God's Grace/Christian's Good

It's a great joy to be with you here again tonight and to be with people who love the Lord and love his word and are teachable. It's an encouraging group of you who are out tonight and I want you to know it is my privilege to be the Lord's mouthpiece and to share with you, however feebly I may, his precious, holy and inspired word. So thank you again for this opportunity to be with you and also to experience the experience of worship that we had this morning and again tonight. The praise, the meditation, the reading of the word was such an uplift to my wife Muriel and to myself. And we are so glad we have had this opportunity. Our reading tonight is taken from Titus 2, 1 to 14, and seeing it is your custom to stand in honour of the reading of the word, I'd ask you to please stand. But as for you, speak the things which are proper for sound doctrine, that the older men be sober, reverent, temperate, sound in faith, in love, in patience. The older women, likewise, that they be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things. That they admonish the young woman to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, Homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed. Likewise, exhort the young men to be sober-minded. In all things, showing yourself to be a good, to be a pattern of good works. In doctrine, showing integrity, reverence, incorruptibility. Sound speech that cannot be condemned. that one who is an opponent may be ashamed having nothing evil to say of you. Exhort bondservants to be obedient to their own masters, to be well-pleasing in all things, not answering back, not pilfering, but showing all good fidelity that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things. For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously and godly in the present age. Looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from every lawless deed, and purify for himself his own special people, zealous for good works. Speak these things, exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one despise you." Thanks be to God for his word. Please be seated. Our meditation tonight is on God's grace and a Christian's good works, or if you like, the grace of God that took Jesus Christ to the cross so that we may know and be able to say no to ungodliness and yes to righteousness. And our text is Titus 2, 11 to 12. This is a wonderful chapter, and it would take us a month of some days to work our way faithfully through it, giving proper attention to every text. But the text that God has laid on my heart is verses 11 to 12, and I think they have a very special message for the Church, all the Churches of Christ at this time. 11 to 12, which says, For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously and godly in the present age. To live soberly is to live a life of moral self-restraint. To live righteously means to live a life in which we are upright in all our dealings with our fellow men and women. And to live godly means to live a life that is well-pleasing in the sight of God. And so Paul is saying that the grace of God that brings salvation is a grace that always teaches us how to say no to ungodliness and, yes, to righteousness, to be morally correct. If the grace of God that brings salvation has not made such a moral change in our lives as church members, then it is suspect whether we have experienced that salvation or not. I don't want you to misunderstand me. I'm not saying tonight that good works can save a person. They cannot by themselves. But what I am saying is that the salvation that grace brings is a salvation that will always produce a life of good works. Of course, a Christian, man and woman, does fall into sin from time to time. We see it in the case of David who committed such an outrageous crime of murder and adultery in relation to Bathsheba, Uriah's wife. But because he was a believer in God and a man of God, He could not live long in his unrepentant state, and soon he humbled himself before God, and in the words of that beautiful psalm he wrote, Psalm 51, inspired by the Holy Spirit, he prayed, Have mercy upon me, O God. Against you and you alone have I sinned. Blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart. and renew a steadfast or a loyal spirit, a loyal to God spirit in my heart or within me. So the pattern of David's life before the incident with Bathsheba and afterwards was not to live in sin, but to live to serve God. Again, we see the same reaction in the Apostle Peter, who denied his law three times with oaths and curses. But as we know, he repented of his sin, and Scripture says he wept bitterly, went on, though he made some mistakes again, but he went on to become a great man of God and a faithful apostle even unto death. So the grace of God that appeared 2,000 years ago to all men is a saving grace. For the angel said to Joseph, you shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins. So I want to repeat tonight, we are not saved by our good deeds, but by Christ's substitutionary death for our misdeeds. The very heart of the gospel is that Christ died to save us from both the power and the penalty of our sin. There is no sin, small or great, that God can overlook. Every sin has to be paid for, and God has ordained only two places where sin can be punished. One is in hell, and the other is at Calvary. Hell is where finite people suffer in eternity the punishment that is due to their sin. The cross of Calvary is the place where the infinite God-man, Jesus Christ, suffered in time, in history, not for his own sins, but for the sins of others. Peter says, Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God. And again, Peter says, Christ himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live for righteousness. Now, that is what Paul means when he says, the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. And the first thing we must do tonight as we focus in on these two verses is to expound what is the nature of God's grace. Now I know Pastor Jeffrey has explained to you many times the origin of the Greek word for grace. I simply want to say tonight that in layman's terms Grace in the New