Book of Titus - Ch. 1, v. 1

All righty, let's see here. We left off last week about five words into the first verse of Titus one.

Let me read verse one really quick. It says, Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God's elect and the acknowledging of the truth, which is after godliness.

Last week, we spent a long time, well, we introduced, we did further introductions for a while.

So that's one of the reasons why we didn't get too far last week. But, or week before last rather.

But what we did cover in verse one was just that very first statement, Paul, a servant of God.

We talked about the Greek word doulos there, the most potent English equivalent would be the word slave.

So you could read it, Paul, a slave of God. We talked about how that was a unique title that Paul gave himself there.

He doesn't give himself that title anywhere else in any of his other letters or introductions, but that it was significant in that that is the same title given to Moses, given to the

Old Testament prophets. And so Paul is essentially putting himself on the same playing field, on the same plane as Moses himself, which is significant because as we will find out shortly,

Titus is up against a lot of false teachers, many of which, if not all, are

Judaizers. They're legalistic Jews that are still trying to kind of thwart the message of the gospel, which at this point is brand new, the gospel of Christ.

And so Paul is, in this letter to Titus, knowing that Titus will share this letter to give himself the authority needed to establish local churches on the island of Crete, opens the letter,

Paul, a slave of God, in the likeness of Moses and the likeness of the

Old Testament prophets. So that's kind of where we left off last week, and we will just pick it up right there.

Paul, as a faithful servant, was totally sacrificial, which of course is one of the greatest components of being a true leader.

What we're about to find out is he breaks down the rest of verse one, beginning of verse two, is what one of his prime concerns, if not his absolute prime concern as an apostle and as a faithful slave of God and of Jesus, it was that he was a sacrificial person.

Paul was a totally sacrificial person, which is one of the greatest components of being a true leader.

As I said a second ago, Paul, when you look at some of the reasons why he was such a great leader, what was it that made him such a great leader?

Of course, being a commissioned apostle by Jesus is a wonderful start, but he had qualities that we are able to emulate ourselves when we are put into a position of leadership.

How can we imitate Paul? How can we be a true leader in the way that he was?

Well, sacrificial responsibility, whether that's leading your home, your church, your employees, a military unit, a team, and so on and so on.

It's one of the prime components of being a true faithful leader and actually leading towards something greater than yourself, not just for the sake of being a leader, not just for the sake of being in a position of power.

Paul exhibited that sacrificial responsibility like no one else, and it's from him, it's using his example that men, regardless of their situation, whether they are in a position of church leadership or just the leadership of their home or the leadership of those that are maybe under them at work, their employees, whatever it may be, you can learn from Paul how to be that kind of person, how to be that kind of leader.

In Philippians chapter two, verses 16 through 17, it says, holding forth the word of life that I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I have not run in vain, neither labored in vain, yea, and if I be offered upon the sacrifices in service of your faith,

I joy and I rejoice with you all. Paul joyed in the labor that he took part in that played a significant role in the growth of all of these people that he's discipling.

Of course, that passage was in Philippians, so those that are at the Church of Philippi, he is telling them,

I rejoice not only in the day of Christ that I have not run in vain, neither labored in vain, and this is the same kind of sentiment we're gonna be getting in Titus as well.

Now, going back to Titus 1 .1, the second phrase that Paul uses gives us a little bit more, kind of the more specific nature of Paul's service to God in this context.

Of course, this applies to his total, his whole ministry, but he's telling us in this context that his service is manifested as the commissioned apostle of Jesus Christ, a slave of God, an apostle of Jesus Christ, a slave of God, the

Father, in the order of Moses, in the order of Jeremiah, but even more specifically,

Christ's apostle. Paul's apostleship was just one facet of his position as a slave of God.

Of course, being a slave of God is a very, that is an overarching position to be in.

It covers a whole lot of different things, a lot of different responsibilities, and things like that, and so Paul is getting a little bit more specific here.

He's sharing, again, let's just say one facet of that servanthood, being a slave to God, calling himself an apostle of Jesus here.

Paul, and this is very important for us to notate at the beginning and to remember in the future as well because in this particular day and time, the writings of Paul are attacked big time.

