God’s Purpose of Grace

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Titus chapter 2. We’re going to be in Titus chapter 2 tonight. And if you have your little booklets of the Baptist faith and message, we’re going to be on page 12 of that.

And we’re going to look tonight at God’s purpose of grace. God’s purpose of grace. And on page 12, we’re going to start there in section 5 tonight and look and see what it means, what it says, and then talk about what it means, and then go to God’s Word and see where we get these ideas from.

It says, election is the gracious purpose of God, according to which he regenerates, justifies, sanctifies, and glorifies sinners. Now, over the last few Sunday nights, we’ve talked about what those terms mean, regeneration, justification, sanctification. Just to recap a little bit, regeneration is being born again.

Justification is where God gives us a clean slate and says you’re no longer held guilty for your sins. sanctification is where God marks us out as being His. He sets us apart and then He spends the rest of our lives working in us, enabling us to act like it.

And then glorification is the future reign that we’ll experience with Jesus Christ. And election is the gracious purpose of God where He does all this. Election is choosing. Now there’s difference of opinion among Southern Baptists about what election is.

that there are some Baptists who believe that God has elected some for salvation already, and also that God has elected some for damnation already. I happen to believe that election is in Jesus Christ, according to God’s foreknowledge, that God looked throughout time, and he knew who would trust Christ, but he said the election is in Jesus Christ, that those who would trust in him would be the elect. That’s my understanding of it.

I could be wrong in that. I don’t think I am or I wouldn’t be telling you that, but I am at least hopefully modest enough to tell you I could be wrong, but that’s my understanding of election. It says here that it’s consistent with the free agency of man, meaning free will, that we believe that there is, that even as God is sovereign and God chooses, that God has still created man with free choice.

It’s consistent with the free agency of man and comprehends all the means in connection with the end. It is the glorious display of God’s sovereign goodness that is infinitely wise, holy, and unchangeable. It excludes boasting and promotes humility.

And that’s just the idea that there’s nothing about our salvation that pertains to us. I’ve said this several times over this series that the only thing that we contribute to our salvation is the sin that makes it necessary. So you and I have nothing to boast about as Christians and say, well, look at me, I’m a Christian.

That just means that we’ve acknowledged how far we fall short of God’s standards, and we’ve admitted that we are utterly helpless to save ourselves, and we need Jesus Christ. So it’s not that you and I are any better than any other sinner in the world like us, but that Jesus Christ has forgiven us through no work of our own. So there’s nothing for us to boast or brag about, but instead we should humbly give thanks to God for the work that he’s done in us. It says, all true believers endure to the end.

There’s always the question, well, what about those who make a profession of faith and then walk away from it? Did they lose their salvation? No, I think the Bible teaches they were never truly saved.

The Bible does tell us that those who, I believe it’s in 1 John, that those who went out from us never were one of us. I’m paraphrasing, of course, but those who were really part of the body would have stayed with the body. Those who were really Christians would have stayed with it.

Those whom God has accepted in Christ and sanctified by His Spirit will never fall away from the state of grace, but shall persevere to the end. That also doesn’t mean that we’ll be sinless, but that at the end of things we will have remained those who have faith in Jesus Christ. Believers may fall into sin through neglect and temptation, whereby they grieve the Spirit, impair their graces and comforts, and bring reproach on the cause of Christ and temporal judgments on themselves. Yet they shall be kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.

And that’s what I was just getting at a second ago, that we may have times, as a matter of fact, we will have times that we sin, we will have times that we slip or we fall into temptation, but it should not be a lifestyle. I told you a few weeks ago in one of my Sunday morning messages that sin is a fact of life for a Christian, but it should not be a way of life for a Christian, and I think you understand the difference. When we slip and fall into the mud, we shouldn’t roll around and wallow in it and enjoy it.

We should stand up and ask Jesus to clean us off again. And that’s the difference between a Christian who has fallen into sin as opposed to somebody who’s made a profession of faith and then shows no evidence of the work of the Holy Spirit. So we can fall into sin, and we will fall into sin, and there are consequences for it.

It does impair us in our spiritual walk. It does bring reproach on the cause of Christ. How many times have we heard, you know, well, look at so-and-so who claims to be a Christian. If that’s the way they act, why would I want to be a Christian?

It gives people ammunition to talk ill of the gospel, and it does bring temporal judgment on us. You know, if I go out and mow a bunch of people down in my truck and then ask God’s forgiveness, I’m forgiven by God, but God still expects me to pay the penalty here on earth. So, you know, that doesn’t get me out of jail.

