Why We Share the Gospel

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Transcript:

Well, we’re going to be in Titus chapter 1 tonight. Titus chapter 1. We’re going to look at the first few verses of Titus chapter 1 tonight.

You can usually tell what somebody’s passionate about, what they really care about, because if you talk to them for long enough, it’ll come out in conversation. And a lot of times it’ll come out in every conversation. I know that if I talk to my dad long enough, we’re going to end up having a discussion about running.

And he’ll tell me how far he, and it doesn’t bother me. I think it’s really neat what he’s able to do, but he’ll talk about how far he ran that day or the day before. And I’ll usually ask him on purpose, you know, was something chasing you?

But that’s something he’s passionate about, and it comes out in almost every conversation. There are some people that, there’s one man in particular I know, that all he can talk about is drums. And, you know, it’s fine. If you like drums, some of you may be passionate about drums or some other musical instrument, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation with him that didn’t involve drums. It just comes out in every discussion.

Talk to Benjamin long enough. We’re going to hear about dinosaurs. Charla knows, and sometimes Dredge, she gets in the car with me.

eventually there’s going to be a monologue about history and the Constitution. That’s just something I care about. Paul is one of those people that if you listen to him long enough, if he wrote to you long enough, you could tell what he was passionate about.

And it’s something that I really want to get to the point where I’m the same way, where it’s what comes out in conversation. And it was the gospel of Jesus Christ. Paul, if you read his letters, and he’s writing to the churches, and he’s dealing with problems they’re facing, and he’s talking about persecution, he’s talking about sin in the church, he’s talking about this, he’s talking about that, it always seems to come back to the gospel. And when you get down to it, the gospel is more important than drums, it’s more important than running, it’s more important than dinosaurs, it’s more important than history and the Constitution.

I can’t think of anything more important that I should be talking about than the gospel. That doesn’t mean we can’t have other interests. But the gospel should be part of the fabric of our everyday lives and part of the fabric of our everyday conversations.

We should be talking to people about the gospel everywhere we go. And we think of Paul as somebody who preached the gospel, somebody who stood in front of crowds of people and commanded them with his voice told them to repent, and there’s some of that as well, but preaching the gospel doesn’t mean just standing in front of a group of people like this, I’ve got a pulpit, or I’m standing out on the street corner with a megaphone and a giant sign and all that. Preaching the gospel is something that happens in everyday conversation.

Preaching just means to communicate a message, to get a message across. And so when the Bible tells us to preach the gospel, that’s not something reserved just for the pastor or the deacons or a professional evangelist or the apostles back in their day. It’s something that we’re all commanded to do, to preach the gospel to every creature.

And folks, that happens in everyday conversation. Even when Paul is having an everyday conversation, the gospel comes pouring out. As I said, we’re going to look just at the first few verses of Titus chapter 1 tonight.

And if you’re not familiar with the book of Titus, it’s really a letter that Paul has written. It’s a three-chapter letter that Paul has written to a young man that he knew who was the pastor of a church on the island of Crete, which is off the coast of Greece in the eastern Mediterranean. And this young man was pastoring this church and perhaps helping with others as well.

And he was somebody who had faced and would continue to face intense persecution. If memory serves, and here comes your history for tonight, If memory serves, he was beaten during a riot when some of the people on Crete became enraged at the preaching of the gospel. This was somebody whose life was difficult as he as a young man tried to shepherd this flock of believers there on the island.

And Paul wrote to him just like he did in the letters of 1 and 2 Timothy. Timothy and Titus had a lot in common. There were both these young pastors that Paul tried to take under his wing and encourage, not just in theology, but also in practical things about how do you serve the people, how do you lead the people in the right direction.

As Paul’s writing this letter, though, even in the introduction, even as he’s saying, hey, this letter’s from Paul, the gospel comes pouring out. Now, we don’t have these long, flowing introductions to our letters anymore. If you even write letters, some of you may.

