Please be seated. I'm going to let you sit because I want to set up the reading of God's Word that we'll be thinking about this afternoon before we actually read it. A couple of months ago I was working through the book of Titus and read a couple of passages. They'll be the passages we'll be looking at this afternoon and it struck me Because these passages are often quoted, particularly in systematic theology studies, because they make certain points that we want proof texts for, but I was struck by the fact that they really are connected by two introductory phrases. The one begins, for the grace of God has appeared, and the other, But when the goodness and loving kindness of God, our Savior, appeared. And as we'll see, those are both references to the same historic events. But it made me link those two in my mind and then think about how we might understand them and benefit from them more in the context of each other. than simply plucking phrases from these verses out in order to prove a theological point as valid and helpful as that might be. So with all of that in mind, let's look first at Titus chapter 2, beginning in verse 11. Again, I hope these words will sound familiar to any of you who are regular Bible readers. Titus chapter 2, 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. And then if you turn to chapter 3, maybe you don't have to turn. In some editions they might appear on the same two pages, facing pages. Chapter 3, verse 4, reading down to verse 8. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. The saying is trustworthy and I want you to insist on these things so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. These things are excellent and profitable for people." Just note those last words. These things are excellent and profitable. You look at an Amazon review, you want a book or a movie that has five stars. maybe four and a half will do, but you're not going to waste your time and your money on books that get one star, or movies that have two stars. I mean, what's the point? We want things that are excellent and profitable, and we're told right here that these things are. These passages, and you kind of get a sense of this just as you read them. Again, if you're a Christian with some maturity, some exposure to the Bible, they just resonate on all kinds of doctrinal levels, but they're an example of Paul's reduction of the gospel, his reduction of the Christian faith. Now you should say, wait a minute, did he say what I just thought I heard him say? The reduction of the gospel, isn't that a bad thing? You know, that's what liberals do, right? They decide they don't like this doctrine, so they get rid of it. And they don't like this doctrine or that ethical principle, so they just clear off the things they don't like and whatever they're left with, the reduction of Christianity, that's what they believe and that's what they proclaim. Well, I'm not thinking of that kind of reduction of Christianity. I'm thinking about a reduction as it is used in the context of cooking. Now, I'm not a cook. Some of you are, some of you aren't, but you know that a reduction in cooking is when you take a mixture of spices and other kinds of flavors and aromas and you mix them all together and then you simmer them, sometimes for hours, And there's evaporation, the moisture leaves, and the mixture gets richer and more flavorful. And if you get a sauce, for example, in a restaurant that has been reduced, then it's going to be really, really good. It's going to smell good, and it's going to taste better. And here I think Paul is reducing his view of the gospel in that way. I mean, think about it. We have 13 letters written by Paul. maybe 14 I'm still holding out for the Pauline authorship of Hebrews. We'll have to wait to heaven to find that one out. And if you put all of those letters together in a big pot and you simmer them for years in your life and in your mind and boil them down to half a dozen or so verses. That's what we have in these passages. They are so rich, so blended, so wonderfully aromatic and tasty. Oh boy, we're ready, aren't we, right now. So that's what's going on here. We have concentrated gospel, concentrated biblical theology, and it's designed to be food for our soul. so that we, as we eat it and as we digest it, are going to become ourselves an aroma to God, a worship, a sweet-smelling savor in his life. I don't know that we think about, you know, we are great theologians, Orthodox Presbyterians, aren't we? Well, at least we have the reputation. We're not cooks. We don't savor and taste and explore. Well, that's what we're going to do today. So let's ask God to bless us in that effort. Again, we're thinking back to Sunday school, Lord God, where we learned. who you are, what God you are, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three eternal persons in one single God. It does stretch our mind, it does blow our mind, but we thank you that it is your good purpose to redeem us as your people and now again we're asking you Holy Spirit since it was you that gave these words through the Apostle now we need you to help us receive them and be blessed by them as we think about them a little bit this afternoon and we do pray that they will be wonderful in our spiritual experience that the tastes and the smells will be so flavorful, so wonderful, that our own lives will be affected by those things. So please bless us and help us, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen. So I wanted to look at this in terms of the past and the present and the future of our salvation. Paul uses that word salvation and And, you know, there are many words that are used in connection with our salvation. Salvation is really the big umbrella. That's the broadest term that the Apostle uses to speak about how God brings sinners fallen in Adam and condemned to eternal death and hell into eternal life, a life of fellowship with this triune God that we've been talking about so far today. So we're going to think about what God has done in the past for our salvation. Some elements in this wonderful sauce relate to the past. Other things relate to the present, our current experience of salvation, and then even looking forward to the future that God has in store for us. So that's going to be kind of the way we look at it. But again, I want you to think about the blend, how wonderfully Paul blends the flavors of redemption accomplished, the flavor of redemption applied. And again, we're not inclined to do that. We tend to pull things apart and sometimes even isolate things. We need to see them as they're interconnected. So let's think first of all for a few minutes about the past work of God's salvation, this royal appearing of Jesus the Messiah, and think about its redemptive historical significance as the climactic expression, the climactic revelation of the saving grace of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 2.11, for the grace of God has appeared. 