While We Wait

--- Welcome to our Bible study in the book of Titus. I've titled this Bible study, While We Wait. Waiting is a tricky thing, isn't it? At best, it's tedious, and usually it is taxing on us to wait for anything. If I asked you to raise your hands, who loves to wait? No one would ever say, oh, I just love that. It's not so bad if we know how long we have to wait. It's maybe not so bad if we have something to do while we wait, if we have a distraction, if we have our phone, or if we have a book, or if we're prepared to wait. But I chose the title, While We Wait, for this Bible study, and I wanna tell you right away why I chose the title. And I wanna take us right into the inner workings of Titus. Chapter two, verse 12 and 13. Unless you have an NIV, you don't need to open your Bible to it yet. I'm gonna put the scripture on in just a moment, not yet. But if I could summarize it first for you, this, the heart of Titus is, how should we then live while we wait for Jesus to return? How should we then live? Because this is what we might call a believer's Bible study. This book was written to a young pastor, and therefore to the Christians in his world. And when we accept Christ, our citizenship has moved to heaven while our residency stays right here. Our citizenship is no longer on this earth. It is now in heaven. But yet we stay here, we wait here, we wait for his return, or we wait to go to heaven. So how should we live? Okay, now let's look at the middle of Titus. Chapter two, verse 12 and 13. And I'm reading this out of the NIV because that's where we got the title for this Bible study, and I like it. It sums up the point of this book well. What type of people should we be?

That's what we should do while we wait. We should be characterized in those ways. That is the core message of this Bible study. I've kind of given you the bullseye right off. If you never make it back to another Bible study, there you go. You have the whole summary there, but I know that you will come back. Most of us are waiting. We might have a list. If I asked you, what are the top three things that you're waiting for? You might not have the return of Jesus Christ on the top of your list. In fact, you might've felt a twinge of guilt while I was talking about that and thinking, that's not what I've been waiting for. I've been waiting for other things. Like I have a lot of things in my life I've been waiting for. And we do. We have things in our life that we're waiting to be made right. Maybe you're waiting for some relief from chronic pain. Maybe you are waiting for children or grandchildren to turn to the Lord or return to the Lord. Maybe you are waiting for an end to the division in your home or in your family. Maybe you're waiting for the right job to come along or a job to come along for you or for your husband. Maybe you're waiting to conceive and have a child. Maybe you're waiting to have a husband. These are real life, okay? This is honestly what's on our list. These are the things we're waiting for. Maybe we're waiting for the election to be over. Maybe we're waiting for COVID to go away. Right? What sort of people ought we to be while we wait? Even for those things, all the things that we're waiting for. Well, we have choices while we wait. We can wait wisely or we can wait foolishly. We can let circumstances carry us along or we can be very intentional about our lives while we wait. We can crab and complain. We can trust and obey. Or as Paul said in this text, we have a choice to become entangled in worldly passions or to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives. So this short letter will show us how to be intentional while we wait. It is a roadmap for us and it gives us hope while we wait. Now, we always point out when we do an introduction to one of our Bible studies that before the Bible was written to me, written to you, it was written to someone else first. And that's what we wanna discover in the introduction of a Bible study. Who was this written to and why? Because we know that it is alive and it is living and it has something to say to us, but it was written to somebody else first. So that's what we're going to investigate here. This book was originally a letter from the Apostle Paul to a young pastor named Titus. Things weren't perfect in their worlds either. Things were out of order. They were not moving along as planned. They had things that they were waiting for because there were things that were broken, confusing. Paul and Titus had spent time together on missionary journeys, traveling, ministering. They faced difficulties. The churches weren't perfect. The people were a challenge. Ministry for them, if you've read about Paul's missionary journeys, ministry was one step forward and three steps backward, often into jail. And so there were things as well that they were waiting for. The location that this letter was sent to, where Titus was, is very important to us. He was on Crete. And then when you begin your Bible study next week, and verse five is going to tell you that right away. And there's a map on page six in your study guide that shows you the Mediterranean world. And you can see that Crete is the largest island there in the Mediterranean. But still, even though it's the largest island, it's only about 160 miles long and about 35 miles wide at its widest point. So it's a pretty small little space. And that's where Titus was when Paul wrote this letter. Now, Paul had visited this place. It tells us, Dr. Luke tells us in Acts chapter 27, on his way to Rome, he had spent some time in Crete. And maybe he evangelized the people. Maybe he shared the gospel. Well, the apostle Paul shared the gospel all the time, wherever he was. But maybe that is where they heard the gospel. But I think, and this is just my opinion, because the Bible doesn't tell me so. I think that when Paul landed there at that missionary journey, he found those that had already an understanding of the Messiah. And you know why I think that? In