Word of Salvation – Vol.45 No.06 – February 2000

 

What We Are To God And How He Greets Us

 

Sermon by Rev. R. Noppers on Titus 1:4

Scripture Readings: Titus 1

Suggested Hymns:  BoW 145; Rej 281; 314; 360;
BoW 375; 133; Rej 422; 428; BoW 428; 237:1,2,5

 

Beloved in the Lord.

How many of us really know who we are and why we are here?

Of course, we all have names!   But does your name tell you who you are?   Or, like most of us, is your surname simply a way of telling who your parents are, or which family name we married into?   And is your first name something your parents liked at the time?

For most of us, our name is little help in defining who we are and why we are here.

Maybe, then, we should stop and look at our own personal histories.   We know where we were born, which school we go to or went to, who our friends are, and what we want to achieve.   Also, all of us have unique characteristics that to some extent tell us who we are!   We have our goals, our dreams, our visions of the future we would like to have, and thoughts that belong just to us!

These are all things that are special, that do make us special, because no two of us are the same!   But that does not really get us any closer to knowing who we are, who we really are!   Even our goals and dreams cannot answer the question: why am I here?   Who am I?

For, who am I apart from my history and my friends?   Who am I if I don’t meet my goals and my dreams?   Is there any value in me without all these other things to make time pass by and to make life progress along its course?   Do you sometimes find yourself wondering this?   Who am I in the ordinariness of life?   Who am I when I am not busy doing something?

I suppose we could ask the same questions about Titus.   Who was Titus?   What sort of person was he?   How much do we know about him?   The first mention of Titus is in Galatians 2:1-3, where he is a test case: a gentile Christian who was not required to be circumcised.  Then he is mentioned some nine times in second Corinthians, where he was sent by Paul to straighten out the false teachers, always with confidence and affection.   Then he was left behind in Crete.   Later, Titus also went to Dalmatia, mentioned in 2Timothy 4:10.

It seems Titus was quite a tough man – in some ways Paul’s trouble-shooter!   He was firm and strong and yet able to gain the respect of the people he worked with!   Even today, the people in Crete remember him as Bishop Titus, and the fact that there are no venomous snakes in Crete is attributed to him!   But in essence who is he without all these parts of his life?   Who is Titus inside himself?   What makes Titus a special, valuable person?

And the answer is to be found in the way Paul addresses him.   An answer that also challenges us to consider who we are!   For Titus was a true son in the common faith!   Titus was special to Paul – a gentile who came to know Jesus through Paul’s ministry!   For Paul speaks here with tender love, having been the agent of God in bringing Titus to faith in Jesus Christ!   Who owes to you the wonderful reality of life in Jesus Christ because you took the time to speak to them about God?

Titus was a person who was joined to Paul by the bond of Jesus Christ!  Titus was a person who believed in Jesus Christ as his Lord and Saviour, a person who built his life on following the Lord Jesus in everything he had to be and do.

Not just his work relationship to Paul, but also his personal relationship was based and founded on that great miracle of salvation that both of them knew and received from God with gratitude and amazement!   A bond that knows no discrimination: a practical application of Galatians 3:28 that there is neither Jew nor Greek in the church of God!   No favouritism as the intimacy of family relationship in the blood of Christ takes over from the old enmities, likes and dislikes!

What a challenge for us to be not just accepting of those with different backgrounds, but to be warmly welcoming and even loving to those who otherwise might even be our enemies!   For we are not first of all Dutch or Australian, European or Asian, but brothers and sisters in our Lord Jesus Christ!   And no, calling each other brothers and sisters in the Lord is not some anachronism from the past, but a beautiful way to describe our relationship to one another!   As children, that we are not just friends with our cousins or the ones we go to school with, but also with those who don’t always fit in!   That as teenagers, we look for the opportunities to minister to those who are struggling, who are on the outer, who seem to be in the process of giving church away.   And adults, we also need to ask: does the bond of Jesus override every other consideration with you?   Or would you rather that God only called middle class, white people into His kingdom, and preferably those who are your type?

