Galen Call's Sermon Library
"Grace In Action" - April 5, 1981 (PM Service)
Take your Bible please and turn with me to the book of Titus, the theme of this pastoral epistle written by the Apostle Paul to his son in the faith and his beloved co-worker Titus is the healthy Christian life. A number of times he uses a term translated in the King James version as sound, he talks of sound doctrine and sound living. That word sound is healthy, hygienic in the original language. Titus is commanded by the Apostle to establish healthy leadership in the churches in the island of Crete, the leadership was responsible then to expose the false teachers and to fight against false doctrine by proclaiming the truth. Those who are false teachers profess that they know God, but their lives don't back up their profession. It's an empty confession they have. He says Titus that is not to be among God's true people. Our living should back up our believing. How we behave should underscore what we believe. And so he says as he begins chapter 2, "Speak thou the things which become or be fit sound doctrine." He says in verse 10, "That they the believers may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things. That word adorn is the root word for our word cosmetics. And rather than covering up what it means is to make attractive. It means to make something beautiful, cosme-o. You and I, by the way that we live, are to adorn our theology. What we say we believe is to be made beautiful and attractive to people because of the way that we live our lives day by day. It's not enough just to tell somebody that Jesus loves them, that he died for their sins, and he rose again. It's not enough just to hand them a force, spiritual laws, or some other tract, but our lives must back up what we say we believe about the Lord. Then in verse 11 we come to our text for tonight, "For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us the denying ungodliness and worldly lusts. We should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present age, looking 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 people of His own, zealous of good works. These things speak and exhort and rebuke with all authority, let no man despise thee." And of course, whenever we come to the Word of God, we must realize the authority that the Word has in our lives, or that it should have. When we come to this book, it's like coming to know other book of instruction in the world. This is God's Word to us, and what we see in these pages and read in these words, we are to accept as the very words of God. In the text that we've read tonight, we have the second of two, or actually the second of three, rather, doctrinal sections in the book of Titus. The first one is back in verses one and two, and then we come to this one. Notice that the theme of this text is the grace of God. Why should I live the kind of life that God commands of me in verses one through ten of chapter two? And remember the instructions that He gave. He spoke first to the aged men, and then to the aged women. He doesn't define what age it is. He's smart. He speaks then to the young women. He speaks to the young men. He speaks to the servants, to the slaves, which applies to students, and to children, and to those of us who are employees. What He says applies to all of us, verses nine and ten. Why should I be motivated to live that way? That is a high standard of living that the Word of God commands of me. So there are four reasons given to us, and the verses that we've read for our text tonight, as to why I should live the kind of life that God commands of me. Reason number one is because of what grace has done for me, verse 11. The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men. Grace is God's unmerited favor toward me. It is kindness that He shows toward me, though I don't deserve it. It is His grace which allows His love to reach out and to save me. His grace is based upon, it's rooted in, the work of Jesus Christ when He died and rose again for my sins. Because of Christ's work, God can be gracious to me. And that's what He is saying here, that God's grace has appeared. It says, "The dawn of the sun after a dark night, so God's grace has appeared on the horizon of history. Ever since man fell into sin, there was darkness in the world, brought about by man's fall. That darkness was overwhelming. It lasted for thousands of years, but then one day, two thousand years ago, God's grace appeared, like the sun, like the sun after a dark night. And that grace appeared in the person of Jesus Christ. In John 1, verse 14, it says that Jesus Christ is the Word. He became incarnate and He was full of grace and truth. When it's mentioned that God's grace appeared, it refers not only to Christ's birth, but to His life and to His death, to His resurrection. In other words, the totality of His life is in view here. God manifested His grace through Jesus Christ. And notice how He describes God's grace. He calls it the saving grace of God, the grace of God that brings salvation. John has said grace came to rescue man from the greatest possible evil, namely the curse of God upon sin, and to bestow upon him the greatest possible boon, namely the blessing of God for soul and body throughout all eternity. Reason that God's grace appeared was that we might be saved. God sent not His son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. And you notice those three words, two all men. The King James puts that phrase after appeared, and it seems as though he's saying