom community, you have to enter in by the narrow way of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You have to.
SPEAKER_00: There's no other way.
SPEAKER_00: There's no other way into the church except through Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: There's no other way into the kingdom of God except through Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You can't do enough good works.
SPEAKER_00: You can't go do enough confessions.
SPEAKER_00: You can't be born into it.
SPEAKER_00: Heard somebody tell me the other day I was born a Baptist.
SPEAKER_00: You know, no.
SPEAKER_00: You have to be born again.
SPEAKER_00: You're not born into the church.
SPEAKER_00: You must be born again.
SPEAKER_00: Who said that?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus did.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to JC Ryle.
SPEAKER_00: He was the uh bishop of Liverpool, 19th century.
SPEAKER_00: Love Ryle.
SPEAKER_00: He said, true Christians come unto God in a certain peculiar way.
SPEAKER_00: They come unto God by Christ, pleading no other plea, mentioning no other name, trusting in no other righteousness, resting in no other foundation than this, that Jesus hath lived.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus hath died.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus hath risen again for their souls.
SPEAKER_00: I, the chief sinners, the chief of sinners am, but Jesus died for me.
SPEAKER_00: This is the way by which the true Christian draws near to God.
SPEAKER_00: It is by grace alone.
SPEAKER_00: It's a gift that Jesus offers you, but you have to receive it.
SPEAKER_00: You have to humble yourself.
SPEAKER_00: You have to repent of trying to earn your way to heaven, and you have to receive what Christ offers you.
SPEAKER_00: Moreover, Paul says the grace of God doesn't just bring salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Salvation sometimes is called justification, but it's also the grace of God which transforms you more and more into the image of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Every day that we wake up in the Christian life, guess what?
SPEAKER_00: We are dependent upon the grace of God.
SPEAKER_00: It's not that I was saved by the grace of God, and then I endeavor to live the Christian life in my own works, in my own strength.
SPEAKER_00: All of the Christian life is empowered by the Holy Spirit, and that is called the grace of God.
SPEAKER_00: So sometimes that's called sanctification.
SPEAKER_00: When you're saved, that's when you are justified.
SPEAKER_00: That's where you are declared righteous.
SPEAKER_00: That's where you are forgiven of your sins.
SPEAKER_00: Sanctification is then the process that inevitably follows, where you will become more like Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You do good works, not to earn your salvation, but because you have salvation.
SPEAKER_00: So notice how the grace of God is to fuel even that.
SPEAKER_00: Look what Paul says in verse 12 of chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: He says, For the grace of God, he says, is training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions.
SPEAKER_00: You know what's interesting about that?
SPEAKER_00: What did Paul say earlier to the older women?
SPEAKER_00: What did he say that they're supposed to do?
SPEAKER_00: Same word.
SPEAKER_00: He says, You're to train the younger women, right?
SPEAKER_00: But what does he say here?
SPEAKER_00: What is to train us?
SPEAKER_00: The grace of God.
SPEAKER_00: So, in other words, we do it, but it's the grace of God that's really doing it.
SPEAKER_00: We are acting the part, but it's the grace of God that's really carrying out the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: You remember?
SPEAKER_00: We might evangelize, but what does Jesus say?
SPEAKER_00: I will build my church.
SPEAKER_00: So we're commanded to do all things, but the power to do it is grace.
SPEAKER_00: It's all of grace.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot manipulate it.
SPEAKER_00: I learned something from John Piper.
SPEAKER_00: I was listening to him talking about preaching.
SPEAKER_00: And he and he said, before he gets up to preach, he goes through an acronym in his mind.
SPEAKER_00: And I watched this a couple years ago, and ever since I heard this, I've done it every single Sunday morning.
SPEAKER_00: When I'm down here on the on the on the pew, this along with worshiping with you, this is what's going through my mind.
SPEAKER_00: The acronym is aptat.
SPEAKER_00: A-P-T-A-T.
SPEAKER_00: The A is admit your need.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I cannot bring someone into the kingdom of God myself.
SPEAKER_00: You must open their eyes.
SPEAKER_00: I cannot sanctify anybody here.
SPEAKER_00: I wish I could.
SPEAKER_00: I cannot.
SPEAKER_00: You must sanctify them in the truth.
SPEAKER_00: Your Holy Spirit will sanctify them.
SPEAKER_00: I cannot sanctify them.
SPEAKER_00: I cannot do this.
SPEAKER_00: This is one of the most difficult things about being a preacher is I have no capacity whatsoever ultimately to carry out the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Jesus does.
SPEAKER_00: And so you admit your need.
SPEAKER_00: I cannot do this.
