Let us pray. Father, you promised that your word will go forth and will not return void without accomplishing all that you ordained for it. So we ask that you would open our eyes, that we might behold wondrous things from your law, that we might see the glories of redemption and the fullness of Christ. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. Please be seated, and let me invite you to turn in your Bibles to Titus chapter 2. Titus chapter 2 is our text for this evening. A very familiar passage from Titus. And if you know anything about the book of Titus, you know that whenever God's truth is properly taught and received and applied, that it reaps a harvest of godliness. That's how the Apostle Paul begins the letter of Titus. So the litmus test of whether something is true is the outcome. Does it produce and promote godliness? Does it produce the fruit of godly living? And the foundation of that godly living is God's marvelous and matchless grace, which we read about here beginning with verse 11 of Titus 2. For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, to redeem us from all lawlessness, and to purify for himself a people for his own possession, who are zealous for good works. Well, let's say you're watching one of your favorite movies or television shows, or reading a favorite novel, and the main character of the story, the hero, the protagonist, is suddenly placed in a life-threatening situation. The bad guys have him cornered, there seems to be no way of escape, and the plot is thickening, the dramatic tension intensifying, and it seems to be curtains for the hero when suddenly, out of nowhere, a solution presents itself. A secret trap door opens, or the sidekick appears on the scene to rescue him, or the police burst through the door, or the hero reveals some hidden device heretofore that has not been shown that allows him to jump off the side of the building and escape. And we think to ourselves, now that was a little odd. That was odd. Did they have a problem with the script? That seems like a very unsatisfactory resolution to this problem. Well, the Greeks and Romans had a mechanism that they used in their dramas called deus ex machina, which referred to a kind of prop or stage device that represented this godlike figure that would suddenly swoop down or appear in the sky to resolve some unsolvable plot twist. It's a term that we now use to apply to anything that appears suddenly and unexpectedly to provide an artificial solution to an apparently unsolvable problem. The Roman poet Horace urged his students, do not bring a god onto the stage unless the problem is one that deserves a god to solve it. Now when it comes to humanity's biggest problem, our sin, our alienation from God. Any human attempt to solve that problem would seem superficial, artificial. And so God must intervene. The plot is so twisted, so convoluted that we are unable to unravel it ourselves. We are desperate for a solution. We need God to make an appearance, a dramatic entrance, as it were, onto the stage of world history. And that's what our passage today depicts, is this dramatic entrance and appearing. Seemed to be out of nowhere, this appearing, this sudden manifestation of grace, that when things looked bleakest for humanity, God's grace appeared in the person of Jesus Christ, who is the supreme embodiment of grace and truth. Titus was ministering on the island of Crete. The Cretans were referred to by one of their own as liars, lazy beasts, and gluttons. And Paul said that evaluation of them is correct. The society of Crete could be compared to our society, an addictive society. Its citizenry were notorious for self-indulgence and Western-style lust. Can God's grace rescue individuals who are steeped in a hedonistic, pleasure-loving society? And Paul says, absolutely. So this is the high point of Paul's letter to Titus, where Paul teaches us much about grace. What does he teach us? That grace saves. That it sanctifies. That it stabilizes. First of all, this is saving grace, grace that rescues us and delivers us and liberates us. If you were to look at the first half of chapter two here, Titus chapter two, Paul is exhorting different segments of the congregation at Crete, older and younger, male and female, free and bondservant to adorn the gospel of Christ with godliness. And in a healthy church, Older members are interacting with younger members and offering counsel and instruction and guidance and leading by example. And younger members look to the older members for instruction and help and wisdom and guidance. And what is the foundation of such a healthy, godly, Christ-centered church? Paul says it's grace. It is God's grace. Now, contrary to Paul's customary pattern, if I can call it that, He first, in chapter two, gave the ethical instruction or guidelines for living for each of these groups in the church at Crete. And then he now gives the doctrinal basis for adorning the truth of the gospel. So in other places, he starts with the doctrine. So epistles like Ephesians and Romans, he starts with