So full and free is the grace of God that someone from a completely heathen background could join and even lead the church of God!   How well would Titus fit in here?

So, Titus was special to Paul, not because of what he could do for Paul, not because of the gifts and talents in leadership and troubleshooting he had to offer in Corinth and Crete, but simply because they were members of the same family of God with a special spiritual relationship that tied them to each other!

Have you ever had that same relationship to another?   To be able to call a person your son or daughter in the faith?  To know that somehow, in His marvellous miracles of grace, God chose you to bring another person to a saving faith in Jesus Christ?  To know that God placed you in someone’s life with the sole purpose of introducing Himself to you?  And if you have, can that relationship ever leave you feeling empty inside?   Can such a commitment and expenditure of your love and time and self ever make you feel anything less than being immensely grateful to God for using you in such a way?  Will you ever see that person in any way except with gratitude in your heart to God and with an intense personal interest in how they are going?  Once you have played a part in such an important birth, surely then their ongoing growth will become a matter of personal concern to you as well?  Or, are you perhaps able to point to a special person in your life and say: he or she is my father, my mother in the faith?  If I ask myself that question, one person in particular comes to mind.  He was a teacher at school, a teacher who had more than just the time to teach.  A man of wisdom and maturity who was available to me, at that time merely 12 years old, to make me feel worthwhile and special!  A man who was not afraid to challenge me from the pages of Scripture, and yet never frightened me away!

Who has been instrumental in leading your life to Jesus?   For that is also a truly unique and special relationship, a bond of oneness that is tied together in the cross of Jesus Christ!  A unity that is strengthened by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Let me ask you: in whose lives are you instrumental at the moment in pointing them to Jesus?   This really is important for any of us, who take up a position of leadership, whether it be in Sunday School, Busy Bees, Cadets and Calvinettes, or Youth-club!   Yes, even in Bible Studies, as Session members, in any place or ministry where you spend time with others in the Word of God, you have the potential to become a parent in the faith, to bear children of faith in Jesus Christ!   And if you cannot think of any area in which you can have this influence, or you do not know of anyone who may speak of you in this way, then take up the challenge of the opening words of Paul to Titus.

Much of this letter encourages ordinary believers who spend most of their days in ordinary jobs doing ordinary things, to look at their life and consider every facet of it as a new and special way to express the will of God!   And once we start to look at life this way, then none of us can be considered to be ordinary anymore!   Then none of needs to ask the question: Who am I?   For the answer comes through loud and strong: I am a child of God!   I am part of His family, with a spiritual father or mother!   I belong to Jesus Christ, and I have spiritual brothers and sisters!   I live to please God, and that is never ordinary and without meaning!

For every single person in the family of God has inestimable value and usefulness to God!  All of us can and will be used by God in this way, if we but let Him!

Once we begin to realise this, that in itself becomes a tremendous source of joy, of satisfaction in our own, at times, ordinary lives, and provides peace as we serve God in who we are before we serve Him in what we do!

And the challenge is then laid before us, as we work and live and eat and breathe and sleep in a community of people.   To have the same impact on the lives of others!   For no matter what pathways of life God has given us to walk, He intends us to be a vital part of His ministry to the world!   To the young and old around us!   To be parents and children in the faith!   To spend our waking moments living and breathing the gospel of Jesus Christ, to bring to life in others the faith that leads to salvation!

In that light the whole concept of a buddy system takes on new meaning!  For it is in such a relationship that we can have the sort of spiritual impact upon one another that Paul is speaking about here!

It is in taking the time to encourage, to just be with one another, to spend time one on one working through issues of faith and trust and personal esteem and dignity and value that brings the sort of spiritual growth for which we can praise God as a congregation!

