Justified by Grace

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Transcript:

We’re going to be in Titus chapter 3. Titus chapter 3, we started looking at this last week, I believe it was last week, and I’d like to go through and share some thoughts with you about this. This is one of my favorite passages in Scripture, and the reason for this is that it’s so beautifully and so, in such a short amount of space, illustrates what Christ did for us.

And, you know, there were times that I’ve tried to use different methods when talking to people about the gospel. I don’t know if you all are familiar with these, but I’ve been through evangelism explosion training and tried to memorize that presentation. A few years ago, they did a disciple way training up at Southgate.

And it’s when I was in Arkansas, but I came back for it. they tried to teach us a shorter version of evangelism explosion that was shorter. Did I say shorter version?

Shorter version that was shorter. That’s usually how it works. Supposedly easier to remember where there were five things to remember and each of the fingers on the hand is supposed to symbolize, and I can’t remember one of them.

So the shorter, easier to remember version did nothing for me. but tried to talk to people using the approach that they teach us in evangelism explosion. I looked at some of the way of the master materials and tried to use that.

But I got to a point where I started just talking to people about what it says in Titus chapter 3. And I’m not saying that’s the only way to lead people to Christ. I don’t always talk to them about Titus chapter 3 and certainly have nothing against any of the other methods of evangelism or approaches to talking to people about Christ, but I do like the way that this one sort of summarizes everything that he did for us. We’re going to go back to the beginning of the chapter where we were last week and start from there.

It says, Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work, to speak evil of no man, to be no brawlers, but gentle, showing all meekness unto all men. And I talked to you about that and what it says about us as Christians staying out of trouble. I think everything in those two verses is good advice for us as we try to live the right way, not only to keep ourselves out of trouble for our own sake, to save our own skin, but for the sake of the gospel not being maligned.

People not being able to say, well, look at those Christians. They’re just like the rest of us. Look at the way they live.

Why would I want anything to do with Jesus? But he goes on in verse 3 and says, For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving diverse lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. I sort of started to hit on this last week.

But I think we all get to a point where we’ve been Christians for so long. And maybe that hasn’t happened to some of you in here. I don’t know how long you’ve been walking with the Lord.

But we get to a point, we can get to a point, where we have been Christians for so long, we forget anything else. I have been, I was born again at the age of five. I became a Christian at the age of five.

Which is not to say I understood everything there was to understand, but I understood enough. I understood that I’d sinned. I understood that Christ died for me, and that was the only way to go to heaven.

And that’s basically all you need to understand to get saved. That’s all you need to understand to come to Christ. But I got saved at the age of five, and I won’t say that I was perfect from then on. I won’t say I’m perfect now.

But I have grown in Christ, sometimes quicker, sometimes slower. But I’ve been growing in Christ now for 25 years, 24 years. Let’s not rush ourselves.

I’m not 30 yet. I’m getting close. but 24 or 25 years of being a Christian it’s hard to remember anything that came before that especially being so young you don’t have to have come to Christ though as a young child you can come to Christ as a 30 year old and 20 years on unless we stop and think about it we can get to a point where we’ve been Christians so long we forget who we used to be we forget what came before we get into 20 years of the habit of We pray, we read our Bible, we don’t go out and get drunk, we go to church on a regular basis.

We don’t do the things that we used to do, and we forget that we ever were there. And the problem with that is not that, oh, we need to remember, we need to constantly be reminded of what we used to do. I mean, God says that he chooses to remember our sins no more.

It’s not that we need them brought up all the time. But the problem comes when we get so far removed from that that we forget where we came from, We forget who we used to be, and we treat the lost world outside as though we’re somehow better than they are. We’re not.

Now, we might behave better. We may do some better things, but ultimately it’s only because Christ has made any change, because he’s made the change in our life that there’s any change for the better. I mean, we are still sinful, fallen human beings.

We just happen to be sinful, fallen human beings that God has worked on. And it didn’t take any more or less grace to save us than it would the worst person that we could think of. And when we get right down to it, we’re all in the same boat.

