Titus 2:11-15. For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lust, that we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, that he might be, redeemed us from every lawless deed and purifying for himself his own special people. Zealous for good works.

Speak these things, exhort, rebuke with all authority. Let no one despise you. Let's pray.

Lord, Father, we just thank you for this day. Lord, we thank you for your love and care for us. Lord, we thank you for the scriptures and for Titus chapter two and how you've given us grace and salvation, and that everyone can have that salvation.

In Jesus name. Amen. Titus chapter two is one of my favorite passages in the Bible, one of the ones that God has used in my life in many different ways and has just been an incredible encouragement to me.

As we open up God's word, let's pray and just ask his help as we study his word. This morning, Father, we really need you this morning. There's never a morning that we don't need you.

But especially here today, as we have gathered together and we're centered around your word, we recognize we need your help in unpacking the scriptures. So, Father, show us Christ. Help us to see him magnified and lifted up and exalted.

It is him that we have gathered here for, not for ourselves, not for a common cause or anything in this world, but for Christ and Christ alone. And so we pray that your spirit would open our eyes and help us to behold wondrous things inside your law. Strengthen us.

Encourage us. I pray that you would build this body up and strengthen them in Christ. Be with Pastor Jordan and his wife Jenny, as they travel and with the wasens and the wedding.

And, Lord, be honored and exalted in what we do here today. We pray this in your name. Amen.

So I'm imagining several of you have been through grade school before, and you've been through the rote normalities of teaching and teachers in your life. And some of you are home-schooled. I was home-schooled.

So I understand that world, too. And you have teachers. You might have experienced the life of having a substitute teacher before.

You may have had a substitute come in and teach your class. If you're a home-schooler, that meant your dad came in and taught class, and that meant you probably went out to the garage and worked on something in the garage, or you went and did something fun with your dad. If you were in grade school, you may have gotten a teacher, and sometimes the substitutes were a lot of fun, and you got to goof off and do a lot of things that you never got to do before.

Other times, the substitutes are very strict, and you missed your beloved teacher. Right now you're stuck with a substitute preacher. And I'm really sorry about that.

And you get me this morning, but you'll get Jordan back next week. But here in our text, we see that there have been many substitute representatives of God who have come through the Old Testament history. We've seen God's prophets speak for him.

We've saw men of God who have stood up and spoke for him. We saw messages delivered by angels. We've seen all sorts of things communicated.

But something new has come where Jesus himself arrives in this passage, and Paul is reflecting back on the coming of Christ and all these substitutes that came along. Jesus came, and he was the representation of God, God himself, in flesh. And something amazing happened in God showing his grace to us.

And I want us to see today that as we look at our text, that God calls us to pursue godliness by grace. See, the book of Titus was written to a group of individuals who were forming a church and were beginning a church. And it was specifically written to Titus, a young pastor that Paul had mentored.

And he was giving him basic early instructions for what it looked like for a church. And as he writes to him, he's giving him warnings against false teachers, and he's giving him an admonition to put in faithful, godly men into leadership. And after he has done that, he is to instruct the congregation in the grace of God and what their lives should look like.

You see, have you ever wondered what God's will was for your life? Have you ever wondered what would God have you to do? And the amazing thing about God's word is, actually, it might not tell us who we're going to marry, and it might not tell us what job we're going to work, but it does tell us how we should live. Wherever we're at in life. And wherever we're at in life, we find God calls us to live godly and to pursue godliness, being like God.

And that's what chapter two lays out for us. We didn't read them today, but verses one through ten lay out what the men should live like, what women should live like, what young ladies should live like, what young men should live like, what employees and employers should live like in their, in their context. God lays that all out for us, but then he leaves us with the foundation for why we should live life like that, and what even is our enablement to live life like that.

And so verses eleven through 15 give us grace, God's grace, which saves us and sanctifies us and brings us all the way home. And that's what we're going to look at this morning. And so if we're to pursue godliness, if that's going to be the direction of our life, I think there's three reasons that we need to pursue godliness, all focused on grace that motivate us and move us to that.

And so, and I believe you have blanks. And if you're filling that out and following along with me, we pursue godliness because grace has saved us. Grace has saved us and brought us into a relationship with God.

Look at verse eleven here. He says, for the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. That word appeared there comes up a couple other times in Titus.

