Seeing the Big Picture, Always

This issue that all human beings have and wrestle with has one particular effect, one particular core element, and that is that in each person's heart, there is an inclination to gravitate towards self absorption. Self centredness is the root issue of sin. The Bible points out that this is the ultimate locus of the power of sin. It is the engine room of sin. Self absorption.

And sin springs up. We see in all these stories in the Bible, when the thing I hold or a person holds most precious, whether that is themselves or their toys, when these things get affected, something happens that causes us to throw these petty tantrums, these huge amounts of hatred or these storms that flash about in our lives. I remember a fight that happened when I was probably in grade eight between my brother and I. Now, we're the best of mates now, but boy, was it a hard time to be alive in my household in those days. Grade eight and he was grade six.

And we had this epic fight where there were fists flying and everything. And my family stood by in absolute astonishment at the reason for this fight, and that was because I took my brother's pencil, refused to give it back to him and then in the middle of the fight, snapped it just to make a point. How, yeah, nasty. It was nasty. This was the epitome of the friction between my brother and I.

It's the thing that both of us remember to this day. But the incredible pettiness of that event fascinates me. I don't understand it. But we can both understand that it was something about us. It was about me and I wanted to have use this pencil for, I can't even remember the reason.

And Dirk's desire to have his pencil back was probably a weak reason in my thinking, was not conducive to what I was trying to do. So that issue is really, it's always and the root of sin is always me. It is always self absorbed and self centred. Now Paul finishes the passage that we read this morning from verses 9 and 10 with these words, avoid foolish controversies and genealogies. Avoid dissension and quarrels, squabbling about the law.

Why? Because these are unprofitable and worthless. The Greek word he uses here to describe worthless means to be devoid of success, devoid of a result. It is in utter, complete, words, pointless. The quarrels and arguments that Titus was having to deal with was absolutely worthless and pointless.

And now to avoid these arguments, the Bible says, because they amount to nothing, we have to see the big picture and Paul holds this out in the verses before this. He says, you are to avoid these petty things because of this and we will see that right now. Paul holds up and says that we should see as Christians and Titus especially in this situation, focus and preach Titus this big picture of God's incredible grace. Now there's going to be people in your life that will cause you distractions, that will bring you to these points of pointless pettiness, people who will tempt you to wade in the mud with them. And Paul and Titus were battling these individuals in their churches all the time.

These were the people that were called Judaizers. They were Christian Jews who believed that, yeah, Jesus indeed was the Messiah, that He had died a sacrificial death, but that everyone must become Jews in order to receive this gift, in order to receive this salvation. And so they were preaching circumcision for Gentiles. They were saying that Christians now still needed to obey all the ceremonial sacrificial laws and so on. And it was messy and these battles were hard.

And Paul says, be careful about these people that are obsessed with genealogies, about the Jewish lineage that they come from. Avoid the debates about the law. Paul says that these debaters, these arguers are not worth God's or your attention. They'll drag you to wade around in the mud and in the garbage while you should be liberated with a clean conscience and an unchained spirit is what Paul is saying. But what is the power?

What is the cause that can motivate us and motivate Titus to break away from those things? The pettiness of those interpersonal arguments. Well, Paul explains it under four movements, four categories of the plot of the Christian's life. The storyline to the Christian's narrative. Four things. The first is how the plot kicks off and we see that in verses 1 and 2 of chapter 3.

This is what you ought to do, says Paul. This is how you ought to live. This is the narrative of how your life should run. This is what God's holy will is for every single human being. Be submissive to rulers and authorities.

Be obedient. Be ready for every good work. Speaking evil of no one. Avoiding quarrelling, being gentle, and to show perfect courtesy towards all people. Can you see how all encompassing and how far reaching this is?

It is not just little how to's here. It is speaking with love and treating others with love completely, showing perfect courtesy, speaking evil of not just your mates, speaking evil of no one. No one. This is what God's holy will is for your life. This is how Paul kicks it off.

