SPEAKER_01: This podcast is brought to you by Grant Parkway Patrick.
SPEAKER_01: Helping people to know, enjoy, and glorify God.
SPEAKER_01: For more information about Grant Parkway, visit GrandParkway.org.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, God.
SPEAKER_02: Your glory is our good.
SPEAKER_02: We are at our best when we are following you, when we have your glory at the forefront of our goals, our priorities.
SPEAKER_02: When you get the glory, which you always get the glory.
SPEAKER_02: It's for our good.
SPEAKER_02: Even when it's hard, even when it's difficult, even when it's lonely.
SPEAKER_02: Your glory is always for our good.
SPEAKER_02: So, God, we love you.
SPEAKER_02: We need you.
SPEAKER_02: In Jesus' name, through the power of the Holy Spirit, and all God's people said.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: You guys can take a seat.
SPEAKER_02: Hello, hello.
SPEAKER_02: My name is Ian Weber.
SPEAKER_02: I have the privilege and honor as serving as the student pastor here at Grand Park Way.
SPEAKER_02: And I love what I get to do.
SPEAKER_02: It's crazy that next Friday is actually three years of being here.
SPEAKER_02: It feels like I've been here for a long, long time, and I've been here for like seven seconds.
SPEAKER_02: So that's exciting.
SPEAKER_02: Hey, we are going to be in Titus, if you have your Bible, gonna be in Titus chapter two this morning.
SPEAKER_02: And while you're turning there, I just want to point out something that I find kind of humorous, which is if you're over the age of 13, statistics says there the vast majority probably have some sort of a smartphone or a smart device easily accessible.
SPEAKER_02: And so for all of you that have an iPhone or an Android in your pocket, there's something uh in the battery safety section of your smart device that says, and I quote, you should not drop, burn, puncture, or crush your smart device.
SPEAKER_02: All right, I find that kind of funny.
SPEAKER_02: Dropping, you know, everybody drops their device at some point.
SPEAKER_02: That's just human nature.
SPEAKER_02: But to burn, puncture, or crush seems maliciously intentful.
SPEAKER_02: That seems rather difficult to just accidentally do.
SPEAKER_02: And one of the reasons why they put that in there is because your smartphone, it has a purpose.
SPEAKER_02: There's a whole lot of purposes, but there is a right way to use it and a wrong way to use it.
SPEAKER_02: But if you don't understand the purpose of your smartphone, then why not burn it, crush it, or puncture it?
SPEAKER_02: Why not use it as a baseball or a doorstop or a coaster?
SPEAKER_02: Your phone or iPad or whatever has a purpose.
SPEAKER_02: To go against the designer's instruction is to diminish what it was supposed to do as well as make it less effective.
SPEAKER_02: I bring this up because I fear that too many Christians do not understand the purpose of their salvation.
SPEAKER_02: And as such, I think that too many Christians are missing out on the full experience it's meant to bring.
SPEAKER_02: They're missing out on using it to its best intent.
SPEAKER_02: So if we don't understand the purpose of our salvation, then we're going to miss out on so much it has to offer.
SPEAKER_02: We're going to miss out on that Zoe life that we talk about here at Grant Parkway so often.
SPEAKER_02: So this morning I want us to look at a question, which is what is the purpose of our salvation?
SPEAKER_02: And in order to do that, we're going to look at Titus chapter 2, verses 11 through 15.
SPEAKER_02: And it reads as follows, and it should be on the screen behind me.
SPEAKER_02: For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself up for us to redeem us from lawlessness, and to purify for himself a people of his own possession, who are zealous for good works.
SPEAKER_02: Declare these things, exhort and rebuke with all authority, let no one disregard you.
SPEAKER_02: This morning we're going to look at salvation from two fronts, what it's for and what it's not for.
SPEAKER_02: So let's unpack this passage, but before we do, there's a little bit of groundwork we need to cover.
SPEAKER_02: Up until this point, Titus, I'm sorry, Paul has been writing to his friend Titus, that's on the island of Crete, how different kinds of Christians should live.
SPEAKER_02: The first person on his list is the elders of the church.
SPEAKER_02: And he's not talking about the older people, he's talking about the leadership of the church.
SPEAKER_02: Just like we have elders at Grand Parkway, he says, this is the criteria that an elder should have.
SPEAKER_02: After going on from after the elders, he then says this is how older Christian older men should live as Christians, then older women, then younger women, then younger men, and then finally servants.