Now, I know they have always been attacked to some degree throughout church history, but the attacks vary, and what we're getting a lot of today is, number one, the first attack is whether or not

Paul even wrote what the Bible says that he wrote, and so, for example, the authorship of the pastoral epistles is always attacked by the more liberal theologians and things like that, stating that Paul didn't actually write them.

Of course, there's easy defense for those attacks, and of course, accepting the

Bible's testament of itself is one of those, but not to get into all of that at the moment. Another attack, though, is when you, it is accepted that Paul wrote a particular thing.

The common attack is that Paul is writing a different gospel than that Jesus preached himself, that there are two gospels,

Jesus's and Paul's, and we need to accept Paul's when it agrees with Jesus's, but when it doesn't, we need to cast

Paul aside and accept what Jesus said, as if there's disharmony in Paul's teachings with Jesus.

Of course, that is a massive topic. There are so many different examples that you could go through and kind of point by point point out the fact that the arguments against them don't hold up, but it is important to know here.

When Paul is telling us that he is coming as an apostle of Jesus, Paul himself makes zero distinction between quote -unquote

Pauline Christianity, as the liberals would say it, as if it's its own thing, and Christ's teaching.

He doesn't make any distinction between the two, as so many liberal theologians today do. Paul considered himself a representation of the risen

Jesus, of the risen Christ. He was not representing his own innovations as a good teacher, who happened to be smarter than just about anyone else around.

So if Paul were a prideful person who weren't actually a commissioned apostle of Jesus, he could have been the guy, hypothetically, the type of guy to go around and, you know, trying to show everyone that he's smarter than everybody else, and kind of molding, changing the gospel, which, by the way, is what the

Gnostics later did. That was not Paul, though. Paul was actually commissioned by Jesus himself. He represented

Jesus. He did not represent Paul. And so Paul is making that clear in stating at the very beginning, he is a slave of God, but he's an apostle of Jesus Christ.

He is a direct representation of Jesus, and his words are coming from that place as well.

And so when that is attacked, when Paul's works are attacked as if he is bringing some new type of Christianity, quote unquote, to the table, that was not in accordance with what

Jesus taught, as if there was disharmony between the two, Paul did not think so, neither did the other apostles.

Peter, I don't think, would have considered Paul's writing scripture if Paul was not in perfect harmony with Jesus himself.

So big topic there, but just remember that what is the

Bible's testimony of Paul's teachings compared with Jesus? Bible's testimony is that there is perfect harmony in unity there.

Now, we've already established that the false teachers that Titus will have to refute throughout his ministry are legalistic

Jews. That's kind of what we ended on last week. We hashed that out just a little bit at the top today. However, the culture of Crete, this is where Titus was, it was very much a pagan culture.

And so Paul takes the opportunity in this salutation here to address the Greeks as well.

How does he do that? Well, the Jews, the false teachers, the legalistic Jews that are living on the island of Crete, that are gonna be trying to thwart,

I'm sorry, Titus' work, the Jews hear, quote, slave of God at the beginning of this letter.

When they hear that, they immediately go to thinking of a person, again, in the likeness of Moses, in the likeness of the

Old Testament prophets. But the thing is, the heathen on the island of Crete didn't care so much about the one

God of Israel. They had their plethora of gods that they were worshiping. They may or may not have been aware of the

God that the Jews worshiped, but they couldn't care less. So Paul hits us with a double whammy here in passing this authority onto Titus, knowing that he would need every bit of authority that he could get.

He begins by stating that Paul is a slave of God, but in regard to addressing the

Greeks, what Paul did know that the Greeks would understand is that a powerful man named

Jesus Christ had been resurrected and that that resurrection had been authenticated by hundreds of witnesses and is now worshiped as God by his disciples, even though he's no longer on earth.

Now, that is something that the Greek mind found very intriguing. And even though they were still dealing with their own pagan idolatry, their own worship of false gods, they were very intrigued by these disciples of Jesus and what they had to say, because the idea of resurrection was new to them.

It was intriguing to them. The boldness with which these apostles came, you can see this time and time again throughout

Acts, as the apostles were going to these places and the Greeks were there and hearing these messages and the way they reacted, sometimes they received it, sometimes they, well, they reacted a number of different ways, actually.

