Let us hear the word of the living God as it's found in Titus chapter 2, starting in verse 11. For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present age. looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for himself his own special people, zealous for good works. This is the Word of God. Christ is our Passover lamb. He is our sin offering. Here's our atonement. When Christ, the blessed son of God, a lamb without spot or blemish, as John said, behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. When he shed his precious blood on the cross of Calvary, it was a substitutionary death, a vicarious sacrifice, a propitiation for our sins that took away the wrath of God that we deserve. He died for us in our place, the innocent, for the guilty, the just in the place of the unjust. And so 1 Peter 2 verse 2 says he is the propitiation for our sin, the one who takes away the wrath of God from us. 1 John 4 verse 10 says, this is love, not that we love God, but that he loved us. And he gave himself as an atoning sacrifice for our sin. Raymond Lowe, one of the first missionaries dedicated to the Muslim world, was born in 1132 into a wealthy family off the coast of Spain. And his early life was spent in debauchery and, as he later put it, utter immorality. Yet he was recognized by his peers in Spain as a young man of brilliance and promise. During his early 30s, Raymond was born again as a result of a vision when he looked upon the Saviour hanging upon the cross, his blood trickling from his hands and feet and brow, looking reproachfully at him. As a result, Raymond Lowell dedicated his life to Christ, devoted himself to the ministry of winning Muslims to Christ, and he became a missionary to the Muslims, dying a martyr's death at age 80. while taking the Gospel to Muslims. He had almost 50 years of ministry in the field before dying as a martyr. It was his vision of the cross and the blood of Christ that led him to take up the cross and to shed his own blood in the service of the Saviour. Now Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf was born into one of Europe's leading families in the year 1700. And he grew up in an atmosphere of Bible reading, hymn singing, and prayer. He excelled at school. He seemed to possess all the qualities for national leadership. He even studied at the University of Wittenberg, at the very heart of the Reformation. Zinzendorf then embarked on a grand tour of Europe, going to the museums and visiting palaces and universities, while visiting the art museum in Dusseldorf. The young Count von Zinzendorf had a deeply moving experience which changed the rest of his life. He looked at a portrait named Behold the Man aka Homo. Behold the Man. And it was a portrait of the suffering saviour wearing a crown of thorns. And beneath was written an inscription. This I did for thee. What hast thou done for me? And Count Nicholas van Zinzendorf, despite his privileged Christian upbringing, admitted, I've loved him for a long time, but I have never actually done anything for him. From now on, I will do whatever he leads me to do. And it was this testimony that I heard on the 3rd of April 1977 from Reverend Rex Matthew at the Stur Kinnicore, the cinnamon pines. I hadn't gone to a church, I thought I was going to a cinema, but the local Baptist church had hijacked the cinema for an evangelistic rally. So I was ambushed with the gospel, and the first time I heard the gospel, I went forward, surrendered my life, and was called to missions. And it was this message of this portrait which shows Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf that shows me. Well, that was not all that Rex Matthews said. He went further saying, Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf went on to found a spiritual community on his estate, Herrenhut. And from that estate, the brethren developed. And they started a prayer meeting that lasted 150 years. And can you imagine? 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, for 150 years. Generations of people, the brethren in this Heron Hood community, kept this ongoing prayer chain going for 150 years. And during that time, that community sent out 2,500 missionaries to Greenland's icy mountains, to Solong's Isle, to India, and even to the Cape. to the Hottentots. The oldest mission station in the Southern Hemisphere dates from the 1730s. George Schmidt came from Heddenhut, one of the brethren, sent out from that very prayer gathering to what is today called Hennodendorf. And he had the joy of baptising the first Hottentots and giving them the first Bibles and bringing them to the Lord. In different ways, this story about the fruits that flowed from this challenge of this I did for thee, what is now done for me, was communicated that night on the 3rd of April 1977 to me. And he also mentioned Francis Ridley Havergill, the British musician, devotional writer, who visited the same art museum in Dusseldorf, but that was in January 1858. And while gazing upon the same picture of Christ, Francis Ridley Havergill was struck by the words, this I did for thee, what hast thou done for me? and deeply moved, she wrote some lines of poetry which she was not satisfied with, crumpled it up, threw it into the fire, but it bounced out of the fire grid and lay on the side. Her father found it, uncrumpled it, was quite impressed, and wrote a melody to accompany this poem. And this was published in 1860. I gave my life for thee. This launched the hymn career of Francis Ridley Havergill. You must have sung a lot of Francis Ridley Havergill's hymns. I'll give you a few names, see if you recognize these names. Who is on the Lord's side? That was one of hers. I'm trusting the Lord Jesus like a river glorious and take my life and let it be. Which was a hymn that they were singing that very night that I was converted to, one of her hymns. And the hymn that her father put the music to of this crumpled up paper included this verse. I