Paul can say this about Titus, but also Timothy, and even the whole Corinthian Church!   In 1Corinthians 4:14-17 Paul declares: “I am not writing this to shame you, but to warn you, as my dear children.   Even though you have ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel.   Therefore I urge you to imitate me.  For this reason I am sending to you Timothy, my son whom I love, who is faithful in the Lord.  He will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church.”

And not only is it conversion that Paul refers back to, but also the fact that there is only one gospel, there is only one Lord, there is only one salvation, and it is a salvation that they share!  It is the faith that comes out in the living of life, the knowing of God and His promises as they are revealed in the gospel and based on a certain confidence in God and His redemptive, Christ centred love.

For Titus was true to his spiritual parentage, he continued in the one true faith that Paul had taught him!  And this is also important, that we do not deviate from the path of truth God has declared to us.  Even though we may struggle from time to time with the relevance of certain things or the influence the world has on us in declaring that we are out of vogue and certainly out of fashion, the truth of our spiritual fathers and mothers is still truth today!

And that we continue to live by it!  For in that living, the words of greeting that Paul extends to Titus are also ours!  “Grace and peace to you from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Saviour.”  God promises Titus through His greeting the inner stability and divine provision for his task no matter what the external circumstances.

It also reminds us that this wonderful privilege of belonging to God’s family, the awesome responsibility of bringing faith to life and nurture is something we do with the power of God, not on our own!   It reminds us that in all our challenges we must rely on God!   For we can all attest to the fact that our own human strength is completely insufficient for such a task!

These words are not just a wish list, but a statement of reality!  In the same way as God greets us with words like these at the start of every service, the benefits that God pronounces upon us are real: benefits of belonging to God the Father’s family and sharing in the salvation through Jesus Christ the Son!

The greeting of God is a powerful word of God, making real the very things it says!  For when God pronounces grace and peace, then grace and peace come upon us!  And the beauty of this is that even though we may not want to be here, that even when we feel like there is no hope for us, just by being here God blesses us in grace and peace!

After all, grace is that which we receive through Jesus Christ!  It is the undeserved and unmerited work of God’s favour in our lives!

In all our living, in all our struggles, in all our pains and sorrows and burdens, do we ever just let God love us?   As we ask the questions about life and meaning and who we are, do we ever just allow His grace and peace to flow down over us and so receive from Him the promise of divine salvation?  For the story of grace is a story of pain and disappointment, death on a cross and all, but it is still grace!

It is the story of God’s riches at Christ’s expense.  And all for us!

Grace is such a beautiful word!  In the Old Testament the word for grace describes gracefulness, beauty!   It describes receiving favour and love from one you could never expect it from!   It is what God is: kind and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love!   It is what Jesus Christ is – the love of God in action, as 1John 4:9-10 reminds us: “This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him.   This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

Ask yourself: Why am I a Christian?   Philip Yancey asked himself that question, and his answers boil down to two.  One, the lack of any good alternative; and two, Jesus.  Because Jesus is grace in action.  Christ Jesus is the one who rescues from the greatest evil and bestows upon His rescued ones the greatest good.

For it is by God’s grace in Jesus Christ that we are delivered from guilt and punishment for sin, and it is by that same grace that the Holy Spirit transforms our lives and our hearts, and it is still by grace that we know our lives are heading toward eternal glory with God Himself!

Completely unmerited, completely sovereign and unconditional.   Such is God’s grace!

Grace is the fountain of God’s blessings.  It is His favour working in the hearts of all who believe!  Our salvation is equally the gift of the Father’s electing love and the Son’s redeeming work.

It is His Christ-centred pardoning and strengthening love.

And peace is what we experience in knowing Jesus.   Peace with God the Father, the harmony of a life once again in tune with God and reconciled to Him.  Peace is the positive effect of the grace we received, the fruit of that wonderful gift of salvation!  Peace that is both inward and outward, that enables us to understand the goodness of God in all the moments of our life and gives us joy for now and for eternity!  To know with absolute certainty that you are reconciled with God and are His child forever!

For that is who you are in Christ Jesus!   True children by faith in God.

Amen.