God's will for your life. But then it moves to the second part where the plot thickens. Remember who you used to be, he says, and why you can't live this life that God is calling you to. Remember who you used to be and why you can't live this life. Remember the terrible internal struggle that you had, Paul says.

Remember how you couldn't live a pleasing life to God and you knew it. Paul says, here are all the reasons to show you how you could never have been submissive to the authorities over you. You could never have loved every person, speaking evil of no one, being ready to do every good work. Paul says in verse 3, this is the reason. For we ourselves were once foolish, petty.

We were disobedient. We were led astray by people we followed. Then he digs that knife even deeper. He says, you were slaves to various passions and pleasures. Slaves.

Passing our days, spending our days in malice and envy. Hated. He uses such a strong word. Hated by others and hating one another. Not simply being the recipients of hate, but being the cause of hate.

This is how you used to live. Paul says, a Christian's story, a Christian's mindset in order to understand the big picture is to know who you were. Remember it. Remember why you couldn't live a good life showing goodness to every person doing every good work because you were slaves to your passions and to your pleasures. But then there's a third movement in the following verse, what Jesus did for us and how Jesus did it.

Paul says, not one of us were able to live the life God wanted us to live but there is one who did. Verse 4, but when the goodness and the loving kindness of God our Saviour appeared, He saved us. Not because of works done by us in righteousness but according to His own mercy. Mercy. In other words, God who came in flesh, God who entered our time and our space continuum is called God the Saviour.

He found us in this state of incapability. He found us in a state of dying, of drowning in the sea of sin, drowning in this ocean of uselessness and self destruction, and He, what? Saved us. Why? And this is similar to what Daniel many hundreds of years before also said.

Why did God do it? Paul says, not because of our works of righteousness. Not because we tried really hard and we scraped together a little pocket of good that we could offer God. Because God is rich in mercy. Paul says, because in goodness and kindness, loving kindness, God saved us.

Why were we rescued? Because Jesus is merciful. Because He is full of love when we are not because we are not. And then the plot winds down and he, Paul, shows us how through the Holy Spirit, we can move towards the life that God wants for us. In the face of this great salvation to us, the work of the cross, we also receive the Holy Spirit and He begins a process described in verse 5.

It's called a washing of regeneration and renewal. Start at verse 5. He saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness but according to His own mercy. How? By the washing of regeneration and the renewal of the Holy Spirit whom He poured out on us.

A little bit, sufficiently? No. Richly, abundantly, overwhelmingly through Jesus Christ, our Saviour in order that so that being justified now by His grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. And then, verse 8, this saying is trustworthy. I want you to insist on these things Titus.

This is the crux of your preaching, Titus, so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. This is what the Holy Spirit does, Paul says in other words. He will renew and He will recreate your heart in such a way that you will be careful to do good works. And that word there means that you will actually now, for the first time, care about what God wants. You will be careful to be obedient.

When we were in part two of the story, we didn't care. We couldn't give a rip about what God wanted for us. For the first time, if you understand grace, Paul says, you will want to live the way that God wants. You see, grace does not free us from obedience. Grace doesn't free us from obedience to God.

Paul still gives these instructions. Paul starts in verse 1 saying, this is what you are to remind the Christians. Remind them of this. Obedience, submission, being ready to do every good work. Grace doesn't free us from obedience, but it frees us to obedience.

The powerful image here is that of renewal that the Holy Spirit does, regeneration. And we should get Rob up here to explain to us the wonderful animals that exist in the world that are able to regenerate. We've probably seen lizards that can grow back their tails that they lose, amazingly. Or crustaceans, crabs that can regrow a crab or a claw or a leg that's been broken off. This is the image.

Our hearts, our hearts are being regenerated. They are so corrupt and dead that they need an absolute overhaul, a recreation. They need to regenerate like a broken off claw. That is the image that God, that God is telling us and giving us here. But it is all possible by remembering the story of grace.

