Learning to Say the Right Words Part 1 (Titus 2:11-14)

A wilderness story can wake you up. The image of a man who planned every mile of his journey but forgot to plan his way home sets the tone for a conversation about grace as both a guide for life and an exit strategy for death. We open Titus 2 and discover that grace is not only a doctrine to affirm—it is a teacher who meets us where we are, repeats the lesson as often as needed, and forms our habits day by day.

We unpack how grace trains us to say no to the patterns that once owned us and yes to practices that make us whole. Saying no is not dour moralism; it’s the freedom to disown what corrodes our joy. At the same time, grace calls us into sensible living marked by self-control and sound judgment, righteousness anchored to God’s standard rather than shifting personal values, and godliness that turns routine into worship. You don’t graduate from temptation, and you don’t age out of formation; grace keeps teaching while you keep walking.

Along the way, we challenge the cultural script that replaces every no with now and swaps virtues for marketable values. The text points us to a steadier path—habit, devotion, and a mind renewed by truth. Whether you’re new to faith or long on the road, this is a clear map: refuse what dims the soul, practice what reflects Christ, and remember that salvation appears for all kinds of people. Grace prepares you to live well today and to leave well when the time comes.

If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs the nudge, and leave a review with the one habit you’re choosing to practice this week.

What does it look like to live a holy life? In In Pursuit of Holiness, Stephen shows you how to think clearly, resist sin, and live differently in a culture that pulls you the other way. Move beyond information to real application. Get your copy today and take your next step with Christ. https://bit.ly/4v5aktw

Learn more: https://www.wisdomonline.org/

Transcript

Recipients Of Grace

SPEAKER_00 0:38

We're recipients of God's grace. How can we express the true meaning and significance of God's grace in our lives?

A Tragic Alaska Story

Living And Leaving By Grace

Salvation For All Kinds Of People

Grace As Our Daily Tutor

Learning To Say No

Parenting Metaphor And Culture’s “Now”

