Devoted to Good Work

Welcome back to our women's Bible study on the book of Titus, our final week. Week six this week, called this Bible study. While we wait, we've learned so many things. I think this has been a really intriguing Bible study as we learn how the Apostle Paul, what inspired Titus to equip the Christians to evangelize. And like last week, we learned that God cares that we live godly lives in front of other people. He cares, he intends for us to even live counter culture lives. And then we had to realize that sometimes he even intends for us to rank under people, even those who may be foolish or disobedient. And so as this letter is winding down now in chapter three, we're given a whole lot of reminders, bunch of reminders and a warning. It's kind of like this. My kids are all adults. And when they come and gather and when everybody starts leaving, we do the Minnesota long goodbye. We walk out the driveway and we wave forever. But I remind them of things, right? They're leaving and I'll say, don't forget to put that salad in the fridge as soon as you get home. I'll say, don't forget to send me, text me that picture. And then I always end with a warning and you do too. What's the warning when someone's leaving? Drive carefully, right? So we part ways with reminders and warnings. And so I just made four bullet points for the reminders that we see in chapter three, as this letter is winding down. I'll put them up on the screen for you. Here's our four reminders. How we should live because of Christ. How we did live before Christ. What God did for us. And what God expects from us. Those are four things we're going to, I'm going to kind of use this as a way to guide us through this chapter, because these are reminders. And the first two are actually from last week's lesson. So I'm going to back up a little bit to the beginning of Titus chapter three. How we should live because of Christ. Look at how verse one started. Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people. We covered those verses at length last week. And I just want to summarize by saying that the most gentle and courteous people that you run into should be Christians. And the least quarrelsome, the least argumentative people that you run into should be Christians. And the best husbands and the best wives and the best workers and the best citizens should be Christians. And the people who are the most ready for every good work should be Christians. This is how we should live because of Christ. Second reminder that we studied last week is how we did live before Christ. This is the verse we ended on, verse three. For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. That is how we did live before Christ. And you might say to yourself, um, I asked Jesus into my heart when I was five. Like I really didn't live passing my days in envy and malice. You know, that's a legitimate thing to say. Here's what the Bible teaches us from Isaiah. All we like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to our own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Those things are all in us. This is what was in us and still is. For a lot of people, it came up to the surface, maybe in differing degrees, right? And so every one of those characteristics is in us. When Paul mentions in that verse, we ourselves were once foolish, I kind of wonder if that included people like him who foolishly thought that his own righteousness was what was going to make him acceptable to God, his self-righteousness. That is included in foolishness. And when he mentions slavery in that verse, we are reminded that all of these things have enslaved us. And slaves can't free themselves. They can't, they have nothing, no means to free themselves. So they have no hope, which is why the next two reminders are really important. Reminder number three is what God did for us. And here's where we pick up our text in this week's study. Okay, verse four. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, so you should have sun rays over that, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. All right, what God did for us, the grace of God appeared, which allowed him to lavish his grace and his mercy upon us. There are no works that we could have possibly done to achieve that because slaves cannot free themselves. Someone else has to do it for them. And in your study guide, in your journal, you marked all of the words works with a W, right? Each one of them. And then you flipped it around and you have an upside down one, which is the M for mercy. The Ws never made it. It was God's mercy that made it. Paul's telling them, remind them, let us never forget about the washing, the regeneration, and the renewal. It's kind of easy to move along and forget that. It's a very good thing to go back to even daily. Lord, thank you for this. Okay, and then he said to remind them that we are heirs. This is what God did for us. So I looked up a definition, just a dictionary definition of what an heir is, and it says it's someone who is legally entitled to the property or the rank of someone else after that person's death. You're legally entitled to their stuff after their death. Now, in a family, it's the parents who gather the stuff and the kids who inherit the stuff, right? It's not the kids. We were just talking about inheriting things. The kids don't work, and the parents inherit. It's upon the death of the parents, the kids gain the inheritance. In God's kingdom, because of God's grace, Jesus paid the entire price, and we get all the inheritance. But we're actually co-heirs with him. But that is something that we should be reminded of as well. And we have legal proof of this inheritance. It's the Holy Spirit. And you went to Ephesians 1, verse 14 in your study guide. That same Holy Spirit that did all the washing and the renewal, he put a deposit down on us, and it says it guarantees our inheritance until we acquire possession of it. So those are the first three reminders. And the next one is that there are expectations that go along with being an heir. You know how we always say God accepts us just the way we are, and he never leaves us just the way we are. Look at verse 8. And this is the fourth point, what God expects from us. Verse 8, the saying is trustworthy, and I want to insist on these things so that those who have believed in God may be, here it comes, careful to devote themselves to good works. These things are excellent and profitable for people. God expects good works from us while we wait for his glorious appearing. In this time that we're waiting, he