Christ Loves His Church

Good morning. We are getting close to wrapping up really a mini-series that we've been doing here for the last few weeks. Chris will be finishing this series next week. And I want to kind of explain, it's a different kind of sermon series. It's different for a couple really important reasons. One, we've been sharing the text. So different elders have been preaching different weeks. And one of the goals there is to make sure we're learning and helping sharpen the different kinds of gifts that we have. Secondly, so I normally preach the book. Secondly, we typically go through a book of the Bible topic or section by section, chapter by chapter. and sermon by sermon, but this one is skipping around quite a bit. And what we've done is really looked at the trustworthy sayings, that's what we've been focused upon the last few weeks, that Paul highlights in the letters that he wrote to young pastors. So we have the letters to Timothy, we have today the letter to Titus, and in these letters where he's trying to help these young pastors know how to put the church in order, how to lead the church according to Christ, he highlights these sayings by calling them the trustworthy sayings. Now, it kind of makes you ask, well, isn't all of Scripture trustworthy? What makes these so much more trustworthy? And that's a necessary question. I think what Paul's saying is that these are fundamental truths. These are basic level truths. And the early church actually recognized these as recitable. They were like creeds. If you recall from that it even is written like a hymn. So here are the trustworthy sayings we've covered so far. 1 Timothy 1.15, the saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. And then 1 Timothy 3.1, the saying is trustworthy. If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. 2 Timothy 4, 11 through 13. The saying is trustworthy, for if we have died with him, we will also live with him. If we endure, we will also reign with him. If we deny him, he will also deny us. If we are faithless, he remains faithful. And then next week is 1 Timothy 4. If you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed. have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather, train yourself for godliness, for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also the life to come. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. This morning we're looking at a trustworthy saying. One that Paul says insists upon this because it's a gospel message. It's the message that God, our Savior, saved us. Now, the theme has been God loved us. And that's because the first one already was God saved us. So I wanted to spread that out or broaden that. But this morning we're looking at Titus three, which you've already heard read. And I want us just to hone in on verse eight. The saying is trustworthy. Okay, we're gonna look at the proclamation. What is the trustworthy saying? Well, that's verses four to seven. That's gonna be the proclamation. The trustworthy saying that he's referring to is what he just said, verses four to seven, and these things, that saying is what Titus is supposed to insist upon. They look at the next part of that verse, so that, Paul gives a purpose for insisting on those things. So that those who believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. So you have the proclamation, that is the gospel, God saved us. Then you have a purpose, that we will be devoted to good works. That's verses one to two. Then we see at the end, these things are excellent and profitable. And there you see in verse nine there's a contrast, but those other things that can so easily distract you and cause division, they're unprofitable and worthless. So this morning our sermon outline is this. The proclamation, verses three to seven. The purpose, verses one to two. And the protection, verses nine to 11. The proclamation, which is the gospel, verses three to seven. The purpose, the good works that we're then called to do, and then the protection, how God keeps his church. Let us begin with the proclamation. Let's look again at verse eight. This, the saying is trustworthy. I want you to insist on these things. He wants Titus to go to the church and he wants to insist upon these particular things and I want you to see it's the gospel. He saved us, God our Savior. He's washed us. We're justified in Jesus Christ, our Savior. He's saying, insist on the Gospel. And I want you to see something. He's not saying, insist upon these things for the non-believer. He's saying, insist upon the Gospel truths for those who have already believed it. Continue. to go over and over the basic gospel truths with the believer because we are sometimes forgetful. The believer needs to be regularly reminded and exhorted that we don't mature out of the gospel faith. This morning we actually are observing the Lord's Supper. Christ commanded His church to do this regularly as a constant reminder of who we are in Him. What He has done for us. His body was broken for us. His blood washed us. Church, we need to hear the gospel regularly. It's for us to shape the way we think about who we are. Shape the way we think about who God is. To shape the way we think about each other. So these things need to be insisted upon for the believer. Let's look deeper into what these things are. Go back to verse four. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, there's a great revelation that his power and his love, they've been revealed to us. God our Savior, he saved us. Do you see that's the main action? He saved us. Who? God our Savior. God our Savior saved us. And we're gonna keep talking about the word salvation. Paul can't get away from it. But that's the main action, and it helps us see we need saving. But from what? That's why the context is important. God our Savior, He saved us. Go all the way back to verse 4, the beginning. But. This is a huge change in the verse, and we need to look at what goes before it. Look at how Paul describes us, who God saved. We ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others, and hating one another. That's not so flattering a description. But notice what Paul's saying. We, Paul's saying, Paul, who we read earlier from 1 Timothy 1, the chief of sinners, we were like this. This is who we were and this is what we needed to be saved from. We needed God to come down with wisdom to save us from our foolishness. We needed Jesus and his obedience to save us from our disobedience. We needed true desires put back in our heart that are glorifying to God rather than being slaves to our various passions and pleasures. We needed to be saved because we were sinners. We needed salvation. And this is the beautiful part. God, our Savior, saved us. We need to insist upon this truth. Now, this is important. He's going to go through this list. It's kind of awkward to read. We can look and we can see that some people have a lifestyle that their slave to passions are more obvious than others. We can see some, their hatred is more obvious than others. We can see some that their foolishness is more obvious than others. But this is who we were. Christian, if we don't recognize ourselves as the sinners who need saving, we're not saved. You actually have to be saved from something to be saved. We have to be able to identify that who Paul describes there is us. And that's when we can praise God for his salvation. If you're not a Christian this morning, we're really glad you're here. Because we were like this, and we still have these same problems, and God saves us. Christians were not saved by God because we were good people or wise people. No, we were saved because we were foolish and disobedient. You may be here and you may be entangled in some kind of a vice. You may be ensnared. You may have some habit that you're trying to kick and you can't. And if you do kick it, guess what's going to happen next? You're going to find another habit you need to kick. Because our hearts, they keep going astray from God. It's going to be restless until it finds its rest in God. Here's the one message you need to hear. You're like everyone in this room. Apart from God, we're foolish, disobedient, slaves to passions, hated and hating one another. But God saves us. If we look to Jesus Christ who died on the cross for our sins to forgive us of those sins, we look to Jesus Christ who rose again to give us new life after we chose death, you're saved. And we're gonna continue to talk about the gospel, but that's what your calling is this morning. to hear that gospel of salvation and believe. So we see the main action, the main truth that needs to be proclaimed is that God, our Savior, he saved us. Well, next Paul tells us why God saved us. Well, first he needs to tell us why God did not save us. Look what comes next, verse five. He saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness. but according to his own mercy. Here's the why. Why did God save you? It's not because of anything good you've done. It's not because he looked and said, wow, that's really impressive. I'm gonna come down and show my love to that person. I'm gonna show my goodness and kindness to that person. No, it's not because of our works. There's nothing we've done. And Christian, we are the ones who are most susceptible to believing this particular lie. To think we deserve salvation. No, look, it's because of His mercy. Why did God save us? Because He simply chose to save us. It's His mercy. His mercy is His loving loyalty that when He makes a commitment, He makes a promise, He keeps it. That's the kind of God He is. He made promises to save a people that rebelled against Him, and we get to benefit from those promises because we are rebels. It's a loyal love that's undeserved. And this is important for us to understand because if we buy into that lie that there's something we've done that God must have really liked, that makes us think we have something to boast about. And there's only one thing a Christian can boast about and it's Jesus Christ. If we are going to think we've done something to impress God, we're a glory thief. Because Christ deserves all the boasting and all the glory. He saved us. Okay, so what did God do? He saved us. Why did God save us? Not because of our works, but because of his mercy. That's his commitment, his love. All right, now listen to verses five and six. How did God save us? How did God save us? Notice he continues. God our Savior, He saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us richly through Christ Jesus our Savior. So let's take this in pieces, because this is getting pretty complicated. God saved us by washing. When do you need washed? When you're dirty. When you're dirty with foolishness and disobedience and vice and hate. and malice and envy. God saves us by washing us. We have to realize we're dirty, and then God can wash us. Now, we're gonna get into some technical things here, and be with me. God, our Savior, saved us by washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ. Now if you're new with us, there's a doctrine in Christianity that's essential, it's called the Trinity. Believe there's one God, and that one God is Father, Son, Holy Spirit. If you say that's impossible, that I don't understand that, I would say if you think you can understand God, that's impossible. But what we do know is that God's revealed himself as one God, who is Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and what we get to do is simply submit. what he said