But the point here is that Paul understood that while they may not have had an appreciation for this title as the slave of God, the slave of the one true

God of Israel, like the Jews would have that would have stopped them in their tracks and gotten them to start paying attention to this letter given to Titus from an apostle, from a slave of God, the

Greek mind would start turning in thinking when they hear that this man is also an apostle sent by this

Jesus that has been resurrected apparently and whose disciples are now boldly proclaiming his message to the world, to the known world at that time unashamedly and that this man is worshiped as the one true

God. The Greeks knew that much, even if they didn't believe in Jesus yet, they were intrigued by it and Paul knew that.

And so I think it's interesting that he hit us with this double whammy at the very top of the letter, a slave of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, something that the entire audience that Titus had before him, all of which were, or most of which

I should say were hostile, they would have heard this and it would have resonated with them to at least hear what

Titus had to say. Now, in the latter part of verse one, we learn of the mission of Paul, Paul's specific mission on earth.

Of course, this is talked about in other places as well. But remember, we talked about this last week, the opening four verses of Titus, it's all one flowing continual sentence.

This is all one thought. And so Paul went to great lengths to lay this out for Titus, again, for the audience that would receive it through Titus.

And Paul was very specific. He was very meticulous in his opener. And so he gives us a really good summary of what his individual mission is as a slave of God, as an apostle of Christ, starting in verse one and following it was to fulfill something specific, something that God wanted him to focus on.

And we can break that mission down into three basic parts. Number one, for the faith of God's elect, for the faith of the elect of God.

The second is for the knowledge of truth, which is according to godliness. And the third is for the hope of eternal life.

So with regard to the faith of God's elect, because look at verse one again, according to the faith of God's elect, he is an apostle of Christ, according to the faith of God's elect.

In this, we learn that Paul is focused, and you may not necessarily get this at first glance, but it makes sense.

What is the purpose of even mentioning that? What's the purpose of mentioning the faith specifically of God's elect and not simply

God's elect, even though that could be a phrase used as well.

Paul worded it very specific here. And we learned that Paul is focused on the evangelizing of God's elect.

In other words, to point out their faith is a specific point of reference that he wants

Timothy to grab onto here. Those who are the Lord's, they are God's, he addresses election here, but they haven't yet been drawn by the

Father in time. The moment in which they are drawn, regenerated, that hasn't yet happened in linear time just yet.

And Paul knows that he, as an individual man, can be the very instrument that God uses to do just that.

He can be the steward, the instrument, the thing that God uses to draw them, to share with them the water of the word so that the gospel presentation is complete.

Paul understood that. To bring the elect to the point of saving faith was the first tenant of Paul's earthly mission.

And we see that time and time again throughout his writings. Notice that Paul doesn't say anything in the realm of not being worried about it, not being worried about the faith of God's elect because they're the elect.

God is sovereign. They're gonna be saved no matter what. He acknowledges election.

He does that, which by definition proves that God is sovereign over salvation.

The very fact that that term is used by definition proves that God is sovereign.

So Paul doesn't need to go proving that or talking about it all that much.

He does mention it, he does acknowledge it, but he does not acknowledge it without also acknowledging his responsibility to evangelize those very people, which is interesting.

According to the faith of God's elect, in kind of a parallel passage, which we'll eventually get to in 2

Timothy 2, if you wanna go there, you can. I'm only gonna read two or three verses here. But in 2

Timothy, this is just a more fleshed out example of Paul's care in evangelizing those who he knows that God knows as people.

But he also understands that he doesn't know God's people. Like Spurgeon said, they don't walk around with a giant yellow

E on their backs. And so Paul knows that he is the means, part of the means that God uses to bring about the salvation of his people.

And so that was a yearning for Paul to get to be that instrument, to get to be that person, not only to evangelize, but to bring conversion, to bring that saving faith to people or to be the one that God uses to do that.

In 2 Timothy 2, verse eight, Paul says, remember that Jesus Christ of the seed of David was raised from the dead according to my gospel, wherein

I suffer trouble, and this is what I wanna emphasize, wherein I suffer trouble as an evildoer, even unto bonds, but the word of God is not bound.

Therefore, I endure all things for the elect's sake, for the elect's sakes, that they may also obtain the salvation which is in Christ with eternal glory.

So once again, you have a passage where Paul is acknowledging the fact that there is an elect chosen people of God, but he is going through trouble, he is going through bonds, he is going through being deemed an evildoer by the world.

