That's where we are this evening, Titus 2, verses 13 and 14. And what we're talking about this evening is, well, I guess I'll just give you the title right up front, joyful expectancy of the return of Christ. Every believer ought to have a joyful expectancy of the return of Jesus Christ. And so last week we looked at verses 11 and 12. Let's go back and just read 11 through 14 all together because that is one sentence and we should consider it as one unit. I couldn't do that for time's sake, but back with verse 11. 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. I'm also going to read verse 15, although it's a different sentence. It does conclude the chapter. Declare these things, exhort and rebuke with all authority. let no one disregard you." So last week, like I say, I was breaking off mid-sentence and thought I could pick up with the verb training in verse 13. However, according to Hendrickson's commentary, training falls in the same list under living in verse 12. You go back there to verse 12, it tells us how we should live. Self-controlled, upright, godly lives in the present age in the sense that waiting modifies how we live. So With that in mind, the main idea of this part of Paul's long sentence is, one way we are trained by the grace of God is to live expectantly for the return of Christ. You received grace, you've come to faith in Christ, you should be living differently according to verse 12, but you should have a different attitude. in verse 13 and 14. And so tonight we're going to look at who we are waiting for. Verse 12 told us what the effects of the appearance of grace should have in our lives. Verses 13 and 14 tells us that one of those effects is how we view the return of Jesus Christ. One of the great errors of American theology in particular is our obsession with the details regarding the return of Jesus. We get all obsessed about all these little details that we seem to forget who is coming back. That is the point of a good solid understanding of eschatology is going to be that we're talking about the return of Jesus. He's what matters in all of this. And so if we would grasp the who, that's far more important than the when, for sure, or even the how, right? That is what matters is the who, not the when or the how. If American theologians and pastors and Christians could get this right, it would change everything. If we would adopt the view of Titus chapter two, verses 13 and 14, it absolutely changes everything as to what we think about the return of Christ. So if we get the who, we'll have strong motivations to actually live out the commands of verse 12. Remember all that was said back there in verse 12, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age." And so strong motivation comes if you understand the who is coming back. So let's take a look at this. We're going to look at, really, this is just one point. There's one point and then a whole bunch of sub-points, but this falls under the how do we live? That whole list that we looked at last time, just add this onto that list. The return of Jesus is our blessed hope. If you've experienced the grace of God, this is going to be very important for you. I know it's sad out there. What's your view on the millennium? Pan-millennial, it all panned out in the end. I understand that sentiment more and more all the time, but understand that what does matter is it's about Jesus. The return of Jesus is our blessed hope. And so eschatology does matter in that sense. So we're going to look at several facts here. The first fact, I'm just going to say this, and I know that, you know, this could be controversial in some places. I don't think it'd be too bad here. But what says there in verse 13, just starts out with it, waiting for our blessed hope. What is that blessed hope? I'm going to start with what it's not. And what it's not is the rapture. This is not talking about the rapture. I grew up in dispensationalism. I was beat into my head about Titus chapter two, verse 13, that the blessed hope is the rapture. There's a secret return of Christ in the air. You're going to get zapped up and you're going to meet Christ in the air. And that's the blessed hope. But in no way can this text be referring to any sort of rapture because of the word appearing, the manifestation. This is the revelation of Christ. This is when Christ comes back. And even dispensationalists will say, That's not the same thing, that the rapture and the revelation aren't the same thing. So by their own theology, it can't be that. And it can't be that just because of the text. And so the blessed hope is not the rapture, but it's the final revelation of Jesus because of the word appearing in the very next phrase in verse 13. You could translate that manifestation. You could translate that revelation, the fact that Christ is coming back. physically, visibly to the earth. And so it's not talking about the rapture, but it is the thing to point out here is that the joyful object of our hope is his return. Pastor's been talking a bit about joy lately, right? That we ought to have joy. And obviously it comes from the gospel. But when we talk about a blessed hope, we're talking about a hope that brings joy. And so the joyful object of our hope is his return. That is what we're talking about when we're talking about hope. The thing that we've set our minds on is the fact that Christ is coming back. It's the thing for which we hope, and it is a source of joy. Why? Why is it a source of joy? Go back to 1 Thessalonians chapter four. Speaking of things that are not talking about the rapture, 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, verses 13 through the end. 