SPEAKER_02: He says, There's all these different kinds of Christians, and we and this is how they should live.
SPEAKER_02: And then he goes into the start of our passage, and we're going to read verse 11 and 12 again.
SPEAKER_02: For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age.
SPEAKER_02: That word for is kind of like the hello.
SPEAKER_02: This is why all these different people should live this way, because the grace of God has appeared bringing salvation to all.
SPEAKER_02: The grace of God in this passage is talking about Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: The infinite, almighty, invisible God, has appeared in the person of Jesus, and he has done something that we were never going to be able to do for ourselves, which is bring salvation for all people.
SPEAKER_02: Now, a real fast little note, because I don't want us to get tripped up on that second half of verse 11.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, this this is not a verse to support universalism.
SPEAKER_02: This is not a verse that says, everybody gets to heaven, nobody has to go to hell.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus saved everybody.
SPEAKER_02: How cool is that?
SPEAKER_02: That's not the point of this verse.
SPEAKER_02: This is talking about the applic, I'm sorry, this is talking about the availability of salvation.
SPEAKER_02: Nobody is beyond God's ability to save them.
SPEAKER_02: If he wants to, it's gonna happen.
SPEAKER_02: This is not talking about the application of salvation, being that Jesus has applied salvation to everybody ever and we're all good to go now.
SPEAKER_02: Cool?
SPEAKER_02: Cool, all right, awesome.
SPEAKER_02: There's no verse that supports universalism.
SPEAKER_02: It's a load of baloney.
SPEAKER_02: All right, cool, here we go.
SPEAKER_02: So, verse 12.
SPEAKER_02: So, what is the purpose of our salvation?
SPEAKER_02: The first is to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions.
SPEAKER_02: The Holy Spirit begins to train in you the way it starts training you away from who you were before you met Jesus and begins to train you towards a whole new way of life made in Christ's likeness.
SPEAKER_02: Training, much like an athlete starts to say no to the things of whatever their life was before they were an athlete, they have to start saying hard yeses to become a professional.
SPEAKER_02: The Holy Spirit works in us to help us first renounce ungodliness and worldly passions.
SPEAKER_02: Now, renounce is a weird word.
SPEAKER_02: I'd be willing to bet nobody in this room has just casually slipped the word renounce into their vernacular at some point this week.
SPEAKER_02: Renounce, the definition that I found that I liked was to deny association with a person or event.
SPEAKER_02: Carrie Underwood clearly depicts renouncing something for an ex when she sings, I dug my key into the side of his pretty little souped up four-wheel drive.
SPEAKER_02: Car my name into his leather seat.
SPEAKER_02: She is making it crystal clear, I want nothing to do with you ever again.
SPEAKER_02: Don't call me, don't text me, you're dead to me.
SPEAKER_02: That's Carrie Underwood's depiction of what it means to renounce.
SPEAKER_02: So, we are to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, the other thing that's important to remember about renounce is that renounce is not just words.
SPEAKER_02: Renounce is not just I'm never going to do it again.
SPEAKER_02: I swear, this time it's for weak.
SPEAKER_02: Renounce is I'm gonna go to the meeting tonight and I'm gonna get the help I need because I never want what happened to ever happen again.
SPEAKER_02: There's action associated with renounce.
SPEAKER_02: So, back to verse 12.
SPEAKER_02: One of the purposes of our salvation is to renounce or to deny association with ungodliness and worldly passions.
SPEAKER_02: Now, those two words are also interesting, ungodliness and worldly passions.
SPEAKER_02: What do those mean?
SPEAKER_02: Well, I could just stand up here and give you my opinion based off of what I think those two words mean, or what I think culture should do, or what our Christian subculture in 2025 is familiar with.
SPEAKER_02: But for me to just give you my opinion would be about as useless as the letter G in lasagna.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, and so I would so much rather us look at what the Bible defines those words as.
SPEAKER_02: The first, uh, so I have I have a couple of verses up here, a couple passages with like a little quick note, I think, if it came out the way I wanted it to.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, they gave me the whole verse.
SPEAKER_02: We're not gonna read the whole verse, that would take forever.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, here's what we're gonna do.
SPEAKER_02: Isaiah, uh, we have four verses, and the reason I'm looking these up is because we should use the Bible to translate and to make sense of the Bible, not our own preferences or cultural slogans.