that the grace of God has appeared to all men. Actually, those words are modifying saving grace. In other words, God's grace has appeared that brings salvation to all men. Not all men have seen it yet. Not all men have received this saving message of the gospel, and that's why we're so heavily involved in missions and believe so strongly in evangelism in the world and here locally. But God's grace that brings salvation has rendered all men savable. It doesn't say here that all men will ultimately be saved. That's not the meaning of it. But God by His grace has caused all men to be in a position of being saved. It can be saved if they will believe the gospel and trust the Lord Jesus Christ. Most of us here tonight have come to that place in our lives when we have trusted the Lord. And as a result of that, God's grace has done a work in us. And because of what grace has done for us, that we want to live the kind of life that pleases our Lord. As Ralph Hudson wrote, "I'll live for Him who died for me. How happy then my life shall be. I'll live for Him who died for me, my Savior and my God." Then there's a second reason as to why I should live the kind of life that God commands of me earlier in this chapter. That is because of what grace is teaching me, verse 12, "God's grace has not only appeared and saved me, but His grace is now instructing me." The word instruct here means to train or to bring up a child. It refers to instruction plus discipline when it's necessary. As you know, you have to discipline children. It's a part of being a parent. It's one of the hard things about being a parent, learning how to discipline with the right spirit and with the right balance and being consistent. Everybody is a virtue of the gods, someone has said. We parents must strive to have the consistency in our discipline. Well God, with perfect consistency, disciplines instructs us. It's a school that we're in. God wants us not only to have the right creed, but to have the right character as well. So grace is working in me to teach me to live well pleasing to the Lord. Other negative and positive sides to this, just about everything, you know, has a negative and positive. For example, electricity, and just as there are many negatives and positives that must work together so it's true in the Christian life. The negatives are found here in the words that God's grace teaches us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts. The positive is found when it says we should live soberly, righteously, and godly. Now let's think about the negative for a moment. In the Christian life, there are some things I must renounce. There are some things I must deny. I must do it once and for all and then follow that with a daily confirmation, a daily death. I wish it were possible for us to once and for all put our sin natures in the grave and keep them there and never have to think about it again, never be challenged by the sin nature, but it's not that way. By faith we make that decision to renounce and yet every day don't we face the battle and we have to reconfirm that decision to renounce and to deny some things in our lives. The Apostle mentions two things here, first ungodliness. What is ungodliness? That's the opposite of godliness. Ungodliness is godlikeness, it's having the Lord in the center of our lives ruling as the sovereign one, it's the Lord on the throne of our lives directing the issues of the life, that's godliness. Ungodliness is just the opposite. We have today what is called the unkola. What is the unkola? It's a soft drink, it doesn't have kola in it. So what is an ungodly life? It's a life that is not god centered. Is it possible for a Christian to live an ungodly life? Yes, the Apostle would have told us here that we must deny it. Do you know it's possible for us to go on day after day after day and never give Jesus Christ the place he deserves in our lives? That's ungodliness. And there are many believers who are living ungodly lives. We ought not to live that way. You must deny the tendency to neglect Jesus Christ and to live the day ignoring Him. Have you ever come to the end of the day and realize as you put your head down the pillow that you went through a whole day without being as conscious of the presence of Christ as you ought to be? If you've never faced a day like that then you're a strange person, you're an aberration. All of us face that, and therefore we need to deny that natural tendency to go through the day as an ungodly person. Start the day with the Lord and throughout the day remind ourselves of His presence with us. As someone wrote in a book sometime ago now, we must practice the presence of God. Then He says that we must also deny worldly lusts. What does that refer to? The world is this present system of things in which we live. It's this organization of mankind which is opposed to God. It's a spiritual thing and it's very, very real. The world system is headed up by Satan himself. The world way of thinking and the world motivations and the world goals, all of these things are based upon satanic principles of greed and force and the desire for pleasure and to leave God out. You and I live in the world but we're not to be of it. We are to deny the very tendency in our natures to be worldly. If there's any word that Satan has twisted and taken out of context and made nearly meaningless to us these days, it's the term worldliness. When I use that term immediately, 95% of the Christians in this room think of drinking and dancing and card playing, etc., is