If you look down in our passage, actually, you look at verse 13, you see that word glorious appearing. That's another instance of that. If you look down in chapter three and look at verse four, you see that word again appeared.

It's a very important word in the book of Titus. And the word appeared often in the normal culture there would refer to a king coming in and appearing and showing his great and glorious appearance. When the king would come, he'd come, and his subjects would see him in all his majesty as a kingdom.

But Paul takes that word here, and he applies it to Jesus. And he applies it, but he gives a personification. He makes us understand Jesus in a different way.

And look at what he uses. He says, the grace of God appears. And later we know this is Jesus because of verse 13, where we see that appearing again of our great God and savior Jesus Christ.

See, for Paul, as he looked and he reflected back on when Jesus came in the cross of Jesus Christ, lived, died, and rose a perfect life for us so that we might have his righteousness. He looked at that and he said, that whole thing, I'm going to call that the grace of God coming. God's grace has come to us in the person of Jesus Christ and what he's done for us.

Jesus has come and he has brought grace. And what does that grace provide? Well, look, it has brought salvation to all men. See that salvation that has come is for all people without distinction.

See this early church here, they had a lot of different types of people in their church. They had Jews and they had gentiles. They had people from all backgrounds of life, people who were broken.

All of us are broken, but some people who are really broken and other people who are morally upright and perfect, but yet all of us needing grace of God and the grace of God has appeared for all types of people and for all people. No one is without exclusion to the grace of God. God's grace is available to everyone, whoever might come.

And God's grace has come in what Jesus has done through his death and resurrection in our place, so that we might have a relationship with God and God alone. Grace has provided that it is a gift of God. And simply what is grace? Grace is undeserved favor given to us by goddess.

Grace is God showing us a gift that none of us deserved and yet we've been given it. It's like when we were children and some of you are children. You might have known that when you've been bad and you've done something wrong and you've experienced the blessing of your parent towards you, even when you know you've been a stinky little child and you've done a lot of wrong things, and yet God, and yet your parents show you something good, they show you something kind.

Doesn't that mean something more? And as God's children, we've all been astray and we've wandered from him, and yet he's shown us great grace. Though we deserve his wrath and though we deserve to be in hell forever, yet he's offered a way for us to know him. But I want us to see one more thing out of this verse.

And at the very beginning of the verse, look at the word for. Anytime we see the word for or the word therefore, we need to ask, what is the for therefore or why? The therefore or wherefore? The therefore right it there. Well, four is there because it's connecting us back.

Remember all those commands given here to the older men and the older women, all the commands given to the young men and to the young women, all of these are supported by verse eleven four. Because we live our lives in a godly manner, only because we've received grace from goddess. See, we would not be interested in living a life like this.

We couldn't even do it in our own strength if we wanted to. And yet God's grace comes to us, forgives us of our sins and gives us a whole new purpose and identity for our lives so that we're not no longer living for me and for what I want. But we live for the Lord and what he wants.

And he wants us to live like him, to show his character to the world around us and all the roles and responsibilities and the duties that God has given you wherever you might be at. And so I don't know what all of your callings are. I don't know what God has equipped you with specifically.

I don't know what skills he's given you. I don't know what responsibilities you have in life. Some of you are husbands and some of you are wives.

Some of you are fathers and mothers. Some of you are single. Some of you here live at this church and serve in ways that other people wouldn't even live at a church and do.

And that is an amazing ministry. And God has equipped all of you with something to serve him with. And the reality of the fact is God's grace calls you wherever you're at to live in a way that's pleasing to God and to serve him where you're at.

And I would be amiss even this morning to not offer a fact that you should respond to this grace. If you have not yet done that in your life, if you have not fled from the wrath of God and fled to Jesus Christ as savior, if you've not turned from trusting in church attendance in your baptism, in your moral uprightness, if you've not turned from those things and not seen that you were a sinner under the wrath of God, then I would call you to turn in faith to Jesus because he loves us. And he will invite you into his arms into a relationship with God and restore you so that you might know him and love him and serve him.

And if that is not you, I invite you to do that because this grace has come and offers salvation for all. And so that is our first reason we pursue godliness. We strive to after living for the Lord and living holy because he has shown us great grace, but that grace not only saves us, that grace is training us.

And that is our second point here. We can pursue godliness because grace is training us. And this is where the heartbeat of where Paul gets with this passage.