SPEAKER_02: Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: Bet.
SPEAKER_02: All right, so here's what we're gonna do.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, Isaiah 5.20, long verse.
SPEAKER_02: Essentially, what it's trying to say is that uh the ungodly have moral confusion.
SPEAKER_02: That sounds like kids are a hindrance to my happiness and my sexual deviancy is good for me.
SPEAKER_02: They wouldn't use those words, but that's our cultural narrative right now.
SPEAKER_02: Romans 1.18 says that they suppress the truth.
SPEAKER_02: They don't need to know what happened.
SPEAKER_02: Keep it to yourself, nobody has to know.
SPEAKER_02: Jude 1.4 says that they deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_02: This is just blatant non-Christians.
SPEAKER_02: If you deny Jesus as Lord, all like at its fundamental level, you're at you're an ungodly person.
SPEAKER_02: And third, uh, I'm sorry, and fourth, and uh we are going to read this one, is 2 Timothy 3, 1 through 5.
SPEAKER_02: And this is a very holistic, comprehensive list of ungodliness.
SPEAKER_02: And it says, but understand this that in the last days there will be, there will come times of difficulty.
SPEAKER_02: For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness but denying its power, avoid such people.
SPEAKER_02: Paul's not messing around.
SPEAKER_02: Ungodliness.
SPEAKER_02: But what about worldly passions?
SPEAKER_02: I think one verse really sums that up very well.
SPEAKER_02: And this is verse uh 1 John chapter 2, verses 15 through 17.
SPEAKER_02: And it says, Do not love the world or the things in the world, worldly passions.
SPEAKER_02: If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
SPEAKER_02: For all that is in the world, highlight this this this little chunk right here, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the world.
SPEAKER_02: And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the with God abides forever.
SPEAKER_02: The desires of the flesh, that's lust.
SPEAKER_02: That's simply I want what I can't and shouldn't have.
SPEAKER_02: The desires of the eyes, greed.
SPEAKER_02: I want in excess more than I need.
SPEAKER_02: And the pride of life, that's believing that you're better than others, or you know better than God.
SPEAKER_02: That is this worldly uh passion.
SPEAKER_02: So, first, our salvation, it's one of its purposes is to train us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions.
SPEAKER_02: That's what it's training us away from.
SPEAKER_02: But it's also training us towards something.
SPEAKER_02: What it's training us towards is to live in this age.
SPEAKER_02: Or said another way, to live a certain way today, right here, right now.
SPEAKER_02: Not like when I get older, I'll start taking this thing seriously, but today, if I follow Jesus, this is what um there's a way that I'm supposed to live.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm curious, if I was to take a questionnaire of everybody in the room and I asked, what are the three defining characteristics of a Christian?
SPEAKER_02: I wonder which ones y'all would say.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm sure we'd get a lot of great answers.
SPEAKER_02: This passage gives us three that we should take very seriously.
SPEAKER_02: It says that we are um to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives.
SPEAKER_02: And also notice how this comes after our salvation.
SPEAKER_02: This isn't something that we can muster up with willpower or discipline.
SPEAKER_02: This is something that the, again, the Holy Spirit starts training in us.
SPEAKER_02: We can't do it on our own.
SPEAKER_02: We'll never accomplish it on our own, but the Holy Spirit starts training this in us after our salvation.
SPEAKER_02: So let's dive into those.
SPEAKER_02: Our second purpose to live in this age, three words, self-controlled, upright, and godly lives.
SPEAKER_02: Self-controlled is how you live, do you do the right thing when nobody's watching and you could get away with whatever you wanted.
SPEAKER_02: Self-controlled is not I put on a great mask when I'm at youth group or when I'm at the office or when I'm with my family and I can do it all right and I can be the right person I'm supposed to be.
SPEAKER_02: Self-controlled is there is no one watching, no one would ever catch me, but do I still make the right decision?
SPEAKER_02: Do I still do what God has called me to do?
SPEAKER_02: Upright is a very, uh, I feel like upright is a challenging one in our modern culture.
SPEAKER_02: Uh the the picture that comes to mind when I think of upright is a big old tree, a big old, strong, awesome tree.
SPEAKER_02: But if you look at images after floods or tsunamis or hurricanes, you will see that trees will start bending towards whatever the weight or whatever the force was that was pushing it over.
SPEAKER_02: What happens, and why I think uprightness is so important for Christians, is we are to look differently than culture.