He is enduring all of this for whose sake? For the sake of God's people, for the sake of the elect, that they may also obtain salvation, which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.

So evangelism was at the top of Paul's mind all the time. He was constantly bringing the word forth and bringing it before the people that he was around so that the elect who were in the crowd may be brought into a saving knowledge of Jesus, that Paul himself may be used as the tool to do just that.

So the first part of his mission is for the sake of God's elect, for the faith of God's elect.

If there's one thing that we can learn about Paul by reading his letters and his story in Acts as well, is that he was all about bringing the saving gospel to those who he was around.

If he had the opportunity, he was going to take it. It's an interesting, Paul is a very interesting case study to look at with regard to the concept of letting the

Holy Spirit lead your evangelism. Because what I see when I look at Paul in Acts is you see the

Puritans use this really neat phrase that they taught that you were to share the gospel promiscuously.

Now, that word's connotation has changed quite a bit in the English language today, but with its core meaning, what it means is to spread it indiscriminately, to spread it without prejudice, without discriminating, all those types of things, to spread the gospel promiscuously.

And that's what Paul did. So he was not concerned with who he was around and who was going to hear his words.

He wasn't scared of anybody. And yet you have the question, okay, well, presumably you have to be careful before certain audiences in sharing that gospel.

And the answer to that obviously is yes, you do have to be careful. But what we find is there's one particular story we talked about not all that long ago in Bible study, in Acts where Paul was just gonna go right on into the theater in Athens and start talking to people.

And I picture like a soldier in battle that is just doing amazing and he's making progress.

And his side is making progress toward victory. And it's like this one soldier wants to chase them into the forest by himself to finish the job.

Well, you can do that if the whole army is going to do that, but you can't really do that by yourself.

And that was like Paul. It's like he was going to continue marching, even if it was by himself, into this ruckus of a crowd to continue sharing the gospel and doing his thing as a missionary.

And he has two of his disciples grab his cloak and pull him out of there. And so God does, he uses a number of ways to kind of direct and to, whether it be through pinging our conscience to make us think, oh,

I need to be careful right now. Or in some cases like Paul, he was not scared of anybody. He was gonna share the gospel promiscuously no matter where he was, no matter if he was before thousands of pagan plethora of God worshipers, he was gonna just go for it.

Sometimes he went for it. And we now know in hindsight, reading the stories, that was

God's will for him to go for it. There were other times where he was gonna go for it and God sent a disciple of Paul to grab his cloak and to pull him to safety.

And so anyway, Paul was not afraid to share the gospel regardless of the crowd that he was before.

And that was a big part of his overall mission. Now, the phrase acknowledging of the truth in verse one in Titus, acknowledging of the truth.

This is another huge part of Paul's mission to God's people as he is about to tell us.

So the first part of his mission is according to the faith of God's elect and acknowledging of the truth.

The word acknowledging here is the Greek word epignosis, if I'm pronouncing that correctly.

And the definition of that word is precise and correct knowledge of divine things, of things divine.

The acknowledging is the epignosis. The acknowledging is a correct knowledge of things divine, a precise knowledge of things divine.

Now, the Greek word gnosis, it's the Greek word for knowledge, but this word that Paul uses here, he puts a little preposition at the front of it.

And it gives a little bit more of a full idea than just the idea of gnosis, the Greek concept of gnosis, because it's talking about a rich, deep, thorough knowledge of something.

Well, what is the thing? A full knowledge of, it tells us in the next phrase, the truth.

It's a full, deep, thorough knowledge of God's truth. So Paul's core objective is to bring this divine truth to people.

And he knows that it will produce, that it will produce godliness, as the phrase ends with, the acknowledging of the truth, which is after godliness.

Now, I want everyone to remember that that's how Paul is opening this letter.

Let me read the phrase one more time. The faith of God's elect and the acknowledging of the truth, which is after godliness.

This truth is a divine truth that comes directly from God. In fact, the Greek word for truth here is aletheia.

And what does that mean? It means objective truth. It means what is true in any matter, under any consideration.

Objective truth, it's concrete, it doesn't move. It's not subjective, it's not situational.

It is concrete, objective truth. That is the truth that Paul is wanting these people to come to a precise knowledge for, for that truth.