What Ungodliness Looks Like

SPEAKER_01 0:48

Grace is going to tutor us in how to say three things. The first expression is that little word no. Go back to verse 12 again. Look, instructing us to deny. That word deny means to say no. It means to refuse. The kind of life you were living, you are now disowning. You're saying no to it. Carl McKinnon was a likable Texan. I read a little bit of his story. He loved the outdoors. In the late 70s, he moved to Alaska, took a trucking job with the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, made good money, a few friends, took up photography, and planned to make an expedition into the wilds of Alaska that still to this day bewilders everyone who hears his story. At the age of 35, he embarked on a five-month photography expedition. He'd spent a year planning every single detail. He had solicited advice. He had used the year to purchase supplies. And then in the spring of 1981, he hired a Bush pilot to drop him at a remote lake 70 miles northeast of Fort Yukon. He had along with him two rifles, a shotgun, 1,400 pounds of provisions, and 500 rolls of film. He arrived, he set up his camp there in the isolation of the wild, surrounded by nothing but gorgeous nature, where he'd spend five months of hiking and hunting and fishing and photographing the splendor of his surroundings. He was blissfully unaware of one overlooked detail that would cost him his life. He had made no arrangement with anyone to be picked up. It didn't dawn on him until August. Every day he searched for food and he scanned the skies for rescue and none came. By the end of September, the lake was frozen, the snow began piling up, hiking out was now impossible. His supplies nearly gone, as well as his ammunition. The details of his final days are known to us because of a more than 100-page diary found near his body where he detailed those last months of freezing cold and starvation. He was found by authorities nearly a year after he had first set up camp and begun his expedition. In his diary is perhaps the greatest and most tragic understatement of his life as he wrote, and I quote, I should have used more foresight about arranging my departure. He'd planned every detail of his expedition. He had not planned any details for his exit. He'd planned everything for his living. He'd planned nothing for his leaving. Frankly, I, as I read that story just a few weeks ago, couldn't help but believe that is the story of most human hearts on the planet today. They think only of living and nothing about leaving. Yet nearly two people will die on this planet every second. More than 6,000 an hour. Around 57 million a year. I find it wonderful that the grace of God has made for us every provision, not only for living in this wild world, but in leaving this world. In fact, the only way you're ever going to live in this world, heading in the right direction, the only way you're going to leave this world, heading for the right destination, happens to be the grace of God. We are saved by grace, we live by grace, we are taught by grace, we die in grace and go to heaven on the promise of God's grace for those who believe the gospel of grace. And in Titus chapter 2, where I invite your attention, the Apostle Paul has been delivering what I've called a family talk. He comes to the end of this address, speaking to every member of the family. He sort of pulls the cart over on the side of the road and says, Look, I want to summarize everything by just telling you it's all about the grace of God. Not only in living and dying, living here and leaving here. It's the grace of God. The graciousness of God. Notice verse 11 where we left off. For the grace of God has appeared. That little word for, that is, everything I've been talking about to you is directly connected back to and empowered then by and encouraged by the grace of God. As an older man, you can't pull off what I've challenged you to do without the grace of God. As an older woman, you can't even begin without the grace of God. A younger wife, mother, younger man, a servant of the household, you can't do what I've challenged you to do. You can't live and you're not ready to leave without the grace of God. And would you notice? He says, the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men. In other words, this is your way out of here. This is your exit strategy. The grace of God, as we'll see in a moment. What have you done then with the gracious offer of salvation from God? Have you made any plans relative to being picked up? Now, I want you to notice that Paul is not saying that all men are saved. Don't misunderstand him. He's not preaching universalism here. This connective conjunction, that begins the sentence, this very long sentence, by the way, that stretches from verse 11 all the way through verse 14, one of those classic sentences by Paul, is connecting it back to the context of the previous verses where Paul has addressed different categories of people. You could understand Paul to be saying here in verse 11, for the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all kinds of people. Whether you're a man or a woman, young or old, bond or free, toss in rich or poor, Jew or Gentile, married or single or widowed, a parent or parentless, childless citizen or foreigner. Anybody can be a member of the family of God. And if you're a member, you got that membership card solely by believing in the gospel of the grace of God. It's appeared. It is your way out. But when you got saved, grace was not finished with you. Far from it. You're going to now grow in grace, Peter wrote in 2 Peter 3.18. That is, you're going to grow up in the gracious character of your living Lord. So Paul effectively now in this sentence says, I'm going to keep the cart parked over here on the side of the road for just a few minutes and explain to every member of the family how grace impacts every aspect of living and leaving. That's what he does in verses 11 to 14. And what I want to do is outline what Paul has to say by giving you three different words or expressions to learn how to say. Three expressions determined by, governed by the grace of God. In fact, if you want to measure, before we dive in, so don't