that right? As we have defined in the past worldliness as doing those things, I want to tell you tonight that is not worldliness only. I'm not denying those things maybe worldly, but worldliness is much broader than that. Worldliness is simply denying God his rightful place in my life, that's being like the world. Worldliness is living for the same things that the unsafe people live for, being motivated by the same things that motivate them, thinking the same way they think. That is worldliness. And all of us are susceptible to it. There are many people who don't participate in the Big Five, but who are as worldly as any unsafe person because of their attitude toward life. We are to deny those things in us which are a part of the world's system, the possessions, the desire to have things. Our world is motivated by the desire to have things or to experience pleasure as one of the reasons for the big drug scene, the escapism of it, getting away from reality, being able to have some kind of sensual pleasure or mental, and I think even a spiritual kind of release. It involves even the spirit of a person, this drug thing. It is not godly, but it involves a release where to deny this kind of thing, the desire for pleasure doesn't mean we can't have fun. There are some people who think that God waits up in the morning for us and as soon as we have a good time he's got a club that says, "Now don't you have a good time today, don't you enjoy life?" And some Christians look like they were weaned on pickle juice, you know. God doesn't want us to have a good time. God wants us to listen, He's given us all things richly to what, enjoy. There is nobody that deserves to have more fun living than Christians because our Father is in control of this planet we live on and He made it all, it all belongs to Him and He's given us everything richly to enjoy. When it comes to the kind of pleasure that the world seeks were to deny that and then the world seeks power, that's one of the lusts of the world, men build their little kingdoms and they secure themselves within a certain framework so that they have power. I've seen people leave churches because they lose their power base in the church, they build themselves a little kingdom and suddenly their kingdom is threatened and so they get out, they don't want anything to do with it. I've seen pastors that way who build themselves little kingdoms that they live in, that's a worldliness. We're to deny that kind of thing. The only kingdom we're to seek is the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ in our lives and ultimately established in this world. We deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, very practical but then He puts it on a positive note. He says then that we should live soberly, righteously and godly. Grace teaches me how to live to please the Lord, it involves three characteristics here. To live soberly, that doesn't mean to live undrunk, it's not the meaning of the word. It means that we are to live with discretion, to live a well-balanced life. What if there's any word that's important these days in our lives, in our churches, in our ministries is that word balance. It's so easy to go on one extreme or the other, to follow tangents, be balanced and that's the word, live soberly a balanced life that shows stability and a common sense, a spiritual common sense, that's a word that relates primarily to myself inwardly. I am to be that way stable, mature, well balanced and then He says we're to live righteously and that's a word that relates to my relationship with others. It means to live a life that's free from deception, to be just and fair in my dealings and faithful to my promises. To follow through and want to give my word to do, that's righteousness in the daily life. So I am to live inwardly by this word soberness, I'm to be sober, well balanced. In my relationship with people I am to be righteous and then in my relationship with God I am to be godly, it means to live a life that's devoted to Him, to have a life that's characterized by proper reverence for Him, to be conscious of His presence and to desire the fulfillment of His will in my life above everything else. As Phyllis sang this morning, submission to the will of God, that's godliness. And so He gives a very well balanced picture here of the Christian life, inwardly I am to live soberly, toward you I am to live righteously and toward God I am to live godly. Now grace teaches me to live that way. Where, right here now it says, in this present age, sometimes I hear people complain about the fact that it's so hard to live the Christian life right now, it's always been hard to live the Christian life. And really it's no harder now than it ever has been, the same forces are at work, basically the same problems are here, they may be a little bit more intense because we're in the end times, but it's always been tough to be a Christian. And right now in this present age that's the kind of a life I am to live. Because of what grace is teaching me, I want to live a life pleasing to the Lord. And then there's a third reason that I want to live the kind of life He commands in this chapter and that is because of whom grace will bring again. The faith that you and I have embraced is basically a future oriented faith. Oh yes, it is based upon historical facts. The Bible teaches us those, it presents them to us, but the Bible also tells us to be looking ahead. If in this life only we have hope in Christ we are of all men most miserable. It is not