Now let us turn to the portion we've been reading together in the pastoral epistle of Paul to Titus and in chapter 2 and looking at words in verses 11 through to 15 in their context. For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously and godly in this present world, looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, sellers of good works. these words. Our text views the Christian believer as living between two great revelations that God has made of himself in the course of human history. Both of these revelations are in Christ Jesus. One of them is a revelation of His grace, and the other is a revelation of His glory. One of them is past in history, and the other is forward and future in time. So that the believer is, as it were, living between that revelation that is past and that great revelation that is future. He is living between the revelation that is made in the first coming of Christ and the revelation that shall be made at the second coming. And because there shall be no further revelations akin to these in the course of human history, we can now, as Scripture in Deuteronomy speaks, we can be spoken of as living in these last days. That is what the text says before us. Like a believer is, as it were, living in the present with the great mountain of the first coming and the revelation of it, and that in the past, and the revelation of the second coming forward. He's living in between the two. And we will seek to look at the text of his teaching tonight. The believer's retrospective view, first of all, He looks backward to that revelation that has passed. And then secondly, the believer's prospect of view, that view that he has as he looks forward. And then the effect that these are to have upon his present life and behavior. There should be an educative effect that both of these have upon his present behavior. That's what the text says before us. The grace of God has appeared. And the believer is now looking to that blessed hope and the great appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ. But in the meantime, These are to have this educative effect upon his life. These should be teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously and godly in this present world. The retrospective view of the Christian, the prospective scan of the believer and the present educative effect that these should have upon his behavior and lifestyle. And that is the way that we should be seeking to express thanks to God with lives of obedience and lives that would show forth that we are being educated in the light of our indebtedness to what he has revealed of himself and what he will get. revealed to us more fully in His Son. First then, that retrospective view. That retrospective view takes us to the grace of God, and that takes us into eternity itself. into that which was purposed from all eternity in the mind of the triune Jehovah. And that which had God not Himself revealed it to us would have remained hidden in the recesses of His eternal mind and will. But from that revelation we learn that viewing mankind in his fallenness, before there was a speck of creation in being, before there was an angel created, never mind a man created, that the all prescient eye of God viewing mankind nevertheless in his fallenness and in the repulsiveness of his fallenness as only the eye of a holy God can see that repulsiveness, nevertheless determined within himself on the salvation of a people from that fallen mass of mankind. Purposed it within the community of the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Particularly in the Son to be the mediator of a covenant of grace. And within that framework to be the one who would come in our nature taking bone for bone and flesh for flesh. And in that nature stand as the surety of his people and meet the claims of the holy law of God upon them. In such a way that the holiness of God being assuaged and satisfied the mercy and the kindness and the love of God could flow freely towards them. Now that purpose of God as I say would have remained hidden but for the fact that God has himself made it known to us in his truth And even from the moment that Adam fell, that revelation began to be made. You find it in Genesis 3, verse 20 I think. See to the woman that was to come to bruise the head of the serpent. The promise of Christ. And there is an unfolding of that revelation of God line upon line and precept upon precept throughout the era of the Old Testament. But our text speaks of that grace of God, the gracious purposes of God, the thoughts that were in the mind of God towards sinners as he viewed them in his own son. the gracious purposes that were there, the purposes of showing favor and loving kindness to the hell deserving, because He so willed it. That revelation, a gradual unfolding of it, but notice the text speaks of the grace of God appearing. Now the word appearing there speaks of it coming to full light, as it were. The revelation was unfolding, but it comes to full light with the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. the trebucheting forth of the light. Whatever revelation had been there before, it is an obscurity in comparison with what comes to light now. It comes to light particularly with the miracle of the Incarnation. God the Son taking human nature into union with Himself in the womb of Mary. That human nature, the Father prepares it. There is the creative power of the Holy Spirit engaged in it, but the Son takes it to Himself so that That which is born of Mary is, Scripture says, that holy thing. It is God and man. It is God manifest in the flesh. It is God in our nature. It is Emmanuel, God with us. God has pushed into the confines of human history in that great miracle, taking our nature into union with His own person. in His Son. But notice, great as that miracle is, and there is no greater, it was with a purpose that He came. And that purpose is unfolded to us particularly when you look at verse 14 of this text. to give Himself for us that He might redeem us from all iniquity and purify to Himself a peculiar people, sellers of good works. He came with the purpose that He might die. He took our nature that He might die that awesome death that we have sought to be mindful of yesterday. Because it's there that the purpose of God's grace come to light. For he that knew no sin is made to be sin for us. For he bears in his own passion that wrath and curse that is due to his people as sinners. For he exhausts that wrath in himself. where he satisfies the claim of divine justice in all its precepts and in all its penal claims upon his people. Where he magnifies the law and makes it honourable. Where he brings forth a righteousness greater than Adam could ever have brought forth had he remained unsinned. That would have been