SUMMARIZING THE PASTORAL EPISTLES TITUS 3:12-15

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1 SUMMARIZING THE PASTORAL EPISTLES TITUS 3:12-15 MAIN IDEA Because the church is the first stage in god setting up his kingdom on earth; we must accurately reflect god s will, god s love, and god s mission. I. GOD S WORD (VS 12-13) God has given us the bible to guide our individual lives and the life of the church. He has appointed leaders to keep the church on track. A. USING THE APOSTLES AND THEIR DELEGATES B. TEACHING THE TRUTH C. REBUKING FALSE TEACHERS AND REFUTING FALSE TEACHING II. GOD S CHURCH (VS 14) God s people are not consumers. We are kingdom workers. A. KINGDOM PEOPLE B. KINGDOM DEVOTION C. KINGDOM PRODUCTIVITY III. GOD S GRACE (VS 15) Truly understanding and receiving god s grace will transform our individual lives and the life of the church. A. JUSTIFIED BY GRACE B. SANCTIFIED BY GRACE C. GLORIFIED BY GRACE

2 Summarizing the Pastoral Epistles Titus 3:12-15 This is the last sermon in our journey through the Pastoral Epistles. They are called pastoral because they are letters with instructions for pastors and congregations; concerning the day to day operations of the church. First Timothy, Second Timothy, and Titus are the Pastoral Epistles. First Timothy is the first letter, followed closely by Titus. Second Timothy was written last; and as we have said before, Second Timothy probably contains some of the last written words of the Apostle Paul. First Timothy and Titus were written sometime between 63 and 67 AD. The Apostle Paul was released from his first imprisonment in Rome around 63 and then rearrested in 67. He was martyred in May or June of 68 AD. So as we can see, these letters were all written during a short period of time. The main concern of the Apostle Paul in these letters is to build a healthy church. God looks at the church as His family; with Jesus as the Head and the Holy Spirit as the Bond. I think this is something we must understand in order to live as healthy followers of Christ. Jesus put it very plainly when He said: 48 Who is my mother? Who are my brothers? 49 Then he pointed to his disciples and said, Look, these are my mother and brothers. 50 Anyone who does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother! Matthew 12:48-50 / New Living Translation This concept is important to Jesus. It was important to the Apostle Paul. It ought to be important to you and me. Please start to view our local church and the worldwide church as family. We can view our local church as our immediate family and all other Christian churches as our extended families. The church is family. A big part of the Italian community is networking. In fact it is a matter of pride to have guys. If one of your friends needs a particular product or service, it becomes a matter of pride to be able to say, I got a guy. I grew up in an immigrant family and many of my family members, relatives, and friends had to go take their citizenship tests. One of my friends, Luigi, studied hard but he was still a little nervous. When it was his turn to go before the judge he said, You honor, Imma study very hard. I know who is da president, da vice president, everyting but Imma worry because Imma no speaka Englisha very well. The judge looked at him and said, Hey paisano, you no worry about a ting. As a long as Imma sit on-a dissa bench, you no gonna have a no problem. Let s never forget we have clout. God is our Father. Jesus is our Brother. The Holy Spirit is our guide. Further, we can all say, I got a guy, I got a girl, because we are all valuable resources to one another. We are family. Our family is all about advancing the Kingdom of God on earth. In fact the main idea of this morning s text is this. BECAUSE THE CHURCH IS THE FIRST STAGE IN Page 2

3 GOD SETTING UP HIS KINGDOM ON EARTH; WE MUST ACCURATELY REFLECT GOD S WILL, GOD S LOVE, AND GOD S MISSION. I don t want anyone to misunderstand me in what I m about to say. I am not criticizing churches that focus on working for social justice in our society. I think what they do is often very helpful. However, I can t imagine the Apostle Paul talking in terms of social justice in the context of changing government in secular society. However, let me say this in the strongest possible terms. Social justice within the church would have been not only a concern for Paul; but it would be a mandate and a direct command from God. As the church, we are to be a model of what social justice looks like to an unbelieving world because in God s Kingdom there will be social justice throughout the earth. We are to be an example of God s heart as we live out social justice. I say that to emphasize the importance of our testimony to the coming of God s Kingdom. I. GOD S WORD (VS 12-13) One of the major themes throughout the Pastoral Epistles has been the centrality and importance of God s Word as inferred in verses GOD HAS GIVEN US THE BIBLE TO GUIDE OUR INDIVIDUAL LIVES AND THE LIFE OF THE CHURCH. HE HAS APPOINTED LEADERS TO KEEP THE CHURCH ON TRACK. God used the Apostles and their delegates to spread and teach the Word of God. We know that Paul sent Timothy to the church in Ephesus and Titus to the churches of Corinth and Crete. In verse 12 Paul expresses his desire to meet up with Titus in person. He wants to meet him in the city of Nicopolis. Nicopolis is located close to modern day Preveza on the west coast of Greece. It has a great harbor and is located directly east from the boot of Italy. The weather is mild and it would be a great place to spend the winter. Since Paul doesn t want to leave the churches without any official leadership, he chooses to send Artemas or Tychicus to replace him and continue the organization process. We know nothing about the Artemas mentioned here. However, we recognize Tychicus from our study through II Timothy. Tychicus was Timothy s replacement in Ephesus and carried the letter to Timothy. Here it appears that Paul is sending Tychicus to replace Titus on Crete. Tychicus seems to also be a dependable trouble shooter for the Apostle Paul. The point to be made here is that the only codified Scriptures the church had at this time was the Old Testament. They had Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek translations. However, Jesus is the One Who is the beginning of this final stage of God s Kingdom on Earth. There seems to be a document that contained sayings of Jesus in existence that circulated among the churches. The Gospels of Matthew and Mark probably had been completed and circulated around the churches. A formal teaching called the Didache may have been in its early stages and circulating among the Christians. This was a compilation of the teachings of the Apostles. Paul s other letters to the churches were in circulation. However, there had to be some way of authenticating the true teachings of Jesus. The early church depended on the Apostles and their appointed messengers to present them with the authentic teachings and commands of Jesus. They were considered to be the prophetic word of the New Testament. Page 3