doctrine, starts with the truth, lays the foundation of the truth, and then applies it to lifestyle. This is how you live. Now here he does the reverse. But in any case, When God gives us something to do, when he gives us a directive, a command, a command to obey, we are not to hear that command in isolation, but rather we are to hear that command in the context of serious contemplation of the gospel of Christ, of the saving work of Christ, and that's what he does here. We see it in verse 11. He says, for the grace of God has appeared. He's just appealed to bondservants to adorn the doctrine of God with with godly living and godliness. And he says, why is that? Because for the grace of God has appeared. Shows how Christian conduct is always grounded in Christian truth. That Paul is unable to separate in his mind Christian doctrine or teaching from God's grace. Grace is such a glorious term. It's a familiar term, maybe it's too familiar to us, but grace is at the heart of the gospel. How do we define it? We usually define it as God's unmerited favor. It is his proactive love toward those who deserve his judgment. And with grace, we see here God takes the initiative. It says grace appeared uninvited, unsought for, unasked for. This is not humanity searching for grace, approaching God, asking for help. We did not ask for help. We did not approach God. We're told in Romans 5 that we were weak and sinful, godless enemies. Grace appeared because God, out of his own goodness and mercy, dispatched it. And provided immediate and comprehensive help for needy sinners. What did we contribute? We contributed nothing but our sin and our shame. Grace showed up on the human stage, invading space and time. And though we know it's planned from the foundation of the world, it would appear that this grace just appeared spontaneously. It physically appeared in the person of Jesus Christ. The word that's translated here, appeared, is related to the word epiphany. We might use the term epiphany to describe some moment of insight, some extraordinary wisdom that we get in a miraculous or momentous event. But an epiphany also refers to the manifestation of a divine being. And that's what we have here, where the invisible divine son of God became flesh and invaded history. Paul describes it as an appearing of grace. Grace visibly, concretely appeared. It showed up, it moved into the neighborhood, is how Eugene Peterson famously translated or paraphrased John 1, 14. So what joy and hope that that brings, that we are not left alone to unravel this twisted, desperate condition. Grace and truth showed up in the person of Jesus Christ. We all appreciate the personal touch, do we not? When someone makes the effort to personally invest in our lives, whether it's through sharing in our griefs, or our joys, or our sorrows, or our triumphs, our successes, someone makes an effort to earn our trust, to win our friendship, to sacrifice for us, and obviously the more effort someone makes, The more time or energy they invest, the more impactful and meaningful that is. The more meaningful is that gesture of compassion and love. I was listening recently to the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Robert Caro talk about his life's work, and if you know anything about Robert Caro, Again, Pulitzer Prize winning biographer and journalist. He's written several compelling stories of people in power. And most notably is his multi-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson, our 36th president. And what makes his work so compelling is his extensive research. So for example, he's now on the fifth volume. He's been writing for some 40 years on just Lyndon Johnson alone. But when he started the first volume, he said that he hit a roadblock. He's trying to figure out Lyndon Johnson's youth, what shaped Lyndon Johnson and there were some seven biographies already published at the time that he was writing and they all told the same stories, these wonderful anecdotes about Lyndon Johnson's childhood and he thought Well, I've got it covered. I understand Lyndon Johnson's childhood, but something was missing. He felt that these stories all lacked detail. So he said, because Lyndon Johnson was raised in the hill country of Texas, I need to go there, and I need to interview people. And so he did that. He did some interviews there, but he found that when he traveled to the hill country of Texas, that the interviews were very difficult. He was a city boy from New York. These were hill country folk, many of them Lyndon Johnson's peers. He started writing maybe three or four years after Lyndon Johnson had died. And none of them really wanted to say anything derogatory about Lyndon Johnson and his youth and his upbringing, so Carroll became frustrated. He was not understanding the people that he was talking to. They were so different from him. And he didn't know how to break through, and he thought, if I don't understand these hill country folk, I'm not going to understand Lyndon Johnson. So he told his wife, Ina, he said, we're moving to the hill country. And