the righteousness of a mere creature. But here we have the righteousness of one who is God in our nature and therefore a righteousness of an infinite quality. Here you have a foundation upon which the vilest sinner can found. Here you have the righteousness that God requires. As the holiness of God against which we have sinned is an infinite height, so The righteousness that is required must be of a similar nature. And it is only in Christ that this righteousness can be found. The righteousness of a creature can only be finite, but the righteousness of one who is God is infinite. And it is brought forth in the nature in which we have transgressed. It is brought forth in that very nature because that is where the law requires it. And so He is not only God but man. And the righteousness that He brought forth is not only sufficient in its infinitude, but it is suitable as being in the nature in which we have sinned. It is the unfolding there of the grace of God, the favour of God at great cost to Himself. that favour to sinners in His Son, in the cross. So it's the coming of Christ in the incarnation, but the totality of the first coming is involved in this unfolding of His gracious purposes. He came to redeem a people from iniquity. And it's not just the incarnation, it's not even just the finished work of the cross. He still finds his people as enemies even after that great revelation. But you see it was to redeem them and he must break down the rapports of pride and opposition that are still in the heart of his fallen people. He must make himself known to them. He must by His Spirit and His truth convince them of their sin and misery. He must enlighten their minds in the knowledge of Christ. He must draw their affections. He must make them willing so that in their nothingness they are enabled to close in with the finished work of Christ. The whole of that work of redemption. It's there that you have the unfolding and, as it were, the grace of God, the revelation of the grace of God coming to its flower, as it were, in Christ, in the Incarnation, in the Atonement, and in the effectual call of His people. and in the gathering of them to Himself, justifying, sanctifying, all of that is in it. All of God. That is what we learn as we look back to what He has done and is still doing in the lives of His people. We bring nothing of our own by which we could take credit to ourselves. And then there is the looking forward also. And you have that particularly in verse 13. Looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ. And the sense of the word appearing here Just as in the first instance it was the shining forth in the midst of darkness of that knowledge of God's grace, so now what you have here is looking to that blessed hope and the glorious appearing, the glorious unfolding, the glorious unveiling of the glory of God, the glory of the risen Christ. The glory is already there, but the appearing now speaks of the unveiling of it to your eyes, believers. That's the sense of this word appearing in verse 13. The unveiling of what is already there. It needs that we might behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, in the face of the exalted Christ and the glorified Christ. When He was on the earth, there were those who could say, we beheld as glorious of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. But nevertheless, that glory was, as it were, hidden. It was veiled in our nature. You needed the spectacles of faith. They needed those spectacles to see that glory of His deity. There was on the mountain of transfiguration that appearance for a short time, that transfiguring glory that broke through, as it were, that veil of the flesh. But by and large, there was the veiling of that glory. but when He shall appear in the second time, He shall appear not in humiliation, but in glory. There shall be the unveiling of what He is. And also this sense of the unveiling, not just that the covering as it were is taken away, that which would have hidden, but the eyes of his people are given a 20-20 vision in that day also. How often we have to confess that their spiritual cataracts that stand in the way of seeing him as he is How often our faith, the eye of faith is clouded. The things of this world come in and they stand in the way of our beholding that glory. But there is the promise that not only will He appear in glory, but that His people will be given, as it were, that perception, that ability to perceive Him as He is. They shall see Him as He is, says John. and they shall be like him, conformed in some way to the character of the risen one. Never deified, remaining creature, but filled as full as it is possible, as a creature can be with the grace of God for the enjoyment of Him into all eternity. So the believer in this present world is to be living with that blessed hope. And it is not a maybe hope. It is a sure hope because it is founded upon the Word of God and the counsel of the Lord that stands forever sure, seers. He who has fulfilled the covenant conditions will surely lay hold of all the promises and among these promises is that He will come in glory and that He will gather His people to Himself. So there is this looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour. two passions, but the glory of God in the face of the exalted Jesus Christ. Well, these are the two viewpoints, the retrospective one and the prospective one that are there for the believer. But these are to have an educative effect in his life. The grace of God should always have that educative effect upon our lives. The grace of God should have a constraining effect. The love of God constraining him in a path of obedience as a debtor to the grace of Christ. And that grace And that educative grace has a negative side to it and it has a positive side to it. The negative side is there in verse 12. Teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts. That we should deny ungodliness and worldly lusts. denying ungodliness, that's a sense of that there should be, if I can invent a word, a disrelishing of all that is contrary to the mind of God and all that is totally centered upon this world alone. Christ, remember, spoke Those savour us not the things that be of God, but those that be of men. Well, it should be a disrelishing, a dis-savouring of those that be of men, alone as it were. It should be, in other words, it should be a shunning of all evil. Indeed, as Scripture puts it, it should be a shunning of the appearance of all evil. And that's what ought to be in your life and mine if we are professing that we are dedicated to that grace that has been revealed to us and that we look forward. What lack of thankfulness if that is not our aim. But there is also the positive side to this teaching. Teaching us that we should deny ungodliness and worldly lusts. but teaching us positively that we should live soberly, righteously and godly in this present world. And we can take these three in the reverse order, that there should be a godly living and the sense there is that we should be seeking to live that relationship with God, seeking to live in such a way that the relationship with God is right. And that brings us to the commandments. That brings us to the first table of the law. That brings us to commandments one to four. This is what is the way that thankfulness is to be expressed. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. All form of idolatry. All the ways in which we would seek to be taken up with material things that would take a place in our hearts. that only God should have, we are to seek that these be put away. Everything that would seek to become an idol that would draw me away from God being my chiefest joy and my chiefest pleasures. The third commandment comes into it. Everything by which he makes himself known should be something that We should delight in, and anything that is contrary, that we should shun. The Sabbath day should be a day set apart, not in a legalistic sense, but in us seeking that we might have a preparation of heart to delight in his Sabbath, and to delight in his ordinance, and delight in his word, and to keep the appointment with himself, and to meet with himself, and to hear his word, and to lay it up in our minds and hearts. and to seek to live it in our lives. That is what is meant here when he speaks of godliness. It is the relationship with himself and particularly as it is expressed in these first four commandments. And the same thing when he speaks of that we should live righteously, that speaks of a relationship with one another. That speaks of the commandments, the second table of the law, from the 5th right through to the 9th, the 10th, as it were, sums up, it's a speaking of the two of them together. That you've got relationships within the family, you've got the relationship with authority, all that the Lord has established in authority over us, whether it be schools, whether it be police, whether it's the judiciary, There should be a respecting of the authority of God in these establishments within society. There should be the opposite of theft. We should be seeking to promote the good of one another in material welfare. There should be the opposite of an adulterous relationship. a chasteness in our relationship with one another, and so on. The whole gamut of the commandments, the relationship of man with man that is set down in these commandments comes into this requirement of righteous living. And then it speaks. Look at how close it comes. It starts off with a relationship with God, Godliness, It comes to a relationship with our fellows, righteousness, but then it comes to sobriety. And that's not just that we should be, that we should refrain from the bottle or refrain from drugs, that's not the sense of sobriety here. The sense of sobriety here is self-control. That we should live in the light of our indebtedness to what is revealed and what is yet to be, what we have yet to anticipate. of the grace of God that we should live in the light of our indebtedness before my own conscience in such a way as to seek to refrain from ill and to walk in the path that is good. It's sometimes more easy when you're dealing with others and they're looking at you, but it's a relationship with ourselves. before God that is mentioned here, going into the secret place because we delight in it, not because we are seen. There is a character in one of Shakespeare's I think by the name of Laertes and the words that are put in his mouth, this above all to thine own self be true and thou canst not then be false to any man. And you can see that if our lives are right as it were before our own conscience, they are more likely to be right before our fellows as well. But all of that comes into it if we are to be living lives of thanksgiving, lives of... In the light of our indebtedness, the standard is high. The standard for the believing, the professing believer is a high standard. Be ye holy, says Jehovah, for I am holy. We have it within our power to bring the standard of God into the gutters if we live lives of licentiousness when we profess that we are His. Standard is high, but oh how thankful we should be because we know our own hearts and we know how prone we are to fail in these standards. And we know how often we have failed in the past, and how ashamed we must be as we consider what is required of us. That there is enabling grace. And not only that there is enabling grace, but that there is forgiving grace. Grace to enable us day by day. But yes, a throne of grace that we may obtain mercy also. A glorious promise to the contrite believer as he finds how far short he comes if we confess our sins. He is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness and hitherto Hitherto, despite all that we find in ourselves, that comes so short of what ought to be there, the Lord has kept us. And that is cause for thanksgiving. Let us pray. Hitherto has the Lord helped us, and hitherto has the Lord kept us from bringing any outward shame upon His name. Despite all that we are in ourselves, and despite all that we could be, O Lord, we would praise Thee. For how much is hidden not only from others but so often from ourselves, of the deceitfulness of our hearts. But O that thou would lift up our eyes to thyself and the hills of thy grace more and more! There alone is our strength, there alone are we revived and quickened, there alone through grace are we enabled to delight in thee. and to say truly, Whom have I in the heavens high, but Thee, O Lord, alone? And in the earth whom I desire, besides Thee there is none. Thy people desire to be unshackled from the things of time and sense which would occupy them and obsess them and hold them downwards. O, Thy people would desire to be aloft in the wing of faith, We pray that thou would grant us to be found much in thy truth, much in meditation of the finished work of Christ, much in meditation of the miracle of his incarnation, much in meditation of the great miracle of effectual calling and of regenerating grace, and much in consideration of that blessed hope that still awaits thy people. When we lose our vision, we perish. But, O, keep that vision alive in our souls and help us to know Thy constraining grace and help us to know that love that would channel us away from sin, the expulsive power of that new affection in the souls of Thy people. Heart us this night with Thy blessing. Bless this congregation, and dear, bless Thy truth to them, and give them an appetite more and more for the things that be of God. And the glory shall be Thine in Christ. Amen.