I know that’s a lot of times been supplanted by text messaging and email and things like that. But think about the last time you wrote a letter. In our day, we have the envelope and the stamp and all that.

We have address labels, and we can write the recipient’s name on there. They know who it’s to, and they know who it’s from. Well, in Paul’s day, they didn’t necessarily have that.

They wrote it down on parchment, and they had to identify who it was coming from and who it was going to in the letter. So what Paul has written here in the passage that we’re going to look at tonight is the introduction to his letter, and it’s full of discussion of the gospel. And the effect of this is imagine you’re writing the envelope that you’re going to put your letter into somebody, and in between the return address and the recipient address, you’re already telling them about the gospel just on the envelope before you even get to the main gist of the message.

That’s what Paul did. Paul was just itching to get into the discussion of the gospel. And it says in verse 1, Paul, a servant of God.

This is the return address, so to speak. Paul, a servant of God, and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God’s elect, and the acknowledging of the truth, which is after godliness, in hope of eternal life, which God that cannot lie promised before the world began, but hath in due times manifested his word through preaching, which is committed unto me, according to the commandment of God our Savior. All of that is just, here’s who wrote the letter.

And even in saying, I, Paul, am the one who wrote this letter, he’s already talking about Jesus Christ, and he’s already talking about the good news. He’s already talking about the gospel. And verse 4 says, To Titus, mine own son, after the common faith, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Savior.

We’re just going to look tonight, We may come back in the next week or two and look over some other things from Titus. It’s a short book. But tonight I just want to look at those four verses of the introduction because it illustrates to us how saturated Paul’s life was with the gospel and really can help us understand why that’s so important, why we should be the same way.

I’m not saying, again, I’m not actually saying if you write a letter that you should put a gospel presentation on the outside of the envelope. I mean, that might not be a bad idea.

but it just illustrates how readily we should talk about the gospel how ready we should be to tell people about Jesus if I told you tonight that you were required to go out and share the gospel with three people before you went to bed most Christians would walk out the door dreading it and thinking okay I’ve got to just get this over with how am I going to get this done Paul looked on it looked on it as a privilege now sometimes I’m in the latter category we get busy we get scared we’re not sure how to do it we don’t want people to think we’re weird Paul was excited about the opportunity to tell people about the good news that was going to take them from being bound for hell in their sins and change their life and change their eternity where instead of being bound for hell and separated from God they were going to have this new relationship with God this hope in Jesus Christ their sins were going to be forgiven and he was excited about the opportunity to help people along on that journey.

And I need to, and we need to get to the point where we look at it as an opportunity. And we look at it as a privilege to be able to share the gospel with other people. So he points out that he calls himself the servant of God, an apostle of Jesus Christ. That was something they would have known an apostle means an ambassador, that he was somebody that was set apart by Jesus Christ, sent out by him with that message, and by the way, we may not hold the office of apostle, but we’re still sent out as ambassadors for Christ. Paul, who was one of these ambassadors, wrote to the church at Ephesus, I believe it was, and said, we, not just I, but we are ambassadors for Christ. It’s our job to go and make him and his position known.

He said, an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God’s elect, the elect mean those who are in Christ, those who have trusted Christ. You see that word where it talks about the elect. If that word confuses you, you can think of it as chosen, the chosen, the called out, those who are in Jesus Christ. Think of it as a synonym for Christians. According to the faith of God’s elect and the acknowledging of the truth, which is after godliness, he said he’s an apostle not just of Jesus Christ, but of Jesus Christ according to the gospel, according to the faith of God’s elect.

He said, this is my job. This is my reason for being on this earth is to make the gospel known, to make the faith known, and the acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness. There is a truth in God’s word that will point other people in the right direction about how to walk and how to serve God.

And he says in verse 2, in hope of eternal life, This word hope is not an empty hope like we use it. Well, I hope I feel better tomorrow. I hope I win the lottery.

Wouldn’t that be something, winning the lottery without buying a ticket? I hope I, you know, get a million dollars. We say I hope all the time, and it’s become a synonym for I wish.