just in this life that our faith looks forward to some glorious things. He says that we are looking for that blessed hope. To look for it means to wait for it, to wait with anticipation, to expect it with joy. We have some friends who are visiting us this weekend, the Waltons from Kentucky. You'll know them, they're the ones without shoes here in the church tonight. I'm kidding, of course. We anticipated they're coming and yesterday as we were expecting their arrival from that long trip from northern Kentucky, it seemed like our whole lives were kind of wrapped around that event. You know, the kids kept running to the door, "Where are they coming? Where are they coming?" We were looking forward to seeing them, you know what that's like. And so really our whole day was wrapped around that one event, it was all focused on the Waltons coming when they were going to get there. You know, that's the way he tells us that we ought to be living our lives every day. We ought to be wrapped around this truth Jesus Christ could come today and he is coming soon. And my life has been focused on that truth. Everything I do should be centered on that. I should be expecting him with joy, looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ. When Jesus came the first time, His glory was veiled in flesh and only a few saw it. The few who saw His miracles. And Peter, James and John, who saw His glory burst through His skin at the transfiguration. And He was, He appeared as the brightness of the sun, it says. His glory was manifested. When He would do His miracles, there would be a burst of glory that would be seen, not visible, but His power and His deity could be seen by what He did. Do you know when Jesus comes the next time, there's not going to be any veiling of His glory. He will shine as the brightness of the sun. And that brightness will radiate throughout all of the universe. It will be seen. It is the glorious, visible manifestation of Jesus Christ, and He will return in that blaze of glory and call us out. Now why is it called a blessed hope? Because it's a happy thing to contemplate, isn't it? Leaving behind this world with its sin and its trouble, leaving behind this world and its darkness and its lawlessness, leaving behind its taxes, you know, leaving behind everything that's a part of this life that aggravates, that holds us down and that fights against us, leaving it all, and being caught up to be with Him. That of course is the happiest part of it. In fact that we will be with Him. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall you also appear with Him in glory, it says. 1 John 3, 2, it says, "When He shall appear, we shall be like Him, so we'll not only be with Him, but we will be like Him, and when He comes we will share with Him in His glory, and we will reign with Him as joint heirs of God's inheritance," that's why it's called a blessed hope. Then it's a blessed hope because when we see Jesus, we're also going to get to see some dear, dear friends and loved ones who've gone on in Christ. I like what it says there in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, where it says, "Then shall we, those who've died in Christ and those who are living in that day, then shall we be caught up in the air to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we, all of us, be with the Lord forever." That's blessedness and there's not many of us tonight who cannot look forward to seeing some loved ones who've met a great deal to us. And so tonight we look forward to that blessed hope and His appearing in glory, and because we do, because of whom grace is going to bring again, I want to live right now pleasing to Him. For when He comes I don't want to have to be ashamed of the way that I've lived. As the songwriter said, "Off times, the days seem long, the burdens hard to bear," and we're tempted to complain to murmur and despair, but Christ will soon appear to catch His bride away. All tears forever over in God's eternal day. It will be worth it all when we see Jesus, and it will want it. It will be worth the trials and the struggle and the heartache and the fighting and the joy. It will be worth it all when we see Him. Now there's a fourth and final reason in our text tonight as to why you and I should live the kind of life that God has commanded of us. It is because of what grace has purposed, verses 14 and 15. God's grace has saved me. God's grace is teaching me. God's grace is bringing Jesus back, and I'm going to see Him and be with Him. And God's grace has purposed something for me. And when I understand what that purpose is, I want to live pleasing to Christ. It's a two-fold purpose really. It says that this Savior who's coming once gave Himself. That is the work of the cross. He gave Himself for us that He might, number one, redeem us, and number two, purify us. At the purpose that grace has in mind, first to redeem us, to purchase us out of slavery, you and I are enslaved by our first birth and sin. We are enslaved to disobedience and to rebellion against God, but God has paid the price for me. Christ has given Himself for me to redeem me out of that and to set me free so that now I can serve Him. I had to be rescued by somebody more powerful than myself, and that's what Jesus did for me. And for you, if you've trusted Christ, He has redeemed us. All my iniquities on Him were laid. He nailed them all to the tree. Jesus, the dead of my sin, fully paid. He paid the ransom for me. Then He has purposed to purify us as well. The word means to cleanse, to