she said, why can't you just write a biography about Napoleon? Why do we have to go through the hill country of Texas? But she agreed, as she always did. And so they moved to the hill country for the better part of three years. And people then realized this journalist, Robert Caro, is not like the transient journalists who come for a weekend and find a story and then leave. No, he's here to stay. They began opening up to him. They saw that he was invested. And he began hearing the truth about Lyndon Johnson, a brilliant but ruthless character. He learned why so many people loved him, primarily because early on in his congressional career he brought electricity to the harsh, isolated, and lonely hill country. Kara would talk with these women on the farm, many of them bent over because, for years and years, they would carry water from the well, sometimes 200 gallons a day. By the time they were aged 35 or 40, they were bent over and stooped. And so he... said I would never have fleshed these things out if I had not shown up and moved into the neighborhood, as it were, and got personal with the hill country folk. When he saw the emptiness of the place and the isolation and the loneliness and the poverty that Lyndon Johnson had grown up with, he began to feel how it had shaped Lyndon Johnson's life, and he began to understand him better. Grace appeared, grace visibly appeared in the person of Jesus Christ to invest in our spiritual welfare, those who are unworthy. Paul's use of this word appearing here to describe the appearing of grace, you could say it's inseparable from who Christ is. When grace appears, appears at the same time that Christ appears. intertwining who Christ is with what Christ provides. You can't separate the two. So we're not to think here of grace as some abstract doctrine, some theological construct made up by academicians in an ivory tower. Grace comes as Christ comes. Grace is as personal as Christ is. In fact, we could even say that Christ is grace, grace personified, grace embodied. The unmerited favor of God is all that Jesus was about. And it's also who he is. He is grace and truth, this grace that brought salvation to all people, to all kinds of people, we could say, regardless of their race or gender or social status. This is a grace that there is no one outside of its magnanimous scope. Paul's not saying here that all people are going to be saved. It just means that this salvation has been made available to all people through Christ, who is the only savior of sinners, a grace that is saving and emancipating, a grace that delivers and rescues and cleanses us, a grace that transforms us from lawbreakers into law keepers. A grace that was uninvited, unsought, unasked for, yet given in abundance. Grace saves completely, fully, comprehensively. So it's a saving grace, but secondly, then it's a sanctifying grace. This grace sanctifies, meaning this grace has an agenda. This grace has been given to make us holy. This is why Jesus came. He came to save us, but he also came to make us holy. And at the moment of salvation, we are all enrolled in the school of grace. Verse 12 says, the grace of God is training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age. So Paul states it negatively. This is what we're trained to renounce. And then he states it positively. This is what we are trained to affirm and appreciate and love. That word training refers to the guidance and discipline that's given to a child. Paul could have used a more formal word that refers to classroom instruction, but here it's the more personal and intimate instruction that a parent gives to a child on a daily basis. It takes great pains to train that child and instruct that child. How does a parent teach a child? Through denial as well as affirmation. A loving parent says no to a child if they ask for something that's harmful or destructive. And a loving parent also affirms and says yes to virtue and righteousness, encouraging them in the path of righteousness. So think of grace here like a parent instructing a child with encouragement and correction and devotion and patience. There was a period in all of our lives when we were told by our parents, don't do this, don't do that, don't touch the stove, don't put that in your mouth, don't hit your sister. Early childhood, those of you who've ever seen the film Finding Nemo, there's a scene in there where Nemo's this little fish whose father's very overprotective, wanting to keep him out of danger, and they're on the way to the to school or something like that and he's constantly having to tell this little fish Nemo, don't do there, don't go there, watch out for that, be careful for this. The scene was inspired by the director who in his own life was going to go out one day with his son and have a nice time, one-on-one time with his son and he said the whole time, I was telling my son, don't do that, don't go there, don't touch that or that. It was this constant instructing of the child that can be a very exacting, painstaking task. And grace performs a similar function