expects fruit. He planted the tree, and he expects fruit to come from it. And so everyone who has been born of God, everyone who has been washed and regenerated, has been appointed to bear fruit, appointed unto good works, which God himself customized for each one of you. Now, since we're talking about good works here, I thought it would be good for us to go back, recap the whole Bible study in terms of what did the Apostle Paul say about good works throughout this whole Bible study. Because you know the title of our study is while we wait, but I think a better and more robust title would have been zealous for good works while we wait. So I'm going to put all these verses on the screen for you. Let's just go through them. It started back in chapter 1, verse 16, when Paul said that the false teachers who professed to know God, denied him by their works. So they say, I know God, but the fruit wasn't there to substantiate it. And then he said, they're unfit for any good work. Verse, chapter two, verse seven, Titus was to be a model of good works. That means, I like how one of the translations says it, a pattern of good works. So he was to be someone to be an example. And then we get to verse 14 in chapter two, and we learned we are to be zealous for good works. That word zealous means passionate. We are to be passionate for good works. We get to chapter three, verse one, we are to be ready for every good work. You know, I grew up on the farm. I've always been a barefoot girl. I don't know how it started. I don't wear shoes in the house. I just have been more comfortable without shoes on. But that's not a good fit for farm life or for ranch life, to not be ready to go outside. And my dad, my poor dad, he had a farm and four girls. He never got a son. I told you this probably before. Every time a baby was born, it was a girl. He went out and bought himself a tractor. And there's a row of pictures in the photo album of the dad, the baby, and his new tractor. His consolation prize. I was never really geared into that, you know? And so he'd come in the house, and he'd say, I need somebody to come out and help me. And he'd look at me, and he'd go, well, you're not ready. Well, after a while, I learned that was a good thing. I didn't care for the machinery all that much. But anyway, I think of Ephesians, the armor of God, Ephesians 6, with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace, you know? We are to be ready for every good work. I may never change my ways and have my shoes on all the time, but spiritually, our shoes should be on. All right, look at 3.5. He saved us, not because of our good works, okay? Just a reminder, remember. And then 3.8, but we should be careful to devote ourselves to good works. And then we'll come to that again here in verse 14. Learn to devote ourselves to good works. So isn't that fascinating when we go back over this short book, and we read, we look at all the mention of good works, we see it's a definite theme that has been coming out, and that's why I titled this lesson Devoted to Good Works. Okay, so there's all the reminders. Now here comes the warning, remember, drive careful, okay? Verse nine, but, I would add, in the church, avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and they are worthless. Religious people in particular, those people who profess to know God but deny him by their works, seem to love to argue about things that don't matter. And we can go through this list. The first one is foolish controversies. Now, not every controversy is foolish, right? Do you remember what we learned in chapter one? That the elders are to protect that whole line of fence. You know, they are to hold firm to the steadfast word of God. And so, not every controversy, but this word foolish is moros, like moron, like stupid, okay? Stupid questioning, stupid or absurd questioning, that's middle school. Do you remember a class, you know, somebody in the class was always the one to start asking a string of stupid questions. And the reason was to get the teacher off track, to sort of seize the classroom and get it on a different wavelength. I hope middle schoolers aren't watching this. I love you, but it's just kind of sometimes how, you won't always be this way. And then it talks about genealogies, you know, tracing by generations. You know, some things go in and out of vogue. In 30 years, we have never had a problem with genealogies being an issue. But look at those people here. We have people just years or maybe a few decades out of Judaism, that is a big deal. What tribe you belong to is a big deal. And I can see the argumentativeness that could potentially arise from that. And like I say, things go in and out of vogue. Today, we might call it conspiracy theories, okay? They're in vogue today. And for people to argue, you know, about those things, dissensions, quarrels about the law. I just wanna take you to 1 Timothy 6, where Paul tells a different pastor some of these same things. This is verse three and five. If anyone teaches a different doctrine that does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he's puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce, look at this, here's the result. Envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth. Now, when we say goodbye to our kids and we say drive careful, what we're saying is protect everybody in that car. What Paul is saying here is the church is warned. Guard and protect the unity of the church. Because these things, all these bad things surface because of this. Be careful, it's a warning. And here's what we're supposed to do. Verse 10, as for the person who stirs up division, stirs up, we call him a pot stirrer. You're making stew and everything kind of settles down to the bottom and it's not a big deal and then you stir up that pot and you bring it back up to the top, right? So for the person who stirs up division after warning him once and then twice have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful and he is self-condemned. Okay, kind of wish we didn't have to deal with that verse. But there's a couple levels for this verse and one level is certainly church discipline and what pastors and elders and church leaders have to deal with in regard to this. But there's another level for the average, everyday Christian woman like you and me, okay? There's an application for us as well. So that's what I want to talk about in this Bible study. So here we are, Susie Christian, minding my own business and I have a friend or an acquaintance who kind of is like this. Every time we're together, kind