make free from any admixture of sin. Sin makes us dirty. And the Lord has purposed that someday I'm going to stand in His presence clean. Without one spot or blemish, see the suit I have on, see that spot right there? Isn't that ugly? The first time I wore this suit, isn't that the same story you've told and heard? The first time I wore this suit, I had a pen in that pocket, I took it on an airplane, and something about the difference in pressure caused that India ink to leak in that suit and fortunately it was right under my pocket so that you can't see it, but it's there. You know something when you and I stand before Jesus Christ, there are going to be spots to be seen on the outside of the inside. We're going to be cleansed inside and out, perfectly pure. Lord Jesus Christ gave Himself for us as Ephesians 5 that He might sanctify and cleanse us. The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son cleansed us from all sin. Are you made clean? I hope so. For only as we are made clean, are we then made fit to be His peculiar people, as it says in the Old English, or some of God's people who take that very literally, they're kind of peculiar, but actually that word peculiar has a peculiar meaning, and that is a people of His own. If you're going to illustrate this on a blackboard, you would put a dot there and then draw a circle around it. That would illustrate this word. That dot would represent you and me, and the circle around it would represent God's arms of love. It means that He puts His arms around us, we are His special possession. Your child runs up to you and you hug your child, you put your arms around Him in a very special way, He's your possession, and that's what God is saying here, that we are a people of His own. He loves us desperately and dearly, and He is making us fit to be that special treasure of His, and He tells us that we should be characterized by being zealous of good works. Now obviously good works do not save us, but good work should flow from our lives, shouldn't they? God has saved us that we might be known for good works. For whom can you do some good work this week? When you think of something you can do for your wife, your husband, that fellow that sits across the desk from you there in the office, that person who works beside you in that assembly line, the students that are in your classroom, maybe you can forget the quiz this week, what good work I just on that, what good work can you do for somebody this week that would glorify Jesus Christ, let's make it even a little tougher than that. For whom can you do a good work when that person doesn't really deserve it? Nah, somebody comes to your mind immediately, the guy you've been planning to get back, this week bless instead of curse. Let's make good work rather than take out revenge. You see God has redeemed us and purified us that we might be His people characterized by good works. For by grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves it's the gift of God not of what works, lest any man should boast. Then it goes on to say for we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God has before ordained we should walk in them. We are not saved by good works, but having been saved we should be characterized by them. When it says that we are His workmanship, the word there is the Greek word poema, you see an English word there, poem. We are His poem, you know the word is only used one at the time, the New Testament and that's in Romans chapter 1, where Paul speaks of the heavens as manifesting God's power and His Godhead. And he uses that word in that verse, in other words the heavens are a poem that speaks to all of the world in a universal language of God's greatness and His deity and His power. Every star up there is a stanza of a poem, now what Ephesians 2 10 is saying that we also are poems and the Holy Spirit is writing a stanza every day in our lives. And every stanza is to be characterized by good works which glorify God. We too are His poems by which God manifests Himself to a lost world. How are you doing on good works? What motivates you to live? Why are you doing what you're doing? It's good for us to stop and ask that question occasionally. Are we doing it just to please our folks? Well that's an important motive but it's not the most supreme motive. I should want to please my folks because it honors God that I do that. Are you doing what you're doing because you get paid for doing it and if you didn't do it you wouldn't get paid? Well that's a very practical reason but there's a greater, there's a higher reason for doing it. I want to do what I'm doing because it honors God that I do this in such a way that men can look at this and know that I'm a believer. Why do you do what you do? Why should I live the kind of life God's commanded of me? Because I love Him. Yesterday I was down on my knees not praying. I was doing the kitchen floor. You husband know what the husbands know what that's like. Got some soap out there, a rag taking a few square feet of the time and washing that floor. And my son came up to me and asked me a very interesting question, he said, "Daddy why are you doing this?" I said because if I don't mother will beat me. No I didn't say that. I may get beaten now but that's not what I said. You know what I said? I said because I love mommy that's why I'm doing it. I want to help her. If you love somebody you want to help them, my friend if you love Jesus you want to live the kind of life that pleases Him. Let's pray. [BLANK_AUDIO]