Book of Titus chapter two and stand with me for the reading of the word of God. We are in what some commentators call the high point of the epistle or the letter chapter two verses 11 through 15. This is God's word 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. What a great description of our Lord. Verse 14, 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. Declare these things, exhort and rebuke with all authority, let no one disregard you. Our Father, we are mindful this morning of our need for grace. Lord, help us to realize that there is nothing we could do, there is nothing we could perform that would make you love us more than you already do. Help us to realize that our merits or demerits have nothing to do with the equation. Help us, Lord, we need to realize this. Lord, we are by nature legalists, and we just pray for a fresh understanding of your grace, of your goodwill towards us. Lord I pray for a deep understanding this morning of your kindness display to us of your grace towards us. Help it to move us. Lord we pray in Jesus name. Amen. Well, last week we looked at Paul's practical instructions for the home, older men, older women, younger men, younger women. It's a great passage, very practical. One thing that I love about Paul is that he's so practical. No one could ever accuse Paul of being just theoretical. He is incredibly practical, I love him for that. Normally Paul starts off with doctrine and then he'll toss out a giant therefore, and then he'll give application. That's his normal MO. But here it's actually different. And this may be one of the few places where Paul does the opposite. He gives us the practical application in verses one through 10 of chapter two, and then he gives the doctrine. And the outline is really as follows, the theme of grace, because grammatically speaking, this all hinges on verse 11 and even that little phrase, the grace of God. So I've outlined it as such. Let's look at point one in your outline. Grace brings salvation for all people. He says, four, this is another transition statement for Paul. He gives now the theological or really the logical ramifications for this kind of behavior. In other words, why are older women to act like this, older men to act like this? Well, here is the logical reason. For the grace of God, again, the transition, and that first word we need to look at and get a stranglehold grasp on, grace, the charis of God, the kindness of God, literally can mean the kindness or goodwill. The grace of God has appeared, the goodwill of God, the kindness of God has appeared. I love this, this is so powerful. Do you believe this morning that God has goodwill towards you? It actually reminds me of Luke chapter two, when Luke writes him out the story of Jesus being born, peace on earth and goodwill towards mankind. This is a wonderful picture of our Lord and his heart towards us. The grace of God is personified in Jesus Christ. Now, this, I think, is one of the hardest things for us, for myself, to believe about God, that He is 100% committed to doing good for us. to His people. Do you believe that? A lot of this comes down to belief and unbelief. Satan would have us not believe this, that God is glad, He is generous, He is ungrudging in His goodness towards us. It reminds us of Romans 8. There is no longer any condemnation. God is for you, not against you. Do you believe that? What about the new covenant? Back in the Old Testament, Jeremiah 32, I will make with them an everlasting covenant, God says, and I will rejoice in doing them good. Do you believe that? Oh, it's powerful. Part of the new covenant, part of God's covenant with us is that He has committed Himself to doing good to His people. And it's so easy to forget this. It's so easy to do what Jerry Bridges has said. We live on the performance treadmill. We try to perform. We have this tendency, I think in all of us, to feel good about ourselves or bad about ourselves based on our own performance, based on our own merits. It's exhausting, it's depressing, and it can be really a constant battle. Again, I think we are, because of the conscience in our hearts, we are legalists by nature. Jerry Bridges has said, we falsely believe that we are saved by grace, But then we're living now by the sweat of our own performance. And so God is either pleased or displeased with us depending on our actions. But grace cannot be earned by merit and it can't be taken away by demerit. You've heard of Jonathan Edwards. It's been said that Edwards really was to theology what Isaac Newton was to physics. A brilliant theologian, he said 100 years ago, you can never come to Christ at all unless you first see that he will not accept you any more readily for anything that you can do. You must first see that it is utterly in vain for you to try to make yourself better on any such accounts. You must see that you can never make yourselves any more worthy or less unworthy by anything that you can perform. And yet the trap, oh, I think we can all identify with this. We feel good about ourselves or bad about ourselves based on our performance rather than the grace of God, the cross of Christ. We don't look at the gospel, we look at our lives, which frankly most often is depressing. Came upon a story this week of a lady who told a story about her father. And she said, my dad kept a coin jar in his dresser every night when he got home from work, the first thing