The Book of Titus - Part 1

When you think of the word hope, what comes to your mind? Sometimes we hear people saying, I hope I win the lottery. Others say, I hope I pass my exam. For others, they say, my hope is in the Lord. The one who says, I hope I win the lottery, is banking on hope being something like good luck, chance. The student who says, I hope I pass my exam, really doesn't have the confidence in his own personal study method, so he's banking on, I hope the teacher is kind. It's a wild guess. But the person who says, my hope is in the Lord, is saying that hope, that trust, that confidence is based on the faithfulness of God. I have hope because of who God is and his character. Paul the Apostle, writing a small letter, almost like a postcard to Titus, is telling us about the hope that we have in God. Paul starts his letter in verse 1 of chapter 1 of Titus, saying Paul, a servant of God, an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the faith of God's elect and the knowledge of truth that leads to godliness. Paul identifies himself as a servant of God. This kind of attitude, being a servant of God, is not a positional idea, but rather it is a humble idea. Paul, being extremely educated, to the point where today it would be equal to several PhDs, amazing ability and logic and reason, where he could stand with the king and reason, or he could be with the beggar and reason. Paul takes the title of servant, rather than some high position, because in the Old Testament a bond servant is one who was a slave that was set free, but chose to remain with the master because of love. Not money, not position, nothing else except love. And so Paul identifies himself as a servant of God, based on love. It's a great challenge for us who are in the ministry or who have a desire to serve the Lord. Very often we see wrong examples of ministers or servants of God on television, where it's the show and the flash and the excitement and the position and power and the fame that people are attracted to, and yet they do not see the Lord in the midst of all that. You look at Jesus' life, everything He did, the miracles, the teaching, whatever He did, you see that people went away glorifying and praising God the Father. There was something very unique in the way Jesus conducted Himself and served His Father that pointed all the attention to Him. Paul, later on in 1 Corinthians 11, would say follow me as I follow Christ. Don't look at me, but look at me as I follow Christ as the example. It's a challenge for all of us not to get caught up in the flashy, showy, all kinds of fantastic fame and fortune that we see very often on television with these preachers and teachers of God's Word who use God's Word as a means to gain fame for themself. And my brother, my sister, if we are called to be a servant of God, which literally means slave of God, or minister which means slave also, then humility is the road that we take. Not the road of money, position, fame, or influence, but the road of humility. And Paul being great shows this title on purpose because his road that he chose was a road of humility. And also he chooses Apostle of Jesus Christ which we know on the Damascus Road, Christ met him there and from that point on his life was completely changed and now he becomes the great messenger of Jesus Christ, the Apostle proclaiming Jesus as Lord. But the message that he proclaims is that the faith that we have is based on the knowledge of truth that leads to godliness. As we grow in our understanding of the Lord and what the Word of God teaches us, it is not an intellectual understanding, but it is the truth that changes us. Jesus warning his disciples to watch out for the Pharisees and the religious leaders and he said to them they change God's Word to fit their lifestyle. They do not change their lifestyle in obedience to fit God's Word. Truth is truth. It's absolute. If you have ever listened to any messages from Ravi Zacharias, one of the great Christian apologists of our time, you go back in the day and you find C.S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, Ravi Zacharias, these men and their names are those who defend the faith and who have the heart and passion for the Lord. One of the things that Ravi Zacharias was saying is that one of the greatest challenges today is that truth has become relative. It means it's not an absolute anymore. It's a wrong statement and a wrong belief, but it's a convenient idea that no one can claim to have a truth statement. That no one can claim that this is absolute. What they fail to see is in saying there is no absolutes, you have made an absolute statement. There is no absolutes is an absolute statement. There is no way to get around it. There are absolutes. Two plus two does equal four. In science, mathematics, and engineering, there are absolutes. When Paul says, the truth that leads to godliness, Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. Paul, Pilate, asked Jesus, what is the truth? Good question. The answer, the truth was standing right in front of him, Jesus Christ himself. The truth of what God's Word tells us that we are sinners and we need a Savior and that God loved us and therefore he sent Jesus to redeem us and to pay the penalty of our sin so that we could have a right relationship back with God once again that was lost in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve sinned, disobeyed God, broke the relationship by taking and eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And so here, the truth of God that leads to godliness. My brother, my sister, every time we read God's Word and we discover the truths of God in his Word and we are obedient to that and we change our life according to what the Bible says, we find that it leads to godliness. Why? Because it leads you to loving God more, reverencing God more, respecting him more, and you find that it leads us to godliness. But here you see in