4 Today we are fortunate because the Bible has been codified and we have the Scriptures written down for us. The Bible is the Word of God and it is meant to guide our everyday lives in faith and practice. Paul wrote this in II Timothy: 16 All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. 17 God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work. Page 4 2 Timothy 3:16-17 / New Living Translation In addition to knowing what the authentic teachings were, the early church depended on having qualified and church approved teachers teaching the truth. Again we are introduced to two names; only one of which we know much about. The only thing we know about Zenas is that he is a lawyer. He is a disciple of Paul so this is what is interesting. He could be an expert in the Jewish Law, Roman law, or both. As a Christian expert in the Jewish Law, his knowledge would be invaluable at making the Old Testament relevant to Gentile believers and Jewish believers alike. As an expert in Roman law, he could help Paul navigate the Roman law procedures because Paul was a Roman citizen standing trial in a Roman court of law. Whatever the case, Zenas was trusted by Paul to be a good teacher. We know a great deal about Apollos. We know from the book of Acts that he was a powerful speaker, teacher, and evangelist. He was trained by the famous teaching team of Priscilla and Aquila. They were located in Ephesus and were no doubt a great help to Timothy as he tried to get that church on track. Apollos and Zenas would be great assets to Titus and whoever would be his replacement. They would be a great help because a big part of the leader s role in the Cretan churches was to rebuke false teachers and refute false doctrine. It is critical to hire a pastor who you trust as a teacher; one who you trust to interpret and apply God s Word to your individual lives and the life of the church. The modern day church in the United States faces the same threats as did the churches in Ephesus and on Crete. False teachers were leading people away from the true faith and encouraging them to follow a false and destructive brand of Christianity. The one temptation was to place their faith in legalism. There are many Christians who are uncomfortable with New Testament grace. They are much more comfortable following rules and regulations. The problem is that they make the rules and define what keeping them looks like. They are quick to judge and condemn others. I have noticed a very interesting thing. The very sins they judge others for are actually sins that they are committing very cleverly so as to appear as if they are not sinning. Legalists are usually violating the spirit that is the foundation of the very laws they think they are keeping. The other mistake is to confuse grace and freedom with license. In other words, these people think that because we are saved by grace; it doesn t matter how we sin or continue to sin. It does matter how we live our lives. In fact Jesus said that our righteousness must surpass the righteousness of the legalists in our midst. False teachers were gaining more and more notoriety, wealth, and power; while destroying people s lives and whole families. I have to say on a personal note that it has been painful and discouraging for me to see so many people led astray by people who have fancied themselves good