3.4, but when the goodness and loving-kindness of God our Savior appeared." The term for appearance here is epiphany and sometimes we use that term in our common speech. It's when the little light bulb in the cloud above your head goes on. It's like, I get it. But here it's the idea that something appears in glory manifesting itself. And this epiphany, of course, refers to the arrival of Jesus on the plane of human history. It was a arrival that was predicted by the Old Testament prophets from Adam, Moses, all the way on forward, looking forward to this one who would come, who would be the Lord's anointed, would be the servant of the Lord. It was announced at his birth, the angel sang, that the one born to Mary and tucked away in that manger in Bethlehem was the Lord of glory. Not an outward obvious glory, but the glory of God manifest in time. It was recognized by the wise men as they came from far to find the one who is the king of the Jews. And we still celebrate that particular event as epiphany. And so that is the idea here. We have the arrival of Jesus of Nazareth in human history as the manifestation of God's mercy and goodness. This arrival brings the king to the fore, the one promised to be the son of David, and the manifestation of his kingdom rule. And when you think about Jesus' earthly ministry, he taught about the kingdom Mark summarizes it, Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God, the good news, and what was it? The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe the gospel. The things that he did, the healings, the casting out of the demons, all were designed to show the presence of the kingdom of God, his redemptive rule in and through Jesus Christ. And as Paul says here, and as I said already, this epiphany is the climax of the many acts of grace and mercy that God had shown to his people up to that point. The generous and powerful love of God, as one writer puts it. Grace, goodness, loving kindness, And again, if you're familiar with your Bibles, if you've read the Psalms, you know how often those terms are used. God's grace, His unmerited favor, His disposition to show kindness to people who don't deserve it, indeed, who deserve the contrary. His goodness, His generosity, the way in which He lavishes His whole creation with His goodness. And that precious term God's covenant love, his loving kindness. When everything else falls apart and you go as far astray as you possibly can, where do you find your hope? It's in the loving kindness of God that doesn't change. For us, if people stop loving us and treating us well, we're pretty much inclined to write them off and find somebody else who will return our love, but not this God. despite Israel's waywardness over millennia, they could look to God and his loving kindness. So all those times that God showed it, whether it was the exodus from Egypt or the recovery from Babylon or any number of small scale mercies delivering from a plague or giving victory in battle or saving a city that's surrounded, all that goodness, all that grace, all that loving kindness has now appeared in the sending of Jesus, God's Son. And it is a revelation that brings salvation to all people. Here's the ethnic universalism of the New Covenant, not to Jews only. I mean, think about it. There'd be no gospel in the Sandwich Islands if it hadn't been that Jesus came into the world to bring salvation to all kinds of people all over the world. Frenchmen wouldn't have been spared. Certainly people in the United States wouldn't have heard the gospel if this gospel hadn't been sent out as part of the revelation, the manifestation, the epiphany of God's goodness and mercy in the sending of Jesus Christ. Now if we look at verse 14 in chapter 2, specifically Jesus is the divine Savior. This revelation is of the one 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 that one verse could make a whole sermon series as you take it bit by bit by bit, but again this is the reduction of the gospel. We get it all in one sentence. So we can't explore it, because I don't have that many weeks with you. But you're supposed to know the bigger story, so here you can just go, that smells so good. Praise God for this grace and mercy This Savior gave himself. You know, at this time of year, many are giving special concentration to the suffering of Jesus. He said he's the good shepherd that lays down his life for the flock. No one takes my life from me. It looks like everyone was taking his life from him, right? Jews, Pilate, Herod, they all wanted him dead. But he says, they don't take my life from me. I lay it down freely. Paul says, the life I now live, I live for the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Most of the gods that people worship, they want something from you. this God can't expect anything from you because you have nothing to give. He gives to you. This Savior who gave himself and so that idea of representative substitution for us and of ransom and redemption to redeem us, you know, when you pay a price to secure the liberation and the freedom of a slave or a prisoner. And then Paul refers just in passing to the subjective personal effects of the death and resurrection of Christ. Liberation from the bondage to lawlessness. Ever since Adam fell, we have pretended to be a law