Acts chapter two, the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem, it tells us there was Cretans there. And of course, when the Holy Spirit fell and everyone shared the gospel, and all the tongues probably known to the world at that time, they were informed that Jesus was the Messiah. And they probably traveled back. And my guess is that when Paul landed there, he found people who already knew about Jesus as Messiah. And he probably further illuminated their understanding during that trip. But anyway, the point of it all is that here's Titus, this young pastor living on Crete among both Christians and the pagans. And I think that the intention of this letter is to inspire Titus, to equip the Christians, to evangelize those that don't yet know. That's what he's trying to accomplish here. So I want to ask a few questions about Crete. What were the Cretans like? What was the culture like? The Cretans were the thugs of the Mediterranean, okay? They were known for lying. They were known for their brutishness. They were true barbarians. And when you start your study next week and you get down to verse 12, you're gonna see that the apostle Paul didn't name call. He didn't say, oh, this is what you're like. He used one of their own people and just regurgitated what they themselves say about themselves, which is, they're liars, evil beasts, and lazy gluttons. That was the characteristic of the people that lived there. And I thought, wow, that would be a really tough culture to live among and try and evangelize until events of like recent months. And I'm seeing, oh, we have a lot of that too. We are becoming more and more characterized by those things in our own culture. So see, we read through something written in the first century, how much it applies to what we're looking at today. How could the Christians gain the attention? of and the respect of those people in order to make inroads to share the gospel. Well, they're not going to gain the attention by being just like them, that's for sure. Their lives are going to have to look very differently in order for there to be, you know, to gain their attention. Their lives would need to be characterized by righteousness and by godliness, selfless, by loving. And so their churches would need to be united and orderly. Their homes would need to express the created order of God. And they would need to behave toward unbelievers and government authorities with respect. And in fact, that's really the outline of this book. And in your study guide, if you're kind of filling in the blanks there on page four, there's a little outline in chapter one. In church life, Paul's going to show us order in the church. And then in chapter two, in home life, Paul is going to show us love and order in the home. And when we get to chapter three in public life, how we relate to those outside of our circle, those who desperately need to see Christ in us so that they will say, whatever you got, that's what I want. So that's a brief outline of this book. I always love books that when you open your Bible, the whole thing just sits right there. I love doing these short little books. So open your Bible to Titus chapter one. We are going to study verses one through four this morning as a way to get you inspired in the next five weeks of your Bible study. I'm teaching from the ESV, even though our title is from the NIV. I figure that's OK to do. So we're going to read through verses one through four, which says,

So the first four verses tell us in verse one, this letter was clearly written by the apostle Paul. It was written to Titus. And what did those two men have in common? Well, obviously, they both had come to a knowledge of Christ. So they were brothers in Christ. They had a ministry relationship as well as a deep friendship. Titus was the younger and Paul called him my true child in the common faith. And these men were both ministry minded. They had dedicated their lives to the gospel. Wherever the Holy Spirit would lead them to go, whatever he wanted them to do, that is what they did. And so they shared that in common. What I want to do is look at Paul, Titus, and then their relationship together. So what do we discover in these verses about Paul? How did he describe himself in verse one as a servant of God? The apostle Paul lived the exchanged life, which means he totally understood that Jesus had sacrificed himself to pay the debt that Paul owed. And he exchanged that, he said, I will receive that payment of debt. And in exchange, I now belong to God. I am a servant of God. This word is doulos, which means, which is translated slave in many places in the Bible, a voluntary slave. And so Paul is saying that he's a servant of God. And he also says he's an apostle of Jesus Christ. We know that apostle is one who is sent forth, one who is an ambassador of the message. And if we look at those two descriptions that he gives about himself, servant and apostle, the way I see it, one is general and one is specific. And here's what I mean. Many people in the Bible are described as a servant of God. Moses was a servant of God. Joshua was a servant of God. David was a servant of God. Mary was a servant of God. You are a servant of God. I am a servant of God. If we live the exchange life, if we are born again, we no longer own ourselves. We are now owned by the Lord. We are a servant of God. It is a general description that should fit each and every believer. But the other one is specific when he says he is an apostle of Jesus Christ. Because not every one of us is an apostle. In fact, I have not one friend who is an apostle. But every one of us has a specific ministry calling. And it is important that we see that and that we walk that out in our life. Our ministry callings may have a lot to do with natural or spiritual gifts that God has given us. Our ministry callings, our specific ministry, might have something to do with our season of life. And it comes and goes. For example, one of my ministries right now is that of a