Show Notes
Pastor Stephen Laurer
Titus 1:1-3
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Our Father, you tell us that the grass withers, the flower fades.
[00:00:10] And certainly we see that frequently here in the desert where things struggle to live.
[00:00:19] But your word stands forever.
[00:00:25] Jesus tells us that his words will not pass away, though heaven and earth pass away.
[00:00:34] And we trust that promise that the words of the Lord are pure words as gold refined by fire.
[00:00:44] No imperfection, no untruth.
[00:00:48] So we find in your word something sure and certain that we can place our hope in.
[00:00:58] And, oh God, we do.
[00:01:00] We place our hope in your Word, which promises us that if we would turn from our sins and trust in the Lord Jesus, your Son, whom you offer us, that you will forgive us and receive us, and that one day you will receive us into your presence forever, O Lord our God. This gives us great hope and joy. But we confess too, that there yet remains sin in us. And so long as there's sin, we have doubts.
[00:01:36] And we get discouraged as we fall into sin.
[00:01:40] And as we see things around us, like the apostle Peter, our eyes turn from Christ to the storm and to the waters that would seek to drown us.
[00:01:51] And our hearts grow weary and fall.
[00:01:55] O Lord our God, we ask that by your spirit and by your Word, you would lift us up once again, heal us, restore us, strengthen us, forgive us, grant us peace, and once again fill us with joy and hope in the Lord Jesus, our Savior, in whom we put our trust and in whose name we pray. Amen.
[00:02:18] Our sermon text this evening is from Titus, chapter one, Titus one. We're going to focus on verse two, but we'll read verses one through four.
[00:02:30] As a reader remind you that these aren't just Paul's words.
[00:02:34] Certainly not my words. They're inspired by the Holy Spirit, and so they are the word of God, and they are effectual for your salvation. So hear God speaking to you in his word.
[00:02:47] Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ. For the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness, in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began, and at the proper time manifested in his Word through the preaching with which I have been entrusted by the command of God our Savior, to Titus, my true child, in a common faith, grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.
[00:03:27] Amen.
[00:03:28] You may be seated.
[00:03:37] Well, when I was a kid in elementary school, we did not have pizza parties.
[00:03:42] But when my son was in pizza party, it was in elementary school.
[00:03:47] They went through just about, as far as I can remember, just about Every semester, they would have the promise at the beginning of the semester that. That if they made it through that semester, the beginning of the fall semester, if we made it all the way to the end, the teacher would throw them a party, usually a pizza party, some kind of a party to celebrate that they'd gotten through all of their work and they'd finished the semester.
[00:04:13] And those children, my son would come home talking about that, and it would fade, of course. But then over and again during the semester, the teacher would remind them, there's a party at the end of all this work.
[00:04:27] When we get to December, there'll be a party to celebrate the work that we did. And I don't know how well it worked for the children. I think it was supposed to serve as a kind of promise that if you work hard and we get through all of this, we'll have a celebration that you can enjoy. It was supposed to motivate them, give them a reason for continuing to do their work and pay attention and be good students. Because at the end of all of this, we're going to get to celebrate together. It was supposed to be a reason for persevering in their studies again. I don't know how well that works with little children. I don't know how far ahead, how long they can wait. Although we're getting to that point where we're going to test them again, right? They're going to start hoping for Christmas and those gifts. So in at least a month or two, there are other things in life that function in a similar way. Some kind of a promise of something in the future that motivates us and keeps us going. It gives us a reason to persevere in our work.
[00:05:33] Anyone who's ever worked a job knows that this is one of the main reasons that you work hard every day.
[00:05:43] You get up early, you get ready, you go, you work all day long, you work all week long. And you do it because you have a promise, a promise from your employer that he will give you a paycheck, right? You may have other reasons for working. You may enjoy your work. You may get great joy out of serving others. I hope that's true for you.
