I have read from George Barna's now infamous book, Marketing the Church, a number of times over my ministry. It's a 1988 book. This particular quotation is stunning. I read it again. It is critical that we keep in mind a fundamental principle of Christian communication. The audience, not the message, is sovereign. If our advertising is going to stop people in the midst of hectic schedules and cause them to think about what we're saying, our message, has to be adapted to the needs of the audience. When we produce advertising that is based on the take it or leave it proposition, rather than on a sensitivity and response to people's needs, people will inevitably reject our message. I put this quote by A. W. Tozer in 1946 alongside Orna's statement. Quote, we must not imagine ourselves commissioned to make Christ acceptable to big business, the press, the world of sports, or modern education. We are not diplomats, but prophets. And our message is not a compromise, but an ultimatum. With this statement by Paul Rees alongside Tozer's. The gospel is neither a discussion or a debate. It's an announcement. When we talk about the gospel of God, we are talking about that piece of good news that comes from God Almighty. It's inviolable. It's unchanging. It is inalterable. It does not, cannot morph with the ages or the audience. It is constant. It is always the same from generation to generation to generation. Paul correctly identifies it is the gospel of God that is the power of God unto salvation. There is only one way to Christ. That is, I mean, there's only one way to salvation, and that is through Christ. It is through the announcement a take-it-or-leave-it proposition that people are saved, rescued, spared, delivered from themselves and their justly deserved condemnation. Many people have misunderstood the gospel and confused it with lots of things over the years. People will say, well, I just want to live the gospel. It's like reading a news headline on Fox News and saying, I want to live that message. Well, that doesn't make any sense. Your life can be in keeping with a particular message. live a message, you listen to the message, you respond to the message, but you don't live it. The gospel is something that must be spoken. It's an announcement. It's news. There are others who want to add to the gospel. Oftentimes they want to add some kind of religious requirement, avoid the nasty nine, the dirty dozen, the filthy four, whatever, and you'll be okay. Now, we're not here to add anything to what God has declared. The gospel can be boiled down simply into four simple words. Jesus died for sinners. This morning in our study through the book of Titus, we're going to look at not four words, but we're going to look at the amplification of those four words into four sentences. We'll only be able to look at one verse, not four sentences, four verses, I'm sorry. We're only going to get through one verse this morning. I invite you to turn with me to Titus chapter two. In this epistle, we've looked at this a number of times, probably every week, that when Paul left Titus on the island of Crete, he gave him a responsibility. This is your charge, this is your duty, this is what I want you to be about, Titus. Paul writes to him. He says, for this reason I left you in Crete, verse five of chapter one, that you would set in order what remains. So I have titled this series, God's Church Rightly Ordered. God has a plan. He wants things to fit in a particular way. So in chapter one, he talks about elders that are to lead the church. They are to be scripturally sound, they are to be biblically qualified, they are to be spiritually mature men. Chapter two, he turns from the leadership to the people, and he addresses everyone. He addresses those who are older in the faith, older men, older women, and those who are young in the faith, young men, young women. And as if he didn't catch everybody there, he turns in verse 9 to talk about slaves, bondservants, and their masters. He's covering everybody in the church. There are certain things that must be true of God's people. The process of discipleship might be defined as thinking and then acting like Christ. Paul says to Titus in chapter 2 verse 1, speak the things which are fitting for sound doctrine. That's where we start. Right thinking leads to right living. Then in verse 11 of chapter 2, he talks about what's at the very heart, the very core, the very center of Christianity, namely God's gospel. And it's right here in the center of this epistle. Verses 11 through 14, you'll notice, well, depending on your translation, you may not notice it, but it's one sentence. In the original language, it's all one sentence. It's convoluted, it's big, it's deep, it's got lots of tentacles, lots of tributaries for us to chase down. This is an expression of God's gospel. I titled this message, and what will come after it as a gospel primer. A primer is something, the word primer comes from where we get our, the Latin word, where we get our English word, primary. When you think of primary education, you're thinking of those early years in school where students are learning how to shape their letters and