verse 2, it says, a faith and knowledge resting on the hope of eternal life which God who does not lie promised before the beginning of time and at his appointed season he brought his word to light through the preaching entrusted to me by the command of God our Savior. And so here, Paul begins to tell us that there's hope that we have in Jesus Christ being our Savior who went to the cross, spilled his blood, his body was beaten and pummeled, he died and on the third day he rose again. This hope in God that we have through Jesus Christ was promised before the beginning of time. You remember I said some people say, I hope I win the lottery. Good luck. Chance. We'll throw it to the wind. A student will say, I hope I pass my exam. They really don't have any confidence. They're banking on the goodwill of the teacher rather than their own study. There is no real hope in that. But someone who says my hope is in the Lord, there is a confidence in that statement. There's no good luck in the statement or I hope by chance something will happen. It is a confidence statement to say my hope is in the Lord. And when Paul the Apostle tells us and he's writing to Titus and reminding Titus of the faith that we have in Jesus Christ, that this hope of God in eternal life was promised, who God cannot lie, he promised it before the beginning of time. What does that mean? When God created the world, he created everything so wonderful. He created the stars and the moon and the planets and the solar systems and the Milky Way. He created the earth, the plants, the animals, the air, the atmosphere. He created the waters and the fish. And then on the sixth day, he created man. It was different. Everything else he spoke into existence. But for man, he formed man from the dust of the earth and breathed life into him. Very unique, different, a different kind of life because we are not simply body and soul, our mind and capacity to think and reason, but we have an eternal part, our spirit. When we die, our body is gone and our spirit continues. That's what we read in God's Word. Adam and Eve, the first man and first woman, created our parents to say, God told them in this beautiful garden of Eden, you can eat from any tree, eat everything, enjoy life. Nothing is off limits for you. Only one thing, there's a tree in the middle of the garden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life. You cannot eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. On the day you eat of that tree, you will die. Now why, if God is so loving, would God put this dangerous thing in the middle of the garden, not even on the edge of the garden, but in the middle of the garden? And then he says you can eat of all the trees in the garden except this one tree. Why would he do that? God created this entire universe and put man on earth in this beautiful garden and he did this for relationship. God wanted to have fellowship and relationship with Adam and Eve, not the animals, not the insects and birds and reptiles and plants, but with the human race. Relationship based on love needs an element of being able to say no to that relationship. If I came to your house and I threatened you with a knife and said you will be my friend and you have no choice but to be my friend, you will say yes I will be your friend, but it is not a loving response from your side, it is by force I am making you. Now in some funny movies you will find that there are some people who will pay someone else to be their friend for a day or a week so that they can be popular. That also is not a genuine relationship, that is a relationship that was bought with money and that's not even a relationship, it's an agreement, a contract. And so God needing to have an element where Adam and Eve could choose to not have that relationship, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The tree itself was not evil or bad or sinful, but the act of disobedience to God would bring sin into their life. And so Adam and Eve, we see they were there for some time and Eve was tempted by Satan to take the fruit and eat of it and she did and also gave it to her husband. They both ate from that fruit and their eyes were opened. Not open to all the wisdom that Satan had promised, but all of a sudden open to the shame of their own sin and guilt filled their life. It says that God came walking in the cool of the evening calling Adam, Adam where are you? God was not calling Adam because God did not know where he was, but it was a rhetorical question, it was a question asked to help Adam to think, why are you hiding now? If we have this wonderful relationship, why are you so ashamed? And God said, Adam did you eat the fruit that I told you not to eat? He said, yes, but it was my wife who gave it to me. And he said, Eve did you eat of this fruit? And she said, yes, but it was this serpent, Satan caused me to do this. Blame shifting from the very beginning. Husband blaming the wife, wife blaming Satan. This is still continuing today. None of us want to take responsibility for our own actions, especially for our own sins. Have you ever noticed when you ask a child, why did you do that? It wasn't my fault, it was my sister's fault, or it was the dog, or it was you know some other person's problem. We never want to take responsibility for our own sin. And until we recognize that, that we need to take responsibility, we will never come to God to ask forgiveness if we keep avoiding the responsibility that yes, I have done this. And so Adam and Eve, they sinned and now what God said would come true. He said on the day that you eat of that fruit, you will die. And what God meant is spiritually on the inside, there will be a breaking of the relationship and you will die. Eventually physically you will die also, but now there is a death in the spirit and something has to come and cause it to be recharged and restarted and reborn is what you see Jesus talking to Nicodemus in John's