he did was head upstairs and change his clothes. And you could hear the familiar jangling of coins as they spelled out his pocket and he set them in the jar. And she said, when I was about nine years old, I decided that his coin should be mine. So over time, I pilfered a few nickels here A handful of pennies there, and before I knew it, I had successfully swindled my dad out of all his loose change, and he never even noticed. But sometime later, the guilt gripped me, and I knew that what I'd been doing could only be considered stealing. I had no way to explain my behavior, so with a pounding heart, I penned a letter to my father. confessing my sin and asking them to forgive me. I tucked it under his coin jar along with a pile of pennies as sort of a restitution. And I anxiously waited for my father to confront me, but one day went by and he didn't say anything. Another day passed, nothing, and still another. And eventually I forgot all about the note. And then one day my father out of the blue stepped into my room and said, Mary and I, I got your note about the pennies. She said, my heart began to race. My throat felt like a marble was lodged in it. I was expecting punishment, but he seemed on the verge of tears. That didn't make any sense. I had wronged him. He had every right to punish me. Instead he said, thank you. And he gave me a big hug. And then he left. And we never spoke of it again. I stood there dumbfounded. Why, when I fully deserve my father's wrath, did he show me mercy? I didn't deserve it. I hadn't earned it. I felt like a criminal was let off scot-free. Then she said this, This was my first powerful lesson on judgment and grace. Since then, I've never forgotten, I've never gotten over the way grace feels. I love that. It's like waiting for the other shoe to drop, she says, but it never does. You know, we assume because we naturally are legalists, again, that if we keep the rules, if we keep the law, then God will favor us. And if we don't, He'll naturally, the opposite's true, He'll punish us, but it's a lie. I remember last year during the football season when the Bills were playing the Steelers, the quarterback for the Bills, Fitzpatrick, threw a pass, touchdown pass to Stevie Johnson who, duked his opponent and then ran past the safety and he's wide open in the end zone. They could have won the game and gone on to beat the Steelers, but throws the football and in the end zone, Stevie Johnson wide open ball right in his hands, drops it. Everyone is just abhorrent over this and saddened. And he goes back to the locker room after the game, after the loss, and on his Twitter account for the world to hear, he says in a somewhat prayer to God, I praise you 24 seven, and this is how you do me. You expect me to learn from this, how? I'll never forget this ever. Thanks though. And it dawned on me as others were commenting on this, how this is a great example, not of Christianity, but of legal entity. I do these, I perform all these things and God, you owe it to me. That's not Christianity. Christianity is not if I keep all the rules, God will bless me, but rather I've really broken all the rules and Christ kept them in my place. And God blesses me because of Christ. We must never forget, although we do all too often, the grace of God and the fact that it's appeared. We are under grace, we're not under the law. He goes on to say, the grace of God has appeared. The word is epiphany, where we get the word epiphany. It means to make a sudden visible appearance. He actually uses the word note here in this passage twice. Verse 11, the grace of God has appeared. And then in verses 13, in verse 13, we're waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing or the epiphany of the glory of our great God and savior. We are living between the epiphany of grace or the incarnation Jesus appearing, being born into this world, grace personified, grace incarnate. We're living between that era and the epiphany of glory when he will suddenly appear and come back to take us home, but he has appeared. And that little statement haunts me. The grace of God has appeared. It's arrived. It's available. bringing salvation for all people. Now in what sense has salvation been brought to all people? It obviously doesn't mean all people are saved. The rest of the New Testament seems to make that clear. All people in fact are not saved. So in what sense is salvation been brought to all people? I think we need to understand that the atonement must be limited in some sense. Everyone who's not a universalist would have to agree with this. The atonement is in fact limited. There is a sense in which Jesus died for all people, but there's another sense in which his death was particularly for the church, the elect, God's chosen people. But I believe it's this first sense in which Paul is referring to. Salvation has been made available for all people. Anyone can be saved. God doesn't discriminate. Salvation is available for all. The grace of God is available to all who humble themselves, repent and come to Jesus. It's accessible. God has made it available for the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people. And we can all say, praise God. But there's another characteristic of grace that Paul points out it's a training characteristic. Verse 12, grace trains us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions. You see grace as our title says, title of this