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, verse 13, historically in every creed that you care to look at, this has never been referred to as a rapture if you're looking at historic creeds. 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 is talking about the return of Christ. When he comes back, there will be a resurrection. So in 1 Thessalonians 4, this is why it's our blessed hope But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, with the sound of the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are allowed to be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and so we'll always be with the Lord, therefore encourage one another with these words. This is your hope. And here, think about it, we're on the eve of a funeral, right? Verlin and Raquel are mourning. What is the hope of the Christian? The fact that when you place your father or your brother or your son or your daughter, your husband or your wife in the ground, that that's not the end. There's coming a day when Christ will return and there's gonna be a resurrection on that day. Praise the Lord, right? There are some people who are trying to make out like this isn't even gonna happen. There are heretics that are saying stuff like this. That is not Christian. That's not Orthodox Christianity. Jesus is coming back, right? And when he comes back, there's going to be a resurrection. There's going to be a resurrection. And so if you're not joyful about it, you think, I can't wrap my mind around being joyful about the return of Christ. Put yourself in the shoes of somebody who's buried someone, right? And you're going to understand in a hurry how there's joy, because you know that's not the end of the story, even for the physical body. We know to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, but that's not even the end of their physical body. Just like Jesus rose again from the dead, 1 Corinthians 15, there's going to be another resurrection, and we're going to be resurrected with perfect bodies. What an incredible hope that is. You can drive by a cemetery, right? And you can think about all those dead people in the cemetery. Those that are in Christ will rise. There's joy in that. It's blessed. There'll be no more death when he returns. No more, gone. That should give you some joy. Aren't you sick of it? If you've lost somebody, aren't you sick of it? You know, but it happens to everybody. 10 out of 10 die. It happens for every one of us. But one day it will be over. It will end. Christ is King. He will rule and reign. He will physically return. 1 Peter 1.3 says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. We have a living hope. It's not like the hope that so many in this world have. Well, I hope it gets better. They don't really have any confidence in that hope that it will get better, that they'll get whatever, that their ship will come in or whatever. But this hope we can have confidence in. Christ is coming back. God's word promises that he will, that Jesus will come back, and that he will raise his people from the dead. That is a blessing. It's a blessed hope. So it's the joyful object of our hope is his return. And as a result, what the text says, is that we wait with expectation. We wait expectantly. That's what it's talking about here, where it says waiting for our blessed hope. That's where I'm getting that from. Translations will translate this with expectation of his return, looking forward to his return, looking for his return. So all of these things are talking about an expectation A key part, and this is where it gets tricky. So I'll just say it, it's tricky for me, all right? Where I stand on my theology, where I have stood anyway, on my eschatology, this is where it gets tricky. Because do you have an expectation that Christ is coming back? Or does your theology rule out any possibility of it happening anytime soon? Because if it does that, if it rules out any possibility, You've got a problem. It's talking about expectant, being expectant that it's going to happen. Bear in mind, this is a fruit of the appearance of grace in our lives from Titus chapter two, verse 11. Such a person who has been impacted by the grace of God in Titus two, verse 11, has been changed. They are no longer enamored with this world. They're not. You get joy from thinking about the appearance, not of something in this world, but you get joy when you think about the appearance of your master. That's the whole point of this text. So whatever your eschatology is, if it's not doing that, there's something wrong. There's something wrong with that eschatology. And so you have to, Consider that. The text says what it says. We get joy from that because we love the appearance of him more than anything else. That's what this text is teaching. The grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us to do all these things. How we live in verse 12 with a result in verse 13 that we are excited and expectant about the return of Christ. If your eschatology doesn't do that, it has a problem. Calvin says, they who do not cease to live to the world and to the flesh never have actually tasted what is the worth of the promise of eternal life. For the Lord, by calling us to heaven, withdraws us from the earth. There is a sense in which we