wife. If I become a widow, well, that ministry calling will be overshadowed by other ones. And so our specific ministries may come and go. Many of you in this room are in a specific ministry of motherhood, taking care of the little ones, raising them in the Lord. Many of you are out of the hands-on and you have moved into a whole different realm, which we thought was going to be the easy part and now we know is the hard part, right? I can always get a little recognizing laugh out of that. So in your discussion, the first question in your discussion is going to relate to how are you walking out your specific calling? And that's an important thing for us to face once in a while in the mirror and say, can people tell by looking at my life that I am walking out a specific ministry calling? Well, what was Paul's motivation? What was his purpose? He also tells us that in the next two words, fill in the blanks in your study guide, or faith and knowledge, because he said, for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness. Paul's motivation was the faith of God's people, their faith in God, the faith of the elect, meaning those who belong to the Lord. And his motivation was their knowledge, not just knowing stuff, but their recognition and their discernment of the truth. How do we know truth? Well, it tells us in here that it accords with godliness. Truth is God-like, and that is one way we know the truth. Any doctrine or any practice that promotes, that does not promote godliness is heading down the wrong path. So that's what truth is. And then he also, his third important purpose was to promote their hope of eternal life. Everyone needs hope. I don't know who said it. I can't give credit. Maybe you've heard it before that we can live about 14 days without food. We can live about three days without water. We can live about eight minutes without air. But we can't live a minute without hope. It is a terrible thing when people lose hope. And you all probably know someone who has lost hope. And hope of eternal, there's all kinds of hopes in the world, but hope of eternal life is the bedrock. It is the foundation of all of them. It is the most important thing. And so Paul opens with this in chapter one, and he'll close again with it in chapter three. So let's break down what he said about this hope in the second half of this run-on sentence that's three verses long, where it starts, hope of eternal life. He says, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began, and at the proper time manifested in his word through the preaching with which I have been entrusted, by the command of God our Savior. All right. So God promised. He promised the hope of eternal life before the ages began. And so we learn that this was all organized and pre-thought out by the Lord, this life that we live. God had intended from the beginning, before he even created humans, that we would have this fellowship with him and enjoy him forever. And I love how Paul says in there, God, who never lies, by the way, remember who he's talking to? A culture of liars. So he wanted to use a contrast and say, God, who, by the way, never lies, has shared this information with us. And then it says that it was manifested in his word. We can't get very far. I didn't use the word manifest at all this week. Maybe you didn't either. So we need to find out what does that mean? Okay. It means to make clear, to prove. to show for everybody to notice, okay? So again, I'm gonna take us back to the NIV, which gives us a very conversational way of that verse three. He brought his word to light through the preaching entrusted to me, okay? Now, Paul was entrusted, that was his specific ministry, and he did it in a powerful way. Much of our New Testament is the words of Paul. However, it should be our aim to manifest the word of God, to bring it to light, to make it clear for everyone to see. I wanna show you what Paul said to the Romans in Romans 10, verses 14, 15. I love this.

I love this verse because it reminds me that making clear the word of God makes us beautiful. Least in God's eyes, it does. How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news? So even though Paul is describing himself and his mission, let's ask ourselves a couple questions right here. Do I make my hope of eternity clear for people around me to see? Do I make that clear? Do I make it simple? Do I bring it to light? Can people sense in me that I live at peace? Or do they see me bound up and fearful about things? Is it obvious that I am resting in the knowledge that God is in control and I am not? Those things manifest the word of God. And so we have the ability to do that too. Just to recap Paul's motivation here, we see he was motivated by the faith of God's elect, their knowledge of the truth, and their hope of eternal life. So let's turn our attention to Titus. Now, Titus in verse four is described as my true child in the common faith. Who was Titus? Well, on page six in your study guide, I give you a short bio of Titus. You can read it later. We won't read through the whole thing. The first bullet point on that page tells us that in Galatians chapter two, we find out that Titus is Greek. That means he was not a Hebrew. He was not a Jew. He was born outside of Israel. He was uncircumcised because of that. He was basically just a regular guy and nothing special about him, except that he came to faith in Christ, probably through Paul's ministry, because Paul calls him my true child in the common faith. And so our guess is that he came to know Christ through Paul's ministry. And then down at the bottom of that page, the second to the bottom one informs us that Titus at some point had been left on Crete. In their ministry together, Paul went forward and Titus stayed behind. He was left on Crete. And so that's why this letter is being sent to him because he was left behind to carry on all the things that we are about to study in here. When you read through that bio, one thing you're going to notice is it speaks of