[00:06:04] But no one works without the promise of a paycheck as a ground. A reason for working, working hard, working long, and persevering all the way to payday.
[00:06:16] There's all sorts of ways in which.
[00:06:19] All sorts of things I'm sure you could think of families do this same thing. Dads and moms will gather the children together and Say we're going to have a family work day and we're going to work hard all day long, whether it's painting the house or cleaning. Usually it's things like cleaning, right?
[00:06:35] Cleaning the house to get ready for guests. And at the end of the day, when all the work's done, we'll have a family movie night or we'll have a family game night. We're going to enjoy and celebrate that we've gotten our work done by having fun together. So there's a promise, right, that keeps us working and persevering through whatever that project is.
[00:07:00] There's lots of ways in life that you can see this dynamic, that there's a promise that you hang your hat on, that you're grounded in, that keeps you going through whatever it is, because you know that at the end of it, you're going to get that reward. That promise will be fulfilled.
[00:07:18] Here in verse two of Titus, chapter one, Paul gives the promise that he, as an apostle and a preacher of the Gospel, the promise that is his ground, his reason for engaging in the hard work of the preaching ministry.
[00:07:39] And that promise is that God has made a promise of eternal life to sinners.
[00:07:45] And Paul is saying, because God's given me that promise, I can persevere in this work. He's giving us the ground or the reason for his ministry.
[00:07:58] We've looked so far, as we've been looking at Paul's introduction, his greeting here in the beginning of the letter of Titus. He's been looking. We said, it's kind of like his. He's showing us his business card. He tells us who he is, what he does and why he does it. In very brief form.
[00:08:16] We saw his aims for gospel ministry, what it is, what his goals are as he goes to preach, and in turn, those are to be the goals of pastors and preachers. Today we aim at the faith of God's elect. We may aim that God's elect would come to godliness through coming to the knowledge of the truth.
[00:08:35] And thirdly, that they would come to grow in the hope of eternal life, that Christians would live in this hope. Those are his goals or aims. Now he gives us his ground or reason. This is why I'm able to persevere day in and day out, continuing to preach the gospel through all sorts of hardships. No matter what comes. I carry on because God has given this promise of eternal life to sinners. You might say that he's saying it like this. My ministry hangs on this promise because God has made this promise I can persevere. I can carry on because of God's word. I'll labor on and on until he takes me home because of his purpose. Promise.
[00:09:23] In brief, that's what he's saying in verse two when he says that he's an apostle of Jesus Christ for the sake of the elect, in the hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before ages began.
[00:09:37] We could summarize what Paul is saying and begin to kind of apply it already.
[00:09:41] Summarize the teaching of this verse this way. That the Christian ministry is. Is grounded in God's promise of eternal life.
[00:09:50] The Christian ministry or pastoral ministry is grounded in God's promise of eternal life.
[00:09:58] What is that promise? Well, we've looked at what eternal life is.
[00:10:04] That this is the idea that one day we will get to be with God forever, that we'll be able to behold him face to face. And that that was what God originally made people for, to have communion with God. And that forever, without sin, without anything in the way, but be able to see God in all his glory and all that that means.
[00:10:28] But this is the promise of that eternal life that God had promised to grant eternal life to fallen sinners who believe in Jesus Christ. Very simple. That's the gospel that we repeat again and again that you find all over the New Testament and sometimes in different words, but also all over the Old Testament.
[00:10:49] As the apostles go around preaching in Acts, they say it over and over again, believe on the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.
[00:10:57] Or Jesus himself says it in the Gospels. He says, I'm the way and the truth and the life.
[00:11:04] He's talking about eternal life. He says, I'm the bread of life.
[00:11:07] Whoever believes in me has eternal life.
[00:11:13] The apostles say, believe in Jesus. Jesus says, believe in Me and I'll give you eternal life. That's the promise in a nutshell that Paul is referring to here. He says, my ministry is grounded on this promise of God to give eternal life to sinners through His Son Jesus.