of quarrelsome, dissension, stirs up division, it's kind of a problem. She usually has a problem with someone or some method or some decision. So what does this verse have to say to me about that situation? Do I just ignore it? You know, do we ignore the division that gets stirred up? And it seems to me we have some choices to make. It seems to me, I'll just say it right out, it seems to me we have an obligation to follow this, warn, warn, and then have nothing to do with her. Can you do that? Is that even okay to do that? Well, let's talk it through. Here's our choices, okay? Choice number one, we can be obedient to the scripture and we can warn, warn, and then disconnect if that hasn't been fruitful. We can wimp out on the warn, warn part and go right to disconnect and never tell her why we're not talking anymore. Or we can ignore the whole thing and just say, yeah, it's just the way she is. Choices have consequences. If you ignore the whole thing, because what have we seen in this passage? This whole, the one who stirs up division, there's an effect to that. There's bad things that come from that. It's like a cancer. Do you look at a cancer and say, eh, not a big deal. Maybe it'll just go away on its own. It's not how we treat it. So, you know, the negativity and the division that's probably not a good choice. Now, if we just, we say, you know what? I don't like confronting people, so I'm not gonna do the warn, warn part. I'm just gonna disconnect. Well, then we've treated that person as though they're guilty without a trial. Who wants to be treated that way? Do you want to be treated that way? Because you know what? Maybe you're wrong. And so, do you see the beauty of having, so now let's not call it warn anymore because that sounds a little stern. Let's switch our vocabulary to having an honest conversation, okay? So we can see the blessing of if you have an honest conversation about someone, and I'm not saying someone who has one negative comment. We all do that. To some degree, we have all done something in this list. We're talking about the person who chronically is causing the division and stirring up difficulty. So can we have an honest conversation with that person and just say, This is some of the things that I see going on, and I know that the ultimate effect would be this. What do you think about that? And warn, and then watch and see what happens. And then what does he say? Go have another honest conversation, and then watch and see what happens. But then there has to be, then you can't just say, oh, well, I guess it's just gonna be what it is. There has to be this final disconnecting. So remember, our goal is unity. That is the goal here. The goal isn't to be right. The goal is unity, to protect the unity, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together. All right, verse 12. When I send Artemis or Tychicus to you, do your best to come to me at Nicopolis, for I have decided to spend the winter there. Do your best to speed Zenos the lawyer and Apollos on their way. See that they lack nothing. I like this verse because it shows us, it's like peeking into the window at all the players in the early church. Sometimes we think it was all the Apostle Paul, and oh yeah, I guess there was Titus and Timothy too. But here we see these names, and we find out that many hands make light work. There was a lot of men engaged in the expansion of the gospel, and I just love to see this teamwork. Two guys were gonna be sent to Crete to relieve Titus so he could go spend some time with Paul, and then we find out too that Titus is instructed to send two other guys on their way. See that they have what they need. Give them money, give them stuff. They need support, and so you help support them in the same way that people have supported you. So we see this sweet giving and taking of what people need, and I like that. Verse 14, here it says, and let our people learn to devote themselves to good works. To me, this is the high point of this lesson here. And the reason I like this, I like to zealous for good works, be passionate for good works. But what if you're not? Are we always passionate for good works? What happens when you're not? Do you just give up? That's why I like this verse, learn. Can you do that? Yes, I can learn. I can practice. I can start at ground zero. Have you ever been in a group of any kind, maybe a sewing group or even in church or something, and you feel like you're so far behind everyone else? Like they have all these skills, and you're just like the newbie on the block. And so that's why I like this verse. Learn, let our people learn to devote themselves to good works. That I can do, and that you can do, because we're all still learning. And then he goes on to say, so the reason is to help cases of urgent need and not be unfruitful. We want always to be practicing, always to be learning to devote ourselves to good works so that we are ready when the need arises. Someone who is practiced up is ready to help when the situation arises. And someone who's been living in her own bubble and hasn't really been practicing, when the urgent need arises, it's really a challenge. It's really a challenge to step up and help meet that need. And so that's why we need to be practicing, learning to do good works. Because one of the worst things for a Christian woman is to be unfruitful. We don't wanna be a tree planted in God's orchard and just be sitting up there, taking up air, soaking up water, and producing not a one piece of fruit. We want to be fruitful. Okay, in verse 15, all who are with me, Paul writes, send greetings to you. Greet those who love us in the faith. Grace be with you all. Such a beautiful way to end the passage. So I'm just gonna pray for your discussion time. And I trust that God has just reminded you of great things through this Bible study. Father God, we do thank you for your word this morning. And Lord, I thank you most of all that you are so tender and gracious with us. We see these words in this lesson, even grace and mercy. And that's who you are to us. Lord, you are right there to walk beside us and help us to learn to be devoted to good works. So I pray, Lord, that you would make us good students, Lord, in whatever way we need to become a better learner. Lord, help us with that. And we thank you, Lord, for all the reminders, particularly, Lord God, the reminder of what you have done for us. We thank you, Lord. And we praise you. And we thank you that you've enabled us to study this passage together. And I pray that you would bless each one. In Jesus' name, amen.