Testament is a favor that a suppliant finds in the eyes of a superior being from whom he or she has no right to claim that favorable treatment. Grace is therefore free in the sense that the person who shows it is under no obligation to show it. and cannot be censured in any way for not granting his favour to the suppliant. Now, here's a case in point. A farmer walks into his bank and asks to see his manager. He says, I've got some good news and I've got some bad news. What do you want to hear first? The banker replies that they'd better get over the bad news first. Well, says the farmer, I've had such a bad year I cannot pay the mortgage I owe you on my house. The bank manager is clearly not happy. There's more, says the farmer. I can't repay any money that I borrowed you for that new tractor that I so desperately needed. That's bad, replies the banker. I'm afraid that's not the end, says the farmer. The extra loan I got from you last year to buy seed and fertilizer, I can't even repay that. That's terrible, says the banker. I hope you have got some really good news for me now. Well, says the farmer, the good news is I still intend to do business with your bank. How would a wise banker handle such a scenario? He would surely not show any more favourable treatment to a debtor like that. But the reverse is true of God, isn't it? Despite our total spiritual bankruptcy that is exacerbated and worsened by our continual sinning, God in His grace is still prepared to have dealings with you and me. It humbles me, and I know it humbles you. God's mercy and favour to us who are unable to pay him his dues is such that he is willing to save his people from moral destitution. Thus Paul amplifies what he means here in verse 11 by the phrase, the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. He amplifies the meaning of that phrase in chapter 3 verse 4 when he says, the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man has appeared. So he defines the grace of God as the love and kindness of God toward undeserving sinners. And that's why, precisely, salvation can be offered freely to all sinners, because it is without qualification. It is salvation by grace to anyone who will come in repentance and faith to Christ for it. It reaches out to Mary Magdalene, the prostitute, and also to Mary, the virgin. It reaches out to Zacchaeus, the cheat, and also to Zacharias, the priest. Whoever we are, however much we have sinned, God loves us, and he sent his Son to die for sinners like ourselves, so that whoever believes in Christ should not perish. but have everlasting life. The grace of God that brings salvation. With that understanding of the nature of God's grace, let's spend the rest of our time this evening on the nature of the salvation that God's grace brings. Well, as I said right at the very beginning of this talk, It is a salvation that teaches us, in the words of the NIV, to say no to ungodliness and to live soberly and righteously and godly in this present age. This may be very obvious to some of us, but clearly it is not understood by everyone in the church today. There are many, I'm afraid to say, even in evangelical churches who are still living unrighteous lives with no concern about it. And yet, we Protestants are the heirs of the reformation that morally transformed the lives of millions of people in Europe and in England, a movement that began on October the 31st, 1517, when Martin Luther, a Roman Catholic monk, nailed his 95 theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, where he was the preacher. In that document, Luther set forth 95 principles of religion that he wanted the leaders of his church, the Church of Rome, to debate. And it has come to be known as the 95 Theses. And it was a protest against the scandalous practice in the Church of Rome at that time of selling indulgences to those who could afford them. You see, the priests in Luther's day were giving members of the Church of Rome the idea that they could live a worldly and ungodly life just like those outside of the Church and still go to heaven when they die. For the Roman Catholic Church was teaching its members that you can buy forgiveness for any sin you have recently committed, if you are prepared to put money in the coffers of the church. So the little ditty rang, when the coin in the coffers rings, a soul from purgatory springs. It was an easy salvation for a certain sum of money called an indulgence. You could go on living any way you pleased. and still go to heaven. That is what Martin Luther was upset about. And in his Ninety-Five Theses he insisted, as the scriptures do, that if a man's life is not being morally changed day by day, he has not received the grace of God that brings salvation. So, the first of Luther's 95 theses declared, and I quote, when our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, repent, he willed that the whole life of believers should be one of repentance. In other words, to repent is not to give money to the church, but to give your whole life daily to the forsaking of sin. and the obeying of God's commandments. Luther was attacking, you see, a cheap view of salvation, and it is an error that still needs to be addressed, as I said, in evangelical churches today. Protestants may have corrected the error of indulgences, but many evangelical churches in America have made salvation easy in other ways. In these churches, the impression is given, wittingly or unwittingly, that all you have to do to be saved is to profess faith in the Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And so, once you have prayed the sinner's prayer, repeating it after a preacher may be in the front of a church, you will be eternally saved from hell, no matter how you live after that. It's otherwise known as easy believerism, because there is no call to daily repent of sin, to daily repudiate it and forsake it. Another way in which this error is propagated through the teaching of evangelical churches is to say that there are two kinds of Christians. There is a carnal Christian and there is a spiritual Christian. But to speak of carnal Christians is really a contradiction of terms, isn't it? Because it's