“Why Grace Appeared” – FBC Morning Light (12/19/2024)

Well a good Thursday morning to you. Today we're reading the book of Titus. Yesterday we finished up the book of Hebrews and we're backing up in our Bibles to the book of Titus as we're proceeding through chronologically the reading of the scriptures this year.

So in Titus chapter 2 we find out what the purpose of grace is, the grace of salvation. A lot of people abuse God's grace. They think of it as sort of like a free pass, you know. You get a hall pass from the teacher in high school so you can go from the classroom to wherever.

And I don't know about you and what you did with your hall passes in high school, but I know those things got abused a lot. You get a hall pass to go to the office to do whatever. And this little errand that should take seven minutes to get there and back ends up taking about 35 minutes and missing most of the class, you know, because you've abused the pass.

And some people treat God's grace like that, like it's a pass that I can just, because I have this pass in my hand, I can do whatever I want to do and I can claim God's grace. God's grace. In other words, they look at God's grace as a license to do whatever they want to do, even though whatever they want to do may be utterly sinful.

But that's not what God's grace is all about. We get that clearly in verse 11 of chapter 2, the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us what? What does God's grace teach us?

Not that we're free to do whatever we want to do in terms of our sinfulness or our own selfish stuff, no. But denying ungodliness and worldly lusts. God's grace teaches us to deny those desires that are ungodly, and those desires that are worldly, that are shaped by the priorities, the philosophy of this world.

We're to deny that, and instead live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present age. Now, clearly this is a challenge, isn't it? This present age in which we live? It's more undermining of that kind of a lifestyle today than, say, it was when you were much younger, 20 years ago, 30 years ago.

And that's just the way the world is going to go. And we know this from what Paul has told us in his epistles to Timothy, that the last days, things are going to become more and more ungodly. It just increases throughout the course of the last days, that is from the time of the Ascension to the time of Christ's second coming.

Okay, so the world is fighting against a life that is marked by sobriety and righteousness and godliness, but God's grace teaches us to live that way in this present age, all the while, verse 13 says, we are looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.

So what does God's grace do for us? What does it teach us to do? It teaches us how to live. It teaches us how to live. It doesn't simply teach us that you've been saved from the penalty of sin, it definitely doesn't teach us that since you've been saved from the penalty of sin, now you can sin with impunity, you can live any way that you want to live.

No, God's grace teaches us that on the negative, we renounce ungodliness and worldly desires, and on the positive side, we live with sobriety and righteousness and godliness, that's how we live in this world, with our focus, our attention, upward.

We're centering our focus on the appearing, the coming again of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. Is this how we live our lives? Is this? Is it? It's awfully easy, isn't it, to get just all caught up in what we have to do every day, and we just go through the day after day after day, the drudgery and the challenges and sometimes the excitements and all the stuff.

We get in a mood of, I need relaxation, and so we find something to relax with and over, and how much of that is shaped by what we've just read in Titus chapter 2? How much of it is shaped by what God's grace teaches us?

Well, we're in the season when we celebrate the first advent of our Lord Jesus, and we look back at that with great joy and thanksgiving, but we're also, through it all, to be looking for the second advent of our Lord Jesus, looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.

So as we look back at Christmas, and we look forward to the Second Coming, let's be sure we're trained by the grace of God to live in this world in a way that pleases the one for whom we're looking. All right, Father, we thank you for this challenge today.

We pray that as we meditate on your grace to us, we would realize the cleansing and purifying and directing power that it have in our lives. We pray it in Jesus' name, amen. All right, well listen, have a good rest of your Thursday.

God bless.