SPEAKER_00: The P, you pray.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, impart your grace now to the people of God.
SPEAKER_00: May your Holy Spirit sanctify them.
SPEAKER_00: Will your Holy Spirit make them more like Christ?
SPEAKER_00: All of these virtues that we just talked about with the older men, younger women, the older women, the bondservants, Lord, would you work these virtues?
SPEAKER_00: You must do this.
SPEAKER_00: Please, God, do this work now.
SPEAKER_00: So you pray.
SPEAKER_00: And then the T.
SPEAKER_00: You think of a promise of God.
SPEAKER_00: Because we live our lives based on the promise of God in his word, what God has already said.
SPEAKER_00: And oftentimes I am looking in various passages of scripture, even before I come up here, I'm I'm thinking about the promises of God to me in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And oftentimes I go to Ephesians 3, where Paul says this, and he says.
SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking, Lord, you can do this.
SPEAKER_00: You can do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think.
SPEAKER_00: And then you know what the A is?
SPEAKER_00: So it's admit your need, pray, think of a promise of God.
SPEAKER_00: That next A.
SPEAKER_00: This is amazing.
SPEAKER_00: Act the miracle.
SPEAKER_00: I have to get up and preach the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: Can't just call in sick, call in a rain check.
SPEAKER_00: You have to come, act the miracle, and trust that God's grace will be at work through the word.
SPEAKER_00: You have to act.
SPEAKER_00: And this is how it is in the Christian life, is it not?
SPEAKER_00: Notice with all the uh if if you look at at Titus 2, notice that they're all imperatives through the whole chapter.
SPEAKER_00: It's all imperatives.
SPEAKER_00: We have to act.
SPEAKER_00: Older men, you are to be sober-minded.
SPEAKER_00: Older women are to be reverent.
SPEAKER_00: So train the younger women.
SPEAKER_00: The younger women are to do this.
SPEAKER_00: You, Titus, show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works.
SPEAKER_00: Bondservants are to be submissive to their own masters.
SPEAKER_00: We have to act.
SPEAKER_00: We can't just say, well, we prayed, the grace of God's going to work.
SPEAKER_00: We have to step forward and act.
SPEAKER_00: And then the final T is in after you see God's spirit at work, you thank God.
SPEAKER_00: You turn around and you thank God.
SPEAKER_00: So you admit your need, you pray, you think of a promise of God, and then you act in dependence on God's grace.
SPEAKER_00: And then at the end, you say, Thank you, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Again and again and again.
SPEAKER_00: You provide, you do the work.
SPEAKER_00: And guess what you're doing when you do that?
SPEAKER_00: You're giving him the glory.
SPEAKER_00: You're giving him all of the glory and all the praise.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what God the Holy Spirit likes to do.
SPEAKER_00: Put you in a place where you need to depend on him, and then you rely on him, you act in faith, and then he gets the glory.
SPEAKER_00: And so, in looking at these cultural artifacts that we've looked at, the Christ-like leadership, Christ-like people in the church, the training and the grace of God, and ending in grace, the imperative is not to sit on our hands.
SPEAKER_00: The imperative is dependence and action that we endeavor to become those types of people and that we endeavor to train people so that we can become this type of church.
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we want to be the embassy of God here on earth.
SPEAKER_00: We want to be a manifestation of the kingdom of God by your help, by your grace, by your strength.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we desire to have Christ-like leadership.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we pray for our elders, our pastors, that we would all lead well, that we would lead according to the word in proclamation and living lives that are conformed to the word.
SPEAKER_00: We pray, Lord, for all the people that make up this church, Lord, that we would be praying that we would be more like Christ, that we would look at these virtues of the different people in the church, and we would say, Lord, may I be more like that, where there's weaknesses in my life, where there's sin in my life.
SPEAKER_00: May I repent and step into more Christ-likeness.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, may we admit that it's okay to see where we need to be trained, our weaknesses.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, may we be willing to be trained by others.
SPEAKER_00: May we be willing to train others.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, help do this work of creating a culture of training in this church where we are coming alongside one another and teaching one another what it means to be a godly man, a godly woman, a godly son, a godly father, a godly mother, godly daughter, all these things.
SPEAKER_00: Godly worker.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, we know and we confess that we are completely and utterly dependent upon your grace.
SPEAKER_00: Completely.
SPEAKER_00: That this is your work.
SPEAKER_00: And so, Lord, we ask that you would do a great work in our midst, that this church would become a culture of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, and we know that only you can do this.
SPEAKER_00: And for every ounce of work that we see accomplished, we give you the praise and the glory.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.