SPEAKER_02: We're not to be pressed down and to follow what everybody else is doing.
SPEAKER_02: That's not what Christian, Christians are made for.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, and so what does this look like in our day in culture?
SPEAKER_02: That looks like things like, hey, everybody else's kids prioritize sports over church attendance.
SPEAKER_02: I don't want my kid to get left behind.
SPEAKER_02: That looks like, uh, hey, I want to move in with my boyfriend or my girlfriend.
SPEAKER_02: Why can't I?
SPEAKER_02: Don't you realize how much money I'll save?
SPEAKER_02: Because that's the reason people move in together.
SPEAKER_02: I love the Bible, but my preferences and culture tell me what's acceptable and what's not.
SPEAKER_02: So I'm gonna take the pieces of the Bible I like, but I'm really just gonna kind of do what culture is is is uh presenting on me.
SPEAKER_02: That is us bending to the cultural current.
SPEAKER_02: But one of the purposes of our salvation that trains us is to have an uprightness, to stand out.
SPEAKER_02: And finally, godly lives.
SPEAKER_02: The last uh the last way that we're to live is to have a godly life in this current age, today, now.
SPEAKER_02: Pretty much the whole Bible is a list of what the godliness looks like.
SPEAKER_02: Is it in step with God's character, the things he loves, the teachings of scripture, the way Jesus walked?
SPEAKER_02: If it's in step with those, that's the things that the Holy Spirit starts making natural in us.
SPEAKER_02: We just naturally start doing those things.
SPEAKER_02: It does not look like somebody saying, I got saved at camp in 1992 and I'm good ever since then.
SPEAKER_02: Yeehaw.
SPEAKER_02: If it has never produced a godliness in you, if the last time you had any amount of growth in your relationship with Jesus was camp in 1992, you should have genuine concerns.
SPEAKER_02: Was that a real moment for me?
SPEAKER_02: Because what this passage and what scripture teaches is when you've been indwelt with the Holy Spirit, the God of the universe comes and lives inside of you, how could it not change parts of you?
SPEAKER_02: How could it not push you to grow in God's likeness?
SPEAKER_02: That's just a natural thing that should happen.
SPEAKER_02: How could it not?
SPEAKER_02: So it starts producing a godliness in us.
SPEAKER_02: And last one, verse 13, and we could spend a whole sermon just on this one verse.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 13 says, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_02: A final purpose of our salvation is to find hope in the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_02: Said another way, our hope, the like most important thing for us Christians, that we're able to go, no matter what faces me, whatever hits me, I can endure this.
SPEAKER_02: Our great hope is in the fact that Jesus is coming back.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus is coming back.
SPEAKER_02: And we have we our salvation, the Holy Spirit helps us wait for that day.
SPEAKER_02: But this isn't just waiting, that's like timeout waiting.
SPEAKER_02: This isn't like sit on your thumbs and just wait for this to be over waiting.
SPEAKER_02: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_02: This is a waiting with a purpose.
SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of different words in the original Greek.
SPEAKER_02: I won't bore you, but the exact same word for this waiting appears in Luke chapter 12, verse 36.
SPEAKER_02: And it reads this and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast, so that they may open the door to him at once when he comes and knocks.
SPEAKER_02: They are ready.
SPEAKER_02: They're not lollygagging, they're not lazy, they're not goofing off.
SPEAKER_02: They are ready.
SPEAKER_02: As soon as the master comes back, we have everything ready to go for him.
SPEAKER_02: We've got this.
SPEAKER_02: They have been living an upright, self-controlled, godly life going when God comes back, when our master comes back, he's gonna have no problem recognizing me.
SPEAKER_02: So, this truth, this hope that we have that Jesus is coming back is what allows a Christian to endure the worst that could happen, or to watch tragedies like what happened in Kerrville and not succumb to despair and hopelessness.
SPEAKER_02: Why?
SPEAKER_02: Because the Christian hope is that one day Jesus will come back and he will set every wrong right in some sort of unimaginable, I have no idea how he's gonna do it, every wrong that's ever been wronged, he is going to flip on its head and do something incredible.
SPEAKER_02: Every heartbreak you've ever experienced, every injustice you've ever seen, what's gonna happen is total, unmatched victory will be absolutely realized.
SPEAKER_02: That is the hope that Christians have.
