Titus lesson 8 end
Titus · Miles Driedger · Nov 19, 2023
Titus, No. 27
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492619332149

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

We are week number four on lesson eight on two verses. I'm feeling pretty good, Miles. Yeah. I do this for Courtney's ego. I think you get the mantle now. Yeah. Courtney, the fast teacher. But we're in verses 11 and 12 of Titus chapter 2. And so let's read that again.

And let's start with the... We'll start in verse 11, but just to be reminded of the context here. that Paul has been giving Titus this kind of list of things to teach to the different categories of believers, older men and older women, younger men and younger women. And starting in verse 11 gives us the basis upon which he can make these or give these instructions. And so it says, For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires, and to live sensibly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, who gave himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed and to purify for himself a people for his own possession, zealous for good deeds." So, we left off with question 8. We had kind of answered that. I said we would just recap that a little bit.

The question is, what are worldly desires? And... And that's contained in that phrase in verse 12, deny ungodliness and worldly desires. And we said that it's essentially the desires of the fallen sinful nature, the self life. And everything that self craves after is wrapped up in the world system or the cosmos. And so that's what our desires are for. in and of ourselves, apart from the new nature that we have in Christ Jesus. And like we said when we talked about denying ungodliness, the same thing goes here, denying ungodliness and denying worldly desires.

You know, we can't just deny these things. We can't just say, okay, well, you know, that's wrong. You know, I'm not going to do that. I mean, we can do that, but we'll find ourselves in the Roman 7 situation, where we find that no good thing dwells in me that is in my flesh.

And so the only basis to deny ungodliness and worldly desires is the basis of the fact that that's what God himself has done. God has taken us as ungodly, and He has declared us righteous. He has placed us in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ. And not only do we have a new set of desires that are Christ's, but we have the new nature, which is Christ's, so that we are now Godly. We are now crucified to the world.

Does that sum up that question? Any other thoughts on that one? That's kind of where we left off last week. We did have some discussion on it, so. It's a good summary. All right. I think we have an understanding here that just because we know what God has done, by separating us from the world doesn't mean the world's going to go away.

It just never stops talking or desiring or trying to influence and we're very familiar with the desires of the world and, you know, sometimes, well, maybe put it another way, a growing believer, one of the big things that a believer has to learn is the difference between what God desires and what the world wants. And the world can put holy water on their desires, but they're still worldly. It's one of the reasons why it takes so much time to learn what God's will is for me rather than, because worldly desires initially make so much sense, you know. Miles, I was looking at the rivalry for the worldly desires.

The definition is passions overpowering attractions for the secular world. You know, so it really, to me, is just focusing on the world rather than focusing on Christ. So, anything that's being attractive to the world, you know, whatever, your job, politics, whatever, that keeps your focus off Christ is, you know, I guess, I like the overpowering attraction. So, I like that definition. taking away on a constant basis. I mean, we all get involved in, you know, whatever our jobs are, whatever. But if it's an overpowering attraction to what the world offers, I think is what we're to deny. Yeah. And why is it overpowering? That's the, I think that's the frustrating thing to, to, uh, you know, growing believer. is when you recognize that it's overpowering, you know? I think you said in Romans 7. Yeah. Yeah.

The flesh is one that desires it, and it's overpowering. You know, when you see Romans 7 and Paul, you know, who struggles with it, it obviously is something that's very overpowering. Your flesh wants to desire that. That's what it thrives and lives for. You know, Zodiatis says, that word for desire or lust, whatever, says the act of an individual desire resulting from the diseased condition of the soul.

Kind of interesting. Yeah. Yeah, all of those desires make so much sense to us, you know. They're so, well, it's just so ingrained in our nature. It is what we are apart from Christ. All those things seem like the right things. All those things seem like the things that will fulfill us or, you know, glorify us, whatever it is, you know, it's just who we are as in Adam. And like you said, Mike, I mean, just because we know who we are now in Christ doesn't mean that that the world goes away, it doesn't mean that the worldly desires go away either. Not yet, right?

That's where we find ourselves as believers until the resurrection, until we receive that body, that resurrection body. you know, we still exist in the midst of that whole program, but we are dead to it. We're separated from it. So, but we can't count on that fact until we know that fact. So, you know, coming to understand the fact of our separation from it is one thing, and then through the failure of trying to separate ourselves from it through our effort, we come to realize that that wretched, wretched man that I am, you know, who will deliver me from this.