He's happy to explain the cross. He's happy to explain the provision we have in Jesus, but he runs to something that grace is doing right now in every one of our lives. If you've come to know Jesus as savior, this reality is true of you right now and is happening in your lives.

Grace is training you. If you look here at verse twelve, Paul says, teaching us that word teaching is an amazing word. And I love the study of this word.

Teaching is not just the idea of giving you knowledge that would be like the instructing word. We have that in mind. We have teachers at school or at home who give us knowledge.

They teach us facts about science, about math, about how the world works. And we think of teaching as knowledge. But the word that's used here is a special word.

And think of it more in the sense of training. Think about in the word of discipline. As a parent would guide and discipline their children in making the next right steps.

So God also trains us by his grace to take the next right spiritual step, whatever that might be. See, that kind of teaching is more than just simply giving knowledge. It's actually giving us knowledge that helps us know what next step to take.

And that's what grace does for us. When grace came in, the person and the example of who Jesus is, he instructs us by his life. He shows us what it looks like to live for God.

He shows us what it looks like to live like God because he was God himself. And he showed us his character and the way he lived the world. Stepping back and just reading the gospels of Jesus Christ, we get to see how his life was lived.

We get to see the kindness of Jesus, the grace of Jesus, the love of Jesus. We get to see his righteous anger towards those who offended God and offended others. We get to see his sacrifice on the cross and a whole bunch of other things in the way that he lived his life.

Jesus coming in flesh and living in this world has shown us not only our salvation, but also our example. And if we want to know how we should live like God, we must go to God himself as revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. And that's what the gospels show us.

They show us Jesus. And then that's what all the rest of the New Testament expands on, is Jesus, because it's all about Jesus and it's never been about us. It's not about us achieving something.

It's about us showing how great our savior is. And Jesus has given us an amazing example, and his grace trains us. But what does that grace train us to do? Look at the rest of verse twelve.

It shows us what this looks like. It looks like denying ungodliness in worldly lusts. The first thing that grace does is to teach us to deny ourselves, our desires and the ungodliness of our lives.

It's the first thing that grace teaches us. And this the way that the text is explained in the original language shows us that this is something that happened at salvation when we came to know Jesus, but then continues on with life. If you've been a Christian for any number of years, even for a few short days, you know that when you become a Christian, your tendency to sin does not go away.

In fact, if anything, you become more aware of the fact that you're a sinner and more aware of all the fact that the flesh is a real struggle in our lives. You see, when we come to know Christ and we repent in turn from living our way, and we turn in faith to Jesus, that is the first time of many, many, many, many times that we do that for the rest of our lives. Because daily we're coming back and we're turning to Jesus again.

Because what does my heart do? My heart wanders, and it runs the other way. It's the child that wants to go to the candy aisle when it needs to go to the vegetable aisle, right? And my parents trying to lead me in the right way, but I go the other way. See, grace comes back, and it does the little slap on the wrist.

It's the little tap on the wrist. It's the little reminder, it's the call that goes, hey, come back. Come back to the Lord.

And his grace chases us and brings us back so that we walk with him and that we please him. But this denial of ourselves happens at the beginning of our walk with the Lord, and it continues again and again and again and again until we die or till Jesus returns. And that can be sometimes a very discouraging thing.

I don't know how many of you have maybe struggled with a habitual sin that just will not go away? You know it's wrong and you hate it, but you just can't get rid of it. Can I encourage you that this word, Paul to us, God to us in his word, reminds us that repenting of sin is a daily thing. We'll never be through with that.

And I don't mean to give that to you as an excuse to live in that sin, but as an encouragement that sin is tough, but grace is stronger. God's grace is greater, and he will help us deny our ungodliness and our worldly lusts. But it doesn't just stay there.

Look at what Grace also teaches us. Not only that we deny ourselves, but that we should live soberly, righteously and godly in the present age. So not only does Grace tell us not what to do, Grace also tells us what we should do.

And grace shows us, that we should live soberly, righteously, and godly. Or in a word, we should live holy. God calls us to live our life set apart for him in him alone.

These three words here actually maybe could indicate this, that we are to live soberly, that is, towards ourselves. We're self disciplined. We control our desires and what we want.

That we live righteously, that's towards others, that we're upright in our conduct towards other people, and we treat other people well and with respect and with godliness, as God would treat them. And then thirdly, that we would live godly, that is, towards the Lord, that our heart would be set apart for him and him alone, that we would consider him and what he wants. See, these three things kind of give us a whole picture of what the christian life looks like.

I'm in control of my desires. I am helping others and working with them in a way that pleases the Lord. And ultimately I'm aware of what God has done, and I'm living in a constant awareness that God sees every part of my life and that he is with me in every part of my life.

And what a privilege and an exhortation that is to us. See this grace teaching us and training us. Imagine with me that.

How many of you have taken music lessons before? Do you play an instrument? Raise your hand. Okay. Lynn and Jonathan, I know Ava and Amy do.

We just heard them play piano. Yeah. And I see you in the back, too.

Yeah. So if you've played an instrument for any amount of time, and if you have a good teacher, a good trainer, would that good teacher or would that good trainer sit you down, give you the music and tell you, all right, great. You want to be a piano player? You want to be a violin player? Here's the music.

Have fun, man. Imagine doing that. Now, there's some amazing people who could sit down and figure it out themselves.

They're hard workers. I can't do that. I don't have any musical talent whatsoever.

Lord gave me talents in other ways. Music's not one of them. But I sure do appreciate people who do good music.

But imagine with me that situation learning that, and maybe it could be any skill, right? Maybe you're a mechanic. Maybe you're a plumber. I don't know what you are and what you do in life, but imagine that you do one of those things and you find yourself getting thrown into that and, like, figure it out yourself, man.

We wouldn't be able to figure that out. It's hard. But a good teacher, a good trainer, would come alongside you and would not only show you what to do, but how to do it.

I'm going to show you. Here's the first step. Learn your scales.

And then after that, okay, learn to play this piece. Try the simple one. And then you move up.

And as a trainer or as a teacher, that teacher would walk alongside you and help you learn what it looks like to take the next step until you become good at it as you become an expert. God's grace doesn't call us to salvation, bring us into relationship with God, and then kick us to the curb and say, hey, figure it out for the rest of you. You figure out the rest of your life.

You just. I gave you instructions. Figure it out.

No, God's grace is with us. God is next to us in the rest of our life. God doesn't abandon us in our most hardest times of sin, in the times we find ourselves most strained by our circumstances and suffering and hardship come into our life, God is actually nearest in those moments if we would humble ourselves and turn to him, and this grace is teaching and training us, and we'll never, ever abandon you.

God's grace moves towards us and helps us where we're at so that we would live pleasing to God wherever we're at. But this grace saves us. This grace trains us.

But look, this grace will return for us. And that is our third point. Grace saves, grace trains, and grace will return.

Look at verse 13 here, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and savior Jesus Christ. You see, after verse twelve, we might sometimes get tired and we might get worn out. If many of you enjoy running or any type of athleticism, or if you guys like just working in the garden or working outside or doing anything like that, sometimes when you're out in the heat and sometimes when you're out exercising and using energy, you get worn out.

And that same is true in our christian life. When we're fighting the flesh, we get worn out. We get tired very, very quickly, and we need hope to push us through.

God's grace has saved us. God's grace trains us. But the God's grace also gives us something to look forward to.

And what are we looking for? Well, look here in verse 13, it says, looking for the blessed hope. And man, the longer you live life, doesn't the more blessed that hope look like? And I'm only 26. I'm a young guy.

Some of you are a little more seasoned than me. And down the road a little bit farther, and you guys are well seasoned, maybe a little salty, too, but well seasoned. And you guys are down the road a bit.

But you know how blessed that hope looks like after a lifetime, right? And even if you're not there, you've lived life for any amount of time. You experience enough of the hardship and you experience enough of the pressures of this life and your own flesh, you start to look and long for man. I just can't wait for, for Jesus to come back.

I can't wait for him to return. And isn't that our heart here? Isn't that what we should cry with? Paul looking for the blessed hope? Man, we're just waiting for the day Jesus comes back. And he comes back for his bride, the church.

And we will be with him forever into eternity and with those we have loved who have gone on before us. That is a blessed hope. It is a glorious appearing when Jesus will return.

He came once and he showed us grace by dying for us and rising again. And he'll return again that same grace to bring us back home to be with him forever. Grace brings us from the start of the christian life, through the christian life, and to the end of the christian life.

The good work that God has started in us he will bring to completion until the very day he will complete what he started. It's an amazing statement about who Jesus is here in this passage. See, it's our great God and savior, Jesus Christ.