then how those letters formed into words, and how words are formed into sentences, and in those primary years, you are learning how to read. Here, we are looking at the very basics of what God's gospel contains. a gospel. For most of you, this will be review. For those of you new in the faith, this may be tremendously eye-opening, and I hope that it is. Let's read verses 11 through the end of the chapter. For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men. instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, who gave himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed and to purify for himself a people for his own possession, zealous for good deeds. These things speak and exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no one disregard you. Titus, don't let anyone discount you and the message that you bring, for this is God's message. This is God's news. This is God's gospel. We're only going to look at the first verse this morning. And I'd like to break this down, break verse 11 down into four parts. We'll talk about the motivation in the gospel, the revelation of the gospel, the function of the gospel, and the beneficiaries of the gospel. Next week, we'll talk about the results of the gospel. Verse 11 starts off with a conjunctive in most English translations. New American Standard translates it, for the grace of God has appeared. Now we don't want to run right over that and get into the heart of the verse too quickly. A conjunctive is there to connect. the word and or the word but are other conjunctives in the English language. This one is giving us an explanation of why. Thinking back to the first 10 verses in chapter 2, he said, right thinking is to be followed by right living, and all of this is to reflect sound living, spiritual maturity. We're to see that in older men, we're to see that in older women, we're to see that in young men and young women, we're to see it in even slaves. All kinds of people that are part of God's fellowship must be those who are pursuing maturity in Christ. Why is that important? Paul's answering that question beginning at verse 11. Four, because the grace of God has appeared. We talk very frequently about grace. We might define it as unmerited favor, undeserved kindness. Grace defines who God is. Psalm 103. The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in love and kindness. Grace defines who He is. It was after a miraculous redirection and after a miraculous turning of an entire city from sin, We're talking about the most powerful city on the planet at the time. It was after a miraculous redirection, a turning around of this man's life and soul, and it was after a dramatic and miraculous turning around of an entire city that Jonah said this. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in love and kindness." Grace, what is unmerited in love and in kindness, characterizes God. Grace also defines how God works among men. Bible teachers will talk about the common grace of God. To speak in these terms is to say that God sends rain and He sends sunshine and He provides fertile earth for the just and the unjust alike. This is His common grace to mankind, fallen mankind. Did they deserve this? No. It was something God graciously, nevolently, kindly extended to the undeserving. And then we could talk about the special grace of God. Common grace is to everybody, without exception. Special grace is given to those without distinction, but it's not given to all. To some, God opens their eyes, their understanding. He removes the veil from their heart so they can see and perceive, comprehend, understand, embrace God's gospel. God's gospel is not a popular thing for the average person to embrace. Because God's gospel first begins not with God's Gospel is not all good news. It also describes who we are as sinners. We are in need of a Savior. We are lost. We are desperately wicked to the core of our being. We want, with all of what we have, to pursue our desires. God's Gospel says, I will free you from that pursuit. chase after me first, or chase after me instead. Not first, instead. Genesis chapter 6 verse 8 tells us that Noah found favor with God. He found grace with God. God extended that kind of special grace to Noah that the masses that died in that worldwide mountain-covering flood, God did not provide His grace to all but some. I found this distinction helpful from Warren Wiersbe. He said that grace, God's grace, can bring a substitute. God's grace can also bring a transformation. Let me explain. I find this helpful. He said there are some instances where God in His graciousness will replace our sickness with health, our poverty with riches, our weakness with strength. He will come in and He will make a substitution. Think of the man born blind in John chapter 9. The disciples asked, wondering if he was born blind because of something he did, maybe because of something the parents did, and Jesus said, no, has nothing to do with this man or his parents. This was to showcase God's grace and God's glory. And there was a miraculous substitution. Jesus took his blindness and replaced it with sight. God's grace can bring a substitute. God's grace can also bring a transformation. When we only focus on the substitution, We can find ourselves in the health and wealth prosperity mess, asking, expecting that God's going to take my sickness, my weakness, my poverty, and replace it with something else. That's not what usually God does. Does he do that? Absolutely. But not always. God usually is in the business of transforming us. Meaning that whatever the affliction is, he doesn't remove the affliction. The affliction stays there. He simply transforms our heart. He enables us. He gives us strength to endure. 