read ahead. If you want to measure, if you're growing in grace, just ask yourself the question you'll be able to ask at the end of the study, perhaps better. How often am I saying one of these three things? And the first word to learn how to say, by the grace of God in your life, is the little word no. In O. This has to do with the kind of lifestyle you are in the process of rejecting on a daily basis. Look at verse 11 again. For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men. Now notice what grace does next, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires. See, Paul sort of personifies grace, so that you actually think of a person. And grace shows up and begins to teach us. And she begins to teach us how to say no. Well, I thought grace was all about how to say yes. Well, it is, but it's interesting that first you're taught how to say no. In fact, you're instructed. Did you notice that word? It has wonderful implications. Paul could have in this, by the way, he could have chosen the word didasco, a Greek word that refers to a formal setting of teaching, kind of like today. I'm teaching, you're listening. I'm behind a desk, which even kind of helps present more of the image of a professor in a class. And this kind of teaching works only if you show up. If you miss the lecture or the sermon or the lesson, tough. You missed it. Paul doesn't use that word. He uses the word pieduo, which gives us our word pedagogy, pedagogue. It refers more to teaching a toddler, teaching a young child, typically by a parent. This kind of teaching is informal. And it takes place, in fact, throughout the day, whenever teaching moments arise, you teach that little child. So what he means here then, even in the choice of that verb, is that the grace of God is a teacher that teaches us where and wherever we are. It daily teaches us whenever teaching moments arise. Which means the grace of God condescends to teach us at our own personal speed. In fact, there's the nuance and the idea that grace will reinforce truth according to our own personal needs and the style of learning where we learn best. Grace is the perfect tutor. If she had taught me science and math, I'd be a pilot. I wouldn't be in the ministry today. And I would miss all of you terribly. If you missed a lesson or two yesterday, Grace is going to show up today. She's ready to teach. If you didn't quite get the lesson, which none of us ever really master, since the subject of our lesson is the character and the nature of God, Grace is going to show up again and again and again and lead us through the lessons all over again. In fact, for the rest of our lives, we will have the companionship of this teacher, this tutor called Grace. And Grace is going to tutor us in how to say three things. The first expression is that little word no. Go back to verse 12 again and look. Instructing us to deny. That word deny means to say no, it means to refuse. You could also translate it to renounce, to disown. Paul is effectively saying the kind of life you were living, you are now disowning. You are renouncing. You're saying no to it. Young couple, in fact, that joined in the first service, told me recently they'd literally decided to renounce everything they could think of that might stand in the way of their commitment and growth. Anything and everything. Anything questionable, anything doubtful. They poured down the sink all their alcoholic beverages. They threw away most of their music collection, books and magazines, began spending their money differently. They got up in the morning as a young couple deciding to view life with a different shift entirely. They effectively said, We're finished with anything that keeps us on the fence. We're going to start saying no to anything that sounds like, looks like, seems like our past life. Paul expands the same idea to the Ephesians. He says, Don't walk any longer as the unbelievers walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the hardness of their heart. They, having given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity, you didn't learn Christ in this way. In other words, grace isn't tutoring you to live like that. In reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and you're renewed in the spirit of your mind as you put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has created us in righteousness and holiness, Ephesians 4, 17 to 24. All that to say, learning to walk in Christ, tutored by grace, means that you will, first of all, be taught how to say and to what to say no to. Growing up in Christ, one author wrote, is impossible without the discipline of refusal. And isn't that just like growing up as a human being? I mean, if you have children, you know you're spending so much time with your toddlers as you're literally raising them. In fact, the one word you say more than anything is no. You don't go around the house saying to them, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It's no, no, no, no, no, no, right? I mean, that's the word that is the number one word in your vocabulary. Your little angel toddles over to the cabinet there or the coffee table and reaches out as his pudgy little hand to grab it, and you say, no, no. And he freezes. Then he looks over at you without blinking an eye, stares you directly in the eye, and grabs it. He has decided you're not as tough as you look. It's time he can take you on. That's what he thinks of your no-no. No wonder Mark Twain said, when a child reaches two, put him in a barrel and feed him through a knothole. He went on to say, and then when he turns 13, plug up the hole. I'm not recommending that, but he must have had some kids. Part of the challenge of growing up is responding to the word no. What's wrong with playing in the street? What's wrong with eating candy, you know, for supper? Well, what's wrong with playing out in the rain when it's lightning? I mean, that's a blast as a kid. Somebody comes along and says no. The truth is, we need grace to teach us what to say no to because our parents aren't going to be around forever, especially as it deals now with mature spiritual things, physical things, emotional things, financial things. Our peers aren't going to teach