for us, painstakingly teaching us to avoid what is destructive and displeasing to God. and then patiently teaching us to renounce ungodliness and everything that that involves, not just the mere passive avoidance of evil, but a full-hearted renunciation of evil. Grace realigns our desires. What Paul says here are our worldly passions, those sinful impulses that characterize the rebellious value system of the world. The fourth century father, John Chrysostom, said that worldly passions are those impulses which do not pass over into the next life, but will be dissolved together with this present world. So what does grace do? It hardens our resistance to sin, so that more and more we are inclined to say no to it. So it reorients our denials, what we say no to, and then it also reorients our affirmations, what we say yes to. So verse 12 continues, training us to renounce ungodliness, worldly passions, it's a word of great aversion to say no, to hate this evil, and then to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age. So it trains us to say no, trains us to say yes, teaches us not only to deny ungodliness, but also empowers us to move toward holiness. enabling us to put on Christ, to make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. What's Paul envisioning here? He's envisioning a transformed life where our physical appetites are under control, that's the self-control, where our interactions with others are righteous, that's the upright part, and where the knowledge of God is our chief pursuit, that's the godly part, where we live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age. So grace moves inward. transforming us from the inside out, transforming our reckless impulses into self-control and sober-mindedness. And grace also moves us outward, nurturing love for others, love for our neighbor, helping us to fulfill the demands of truth and justice in our relationships with others. And then grace moves us upward in our focus and interest and reverent devotion to God. One Christian author says that self-control is the skill of saying no to sinful desires even when it hurts. The writer of Proverbs in Proverbs 25, 28 says that a man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls. Could that be a description of your life tonight? Where there are no walls and so sin has its way with you. There seems to be no restraint. All reckless impulses are indulged. Well, that's not what grace intends for us. Grace helps us to rebuild the walls of our heart to keep out sin. Remember when I came home from the pediatricians with this big thick book, you know, we have small children and there's this big thick book telling us all the things that we should do and look out for and there was a section on behavior, how you help the child and there was a paragraph or a line that said, be very careful about ever saying no to your child. I thought that's impossible. How can I do that? And so grace is that, gives us the freedom to say no to those sinful, reckless impulses of our hearts and empowering us, giving us new desires, transforming us from the inside out so that we love God and love others John Piper calls this the five-second rule of spiritual warfare, where we have a five-second rule for food. If it touches the floor, you've got five seconds to pick it up and eat it before it becomes contaminated. Well, grace empowers us to say no to every sinful passion, every inclination toward ungodliness within five seconds. You don't have much more than five seconds. If you allow sin to remain unopposed for much longer than that, it will embed itself and become almost immovable. So here comes this directive from Paul that is an admonishment for us to be tough and warlike, to resist the devil, and he will flee from us. Let him know that we mean business. Don't allow the world, the flesh, and the devil to bully you. As Romans 6 tells us to consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies to make you obey their passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life. Grace empowers us to face down sin and say no. But it doesn't just tell us to stop doing things, like stop drinking or stop carousing or stop losing your temper. It certainly is no less than that. Grace takes it a step further and says yes to godliness, no to these things that destroy us. So there's an immediacy to grace that provides help right now, Paul says, in this present age. And according to 2 Peter 1, we have all the divine power we need right now for life and godliness. Maybe some of us are waiting to be zapped with holiness. Only God would come through and zap me with holiness. We're waiting passively for grace to work, and that's the wrong idea. The assumption is that we are presently engaged in the battle, fighting and wrestling and struggling, and actively saying no to sin while also resting and trusting in the help of Jesus. So these gifts of self-control and uprightness and godliness, these are gifts of the Holy Spirit through faith in Christ. Grace empowers us to say no and yes, to put off and put on. So grace saves and