We are all in the same boat. I don’t just mean all of us in this room. I mean all of us on this planet we inhabit.

We are all in the same boat. We are all sinners destined for an eternity separated from God in hell apart from the grace and mercy that He offers in Jesus Christ. And we look at this list in verse 3. and you don’t want to an extent, that describes every one of us.

Again, not every one of us in this room, every one of us on this planet. Are we all as bad as we possibly could be? No.

Some of us are restrained in other ways. I’ve shared with you before that even at five I knew I was a sinner, but how much mischief had I had a chance to get involved in? I was five years old and I was scared of my parents.

So, you know, it’s not like I was out at five shooting people’s windows out and knocking over liquor stores. I was scared of my parents and still am a little bit. So we’re not all as bad as we possibly could be.

There are things that restrain us from acting out our job description as heathens, other than the Holy Spirit, even before we come to Christ. You know, there can be the consequences. We’re afraid of going to jail or we’re afraid of what mom and dad are going to do. Maybe we’re afraid of what the neighbors would think if we did such and such.

Maybe we’re afraid of consequences like losing our job or our family falling apart. If we got involved in all the things that are out there that we would label as sinful. And yet the sin nature is there.

Whether we go out and commit the acts or not, the sin nature, ladies and gentlemen, is there. And I mentioned to you last week what our administrator at the school said so very well in chapel, talking about taking something off of somebody’s desk. And he said, if I were to steal this, would that be a sin?

And all the kids, I’m glad I didn’t answer, but I was thinking yes too. All the kids said, yes, that would be a sin. He said, no, that is a byproduct of sin.

The stealing is not the sin. It’s the byproduct of the sin that’s already there. You see, sin is not the things that we do that we think of.

Now, I’m not saying go out and steal things. It’s okay. The Bible does call it sin.

But in terms of the sin nature is what we’re talking about. And the Bible makes that very clear as well. Sin is not primarily the things we do.

It’s who we are. It’s this heart and it’s this attitude of rebellion against God. And he says, we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving diverse lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another.

It paints a bleak picture of us because we are not all involved in these things to the extent that we could be, and yet they are all present. There’s not a part of us. There’s not a part of us that’s not tainted by this sin nature.

Some of these things, this foolishness. We do foolish things. And it’s not talking about it’s a sin because I tripped and fell backwards down the stairs.

Okay, that would look foolish, but that’s not the kind of foolishness that it’s talking about. The Bible, a verse that comes to mind all the time, both with my kids and the kids at school, the Bible says in Proverbs that foolishness is bound in the heart of a child, that the rod of correction drives it far from him. It’s a good verse to remember.

Foolishness is not just talking about silliness. Foolishness is this undisciplined, this undirected energy that we all have where we run wild apart from God’s restraining us and God’s disciplining us and God’s chastening us and God’s pointing us in the right direction. We do foolish things.

There’s youthful foolishness. You know what? There’s not so youthful foolishness.

But foolishness is throwing away our lives on things that don’t matter. Things that don’t matter in this life or in eternity. And how many people could we look at tonight and say, Well, they’re throwing their lives away on alcohol.

They’re throwing their lives away on drugs. They’re throwing their lives away on gambling or affairs. Or we could list the number of things that people are throwing their lives and their families away on.

It’s foolish. It doesn’t amount to anything. It’s not going to bring them happiness.

It’s not going to bring them fulfillment. It’s not going to bring them peace. It’s not going to bring anything but emptiness.

And yet we do the same thing. Maybe not with gambling and drugs and alcohol and whatever else. But we partake of foolish things as well.

And we all have the ability and the tendency. And apart from God’s grace, we would still be there partaking of that foolishness. He describes disobedience.

Guys, we know what disobedience means. It means we were told what to do, we know what we’re supposed to do, and we deliberately say, I’m going to do something else. I don’t care what you have to say.

God has made many things very clear to us. God has made many things very clear to us that we are supposed to do and are not supposed to do. And we as a human race don’t always do them.