Gospel chapter 3. God, before sending Adam and Eve out of the garden because he loved them, now in their sinful decaying body, if they were to go back into the garden and eat of the other tree, the tree of life, they would live forever in a sinful decaying body and it would be misery. And so because God loved them, he sent them out of the garden, but not until he gave the first prophecy of hope of his son Jesus Christ coming to the earth. He said the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. The first prophecy of the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, the Savior that would come later to redeem man back to the Father through him going to the cross, taking all the sins upon himself, giving us a righteous hope, a hope that is definite, not a hope I win the lottery, I hope my teacher gives me a good grade, no, a hope and confidence in Christ Jesus. And Paul says that this hope in Christ was promised before time even began. You know what that simply means? God knew that Adam and Eve would eventually sin. He let them choose, even though he knew what the outcome would be, instead of destroying the world and starting over again, his love being demonstrated that before creating the world, he said, I will plan to send Jesus. They had the free choice and free will to break the relationship. Jesus will come and die on the cross and provide again the free will choice. They can accept the free forgiveness of sin and gift of God into life or they can reject it. He is giving us this hope of eternal life through Jesus Christ which was promised before time even began. God is amazing in his ability to love us and go to the extent and Jesus Christ himself chose to obey the Father and in his own will he said, I will do this. The Bible tells us that Jesus endured the cross for the joy that was set before him. Why would Jesus allow himself to be beaten and pummeled and hurt so terribly then crucified and then faced death? Because while he hung on the cross, he was thinking about you and I. For the joy that was set before him when he saw so many people being brought into a right relationship with the Father, once again it gave him so much joy. In a small imperfect example, like a lady giving birth to her children, the pain of giving birth is forgotten when she sees the beautiful little baby. And Jesus endured that cross and God planned for this to happen before creating the world so that you and I could experience God's grace in a huge significant way. Jesus talking to Nicodemus. Nicodemus, one of the religious leaders at that time, came to Jesus by night secretly and said, how do I inherit eternal life? And Jesus said, Nicodemus, you must be born again. Nicodemus said, how can I be an old man go back in my mother's womb and be born again? It doesn't work. And Jesus said, you being a teacher, a religious teacher of Israel, how do you not know these things? He said, I'm not talking about a physical being born again, but by the Spirit. Remember, Adam and Eve, the Spirit died. Something broke in them because of their sin. And so Jesus would go to the cross and when we accept the free gift of God, of forgiveness of sin through Jesus Christ, our spirit is born again. It's restarted, recharged, and we have a new birth and a new right relationship with God the Father once again. And Paul tells us, and he tells Titus, reminding him this message of the good news of Jesus Christ that we preach is not based on some empty hope, but a solid hope. A hope that we have confidence and we know that God loves us and God has done this. And Paul says, not only am I a servant and a slave of God, and I serve God not for money, not for position, but I am an apostle, a messenger of Jesus Christ. And this message I give is this, there is hope in Jesus Christ and his hope was planned before the beginning of the world being made. And God loves us so much and we too can have this hope. And as we live in this hope, taking God's word, putting it into our life, in obedience to him and love to him, it brings about the righteous life. My brother, my sister, this is exciting news for all of us. Maybe you have never made Jesus Christ your Lord and Savior. Maybe you've never experienced the forgiveness of sin and the peace of God that fills your heart because of the forgiveness of sin. Maybe your whole life you've been searching for the answer for the guilt that you hold inside and you carry with you and you tried everything and there is no answer or peace. Jesus said, I give you peace, not as the world gives, but a lasting peace. The Bible tells us that if we call upon the name of the Lord and ask him to forgive our sins and repent of our old ways, then we have a new life and a new beginning. Maybe we are already following Christ and we have experienced this new life in Jesus. My brother, my sister, every single day you can wake up in the morning and have the confidence, my hope is in Jesus Christ and I can live this life for his glory and I can tell others about the hope that I have. Let's pray and ask God to help us. Rejoice in these things. Father, we thank you for your grace and your mercy. We thank you for this hope that we have through Jesus Christ and the confidence that we know by him going to the cross and our sins being forgiven that we can have life and life more abundantly. I pray for each of my brothers and sisters. Bless them. Watch over them. In Jesus' name, amen. My brother, my sister, if you have never experienced the love of God that comes through the hope in God through what Jesus Christ did on the cross of Calvary for you, please write to us. Call us and we'll explain more how you too can have this hope in Jesus Christ, seeing your life transformed and giving you a purpose, a genuine purpose in life. Remember this, the Bible has the answers for life and God's promises always comes true. May the Lord bless you as you experience this hope that comes through Jesus Christ our Lord.