So with that in mind, and considering that Titus here, I'll get you in just a sec, Matt. Titus here, this whole letter is a part of that divine truth that Paul is gonna be sharing.

I want everyone to remember that that's how Paul is opening this letter while considering some of the things that he's going to be talking about later in this same letter.

So he wants us to be thinking about the fact that these are divine truths, objective truths that are concrete in every scenario for all of time.

And some of those truths later are going to include the qualifications of elders. Some of those divine, concrete, precise truths are going to include our behavior as a church.

Some of those truths are going to include instructions on obedience to those whom you are subservient to.

There's a lot of things in this tiny letter that our modern culture would take a ton of issue with, and they do take a lot of issue with.

Hence the fact that they say Paul didn't even write this letter and all of the other liberal attacks on the pastoral epistles.

And yet it's Paul delivering a part of God's full truth to his people.

This idea of Aletheia, of Aletheia, the objective concrete truth that is true under any circumstances, under any consideration all the time.

And then I'm going to go ahead and quit pretty soon here, but let me at least finish this verse.

The last phrase, which is after godliness. So let me read the full phrase one more time. According to the faith of God's elect, we covered that.

That is Paul's mission to evangelizing the elect of God, helping bring them to a saving faith by helping,

I simply mean God using him as the tool to do that. And the acknowledging of the truth that is a full precise knowledge of divine things, which is after godliness.

So what is this final phrase here? What's the significance here? This divine objective truth that Paul is talking about and of which he discusses in the letters to Timothy as well, starts with knowledge of salvation.

We learned that in 1 Timothy 2 .4. Dad recently, or is it 4 .2? Dad recently spent a good amount of time, two or three

Sundays on that specific verse. Let's see here, 1

Timothy. Yeah, 1 Timothy 2 .4, who will have all men to be saved and to come into the knowledge of the truth.

So Paul's starting place with this knowledge of divine truth is salvation, a knowledge of salvation.

But here in Titus, he sheds some light on the fact that it continues through the concept of, or the reality of sanctification.

God's divine truth is revealed at first at the point of salvation, and then revealed continuously as we strive for godliness, as we strive for being sanctified more and more in our walk with the

Lord. If you take the full sentence at the end and split it into two phrases, they become two sides of the same coin, knowledge of God's truth and godliness.

They go together, they're inseparable. Because truth without godliness can lead to a lot of pitfalls for a

Christian. If you acknowledge a truth such as some of God's, let's say, imperatives to man, some of the commands that he gives us, but you remain an ungodly person when you are striving for those, you become a legalist.

You become a person that is hard on the rules without any kind of fruit to bear otherwise.

But if you acknowledge a truth like one of God's indicatives, such as you are saved by grace, but remain ungodly still, you accept that as truth, but you remain an ungodly person, you have then fallen for cheap grace.

You've fallen for the scheme of, maybe you could call it free grace, antinomianism. That's something that a lot of the conservative theologians had to deal with from the time of Spurgeon, and probably before him as well.

It's the idea that I am saved by grace, therefore I can live however I want. Which of course the apostle

Paul dealt with that too. So if you accept God's imperatives, but remain ungodly, you're a legalist.

If you accept God's indicatives, I love you, or you are saved by grace, but you remain ungodly, you become what guys like Spurgeon would call an antinomian.

And that, in my opinion, is the issue that is plaguing a county like Navarro. Yes, we have legalism left and right.

We deal with legalism thoroughly here, and we should. But antinomianism is a cancer in like manner of legalism.

And that is being so hard on grace that you don't even care about sanctification. Which by the way, that is where a lot of the

DTS guys come from. They actually go as far as to say that sanctification is something good, but it's not necessary.

Which of course is, as far as I can tell, throughout the New Testament, as unbiblical as you can come.

You can't have a full, robust knowledge of how salvation works without also acknowledging the sanctification process, and from time to time, also talking about glorification as well.

Now, I'll end it there. That ends verse one, so we can say we got one full verse done here.

But the thought of Paul's overarching mission to his people continues into verse two. In fact,

I'll just read it, but we're not gonna get into it. It says, in hope of eternal life, which God that cannot lie promised before the world began.

So we'll talk about how that plays a part into Paul's overarching mission as an apostle next week, but we'll end it there for today so we have some time for some questions or thoughts or anything like that.