This is the plotline of our lives. This is the plotline of every Christian's life. It makes us, at the end of the day, careful to devote ourselves to good things. And grace overhauls our lives in such a way that we can honestly now say, like the Psalm writer of Psalm 119, God, I love Your law.

I love Your word. Your ways, God. Your instructions to me are perfect. And so the Christian freedom is not doing whatever. Christian freedom is not doing whatever.

Christian freedom is delighting in what God delights in. So Christian freedom is not a lack of restrictions. True freedom, the freedom that our heart actually craves and desires is joy. Freedom is joy. Joy is the great liberation of the soul.

Being free to do whatever we want isn't actually the freedom that we crave. True freedom is the joy that is found in the message of Jesus Christ and His death on the cross. That is joy. That is freedom. For freedom, Christ has set us free.

Paul says, for freedom, Christ has set us free by His death and this is the big picture. And friends, if we understand this, if we can keep this in the centre of our lives, the motivation of everything we do, it annihilates any pettiness. It absolutely destroys what can cause bitterness and interpersonal issues. If our missionary friends understood this incredible power, would they really have cared about peanut butter? Every time we're tempted to start wading in the mud of sin again, every time we want to have a dig at our neighbour, resent or harbour bitterness in our hearts, when we stop to marvel at the story of God's incredible love, it destroys our self absorption because we know point 2 and verses 1 and 2, we don't deserve to be so self centred.

We've gone and done absolutely nothing to earn God's forgiveness or His love. It rips our ego out from underneath us. And then we are so overwhelmed with gratitude and thankfulness that we say, God, there's absolutely nothing in me that I will not give back to You. There's absolutely nothing in my life that I will not offer my great Saviour. Philip Yancey, in his book, which is a great book, I recommend anyone to read it, What's So Amazing About Grace?

He writes this, the Christian life, I believe, does not primarily centre on ethics or rules, but rather involves a new way of seeing everything. I escape, he says, the force of spiritual pride, and I'll explain this, the pride that makes us get into these fights to do selfish things. He says, I escape the force of spiritual pride when I begin to see myself as a sinner who cannot please God by any method of self improvement or self promotion. Only then can I turn to God for outside help, for grace and to my amazement I learn that a holy God already loves me despite my defects? I escaped the force of gravity of self righteousness and pride again when I recognised that my neighbours are also sinners that are loved by God.

A graceful Christian is one who looks at the world through grace tinted glasses. Grace means that there is nothing we can do to make God love us more. But grace also means there is nothing we can do to make God love us less. It means that I, even the imperfect and broken KJ, who deserves the opposite of God's love. I'm invited to take my place at the table of God's family.

That is the story and the power of our life. Now, you've probably, if you have your Bible open, you probably know that we've dealt with 75, 80% of this passage. Apart from the last two verses here that are a little bit difficult, Paul says that there are people that need to be removed. People who are dividers and distractors and Paul puts it in such hard ways that you are not, he says, you are not to have anything to do with them. And you think, how was Paul been talking about grace? How does this fit into the picture?

How can he end here? He gives this command, warn a person once, warn them a second time, and after that have nothing to do with them. The question is if Christianity is about grace, then isn't this a little antithetical? Isn't this a little harsh? Friends, Paul finishes here in the same vein because there is grace in the warning as well.

Paul has some strong words. He says, you may be sure that a person who is continuously, obsessively absorbed by causing hurt, that person is warped and sinful. He says that they are self condemned, condemned by their own actions. There are times when no amount of forgiveness, no attempts at reconciliation, no amount of love and kindness can directly sway certain individuals to stop hurting you or especially in the context of this passage to stop hurting the church. In these rare cases, and I want to stress that these are rare, these are self condemned individuals.