gave my life for thee. my precious blood I shed, that thou my ransom be, and quicken from the dead. I gave, I gave my life for thee, what hast thou given for me? Now you can understand this passage that we began with. For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lust, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present age. Looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of a great God and Savior Jesus Christ who gave Himself for us. That He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works. We were saved to serve. We are blessed in order to be a blessing. We are forgiven that we might share the message of forgiveness with others. We are to be hosepipes, not buckets. We're not going to store God's blessings for ourselves. We're going to be channels of His blessings. To whom much is given, much is required. To whom much more is given, much more is required. And it's so important to understand that God has redeemed us to be zealous for good works. He did a lot for us. And we should do a lot for him. Not in order to earn his grace, because grace is free. It cannot be earned. It is given freely from God, the grace of God, as our Luthero's window declares with the five great solas of the Reformation, the great battle hymns of the Reformation. Sola scriptura, scripture alone is the ultimate authority. Sola gratia, salvation is by the grace of God alone. Sola fide, salvation can be received by faith alone. God works, lest anyone can boast. Even the faith itself is a gift of God, so there's no room for boasting. And Solus Christus, Christ alone is the head of the church. Sully, dear glory, everything should be done to the glory of God alone. Not unto us, not unto us, O Lord, but to thy alone should all the glory be given. But God has saved us. to serve. He has converted us and called us into a service. We are enlisted into his army worldwide. We are part of his family, part of his church, part of his work worldwide. Every Christian has their part to play. We all have a unique calling. God has no moulds. There is no one way of doing it. It is so important to recognize when you look at the victorious Christians God has used through the ages, none of them fit in the mold. They're all different. They're unique. And God has a different, special, unique calling for each and every person. The night I was converted, the pastor, Rex Matthew, the guest speaker, made this comment. He says, if God has kept you alive thus far, it is for a reason. And indeed, if you can look back in your life and think of some time when God intervened to save your or your parents' life, you've got to know He's kept you alive for a reason. What is that reason? And it's so important for us to discover that reason. And His reason is that we should be zealous for good works, that He has prepared for each one of us. This inspired William Carey in a sermon which launched the modern missionary movement. Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God. Because God is great, we should honour him with great faith and great obedience and great service. And therefore, expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God. Step out of our comfort zone. Be bold. Be brave for God. know that God has saved us for a reason. To whom much is given, much is required, and to whom much more is given, much more is required. And all of us are in that much more category. We've all been blessed with so much. So much resources and so much access to so much of the treasures of the faith. And we also have so much more freedom than most people in the world have ever enjoyed. and we need to use this for the glory and the honor of God. Can we accept Jesus Christ as Savior without following Him as Lord? There's a group of people in the world today who deny what they call Lordship Salvation. They say that that's a false teaching, that you don't need the Lordship of Christ, you just need Him as Savior. Just accept Jesus as your personal Savior. But there's only one Savior, and that's the Lord Jesus Christ. We cannot accept a salvation without submitting to him as Lord. It's unthinkable. Just think for a moment of the premier picture of salvation in the Old Testament. The people of Israel are slaves in Egypt. Moses comes with a message, let my people go. Moses, in his conflict with Pharaoh, is in some ways a picture of Christ fighting for our salvation against Satan. Would it have been sufficient for Moses to just proclaim to the Hebrews in Egypt, you are spiritually free. Okay, you're still going to wear the shackles and the chains and be whipped and all that and still have to make bricks without straw for Pharaoh, but somehow you're free spiritually. Would that have sufficed? No, they had to come out of Egypt. They had to be freed from bondage and slavery. They had to pass through the Red Sea. and ultimately it wasn't enough to wander around the wilderness, they had to cross the River Jordan, and the River Jordan many people depict in hymns as death, crossing the River Jordan, but no, the River Jordan doesn't symbolise the end of your earthly life, it symbolises crossing into the victorious Christian life of conflict and occupying and taking the promised land. And so, in a sense, while you could think of crossing the Red Sea as baptism into the Lord's Church. Crossing the Jordan is a sense of getting that second blessing, entering in for service now where you are taking the land, you're doing what God has called you to do. But plainly, salvation needs to be salvation from sin. We have been saved, we are being saved, we will be saved. There's a past tense, there's a present tense, and there's a future tense to our salvation. And those who just have a past tense to their salvation, I have been saved, are missing so much of the salvation story. Notice that while we often proclaim the gospel of salvation, Jesus proclaimed the gospel of the kingdom. Now the Gospel of the Kingdom is about the King, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords. The Gospel of the Kingdom is much greater than the Gospel of Salvation. The Gospel of Salvation is an important part of the Gospel of Kingdom, but it's a smaller part. The Gospel of Kingdom is so much bigger and greater than me and my salvation. Eastern religions are obsessed with attaining their own Nevada, or their own better reincarnation as the case may be, whether you talk about Hinduism or Buddhism and so on. But Eastern religions are very much consumed with looking inward. Meditation, think of the Buddhist lotus position, the Hindu meditations and so on. It's very self-focused. That's not Christianity. Christianity is not obsessed with me. The Christian message is, take up your cross, forsake the world, deny yourself, follow me. The Christian message is the opposite of selfishness. It's not being self-obsessed. It's denying ourself. It's forgetting ourself. It's abandoning ourself. If anything, having our selfishness nailed to the cross, crucified, died to the old life, born again to the new life, it's a complete transformation. And therefore, the picture that so many people have today of, I raise my hand, I prayed the prayer, now I'm saved. Or I walked the aisle, I got baptised, I'm accepting church membership, now I'm saved. I have been saved, past tense. And there's a story about someone who was asked to give his testimony at church and he came the next week and said he's sorry, he wanted to give his testimony but his testimony had been eaten by the rats. He kept it in the attic and his testimony had been eaten by the rats. Now if your testimony can be eaten by the rodents, then it's not much of a testimony. A testimony should not be what God did for me so many decades ago. A test me should be past, present, continuous, and future tense oriented. I have been saved. I am being saved. I will be saved. I have been saved. I am saved from the guilt of my sin. We have two major problems, sin and sins. Sins are our actions. I need forgiveness for my actions, sins. But there's another problem, that's my nature, sin. I need deliverance from my sin nature. So the problem is not just sins, but sin. And this is one of the problems with Catholicism, and what Martin Luther complained about, is that In Catholicism, in the Middle Ages, especially the way it was being carried out by Johann Tetzel and these other salesmen extraordinary with indulgences, is that you go and you get forgiveness for your sins, but you don't get salvation from your nature. You have salvation in sin and every week you go back to the confessional and you confess your sins and you go the next week and do the same problems again and then you come back at your slate cleaned and then you go out and you sin again. He said that is salvation in sin, that's not salvation from sin. But we are not only justified, we're also being sanctified and one day we will be glorified. Sanctification speaks of my ongoing experience today of being delivered from the nature of sin. Justification is a legal term speaking about the past tense having your guilt wiped out. It's a judicial term where the judge declares not guilty. So justification by faith is a precious doctrine to reform Christians. But that only deals with the past tense of your salvation. You've got to go on to sanctification. All reform has emphasized it too. It's not sufficient to just have a technical salvation that's head knowledge. I have been justified by faith. That's where it starts. That's not where it ends. That's just the beginning. Sanctification is a daily, ongoing walk with the Lord where through Bible study, through devotional prayer, through following the Lord, responsiveness in our discipleship walk, response to counseling and all the rest, I am being daily, furthermore, redeemed, renewed in my mind, having our minds transformed by the renewing of the Word. Sanctification is our ongoing, present, continuous experience as a Christian. And one day, Glorification. When we finally leave this earth and are promoted to heaven, then we are delivered even from the presence of sin, even from the temptation to sin. And so, in a real sense, your salvation is not complete if you do not have the understanding of past tense, present continuous tense, and future tense. I have been saved. I've been justified. My guilt has been forgiven. I am being saved. sanctification, progressively delivered from the power of sin. My nature is being renewed and transformed by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit. And one day I will be saved, glorification. And so when we think about the blood of Christ and the cross of Christ, the blood of Christ deals with what I've done. It cleanses us from all our sins. But the cross of Christ deals with what we are. It deals with our nature. It deals with our capacity for sin. Because the cross, when the Lord says, take up your cross and follow me, he's not just meaning wear a cross as an ornament, as an identification symbol, although that can be useful. And it doesn't just mean having a Christian bumper sticker or a nice Christian t-shirt. Taking up your cross meant dying to the world, to the flesh, to the devil. Taking up your cross in the Bible times was taking up an instrument of death. I mean, remember, what was the cross? The cross was an instrument of death. It meant to the people in the Roman world what the guillotine meant in France until they abandoned it in the 1970s. and what the gas chamber and the electric chair means in America. It's a form of execution, or what the gallows meant in Great Britain when they actually had the death penalty. I think they still have it technically for treason and piracy. But other than that, they haven't practiced death penalty in quite a few years in Britain. But that's what we're talking about, the gallows, the electric chair, the guillotine. The cross was not just meant to be a nice ornament. an ugly, torturous instrument of not just