Matt, sorry I interrupted you earlier, but what was your thought? Well, the word truth in Titus there, in verse one, the acknowledging of the truth is the

Greek word, alephia, alephia, A -L -E -T -H -E -I -A would be the transliteration of that Greek word.

And it means objective truth, which is true in any circumstance under any consideration.

And so that is the truth, but it also carries the connotation of it being divine truth.

So those go hand in hand. If it's a divine truth, it's objective truth and so on. Yes, ma 'am.

Very prevalent in our society today is everybody get their own truth.

Right. It's not my truth, but my truth is true. Well. And it's true that that is not the definition of truth because the definition of truth is it's the same for every man everywhere all the time.

Right. Yeah, well, there is no coincidence that we are living in a culture that over the last several decades has slowly methodically gotten to us to the point where it is the, you know, there's the phrase your truth, which is just a cute way of saying subjective truth.

I remember Jeffrey talking about being going to Baylor or maybe even been in seminary. I don't think it was,

I think it was just Baylor prior to seminary, going to seminary.

And he was talking about a class he had to take. It was required on situational ethics. Well, that's a fancy way of saying subjective morals or subjective truth, subjective morality.

People get to pick however, whatever they say is right is right. And in that situation, you have to act ethically based on that person's truth.

And so that, Jeffrey went to college a long time ago. So that has been something that has been eating away at our culture for a long time, where now it has just permeated social media.

It's what it's, it is, that phrase is gospel truth in the mind of every teenager today.

And that is by design. We battle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers. That has been a slow burn of an attack by the devil and his enemy over time.

And it's in direct opposition to Paul's whole mission in life. Yes, ma 'am.

Well, that's the purpose of evolution, is to remove the base of truth, man. Sure.

Well, it's all on evolution. It's all an illusion. It like, it's, ironically, evolutionists, a lot of secular scientists believe in determinism, hard determinism.

You might call it fatalism. They don't believe man has free will. And that any will, any idea of will that we have is an illusion that is built into us through evolution.

Are the chemicals in our brain designed to the illusion of will so that we can think that we are doing things we want.

But in reality, it's all, there are no coincidences. It's all, once the big bang happened, everything fell into place and was locked in at that moment.

And you're going to do what was determined of you to do by natural means, however they would word it.

So that's kind of ironic. But to your point, the reason I brought that up is that you were right on evolution.

Subjective truth is totally fine because it's all an illusion anyway. It's all just a figment of our imaginations to help us get through our day and to help us make the next decision that progresses our evolution as a species to the point of our survival or whatever with the objective of our survival, that sort of thing.

Yes. Oh, go ahead, Dave. I kind of broke down. Truly, truth is like you're saved by grace.

And a lot of people try to mess it up. They say, well, I'm saved by my words. And this just debunks that beautifully.

And after you go through all of the various studies that you did, you just go back and re -read the translation.

It works really nicely. It says the acknowledging of the truth, which is after Godliness. Acknowledging means to accept or admit the truth.

And after, it's like true or down from. So the way you admit or accept the truth, you are saved by grace, is to portray godliness in your actions.

It doesn't save you. That's how you admit or accept that you were saved by grace. Right, what you're saying is even in the

English, the term, well, the term acknowledging, at least at that time that it was used there, it's like a possession of truth.

It's having knowledge of it, but it's possessing it as well. And it's you.

It becomes who you are. It becomes who or what you stand for.

And so by acknowledging the truth, which is after godliness, it's another way of saying this is the truth, not only by which

I stand, but by which I mold and morph all of my life after.

It's the foundation for everything I want to do. And if I live contrary to it, it is a contradiction of who

I want to be and who I really am. It's not that that's who I really am. And why you can't acknowledge the truth without it.

And that, well, that's absolutely true. That's why I was, I wanted to make the point that it's really two sides of the same coin because you can't have truth without the godliness part.

Otherwise you're either a legalist or the people that just say, well, I'm saved and now

I can live however I want. So there is truth in saying I'm saved by grace. That is absolutely 100 %

Bible truth. But if you want to go use that as an excuse to live however you want and think you got your ticket punched to heaven, it means nothing to you.

It is a truth statement that is coming from a place of deceit.

And the same is true when you want to use any kind of God's law, any kinds of God's law or imperatives to justify being a legalist.