And there is deliverance. That's the thing. That's not a, that's not a, you know, I think I probably read the end of Romans 7 many, many times thinking, oh yeah, I mean, some, someday I'll be delivered, you know, want to die, you know, that's all you can really hope for. And, and yeah, that's not what he's saying. You know, the deliverance is, is right now reality for a believer.

Accepted by faith the same same way we came to Christ in the first place, you know we have a faith trust that we are We are dead to all of that and that's what it means to deny. So that deny word is a faith faith word Someone asked me a question in the back row or stretching Not asking a question but the parallel verse of first Timothy chapter is pretty contextually helpful. But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction. And the thing about the worldly desires in this verse is it's preceded by instructing us to deny them because of the results that 1 Timothy talks talking about, there is the denial, right? Like, how does that work? Talked about that some, but if you want to know how it ends up, like how things work out, those worldly desires will plunge men into ruin and destruction.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Would you say that denial is a reckoned word? Yeah, maybe that's, maybe that's a better way of saying it. Yeah. I think you're right. It's the, uh, Romans 6, 11. Disowned. Disowned. Disown it. I thought you were saying just, just own it. Just own it. Yeah, I'm not, you accent my video and everything. You never know. You gotta be careful. Yeah. Are you disowning or just owning? Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. Disown it. That's right. That's really good.

So let's look at question number nine then. What does it mean to live sensibly, righteously, and godly? So the verb there is to live. And then it's modified by those three words, sensibly, righteously, and godly, in this present age. which of course says what we were just saying, that this deliverance from the worldly desires is not a future hope, that's a right now reality in this present age. And we'll talk about the present age in question 10, but we just kind of want to grab that context here. This is talking about right now for the believer.

Miles, when I see that, I guess I go to what the fruit of the Spirit is. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. It seems like the fruit of the Spirit is to live righteously, whatever.

Sorry, back to the question here. Yeah, sensibly, righteously, and godly. If you're walking by the Spirit, that would be evident. Yeah. Yeah, it's a very, very good parallel there to point out. To me, it's not sensible to the world. That makes no sense. Am I wrong? To live sensibly as a believer means you've been persecuted in this world. And that seems foolish to all those who... Right. Yeah, I think the English word there, sensibly, is maybe a little bit of a relative word. I mean, the way we live as believers is complete nonsense. to the unbeliever, you know, and vice versa, I guess, right? The word sensibly, sopranos, with sound mind, temperately, discreetly. So, self-control could be a translation there. And so it's kind of the idea of having your senses about you. You know, we use that phrase a little bit.

So it's not that it's something that is logical or sensible to a worldly way of thinking. This is something about having a sound mind. And that has to be a mind that is A new mind. It has to be a mind. This is a sound mind from God's perspective. The fascinating thing about the context of this verse is that it graces the thing that teaches us this.

Yeah. Not law. Yeah. It's not spiritual push-ups, discipline. It's grace that teaches us. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. And that's the whole point here. I mean, if we look at verses 11 and 12, you know, he's summarizing the whole first part of this chapter and kind of saying, you know, okay, I've given you all these things to do. And like I said back at the beginning of chapter 2, It's very easy to take a portion of scripture like this, and it's often done that verses like 1 through 10 are taken as law. They're taken, you know, in a legal sense by Christians trying to trying to put themselves back on their law, but that's, the whole problem with that is it's entirely contrary to grace, it's entirely contrary to what God is doing in us as believers.

It's only on the basis that the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation, that we are instructed to deny ungodliness and to live this way. So the grace of God is the only way that this is to be brought about in the life of a believer. It's not self-effort, it's just not a self-improvement program. Yeah, I mean, the word righteously there, you know, I just, when we see that word, you know, and this instruction to live righteously, I mean, I think we really have to recall to mind the early chapters of Romans, you know, there is non-righteous, not one. Righteousness is not something that can be sourced in us. It's not something that can be found in us apart from So if you're getting this instruction to live righteously, and the same goes for sensibly and godly, because we were ungodly beforehand, but if that's going to be in the true sense of those words, then it has to be through grace, the fact that we have Christ as our life by grace. It has to be on that basis that this instruction could really be given. Christ is our life. So if we are to live, it's not I who am to live, but it is Christ who is to live in me. So, again, you know, it's the idea of dependence. It's the idea of reckoning or counting on who he is and what he has done. All right. Should we look at question 10? And Courtney's trying to, I'm trying to time things out here so Courtney can be at ease. He said if I get to nine, what was it, Courtney? 940? 940, I'll let you go.