about himself, and trust that he's greater than we are. If you can wrap your head around the God you worship, you're fooling yourself. So we're going to admit this is difficult. We're going to admit this doesn't make sense as an arithmetic problem, and God is not an arithmetic problem. He's God to be worshipped. And so we have here three particular Agents. We have three particular persons doing work. God our Savior saves us by washing through the Holy Spirit whom he poured out through Jesus Christ. Now here's a rule for reading the Bible. Again, this is technical. I'm not going to apologize for it. It's just we're going to have to think about the passage. Anytime God is referenced next to Jesus or the Spirit We need to interpret that reference of God as referring specifically to the Father The Father our Savior saved us by washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ. If we think about this and back up a moment, the Father has sent His Son, the Son walked among us perfectly, He died on the cross, He rose again. The Son ascended back to the Father, then the Father sent the Spirit through the Son, because He's the Spirit of the Son, into our hearts. The big picture here is this. The Father is not a distant God who is inactive. The Father is our Savior who saves us. He saves us by sending His Son and crushing Him for our sin. He then rose Him from the dead, He has sent Him back to His right hand, and then the Spirit comes and applies in us, indwelling personally, what the Son accomplished on the cross in His resurrection. All three persons working together for our salvation. God the Father saved us by sending His Son. Now let's look at verse six. I'm gonna skip down there, I'm gonna come back to the Holy Spirit. The Father saved us who poured out the Holy Spirit richly through Jesus Christ, by whom we're justified. Now, notice here, Jesus is described as our Savior, just like God above was. When we look at the Father, the Holy Spirit, we actually know they're all the one God, because they're doing things only God can do. Only God can save sinners. Jesus is distinct, but he's clearly the same and one God working with the Father in our salvation. I wanna just hone in here on the word justified. This means declared not guilty. Now if we go back to verse three, that's a guilty person. There's culpability. We've done things. When we stand before God and those things that we've done, hating, malice, the passions of pleasure being slaves to them, they're foolishness, when we stand before God, the righteous judge, there's not a word we can say. Just standing there with our own words, we're declared guilty because we are guilty. But when we're justified in Christ, we're justified by His grace, God the Father says, not guilty. He calls us different than we are. He declares to us a righteousness that's foreign to us. It's not inherent. Because what he actually does is he sends his son, who's perfectly righteous, and then he crushes him for all of our unrighteousness. So that in him, in Jesus, the wrath of God is satisfied. He's righteous. And then Christ's righteousness is counted to our account. We're declared righteous. We're declared not guilty because Jesus has paid our sin debt. He has given us his righteousness, and therefore we are heirs. We receive his righteousness, we receive his love. Now let's back up a bit further. The Father, who's justified us in the work of Jesus Christ, he's washed us by the regeneration and the rule of the Holy Spirit. Now this is important to see the Spirit's work. The Holy Spirit renews us and regenerates us. The renewal, I believe, is renewing a relationship with the Father. The Holy Spirit comes and He applies a new relationship in our hearts with the Father. And it's not a generic relationship. It's a very specific kind of relationship. You see, the Spirit is simply taking what the Son has accomplished and applying it to us. And what the Son accomplished for us was that we are now beloved children of the Father. Because as the Spirit cries out, remember in Romans 8, I'm a father. That's not just some generic childhood. No, the eternal perfect love that the Father and the Son have had, now we get to enjoy because the Spirit comes and renews a relationship and we're now beloved children of God. We get to call God Dad. Then the Spirit regenerates us. We were dead. We weren't mostly dead. No, we were dead. What can a dead person do for themselves? Somebody has to come and breathe life back into you. The Spirit, He comes and gives that life. And again, it's not a generic life. The Spirit comes and applies the life of Jesus Christ, the indestructible life that's risen from the dead. We're regenerated, given a new life. This is what we heard in John three years ago about being born from above. Now this is an amazing salvation. God, our Father, who's our Savior, He saved us by sending His Son to die for us, to rise again. That Son is now at the right hand of the Father. The Spirit has come to give in us, to put in us a new life and a new relationship. These are the truths that we're supposed to be insisting upon. Friends, this is a trustworthy saying. We are to be instructing one another with the truth. We're sinners saved by grace. We're sinners who now have new life in Christ because of the Holy Spirit and the Father has chosen us. We're sinners who now have a new relationship that we get to enjoy. These are truths that should define us and lead us to be a people who live by faith, depending upon His mercy. These are things we try to insist upon as a church. I hope you can go back through your bulletin, your order of worship, And see that we're insisting upon these things because we've read them, we've sung them, we've prayed them, and I hope right now