2 Corinthians chapter 12, Paul talks about his thorn in the flesh. And he reports something that the Lord said to him. Chapter 12, verse 9, My grace is sufficient for you, the Lord said to Paul, for power is perfected in weakness. God did not remove Paul's thorn in the flesh. It stayed there. God transformed him, that is Paul, by his grace so that he was able to endure. He had strength, power. perseverance through that affliction. That is God's grace. Back in our text, Paul writes to Titus 4. Because God desires us to grow in spiritual maturity, we see The grace of God, which we need in every circumstance in our life, we see the grace of God appearing. Indeed, it has appeared. And here he's talking about the Christ. He's talking about the advent of Christ when the grace of God embodied in Christ He's revealed, made manifest, displayed. Appears. Now, when we think of something that appears, we can think of the advent of Christ, when He was born on that Christmas event. A bystander might have have used the word, well, it just happened. We say that of the birth of babies. Well, the baby came on this particular date before that child was not born, but on that date is when the child was born. It just, it happened right there that day, and the child appeared outside of the womb. When we talk about this appearing, it's not limited to the birth of Christ, because God's purpose in Christ's first advent to redeem mankind took place in eternity past, before there was time, before there was any creation. God purposed in His mind those he would redeem and how he would redeem them by the coming of the Christ. All of our thoughts have a genesis, they have a beginning. You know, I never thought about that until right now. Well, our thoughts have a beginning. God's thoughts regarding redemption, salvation, disappearing, They have always been with Him. There was never a time where God did not plan this. This whole idea of salvation, of redemption, reconciliation, has always been in the mind of God. Those whose names He wrote down in the Lamb's Book of Life, those names have always been in the mind of God. Eternally so. So this whole idea of appearing had a genesis in eternity. That's silly, I can't even use the word genesis because it never had a beginning. God has always had this in mind. But there was a particular date and time that we could point to where we now know there's a need for that plan. And that point in time was in the garden when Adam and Eve went their own way. They rebelled against God. And it was at that point God, the entire world, not God, the entire world saw there was the need for a Redeemer. Progressively, by God's acts and by God's prophets, we became more and more aware, more and more familiar, more and more of an understanding of what God was going to do and how God was going to do it. And then there was that moment when the appearing was manifest. revealed, seen, discovered. You could put your finger on the calendar date and say, this is when the one that God planned for came. In the incarnation, we have the Christ, coming into the world as God in a human body, and it had to be that way. He had to be fully God because there is no other being that is perfect and morally flawless. And any other being, well, there are elect angels that are not fallen. I'm talking about human beings. There is not a one that is not stained with sin. So those ones among humanity that would be welcomed into God's presence had to be holy. There's no other being that could do this job of redemption other than God himself. And the person had to be fully human in order to be an acceptable sacrifice. I'm on the second page of your notes if you haven't figured that out yet. I wrote it down in my notes this way. He had to be perfectly holy to potentially be our substitute. And he had to be perfectly human to actually be our substitute. The two are tied together in what we call the virgin birth. Where the Christ child was born from a woman's womb so that he was fully human, yet he was spared from being conceived by the seed of a man. thereby protecting him from sin nature. He had to be perfectly holy to potentially be our substitute. He had to be perfectly human to actually be our substitute, and it was all wrapped up in the virgin birth. I've had discussions, hmm, arguments with other people in the past over whether you have to affirm the virgin birth in order to be an Orthodox Bible-believing Christian. The reason why that question comes up is because it is from our scientific world. Out of possibility, out of probability, it is beyond, it couldn't happen. That kind of mentality