[00:11:33] Now, he says we can say at least two more things here that Paul says about that promise.
[00:11:38] First, it's an ancient promise.
[00:11:41] It's a promise that God made before the ages began or before worlds began or before time began.
[00:11:53] God made a promise of eternal life.
[00:11:57] He's not just talking about the promise that we've quoted over and over again that comes through the preaching of the Gospel.
[00:12:04] But Paul points back before history, before time, and says, God gives that promise in history. And so we preach it.
[00:12:13] But that promise actually was made in eternity, before the world was even made.
[00:12:22] It's not just the one that we heard Jesus speak. You might say the apostles said, we heard Jesus made this promise. Paul's saying, we, we know that God made this promise not just in time, but in eternity before creation.
[00:12:38] Now that tells us something very specific about this promise of eternal life. This is the promise that God the Father made with His Son to save sinners in eternity.
[00:12:53] It's a promise that Jesus talks about a number of times in the Gospels, especially in the Gospel of John.
[00:13:00] The Father and the Son planned to save sinners before they ever made the world.
[00:13:06] God had a plan for history. It included that man would fall and that he would save mankind.
[00:13:13] And the way Jesus talks about it in the Gospel of John is he describes that the Father had sent him.
[00:13:21] But then when he talks about his relationship with the Father, he refers to things that he and the Father have discussed before the Father sent the Son.
[00:13:34] And we could summarize it this way, that the Father and the Son discussed this matter of the salvation of sinners. And the Father promised the Son that if the Son would go and die on the cross for sinners, the Father would forgive sinners for Jesus sake, the Son's sake, and he would give them eternal life.
[00:13:55] Now this is fascinating to think about, that the Father and the Son dialogued about this before we were even made.
[00:14:04] They had a plan and they promised together, made a commitment that the Father would give eternal life to those whom the Son went and died for.
[00:14:16] And when Jesus was praying in John 17, he reminds the Father of this promise.
[00:14:22] He says in John 17, 1, Father, the hour has come.
[00:14:26] I'm about to go to the cross like we agreed.
[00:14:30] Glorify your Son, that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh to give eternal life to all whom you have given Him.
[00:14:47] He says, you gave some sinners to me to save, and because I'm going to the cross to die, you have given me authority to give them eternal life.
[00:14:57] He's referring to the arrangement that the Father and the Son had before the Son came into the world to save sinners. This promise, this ancient promise from before time began.
[00:15:11] There are several places in the Bible that give us a glimpse into this conversation between the Father and the Son.
[00:15:18] Just think about this. God was contemplating you fallen sinners, and the Father and the Son were discussing, how will we save you from eternity. His mind was upon you before he even made you, how will I deliver sinners for myself?
[00:15:38] And he made a promise. Here's A glimpse of that conversation. Psalm 2, verse 8.
[00:15:45] The Father says to the Son, ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage, the ends of the earth, your possession.
[00:15:57] I will give you the nations if you will be their Messiah, their Savior. That's what he's saying.
[00:16:04] It's a glimpse into that eternal conversation within the Trinity.
[00:16:10] In eternity, the Father and the Son contemplated you fallen humanity and how the Trinity would come to deliver you and made a promise between the Father and the Son that they would come, that Christ would come, the Son would come and deliver you, and that the Father would give eternal life to all that Jesus died for.
[00:16:32] And so Paul says this. He. He's continually drawing salvation from time back into eternity, into the mind of God.
[00:16:42] He says this in 2nd Timothy 1, verse 9.
[00:16:45] God, who saved us according to his own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ before time began.
[00:16:58] God purposed to save you in His Son and made a promise of that before time began.
[00:17:05] That's an ancient promise, but thirdly, it's a truthful promise.
[00:17:14] It's a truthful promise.
[00:17:17] What does that mean?
[00:17:19] There's a double assurance. You might say here. If God says he's going to do something, you can know that it's going to happen, right?