Now does that mean that everybody out there just deliberately flouts every law that God has set? God says thou shalt not kill, I’m going to kill anyone. We don’t all do that.

Some people do that. We don’t all do that. But we all to some extent in our lives say, you know, I know God says this.

But maybe it’s okay if I do that instead. And you could fill in the this and the that with whatever applies to your situation. I’m not even going to try to guess tonight.

But we know that we have that problem as believers. And we’re in the same boat with the non-believers in that. And when we have victory over that as believers, when we say, you know what?

God told me to do this, and even though it would be easier to do that, I’m going to do this that he told me to do. The reason we have victory over that has nothing to do with how good we are. It has everything to do with the change that he has worked in us.

So we were foolish, disobedient, deceived. Guys, some people out in the world act the way they do because they don’t know better. Now, a lot of people do know better.

This is not a blanket excuse for everything everybody does. Well, they don’t know any better. Folks, some people’s mamas and daddies should have been teaching them right from wrong.

But even without it, and I’m convinced a lot of people are growing up without that these days. But even without it, God has given us a conscience. The Bible talks about the light of conscience.

The Bible says his law is written on our hearts. There are some things God never intended us to be confused about. And yet the Bible also says that the God of this world has blinded them.

I believe that’s in 1 Corinthians. The God of this world has blinded them. That does not mean the God of the Bible.

That does not mean the one true God has blinded them. That God has has picked some people and said, well, you just don’t get to see the truth. The God of this world that it’s describing in the Bible is the little g God that is worshipped by this world system.

Who is that? The devil. The one the Bible calls the deceiver, the father of lies.

You know, we get things twisted sometimes in our own minds. And the world, certainly, apart from the light of Christ, and apart from the illumination of the Holy Spirit, certainly is going to get things wrong with it. It’s certainly going to get things wrong and twisted in their minds.

And we tend to look down on them. All of these things, we tend to look down on people outside and say, well, you’re this way and you’re that. And we forget that we were once there.

And we get so, so worked up over trying to make lost people act like saved people. When we can’t even get saved people, act like saved people sometimes. Deceived.

So much of the world is just blinded to the truth of God’s word. Now, are they responsible for their choices and decisions? Absolutely.

But how are we going to hate them and how are we going to hold it against them when they, to an extent, don’t know any better? Because they’re non-believers and they’re exercising their job description, just like we used to. They’re deceived.

The God of this world has blinded them to the truth. They may know the truth, but he’s blinded them to the truth to such an extent of saying, it’s okay. It’s okay if you ignore what that.

Just like Adam and Eve in the garden, hath God said? That old snake knew very well God hath said, but he got Eve all twisted up. She knew in her mind what God had said, but he got her all twisted up.

And I’m not saying the devil made her do it. She and Adam both were responsible and held responsible for their choices. But let’s not forget that there’s an influence out there that blinds people to the truth.

Serving diverse lusts and pleasures, and we could list all sorts of things here, but, you know, we live in a day and age where whatever people feel good about doing, whatever makes them feel good, whatever makes them happy, that’s what you need to do. I can’t think of the name of it right now, but when we were discussing different ethical systems in a philosophy class at OU, talking about the different theories about, well, how do you know something’s ethical or not? How do you know something’s right or wrong?

And they just ripped apart anything that had to do with God. They had the divine command theory, and they just tried to rip that apart. Well, one of the theories that they threw out there was whatever makes somebody happy.

I can’t remember the name of that ethical system, whatever they called it. But whether we know the name of it or not, that’s what most people are living under. Well, this makes me happy.

Many of you know my family situation, what has transpired over the last two years or so. And I won’t go into any great detail about it tonight. but one thing that was said to me when all of that was happening was, well, doesn’t the Bible say God wants all of us to be happy?

Shouldn’t somebody do what makes them happy? Isn’t that what God wants? Okay, the Bible is very clear.

God does not care about our happiness as much as he cares about our holiness. It’s not that God wants us to be miserable. It’s just that our happiness is not his primary concern.