5 and wise leaders. I have seen too many people led off the path knowing that one of their friends could have confronted them and turned them around. When a person is led astray; there is no guarantee their lives will ever recover. One of the major themes throughout the Pastoral Epistles is this. GOD HAS GIVEN US THE BIBLE TO GUIDE OUR INDIVIDUAL LIVES AND THE LIFE OF THE CHURCH. HE HAS APPOINTED LEADERS TO KEEP THE CHURCH ON TRACK. II. GOD S CHURCH (VS 14) Verse 14 states the principle that the church is God s church. GOD S PEOPLE ARE NOT CONSUMERS. WE ARE KINGDOM WORKERS. Many modern day scholars in the field of spiritual formation have noted that somewhere along the line people have come to think of the church as a commodity to buy or not to buy. We have become consumers. If the church has programs that I am interested in, then I will attend that church. If I don t like the music, I ll go and find a church that plays the music I like. The point is this. The church doesn t exist to entertain us or cater to our needs. The church is God s Kingdom on earth, on the move. We are first of all, Kingdom People. In his final comments here in Titus, he reminds us that we are to be about the business of advancing God s Kingdom. The workers that he has already mentioned gave their lives up to serve the cause of Jesus Christ. It was important to Paul and the New Testament writers to make sure that we know that we are God s special beloved people. If we are going to be true followers of Christ, we need to start from the point of knowing how much we are loved by God. Jesus suffered the most humiliating and painful death so that we could be reconciled with God. This is how Paul wrote it to the church in Ephesus. We should quote this to ourselves, to our families, friends, and to everyone we meet over and over again: 16 I pray that from his (God s) glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. 17 Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God s love and keep you strong. 18 And may you have the power to understand, as all God s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. 19 May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. Ephesians 3:16-19 / New Living Translation That s who we are. We are God s special beloved people. We are Kingdom people. And because Christ first loved us, we naturally return to Him Kingdom Devotion. The word devote literally means to place before or to stand before. In other words, we are to set ourselves about the task of doing good works. Our response to God s love is to present ourselves before Him as if we are reporting for duty to our Commander. We do not do good works to earn favor with God. We devote ourselves in love to God and ask Him to use us in furthering His Kingdom as we wait for His return. Jesus loved us and devoted His life to reconcile us with God. We love and devote ourselves to Jesus in order to further His Kingdom. This should all lead to Kingdom Productivity. I like the way Paul ends this verse; although I m not quite sure why he wrote it in the negative. He said that as we serve Christ in the church, we will not live unproductive lives. There are several things here. The word he uses for unproductive comes from the root word for fruit. In other words, we are to live fruitful lives. We know the fruit of the Holy Spirit consists of; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, Page 5

6 gentleness, and self-control. These are attributes of God that we are to imitate so that the world can see Who God is and what He is like. If we are apprentices of Christ; these should becoming part of our natural way of being in the world and our natural responses to things that happen to us. Next, we are expected to be productive and useful. Perhaps that s why Paul phrased this in the negative. There were too many people who were becoming part of the church but they were only interested in what the church could give them or do for them. Maybe that s why Paul said they should not be unproductive, fruitless, or useless. They should be useful to the church and useful to our Lord Jesus Christ. The way they serve should be in a manner that accurately reflects the heart of Jesus. GOD S PEOPLE ARE NOT CONSUMERS. WE ARE KINGDOM WORKERS. Throughout the Pastoral Epistles, Paul has hammered home the importance of knowing the truth of Scripture and submitting to the leaders of the church. He has emphasized that we are the church and because we were first loved by Christ, we are called to serve and imitate Christ as we grow to maturity. III. GOD S GRACE (VS 15) In verse 15 he hammers home the fact that we are a people who have been saved by and continually live because of God s grace. TRULY UNDERSTANDING AND RECEIVING GOD S GRACE WILL TRANSFORM OUR INDIVIDUAL LIVES AND THE LIFE OF THE CHURCH. In this section, Paul reminds them that they are a family formed together by the grace of God. We enter the family by grace, we live in the family by grace, and we will spend eternity with the family by grace. If you remember in our study through the Pastoral Epistles, Paul has hammered home the three stages of salvation; justification, sanctification, and glorification. Each one of these stages is infused with God s grace. The first stage of our salvation is justification. We are justified by Grace. Justification is a legal term. If we were talking about justice on a cosmic sense, you and I stand guilty and headed for an eternity in hell. This is where understanding grace becomes so important. Most people fancy themselves to be pretty good people. My guess is that most people feel that the good they do far outweighs the bad. They can t imagine that if God judged them on the way they live their lives; that He could possibly judge them to be guilty and deserving of eternal hell. If there is no understanding of the fact I stand accused in the cosmic court of law; then I could in no way understand that I need grace. I believe several things about this situation. First, I m convinced that people would be offended to think we would think they deserve to spend eternity in hell. Second, the reason is that most people are not self-aware or honest enough to take a good hard look at every aspect of their life. Third, people can easily see the sin and evil in other people s lives; but don t recognize the same evil in their own lives. Finally, only the Holy Spirit can open up these blind eyes and show them how evil and sinful they actually are. It is not my job or yours to point out sin in people s lives. It s our job to pray and to be at hand with the remedy. It is the job of the Holy Spirit to convict the world of sin. When people come to see how morally bankrupt they are and how hopeless they are to be in a position to earn God s love, they are then ready to receive God s grace of justification. I am going Page 6