unto ourselves. And we hate it when other people act like they don't have to follow the rules. And yet, when it's our turn to follow the rules, we're perfectly happy. Or to rewrite the rules. And the more powerful any one of us become, the more inclined we are to rewrite the rules because we are in bondage to lawlessness. We are delivered through the coming of this savior and we are sanctified. We are made holy as we heed the gospel call to trust in him. Indeed, God, by the sending of Jesus, His Son, is creating a people that belong to Himself. Here, Paul's drawing on an idea out of Deuteronomy, where God said, you are my peculiar possession. You belong to me. You are my beloved people, like a husband and a wife belonging to one another. So this God has now finally, fully wedded us to His own Son. And we live that way, looking toward good works. And we'll come back to this in a moment. So those are the things that God accomplished through the sending of His Son. What about the present reality of God's salvation? Here we're thinking about the redeeming and transforming work of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity in the lives of God's people who are called from all the nations of the earth This is, again, the category we call the application of redemption in the hearts of those, in your hearts, as the Spirit takes what the Son has done in the past and brings it into your present. Whether you're raised in the covenant and you can't really remember a day when you didn't know and love the Savior, to someone who's lived the most reprobate imaginable life and then in a moment is turned around and converted and brought to the Lord. It's the same powerful working of the Spirit. So we read in 3.5, he saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness but according to his own mercy by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior. Again, so much in Paul is boiled down, it's reduced here to this rich, thick product of God's mercy, not by works that we have done in righteousness. We've been taught, if we've been taught properly, nothing in my hands I bring simply to thy cross I cling. Amazing grace, how sweet a sound that saved such a wonderful person as me. Oh no, wait a minute, that's not how it goes, is it? That saved a wretch like me. Mercy that first has to show me my wretchedness so that it will show me how much I need and how wonderful a savior I have in the Lord Jesus Christ. we have nothing that we can give to God. If we were not fallen and we did everything that we could possibly do, we would still just be like servants who have done their expected duty. But we're not faithful people. We are fallen and rebellious and so we must look to the sovereign undeserved mercy of God and that mercy is there Paul has said that Jesus died to purify for himself a people for his own possession. That was chapter 2 verse 14. Now he explains how that purification is accomplished by the renewing work of the Holy Spirit, which he describes as washing in regeneration the new birth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. And here I think Paul is kind of paraphrasing that great prophecy of the coming of the Spirit in the Old Testament, chapter 36 of Ezekiel. Listen to this expansion. You don't have to turn to it, just let it enter your ears. I will take you from the nations, says the Lord God, and gather you from all the countries, and bring you into your own land. And I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness. And from all your idols I will cleanse you." So here is the promise of purification, cleansing, all of that language from the rituals of the book of Leviticus. And I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God, and I will deliver you from all your uncleanness." Now when you boil that all down, what do you get? The washing of regeneration and the renewal of the Holy Spirit. And think about your condition by nature before you were worked upon by the Holy Spirit. Our conversion experiences take all kinds of form. Again, it may be almost imperceptible in the growth of a covenant child faithfully taught in the home. It's still regeneration, but it doesn't look like the outlaw biker who suddenly becomes a Christian under the power. But it's the same thing. We are dead like stones. Can these stones live? Can these bones live? only as God creates life. And that's the renewing work, the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. And it has the effect of making us pure people, purifying us for God's own purposes. And this Spirit that does this wonderful work was poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior. here a reference again to Pentecost when God poured out his spirit through the sun on the church all these things again each one you could tease it out in Paul's teaching and the teaching of the rest of scripture but it's all boiled down and brought together in these few phrases and so even preaching a message like this you know I at least my feeling is I want to just stop on each verse smell the aroma or just get a little taste of it. What a wonderful salvation we have through Christ. How rich and deep and broad and magnificent it is. And sadly we take it so much for granted. Are you a Christian? Yeah, sure. So what else is new? For Paul, everything is new. And then he describes the effect of this regeneration. As God says, I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, Paul again kind of paraphrasing in 2.11, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age. He purifies for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works." Sins are forgiven, indeed. There's a new relationship with God that is constituted, but we are also new people. That means we don't desire and pursue and are not consumed by those things that used to dominate our thinking. Now we have a different perspective and a different desire. We are purified for good works. He talks about us being trained by this work of the spirit. And here the word is very general word for education, including discipline, that leads to trained expertise. So don't think about studying medieval literature. Think