And guys, if we are living lives that are dedicated to nothing else but making ourselves happy, and we’re missing out on everything that God’s told us to do. We’re missing out on the lives that God created us for. And I don’t mean to sound like a cranky old preacher, but there’s so much more to life than being happy.

Happiness is fleeting. Happiness will lead you down bad roads to unhappiness. But there’s joy in obedience.

There’s joy in obedience. And we hear about the lusts and pleasures that people in the world serve, and some people, it brings them pleasure to go drink and drink more. Some days I had that day at work where I just need a Coke.

And I told Charlie the other day, I said, I almost can understand. I had a parent ask me Thursday, keep in mind this is a Christian school, but the kids were being so crazy that I had a parent come to pick up her child and said, I don’t understand why you don’t drink. Well, I get your point.

I know you’re just kidding, but I get your point. And there are some days where I think, I just need a Coke. And I told her the other day, I said, I almost understand people who have that bad day and they think, I need a drink.

Because I took a drink of that Coke and it’s like, everything’s better now. By the way, not an argument for drinking because I don’t do that, as you all well know. But those who have the time, it would just make me feel better.

It would just bring me so much pleasure if I just had that drink. And then how many families have been ripped apart by that drink? See, serving lust and pleasure leads to consequences.

The pursuit of happiness often leads to unhappiness. Excuse me, the pursuit of happiness regardless of God’s law often leads to unhappiness. How many people think they’re going to find pleasure and happiness and fulfillment in a life of going from one relationship and one immoral encounter to another?

And yet there are diseases, there are unplanned pregnancies, there are things that just mess up people’s lives. A pursuit of pleasure, a pursuit of happiness, with no regard for God’s principles, leads to unhappiness. It says living in malice and envy.

Sometimes we get so mired in sin, we can get angry. We can get hostile toward God and toward the things of God. And we can get hostile toward one another.

You know, it’s a sin to hate our fellow man. It doesn’t mean we have to agree with them. Don’t be confused about what I’m saying here, because we live in a, again, I keep saying this a lot.

We live in a day and time because a lot of this perfectly describes not only our age, but the age in which Titus lived. But we live in a day and time where if you disagree with somebody, you must hate them. No, I don’t have to agree with everything everybody says in order to love them.

Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is disagree with them when they’re wrong and let them know it. But this malice and envy, hateful and hating one another, it is a sin to hate other people. Doesn’t the Bible question how we can bless God and curse man who is made in the image of God?

We’re not supposed to do that. And yet out in the world there’s a lot of hate and there’s a lot of malice and envy, hatefulness and hating one another. And I could go on and on all night with this, but it paints a bleak picture of the life that we used to live and would be living apart from the grace of God in Jesus Christ. And sometimes still do slip into.

Apart from the grace of God in Jesus Christ. Then in verse 4 we have one of the best words in the whole Bible. But. B-U-T.

So many things. So many good things show up in the Bible. When you have the word but.

Followed by what God did. Because that word but means in spite of what has happened before. Something changed.

Something happened. He says in verse 4. But after that, the kindness and love of God our Savior toward man appeared.

God decided to be kind to us. Kindness is not always deserved. As a matter of fact, sometimes it’s more kind when we do kind things for people who don’t deserve it.

We deal with this a lot with younger children. You need to be kind to your classmates. You need to be kind to your sister.

But she did, I don’t care what she did. I’m not saying act the way she deserved. I’m not saying act the way he deserves to be treated.

I’m saying be kind. Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God for Christ’s sake has also forgiven you. He used to make kids write that verse out when they couldn’t get along.

Kindness is not always deserved. And in this case, it was not deserved because we look back at the picture that he painted of the human race in verse 3. We didn’t deserve good treatment from God.

We deserved wrath and justice. But after that, the kindness of God appeared. Not because we deserved it, but because we did not deserve it.

He was kind enough to demonstrate love to us. But the kindness and love of God, our Savior, toward man appeared. The love of God.