message, grace has a specific curriculum. to restrain certain behaviors and to promote others. God is interested in teaching, grace trains us. You see the grace that appears doesn't just stop there, it actually teaches and actually does something and actually causes something to happen. Well, what does it teach us and how does it teach us? I was having a conversation with someone on Friday night just about this very passage. And they said, well, how does the law teach us? I thought that was a great question. The opposite of grace, of course, is the law. Well, how does the law teach us? The law says do this and live. Don't do this and you die. The law is exacting. It frankly makes us neurotic, afraid, depressed. Romans 7 actually says that it makes sin come alive. Now the law is good, don't misunderstand Paul, but the law when mixed with my sinful nature creates a beast. It causes sin to increase. Well, how does grace teach us then? That's how law teaches us. How does grace teach us? If law magnifies sin or shows me how much sin I have, what does grace do? Kent Hughes tells a story about the mudslides in California. He says, when El Nino's reign dominated Southern California, Mudslides became a real issue, but particularly a nightmare for this one family. While the family was still in their house, a massive wave of mud just swept through their home. You can imagine this. Severing it, sweeping their sleeping baby out into the night. While the parents began to search through the middle of the night, through the darkness for their child, tromping through the mud, the muck, the mire that had descended on their entire neighborhood. They searched, they dug, they called for their child all throughout the night, but nothing. You can just imagine this. When the morning came, a rescuer himself covered in mud came to the parents with this mud cake bundle in his arms, the baby filthy, but alive. And you know what the mother did? She clung to her little child despite its filth. She washed the muck away and determined to keep her child out of the mud in the future. Now, what does this have to do with grace training us? In verse 14, we read that He has redeemed us to be a godly people of good works. So why should we, this is interesting logic, why should we really be cared or care about good works if we're saved by grace? If it's all by grace, why should we really exert ourselves? Because Kent Hughes says, when the filth of my sin was sweeping me in my helplessness to eternal death, God covered Himself with the muck of this world to rescue me. He embraced me. He saved me. It only makes sense that He would want me to stay out of the mud. He doesn't want us playing in the mud. See, grace has a way of training us. It changes us. It trains us to renounce the filth, to renounce the mud. Biblical grace doesn't make us, or rather it makes us intolerant of evil in our lives. It doesn't make room for more sin. It doesn't make sin more tolerable. It makes it less tolerable. It makes it repulsive. The gospel does in fact lead to godliness. When true grace touches a person, it changes a person, fact. Grace also trains us to renounce. It trains us to renounce. Renouncing here could also be said to be repenting. It's the idea, the verb is a continual renouncing. It means to deny, to refuse to cooperate with, to leave the old way and start with the new way. It changes the mind. See part of living the Christian life is renouncing certain things. A grace that doesn't change people's minds and lives is an imposter. It's a fake, it's a fraud. It was never real grace. Francis Schaeffer has said, we are surrounded by a world that says no to nothing. When we are surrounded by this sort of mentality, then suddenly to be told that in the Christian life there is this strong negative aspect of saying no to things and no to self, it must seem hard. And if it does not feel hard to us, we are not really letting it speak to us. Of course, this environment of not saying no fits exactly into our natural disposition because since the fall of man, we do not want to deny ourselves. This is a real hang up for people who were on the fence of Christianity. They're unwilling to part with certain things. They're unwilling to say no. They're unwilling to renounce. But grace, when it touches a person's heart, causes things to happen, including renouncing. God's grace makes us willing to renounce. You know, to speak personally, I wanna be at a place, I'm not oftentimes, but I wanna be at a place with the Lord where I say to the Lord, whatever you want me to give up, whatever you want me to renounce, I'll do it. I'll do it. I don't know exactly what that is, but I'm open to whatever you show me, whatever you want me to stop doing or start doing, I wanna do that. I wanna renounce the things that you want me to renounce. Psalm 139, search me, O God, know my heart, try me, know my thoughts, see if there'd be any grievous way in me. And Lord, if there is, help me to renounce it. We also not just renounce, we renounce ungodliness, worldly passions. And godliness is all that is anti-God. It's a mindset. It's the world's mindset of all that is anti-Christ, all that is anti-Scripture. It's the world of Hugh Hefner and MTV. We're not to delight in it. We're not to partner with it. We're not to laugh with it. We're to renounce it. Also worldly passions. The sinful impulses of our body. probably most normally sexual sins, but