I'll disappear. I just got a text from the workers. They're getting ready, so I'm going to pull out. Courtney's going to disappear here and he's up next. We've only got one question left, so. But that's okay. I've got like a page of notes on question 10, so we can talk about that for a while if you want. So I'm not going to bail on you because I'm objecting to your teaching, but I may have to get out of school. Yeah. Courtney's, yeah. If Courtney's just done, then there you go.

Alright, well, unless there's any other thoughts on that, living sensibly, righteously, and godly, we should talk about the word godly, I didn't quite mention that, but godly is the, well, in verse 11, we see, or sorry, early in verse 12, deny ungodliness, and this is the opposite.

So this here, godly, is the root of that word ungodly, or ungodliness, we say there's assebo, that awe being a negation, and it was an irreverent or unworshipful mentality or way of thinking. And this here, by contrast, could be actually translated as reverently. In other words, I would say in that looking at, or considering the Lord as we ought to consider Him. And I think sometimes you could probably read this phrase, you know, live godly, and we think that that maybe means to live god-like, but it seems to have more the idea of our thinking rightly about God and who he is, a reverent or worshipful attitude towards God. Could you say that it is living in who you are in Christ? I mean, that union produces godly manner. You can't reproduce that without having been Yeah.

I would say maybe 2 Corinthians 3.18 is the optimum verse here. Beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, I'm transformed into his very image, even by the Spirit of God.

It's Christ living his life through me. It's not me finding out how it goes and then imitating. And the interesting thing about The motivation of the old life, the worldly life, is the world itself. The life in Christ is lived solely by the Holy Spirit through you. And there's an intimacy, a growing intimacy with you and the Lord Jesus perpetrated by the Holy Spirit that has an effect on us. by conforming us, and we begin to see and understand, one, what grace is, and two, how it works.

Yeah, I'm trying to recall here exactly how Miles said it in one of the recordings, but it was to the effect that if there's any effort in reckoning, then it's not reckoning yet. It's arresting. And it is his work. It's his work in and through us, not us. I find these passages and these kind of commands, it's an imperative, right, to live a certain way.

I find them kind of interesting because if we take this and we don't have an understanding of Romans 1 through 8, especially 6 and 7, and we try to, it's so easy to take this out of context and make it work, and that's what so many believers do. And Paul doesn't repeat Romans 6 and 7 every time he comes up to an imperative kind of instruction like this. But I think that what that allows so many believers to do is to experience the Roman 7 struggle, which is so critical.

Because we get to this, and because we don't understand grace, it's so easy to be like, okay, well, all I got to do is live righteously, you know? And so we set out to do it, and we fail. And that's what brings us back to that. that place that we need to get to of failure. Failure is an important piece of the process for believers and a really important step on the way, I think.

Does that make sense? I thought about that. I had a grade three teacher who always told us, I don't chew my cabbage twice. Do you guys use that expression? No. No? No. Oh, great. She was a French Canadian, Mrs. Kowal, and she said, I don't chew my cabbage twice. It means I said it once. I don't need to say it again. I'm not going to say it again. You need to have gotten it the first time.

But in grade three, wow, what a strict teacher. But I think that's somewhat the case with Romans. It's not that it's not repeated anywhere else, but some of those really, really core fundamental truths. He doesn't repeat that here. He doesn't say, oh, and by the way, you know, you've got to reckon on your identification with Christ here in order for this to happen. No, he just, he assumes that, you know, as a believer, you've got those baby, those foundational truths, you know, you've studied that. And so when we get to this year, we're not, oh, well, it's back to works, you know, got to get back to work. I got some imperatives. So I was kind of thinking about Mrs. Quall here, but, um, Let's look at question number 10 then. Let's get that done in the last 10 minutes here.

So, try and define this age. Because this is something that happens in the present age, not in the future age. So, what do we mean by, what does Paul mean by this age? The word there, the Greek word is Ione, which we kind of get our word Eon from. So Ione is an age. It's a time word.

And it's important to know what it, kind of what it refers to. There's a lot of other uses in Scripture of that word. There's a lot of uses in the Gospels. Jesus used it quite a bit. This present age is considered evil. He doesn't use that expression here, but in Galatians 1.4, he says, "...who gave himself for our sins, that he might rescue us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father." What I found interesting was in Matthew particularly, I pulled out a few references from Matthew, that this present age will come to an end. And that's important to know.