you're hearing them. So on Sunday morning, for a good hour and a half, okay, maybe two hours sometimes, in the Lord's Supper, we're gonna do them. We're insisting upon these things, but that's what we're doing as elders, is we're leading the service to insist on these things. These things need to be insisted upon every day, as we communicate with one another, as we pray for one another, as we talk with one another. These things are so easily forgotten, these gospel truths. These are things that we, as a church, need to be constantly reminding one another of. Now let's get to the second point. That was the proclamation. That is the gospel, the trustworthy saying that we as Christians need to constantly be reminded of. And now the purpose. Look at verse eight. The saying is trustworthy. I want you to insist on these things so that. That is a purpose statement. So that those who have believed, if you believe in Jesus Christ, he's talking about us. Those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. Now, works is referenced three different times in our short passage. Look at verse one. Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work. So Paul starts this chapter, he didn't think in chapters, this section, remind them to be ready for every good work. So Christians are to be ready for every good work. Okay, then verse five, he saved us not because of works, done by us. And then verse eight, saved to be devoted to good works. This is important. God saved us from our sinful work for His good work without us working for it. God saved us from our sinful work for His good work without us working for it. This is an axiom of the Christian faith. We are saved apart from our good works and we are saved to then do good work. You are not saved from your good works, and you are not saved to not do good works. You are saved apart from your good work, and you are saved for good work. This is really the amazing thing about the gospel. We need it washed. God takes filthy, broken instruments, restores them, gives them new life, gives them the Holy Spirit, and then puts us to work for the kingdom of life. He takes what's unglorious, gives us new life, new hope, and then puts us to work in his kingdom of glory. It's amazing. Christian, we've been washed, renewed, regenerated. It's now time to get to work. Christians work, not to earn God's favor, but because they've received it. It reminds us of something. Work is good. Our culture tells us that we need to value relaxation and recreation. No, the Christian values good work. It's something that we're supposed to be careful about, according to verse 8. But insist on the gospel so that those who believe may be careful. There's an intentionality to be devoted. There's a devotion to good work. What kind of work? It's kingdom work. It's working for Christ. And if we want to get more details of what that work looks like, we have a list for us in verses one and two. And then we'll look and see what it talks about in verses three. We'll read verses one and two. Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities. Okay, these are good works. To be obedient. to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, to show perfect courtesy towards all people. Now, as I've looked at this list, there's seven items. The first three seem to be more generic, and the last four seem to maybe be in pairs. There's a positive exhortation at the end of be gentle, show perfect courtesy, and then there's a warning, a prohibition, do not speak evil and avoid quarreling. Let's take them in order. Remind them. These believers were already supposed to know these things were good and right. They need reminded. We need reminded. Reminded of what? Well, the first thing he mentions is be submissive to rulers and authorities. Now, a member recently pointed out, we've talked about submission a lot lately. Believe me, we haven't chosen texts that talk about submission. We're just walking through the Bible text, and then submission pops up. It's funny how the things that we find awkward to think about and talk about, God talks about a lot. It was actually pretty humorous to me. Pastor Sam recently preached Hebrews 13, and that text, in one sermon, he had to talk about sex, authority, and money. Three of the most awkward topics to talk about. But that's why we call Sam, Sam. Sex, authority, and money are just an acronym for what we call him. His real name's Waldron. But he handled that well. But I want to point out, those things are uncomfortable because there's probably idols in those topics. Sex, authority, and money. Let's walk through this very quickly. We're called to submit to our authorities. I believe here Paul is speaking about the governing bodies. So employee to employer, the citizen to the government, and so on. Submission doesn't mean we are required to agree with them. It just means we show deference. We have honor towards them. It's trusting God that those authorities that he's placed over us, he is in control. Next is be obedient. To what? How about the commands of Christ? To constantly be conformed more and more to the image of Christ. As many of you were with the Sunday school class last week, that Matthew 28, the great commission, the last commandment we have recorded in Matthew, teach them to observe all life commanded. Not what you like, not the things that make most sense, not the most comfortable, but teach them to observe. Not just acknowledge them, but to observe all that Christ has commanded. Then we have this verse. Be ready for every good work. Work is active, it's productive. There's an eagerness. Be ready for it. As I was reading this, I thought, you know, when a runner is about to get into a race, what does the judge call? Ready, set, go. You know