sanctifies, and then finally, grace stabilizes us. It steadies us through life's turbulent circumstances and gives us expectant hope. It's a stabilizing grace, steadying us, staying us. As verse 13 says, waiting for our blessed hope the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. Paul portrays waiting here as a positive thing. We don't usually think of waiting as a positive thing. We are very impatient people. We hate waiting. We wait at the airport. We wait at the doctor's office. We wait in the line at Chick-fil-A. But this waiting here has a glow to it, a divine luster, a proactive faith-filled blessed posture of waiting, an eager expectancy. And what is it that we are waiting for? Paul says there is a second epiphany, a second appearing, an appearing of glory, first the appearing of grace, now this appearing of glory, referring to Christ's second coming. His first coming was this visible concrete manifestation of grace, and now the second coming will also be a visible manifestation of grace. The first coming was localized. sticking to one geographic region of the world. This is a coming that will be seen by all, will be universal. And it will consummate the work of grace as Jesus returns for his people. So we are living in between this appearing of grace and this appearing of glory. And this blessed hope is not just a wish that we hope is going to happen. It is a confident expectation that Christ is going to return to deliver us And so Peter tells us to set our minds fully, set our hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. It is a hope that purifies us and blesses us even as we anchor our pursuit of godliness in the present. Constantly reminding us that the king is coming, the king is coming. Think of those villages where they know the monarch is coming for a visit, so what happens? Everything is cleaned and decorated repainted and made fit for the royal eye to see. Everyone wants the king or the queen to know that they are anticipating their arrival. The house is put in order, the expectation of the imminent arrival of our king. Paul says this spurs us on to love and good works. What does hope do? It gives us a deadline. The fight with sin is arduous, it's daily, it's difficult, but it's coming to a close. At some point, it will be over. It gives us a dose of reality. It will be very hard for us to indulge in some forbidden pleasure or sin if we know that Jesus could return at any moment. And hope reminds us of our future destiny, that if we have put our faith in Christ, then our destiny is to be absolutely sinless, free from sin, so we are to be like the person that we will soon be. So this appearing of grace is inseparably connected from this appearing of glory. And if Christ has made that appearing of grace in your heart, and has transformed you, and grace is inwardly transforming you from the inside out, then you will also experience that appearing of glory. And Paul explains here the particulars of this gospel hope back in verse 14. Christ gave himself for us. This is the language of the Passover. A voluntary, loving, complete, once-for-all sacrifice. He was our substitute. What do I place my hope in? In the life that I did not live, in a death that I did not die, I stake my whole eternity. To redeem us from all lawlessness, recalling there the exodus and redemption from bondage and enslavement, God rescues his people from slavery to sin. Sin is lawlessness. Lawlessness is the essence of sin, that proud and defiant assertion of our self-will in response to God's righteous standard. We have been redeemed from that lawlessness. We've been redeemed to holiness and purity. Christ intends to purify us as a people for his own possession. That's the great refrain of the Old Testament. I will be your God. You will be my people. The Lord moves heaven and earth to make us his own. We belong to him. He has put his name upon us. We are highly favored, highly graced ones. And therefore we should be zealous for good works, enthusiastic about obedience, demonstrating the very existence of God through our obedience. So grace has appeared in the person of Jesus Christ, untying that knot of sin that has plagued humanity. And the same grace is now at our disposal to renounce ungodliness and say yes to holiness and truth in this present age. Paul using the whole scope of redemptive history to thrill our souls that Christ has died. Christ has risen and Christ is coming again. He says, set your hope fully on that grace as we pray together. Father, we are thankful for the grace of God that has appeared in Christ, a grace that we celebrate even now during this time of the year and increase our gratitude for that grace. We thank you for its saving and sanctifying and stabilizing power. We pray that we might adorn the truth of the gospel with lives that have been transformed by that grace. and make us zealous for good works. Make us zealous for the pursuit of holiness. We pray it in Jesus' name, amen. We'll close our service together by singing hymn number 229, Gentle Mary Laid Her Child, hymn number 229.