Where was the love of God most clearly illustrated? It was at the cross. We didn’t deserve God to sacrifice his own son that we could be forgiven.

and yet that’s exactly what he did. Not only did we not deserve heaven but we didn’t deserve him to make a way for us to get to heaven and he did it anyway. Not because of our goodness but because of his.

It says in verse 5, not by works of righteousness which we have done. There’s nothing about the gospel that involves our good works. Our good works, if we can even call them that, get in the way.

Because we get so consumed by I did this or I can do this so God must love me. That’s not how it works. It is not by works of righteousness.

There is no work of righteousness that we can do that is so good that it undoes any of the wrong that we’ve ever done. God’s mercy toward us is not because we’ve earned it or deserved it or done these works of righteousness. It’s because of his kindness and his love that appeared in spite of who we are.

Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy, he saved us because God was merciful. by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior. He sent Christ to die for us, to shed his blood and die, bearing all the punishment for our sins, paying all the penalty, so that there was nothing for us to earn or deserve, nothing for us to do, nothing for us to change in ourselves in order to get to heaven, but it was all done for us.

And then on top of that, he cleans us up from the inside out by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost. He gives us new life. He changes who we are. We become a new creature, a new creation as the Bible says.

And He changes us from the inside out, gives us new life, and renews us with the Holy Ghost. And this grace, this mercy that He’s shown us, it says in verse 6, He shed on us abundantly. God doesn’t give us just enough grace and mercy to get to heaven. It’s not like sliding into home plate just as the ball, I don’t know all the terminology, but I’ve seen it enough in movies.

I’m not an athlete either. But it’s not like sliding in the home plate and just barely sliding in as the ball comes back to the plate. And they have to think about it, and then they say, you’re safe.

God shed his grace on us abundantly. It wasn’t just enough. It was abundant grace, above and beyond what we could ever deserve, that being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

This word justification is a word we really need to bring back into understanding because we don’t use it anymore. To be justified means that we have a clean slate before God. Now, being justified by His grace, who’s being justified?

We are. And this justification by His grace means He wipes the slate clean even though we don’t deserve it. We didn’t earn those marks of sin to come off of our account.

He wiped it clean because of His grace. And because of that, we were made errors according to the hope of eternal life. So the whole point of these few verses, verses 3 through 7, and we’ll pick up back in verse 8 next week.

The whole point of verses 3 through 7 here is to illustrate how lost and how sinful we were and are, if we want to be honest about it. And yet God is merciful and loving in spite of that. God’s forgiveness and God’s love has nothing to do with our ability to earn it or deserve it, but He’s kind to us in spite of the fact that we don’t deserve it.

He shows us mercy and forgiveness in spite of the fact that we don’t deserve it, in spite of the fact that we can’t earn it. And He gives us the grace because of what Jesus Christ did. He gives us the grace to forgive us, to give us a clean slate, an eternal life with Him in heaven.

Now, for those who’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior, that’s an important truth for you to know tonight, that God does offer a clean slate. God does offer forgiveness. You don’t have to earn it.

You don’t have to deserve it. Christ has already done what’s necessary. The Bible says you’re justified by his grace.

All there is for you to do is to understand your sin, to understand your inability before God to do anything to get yourself closer to heaven, to understand that you’ve sinned and need a Savior, that Christ is the only one who could save you, and that he paid all the penalty that you owed, took all the punishment you deserved, and simply to ask God’s forgiveness because of what Christ did. And if you are a believer tonight, we need to be reminded of what the grace of God really is. That it’s his kindness in spite of what we deserve.

Because we get to a place where we feel so self-righteous. Because we’ve lived such a good life for so long. We forget who we really are.

And this grace that God gave us even when we didn’t deserve it. Especially when we didn’t deserve it. We need to be reminded of that.

So that not only we will be thankful to God and live in light of that. but also so that we will have the grace and kindness to take that message to people who desperately need to hear it, even when we think they’re too much, like verse 3, to want to mess with. Folks, God messed with us.

God took the time to save us and bring us the message of the gospel, but we have no right to withhold it from others.

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