what's interesting about whenever the judge calls that, I've never seen, and I only watch a race once the Olympics on TV, but I've never seen a runner, when the judge says ready, all of a sudden quickly throw his warm-ups off and tie his shoes. At that moment, the runner is typically already ready. They've done this before. They know what's going to happen. I think we need to think about this in that a readiness for every good work is an eager anticipation that God might use me in preparing myself ahead of time to be ready. See, if you think about a runner, he was ready well before that race. I've never seen a runner have to tie his shoes. Usually by the time they say ready, they're hydrated. They've warmed up, they've loosened up, they've stretched, they've eaten a meal, and then before they got there, there were hours spent practicing, lifting weights, learning how to jump off, learning how to condition their heart, their mind, and their body, and their muscles. How much are we really working to be ready for every good work? We're too casual. Well, we're too casual in thinking about how God's going to use us. Being ready means we're devoted to submitting to His Word. We're devoted to praying. We're devoted to being with the saints. We're devoted to discipleship and making disciples. There's a devotion that's required for us to be used and ready. It's actually frightening to think If God has prepared work for me to do beforehand based upon Ephesians 2, what if I did not make myself ready and available to do that work? Not only did I miss that opportunity to glorify God and enjoy Him, I will be held accountable. Christian, this kind of work is good. Working for Christ and His kingdom. It's not something we just fall into casually. There's a readiness, there's a discipline, there's a practice that's required. The other kinds of good works, verse two, these have to do with how we relate to one another. There's a set of prohibitions, there's a set of exhortations. The prohibition is speak evil of no one. I believe here the best interpretation I've seen is that this is speaking of someone who might defame someone else's character. And I want us to notice verse three, we ourselves have to inform this. We do not speak evil of someone else because we ourselves know we were once evil. Apart from the grace of God, we are evil. We don't speak evil of others because we know we've been saved by grace. We ourselves were evil and then we're saved. The dictionary defines defamation of character as an attack on the reputation of someone by publishing falsely and maliciously things that slander and injure. Qualifications here are important. When we're speaking negatively of someone, If it's malicious or if it's false, you're breaking this commandment of that's good. You're speaking evil. If it's malicious or false, you're speaking evil. Paul says we shouldn't do that because our reputations are tied to the reputation of Christ and that should matter. He then says avoid quarreling. Quarreling is oftentimes a word Paul uses with weaker brothers. So I'm gonna interpret this in the sense that quarreling is usually somebody taking an opinion or a conviction and trying to make it a rule. Be careful here, we don't wanna quarrel. It's not healthy for somebody to say, I'm gonna play the devil's advocate for the purpose of doing that. We don't argue because arguing's fun. No, we seek to do what's next, to be peaceful. Look what he says. Speak evil of no one, avoid quarreling, Be gentle. Another way of translating this is be at peace. Be at peace with one another. And this aligns with other things Paul said. Inasmuch as it depends upon you, be at peace with everyone. We're called to be peacemakers. Blessed are the peacemakers, Jesus says, for they shall be called children of God. This means we're not causing trouble. We're not stirring up other people's trouble. We're not taking things personally. We're seeking to promote peace. That's what Mark's a child of God. Proactively promoting right relationships. Showing charity. And then be courteous to all people. Now, it's easy to be kind to strangers. When you first meet somebody, it's easy to be kind to them and to show courtesy. It's also easy whenever you have a common interest with somebody to be courteous to them. It's hard for those that we find difficult or different. That's why Paul says all people. The Christian is supposed to be kind and courteous to all people. So we're saved. We have that proclamation for the purpose of doing good works. We're to be ready for that. We're supposed to be doing it and recognize that it's good. And then our last section is this, the protection. And here in verse 8, Paul is going to remind Titus, these things are excellent and profitable, and he's going to contrast the excellent and profitable things with verse 9. There are things that are unprofitable and worthless. The first gospel implication is have a new way of life towards new good works. The second gospel implication is to be unhinged by distraction and division. Titus is charged with insisting on the gospel truths that are excellent. They're profitable. When the Bible's open, we're saying excellent things because they're God's things. They're profitable things because God gives us good words. They're contrasted with those who bring division, who bring unprofitable and worthless words. I also want you to notice here that Titus the pastor is called to discern what kinds of truths to proclaim, what kind of problems need addressed, and what kind of concerns are problematic, and which ones should be avoided. This takes us back to Titus 1.9. You can just flip over, or you don't have to even flip a page, you can look over at Titus 1.9. In the qualifications, the last qualification