don't have anything here. We sing it all the time. We're just passing through. That's really true. You are not going to live forever. Right? And so keep in mind that our focus is Christ. Our focus is not anything like the writer of Ecclesiastes would say, under the sun. Right? It's not anything here. Our hope isn't even something up in heaven, like materialistic in heaven. It's not about stuff. It's about a person. Who? Remember? Christ. I'm not sure any of the eschatologies get this right, really. So it's the glorious manifestation of our Savior God. This is the next point. It's the glorious manifestation of our Savior God, Jesus Christ. The next part of verse 13, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Now I gotta say this because it's an issue. Some translations make this sound like the two persons of the Trinity separately. So they'll make it out to be like God the Father and Jesus Christ. They appear to be separate in some translations, but because of a specific Greek grammar rule called the Granville Sharpe rule, God and Savior both refer to Jesus Christ. this translation is correct. And what it's saying is, it's another, what this is, is another wonderful proof of the deity of Jesus Christ, because what? He's coming back and he's called God here in this text. And so you have a proof of the deity of Christ in this text. The Arian heresy, which the Jehovah's Witnesses are basically a part of, like to try to break this up and split the names up. And they'll say, aha, see that? Not the same. We can throw out the Trinity and we can throw out the deity of Christ. Wrong. This text is clearly teaching that Jesus Christ is God, just like so many other texts in the New Testament. The word appeared is a verb. I'm sorry, the word appeared back in verse 11 was a verb. Here the word appearing is a noun. You could translate it appearance. And it's another proof that Jesus is in view here and not the father, because the noun never refers to the father in the New Testament. It's always talking about Jesus. So the appearing here isn't God the Father separately. This can only be talking about Jesus because every time that appears, you're talking about Christ. It's the appearance of Jesus, God. Now what's that gonna look like? It's gonna be glorious because he's God. Remember when you're reading the Bible, whenever God shows up, you've got this created light that surrounds the throne room of God. Remember that? And God is obviously glorious. He's eternal. He spoke everything into existence. And so when Jesus comes back, It's going to be incredible. And that's the language here in the text, because this appearance of Jesus is the conclusion of all of human history. Everything is wrapped up when this happens. It's done. When Jesus comes back, it's over. Game over. And he is everything. And he's called in the text, great. the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. He's called great because everything that has come before this point in history is minuscule in comparison. You think about the greatest empires. You think about the greatest celebrities. Whatever, gross, right? Think about the greatest, whatever you want to think is great. You know, football teams, not the Bills. The thing is, is that Christ is so great that the rest of it is garbage, no matter how great that stuff looks like in human comparison. He is the great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. All that this world deems important, all who this world deems important have become microscopic midgets in comparison to this one and only God-man who died for sinners, rose from the dead and at this point will have returned. He is great and he is glorious. complete biblical library says Jesus presently exhibits his glory as a living and ascended Lord. And that is glorious. But when he returns, his glory will be fully revealed. His return and the whole world will see it. 1 Peter 4 verse 13 says, but rejoice insofar as you, now get this, he's talking to people suffering. Peter is, in 1 Peter 4 verse 13. He's talking about the suffering church. In 1 Peter 4, 13, what does Peter say to the suffering church? Not the victorious church. What does he say to the suffering church? But rejoice, insofar as you share Christ's sufferings. Why? that you may also rejoice and be glad when, when his glory is revealed, when he comes back. The church will always suffer. Take a look around. I just shared a post today on Facebook about how in Canada, there's been 100 churches that have been burnt to the ground in Canada, 100. Trudeau is not talking about it at all. He hasn't made one speech about this fact. You basically have a hate crime going on, and they're burning churches to the ground, and their prime minister's not even talking about it. We shouldn't be surprised by that, because isn't that what Jesus said? They hated me, they're gonna hate you. That's what he said. And so we must grasp this, that this suffering that we see all around us is going to end. This persecution of the church is happening all around the world. Some places the church is strong, some places it's weak, but one day it'll end. When will it end? When Christ returns. So it's a glorious manifestation of our Savior God, and it just gets better. This is an amazing text in verse 14. We are reminded here in the text that Jesus is an amazing Savior, aren't we? He's an amazing Savior 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. So what do we have here in the text, verse 