is why we even ask the question, do you have to believe in the virgin birth? Well, as was read from Isaiah 7 earlier this morning, it is a part of the testimony of Scripture. So to reject the virgin birth is to reject at least that portion of Scripture. If the Holy Spirit has indeed overseen the inscripturation of the text before us, to reject a portion of the Scripture would be to reject the authority, the lordship of Christ. It would also be to reject what the virgin birth teaches. This doctrine teaches that we have to have perfectly holy being. potentially be our substitute, and we have to have a perfectly human being to actually be our substitute. This is God's gospel. Christ, by grace, appeared. Now lest we think that Christmas event is the most important in the life of Christ, it's a necessary, if we have to put them on a, if we have to rank them as terms of what's most important, Christmas is a wonderful thing, but it's not the most important thing. It was necessary in order to bring about the most important thing. And the most important thing is not the resurrection. The most important thing in the life of the Christian is the death of Christ. It is by the death of Christ that death was killed. It was by the death of Christ that God's gospel was solidified. That's when this announcement was printed, published, made known. I made this statement in your notes. Let me explain what I meant. The apex of the appearing is the nadir. The word apex means the highest point. The nadir refers to the lowest point. So the highest point, the most important thing, the most significant thing in Christianity is the lowest point with regard to Christ. That which is most important, most significant, is His death. The apex is the nadir. If I can go back to using an illustration from syntax, the death of Christ is the verb in the sentence. The resurrection of Christ is the exclamation point at the end of the sentence. The resurrection is saying, yep, what Christ did on the cross of Calvary won our redemption. Exactly right. Sign it, seal it, deliver it, speak it, announce it. That's right. In the Greek text, the syntax of a sentence can be all jumbled up. Syntax has to do with how you order your words. In the English language, usually, not exclusively, but usually it goes subject, verb, direct object. Johnny threw the ball. If we change our syntax around and we say, The ball threw Johnny. We would scratch our heads and go, that really didn't make a whole lot of sense. However, in the Greek language, you can do that. Because there are case endings to the words that tell you, oh, this is the subject of the sentence. Oh, this is a direct object of the sentence. Oh, this is the verb. And you can see by the ending of a word what it is. and then how you translate that into another language that has maybe a completely different syntax. In the Greek language, the very first word in verse 11 is the word appeared. The verb is the very first thing. And the Greeks would frequently put things at the front of a sentence, front of a phrase in order to show emphasis. The appearing of Christ, the coming of Christ is what's most important here. For the grace of God has appeared and this is what He's what he's doing in his appearing, he is bringing salvation. We talk about salvation in a variety of different ways. It's variously pictured in the New Testament. It is a rescue, it is a deliverance, it is a saving. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4, For God, who said, let light shall shine out of darkness, is the one who has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. Light shall shine out of darkness. There's a picture of salvation. You're spared from the darkness. I have said this on many occasions, I'll say it here one more time just because it fits well here in this gospel primer. There are four tenses of salvation. I have been saved, I am being saved, I will be saved. They fit the doctrines of justification and sanctification and glorification. What's gone on in the past, what's going on now in the present, what will go on in the future. I was saved from the penalty of sin. That's my justification. I am being saved from the power of sin. That's my sanctification. will be saved from the presence of sin. That's my glorification. And all of these concepts are wrapped in this big bow called salvation. When we talk about God saving us, it has many different aspects to it, and it's not inappropriate to talk about one or two or all of them. We also talk about concepts like forgiveness and regeneration and redemption and reconciliation, adoption, sealing, indwelling, being baptized in the Holy Spirit. All of these are part of this big package, this big box, all wrapped around with a bow called salvation. This is what God's gospel brings. For the grace of God has appeared, Paul said, bringing salvation forthly to all men. This phrase, all men, appears in the scripture a number of times, and it can mean one of two things. All men can mean all without exception or all without distinction. we understand which is being used by the context where we find it. Turn with me over to Romans chapter 3, if you will. Romans chapter 3, verse 