SPEAKER_02: So they can look at something like Kerrville and say, I don't understand.
SPEAKER_02: Why would you do this, God?
SPEAKER_02: I don't get this.
SPEAKER_02: I'm mad, I'm angry, I'm confused, I might even feel guilt that I'm perfectly okay, but those people have they're going through the worst imaginable.
SPEAKER_02: I can think all those things, and God wants to hear those things, yet I have hope and I know that when you come back, somehow, you're gonna do something so incredible with what happened there and everywhere else, that all of us, the only response that we could possibly have is, isn't God awesome?
SPEAKER_02: Isn't He incredible?
SPEAKER_02: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, worthy, worthy, worthy to receive all praise.
SPEAKER_02: So what do you put your hope in?
SPEAKER_02: What do you put your hope in?
SPEAKER_02: If it's anything less than that, how are you going to get through the worst that the light this life can bring?
SPEAKER_02: If your hope is in your children's success, what happens when they fail?
SPEAKER_02: If your hope is in your career, what happens if you get laid off?
SPEAKER_02: If your hope is in your capacity, what happens when you just can't do it all like you used to?
SPEAKER_02: If your hope is in anything else, it is too fragile.
SPEAKER_02: This is the only hope strong enough to get us through all that life can throw at us.
SPEAKER_02: So the purpose of our salvation is to renounce on godliness and worldly passions, as well as to train us in self-control, um, uprightness, and godly lives.
SPEAKER_02: That is what our salvation is meant to be used for.
SPEAKER_02: But now I want to look at a little bit of a different question.
SPEAKER_02: And we find this in verse 14.
SPEAKER_02: Why did Jesus die for us?
SPEAKER_02: Why did he give himself up for us?
SPEAKER_02: Why did he bring us salvation?
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna start in verse 13 because it kind of bleeds into 14, the just kind of the natural flow of it.
SPEAKER_02: So we're gonna start in 13 and read 14.
unknown: Okay.
SPEAKER_02: Waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself up for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possessions who are zealous for good works.
SPEAKER_02: The first reason Jesus gave himself up for us is to redeem us from all lawlessness.
SPEAKER_02: Third weird word for the morning, redeem.
SPEAKER_02: Once again, I bet nobody in this room has just casually slipped a redeem into their vernacular this week.
SPEAKER_02: Redeem.
SPEAKER_02: Redeem means to uh save from a terrible circumstance.
SPEAKER_02: Think of any war movie that you enjoy.
SPEAKER_02: Black Hawk Down, Brothers in Arms, Behind Enemy Lines, Top Gun, Top Gun Maverick, or my personal favorite, saving Private Ryan.
SPEAKER_02: In all of those movies, somebody is in a terrible situation, whether they're being hunted by or they are already captured by the enemy.
SPEAKER_02: And the good old US of A comes in and redeems them, rescues them from that situation.
SPEAKER_02: That's this idea of what Jesus does with our lawlessness.
SPEAKER_02: He has saved us from the tyranny of sin.
SPEAKER_02: That awful jailer who has abused and sought our destruction from the moment we were born and is the natural inclination of every human's heart.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus saves us from that, so that that jailer doesn't have power over us.
SPEAKER_02: He came to set you free so you could experience.
SPEAKER_02: The fullness of life, not the cage of depravity.
SPEAKER_02: The second reason Jesus gave himself up for us is to purify for himself.
SPEAKER_02: Notice it's for himself, not for us, or not for our pride, or not for us going, look at how cool I am.
SPEAKER_02: Pat myself on the back.
SPEAKER_02: To purify for himself a people, Christians.
SPEAKER_02: And there's something really important about what's going on with that word to purify.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm sure we've probably heard this analogy before, but I think it's just so perfect I can't not use it.
SPEAKER_02: That word there is used in gold smelting.
SPEAKER_02: So when you're trying to turn gold into whatever you want to turn gold into, you bring the heat up until it starts melting, and as you get that gold hotter and hotter and hotter, you can sift off the impure, the impurities rise to the top, and you can sift it off.
SPEAKER_02: And a smelter does that process over and over and over and over and over again until he can see his reflection in the gold.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus is doing that same thing with us through all the different trials that we go through in life, all the difficulties, all the lessons that we're to learn.
SPEAKER_02: He brings the temperature up to let the things of the old self get less and less prevalent so that Jesus can see himself clearer and clearer in you after every trial.