Yeah, I wish I would win the lottery without buying the ticket, but I know it’s probably not going to happen. And so it’s an empty wish. Hope is something much stronger.

Hope says, I know what’s in store for me, and I’m assured that it’s there. It’s just not here yet. I don’t see the finished product yet.

We have a hope of eternal life in heaven. We have the promise that Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us, and gone to prepare a place for all of those who love him and have come to the Father through him. We are assured we have his promise that he’s gone to prepare a place for us so that we can be there also.

And it’s not an empty promise. It’s the promise of the one who said, destroy this temple and in three days I’ll raise it again. It’s the promise of the one who said, I will conquer death itself.

It’s the promise of the one who then fulfilled that and rose again from the dead. It’s the promise of the one who keeps his promises and can do anything. And he says, I go to prepare a place for you that where I am there you may be also.

So we have this hope of eternal life and it’s not just wishful thinking, oh, I hope I get to go to heaven. No, we have hope. we have the ability to look in expectation of something we haven’t received yet.

Have I received my eternal life? I know I’m earmarked for it. I know I have eternal life.

I just haven’t seen it come to its final completion yet. I’m not experiencing it yet, but I know it’s there. There’s not a shadow of a doubt in my mind that it’s there.

There has been at times, but God has worked on me through that. And I’ve come to realize it’s not about my goodness or my effort. It’s faith in what Jesus Christ said.

It’s faith in his promise. And so he says, in hope of eternal life, which God that cannot lie promised before the world began. He says, I’m writing these things to you as a spokesman for Jesus Christ, for the faith of God’s elect, for the truth, and for the hope that we were promised by a God who cannot lie.

And I talked to you a little bit about this, I think, last week, that there are certain things God can’t do. Now, I was raised, as many of you were as well, to believe God can do anything that’s true to an extent. I know what they’re saying.

God is all-powerful. But the Bible does teach there are some things God cannot do. God, for one, cannot lie.

God cannot deceive us. God cannot sin. There are some things God cannot do.

And I had to deal with this in college, this question. Well, the things that are right, they call it the Euthyphro Dilemma, which is a fancy name for it. But just saying the things that are right, are they right because God said them?

Or did God say them because they were right? If they’re right because God said them, then God could, what the philosophy professors told me, is that God could have just as easily said, well, kill, lie, do all these things that, you know, are against what the Bible says. He could have said that in the beginning and said it was right, so it’s all arbitrary.

And that’s not an acceptable position for me. But if God said it because it was right, then God is subject to some higher law and he’s not really sovereign. And that’s an unacceptable position for me.

And it was kind of like a gotcha thing that the philosophy professors would say, well, see, God’s moral law, which is it? And it’s not that I’m that bright. I wish I’d thought of it in college, but it was years later as I was studying the Bible, I realized there is a third option, that what God says is consistent with his nature.

It’s consistent with who he is. What he expects from us is consistent with who he is. God says not to lie because he himself cannot lie.

He’s a God of truth. God says not to kill because he is a God who values life. He tells us not to murder because he’s a God who values innocent human life.

He tells us not to commit adultery because he’s a God who is faithful. You see, all of these things that God said do and don’t do flow from who he is. And there are certain things God can’t do, but God can do anything that is consistent with his nature.

By the way, that’s also in my mind the answer to, well, can God build a rock so heavy he can’t lift it? Okay, God is a God of logic and order. So God doesn’t do illogical things.

He does things that might not make sense to us, but he doesn’t contradict himself. And so if God’s nature is one of logic, get out of here with that question. That doesn’t even make sense.

Okay, God can do anything. The answer is God can do anything consistent with his nature. And his nature says, I can’t lie.

I cannot lie to people. And so Paul reminds Titus, this hope, this eternal life has been promised to us, not just an empty promise by some guy, but it was given to us by the God of the universe who by his nature cannot deceive us. If you can take anybody’s word, if you can trust anybody’s word, it’s his because he cannot lie.