about somebody who first teaches you, this is a basketball. You know what a basketball is for? It's for a game that's played on a court shaped like this. And what you do is you bounce the basketball up and down. But when you start bouncing the basketball up and down, the ball doesn't come up to your hand like it's supposed to. Sometimes it hits your foot and goes scooting across the floor, so you gotta get the basketball back again. And you keep at it and at it and at it and at it until you watch some of these college and professional basketball players that can do things while they're dribbling the ball that is completely amazing. We're being trained to become so skillful, so instinctive in our love for that which is holy and our ability to pursue that holiness in good works. Again, you can't learn it from a book. Somebody has to show you a basketball and tell you what it's for. Maybe you can read a book about basketball, maybe read a biography of of Michael Jordan, but that doesn't get the job done. The training requires repetition until we become instinctively godly. That of course takes a whole lifetime, but that's what this powerful working of God in our lives in the present is all about. Negatively, we are trained to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions. That's where we used to live our lives, ungodliness. God either is completely denied or he's just ignored. Most people just ignore him. And worldly passions, those winds of desire that blow us this way and that, seem to be overpowering in their strength. We can renounce them." Notice the word he uses. When you renounce something, you see and recognize its odiousness, its worthlessness, and you say, no more, I will not do that. This is not just stop sinning every now and again. This is like when you renounce your citizenship in one country so that you can become a loyal and faithful citizen of another country. You don't make that choice lightly. And yet, this discipline teaches us to renounce those destructive ways of thinking and living, those passions that used to be so life dominating. And on the positive side, we are trained, we are taught, to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives. Self-controlled, we're going to behave ourselves upright in our public life. We're going to be measured in an upright way, not twist and bent all as we are ordinarily. Remember those images in the Old Testament? Sometimes an angel will show up with a plumb line and measure everything. Why do they do that? Because everything is so bent that the bent people can't see how bent they are. Broken people don't recognize brokenness. So we're taught to live upright in our public life and godly is an expression of our relationship to God. We live in devotion to Him. Despite the gravitational pull of this present evil age, and that sin that continues to dwell within us, the new human being in Christ, which is the real you now, if you are a Christian, is enabled by the Holy Spirit, who is the one who is in you, who is greater than the one in the world, to more and more consistently live the kind of lives that are described here. When you look at the Westminster Standards, and I won't refer to them, but the catechisms, when they talk about either repentance or sanctification, the last sentence always has to do with a new desire to pursue good works. So we are not redeemed by our works. but we cannot claim to know this God and have experienced this kind of transformation unless our lives are ethically as well as spiritually brand new. That's why it's so appalling that in our contemporary day we tell people you can know God and you can worship God and you don't have to stop doing what you did before you were a Christian. That's not an option. much less to devote ourselves to the kind of kindness and generosity and helpfulness that good works often describe in the New Testament. So in the present the Spirit transforms us and then he trains us for this new way of life. Again, it's all boiled down here. All the ethical teachings in Paul's letters really find themselves under the umbrella of these few short verses. But there's a future as well to our salvation. The king who appeared the first time in glory will appear yet again at the end of human history to bring everything in subjection to himself, the return of the king, if you will. That certain coming royal appearing of Jesus the Messiah and its consequences Now if you're a new creature in Christ, if you have come to put your trust in the Savior, you are living your life now with that on the horizon. It's interesting that just by God's providence we read those two catechism questions this morning and they point out the fact that the benefits that we receive in Christ have a present reality an at-our-death reality and a when-Jesus-returns reality. So that's the horizon. I love to take road trips. So you see a lot of road horizons on the road trips and you watch them come closer and then you break over a rise and then there's another horizon. Well, we look at next Friday or next weekend or next birthday or the day I get married or whatever maybe maybe we're thinking about that day I'm we're finally gonna die but for us the the ultimate horizon is always Jesus is coming again even the day we die and go to be with the Lord in heaven that's not the horizon the horizon is Jesus is coming again and when he does he will renew the entire creation including your body by raising them from the dead in the likeness of Jesus' resurrection body. And so as new creatures, we're living in light of that goal, that end. When Jesus says, seek first the kingdom of God, that's what he's saying. That glorious kingdom is the horizon. That's the reference point. That's where you want to go. And you live your life in that direction with more and more consistency. And here the promise in chapter 2 verse 13 is the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, which is our blessed hope. The same note of hope is sounded in chapter 3 verse 7, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. You know there are a lot of people waiting around for their rich uncle to die so that