also anger, hatred, selfishness, jealousy. We renounce it. You know, when you renounce someone, you say, I will have nothing to do with you. We have no fellowship any longer. We do that with our sin, with our worldly passions. I wanna have nothing to do with you any longer. I deny you. Just a little bit application here. In order to do this, we need to identify ungodliness and worldly passions. In the same way that we identify, you know, a couple of weeks ago, the spiritual diseases, materialism, greed, distraction, entitlement, immorality, medicating, hyper busyness, entertainment, addiction. We identify those things. And a great way to do this, I heard this this week, Kevin DeYoung, I've learned over the years that the simplest way to judge gray areas in the Christian life, like movies, television, and music, is to ask one simple question. Can I thank God for this? Can I thank God for this? Identifying ungodliness and worldly passions. Also, we need to renounce it. It's pretty simple. Here's Paul's logic. Are you ready? If it's ungodly, don't do it. If it's worldly, don't do it. That's Paul's logic. It's not, this isn't very complicated. The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe the gospel. Now note this, this renouncing of ungodliness and worldly passions is not a means to get to God. It isn't behavior that allows for a relationship with God. Do this and you'll have a relationship with God. No, it's done because God has initiated grace in a person's life and this just naturally happens. Next point, grace trains us to live self-controlled, upright, godly lives in the present age. The goal of God's curriculum is for us to live a new kind of life. The Christian life isn't just a life of avoidance. It isn't just a life of abstinence. I'm not gonna do these certain things. It's actually a life of doing certain things as well. Isaiah 1, cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression, bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause. We cease to do evil and then we learn to do good. This grace trains us to do a number of things positively, to be self-controlled, self-control over bodily desires, impulses, sex, food, sleep, That's a fruit of the Spirit. We have self-control. It's an evidence of grace. It trains us to live upright lives. This is just a general description for being above reproach. It trains us to live godly lives. This is Paul's general term for authentic Christianity, the antithesis of the old life. Now there's a new life. In Paul's mind, the gospel leads to godliness. It's the main point of this letter. Another application here. In other words, grace teaches us to be disciples, to be legitimate disciples. In his first rate commentary on the pastoral letters, William Mount's comments on the so-called lordship salvation debate. And he says this. Salvation never stops with redemption, but always moves to sanctification. There is no salvation apart from discipleship. Paul is not teaching the annulment of grace. He's teaching the full measure of grace. You see, grace leads to obedience. It leads to discipleship and a discipled life. A number of people in the 70s, 80s, even 90s started teaching that a person could receive Jesus as savior, but not really submit to him as Lord. Obedience became optional. Discipleship was sort of optional, but this is false. Now to be clear, we are saved by God's grace alone, not by our obedience. But let's also be clear, a true Christian is obedient to his savior, who's also his Lord. A profession of faith where someone claims to know Christ, but is living in disobedience is, A false profession. You can't be a Christian and not be a disciple. God teaches us to be self-controlled, upright, godly. That's what grace does. Another point of application is that all of our sanctification is by grace. Our growth in godliness is by grace, just like our salvation is by grace. This isn't a white knuckle approach to getting things done. This is a meditating on the grace of God, allowing God's grace to move through us and then following through with action. The Puritans had a saying for this. They called the power of new affections. It was a reference to having the love of God create an intolerance for sin. In other words, what ultimately destroys sin and their view is not willpower or human exertion or a really moving sermon. but rather a deep appreciation of God's mercy and grace in Jesus. In other words, the gospel leads to godliness. The power of God's grace becomes stronger and more compelling than the power of ungodliness and sin. Does that make sense? The illustration they would use is that of an oak tree. They would say a lot of times oak trees would keep their leaves throughout the winter. It's interesting, the high winds wouldn't take the leaves, the dead leaves down, the blizzards couldn't take the dead leaves down, but rather it was in the springtime when new life began to bloom that the leaves began to drop. The power of new life, the grace of God is like springtime. When it appears, it changes things, things happen. It's not a coercion, hey, you need to really, really do this. No, when a person understands and receives grace, when they hear what God has done through Jesus on the cross, when they even at an emotive level are touched, when they feel what grace feels like, things naturally happen. Renouncing begins to take place. Godliness begins to happen. I know I'm, especially in