And he promised it before the world began. See, it was God’s plan all along that he would send Jesus to die for our sins. The day that Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, God didn’t wake up that morning and go, whoops, I didn’t expect that, didn’t see that coming.

It blew my mind when I first thought about the logic of it and realized that God, if he knows everything, and I believe he does, if he sees the future, then God created us knowing that we were going to fall. You realize that? God created me knowing how awful I was going to be.

God created me knowing what an awful attitude I was going to have sometimes. God created me knowing how unlovable I was going to be when I first wake up in the morning. God knows everything about you.

And He still loved you enough to create you. As a whole human race, He knew how awful we were going to be and He created us anyway. Because God wasn’t caught by surprise when we sinned.

It wasn’t plan B to send Jesus to the cross. It was God’s plan all along to create us, even knowing that some of us were going to fall. I’m sorry, knowing that all of us were going to fall.

If I say something that doesn’t sound right, let’s chalk it up to lack of sleep and not heresy, all right? Give me a chance to go back and fix it. Y’all listen to me enough to know I don’t believe.

Oh, just some of us fell. Okay. God created us as a human race knowing that we were going to fall and knowing that the only chance we had of getting back into heaven, getting back into fellowship with him was for God to earn it, for God to send Jesus Christ to do it, and even knowing that not all of us were going to take that route.

Still knowing that much of mankind was going to reject him anyway after his offer of grace and love and mercy and forgiveness. Knowing all of that from the beginning, God created us anyway. How can we ever question the love of a God like that?

And say, I know that you’re going to spit in my face, and I know that even after I offer you love and mercy and forgiveness that you don’t deserve just because I’m good enough to offer it, that you’re still going to spit in my face and reject me and call me every name in the book, but I still love you enough to create you and give you that opportunity. That’s a God of love. He said, and this was promised before the world began, and God began from the earliest days of mankind in the Garden of Eden, began pointing them to the idea that somebody was going to come and deal with the problem of sin.

And I give the examples all the time that in the garden he told the serpent that the seed of the woman was going to come and crush his head. He’d bruise his heel, but he’d crush the head. That Satan would injure the seed of the woman, but the seed of the woman who was Jesus Christ would deal the death blow to Satan, which he did on the cross.

Even there in the garden he began promising a savior. And before he cast mankind out of the garden, he killed an animal so that the skins could be used as a covering for mankind. Because the innocent died for the sins of the guilty.

God has been from the very beginning, pointing us to the Savior who would come. And he says in verse 3, But hath in due times manifested his word through preaching. And he says now that what God has been saying all along is manifest through preaching.

And now he says it’s our turn, it’s our responsibility to go and share this word of hope, this message of hope, and this truth that God has given us. It’s our responsibility to go now and make that known, to make that manifest, that word manifest means just shown. The Bible talks about things being made manifest, that their true nature being shown.

He says now it’s our responsibility to put that same gospel on display through preaching. And again, don’t mistake that for saying, well, then I’ve got to go out with a bullhorn. Hey, if God calls you to go stand on a street corner with a bullhorn, if God calls you to do that, go do that.

I’ll say that is not my area of expertise. If God called me to do that, I would do it, but I would have to make really sure that’s what He wanted me to do. Because I’ve seen a number of those guys and about half of them are crazy.

I’d have to make very sure that that’s what God was calling me to do. Don’t mistake it either for saying, well, I’ve got to stand in a pulpit. Not all of you are going to want to stand in a pulpit.

Y’all can be scary sometimes. Preaching the Word can also happen one-on-one. That doesn’t mean telling the other person, sit down and listen.

Well, I preach you the good news. Sometimes we preach the gospel in conversation. Sometimes we preach the gospel just by having a conversation with somebody, listening to them, and hearing the problems that they have, and realizing that we have the solution.

And so we listen, and we care deeply about them, and we care deeply about what’s going on in their lives, and we offer them the solution that only Jesus Christ can provide. Preaching the gospel happens in big groups. It happens in small groups.