So, this is teaching us that there are consequences that we bring on ourselves as a result of our sin, but it doesn’t result in the loss of our salvation. Because we are kept not by our, we don’t, we don’t get salvation by our good works, and we don’t keep it by our good works. We are utterly and completely and finally kept by the grace of God through the power of the Holy Spirit because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. It has nothing to do with anything good that you or I can do.

And I know that a lot of people will say that that gives us a license to sin, but I think we’ve talked about that enough, that the Bible teaches that we are supposed to be changed. Jesus said we had to be born again. So if we show no evidence whatsoever, if we claim that we have come to Christ, if we claim that we’ve been saved by Him, and there’s no change whatsoever over the course of our lives, that’s evidence that, no, we were not really saved.

And you and I can be born again. We’ll still have sin. It doesn’t mean that we become angels overnight.

It doesn’t mean that everything in our lives just is totally different. We’ll never struggle with sin again. I knew a pastor who was getting up into his 80s, and a younger man asked him, when does it become easier dealing with these temptations?

And he said, I’ll let you know. This is one of the godliest men I’ve ever known. He said, I’ll let you know.

We never get to a point where we never have to strive against sin anymore on this side of eternity. But from the moment of conversion, there should be some change that takes place in our hearts. There should be some change that’s noticeable, even as God continues molding us and sanding off the rough edges from there on out.

And so tonight we’re going to talk about this concept of God’s grace and God’s purpose of grace. And what we’ve talked about, what we’ve already looked at in the Baptist faith and message. We’re going to look at Titus chapter 2.

And look at a couple of verses here that speak to that subject of God’s grace. How he shows it to us, why he shows it to us. We’re going to look at verses 13 and 14 tonight.

And it says, for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto himself a peculiar people zealous of good works. Now, Paul does go on in the next verse and say, these things speak and exhort and rebuke with all authority. Exhort.

Did I say exhort? Exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee.

That’s how he ends the chapter. He’s talking about the purposes of God’s grace, and then he says, go tell these things. Go teach these things.

Go explain these things. Let people know these things. So that’s what we’re doing tonight, is I’m speaking and exhorting and rebuking, as the word says.

So let’s look at verses 13 and 14 a little more in depth, where he talks about why God has shown his grace. First of all, we need to understand that God’s grace is only available to us because Jesus Himself for us. And I mentioned this a couple weeks ago, that God’s grace is necessary to salvation.

It’s the most important ingredient in salvation. Because even as we talk about faith, even as we talk about repentance, it doesn’t matter how much you have faith. It doesn’t matter how much you believe.

Oh, I believe that God will save me. I put my trust in Him. It doesn’t matter how much you repent and get on the same page and, God, I’m a sinner, God, I’ve sinned against you, God, I need forgiveness.

It doesn’t matter how much we believe or how much we repent if God never made the offer in the first place. What we would end up with, if that were even possible, we would end up with people believing in a God who never promised to save us, and we’d end up repenting when God said it doesn’t matter. And God would have had every right to do that.

When we sinned against him, God would have had every right to look at us and say, fine then, you’re on your own. And some of us, if we were in God’s position, might have said that to humanity because we’re not necessarily as loving or as gracious as He is. But God in His holiness would have had every right to look at us and say, okay then, you blew it, you’re on your own.

And it wouldn’t matter how much we believed or how much we repented if God had never made the offer. But because God is gracious, because God is loving, because God is kind, because it’s part of his nature, he did make the offer to forgive us and save us. And God’s grace in saving us was evident there at the cross.

That’s what sent Jesus to the cross. It wasn’t because everybody got mad at him and wanted to put him to death. It wasn’t because he was a revolutionary.

It wasn’t because he was showing the seriousness with which God views sin, although that’s part of it. Jesus went to the cross because that was God’s plan so that our sin could be punished, so that our sin could be dealt with, so that our slate could be wiped clean so that God could forgive us. Because God being holy can’t just look at us and say, I know you sinned, but it’s all right.

We’ll let it go this time. No, when God starts compromising with sin, when God starts allowing sin, then God stops being holy. And he can’t do that.

He can’t stop being who he is. So that was God’s plan in order to deal with our sin, was to send Jesus to pay for it. The whole reason he did that was because God wanted to show grace to us.

God wanted to make this offer of salvation that you and I didn’t deserve, and that he didn’t have to offer, but just because of who he is, he made the offer. And so we see there in verses 13 and 14, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us. God has been gracious to us in thousands and millions of little ways throughout human history.

Throughout your life, God’s been gracious to you in a multitude of ways. But where God’s grace really has some effect when it comes to our salvation is the fact that he sent Jesus Christ to die for us. And he did that so that he could make the offer of forgiveness.