[00:17:32] Because he's all powerful. Anything he purposes to do will happen.
[00:17:38] And he's truthful. So he only speaks what he's actually going to do.
[00:17:43] But there's a sense in which it's a double promise. It's not just that his words are true, they have to be true because of who he is.
[00:17:53] God's promise is backed by Himself.
[00:17:57] Now we make promises to each other. Sometimes we keep them.
[00:18:02] Companies make guarantees that their products won't fail, and sometimes they don't fail.
[00:18:11] But how do we know that people will keep their promises and that company's guarantees are the real deal?
[00:18:20] But we don't ultimately, because people are fallen and companies are made up of people and we have problems here, there and everywhere with keeping our word.
[00:18:30] But God stands behind his promise.
[00:18:34] And Paul wants us to be double certain that his promise is sure. And he says God, who cannot lie, promised before ages began.
[00:18:48] It isn't just that God made a promise in eternity, but the God who made that promise cannot lie.
[00:18:55] He must speak the truth.
[00:18:58] He only ever speaks the truth.
[00:19:01] Not just that the words are true, but they must be true.
[00:19:05] And what he promises he will do because he must be true to himself.
[00:19:11] So Hebrews says something very similar that we read by two immutable things in which it is impossible for God to lie. He. He cannot lie. And then it adds a different one, the second one being his oath.
[00:19:24] We might have a strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope before us.
[00:19:33] That's God's promise of eternal life, an ancient promise, a truthful promise, doubly assured promise. And it's the ground of Christian ministry. That's what Paul ties it to here, specifically in this verse.
[00:19:51] What do we do with this? That's all pretty wonderful, pretty amazing, I suppose, to think about, but when it comes to preaching the gospel, and not just for preachers, because the same principle here holds for any Christian who goes to share the gospel.
[00:20:06] It's true for when we're standing here in the pulpit. It's also true for when you share the gospel with people in your family, with your spouse or your children or your siblings who are also Christians and they've fallen into sin or they're struggling. You go to share the gospel with them.
[00:20:24] This promise is for what you're doing, too.
[00:20:30] It's a true promise, a sure promise.
[00:20:33] And it's of course, also true for when we share the gospel with those outside the church.
[00:20:40] What does it do for us?
[00:20:43] Well, it gives us great confidence when we share the gospel or when we stand up here and preach the gospel.
[00:20:51] Gospel preaching. And if you've ever tried to share the gospel with someone, especially someone who doesn't want to hear it or doesn't understand it, the work of gospel ministry is very difficult.
[00:21:02] It's hard work.
[00:21:06] Why?
[00:21:07] All sorts of reasons.
[00:21:10] It's kind of difficult work to share the gospel because what we're trying to do is take men who are spiritually dead and give them the medicine in hopes that it will bring them back to life. Bringing dead men back to life, that's not just hard, that's impossible.
[00:21:30] Sharing the gospel with a Christian who's struggling with sin, have you ever tried that?
[00:21:35] That's hard work too, because guess what? Our sinful hearts, they love the sin that we're engaged in.
[00:21:43] And not only do we love it, and so we don't want to hear someone telling us not to turn from that sin.
[00:21:50] We love that sin and we won't hear.
[00:21:54] We want to continue in it.
[00:21:57] To go to someone like that and say, here's what God's word says and he calls you to repentance, that's hard work.
[00:22:08] How about Paul's third ministry aim here?
[00:22:12] That he wants to see Christians grow in the hope of eternal life.
[00:22:20] Everyone in this room, me included, we go out there and we live in a world in which we cannot see heaven.
[00:22:27] What do we see? We see stuff. And we live in a society that wants us to love stuff and worldly things.
[00:22:33] And it's constantly enticing us with earthly lusts and desires, everything that's opposed to the hope of eternal life, to try to reach people whose hearts and minds are constantly being pulled to this world with the hope of something they can't see.