It happens one-on-one. Sometimes it happens without saying a word at all. Now, I have used it before, but I have grown in the last few years to hate that quote that says, preach the gospel to all the world, and if necessary, use words.

I thought it was profound when I first heard it, because we do need to be living lives that provide an example for the gospel. But I’ve grown to hate the expression over the last few years, because a lot of times it’s used as an excuse not to open our mouths. Well, if I just live the right way, people will see the difference and they’ll ask me about it.

That doesn’t happen very often. We need to open our mouths. We need to preach the gospel with our mouths and with our words.

The book of Romans talks about the inability of people to come to Christ if they have not heard. They need to hear the gospel from us, but at the same time, they need to see the gospel. The gospel needs to be backed up by what they see.

So we preach the gospel in our everyday lives. And hath in due times manifested his word through preaching, which is committed unto me according to the commandment of God our Savior. And again, God called Paul out.

God gave Paul a specific commandment for a specific ministry, to preach the gospel in a specific way and to specific people. But that doesn’t mean that the command to preach the gospel was just for him. As I recall, the Great Commission, to go and preach the gospel and make disciples and baptize all nations was not just given to the disciples.

It was given to the entire church there at Jerusalem. It was given to the entire group of Jesus’ followers who had remained faithful even after his crucifixion and resurrection. And it applies to us today.

Yeah, I know we weren’t members of the church at Jerusalem, but he gave it to them because they were the followers of Jesus Christ at that time. Now there are followers of Jesus Christ here at Trinity Baptist Church. There are followers of Jesus Christ at First Baptist. There are followers of Jesus Christ at First Baptist Bolegs.

They’re followers of Christ in churches all over the state, all over the world. And we all have a responsibility. We’re all part of the same commandment called the Great Commission to go and preach the gospel and make disciples.

It wasn’t just Paul. And it’s not just a select few now. And he says to Titus, my own son, after the common faith.

I’m not sure if Paul is the one who led Titus to Christ or not. But I do know that he discipled him. I do know that he encouraged him and helped him grow and mature in the faith.

And in that sense He was like his son, my son in the common faith, because they shared the same faith in Jesus Christ. And he wishes him grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Savior. Just a few things to share with you about why it’s so important that we share the gospel that I see just in this passage. And folks, I could go through the entire New Testament and probably the old too, and come up with dozens and dozens and dozens of reasons why the Bible says it’s important that we share the gospel.

But we’re getting close to seven, and I’m not going to do that to you tonight. we’re going to look at just these few verses and give you three would you rather have three than dozens and dozens I see heads nodding first of all God promises eternal life to those who believe that’s why it’s important we’re not just talking about changing people’s minds I like to be right and I like for people to change their minds if I think they’re wrong because of what I said I think that’s human nature if somebody disagrees with us they need to change their mind right? That’s part of our human nature.

There are all sorts of things that I. . .

My dad and I were driving back from Phoenix a few weeks ago, and we stopped for dinner one night in Sedona, Arizona, which is kind of known for being an artsy community, if I can put it that way, kind of left-leaning, and I am not, and I apologize if you are. I don’t mean to slight you for that. I am very much not left-leaning.

And we were sitting in this Mexican restaurant listening to other people talk politics. And my dad was trying to have a conversation with me. And he’s like, are you listening to me?

I said, I’m trying, but there are people over there who are wrong. I just, I just, I mean, from tax policy to foreign policy, they were just wrong. And they were wrong.

Y’all know I didn’t endorse anybody in the campaign, but I was not a Trump supporter. And they were just so wrong, they were even making me want to defend Trump. And I thought, that’s how wrong you are.

And I just wanted to jump up and tell them all the ways that they were wrong and fix it. And that goes on all the time. I hear people that I think are wrong about politics.

And I could spend my time trying to change everybody’s mind about that. And what good does it do? And by the way, you’re welcome to think I’m wrong.

The preacher just needs to change his mind. You’re welcome to think that. We don’t have to fight about that.