this message, I'm just quoting ad nauseum. Forgive me for this. I'm a quote junkie, but I heard this quote by Martin Lloyd-Jones this week, and I just have to share it with you. He says, for me, this is one of the greatest discoveries of the Christian life. I shall never forget the release I felt when this was first brought to me. You and I must never look at our past lives. We must never look at any sin in our past life in any way except that which leads us to praise God and magnify His grace as Paul did. He says, I challenge you with that. If you look at your past or anything in your past and are depressed by it, you are failing miserably as a Christian. If as a result you are feeling miserable as a Christian, you must do what Paul did. I was a blasphemer, he said. But he did not stop at that. Does he then say, I am unworthy to be a preacher of the gospel. In fact, he says the exact opposite. I thank Christ Jesus, our Lord, who has enabled me, for he counted me faithful in putting me into the ministry. And listen to what he says here. When Paul looks at that past and sees his sin, he does not stay in a corner and say, I'm not fit to be a Christian. I've done such terrible things. Not at all. What it does to him, its effect upon him is to make him praise God. He glories in grace and says, and the grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant with faith and love, which is in Christ Jesus. That's the way to look at your past. Sure, you look back. Sure, you were blinded by the world. You were blinded by Satan, but you can magnify the grace of God. Look where he's brought you. Don't believe Satan. Believe the words of God. You've received grace. You were once in darkness, you were once blind, but God has saved you from that. Rejoice, revel in his grace. Our main problem, I fear, is unbelief. Grace also trains us to eagerly wait for Jesus to come back. It also trains us to eagerly wait for Jesus to come back. Waiting for the blessed hope, Paul says, or the hope that brings blessing. It's interesting that part of the curriculum of grace is to foster an anticipation for Jesus to come back. It's part of what the Lord teaches us, it's part of what grace does. I don't know if you saw this week in Denver, the news, there was this farm out east somewhere, I can't even remember where, out on the plains, but they had a horse that was walking, lived on 10 acres or so and little horse pasture. The horse, part of the pasture includes the home. Well, the horse was getting too close to the house and it fell through the window well. And the back end of the horse is stuck in this window. Well, it must've been a pretty big window well, but they didn't know what to do. So I think they like opened the window or maybe the window was broke, but they kind of backed the horse into their basement. But the stairs were too rickety for the horse to go up. So there was conundrum, what do we do with this horse? And anyway, I'm watching this in the news and the camera crew is there and, as they're showing this horse in the basement, the basement is all unorganized and filthy. And the anchor asked the lady if she had learned any lessons from this whole ordeal. And she said, I think the major takeaway lesson from this mess is to make sure your basement is clean. Because you never know when a camera crew might show up. I had to laugh. If you were expecting a presidential visit to your home, You would tidy things up. There would be an anticipation. Well, the Christian is the person who's always prepared to meet the Lord. We don't know when he's coming back. It could be this afternoon. I hope it is. But he's coming back and he's coming back to take possession of us. S. Lewis Johnson tells a story of a bridegroom, his name was William Dyke, and he had been blinded by an accident when he was 10 years old. But in spite of his handicap, he went to university, he won honors in the university, went to university in Britain, won honors. He also won a beautiful bride whom he had never seen. And shortly before his marriage, he submitted to an operation and the climax came on his wedding day. And in order to make it as climactic as possible, he had the eye doctor who performed the operation stand by his side on the wedding day. And just before his bride was to come down the aisle, the doctor cut away the bandages from his eyes. And for the first time, his eyes looked upon his bride and he looked into her eyes the very first time he'd ever seen her and said, At last, at last. We will soon and very soon, I hope, go to be with the Lord. We will look upon his face and we will say at last. That's what grace does. It does something inside of us that causes us to anticipate this blessed hope. J.C. Ryle has said, live as if you thought Christ might come at any time. Do everything as if you did it for the last time. Say everything as if you said it for the last time. Read every chapter in the Bible as if you did not know whether you would be allowed to read it again. Pray every prayer as if you felt it might be your last opportunity. Hear every sermon as if you were hearing once and forever. This is the way to be found ready. This is the way to turn Christ's second appearing to good account. This is the way to put on the armor of light. Paul goes on to say that this great God and savior, what a statement for Jesus. He gave Himself for us. Oh, we could, it's almost embarrassing. We're only spending