like talking about an unconverted Christian, or a pagan Christian, or an unregenerated Christian. And to theologically justify this, people are being taught, sometimes even in reference Bibles, that you can receive Christ as your Saviour separately from receiving Him as your Lord, and have your sins forgiven. But that's sheer nonsense. No one can receive Christ as their Saviour and not submit to Him daily as their Lord in a life of obedience to His commandments. It's the same heresy, isn't it, that the Church of Rome taught, that you can believe in Christ without repenting of sin. That was what upset Luther. It is to put asunder what God has joined, for the Gospel is both a summons to believe in Christ and to repent of sins. Luke says to take up our cross daily and follow Him. And we do it not just at conversion. We exercise faith and repentance not just at our conversion. but every moment of every day after that. And our text, you know, desperately needs to be thundered forth from every pulpit in every confessing Christian church today, that the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and live a life of godliness or to live soberly, righteously and godly in the present age. And the Apostle Paul here is personifying the grace of God as a school teacher or a school master whose task it is to train us in the art of living a God-honouring and a God-pleasing life. And the first thing Paul says, the schoolmaster teaches us, is what we must not do, what we must say no to. And in that regard there are two things that we are to deny. The first is ungodliness. What is ungodliness? It is living our life without any thought of God or of His claims upon our lives. It's what I would call practical atheism. For a person can say they believe in God, and yet at the same time live their life as if God had no claims upon them. What scripture tells us, and what Paul tells us, is that if we are Christians, then we are to Honor God in everything we do. He says in 1 Corinthians 10 verse 31, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Yes, even things like how I earn my living, how I drive my car, how I run my home, how I rear my kids, how I treat other people, and so on. To be ungodly is to be what we are by nature. We are born, I say, practical atheists. It is natural for us to live as if God has no claim upon our lives. We are our own bosses. And so instead of living for God, we live for ourselves and we live for this world. Our lives are driven, says Paul here in verse 11, by worldly lusts or worldly desires. And that, therefore, is the other thing that we are to deny, we are to say no to. Now, let's be very careful here. In themselves there are many things in this world, in this present life, which are good and legitimate. Paul says in 1 Timothy 6, God gives richly all things to enjoy. So food and drink and clothes and possessions and pleasures, these are all God's good gifts. And they are to be desired by all His creatures and enjoyed. They are not in themselves sinful. But the Bible says that we are to live our lives for God supremely, not for things. We are to worship the Creator, not the creation. And if we focus our attention entirely on these things, then we are disobeying the first commandment of God. And we make idols of things that God never made to idolize. And our lives become preoccupied with worldly things and the benefits of this present life. And we never give eternity a thought. But God didn't make us to live like that, did he? He made us to be like him, to enjoy him, and to serve him. And so he sent his son Jesus to bring us salvation, to give us grace that is undeserved favour, to deny ungodliness and these worldly desires. So much for what we must not do. Positively, what must we do? Paul says that God's grace also teaches us positively to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present age. This trio of positive virtues covers the major areas of our moral life. To live soberly quite simply means to live a life in which we handle ourselves with restraint. We exercise some restraint on our behaviour and the things we do. The basic meaning of the word has to do with a person's mind. And a sober person is a serious-minded person, a sensible man and woman. They may not be intellectual, but they are men and women who know what is trivial to be put aside and what is eternal to be sought after. To live righteously, again, secondly, means to be loving and fair in all our dealings with other people, to treat them rightly as we would expect them to treat us. To live godly means to love God with our whole heart, and therefore our supreme concern is to do what God asks us to do, to obey His commandments, and to enjoy his fellowship. For Jesus said, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. If you are my friends, keep my commandments. Well, that is the salvation that the grace of God brings, and it is only possible because, as Paul says later on at the end of the chapter, verse 14, Christ gave himself for us that he might redeem us from every lawless deed. How did he give himself for us? He gave himself to die for us, to bear the penalty and the guilt of our sin on the cross. So the cross was absolutely necessary to deal with our sin. He gave himself up to deliver us from every lawless deed. And the hard fact that he who had no sin had to die for our sin tells us immediately that sin is not a light matter in the sight of God. The only true and living God is a holy God, a righteous God, and his hatred of sin is such that God has to send every unpardoned sinner to hell. So if sinners are to be pardoned, it can only be as the penalty and the guilt of their sin is paid. That penalty that was paid was nothing short of the substitutionary death of our Lord Jesus Christ upon the cross, the death of the infinite and sinless person of God's only Son. And I say the cross is the irrefutable proof of God's righteous wrath against sin and His determination to have no dealings with it. And therefore, we, you and I, must never fool ourselves into thinking that our sin doesn't matter. God wants us to be a total war with sin in our personal lives, to die daily to sin, to mortify sin, and to