It is God's truth coming from lips of deceit as David talks about in Psalm 17, one, a deceitful place, a deceitful heart.

And so I wanted to hit on that hard and we could probably hit on it even harder, but it is very important to remember.

Yes, sir. Spurgeon said there's no one who has ever said that drinking, swearing, lying, and so on.

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. But he said it a lot stronger. Yeah, he did.

Yeah. With a bottle of gin, he said,

I don't know what I'm talking about. Right. See, that is what we could rightly call maybe a hyper

Calvinist or a fatalist. Someone that wants to say, I am saved because I'm of the elect, but I can do whatever

I want. Whatever happens is God's will. So who cares? Let's down another one. And so Spurgeon is...

Okay, I want to say this to Arthur Pink. And this is something that he does not get credit for. People love to act like Arthur Pink is just this terrible, you know, a mean

Calvinist. He, you got to read his biography to learn some of this stuff. But, and I'm sure it's in some of his magazines too, but he preached hard against hyper

Calvinism, like Spurgeon just did there. And if you are a consistent

Bible believer, you will believe in what we might call the doctrines of grace, election, predestination, all of these wonderful doctrines,

God's sovereignty over salvation, his exhaustive sovereignty. But just as passionately preach or passionately focus on evangelism, such as Paul did, and preach the fact that you have to be a godly

Christian. You have to submit to God's standards of living and all of these other things that go along with it.

Otherwise you are just a fatalist. Yes, ma 'am. When you look at 2

Timothy 3, it talks about their husband.

When you look at the description of those who have a form of godliness, there's nothing godly about it.

So what is it that is godly about their form?

It's their home. It's just their shelter for other people.

It has absolutely nothing to do with the heart. Right. I'd love to do a word study on that word form there because it's a very interesting phrase.

And it's almost as if Paul is coming at it from our viewpoint, because there are times where you can look at a person and think, man, they sure do look good.

Like what they're doing seems really good. And so maybe that's from, but from God's viewpoint, it's nothing.

But it's almost like Paul is talking from our viewpoint. From our perspective, they have a form of godliness of what we may deem godly.

But we know the end of the story there. But yes, that is very much a great enemy to not only that individual, but also to those around them because they might be an example for others, whether intentionally or not, that's leading others down a path of either legalism or just living however you want because God saved me by grace.

It's true, but it doesn't negate godly living, sanctification, all of those types of things.

We have 60 seconds left. Does anyone have any other thought? Yes. I'll just say that I really love that.

I really love how you pointed out acknowledging God's truth is sort of like a parallel.

It is parallel with just being godly in general. Mm -hmm. I see a lot of people out there apply principles that are visible.

They usually are from the Bible. And you know, they live in certain ways where you see the fruit that comes from that.

But underneath it, they're not living in truth. And they just care less about being godly.

So it's like they're kind of stealing and borrowing from it. But it's like, are they really living?

Are they really being godly? That's a pretty good way of putting it.

I like the phrase borrowing or stealing from because that is essentially what they're doing is they see personal gain.

And like, it's so weird. There are groups where being a legalist, you gain personal notoriety and reputation and power and all these, and perhaps authority over other people.

So they are borrowing certain statutes of God to justify that.

Or on the flip side is you have people that are borrowing from the reality that we are saved by grace and et cetera, et cetera.

And therefore, I can call myself a Christian and go absolutely bonkers six day of the week, or six and a half days of the week.

And what they're doing is they are borrowing truths to justify the way they live and the things they get to say for personal gain.

And that's it. And of course, mankind has been guilty of that for all of human history. But this is another good example of it.

And so, yeah, we need to possess the truth, make it our own, acknowledge it, have a full comprehensive knowledge of it.

And the godliness will follow by necessity. It's not an if.

There's no sanctification is optional. It will follow if we truly possess that truth, which of course is part of the overarching gospel message.

So, hey, dad, would you mind dismissing us in prayer this morning? Lord, thank you so much for this lesson this morning.

Thank you for the study you've put into it. And it's an interesting topic, the humanism.

And Lord, help us to always seek the truth and to be able to be frightened by the word of truth.

And we just ask that you would give the power to each person in this room to go out and do light and salt in the community with all this knowledge.

We ask it from Jesus name, amen. Amen. Man, I washed my clock.