I’m just telling you where I stood with it. They’re just wrong. But me changing their mind about tax policy, me changing somebody’s mind about the Tenth Amendment, my changing somebody’s mind about Israel, is not the best use of my time, because I can make them as conservative or libertarian or whatever you want to label me as I am, and it still doesn’t change anything with God.

Because they can agree with me on politics and still go to hell. God doesn’t promise eternal life if they’ll agree with me on tax policy. God doesn’t promise eternal life if you agree with me on school choice.

God doesn’t promise eternal life if you decide you want to privatize everything. God promises eternal life if you believe the gospel. And if I truly care about the people outside in the world around me, in my community, in my neighborhood, as I’m out traveling and listening to strangers in a restaurant, If I really care about people around me, why wouldn’t I want them to hear the message that could give them eternal life?

If I really do believe that there’s a heaven and that there’s a hell, if I really do believe that there’s only one way between the two and it’s through Jesus Christ, which by the way is not my opinion, but what He claimed. If I really believe that all of that’s true and that the only way that they have eternal life is through believing in Jesus Christ and what He did for them on the cross. If I truly believe that, why wouldn’t that be the most important thing?

that I have to tell them. We should be willing. We talk all day, most of us.

We talk about the weather. We talk about politics. We talk about football.

We talk about the weather again because it’s so hot. Do we care enough to take some of our time out of our day to talk to people about the message that will change their eternity? No message matters more because this is the message that will bring them eternal life.

God promises eternal life to those who will believe. He talks about it in verse 2 in hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised before the world began. This is the only thing that we have to change their minds about that will get them from hell into heaven.

Second of all, God illuminates man by the preaching of the word. We may think, well, this guy’s never going to change. My brother’s never going to change.

My cousin’s never going to change. My daughter’s never going to change. You don’t know what can happen through the preaching of the word.

He said this hope and this message that God has been sharing all throughout history in verse 3, was in due times at just the right time manifested through preaching. His word was manifested through preaching. And the Bible says that his word is powerful.

It’s quick. It’s powerful. That word quick means alive.

God’s word is alive and powerful like a two-edged sword. God’s word still has the capacity to change hearts. I know there’s people out there who say, give me another argument because I don’t believe the Bible.

It’s important that we know some other reasons to give them, but don’t neglect the power of God’s Word and sharing God’s Word with people. Because I can give them facts and stats all day, but only the Word of God is alive. And God can change people’s hearts through His Word.

As I shared with you this morning, God softens my heart when I want to be mad, and God softens my heart when I want to be right and think I’m right. He does that through his word. The more somebody comes to me and says, the more my wife, we don’t fight much.

I can’t even remember the last time, but there have been times. And the more she comes to me and says, you should have done this, the more likely I am to shut down. But when I get alone in the quiet and God’s word starts yelling at me, it’s God’s word that changes my heart every time.

And I’m pretty stubborn or can be. It’s God’s word that changes my heart. And I know if it can change mine, it can change other people’s.

God illuminates people through the preaching of his word. You may not see the immediate result as you share with your family members, with your friends, with your neighbors, with your co-workers, as you take the time to care about them enough and care about their eternal destiny enough to talk to them about Jesus Christ and about what God’s word says about the hope that we have. You may not see the immediate result of them dropping to their knees in repentance and accepting Jesus Christ. But don’t underestimate the time-release power of God’s Word.

Once it gets in here, it never seems to get out. And God can activate that years later. And suddenly it all clicks and makes sense.

The Word of God is powerful. Why wouldn’t we share it with people who need it most? Finally, we need to share the Gospel simply because God commands us to make His redemptive plans known.

If for no other reason, even if we didn’t see the power of the Word, Even if we didn’t care about people, and I submit we should, we must care about other people. But even if we didn’t care about any other concern other than this, obedience. Did God tell us to do it?

Church, did God tell us to go and make the gospel known to people? Did He? It’s not a trick question, yes or no, did He?

All right, I’m making sure you

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