14? Well, we have substitutionary atonement. He gave himself Don't miss this, for us. Three letters, for. That's a really important word. You know, there's a lot of people that deny this, that Jesus didn't really die on behalf of us or in our place. That's divine child abuse. They say stuff like that. That's baloney. They're wrong. He died. The scriptures are so clear. It says it over and over again. It says it here. He gave himself for us. You needed a substitute. I needed a substitute. You don't want to take that heat. What does this Bible say? The soul that sins, it shall what? Die, right? Under a just law, the soul that sins, it shall die. Jesus went to the cross so that you didn't have to die for your sin. So if you repent of your sin and place your faith in Christ, his death on your behalf, the righteous, the just for the unjust, right? His righteousness can be credited to you. You better have that. That's your only hope. He gave himself for us. Galatians chapter one, verse five, grace to you and peace from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age according to the will of God and Father. This is practically a parallel verse to what we're looking at here. I mean, it's not really like a narrative parallel, but Theologically, it's saying the same thing in Galatians 1 verse 5 that we're seeing in Titus chapter 1. Grace and peace from God our Father who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from what? The present evil age. What did we read about at the end of verse 12? That we could live godly lives in the present age. So in this present age, he's able to deliver you from the present evil age and do something. That's the whole point of this whole text is that the grace of God actually does something in people's lives. Wouldn't make the gospel great again, right? I mean, who believes this anymore? That the gospel actually can change somebody. Now why, why is the question, why in the world did he give himself for us in this text? What is it saying here? It's saying two reasons here at the end of verse 14. Number one, there's a negative reason, and then there's a positive reason. So the negative reason is this, to redeem us, now this sounds positive at first, but the negative comes at the end of this phrase, to redeem us from all lawlessness. There's the negativity, right? Lawlessness, sin is transgression of the law. The Bible defines sin that way. Jesus died for us to redeem us from all lawlessness. We have been freed from it by his ransom payment on our behalf. We celebrate it when we take the Lord's table. He shed his blood. What are we doing when we're drinking the juice there? What do we represent with that? He bought us and we are trusting in that ransom payment for our salvation. We've been freed by that ransom payment. Thayer's Lexicon says that the word redeem means to deliver from evils of every kind, internal and external. All the evil that's around us, but the evil that's within us. Mark chapter 10, verse 45, Jesus said it. For even the son of man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. Not for all, but for many. He gave his life a ransom for many. He rescued us from the penalty of sin by paying for it himself. with his own death. Have you thought about it lately? Have you thought about this? This is everything. This matters more than anything in our lives, that God would orchestrate this incredible salvation and that he would do this thing in us where he would buy us out of lawlessness. That's going to, if he has the point of the whole context, again, bringing you back to it, if he has, there's going to, it's going to be obvious. There's going to be obvious differences in the context of the sentence that we're looking at. But there's also a positive reason, and it's the last part of the verse, to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. So purify, Kittel says, the inward life of believers as cleansed from past sin and wholeheartedly directed to God. The word purify expresses the unreserved nature of the return to God and also the inner unity of a conscience which is no longer disturbed by the sense of guilt. This is what happens with purification. What we're talking about here with this context of purifying, God is able to purify for himself a people. Everyone that's born on this planet sins. And everyone that you see around you, they don't know Christ. They're walking around, whether they even recognize what they're doing or not, with a load of sin and guilt and shame. And what they need is to be purified, not just from the penalty of sin, but the devastating power of sin and their lives and how it's destroying them. People you know, your family members, your friends, your coworkers, neighbors, whoever, people you don't know, the people you pass on the street, they need to be purified. And Christ does it. But he's doing it for himself, to purify for himself. You see, salvation is all about God. And so he's all about getting a people for himself. He's done this throughout redemptive history, hasn't he? He did it back in the Old Testament. And in fact, if you look at the Subtuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, this word is used, people, the word people, sometimes translated peculiar people. And the Subtuagint, that word is used 2000 times. to translate the Hebrew concept of chosen people. This isn't just talking about people generally. It's definitely not the same word for Gentiles like Goy or Goyim or something like that. This