SPEAKER_02: He is purifying for himself a people who are what?
SPEAKER_02: What is the purpose of that purification?
SPEAKER_02: What's the purpose of that redeeming from lawlessness?
SPEAKER_02: It's to produce in us a zealousness for good works.
SPEAKER_02: I fear too often in the discussion between works and faith, we've thrown the baby out with the bath water.
SPEAKER_02: I fear far too often we we well, let me start here.
SPEAKER_02: I totally affirm where it says, it is by grace through faith that we have been saved, not by works, so that no man may boast.
SPEAKER_02: Glory, hallelujah, amen.
SPEAKER_02: However, we are not saved by works, but we absolutely are saved for works.
SPEAKER_02: Come on, whoever said that.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02: And if you look at Titus, Titus has one of the common themes of the entire three chapters of Titus is good works.
SPEAKER_02: There should be this natural part of us as we continue to look more and more like Jesus that goes, I can't not do good things.
SPEAKER_02: It's in my bones.
SPEAKER_02: It's got to get out.
SPEAKER_02: It's not something I have to force or try.
SPEAKER_02: As I continue to follow Jesus and learn more about who he is and what he's done for me, how could I not do good works?
SPEAKER_02: How could I not want to bless people?
SPEAKER_02: How could I not want to pray for my friends?
SPEAKER_02: How could I not want to serve?
SPEAKER_02: How could I not want to go do a missions trip?
SPEAKER_02: How could I not want to give and what a like?
SPEAKER_02: It produces in us a zealousness for good works.
SPEAKER_02: That is a natural piece of our salvation.
SPEAKER_02: So let me ask you this.
SPEAKER_02: Have you experienced this kind of salvation?
SPEAKER_02: Have you experienced the fact that your old jailer of sin and lawlessness has begun to lose its grip on you?
SPEAKER_02: Have you experienced this purification process in which Jesus has become clearer and clearer in your life?
SPEAKER_02: Have you experienced that your salvation is bringing a zeal for good that works?
SPEAKER_02: This is what Jesus gave himself up for, for you to flourish in the way God designed you to flourish.
SPEAKER_02: But often we exchange that incredible, infinite, eternal purpose for something really self-centered and biblically undefensible.
SPEAKER_02: What do I mean by that?
SPEAKER_02: If you look at the way uh the Bible talks about our salvation, both here and pretty much anywhere in the Bible, you will see that a lot of things that modern Christians believe and say are biblically undefensible.
SPEAKER_02: We cannot hold to them if we say that the Bible is true.
SPEAKER_02: The three most common that I've heard of that I felt were just perfect for this passage were escapism, and I'll start off with that one.
SPEAKER_02: Escapism.
SPEAKER_02: Escapism sounds like I'm a Christian because I know when I die, I'm gonna get to go to heaven.
SPEAKER_02: If you look at all the times the biblical authors or the characters in the Bible ever try to tell somebody why they should follow Jesus, because you get to go to heaven when you die is never once mentioned.
SPEAKER_02: Not once.
SPEAKER_02: There are so that that that is not even remotely close to what they find important.
SPEAKER_02: Somewhere in our church history, and Clyde is the wizard guru of all things church history, he knows way more than I do.
SPEAKER_02: So ask him for the nitty-gritties of this, but somewhere in our church history, we have shifted from the biblical purpose of salvation, forgiveness of sins, new and purposeful life, now, hope for the resurrection, for on a scale from one to ten, do you know if you're going to heaven when you die?
SPEAKER_02: That is so self-centered.
SPEAKER_02: It's all about me escaping from this big, bad, scary world when I die.
SPEAKER_02: I just gotta endure this big, nasty world until I kick the bucket, and then yes, I get to be where I want to be.
SPEAKER_02: It's escapism.
SPEAKER_02: That is not a biblical perspective at all.
SPEAKER_02: And in fact, heaven isn't even the final step.
SPEAKER_02: Like when we die, thief on the cross today will be with me in paradise.
SPEAKER_02: We go to, we go to God's presence in some super cool way, and that would be heaven.
SPEAKER_02: But our ultimate hope is not in that.
SPEAKER_02: I've already said it.
SPEAKER_02: Our ultimate hope is when Jesus comes back.
SPEAKER_02: New heavens, new earth, body, soul, eternal, awesome.
SPEAKER_02: Like our our resting place for now is only a temporary spot until Jesus comes back and we reunite with the physical.