[00:22:51] That's impossible work.
[00:22:53] The work of gospel ministry is. Isn't just hard and difficult, it's impossible.
[00:23:01] It's like weeding.
[00:23:03] You weed and the weeds come back. The problem never goes away. You got. If you ever garden, you got to constipate weeding. I don't know how that works around here, but everywhere else, the weeds are always coming back. Sometimes they come back worse. You think. You think you've worked on some sin. You think it's getting better.
[00:23:19] Jesus says, dealing with that, it's like a man. You've cast the demon out, the demon comes back. He finds the house cleaned out, and he brings seven demons worse than himself. And the state of the man is worse than it was to begin with.
[00:23:32] Dealing with our sins is just. It's an impossible mess.
[00:23:38] And then you look inward or you look in the mirror as a preacher or as a Christian trying to share the gospel with others.
[00:23:45] And what do you find?
[00:23:47] Your own weaknesses.
[00:23:50] We're not good at speaking. We speak too long. We explain things in the wrong way. You could probably give me lots of feedback on my sermons of all the weaknesses in them. Right?
[00:24:01] But that's the easy part.
[00:24:03] The hard part is our own sin.
[00:24:05] How can we share the gospel with others when we're great sinners?
[00:24:12] The work of preaching the gospel or sharing it with others is impossible in ourselves.
[00:24:18] And here Paul comes along and says, but none of it depends upon you or me. It doesn't even depend upon the person that you're trying to minister the gospel to.
[00:24:33] The whole thing hangs on God's promise.
[00:24:39] You can go preach the gospel. You can share it with one another and with your neighbors. Why? Because God says, I am giving eternal life to sinners.
[00:24:49] I have my people whom I've chosen from eternity, and the Son is going to save them, and I'm going to give them eternal life.
[00:24:59] That's where our hope lies. That's the ground of gospel ministry.
[00:25:05] God promises to use the words of the gospel that we share with others and with one another. He promises to use that to bring sinners to eternal life.
[00:25:16] It doesn't depend on us, it depends on him and His Word.
[00:25:22] God has not, will not, cannot change. And so his promise cannot, will not change.
[00:25:31] If I continue to preach the gospel, God will keep his promise and grant eternal life to his people.
[00:25:41] There's a second application. Not only does it give us confidence and an assurance that this work will succeed because of God's promise, it also shows us the sufficiency of the gospel.
[00:25:56] If it hangs on God's promise, then the message of the gospel, the promise of eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ, that promise is enough.
[00:26:07] It's good, it's sure, and we don't need anything else.
[00:26:14] In the midst of all of this difficulty that we've been talking about in terms of sharing the gospel, in terms of proclaiming God's word to the lost, there's a lot of temptation to say, I need to reach for something else. If I find something else, then people will come and join the church. If I find something else, if I adjust something here or there, maybe this project will succeed, maybe my ministry will be successful.
[00:26:47] There's a temptation to mess with the method, the preaching of the gospel, or to tamper with the message itself.
[00:26:57] Maybe if I have clever enough words, if I learn good rhetorical style, if I'm a fancy speaker, you might say I can woo people over and draw them in.
[00:27:10] Who doesn't want this? Everyone wants a better preacher, right?
[00:27:16] But there's other things it's tempting to turn to, what we might call in our day, business and marketing strategies.
[00:27:23] I've read multiple church planting books, books on how to grow the church written by evangelical pastors, and they read like poorly written marketing and sales and management books.
[00:27:42] They're just taking principles that they teach in business schools and putting gospel coding on it and putting it in the church.
[00:27:50] If we have the right ads, if we have the right marketing strategy, if we have the right sales process, the right processes for integrating people into the church community, then people will come and they will stay and things will grow.
[00:28:04] I kid you not.
