Imprisonment, beatings, slander, how did the early church endure this? Four words: Look up, look forward.
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Look Up, Look Forward
Titus 2:11-14
In Paul’s letter to Titus, Paul is encouraging Titus to continue in the work that he left him to do which was to appoint elders in every city on the Island of Crete. So in chapter 1 he describes the qualifications of an elder but then in Chapter 2, he moves away from the eldership and discusses the behavior of other people in the church besides elders. In chapter 2 he starts out with addressing the Older men in the church and their behavior, then he moves to the Older women and younger women, next he tackles the young men, then he address the people in the church that are bond servants. And when you step back, you see that the church in Crete was a multicultural/multigenerational church, just like us here at the Bridge. After Paul addresses each group in the church he concludes by bringing them back to their foundation: Jesus.
In verse 11—Grace of God has appeared and with His appearing he brought salvation. This verse is referring to Jesus, Jesus is the personification of Grace, he is the embodiment of God’s grace. But some have a problem with this verse because they are saying, wait, the grace of God appeared on earth and it did not involve the eradication of homelessness and disease, it did not involve the eradication of hunger but was more concerned about the state of my soul? Yes, because the state of your soul, your standing in the eyes of God is more important than the secondary issues that you mentioned. But so that you can see the compassion of God, Jesus Christ not only brought and brings spiritual healing but natural healing and restoration as well.
And I think that an important distinction to make here is that at Jesus’ first advent, he comes to bring salvation but at his second coming at his return, for us the disciple he will be completing our salvation but for the non-believer, he is not going to have salvation in his hand but a sword, meaning judgment.
And this salvation is available to all men—We see the proof of this in Revelation 7:9 where John gets a glimpse of heaven and he said that he seen a “multitude from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb in white robes”.
They all had white robes on but they obviously had different skin color, which also tells me that diversity was always apart of Gods plan. If it was not, in heaven where things would be restored, you would see one race but this is not the case.
And when Jesus came to earth as it says in the b portion of verse 11, he brought instruction, he brought the words of the Kingdom of God because up unto this point, you had many rabbis with their own interpretation of Moses, the law and the prophets and on what ungodliness looks like and what worldly desires look like and we see Jesus addressing this in Mathew 23 when he scolds the Pharisees for tying these weighty burdens upon the people with their commandments for holiness. And this is why it is so important for pastors, elders, teachers of scripture to not make demands upon the people that the gospel does not demand……..all it does is add a weight.
So Jesus has provided instruction…………. And so with the instruction that Paul has received from God he is now instructing the church.
So Paul is showing how denying ungodliness and worldly desires and living righteously looks for every person in the church. He said for the older man it looks like this, for the older women it looks like this for the younger it looks like this and the bondservant it looks like this.
Verse 13. But here is the major point in this text and about the life of Christ and that is while Jesus came to earth to give instruction on godliness, it was not instruction alone, it was not as if Jesus just came to earth to give us a bunch of rules to follow but what accompanied his teaching or instruction was the promise of a heavenly treasure, an eternal inheritance, resurrection from the dead, entrance into the kingdom of God that encouraged the believers to persevere as they tried to live righteously here on earth. And if we don’t have this eternal perspective, if we are not constantly valuing our treasures in heaven, our eternal inheritance, Christianity is going to turn into a rigid set of rules and you are going to be miserable, no joy. If your faith and joy is only based in this present life, in trying to be Christ like, denying the sin in your life and battling your flesh, if you don’t look up, if you don’t look toward your eternal tomorrow, you are going to be a miserable Christian and I am going to get into why you are going to be miserable a little bit later.
So Paul said, looking for that blessed hope and appearing of our great God and savior but I want you to pay attention to the flow of this text.
- First Paul said that Christ has appeared, the blessed hope, bring salvation and instruction., instruction to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live righteously ……….but guess what, these things are difficult to do, especially in this fallen world, and especially in this fallen flesh. Turning the other cheek is not always the easy thing to do, preferring my brother or sister to myself is not always easy to do, loving people unconditionally is not always easy to do, standing up for righteous is not always easy to do,
And living godly, let’s see what happens when you try to live godly in this world.
2 Timothy 3:12-Persecution—–Just look at the baker in Oregon whose business has been shutdown because they refused to endorse homosexuality by making a cake for a Gay wedding. In these things there are going to be disappointments, and failures, and we need the blessed hope, we need to know that Christ is returning, we need to know that the life that I am living is not for nothing but that there is treasure at the end.
Example: take the young women
Verse 4 If you have a young wife, mother,
Love your Husbands—-This is a difficult one and I know this because I am a husband and I know that I do bonehead things, I can do things that drive my wife crazy, and if your hope and joy is tied up in me and not in the return of Christ and the heavenly riches that accompany him, resurrection etc., it is going to be a difficult road.
And I believe that this is one of the reasons why we have so many grumpy, miserable Christians, with no joy. Their joy is tied up in trying to be a good Christian, it is tied to having a good ministry or other things of the earth and it is not tied to the blessed hope—eternal life, heavenly treasures.
Even in ministry this can happen and I know this first hand. Let’s say you are a person that loves to witness conversions and see a person go from death to life and because this brings you so much joy, you pursue it with your life that is fine so long as people are being converted but what happens when there are no conversions, what happens to your joy? If your joy is only tied to what’s happening here presently, you are going miserable and on a roller coaster.
Let’s look at another place where this same thought is occurring.
1 Corinthians 15:19- There was some debate over if there was a resurrection and the resurrection is one of the treasures that accompanies Christ at is return, it is one of the heavenly treasures that we should appraise in our life. If there is no resurrection to life, if there is no new heavens, new earth, if this is it, if we just live this Christian life and then we go to the ground and that’s it, then we are people most to be pitted if there is no resurrection. That is how vital this treasure is.
Look how the Apostle Paul encourages other Christians
2 Corinthians 4:17- Eternal weight of Glory—-Revealed at the Return of the blessed hope
Romans 8:18 – Glory that is to be revealed to us
The church is encouraged by the return of the blessed hope, the appearing of Jesus. As they endure the trials of this life they are up and forward with anticipation. And you had some Christians that were so looking up, so looking forward to the return of Christ that they stopped working and part of me does not blame them because this life can beat you down. The most recent one was Harold Camping and his followers.
We have looked at Paul’s perspective on this. Let’s look at Peter’s.
1 Peter 1:3-6;13
Peter is writing Christians who are suffering persecution, 1st century persecution, much more harsh then some of the things that we face. So how does this leader in the church encourage these Christian that are facing hard times? He tells them to keep their eyes on the heavenly treasure that is to come their way and he tells them to rejoice in it.
And how sure should the Christian be in the blessed hope, the appearing of Christ? Just has sure as the Spirit of God working in you giving you new affections, desires, new, you can be sure that Christ is returning.
Read verse 14-
How can I know that I have been redeemed from every lawless deed and this purifying effect is happening to me? The Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is the proof that Christ’s redemptive work has been applied to your account.
Titus 3:5
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