In that sense, they cannot blame you. They cannot blame you or anyone else for their actions. Paul says that we are to give them absolutely no reason to hate us, to live loving lives towards them. But if you have truly given them no reason to hate you or no reason to hold things against you because of the loving Christian way you've treated them, Paul says they are condemned by their own hearts, by their own actions. They have shown to you that they may not be believers at all by how ferociously anti grace they are.

They, in other words, haven't been moved by this story. They don't understand, they don't accept that this is their story. And you know what? It is a moment of grace that warns them. It is a moment of grace not just once, but twice.

Now I need to add especially that in principle, we're dealing here with church discipline and Paul is giving the right to Titus and the elders of the church to say to someone in church who is causing division, you have to leave. You can't be part of this fellowship anymore. Lovingly, graciously have called them to repentance, have called them back to faith, but this is the biblical example of the right that a church has to remove someone. But as was the case in the Corinthian church, there's always grace throughout this. Paul writes to the Corinthian church about an issue there.

You probably remember of a man sleeping with his father's wife. Absolutely unrepentantly. And by all accounts, the church had been calling him to repentance and telling him that he cannot live as a Christian in this way and he was remorseless. And Paul says to them, remove them from the fellowship and hand them over to Satan. Hand him over to Satan that Satan may have his way with him and then hopefully, by God's grace, he may be redeemed by that experience.

Always with a view to bringing them back. Always with a view that God may redeem. That they may not be, even if they're very far from us, that God's long arm of grace may still reach them. But, and this is what we need to finish on, there is a point for God when enough is enough. And this is where we finish this morning and this is where God's grace comes to us again.

The Bible says that God is constantly sending out His word about Jesus Christ. Like right now, this morning, so that people will take Him as God and as their King. But the end will come where He will judge every person. He will judge every living human being. And our God is patient and He is kind, but I must warn you that there is a time when enough will be enough.

And in God's grace, if you know that you have not made Him the Lord over absolutely every part of your life, if you stand divided in your nature between having God and having the world, then please consider where you are this morning. If the message of God's work in Jesus Christ hasn't moved you this morning, if this story doesn't reflect your life, then please consider where you stand. I want to encourage you to go to God and seek Him out and lay your heart out before Him. But then if you are troubled this morning and if your heart is quaking under these words, if you feel the pinch of guilt and you feel the longing to please God, then friend, you are in a good place. You are in the best of places.

There is a freedom and there is a forgiveness available to each and every one of us. Because on that day of judgement, when God sees and calls out our actions, our heavenly Father will see Christ in us. And He will see the renewal and He'll see the regeneration of a dead heart that's been brought to life. God will see in us the blameless nature of our Saviour Jesus covering us, enveloping us, washing away and renewing this old bad life of ours. And so this morning, I want to ask you to receive Him, to treasure Him, to run after Him and leave that old life behind.

And then friend, live in gratitude, obedient lives, full of joy that are pleasing to our God and Saviour. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you for the word of grace and love again this morning. We thank you, God, that You are the God of loving kindness and goodness. Lord, that abundantly, more than any other descriptor we find of You in Scripture, it is one of love and patience and kindness.

And though, Lord, there will come a day, and Lord, though there comes those moments of recalibration where we feel the weight of our sin, we see the enormity of our fallenness, there's also grace and forgiveness and acceptance available to us. Lord, for those here this morning that don't know You, I pray that whatever You have started, whatever You may have stirred up in the hearts, Lord, I pray that You will carry that through to fruition. That hearts may be utterly brought into humble obedience to You, to accept You, Lord, not simply as Saviour and forgiver, but as Lord as well, as King. That Father then, that our lives can be so overwhelmed and so renewed and so liberated that we will be careful to devote ourselves to good works. To things that are pleasing to You.

Father, we thank you for this word of encouragement this morning. We pray that we will be strengthened by it in our fight against all that entangles and ensnares. Father, give us the big picture always to remember and to treasure. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.