[00:28:07] Or maybe it's tampering with the message itself. Maybe we need to turn to something that soothes the people, that's therapeutic, that reaches their emotions, and so they feel better under the preaching of the gospel. And so they'll come back and the church will grow.
[00:28:27] But if you go back to our text, Paul says that the Christian ministry depends upon God's promise of eternal life.
[00:28:40] None of these things will bring people to eternal life in Jesus Christ.
[00:28:45] Only the preaching of God's promises will they won't do it.
[00:28:51] Only God's word will. His promise will.
[00:28:54] It's enough. Everything else will disappoint.
[00:28:58] Paul talks in First Corinthians, chapter three about the Gospel ministry, like building a building. And he says some people are building with gold and precious stones.
[00:29:11] In other words, that as they're preaching the gospel, sinners are being converted and brought to Christ. And they're like stones of which the temple of God is being built, but others are building, he says, with wood, hay and straw. In other words, the people that they're bringing in the, into the church through their ministry are not being brought to saving faith in Jesus Christ.
[00:29:35] And so they're like wood, hay and straw. And Paul says that on the judgment day, that man, that pastor's work is going to be judged. It will be tested by fire, in other words, the fires of judgment.
[00:29:47] And have men been brought to saving faith in Christ and become like stones and, and jewels that adorn the temple of God? Or are they like wood, hay and straw that will be burnt up in the fires of judgment because these people aren't drawn to hope and eternal life in Jesus Christ? That's what Paul's talking about there.
[00:30:06] All these other methods build with wood, hay and straw.
[00:30:11] But the promise of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ.
[00:30:17] That will never disappoint.
[00:30:22] One final application.
[00:30:25] This promise isn't just for the one preaching and sharing the gospel in terms of his ministry.
[00:30:31] This promise of God is for you, dear Christian.
[00:30:37] All of the things that are a problem and trouble for engaging in Christian ministry are a problem for the individual Christian. The things that lead others astray lead us astray. The things that weigh others down in their sin, weigh us down in our sin. All of those problems bear down on our hearts, don't they?
[00:31:02] When everything seems hopeless for you, for your loved ones, for your gospel witness, come back to this God's promise for you.
[00:31:15] A promise from all eternity.
[00:31:19] Come back to this and contemplate. Think about God in eternity, in his mind, contemplating you in the mind of God. He thought about you. Not just his mind, but his heart was moved as he considered you fallen, miserable, rotten sinners.
[00:31:44] His heart was moved in eternity as he contemplated you in your misery. And what moved him was his love for you.
[00:31:54] And the Father said, go. And the Son said, I will go. And I will lay down my life for those sheep.
[00:32:02] And the promise that he made in eternity, he kept in time, space and history, hanging on a wooden cross hour after hour. His heart and mind, not just in eternity, but in time and space was on you.
[00:32:21] Your name was on his heart, written on his breastplate. Your hand. Your name was graven on his head. Hands.
[00:32:30] God, eternal, infinite, great, beyond all.
[00:32:36] He considered you and loved you and made a promise to save you.
[00:32:42] That's more than sufficient for you. Let's pray.
[00:32:46] Oh, Lord, our God, how we need you.
[00:32:50] We need you for this great mission that you have sent us on to reach the lost with the hope of eternal life in Christ Jesus.
[00:33:00] And we need you much more for ourselves.
[00:33:05] O Lord God, we ask that you would reach into our hearts this very day and by your spirit, that you would draw us closer to the Lord Jesus Christ.
[00:33:18] We are united to Him. Draw us ever tighter in his embrace.
[00:33:24] Help us to feel his hands on our hearts. Feel his love, his heart warm and beating for us.
[00:33:35] And draw us in love and compassion and mercy, not only to him, but to the lost.
[00:33:42] That we would be willing, no matter the opposition, no matter the difficulty in ourselves or before us, that we would be willing in all things to point sinners to Jesus the Savior and to the hope of eternal life in Him. And it's in his name that we pray. Amen.