is its own word. In the New Testament, the church is the new people of God. Thayer's lexicon says, the people whom God has chosen for himself, selected as peculiarly his own. Yeah. So the term here in Titus 2 verse 14, I'm not going to, you should write this down. It originates in Exodus 19 verses five and six and Deuteronomy 14 verse two. That idea of the chosen people, it harkens back to that. Second Corinthians six verse 16, for we are the temple of the living God, as God said, I will make my dwelling among them and I will be their God and they shall be my people. That's in second Corinthians. He's talking to the church. And he's saying there in that context, you're my people. Stephen Sharnock, here's the point of this whole text. We got to pull it together. Stephen Sharnock said, the Puritan preacher, and this is so good. I hope you get this. Christ expiated sin. He expiated it. It means separated it as far as the East is from the West. He expiated it, but he did not encourage it. He died to make your peace with him. but he died to make you holy, to purify a people to himself. He is no atoner where he is not a refiner. If he's going to atone you, he's going to refine you, Sharnach says. It is as certain as any word the mouth of God has spoken that there is no peace for the wicked. It's quite a statement. The church is God's chosen people and they have a mission and the mission is that they would be zealous for good works. Zealous for it. Not just kind of going through the motions or just being religiously doing good works. It's saying zealously, putting out some effort. And there's actually some enthusiasm. Some translations will translate it as enthusiasm. There's something about like you want to do good works. not to earn your salvation. You can't possibly read verses 13 and 14 and come away from that with, oh yeah, you earn it yourself. No, verse 14 is all about you doing it because of the amazing fact that he gave himself. In that verse, in the beginning of verse 14, he gave himself. This is amazing text. So 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. Now you come to the end of the chapter and keep in mind everything that's in chapter two. There's been instructions for old men, young men, older women, younger women, slaves, the whole nine yards. And some people think that maybe this is a conclusion in verse 15, the whole first two chapters, maybe. But listen to what he says. Declare these things, declare these things, exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you. He says to Titus, he's planting a church in Crete. and this pagan, godless culture we've been talking about all through the book so far. He says to this culture, don't back down from this. Don't say, well, because the culture is so godless, well, I got to kind of allow for some concessions and just, you know, not talk about purifying. I mean, they're just not there yet. Let's give them some milk before we give them the meat. Not what he says. Declare it, exhort and rebuke, and do it with authority. He says, do it with confidence, not because he has any self-confidence, but do it knowing you're proclaiming the word of God. When you're proclaiming the word of God, it's not your authority. It's God's word, and the preacher has to have it in his mind. If God says it, that settles it. If God says it, I can say it with authority, not because it's me, but because it's the word of God. And then he says, let no one disregard you. Now that word disregard is interesting in Greek. It means to think around something. Do you ever think around something? You get something put in front of you and you're not really sure you like it. And so you try to think around it. You look for a loophole, find a way through it or around it, some way to get around that thing and just be able to ignore and shelve whatever it is that you just heard. Paul says to Titus, let no one do that. Don't let them do it. Don't let them think they can think around it because this is the word of God. So I would just urge you to really meditate on the text, to really think about it. and ask yourself that question. Has the grace of God done that in your life? He's appeared to all men, bringing salvation, right? And teaching us, training us to live this way. Are you living this way where your hope and everything is focused on Christ? Because that's what the text is saying. That's what the text commands. And so wherever you're at with your eschatology, I don't really even care. But wherever you're at with it, Christ needs to be preeminent. Christ and the gospel needs to be the thing that's preeminent. And if you get bogged down in all this other stuff, whether it's the how or the when or whatever, you're missing it because it's all about Christ. Let's close in prayer. Lord, you are very gracious to us to reveal your truth in your word. Lord, we thank you. Lord, there's so much confusion and chaos out there in this world today. Lord, I pray that you would just intervene, that you would step in and help us as Christians not to get sucked into this confusion that's out there about all these different views. But Lord help us to be very certain about one thing, we know who is coming back. We don't know when, we don't know how, but we know that he will return. Lord, I pray, Father God, that you would help us to repent. if we have gotten into thinking that has taken us away from the glorious who of Jesus when he comes back. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.