us. The world system isn't going to teach us. The world system is designed to erase every no and replace it with now. What are you waiting for? Now. Don't withhold anything. Don't say no. Say now. Francis Schaeffer, a Christian philosopher, now with the Lord and author, wrote some 40 years ago. He wrote this, and I quote, we are surrounded by a world that says no to nothing. We have a society that holds itself back from nothing. Any concept of the word no is avoided as much as possible. Absolutes and ethical principles must give in to selfish pursuits. Of course, this environment fits exactly into our natural disposition because since the fall of man, we do not want to deny ourselves either. No wonder we need grace to show up regularly and teach us, instruct us, tutor us in how to say no. Grace will teach us to say no to ungodliness and worldly desires. What are they? Well, he didn't give us a list, which I think is wonderful because now we can generalize this definition. It would simply be anything. A disciple of Christ who wants to grow, anything you might do or say, or pursue, or or think, or participate in, where you would be embarrassed if Jesus showed up. And you heard the implicit from him. No, no. This is this is how you leave your old life. It's a daily leaving, moment by moment sometimes. But there's more. Not only does grace teach you how to leave your past life, it teaches you how to live your present life. Notice what he writes next in verse 12, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires. Don't stop there. But to live sensibly, righteously, and godly in this present world. You don't just stop with no. You know, how you're growing Christian? Yeah. How do you know that? Well, I'm not doing this, that, I'm not doing that, I'm not doing that, I'm not doing that, I'm not doing that. Don't stop there. Grace is going to teach you how to say yes and what to say yes to. In fact, the tenses of this verb to live, to live sensibly, indicate that it takes place at the same time as your denials. This is a wonderful truth and very encouraging to every disciple that wants to grow up in Christ. In other words, you're saying no to ungodliness and no to worldly desires, while at the same time you are saying yes to living sensibly and righteously and godly. You see, part of the misconception, especially if you're new in the faith, that the enemy's going to bring to your mind, is that you're going to become discouraged because you have this belief, this misconception that you'll eventually arrive at some point where you will never have to say no again. Life will be an easy yes. I mean, surely a mature-wise, growing Christian gets to the point where he never has to bother saying no. I mean, those temptations are finally going to give up and say, well, leave that guy alone. It doesn't work. Not according to Paul, not according to the rest of the Bible. In fact, even Paul, as a maturing believer, transparently admitted to struggle with doing the things he didn't want to do and not doing the things he wanted to do. Oh, wretched man that I am. Romans 7. You are never beyond temptation. You will never outgrow the need to say no on a daily basis. And at the same time, you're never beyond the need to say yes, to affirm these things. We don't just put off the old man. We put on the new man. Ephesians 3. And Paul tells us that grace is going to clothe us correctly. Take that off and put this on. Now Paul tells us that Grace is going to teach us to say yes to three different attributes. The first one here in verse 12 is sensibility. This word has shown up several times, and I've tried to mark it each time in your minds. It occurred in chapter one as a qualification for an elder. He needs to be known as sensible. It is also a challenge for older men to be sensible. Chapter 2, verse 2. It's part of the growing development of a young wife and mother. She's also told to be sensible in verse 5 of chapter 2, and also in the lives of young men they're told to be sensible in verse 6. Now Paul broadens the application, as I said he would, to the entire church family so that no one is exempt from saying yes to this characteristic. The word means, if you remember, to live with discretion, to think and act with self-control. It's a word that refers to somebody, in fact, is translated often, especially in the King James Version, to be of sound mind. That is, he's a believer who doesn't allow his mind to be controlled or distracted by either circumstances or culture, and that is then the daily battle. He daily makes up his mind to follow the truth. Daily. Now Paul adds another course in the curriculum of grace. Not only is the believer to live sensibly, but righteously. Paul, by the way, only uses this word in this form two other times in the New Testament. One to defend his own actions as being upright. One of the rare times he defends himself, 1 Thessalonians 2, verse 10. And the other time to describe the believer's obligation to stop sinning and live rightly. 1 Corinthians 15, 34. Living righteously means you live rightly. You live with rightness. You live then by the divine standard of what is right. And it must be a divine standard outside of yourselves, because if it isn't, we're going to think whatever we're doing is right. Let me get on a little hobby horse for a moment. More and more you are hearing people talk about their values. They have family values. We have personal values, the values that made our country great. People who live according to their set of values. I'm a man or a woman of values. That word values, dear fly, means absolutely nothing. It can be defined any way a person wants to define it. The word values is entirely subjective. It's whatever you happen to believe in. Whatever you happen to think is something valuable. In the eyes of God, it might not be valuable at all, but you think it is, and so you're a person of values, and that's the word today. It's used for everything from American-made merchandise to organic food. Whatever you value is based on what you believe, you feel, you want to do, and they are as varied as the wind. Values have replaced, here's the word that's that's disappeared. Values has replaced the word virtues.