SPEAKER_02: All of you just got eschatology, the study of the end times 101.
SPEAKER_02: I I beque I give all of you a degree.
SPEAKER_02: You're welcome.
SPEAKER_02: It's also not our the second false purpose for our salvation uh is it's a private use.
SPEAKER_02: Our second false idea of salvation is it's my private use.
SPEAKER_02: My faith is a private matter.
SPEAKER_02: I love where Jesus says that in the gospels.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, wait.
SPEAKER_02: He doesn't.
SPEAKER_02: He he dies for his teachings.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, it's the disciples.
SPEAKER_02: I love where the disciples are like, hey, don't rock the boat, coexist, put it on your wagon.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, wait, nope.
SPEAKER_02: No, it's not the disciples either.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe it was Paul! Maybe it was Paul that goes, hey, uh, my faith is a private matter.
SPEAKER_02: I'm not gonna try to like get in anybody's business.
SPEAKER_02: No, he was he was a nomad constantly wandering on in threat and danger from just about everything until he was executed for his faith.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I don't think the Bible backs that line of thinking up at all.
SPEAKER_02: I don't think there's any way that you can say that it's okay for me to say, my my my faith is a private matter, just for me.
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely not.
SPEAKER_02: We should live an upright, going all the way back to verse 12.
SPEAKER_02: There's an uprightness that should be about us where people go, you're not bending, you're not blending in with everybody else.
SPEAKER_02: What's up with you?
SPEAKER_02: Whether that's attractive and I want to know more about it, or I hate it because it doesn't blend in with what I want.
SPEAKER_02: We should live an upright life where people have no problem distinguish distinguishing us from non-believers.
SPEAKER_02: The third false purpose for our salvation is contentment with this present condition.
SPEAKER_02: And this goes kind of back to what I was saying with godly living.
SPEAKER_02: I got saved at camp in 1999, and that's good enough for me, is not a testimony.
SPEAKER_02: I would argue it's not even great evidence for salvation.
SPEAKER_02: The Christian who understands the purpose of their salvation never gets to the point of contentment.
SPEAKER_02: I've learned enough.
SPEAKER_02: I have like enough information.
SPEAKER_02: I was just at a birthday party for a 70-year-old uh and and I asked him what wisdom he has for me.
SPEAKER_02: And he said, the more that I learn, the realize I've got so much more to learn.
SPEAKER_02: And that's the right idea.
SPEAKER_02: That's the mentality that we should have.
SPEAKER_02: I I've had the privilege of meeting some people uh and and visiting them on uh in a hospital room where where Jesus ends up taking them home, and in that hospital room, they are working on scripture memory cards.
SPEAKER_02: That's cool.
SPEAKER_02: That is a zealousness for good works until the moment Jesus calls me home.
SPEAKER_02: I don't, I do not want to miss a day of learning what he has for me because he is an infinite, awesome God, so that even a trillion years into eternity, I will never run out of interesting things to learn about him.
SPEAKER_02: I will never learn out of ways that blow my mind about how incredible he is.
SPEAKER_02: I want to have a zealousness for the things of God.
SPEAKER_02: So to kind of wrap up this passage, the biblical idea for salvation is not being saved uh uh from something.
SPEAKER_02: It's being saved for something today.
SPEAKER_02: Not when I'm older, not when I have time, not when I'm retired today.
SPEAKER_02: It is the greatest way to live with the only hope strong enough to endure tomorrow.
SPEAKER_02: So just as your iPhone wasn't made for being punctured, crushed, or burned, neither is your salvation made for your preferences or running away from a big, bad, scary world.
SPEAKER_02: You get the most out of this super cool device when you use it the way that the developers intended you to use it.
SPEAKER_02: You get the most out of your salvation and your relationship with Jesus when you use it the way the designer intended.
SPEAKER_02: Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_02: Beautiful.
SPEAKER_02: So here's what we're gonna do.
SPEAKER_02: I ended just a smidge early, that's on me.
SPEAKER_02: What we like to do is uh one, if you're a guest, just hang out, relax, you're gonna be alright.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, we like to throw a couple of mental worship questions from what you just heard up on the screen.
SPEAKER_02: And what we want you to do with those mental worship questions is to kind of find, hey, did anything have my name on it?
SPEAKER_02: Did anything uh did that clarify something for me?
SPEAKER_02: Did that maybe convict me of something?