live for God. And His grace that brings us salvation through the cross of Christ demands nothing less than this, that we say no to ungodliness and worldly lusts, and yes to living a sober, righteous, and godly life. I quote Thomas Brooks, the great Puritan writer, who says, Saving grace makes a man as willing to leave his lusts as a slave is willing to leave his galley, or a prisoner his dungeon, or a beggar his rags. As I conclude, I want to assure anyone here tonight And not even your pastor knows the true condition of everybody's heart who comes into this building to worship. But I want to assure you that if you at this moment feel powerless to deal with sin in your life, to pull yourself out of the bondage and grip of sin, God's grace offers you a glorious salvation to deliver you. It's yours for the asking. The Bible says, whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. Well, you say to me, what does it mean to call upon the name of the Lord? It means to pray to him. And you ask, well, where am I to call on the name of the Lord? Well, you don't have to go to the front of a church building to do so, because Christ is at the right hand of God the Father in heaven. And He can hear you from heaven wherever you are. You can call upon Him silently right here where you are sitting and He will hear you and He will answer you. You can ask the Lord Jesus to forgive your sin and change your evil heart so that you can begin to live a sober, righteous and godly life. If He has done it for some of us who are here this evening, then He can do it for you also. We have not cleaned up our own lives, believe me. The grace of God that brings salvation has taught every lost Christian here how to say no to ungodliness and yes to holiness. To be honest, we still do sin. I sin. But we also hate our sin with a vengeance and a passion, whereas once we could not have enough of it. And we can see, as time passes, that there is a definite progress in living a sober, righteous and godly life. that we are growing in our ability to live a life that is pleasing to God. So I say, if you want the salvation that the grace of God brings, then you must understand from the Word of God this evening that it demands that you begin in God's power, by God's undeserved favor, to live for righteousness. Too many people, you know, are like the rich young ruler who wanted eternal life, but he didn't want it bad enough to give up his love for riches. The Bible says that Jesus looked at him and loved him. Jesus wanted to be gracious to him and give him eternal life, but the rich man went away sorrowful, refusing to give up, to turn his back on his love for riches. Love for riches was the supreme thing in his life, whereas Christ was calling him to make God and Christ the supreme passion of his life. He wanted to go to heaven, didn't he? But he also wanted to keep on living for the things of this world and not for God. And friends, there is no such salvation. There is no such Christian. You have to repent. and believe on Christ to be saved. You have to turn away from sin in order to turn to the Lord Jesus Christ in faith and receive him as your own personal Saviour. And I want to beg you tonight in the name of my blessed Saviour, who freely invites you to come, to come to Him while you can, while you have the opportunity, and more importantly, while you have the inclination. Call on the name of Christ and He will save you. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank You for the opportunity of studying Your Word as Christians and feeling the thrust of its challenge as presented to us by the Holy Spirit, who always uses the sword of Your Word as His weapon to deal with sin in our lives. And we thank You, Heavenly Father, that we have begun to taste of the grace of God that brings salvation and has appeared to teach us, men and women, how to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts and live a sober, righteous, and godly life. And Father, we pray that you will give us a hatred of sin too, a desire to be saved by your grace, change our evil hearts so that we indeed, more and more in our Christian lives, will learn from grace, from the undeserved favour that you have shown us, that humbles us so much, our need to constantly say no to ungodliness and yes to holiness. do this work, continue this work of salvation in the lives of your people here tonight. And Father, for that one who has been seeking you and has not found you yet, we pray that tonight will be the night that he or she will find you, and who will come not only in simple faith to Christ, but also in true repentance. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. The closing hymn that I have chosen is number 208. Love divine, all loves excelling, joy of heaven to earth come down. Fix in us thy humble dwelling, all thy faithful mercies crowned. Look at the second stanza. Breathe, O breath, thy loving spirit into every troubled breast. Let us all in thee inherit. Let us all find the promised rest. Take away our bent to sinning. Alpha and omega be. End of faith as its beginning. Set our hearts. at Liberty, a wonderful hymn by Charles Wesley, 208. Love divine, all loves excelling, joy of heaven to earth come down. Fix in us thy humble dwelling, all thy faithful mercies crown. Jesus, Thou art all compassion, pure unbounded love Thou art. Visit us with Thy salvation, enter every trembling heart. Breathe, O breathe Thy loving Spirit into every troubled breast. Let us all in Thee inherit, let us find the promised rest. Take away our bent to sinning, Alpha and Omega be, End of faith as its beginning, Set our hearts at liberty. Come, Almighty, to deliver, Let us all Thy grace receive. Suddenly return and never, nevermore thy temples leave. Thee we would be always blessing, safe thee as thy house above. Pray and praise Thee, let us receive Thy eternal grace. Pure and spotless let us be, let us see Thy great salvation. Perfectly restored in thee. Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! Sing hallelujah! And now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to God our Saviour, who alone is wise, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen.