All right, Titus. Titus, the book of Titus. I'm not there yet either, so let me get there. Titus. We are working our way through Titus, and it's interesting. It seems like the shortest books seem to hold me up the longest. We're gonna cover four verses today, well, five verses, I think five verses. Five verses today, and there's two verses, verse 11 and verse 15. I feel like I could do a whole lesson on just those, each verse alone. So maybe one day I'll do an entire message on verse 15, because there's a lot packed there that would be good to say. The book of Titus, we are working our way through this Titus. This book is, just by way of review, is considered a pastoral epistle. It's considered a pastoral epistle because it is written by Paul to the elder or elder over many of the churches on the island of Crete whose name is Titus. And the churches were in disarray. The churches had a lot of issues. So Paul writes to Titus and gives him instructions on what to do and what to teach at the church to get them back on track. And so he starts off with a greeting where he lays out his purpose, and then he goes into telling him to set up elders. He says the first thing you do is you need elders, and then he tells them how the elders are supposed to be, what their qualifications are. So we spent some time going through the qualifications of elders, and then he goes from the qualification elders to the elders' responsibility. A lot of times the pastor or the elder is referenced to a shepherd or like a shepherd is given the picture there. And a shepherd, many times his duty was to protect the flock. And the elder in the church is one of his primary duties and primary responsibilities is to protect the flock from false teaching. And so he gives him a lot there. So after he gets through all of that in chapter one, he starts chapter two off by continuing the same line of thought of the responsibility of the elder. And he says, by protecting the flock from false teaching, you then go in to teach them what they're supposed to be, how they're supposed to live. And then we spent two Sundays breaking verses 1 through 10 of chapter 2 down on the conduct of the church, of Christians in the church, that Titus was supposed to be teaching. So my responsibility and Brother Steve's responsibility as the teachers, teaching pastors here, are to teach you to behave in the way, as Christians should, of Titus chapter 2. Older men, older women, Younger men, younger women, and employee-employer relationships, as we looked at that and broke that down, and that's how, as a Christian, your conduct is supposed to be. And he gives the reason. He repeats the reason after each one. Why do you behave like this? Why do you live like this? Why is this so necessary? to show the world that the gospel is the truth, to proclaim the truth of Christ. Why would somebody want to come to your church when they don't see any difference between the way you and them live? It matters. It matters, okay? And so this brings us to where we are today. And what we're going to cover today is the last verses of chapter 2, and then we'll get into chapter 3 and break that and finish up the book. But chapter 2, he gets all of those. He says, verse 9, exhort servants or slaves to be obedient unto their own masters and to please them well in all things. Not answering again, not purloining, or we broke that word down as stealing. but showing all good fidelity, that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things. So here's what we're going to cover today, verse 11 through 15. Let's read it. 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 Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto himself a peculiar people zealous of good works. These things speak and exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee. So we see, I broke this passage down. Basically, our points are each verse. Now, if you've noticed in your Bible, verse 11, let me see if this is right. Yeah, verse 11 through 14 is one sentence. Verse 11 through 14 is one sentence, and we have the verse divisions, and sometimes the verse and chapter divisions, let me repeat this, it's not inspired. Okay. Paul did not write this and put down number 11, number 12, and then write what he's going to say. Those came actually quite later in church history. The first thousand years, or maybe even I think 1,200 years of the church had no chapter divisions. about a hundred or two hundred years later is when they introduce verse divisions. Now, they're helpful. Let me say that. I believe that they're helpful, but sometimes they do get in the way of the flow. They get in the way of the thought. They will separate a complete thought. And so what you see here, what we're going to do is instead of breaking this down Understanding that these four verses are one whole sentence, we are going to use them and divide them up by the verses, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15. So verse 11, I have put this point up there as God's grace, verse 11. Now, verse 11 says, for the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men. Now, is this contradictory to what we have been teaching in this church for the past year and a half? Well, almost two years. Is this contradictory to that doctrine? On the surface it might seem that way. I am going to throw some Greek at you, so get ready, and I probably will slaughter pronouncing some of these words, but the Greek of this verse goes in this order. Epiphane, Gar, Hecaris, Tov, Theos, Soterios, Passon, Anthropos. With the construction of those Greek words. Now, understand this. In the Greek, There is no commas, periods, or apostrophes, those types of things. There's no grammar, there's no punctuation marks like we have. The way you knew the tenses and how things were being said was the construction of the word. For instance, the word for all is the word pausen in this verse. The word for just simply all is pos. But if you're giving it a different understanding, a different distinction, using it differently in a sentence, there's different suffixes and prefixes that you add to the Greek term to give it that meaning. So they know what they're reading. I think we use all kinds of punctuation marks to help us understand what we're reading. And sometimes many preachers just ignore the punctuation marks in the English Bible and come up with some crazy interpretations. They forget the question marks a lot of times and preach heresy from the Bible. I see that quite often actually. But in the Greek, there was no punctuation mark, so you had the way the words were, what tenses they were in to get the understanding of the verse. The New American Standard, I think, puts this in the English probably the most literal and the best understanding. It says it this way, for the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men. Are all people going to be saved? No. That's understood. And by the way, next year in our Sunday school study, we're gonna get into the doctrine of salvation, so I'm gonna deal with this quite, get into the minutia and the details of this doctrine, so if you're left today with some questions, I understand that. I'm not gonna get into the details of this idea of the extent of the atonement. So, if we understand, and most understand, that this verse is not teaching that all men everywhere that have ever been born are going to be saved, then that means there must be some type of distinction within the verse. Daniel Aikens said, The grace of God refers to His unmerited favor, His goodness and kindness, His compassion and mercy demonstrated toward undeserving sinners." So let's break it down. The grace of God that brings salvation has appeared. First of all, has appeared. That is, He has made this salvation known in a way previously unknown, and He has made it known for all the world to see. We're in Titus 2, Titus 2 verse 11. Titus 2 verse 11. So there's this salvation. What is salvation? Who is embodied in salvation? Jesus Christ, right? So Jesus Christ is the embodiment of salvation. He's the one that paid the penalty for salvation. He's the one that offers salvation, that rose again, that conquered the grave. Jesus Christ embodies salvation. So, would you say, would you agree with me that pretty much people have an understanding of Jesus Christ? Now, I understand there are tribes, there are remote villages, there are things, there are places in the corners of the earth where maybe they have not heard of that, and that's a different discussion as well. But we're not talking about necessarily 2019. Let's talk about the book of Acts. I think the book of Acts, whenever the gospel goes out after Christ has resurrected and the church is commissioned, that Acts chapter 2 describes that they were spread about. Every nation and tongue were there, representative at Pentecost, and the gospel went forward. for appeared is the word epiphano. We get the English word epiphany from it. It carries the meaning of coming to light, especially that of becoming manifest in a way that previously was unseen. Okay, so this appearing of Christ, this salvation of Christ in that one instance on the cross and in the resurrection brings salvation. It brings salvation. Salvation from what? What are you saved from? Sin? Hell? What is hell? Everlasting torment. More detailed, hell is God's wrath. God's punishment. Correct. So, What are you saved from? You're saved from God. You're saved by God, from God. People are so scared and on their tippy toes to try to make... Listen, you don't have to defend God. They're so scared to death about God looking bad. And so they come up with all of these ideas, well this is this and this is this, and ways to put it to try to make God look more, like God needs a, what is it, what is it, a PR person. God needs us to be His public representative, His PR, to spin things to make it look better. The idea is this, God is the one that set it all up to begin with. Who created hell? God did. Who, and I hate to say it in some juvenile terminology, but who set the rules? Who set the, I mean, it was God that set up, listen, there has to be payment made for sin. And if payment is not made for sin, there is punishment. There is my wrath that is going to be punished for that sin. Okay? God set that up. There's nobody that was saying, all right, God, you're this person. Here's the rules. And God, you got to play by the rules. There's no rule maker out there that God answers to. Okay? So this grace of God appeared in what form? Jesus Christ. And that form brought salvation. Now let's get to the tricky part. to all men." There are several ways we can deal with this word. There are other verses in the Bible that seem to be tricky when it comes to the extent of the atonement. Again, like I said, I'm not going to do a detailed, this is what I'm saying, I could spend an entire lesson on verse 11, but we need to cover the rest of these verses in this chapter. So if you're left with questions this morning, you probably are going to be if you stay with me, I will get those questions. You can ask me personally or you can wait until the next year's Sunday school study where we're going to dive into that in detail. The word translated all, posson, can mean either all without exception, which means every single person, or all without distinction, every class of person. I say it this way. When you look at the Bible and you look at the Old Testament, God's covenant was made with what people? the Jews, Israel. Israel was His covenant nation. Now were there other people, or what is referred to in Scripture that's non-Jew, meaning a Gentile, and by the way, we're all Gentiles, were there Gentiles in the Old Testament that came into the fold and came into and accepted God's covenant with His people and followed the law? Did that happen? Yes, it did. It did. But for the most part, most of the writing in the Old Testament and the teaching and the law and all that stuff, that was for the Jews. Let me say it this way. Did the Jews evangelize in the Old Testament? No. They were not told to. They did not evangelize. They did not go out and try to get more people to become Jewish. Okay? That was never taught in the Old Testament for them. Jesus comes, teaches some radical truth to them, dies on the cross, he's resurrected, the church is then commissioned, and now, through the whole incident with Peter, Brother Steve went through this in a series on Acts, Peter is given a vision to take the gospel to Gentiles. This is available for Gentiles too. So when you see the teaching in the New Testament about salvation being to all, that's an understanding to this Jewish culture that was filling up the church at the first part of the awakening of the church, that not just Jews were going to be in the church. It was going to be Jews, Gentiles, bond, free. And so, all can either mean, all without exception, we can take this to interpret every single person, or it means all without distinction, meaning it's not just Jews that get saved. It's not just white people that get saved. I take that interpretation of this verse for this reason. Because if it's not all without distinction, meaning every class of person, and the definition is all without exception, meaning every single person, what have you just interpreted for yourself through Scripture? Universalism, meaning everybody's going to heaven. And we know that Scripture does not teach that. Paul clearly means, James White said this, Paul clearly means all kinds of men. For the context, now watch this, the context both before and after speaks of all kinds of men. In the previous verses, Paul addresses such groups as older men, older women, younger women, young men, and slaves, and rulers and authorities in verses 1 of chapter 3. Verse 1 of chapter 3 says, No one would suggest that in fact Paul is speaking of every single older man, older woman, etc. He speaks of kinds of people within a particular group. That being the fellowship of the church. Likewise, rulers and authorities are obviously generic classifications that everyone would understand needs to be applied to specific locations in specific times. The same kind of usage all kinds of men being in view is found elsewhere in Paul, such as Titus 3.2. So that's where I believe that this is talking about, when it says that this hath appeared to all men. Now, like I said, there's some other verses, and when we go through the study on the atonement, I'm going to cover every single one of them. And there's two that are a lot harder to deal with than this one. There's one in Timothy that says that salvation has come to all, especially the Christians. I'm paraphrasing there. And then there is one in 1 John. Let me see if I can find it for 1 John so I can quote it correctly. We're going to discuss these. Okay, 1 John 2.2, and He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also the sins of the whole world. Those are a little bit more difficult to deal with in Titus. However, I know that I should probably... Why are you going to show us that and then not discuss what they mean? All right. We're in Titus, so let's stick with Titus. And next... I say next year makes it sound a lot longer. In January, we're going to get into the study on that, and we'll dive deep. We're going to deal with every single one that sounds like that. Okay? Every single verse. So let's move to verse 12. So we see God's grace. Next in verse 12 we see the believer's life. Now here's a repetition again. Repetition. Your conduct. How can you go to Scripture and say that a Christian, it doesn't matter how you live. It's all over the New Testament. God saved us by grace and therefore we're not under the law so we can live any way we want. That's not biblical. And if you're practicing that, I would be highly suspect of your salvation. Alright, so verse 12. The grace of God that bringeth salvation, verse 12, teaches us, teaching us that. What does it teach us? What does this salvation that's been brought to us teach us? Denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present world. All right, so it gives two negatives, three positives. The term teaching here is pideuo, I did not pronounce that right at all, which is based on the common Greek noun for little child. Paul could instead have chosen the word didasko, which is most commonly translated for teaching, but he didn't use that. Now, this is interesting. which refers to the instruction that builds knowledge. Pdeuo places us in the role of little children receiving life instruction from a loving parent, which this is a continual theme through scripture that new believers are as little children that need to grow. And let me say this, if you have not grown in your discipleship, it does not matter when you were saved, you're still a child. There are some people who have been saved less than a year that are more spiritually mature than those that have been saved for 20. Because there's been no growth. And so this is the idea, that you are saved, you are an infant in Christ. And you need to grow. How does a baby grow? First, it's given milk. And then you give it milk for a little bit, and then you work it off milk to solids. And then by the time they get a little bit older and their palate starts to develop, you try to give them some meat and get them off of McDonald's chicken nuggets to get them some actual real food. Sorry, I had to get that dig into McDonald's there. And get them on steak. Our kids are coming around to that. All right, we're starting to see, get them to try some different things. For the longest time, you know, the little kids, if it has any type of flavoring or seasoning, uh-uh, they didn't like it. But we went to a Mexican restaurant not long ago. Well, we went to go. Mary had one of those pregnancy cravings. Love those things. Because my wife doesn't have the crazy pregnancy cravings. She has the good ones. When she has a pregnancy craving, I get to enjoy the food. It's not like pickles and ice cream in the middle of the night. And so she said when her pregnancy craving hits, it's Chinese food or Mexican food. And so we went there and we got the chicken and rice dinner with the cheese on it. And we brought it back. Now Kenzie normally just eats straight chicken with ranch. And she started eating that. That's all she wants now. I want the good chicken and rice. I want the good chicken and rice. Can we have good chicken and rice for breakfast? I mean, she loves it. So her palate's developing as she grows. Madison's gotten to where she starts to like steak now. She's branching out. And that's how you grow as a Christian. You grow in the word. This is your food. This is how you get. And so you start with milk. And then as you've been saved a little longer, you get into the meat. You get into the details. You get into the theology. And of course, what is the Bible's teaching on that? Theology is not given to you so you can be some kind of person that has some kind of professor hat that sits and doesn't do anything but contemplate, you know, the deep things that nobody ever thought of. Theology, the deeper your theology is supposed to strengthen your worship and your service. Theology always comes out in action. Remember, what do we say? What you believe determines how you behave. So the believer's life. MacArthur said this. Because of a Christian's new nature and the indwelling Holy Spirit, he simply cannot continue to live in unmitigated sin bereft of any outward evidence of his new holy and righteous nature and of the presence of Christ's own Holy Spirit within him. So, first, deny ungodliness. The root term originally means to fall back or to shrink from, as one would do in the presence of a deity. By the time of Paul, the word described an attitude of reverence or worship. The Greek prefix for the Greek term used in this verse, a, and the word is asabia, negates whatever it's attached to. So the term asabia refers to a lifestyle of irreverence which inevitably breeds contempt for God. So when it says deny ungodliness, it's basically teaching this, that as a believer, you are to shun away anything that is irreverent towards the holy. You should not laugh at jokes that are blasphemous. We should not sit there and watch programs that jump into blasphemy just like that. They think it's funny to make fun of, not just, and see this is what, we tend to personalize it. If they make fun of Christians, we get so offended, but if they make fun of Christ, it's okay. That's what the eternal Mongolians is talking about. Next he says, deny worldly lusts. Deny worldly lusts. Then he gives three things that you're supposed to do. And again, this is interesting that this one, this first one is repeated in the context of this. Because remember, this is linked up to all of the things that the men, women, older and younger in the church are supposed to do. And this was given several times to those groups. It says in verse 12, live soberly. Now if Paul's repeated this that many times, don't you think he thinks that it's important? Or better yet, the Holy Spirit thinks it's important. Look at verse 2 of chapter 2. The age of men be sober, temperate. The age of women, verse 3, they be in behavior as becometh holiness. Verse 4, the young women to be sober. Verse 6, young men likewise exhort to be sober-minded. And then we come to verse 12, live soberly. The same term is used, sophronos. Same term used every single time. Now we see a lot in the news today. and we see people out there with their signs protesting, whether it's for this cause or that cause, it doesn't matter. But how do you see that their demeanor is? Even with the people, think about this, when you watch the news and they have a panel, their panel, that's just another word of saying four people full of hot air. And what do they do? They get just arguing, arguing, fighting, and then passions get heated and all this stuff. Well, let's take it, it's easy to say, to distance it out over there. Let's bring it back a little bit closer to home. We see this more today in social media, how easy it is on Facebook to share something or make comments and then start things on Facebook. That's not sober mindedness. The idea here is that Christians should be sound of mind. They are to be the one that is collected, that does not lose their cool, that does not forget who they are. Does it let their emotions, and emotions are a good thing. Emotions were given to us by God. but does not let their emotions overcome them. You say, I'm hitting this a little bit too hard. Paul mentioned it four times. Live righteously. Live righteously. He says, live soberly, righteously, and then it carries the same understanding as the next term, godly. And then he puts this, in this present world. Now other translations will say present age. The term can be interchangeable there, age or world. But think about it in the context Paul was writing to. He was writing to Titus in the Greek culture of Crete in the first century. But of course we also understand the Holy Spirit has meant this to be for every generation that has come afterward as they've picked up the scripture of the book of Titus. We are supposed to live this way in spite of the present age, meaning this. This kind of living is not going to be what the crowd's doing. It's not going to be the popular thing. I just had a thought that was very unpopular in this context, but I'm not going to say it, because I may make some of you angry. And it probably was more me than it is the Holy Spirit here, so I'll just move on. Okay. The believer's hope. I've got to move quickly or I'm not going to get to it. The believer's hope. Jesus is returning. It says, looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ. Hope is elpis, which means an assured expectation. This is your hope as a Christian. Madison, how many of you have heard Madison excited about what she's gonna be doing after Christmas? Raise your hand. Okay, so she has been telling people she's going on, her Nana has taken her on a cruise. Okay, Madison knows she's going on a cruise. She has this anticipation built up. Madison has an assured expectation that she's going on this trip. Okay? She is so excited that we have to like, listen, stop talking about that. It sounds like you're gloating to everybody that you're going on a cruise. What does that mean, mom? Okay? You know, so we understand her excitement. She's still a child, still growing and understanding communication things, but she's excited. She knows she's going and she can't wait. And this is the idea in the word hope in this verse. an assured expectation. And I've heard you all say this. I've heard you say this in certain times where there's a funeral or something like this, or at a hospital when things are rough, or somebody's in a hospital bed. You say, you know what? This is just temporary. Because one day we're going to have to deal with this stuff. And that's your assured expectation of what this verse is teaching. We have that. That assurance and that hope that knows that, oh, it's coming. We know it's coming. It's just not there yet. That anticipation. So, Jesus is returning. Next, Jesus is God. He says, "...the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ." There is a textual variant here. The King James, and I believe the New King James translates this, "...the appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ." But newer translations that King James Onlyists don't like actually get this a little bit better. And more conservative, if you ask me, this is a great verse for the deity of Christ. It says, the Greek term and some of the other older manuscripts say this, that it is our great God and our Savior, Jesus Christ. It says our great God instead of the great God, meaning that Jesus is God. Next, Christ's people. I've got to move quickly. Christ's people. He died for them. Verse 14, "...who gave Himself for us." He gave Himself for us. He redeemed them from sin, that He might redeem us from all iniquity. Iniquity there is sin. Warren Weersbe said the word redeem means to set free by paying a price. Newt Larson said He redeems us for a purpose, and this is to purify for Himself a people that are His very own. Not only were we paid for, we were released into the freedom of belonging to God, of fulfilling our original design and purpose for which He created us. and then he sets them apart and purify unto himself a peculiar people for good works, zealous for good works. There you have it again. Again, your duty as a believer is to do something. It's good works. It's not good works that makes you a believer. After you're a believer, you do good works. It's the proof of the pudding, as the old saying goes. Now, verse 15, I've got to move, because I really wanted to spend some time in verse 15. Maybe one day I'll preach an entire message from verse 15, because there's a lot here. He then tells Titus this little personal note to Titus. because Titus is the elder, he says this, these things, what things? Everything he said thus far from verse one or his commission to him in verse five to this, verse five of chapter one, I'm sorry, to this point. These things speak, exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Now, I want to take the word there at the end and talk about it first, and then we'll explain, speak, exhort, rebuke. And that is the word authority. I have authority. Brother Steve has authority. The preacher has authority. But it only extends to the Word of God. No preacher has any authority outside of the pages of the Bible. The truth of authority needs to be addressed. Authority translates epitage, which refers to something that is in its proper order of place. The preacher is called to accurately interpret and proclaim Scripture with sympathy, compassion, and humility, but he also has the divine charge to present biblical truth with strong