SPEAKER_02: And I wanna I wanna kind of process through that.
SPEAKER_02: So I'm gonna give you a couple of minutes, some some piano music will begin, and then I'll come back up in just a little.
SPEAKER_02: God, thank you that you're so much bigger than we could ever hope or imagine.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you that you know the way that we are to thrive.
SPEAKER_02: You designed us, you gave us the instructions, you gave us our purpose.
SPEAKER_02: We are at our fullest when we live that out.
SPEAKER_02: So, God, give us the courage, give us the wisdom, give us everything we need.
SPEAKER_02: Train us to renounce what's behind us and to embrace what you have for us.
SPEAKER_02: We love you.
SPEAKER_02: It's in Jesus' name through the power of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_02: And all God's people said.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: Beautiful.
SPEAKER_02: Hey, we've got a whole lot of stuff going on in the life of our church.
SPEAKER_02: A couple of announcements, and so if you would turn your attention to the screen, that'd be awesome.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what's happening at Graham Parkway Baptist Church.
SPEAKER_00: We believe the Bible loves to see us proclaim God's goodness from one generation to the next.
SPEAKER_00: Join us for the first ever convergence of women and students at Graham Parkway on Sunday, July 20th at 6 p.m.
SPEAKER_00: in the gathering room.
SPEAKER_00: We'll eat, laugh, and talk about what matters.
SPEAKER_00: Our annual end of summer mash is blasting off this year on Friday, July 25th, with Josh Denhart and the amazing chemistry show.
SPEAKER_00: This will be an exciting evening of family fun.
SPEAKER_00: Kids and adults alike will enjoy learning about the love of Christ through interactive experiments and an engaging stage production filled with fireballs, colored foam, liquid nitrogen, and glow-in-the-dark solutions.
SPEAKER_00: You're invited to be part of Grand Parkway's Adult Bible Studies.
SPEAKER_00: These classes are a meaningful way to grow in your faith as you explore God's word alongside others in a similar life stage.
SPEAKER_00: Each group begins by connecting in community, then dives into the story of Scripture together.
SPEAKER_00: Our classes are designed to walk through the Bible from a Christ-centered perspective.
SPEAKER_00: Through discussion and shared insight, we encourage one another and become better equipped to live on mission wherever God has placed us.
SPEAKER_00: Our classes meet Sunday morning in the adult building.
SPEAKER_00: Parents, August 3rd is Promotion Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: On that day, children promoting to fourth grade will be moving over to the Bridge Ministry, which meets in the Adult Building.
SPEAKER_00: Children promoting to seventh grade will be moving to the Grand Parkway Student Ministry, which meets in the student building.
SPEAKER_00: For more information or to register for these events, please visit our website at grandparkway.org.
SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions or want someone to pray for you, find one of our pastors or elders at the front of the stage at the conclusion of our service.
SPEAKER_02: Beautiful.
SPEAKER_02: I've just got three more things for you, and then we will uh we'll get out of here.
SPEAKER_02: So, first is uh if this is your first time, there should be a number on the screen.
SPEAKER_02: Boom.
SPEAKER_02: If this is your first time, go ahead and text that text welcome to that number.
SPEAKER_02: We would love to follow up with you, we'd love to get to know you.
SPEAKER_02: Um I think Travis wants to buy coffee for you if uh it's on his budget.
SPEAKER_02: Not on mine, it's on Travis's budget.
SPEAKER_02: No, we'd love to catch up with you, we'd love to get to know you.
SPEAKER_02: That'd be awesome.
SPEAKER_02: Second, if today is the day that you faithfully give, uh, you will see cool little brown boxes at every exit.
SPEAKER_02: You can give uh your tithe in there, or as always, there's always the option to give online.
SPEAKER_02: And finally, we like to conclude all of our services at Grand Parkway with a spoken blessing.
SPEAKER_02: So if you would please stand to your feet and put your hands out.
SPEAKER_02: You were not made for a small salvation.
SPEAKER_02: You were made for a salvation that is bigger and greater than anything that we can possibly wrap our heads around on this side of heaven.
SPEAKER_02: And there are a lot of lost people out there that are dying to know about that, that have not experienced it.
SPEAKER_02: And so let's go and be the hands and feet of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: Let's go and be salt and light, like that baptism said, to a world that desperately needs it.
SPEAKER_02: In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_02: You're dismissed.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.