death but terror, to intimidate the people that the Romans were crushing, that they would not rise up in resistance against the Roman authority. And so to take up the cross meant to be willing to die, to die to the world, to sin, to the flesh, to the devil. The cross deals with my nature. In other words, mortifying, to put it nicely, or killing, putting to death my sinful nature, saying no to my selfish desires. saying yes to my duty and my calling and to my God. And so the blood of Christ deals with what we've done, cleanses us from our sins, but the cross of Christ deals with what we aren't, strikes at our capacity for sin, our very will and nature. And the return of Christ will deal with our very inclinations and remove even the presence and temptations of sin. And so, as Christians, we need to understand what it is to be saved, to continue to be saved, and to be saved in the future, past, present, and future sense. Justification, sanctification, glorification. Sin is serious. It is far more serious than any disease or virus. It's far more serious than any poisonous snake. It's far more serious than landmines and unexploded bombs. You wouldn't want to play with those things. It's more defiling than dirt. It's more dangerous than unexploded bomb. And it's far more life-threatening than any deadly disease, and it's far more insidious than any virus, and affects 100% of the people on this planet. It is a curse. And we are told, seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him. And to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are my ways your ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. Read that in Isaiah 55. And so, as Christians, we know that the cross is the door to eternal life. The gate to heaven is narrow, and the gate is the cross. You cannot get to heaven without following our Lord Jesus Christ, and you have to go through the cross. As in Pilgrim's Progress, it was at the cross that the burden of Pilgrim rolled away. You have to go through the cross. The cross is also a requirement of discipleship. Jesus said to his disciples, if anyone would come after me, he must deny himself. Take up his cross and follow me. There is a way back to God from the dark paths of sin. There's a door that is open and we may go in. At Calvary's cross is where you begin when you come as a sinner to Jesus. I know a fount where sins are washed away. I know a place where night has turned to day. Burdens are lifted, blind eyes made to see there's a wonder working power in the cross of Calvary. Our salvation depends upon Christ's atonement alone and not upon our attainment. It is faith in the fact of Christ's finished work, not my temporary feelings, not my emotions, not my feeble attempts. Salvation is by Christ alone, by grace alone, received by faith alone. But the precious blood of Christ can purify our conscience, and redeem us, and set us free, and cleanse us from all sin, and obtain forgiveness and freedom, and sanctify us, and give us complete freedom to go into the presence of God on a daily basis, and win us the victory against the world, the flesh, and the devil. He breaks the power of canceled sin. He sets the prisoner free. His blood can make the foulest clean. His blood availed for me. And so Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. We are lost. He is the way. We are deceived. He is the truth. We are dead in our trespasses and He is the life. He is the way, the truth, and life. And so we have to be committed to discipleship, following Jesus' example, for he is the way. We need to be consistently obedient, obeying his teaching, because he is the truth. And we need constant fellowship, abiding in Christ's love, because he is the life. When last did God speak to you? What did he say? Did you obey? If someone who did not know Jesus followed in your footsteps, Would he find Jesus? What kind of example are you? God shows us a way, but we must do the walking. If we have a proper understanding of the problem of sin, we will not be satisfied with anything less than salvation by the blood atonement of Christ on the cross of Calvary. Not only forgiven from the penalty of sin, but victory over the power of sin. not only justification by faith but sanctification through the means of grace, through the power of the Holy Spirit, through our devotional life, through the reading of the Word of God, through being in accountability partnerships, being part of a fellowship, following with others who are taking up the cross, following Christ, forsaking the world. This is one of the greatest aspects of the Reformation. That we are not saved in sin, but we are saved from sin. Not a religion, but a relationship with God through Christ. Israel could not fulfill its calling by remaining in bondage in Egypt, and we cannot effectively serve today if we remain conformed to this world, in bondage to its sins, believing its lies, clinging to its idolatries, and attempting to accept the benefits of Jesus, Savior, while denying His authority as Lord over all areas of life. Jesus is either Lord of all, or He is not really Lord at all. The only savior is the Lord Jesus Christ. Love so amazing, so divine, demands my life, my soul, my all. Let us pray. Lord God, we want to thank you and praise you for who you are and for what you have done. You are our creator. You are our savior and our Lord. You're the eternal judge. We praise you, Lord God, for all that you are and for all that you do. We praise you, Lord God, for your matchless grace and mercy and love towards us. Undeserved favour. We pray, Lord God, that you would deepen our faith and widen our vision and help guide us to be more faithful and effective in your service. We pray it in Jesus' precious and holy name. Amen. Let us stand and let us sing 134 when I survey the wondrous cross. Let's make this. in a real prayer of our heart. In 134, may I never boast except on the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.