7 to assume that if you are a genuine Christian, you recognize how sinful and evil we are and how hopeless and helpless we are to earn God s grace. Grace in the justification stage is that because of God s incredible love for us; He sent Jesus to suffer and die so that we could be reconciled with Him. When we go to Jesus, confess Him as Lord, ask Him for forgiveness, and receive Him as the Lord of our lives; He saves us. As God looks at us through the blood of Jesus; He declares us to be not guilty. We are reconciled with God and made His children and given citizenship into His Kingdom. As workers in God s Kingdom; we should be able to help someone receive the salvation of Christ when they recognize their need for a Savior. We are sanctified by Grace. This is the part of our salvation that is terribly neglected. I have heard a lot of talk and seen a lot of programs that are geared to bringing people into the church. Please hear me; I m not saying that these are not valid. What I am saying is this. If we Christians were living out the lifestyle laid out in the Sermon on the Mount by our Lord Jesus Christ, people would be following us to church. There would be so many people coming to church; the fire marshal would tell us to stop letting people in because the building is too full. Here lies the problem. If I were to give us a test about the information in the Sermon on the Mount, we would all get close to 100% on the exam. However, just because we know the answers doesn t mean much. Most of us are not living the Sermon on the Mount or even attempting to live the Sermon on the Mount because either we don t believe that we are required to live them or because we just think they are so hard to actually live that we will not even try. Jesus ended the sermon like this: 24 Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. 25 Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won t collapse because it is built on bedrock. 26 But anyone who hears my teaching and ignores it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. 27 When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash. Page 7 Matthew 7:24-27 / New Living Translation Please correct me if I m wrong; but it doesn t seem to me as if Jesus presents this as optional. If we want to be Christ followers; if we want to be apprentices of Jesus; then we must live out the Sermon on the Mount. If we live out the Sermon on the Mount; people will be so attracted by our lifestyles, they will follow us to church. This part of our salvation is called sanctification. This process goes on until we die or until Jesus returns. Each day we are called on to cooperate with the Holy Spirit as He continues to change our hearts, mold our attitudes, and form our thoughts, words, and behaviors so that they imitate our Lord Jesus Christ. Sanctification is the ongoing process that prepares us to live in heaven for an eternity. We are being saved. This is not optional. I think that the modern day church only focuses on justification and glorification. In other words we think that because we have prayed the magical salvation prayer, we can go on living our lives the way we want to and we will go to heaven when we die. I have tried to focus on discipleship for all my years in the ministry and I m not sure I have been able to sell the vision that we are called to be Christ-followers. I don t want to leave myself out of this criticism. I m not sure I have given it my best shot either. In order to bring the sanctification portion of our salvation to the forefront of our church life; I am going to preach through the Sermon on the Mount starting next week. I hope to leave a legacy of a church filled with Christ-followers. I d like to leave knowing that the church is filled with people who desire to be apprentices of Christ.

8 There will come a time when our salvation will be complete. When Jesus returns to set up His Kingdom on earth, we will be glorified. Our resurrection bodies will be reunited with our perfected souls. We will live and rule with Christ for an eternity. This is all done by God s grace. TRULY UNDERSTANDING AND RECEIVING GOD S GRACE WILL TRANSFORM OUR INDIVIDUAL LIVES AND THE LIFE OF THE CHURCH. In describing the Kingdom Community which is the present day church, Alan Wakabyashi in his book Kingdom Come, gives this great illustration of our purpose as a church: When I go home to visit my parents, my mom usually cooks me something good for dinner. I just love it when I can go to Mom and Dad s to eat sukiyaki or curry rice or some other Japanese dish. As dinnertime approaches, I begin to smell the sumptuous scents of Japanese food wafting from the kitchen. My mouth begins to water and my stomach begins to gurgle as I anticipate my mother s cooking. Dinnertime has not arrived yet. It is still on its way. But those smells boy, I can t wait. The Christian church is supposed to be a foretaste of that coming day when the kingdom will arrive in all of its fullness. Like those smells wafting over to me from my mom s kitchen, the church is supposed to be a foretaste of incredible banquet of the kingdom of God. As the world sees and experiences the partial presence of the kingdom in and through the church, they get a foretaste of what it will be like when Jesus returns to restore all of creation As the Spirit enlivens our love and worship and empowers our truth telling and actions, we give off the fragrance of the coming kingdom of God. We give people real tastes of Christian life. If we do gather together in community, many of us stay only as long as our needs are met and our spiritual stomachs are fed. God wants to change the world through the church, but many believers look to the church as a means of fulfilling their own needs. The gospel is about God s work to reclaim all of creation and the Christian life is to be lived out in a Spirit-filled community before a watching world. Is it not time for us to wake up from our individualism and get on board with God s plan? I think his observations are extremely insightful. The Apostle Paul had that same view of the church. BECAUSE THE CHURCH IS THE FIRST STAGE IN GOD SETTING UP HIS KINGDOM ON EARTH; WE MUST ACCURATELY REFLECT GOD S WILL, GOD S LOVE, AND GOD S MISSION. Page 8