9 Paul writes, We're headed to verse 23. That's a very familiar verse where we find the phrase, for all men have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. That's where we're headed. But we're looking at the context here right now, verse 9. We have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin. Now, Paul's writing this to Romans. who lived in Italy, and many of them spoke a different language. Though Greek was the lingua franca, the trade language of the Mediterranean world, these Romans would not have felt left out. when Paul says Jews and Greeks. It's another way of saying, which is a little more common, Jews and Gentiles. There's Jews and then there's everybody else. So we're talking about everybody on the planet here in this phrase Jews and Greeks. They're all under sin, verse 10. There is none righteous, not one of them There is none who understands, none who seeks for God, verse 11. Verse 19, now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God. Notice those phrases, every mouth, all the world, Over and over again, he has talked about every single person on the planet. And then we get to verse 23. All, all men, have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. All without exception. Every single person. The context tells us that every single person on the planet has this problem of sin. That's one way that the phrase all men is used. One or all without exception. It's also used all men without distinction. This is how Paul's using that in Titus chapter two. He's already talked about those in the church, note that, those in the church who are older, older men, older women, and those who are younger, younger men, younger women, and if we thought that they were not people, but were chattel, were commodities to be sold and traded. Even the slaves are mentioned. These are men, women that are in the church, all kinds of people. And he says, the grace of God is up here bringing salvation to all men. We're not universalists. Paul is not a universalist saying that every single man without exception is going to be saved. No, he's, in the context, we're talking about those in God's church. We're talking about the older, the younger. That pretty much captures everybody. The grace of God has appeared bringing salvation to All of us. And that's what he meant. He didn't write it explicitly with those words, but that's what he meant. All of us. Talking about the people in the church. All of us. Salvation has been brought to all of us. All kinds of people, all conditions of people have all been the recipients of this good news. Susanna Wesley said this to her boys, John and Charles, there are two things to do about the gospel, believe it and behave it. That is, there are two ways that I respond to this message God delivers. By the appearing of Christ, God's grace has come, and it is in the receiving of that, that is, the believing of that, that salvation comes. It comes to all those Without distinction, not without exception, but all those without distinction, doesn't matter if you're male, female, Jew, Gentile, slave, free, doesn't matter. This salvation comes to all who put their faith and their trust in the Lord. Two things, two ways, two necessary things for me to do in response to the gospel. The first is to believe it. Next week we'll be talking about the behaving, the living in keeping with the message that we have heard. Oswald Chambers said this, quote, there is nothing attractive about the gospel to the natural man. The only man who finds the gospel attractive is the man who is convicted of sin, knows that he needs Savior. Let's pray with me if you would. Father, we're in the middle of a thought, and it is a little disruptive to stop right here. There are certain things that we have to affirm, certain things we need to wrap our mind around as best we can. And the question that we have to ask ourselves is, do I really believe that? Do I really believe that Christ second person of the Trinity, Son of God appeared as a human being on this planet. Do I really believe that this is not just a miracle, but this is an expression of the grace of God in order to bring about salvation? all kinds, all classes, all conditions of people. Do I really believe that? Do I really believe that I need that? Thank you for the truth that for those who put their faith and their trust, their hope, their confidence, their assurance in you, we'll save them, spare them, redeem them, deliver them, reconcile them. You will put them in your showcase. You will make them into a trophy a declaration to the world, this is what your grace, this is what your power, this is what your authority, this is what your love does, change and transform a wretched sinner into one who is more and more like his master. Father, would you reveal those areas of our life where we are living on our own. Honestly, we're not submitting ourselves to you. We are not presenting that aspect of our life as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to you. Heaven laid it on the altar. We need to. Pray that you would guide us, direct us, that we might be men and women of maturity in Christ, as we pray in the name of the Savior.