one week on this. We could spend another week on this little statement. He gave Himself for us. Ah, the language of substitution. He gave Himself for us, Romans 8.32. He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all. He gave Him up for you. It's the language of the Passover. And for us, It wasn't an accident, it wasn't a horrible mistake. He gave himself for us. Be moved, be touched by this. He did it to redeem us. He bought us from slavery and then he purified us. He's interested in making us holy. and also a people of his own possession. You know, when the Lord delivered the Israelites out of Egypt, he said to them, you shall be my treasured possession among all the peoples. So now the church made up of Jew and Gentile are part of the possession of the Lord. We are his, he's our father, we are his children. J.I. Packer has said, where I asked to focus the New Testament message in three words, my proposal would be adoption through propitiation. And I do not expect ever to meet a richer or more pregnant summary of the gospel than that. If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God's child and having God as his father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well. We are now in the possession of our great God, our great Father. What a great thing. And we are now to be zealous for good works, beautiful deeds, literally. This is what salvation results in, Ephesians 2 says this. God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. These good works. They're not just possible, they're necessary. Grace moves us from ungodliness to godliness, from self-centeredness to self-control, from the world's way of doing things to God's way of doing things. That's what grace does. Lastly, verse 15, grace needs to be taught. It needs to be taught. Paul gives this charge to Titus, declare these things. Not only does grace teach and train, but it also needs to be taught and trained. Along with everything else Paul's mentioned in chapter two, these things are to be declared. This means that words are to be used. Verbal communication is necessary. The church is to have a declaring ministry to its kids. to all people, a teaching ministry. Jesus spoke and his disciples wrote. They wrote books. He didn't ask his disciples to sculpt or paint or draw. They were to be people of words. As Mark Deborah has said, the day is coming when we will see Jesus. But we are not living in the age of the eye theologically. We're living in the age of the ear. We are to be people who declare certain things, who have a message. We're to be people of words, God's words. Declare these things. He says, exhort. There ought to be urging and encouragement, exhortation, rebuke sometimes, even on a Sunday morning, there needs to be rebuke. Stop doing these things. Start doing these things. I have to say to my kids, don't touch that or don't run out onto the street or watch out for bad guys. Exhort, rebuke with all authority. Preaching is honestly, it's a colossal waste of time. It's a joke. If it's not done in the authority of God's word, if it's not God's words, I don't know about you, but when I hear preaching, the preaching I love to hear always carries a thus saith the Lord spirit to it. I wanna hear what God has to say. I wanna hear his words. I wanna hear his opinion. We are people under authority. Let no one disregard you, he says. In other words, people might hate you, but don't be a weakling, Titus, preach the word, declare these things. Now, let me just summarize this little section. Our biggest problem, I think, as Christians, the main reason we lack joy, the main reason we lack happiness, the main reason we lack assurance, I think is because we have not believed, verse 11, for the grace of God has appeared. You need to hear on the authority of God's word this morning. I am declaring it to you that the grace of God has appeared. Imagine if you heard this from God. What if I tell you there are no lists? What if I tell you that I don't keep a log of past offenses of how little you pray, how often you've let me down, made promises you didn't keep. What if I tell you, you are righteous with my righteousness right now? You know, the reason that feels good is because it is good news, but we can forget it so quickly. And so the exhortation for us is to believe And Satan's big lie here, our temptation is to believe the devil, to look at ourselves, to be introspective and look at past offenses, to fall into spiritual depression. Our big challenge is to believe, verse 11, that the grace of God has arrived. It's freely available. apart from your merit or demerit, but rather because of the merit of Christ given to you because of Christ. May we live in light of the gospel of grace. Amen. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you, Lord, that your grace does cause things to happen because on our own, we can freely acknowledge nothing would happen. Nothing does happen. Lord, we need you far more than we even know. We need your grace, not just to save us because we're completely helpless, but we also need you to sanctify us by grace because we are, again, completely helpless. But help us, Lord, as we sense this grace, as we feel this grace, as we experience this grace, help us to follow through with renouncing. Help us to follow through with living a godly life, adorning the gospel with our lives. We pray this in the good name of Jesus who gives us much grace. Amen.