So, Matthew 13, all in a cluster, this is in the parable of the the seed sown, and the different soils. Matthew 13. So Matthew 13, 39, 40, and then 49. It's kind of repetitive. And again, the word age in each of these verses is our word, I own. And so Jesus said, the enemy who sowed them is the devil, and the harvest is the end of the age. the reapers are the angels. So he's referring to the end of the age, or the end of the Aion. And again in verse 40, so shall it be at the end of the age. And in verse 49, so it will be at the end of the age. So that's a common way to speak about the age, the Aion, this present age.

This present evil age has an end, But not only does it have an end, there's common reference to the fact that this present evil age, by Courtney, will be superseded by an age to come. The present evil age will be superseded by an aeon to come. So, Luke 20, verses 34 to 35, Jesus uses this age and that age. Jesus said to them, the sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. kind of not really paying any attention to the, much attention to the context there, getting off track on that, but just the fact that there is this age in which we exist right now, and that age, although it is important to recognize there that he refers to that age as having to do with the resurrection from the dead.

And then in Matthew, back to Matthew chapter 12 verse verse 32, and this is important because this is the rejection of the Son of Man, this is the rejection of the Messiah by by the Jewish leadership. This is often referred to as the unpardonable sin, and gets people really worried and worked up. We're not going to really deal with that. I think most of us in the class have a handle on that and what's going on.

This is where Jesus condemns those people that have rejected Him at His coming. And He says, whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him. But whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come. So again, He uses that, the present aeon and the aeon to come. And in this case, the Jewish leaders who were rejecting Jesus as the Messiah, he's informing them that you'll not be forgiven in this age or in the future age.

So hopefully that gives us just a little bit of a biblical, kind of contextual handle on the use of the word age. and what that refers to. An age is sort of a... it can even be used for the idea of eternity. It could be translated as an unbroken age, an unbroken span of time.

It's not so much referring to a limited or or a period of time. But of course, this present age does, like we said, does come to an end. So it is limited, but it's not, it's kind of like it's not on a clock. It's referring to a whole large span of time. But I'll throw that open to a few for comment for a minute or two if anyone has any thoughts. So this isn't the kingdom? This is not the kingdom that we're talking about now. Okay, cool. Thanks. Yeah. Yeah, though, yeah, I mean, yeah, it's worth bringing up, right?

So many people look at, so many believers look at what's going on right now, you know, the church age as the kingdom, and that's, you know, that leads into all kinds of error because this is to come to an end. The kingdom, the future kingdom, is an endless kingdom. And just look at Just look at the way the Lord talked about that through the Old Testament. He will sit on the throne of his father, David, and it will be an everlasting kingdom. The beginning was a thousand years, but rolling on into eternity. So, no, this isn't the kingdom. The kingdom is related to the age to come.

Right? The age we're in right now is an evil age, not a glorious kingdom age. Miles, do you think that with information like this given to us in the Word, as believers, we don't live in the old age really? I mean, physically we're here. But that's not the environment that the Lord has placed us. We live in an environment totally orchestrated by grace alone. Now granted, we still have this old body and we still live in the same environs as the old age. It goes on around us all the time. I think what he's telling us is that Grace is not a substance in a jar somewhere. Grace is an age. It's a place where all of the influences and all of the responses are based on grace, not the present evil world.

Yeah. in probably other places, but I just noticed it in studying Colossians recently. He talks about, in his greeting in Colossians 1, to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ, in Colossae. That's the way it reads in the Greek, straightforward, kind of, in Christ, in Colossae. And so we have these two positions, you could say, obviously we know about our position as in Christ, but we do have a earthly location, is maybe how we should say that.

We live, in one sense, in this present evil age, but we also are outside of it. We live in it from outside of it. If we can get our heads around that. And we really can't get our heads around that, can we? But it is our reality as believers. So it's the idea of keep looking down. Keep looking down. And we are seated in Christ in the heavenlies. And where we find ourselves in the day-to-day in this present evil age, we look down on that from where we are. So, all right. Well, any other thoughts we should close in prayer? What? All right.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for our position in Christ. We thank you that it is an unchangeable and eternal reality and that this present evil age is an age that is passing away. Our present fleshly bodies are bodies that are passing away and we will very soon find ourselves out of this age and out of these bodies and in eternity with you in that perfect state and that age to come. But Lord, we don't want to disregard or dismiss where we find ourselves right now. We understand that it is in this time that you intend to display your life your righteousness, your character in and through us to a lost and dying world, to glorify yourself and to silence every tongue so that all would recognize that they are without excuse, that Your grace has been revealed. It has appeared in the person of Christ, and it is displayed in the body of Jesus Christ. And we thank You for that in His name. Amen.