So God’s grace, as far as our salvation is concerned, really began at the cross. Now, you can look back throughout history, you can look back throughout the Old Testament, and see how God was working and moving in that direction to begin with. But if God had ever stopped short of the cross, none of it would have mattered.

The cross is where God’s grace came into view as far as our salvation. And God is only, God only makes His grace available because Jesus Christ purchased our forgiveness. Grace to us is free.

Grace comes to us at no cost. But make no mistake about it, God’s grace was incredibly costly for God who gave it. He gave his only son for us to receive that grace. And so I think we need to understand that.

I think we need to be reminded of that from time to time, that God’s grace comes through the incredibly high price that he paid and that Jesus Christ paid. I think we need to be reminded of that so we won’t take it for granted, so we won’t just assume it’s something we deserve and it’s something we have. and now we can do whatever we want.

Because if we can look at the grace that He’s given us that we don’t deserve, and we can look at everything that Jesus Christ did to pay for that grace, and if we can look at that and say, now I can just live however I want, that says a whole lot about the condition of our hearts. And it says we’ve never been changed by that grace that He gives us. So this grace that He gives us is available because of what He paid for at the cross.

And God’s plan, second of all tonight, was for him to purchase us through his sacrifice. God’s plan throughout all eternity has been for him to purchase us through the sacrifice. Not just to pay for our sins, but to actually purchase us.

I have not actually heard the song myself, but I’ve heard a number of people quoting Bob Dylan and saying, it may be God or it may be the devil, but you’re going to serve somebody. Is anybody familiar with that song? Okay.

All right, Sharon, so I’m not totally crazy and nobody’s been lying to me. I haven’t heard the song, but I believe that’s true. I believe that’s biblical. I don’t know about the rest of the song or what it says, but I think that’s.

. . Somebody’s going to come up to me afterwards and say, have you heard the rest of the lyrics?

It’s awful. It’s not biblical. Yeah, I don’t know. I’m saying that statement is biblical. We are serving somebody.

People like to think that because they’re sinning and they’re outliving their lives that they’re free and nobody tells them what to do. absolutely not. The book of Romans is pretty clear that we are enslaved to sin.

And the only way out of that slavery to sin is to be purchased, to have our freedom purchased by Jesus Christ. And so God didn’t just forgive us and turn us loose to our own devices. He purchased us. Verse 14 says that he might redeem us from all iniquity.

That word, we usually think of that word in the context of coupons. That’s one of the few places where we still see that word in our modern English, that you redeem a coupon. Because until you redeem it, it’s got a cash value of like 1 20th of a cent, something like that.

You have to get, what is that, 2,000? 2,000 of them to equal a dollar. They’re worth nothing until you put them up there on the counter with whatever can of soup or bag of cheese that you bought, and suddenly it has a value at 55 cents a dollar.

Now it’s actually worth something. And so we think of redeeming as giving value, but there’s an additional component to that word redeem. And I really understood this when I heard the word in French for the first time, because the French word for redeem is rachete, and the word for buy is achete.

And what it means in French is what it really means to buy back. And I realized what the word meant in the Bible by seeing it in a college class one day. It means to buy something back.

When Jesus redeemed us, he purchased us back. He went up to the slave master who owned us before. He went up to sin and death and hell, and he purchased us back.

He bought us back. We’ve been bought with the blood of Jesus Christ. So God’s grace didn’t just wipe our slate clean. He bought us.

He paid for us. He bought our freedom out of bondage to sin. I think that’s pretty incredible that we had rebelled against the king of the universe.

We despised him. As a human race, we’ve despised him. We’ve turned our back on him.

We have not done anything to love him or glorify him in the way that he deserved. And he had every right to turn his back on us, but he didn’t. He and he purchased our freedom.

We no longer, if you’re in Christ, you are no longer a slave to sin. You belong to Jesus Christ. I think that’s incredible. And we’re not just slaves.

I mean, there is that terminology in the New Testament. And I think it’s important for us to understand that slave terminology, that you and I belong to Jesus Christ, that we belong to God, that we don’t work for ourselves. But the Bible also teaches that we’re not just slaves, but that we’ve been adopted into the family.

We are daughters and sons of God through Jesus Christ. We’ve been adopted by what he’s done, through what he’s done for us. And we need to understand that aspect of grace as well. And that it’s been God’s plan all along to purchase us through Jesus’ sacrifice that he might redeem us from all iniquity.

God’s grace not only transformed you in the legal sense that you’re no longer guilty, but it transformed you in a relational sense that you belong to God now. You’re no longer a slave to sin. Now, why did he do this?

My third point at the end of verse 14 summarizes this for me. Because it was not just to redeem us from all iniquity, but it says, and purify unto himself a peculiar people zealous of good works. He, God’s desire, God’s plan throughout all eternity, this is why he created us in the first place.