they can inherit. Well we have a much greater inheritance. It's that new glorious creation that we will be a part of. but I'm afraid as Christians we often can't get beyond tomorrow is the horizon and next week is the horizon and next year is the horizon. We need to lift up our eyes and live in greater expectation of that glorious return of the Lord. In one sense the future is already present for those of us who are in Christ because of that first appearance of the grace and mercy of God in Jesus. The old has passed away, Paul says. The new has come. In Christ we are now partakers of that new creation. But the new creation isn't so obvious because it's growing still in the setting of the old creation. Sometimes you look at your life and you can't tell whether you're looking at the old you or the new you, or the old circumstance or the new circumstance. Since so much of what we see is the old, we can get discouraged and wonder, really, is there anything new? That's why we need a verse like 2 Corinthians 5.17, if anyone is in Christ, new creation. and the old has passed away. Why does he say that? Because it doesn't look like the old has passed away. The new has come. Why does he say that? Because it doesn't look all that new. But as we see that horizon, then we begin to live in hope. So Christians, as Christians, we've been called to live in the present in view of that future, both individually, our future hope, and the future hope of the success of the gospel and the growth of the church. Here again Paul's boiling down, he's reducing so many things that he has to say elsewhere. Just listen to these phrases, they'll ring a bell. Whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son. One day you are going to be like Jesus in every human, in every way a human being can be like Him. I disappoint myself a lot as a professing Christian, do you? Does that make you long for the day when you will sin no more? That's gospel, that's good news that we might be like Him and our bodies one day will be like his resurrection body as well seek first the kingdom of God already mentioned what what's the horizon the final manifestation of the glory of the kingdom of God we prayed it again in worship we do every Lord's Day thy kingdom come thy will be done what's that if not living in expectation and hope of the future Jesus Christ is our hope We have set our hope on the living God, who is the Savior of all people. We have access by faith into the grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. This hope gives strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. We are God's children now, but it doesn't yet, we do not yet see, sorry, We are God's children now and what we will be has not yet appeared but when he appears we know that we will be like him. Everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure and so on and so on and so on all boil down to this living by hope. So the past, the present and the future all brought together and blended wonderfully in all of this richness. That last two verses in chapter 3 then is the conclusion. The saying is trustworthy, verse And I want you to insist on these things. So these are not negotiable. These are essential truths. But again, just referenced very briefly that leads us back into the rest of what Paul and the Bible have to teach. Insist on these things so that those who have believed in God, that's you, I trust, may be careful to devote yourselves to good works. That's where the rubber meets the road. What are you devoted to? What do you give your money toward? What do you spend your time at? What can't you get enough of? That's devotion, devoted to good works. I've been reading the biography of George Muller, who was a German who came to Great Britain, eventually ended up in Wales, and opened a bunch of orphanages. And he determined that he was going to trust God for supplying these orphanages. So he gave up his own salary to the work. He didn't ever ask anybody explicitly for donations but he and a few others prayed day by day by day and it is an astonishing record of the way in which God supplied. Now you could say well that's great if you have that much faith and you can trust but but it was all aimed toward caring for these orphans and it's interesting he said I do this for two reasons one I care about the orphans. And two, I want my life to be an example to others to have that kind of faith that leads to, that's devotion to good works. Not good works when I get around to it, but good works that gives even out of our poverty. I don't have enough time, but I'm going to do it anyway. I don't have enough money, but I'm going to do it anyway. I'm so weak and tired, but I'm going to do it anyway. That's the result. So that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. These things are excellent, five stars, and profitable for people. So it's a quick review. How do you get the whole of the Apostle Paul in a few verses? These two passages will do it for us. But they bear the reflection, smelling the aroma, tasting the taste of this rich grace of God from the past, from the present, and anticipated for the future. And it's all yours if you are in Christ and you're trusting in him. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your word in its breadth. But then we'll thank you for those times when you boil it down for us make it simple and clear and resonant. We ask Heavenly Father that as believers and knowing some things about these verses will become precious to us in new ways. We can certainly pull them out and use them to prove the doctrine of justification by faith or the necessity of regeneration or the hope of eternal life and that's all well and good Lord but Paul put them all together so that we might bask in their richness and wonder and we pray for grace to do that. Holy Spirit you're the only one that can give us the desire for these truths. Otherwise, we'll be out of here in a couple minutes. We'll have a meal and we'll go back to business as usual, which will mean not much time or thought for you. So bless us, we pray. Write these words upon our hearts, we ask for Jesus' sake. Amen.