relationship between Paul and Titus. I love the letters in the New Testament that are written to pastors because they are heavy with relationship. You see that, I'll call it mentoring in this context. And mentoring in your mind, you might think of it as a very, a formal thing. I'm not talking about that kind of mentoring, okay? I'm just talking about a real organic and natural and spiritual mentoring. When we get to chapter two, we are going to discuss mentoring between women. But I want to mention it here because of what we see with Paul and Titus. And I think it is so sweet. We live in community life in the body of Christ, okay? And we are very often shaped in important ways by the community that we engage with. I always like to say, we are discipling each other for better or for worse because we rub shoulders with each other. It's not something you can plan. God brings it about, although I will tell you, I did try to plan at once when I was a young pastor's wife, about 28 years ago. I thought, we need some of these mentoring relationships. So we started a whole program called Heart to Heart and we had ladies sign up and we paired them up and we matched them up. It's like, you will be with you. And we, you know, and it was kind of funny because you can't plan and you can't force and you can't push things like that. Although I will say this, God's bigger than our fleshly efforts because some of those relationships carried on to this day, even though, but the point of it is, God puts people together as he desires, when he desires. And we should be open to that. We should watch for that. So when I was young, just rededicating my life to the Lord, there were women that I would say definitely mentored me. Not one of them knew it. That happens. I just watched them. I was 22, I was impressionable and I watched. Those relationships are credible. Also another foundation in my life is Elizabeth Elliott. I devoured her books. She was my mentor in many ways. I did meet her once. I stood in a book signing line for a long time, have a book signed by her. But so there are some relationships that people don't know that you have discipled them. But then there are those beautiful relationships where you actually do life together. You spend time together. You're in the same space together. And maybe you have had the privilege of being in one of those relationships where someone has mentored you. They have been a mother figure to you. Or maybe you have been the one doing the mentoring or both of those things. But what I see in this opening, the tender language that Paul uses is certainly he and Titus experienced that doing life together. So either way that it goes, whether it's from a distance or whether it's very close, it is part of our Christian existence and it's important for us to watch for. And it's important for us to know that everything that we say and do is going to have an effect. So I wanna show us 1 Thessalonians 5.11 as a reminder that says,

This should be our focus in all of our relationships is to encourage and to build up. Okay, so as we close, I just wanna give a little information for how instruction and how to do this Bible study. This study guide is written in a four day a week format. So you're gonna need four days to, unless you're one of those that just sits down and does the whole thing, that's okay. Whoever you are, you just go with your personality, nothing right and wrong here. But I do wanna say one thing. There is one wrong thing and that is approaching it without prayer. Whenever you do do your Bible study, please just pause, doesn't have to be long, but say, Holy Spirit, I invite you to show me what you wanna show me as I am going through here. And then the first thing that you're gonna see is read a passage, write it in your journal. So grab a notebook, grab a journal, write out. It's just a few verses each day, so it doesn't take long. Like we've said often, boy, slowing down to write that verse by verse gives the Holy Spirit time to speak to you since you asked that he do it. It's like, then you need to give time and it is a great way to do it. Then you can answer the directed questions in that day. And then the last page of each week is what we call the questions for thought and discussion. And that lifts the scripture out and brings it into our culture and into our world a little bit more. And some of those questions may be great for your discussion groups. And then lastly, you need to make it to your discussion group. So I just wanna close by saying, if you guys will endeavor to do those things that I just listed and be faithful, and I just wanna say, there's only five more of these weeks, make this the top priority, okay? Put this to the top and other things can't be done because you have to go to Bible study. You can do that. for six weeks. If you will endeavor to do that, I promise you that I will do my best to just prayerfully look at each passage and ask the Holy Spirit to guide us. What does He want to speak to us today in 2020 about this passage and allow, just invite Him to breathe prophetically into the passage that we're studying. Because we're waiting for a lot of things in life, but we are waiting for Jesus to return. What sort of people ought we to be while we wait? I think He'll refine us through this book. So let's pray about that. Lord, we invite you into those places in our heart to remind us that there's so many things on the horizontal level that just grab our attention and take up so much of our real estate in our brain. But Lord, we really do want to be the type of people that you are growing us to be while we wait for your return. Whether you come to get us or whether you take us home to be with you. Lord, make our days useful. Make them profitable. Lord, help us to be impassioned to let your word be manifested in us either through the words that we say or just how we live our life. Lord, that's our invitation as a whole group. We invite you to do this work in our lives. In Jesus' name, amen. ---