Notice how Paul links those two things together. Jesus is God himself. He is divine.

He is God in essence of who he is. And he came and he lived life in this world. And look at what this God did for us.

Verse 14. Who gave himself for us, our wonderful, transcendent God, who created the world and lived over everything and rules over everything and does not need us. He came in the person of Jesus Christ, and he became like you and me.

And he experienced all the sufferings and all the hardships of this world, even temptations, though he never ever gave in, and neither could he. And he went to the point of giving himself for us. Think about that.

Paul moves from a beautiful statement about God in flesh. Jesus Christ is God in the flesh. To that God became flesh and gave himself for us.

What greatness, what humility of this God. What an amazing God we have. And this God gave himself for us.

And he gave us two reasons. He gave himself for us. Look at this.

It's right here in verse 14. That he might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for himself his own special people to buy us back from the slave market of sin. Before salvation, we were enslaved to sin.

It was our master. All we could do is obey sin. God buys us through his blood in Jesus Christ.

His death and resurrection buys us out of that, redeems us back to himself. So we're his now and purifies us for himself, his own special people. And you know, you, as Northridge Baptist Church, are being purified by the grace of God.

The church I'm a part of, Altoona regular Baptist church, is being purified by the grace of God. See, the grace of God is redeeming us as a people. Holiness is an individual pursuit of that affects a corporate body.

So your choice to commit yourself to living for the Lord will in turn affect the rest of your peers and friends at your church and will add to the pursuit of looking more like Jesus Christ. You see, as you give yourself to that, as you go back in the text, and you look at the beginning of chapter two, as you live soberly, reverent and temperate, as you don't slander, as you love your husbands, as the young men live sober minded, as the young women love their husbands, as the older women teach the younger woman, as the older men are sober and reverent in behavior, as all of that is lived out in a church, the grace of God is magnified and seen greatly. And if you want to show the greatness of goddess, you would commit yourself right now in your own heart to live for the Lord by simply living a holy life.

There's great power to be found in holiness, as contrary to thought as that might seem. There is great power to living pleasing to the Lord. Because if we are not holy, we are useless in his hands.

Just like a surgeon would not use a dirty tool, just as a surgeon would not take a tool that he used on a previous patient and use it in the next patient. That would be unthought of, because it's not sterile. He could infect someone and hurt someone else that way.

So also, why would God use an impure tool for his work? Our purity makes us usable to God. Now, our purity doesn't save us, by no means. It is the grace of God that saves us.

And I think Paul makes that very clear. But to show his glory, to show his wonder, to show his holiness, his purity, his grace, he uses us to show his church as a trophy of his grace. And he wanted that so much that he sought us and he loved us and he died for us to accomplish this in our life.

Well, look at the end of our passage here in verse 15. Paul leaves this message of grace. With an exhortation to Titus, he says, speak these things.

Exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one despise you. See, in this church that Titus was in.

The one message Paul leaves him with is, preach grace. Because God's grace is what will strengthen and enable the church of God to live in a way that's pleasing to God. There's great authority, there's great power to be found in these words.

And as Pastor Jordan takes you guys the word on a weekly basis, he's bringing you back to grace. He's bringing you back to the word of God, which feeds and nourishes our souls so that we might live for him. God's grace works in our lives through his word.

And can I even exhort you personally and individually, if you have time every week and even every day where you're spending it with the Lord in his word, boy, God's grace will strengthen and sustain you to make you live like him. And so God's grace has saved us. God's grace is training us, and God's grace is going to bring us home.

God's grace will do that. And that's why we call it amazing grace. How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me I once was lost but now I'm found was blind but now I see see the grace of God is amazing.

And my call and my plea to you would be to revel in that grace and as a result of basking in God's grace, to pursue godliness and to live for the Lord in what he has done. That is what God calls us to in his word. And may you be encouraged, wherever you're at in your walk with life, that grace is with you and will not abandon you.

Let's pray. Father, we're grateful for your word. We're grateful for what you have shown us in it.

And we all know that we deserve to be cast off and rejected and separate from you forever. That is right of you to do that. But, lord, you've been so patient, so kind, and you have loved us, and you have sent Jesus Christ.

And what amazing love. How can it be that thou, our God, should die for us? So thank you. God be with us as we continue to worship you.

We pray this in your name. Amen.