listed, an elder must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught. He's not creating anything, he's holding firm what's been received. so that he may be able to give instruction and sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradicted." And then he goes into a section of a divisive person who's insubordinate who needs corrected. Paul lists out some of the things he has in mind that need corrected or that are unprofitable in verse 9. Foolish controversies. Foolish controversies. These, again, are, I think, probably people just arguing over their opinions and convictions. Making something more important than it really should be. Next, we have genealogies. Now, everybody loves to talk about a good genealogy, right? Everybody, it's one of the things we can really get wrapped up in the most is genealogies. Well, that may sound silly to us, but we have to remember genealogies are very important. Two of our Gospels have a genealogy of Jesus. The line of promise is very important. I'm not exactly sure what kind of dilemmas would have been involved in a genealogy dispute, but here it's something that was causing enough trouble to cause Paul to mention it. Dissensions. This one is interesting in Titus 1.10. Seems to be a very similar group of people. A dissension is a division that is caused by someone who isn't so insubordinate. They're not receiving the word that's been taught, they're wanting to create their own rule and standard, not Christ. And then a quarrel about the law. I believe this is simply referring to somebody who tries to say you can earn your salvation to boast of it. Now, Paul transitions after this list The unprofitable and the worthless things, the foolish controversies, the genealogies. Verse 10, he speaks of a person who stirs up division. I don't think he's breaking from the previous section or verse 9. He's simply getting into something a little more specific. And as we look at this verse, let me read it. As for a person who stirs up division after warning him once and then twice have nothing more to do with him. Knowing that such a person is warped and sinful, he is self-condemned. That sounds harsh, but it's not. It's Paul giving good pastoral advice to a pastor. It's hard to hear, but this is the reality, that there are going to be some who stir up division. And what we have to do is recognize in our own hearts we're prone to wonder. We're prone to be selfish. We're all prone to insist upon the things that we like the most, rather than insist upon the things that God has said are the trustworthy things. And so first there's just a posture of charity, of being peacemakers. That says what God has said is excellent and profitable, we're going to insist upon these things. Really as I read this passage, and I've read it a few times recently, it reminded me of a conversation that I had a couple years ago. one of our seasoned members who I respect and appreciate. He came to my house and I assume he could tell that the elders were getting different kinds of feedback and we were making different kinds of decisions and talking about different things. And he came to my home to tell me, to love me and you. And he said, Keith, and he used a nautical analogy, which are the best analogies. He said, the church is like a ship. And if you're at the helm and you're steering us with what you're preaching on and while you're leading, if you keep going to the right to try to fix this problem of this particular person, and you try to go to the left to fix this problem of this particular person, guess what's going to happen? Everybody who's in the ship is going to get seasick. Everybody who wants to be with the ship and in the ship, we're getting seasick. Your job is to hold steady on the trustworthy thing. Your job is to simply proclaim Christ, to not try to go fix every problem, which is really hard for me. Really hard for a pastor to do, to see folks going left and go right and not want to go after them. Paul says, once they will not hear a rebuke, once, twice have nothing to do with them. Really, I think what he's saying here is holding steady on the gospel truths. That's the true correction. Let them see what's good about the gospel truth and let them want to jump back on board, rather than constantly helping that division or helping that problem by distracting the whole church. The call is to proclaim Christ and trust Him, to draw His people to Himself. The church needs to be focused on the truth of Jesus Christ, the truth of God our Savior. I want us to focus on one thing as we conclude. We need to be warned not to stand over the kind of person that Paul describes here, because we ourselves are once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to passions, hated and hating one another. But God, our Savior, saved us. He saved us, He calls us, He unites us, He gives us good work to do. So let us receive the word of salvation with all eagerness, let us be ready for every good work, and let us be united in the gospel truth that He's given us. May the God of mercy keep us, unite us, and grow us. Will you pray with me? Father, we thank you for your word, that it is trustworthy. We thank you for your gospel, that it is sure. We thank you, Father, that your promises have come in a way that has demonstrated your loving kindness and your goodness, that we can see your love and that you sent your son, we can see his love and that he's laid down his life for us, and we know your love because your Holy Spirit testifies to us and helps us see the height, the breadth, the width, and the length of your love. Help us to see you more and more, Lord. Help us as a church to grow in that love, to be sustained by the gospel. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.