authority, commanding God's people to hear, believe, and obey God's word. Now, every position of authority in the world has limits. It all has limits. Whether it's a police officer, mayor, governor, senator, president, king, whatever the position of authority, there are limits to that authority. There is a point where their authority ends. The only one in the universe who has no limits on their authority is God. Now, understanding the parameters of your authority is key. That's what we have a major problem when we have a sin-cursed fallen world, and especially when it comes to preachers, is understanding the parameters of your authority. Because when a preacher or any other office does not understand the parameters of their authority, what do they do? They abuse their authority. And when they abuse their authority, problems start to happen. Now, that's the illustration that I wanted to use, but I want to bring this and talk about the rest of the time within the context of the preacher. As a preacher, I have zero authority to tell you to go... Let me say it this way. No preacher has the authority to tell you to go out and take a bank loan and give the money to the church. No preacher has the authority to tell you when and when you should not have children. No preacher has the authority to tell you what you should and should not wear, except for as it exists in the realms of the pages of Scripture, to be modest. That's as specific as it gets. And whenever you start getting more specific than the Bible, you have violated the parameters of the Scriptures. Now, I do have authority to tell wives to reverence their husbands. I do have authority to tell husbands to love their wives. I have the authority to tell you as a believer you should be practicing good works and you should be living like we talked about in Titus chapter 2. Sober-minded. And I will preach those with authority. But that's where it stops. My authority does not exist outside of the Scriptures. And too many times, preachers get out of bounds with their authority. They go outside of their parameters. And Brother Steve did a very excellent study, and I was thinking about this the other day, Brother Steve. It's been a couple of years since you did this, and I'm maybe not as detailed as long as you went, but it may be time to go back and do the false religions and the cult study again. Because there was so much good there that I think we need to be reminded of ever so often. He did about three messages where he talked about the definition of a cult. And whenever, I would say this, whenever the preacher jumps outside of the parameters of his authority, which is the Word of God, he's fast on his way to creating a cult as those people start to follow and believe that. Because whenever one of the identities of a cult is a group of people that follow a man and not God. And that is very important here. That's taught throughout Scripture. We here do not teach and practice a pastoral, a sole, one only pastoral authority church government. That's not biblical. We practice the plurality of elders and deacons and a church leadership body. So, let me go back to the words that he gives. I had so much here. I'll just skip it. He says, speak, this is the word leleo, the points to the pastor's responsibility to preach with the intent of making clear God's truth so that those who hear may understand." He then says, "...and exhort." This carries the idea of beseeching, entreating, and pleading the preacher who exhorts, seeks by every means at his disposal to persuade and encourage his hearers, not simply to understand, but to believe God's truth. And then he says, "...rebuke." Rebuke is a negative command, meaning to convince and correct one who does not yet recognize or admit that he must turn away from what is wrong. And then he says, let no man despise you. Be an example. Be an example. This is three elements. Last thing and I'll be done. Last thing is when it comes to preaching, there's three elements to a message that is considered preaching. And I try to do this every time. It's difficult. It is. I need to engage your mind, so there needs to be teaching to the preaching. I need to engage your mind. I need to activate your emotions. There needs to be passion with preaching, or else it's just a lecture. If it's just teaching and there's no passion involved, your emotions have not been engaged, then it's just a lecture. So, there needs to be teaching, your mind needs to be activated, your emotions need to be engaged, and your will needs to be challenged. There needs to be something that you are called to live differently, or called to do. There needs to be some kind of applicational truth that you have taken from the Scriptures that calls you to go out the doors I knew that. Now, is that easy? No. And I think it's, I don't know if Brother Steve would agree with this, it's a little bit more challenging when you are committed to preach sequentially through the Bible, because you come to some obscure text. And it's like, what do I give them from this? But you are committed that all scripture is profitable. And for that reason, we practice, we leave no verse behind. Well, I'm finished. I'm finished. That's the end of Titus chapter 2, and we'll get into chapter 3 next week. Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for all that you've done for us. You are a great, wonderful, loving God, and we seek to exalt you and honor you and worship you. We pray that everything that is done in the worship service this morning will glorify your name. We love you in Jesus' name. Amen.