God didn’t need anybody. God didn’t, God didn’t need anything or anybody. God created us because he desired the fellowship with a creation that could choose to love him.

Now, God already had perfect fellowship within the Trinity. The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, they had perfect fellowship. And God had the angels, who apparently have some semblance of free will, if a third of them apparently were able to choose evil and fall.

But God desired a creature that could choose to love him, to choose fully to love him. And God created the animals, but they don’t really have a free will. They run on instinct more than anything.

Pet lovers, I’m not saying they don’t think and they don’t feel. But they don’t make rational decisions the way we do. You understand what I’m saying?

My dog has learned to behave through behavioral modification, through positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement. But he doesn’t make a choice the way that you and I do. So God looked at us and wanted somebody who would choose to love him.

And God knew that we would fall into sin. God knew that we would turn our backs on him. But the only way for God to be glorified, the only way for God to have this people that could choose to love him would be to create a people who would have the choice not to.

And knowing that we would make that choice, God respected that free choice and gave us that opportunity. But God determined he was going to do everything possible to purchase us back. God was going to do everything he could to demonstrate his love toward us.

And we don’t love him because we love him first and he loves us back. We love him because he first loved us. And God showed his love at the cross.

The Bible says in the book of Romans, God commendeth his love toward us in that, excuse me, I’m tongue-tied tonight, God commendeth his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And when the Bible says God so loved the world, When John 3. 16 says, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that word so there doesn’t really mean this much.

It means in this way. God loved the world in this way that he sent his only begotten son. In other words, the cross was the ultimate demonstration of God’s love for us.

It was the ultimate demonstration of God’s kindness toward us. And the book of Romans says that it’s God’s kindness that calls us to repentance, that draws us to repentance. God’s plan all along, even though He knew that some people would choose Him and others would not, some would love Him and some would not, that God created us knowing that some of us would give Him the glory He deserved.

And some would love Him because He deserves to be loved. God’s desire was to have a people for himself. God’s desire was to have a people that he could love.

God’s desire was to have a people that he could have this relationship with. Do you see why it’s important that we had the free will for that to be the case? Otherwise, God is just like those cartoons from the 40s with Bugs Bunny, where they’re making fun of the book of mice and men, and you’ve got the guy wanting to.

. . Do any of you remember this cartoon where the guy’s got Bugs Bunny in a headlock and he’s telling him, I’m going to hug you and squeeze you and call you George?

Anybody remember this? Okay, thank you. If God didn’t create us with the ability to love him or not, if God didn’t create us with free will, we’re just like the rabbit.

He’s going to love us and hug us and call us George no matter how much we want to get loose. No, God wanted this to, God wanted a people for himself that would truly love him, not be forced to love him or not love him because we had no choice. He wanted to redeem unto himself a peculiar people.

He wants us to be different. He wants us to be different from the world. That doesn’t mean peculiar in the sense that we’re going to start running around town in tinfoil helmets.

There’s plenty of peculiar people out like that. No, he wants us to be peculiar in the sense that we are different from the world, that people look at us and see the result of what God has done in us and know that there’s a difference. Because when they know there’s a difference and they know that it’s because of what God has done in us, then who gets glorified for that?

He does. A peculiar people zealous of good works, to have a zeal for serving Him. Not serving Him because we have to, not serving Him because we’re slaves, not serving Him because it’s an obligation, it’s a drudgery, but serving Him because that’s what we want to do.

Because that’s our overwhelming burning desire is to serve Him. We have zeal for these good works. And again, that’s not how the natural world functions.

That’s not how the natural man functions. The natural man wants to serve self and desires. And again, that’s part of the peculiarity, that the world would look at us and see those desires and see that we really are different.

Not because we’re better, but because Christ in us. makes us different. The world would see the change and glorify God.

God’s plan, God’s plan all along has been to gather to himself a group of people, a purified people who would love him and serve him. That’s what he’s called us out to be. God’s plan all along, God’s plan all along was to gather to himself a people who would love him and serve him.

So why would God love us? I still don’t totally understand that. I mean, I tell you that all the time.

I don’t understand why he loves me. We’re a lot of trouble. I’m a lot of trouble.

I’m a handful. And yet God loves us anyway. And I understand, because this is what the Bible teaches, that he did it.

He loves us because he desires a people who will love him back. But at the same time, I know that he really loves us because it’s who he is. I can’t come up with any stronger explanation for why God would go to the trouble of dealing with any of us and our sins and our problems and our shortcomings.

Why God would go through all of this and come up with no better reason for you than because it’s who he is. because God is love.