Titus Chapter 1:1-4

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in the pastoral epistles, Titus itself. The word
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Titus appears once in Titus at the introduction, and then once in 2
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Timothy 4 .10. In 2
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Timothy 4 .10, Paul tells us that Titus went to Dalmatia. Titus is also mentioned in the letter to the
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Galatians. If you were here a couple years ago, we studied Galatians.
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It's not recorded because we just thought about doing YouTube live.
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But maybe I will preach through Galatians one day, and you will get what they got.
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I think the only people here who've been here, like Lauren and the Hostel sisters, who were sitting through the
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Galatians study. Jim might not have been. It was a
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Friday night thing. It was a summer Bible study, and I don't think Jim could make it on Friday.
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Yeah, but I mean, Jim was part of the church. The other Carolyn, yeah,
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Carolyn Okanag, Carolyn O was there. Now, Galatians is one of the earliest
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New Testament books written. We think, I'm saying estimate, AD 48.
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The reason for that is it is before the Jerusalem Council that declared and decided that the
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Gentiles do not have to become in order to be fully Christian, right? They don't have to obey the dietary laws, right?
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And Galatians is heavily on that, right? You don't have to follow the laws like the
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Jews do in order to be a Christ follower. So, knowing that AD 48 and Paul actually in this context mentions that how we went to Jerusalem and Titus, one of his disciples, being uncircumcised actually caused a stir among the early
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Christians, right? And what that tells us is Titus himself was a pretty close friend to Paul.
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If it caused a stir that the apostle's friend was uncircumcised, means
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Titus was a close friend, a close figure to Paul, right?
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So, we're just studying the person of Titus just by how Titus is mentioned.
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No, 48 is Galatians. I'm talking about where else is
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Titus mentioned? After Timothy, Titus is probably one of the closest disciples of Paul's.
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2 Corinthians, which is written 10 years after Galatians, about AD 58,
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Titus is mentioned as acting as a mediator between Paul and the Corinthian church, the reason being, the
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Corinthian church was a messed up church, and they questioned Paul's leadership, right?
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If you read the 1st and 2nd Corinthians, you'll get a good picture of that. 2
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Corinthians 7 .6 says that Titus comforted Paul through this time. And Titus also helped with the collection for the
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Jerusalem church because they needed financial help.
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In 2 Corinthians 8 .23, Titus is mentioned as Paul's partner and co -worker, so a very personal ministry partner to Paul.
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Now, let's talk about the letter to Titus. Diane's right, Titus is written around the mid -60s.
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64, according to Diane's NASB Bible. Considering this, knowing that Paul died around late to mid -60s under Nero, this was one of Paul's later epistles.
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What we do need to think about is this, if Titus was known to Paul and was a close friend of his all the way in the letter to the
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Galatian church, which is 48, and this is mid -60s, how long have they been working together?
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Almost two decades, right? Probably more than two decades. And when you see that in context,
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I think the letter to Titus comes alive. This is a senior minister writing to a close and intimate and personal junior minister, but yet he is still an experienced minister if he's been for over two decades.
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Hard to tell. 2
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Timothy for sure, but I don't think
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Paul talks about where he is in his life.
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But it is before 2 Timothy. We believe 2 Timothy is the last one.
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And some argue that belongs to its own genre, like the last letter. There's really no doubt about Titus being part of the
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Bible. There's a great amount of textual evidence. What I mean is manuscripts that are found that contains
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Titus. As early as AD 200, there's a manuscript that contains a large chunk of Titus.
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And Sianicus, that's the manuscript name from the 4th century, so the 300s, contains the whole
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Titus letter. So, there's very little dispute about like, well, the word here in Titus wasn't included in that.
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No, it's very much well accepted. So, Titus doesn't get argued about like, oh, is this illegitimate?
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No, it is legitimate. So, Titus is a very undebated
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New Testament book. All right. So, we're going to go over Paul's introduction.
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What we need to know about the epistles, when I say the epistle, it means letter. One of the noticeable things about epistles is that there are sections.
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There's the epistle introduction, right? It's the introduction where the author,
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Paul, introduces himself, who he is, and some theological points, usually like a summary of what he's about to talk about, and then the person he is addressing the letter to, or the church.
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And that's what the introduction normally looks like. Introduction, after the introduction normally follows the body of the letter, usually multiple paragraphs.
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Remember, if Paul didn't have a purpose for writing a letter, he wouldn't have written it.
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So, there's a purpose here for this letter, and we'll see what it is. It's concerning elders, concerning false teachers, concerning various groups, concerning believers in general, concerning the response to spiritual error.
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Right. And then there's the conclusion. So, that's how you would read most of the epistles.
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Considering what we went over last time, epistles actually are one of the easiest and simplest to understand for Christians because of fewer number of figurative language used, because it's not as poetry -like, although you can find poetry portions in the epistles, but a lot of it is pretty straightforward.
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Another reason, what's another reason do you think the epistles are easier to understand for Christians?
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What is it? The message. Yeah. Shorter.
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Yeah. It's concise. Right. Very clear, concise.
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You can read the book of Titus in one sitting. So, you can read it like a real letter.
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It is a real letter. Another thing is, it's written for Christian ministry specifically, which means we are familiar with a lot of the concepts here already, because you might have experienced it yourself, elders, and how men and women and young people are to live.
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Another reason is, we're under the same covenant. We're under the new covenant here.
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The gospel is the focus here, too. The gospel is clearly revealed in the letters, because this is written after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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So, for that reason, letters are some of the easiest to read for Christians.
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Not saying every part is easy, because there are some hard parts, right? I'm not saying every letter is easy either, but generally, letters, especially short letters, are easier for Christians to first read.
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So, this would be a great place to start. Now, when we read
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Paul's introduction, the first four verses, this is actually the second longest opening of Paul's letters.
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The first is, of course, Romans. Romans has the longest introduction.
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And what this introduction will show is, it's kind of like the intro to introduction paragraph for an essay.
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I don't know how many of you have written essays recently, right? But it's been a while, if it's like high school, college, right?
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Introduction paragraph is quite important, because it summarizes what he's going to talk about, right?
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And this is what it is. So, we're going to go over this. What we'll do is, can someone read just all the four verses, and we'll unpack verse by verse.
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Who would like to read? Go ahead, Carolyn. Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God the living and the knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness in hope of eternal life, which
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God, who never lies, promised before the ages began, and at the proper time manifested in his word, through the preaching with which
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I have been entrusted by the command of God our
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Savior, but to entice my true child into common faith.
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Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior. All right.
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So, here we got the introduction. I think it's worthwhile to read the section as a whole first, because that's how
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Paul wrote it, right? Paul didn't write, okay, verse one, right? But he wrote the section at a time.
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So, let's go over verse one now that we've heard it. Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness.
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Let's go over how Paul identifies himself. What are two ways in which Paul identifies himself?
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Servant, bondservant, right? Slave of God. Apostle. Yeah, and then apostle, right?
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Um, what does it mean by a servant, bondservant, or a slave of God?
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Working for him, working for Jesus. Working for him, working for Jesus, yeah. Slave means you're basically devoted to him.
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Yeah. So, apostle. Yeah. Devotion.
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Devotion, allegiance. Devotion, allegiance, right? And of course, this is different from the
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American slavery. It was not based upon skin color. It was a socioeconomic level.
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If someone were to be in debt, they would have been enslaved or serving as a servant.
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It would be a bondservant. Yeah. Well, the word for servant is doulos here.
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It's just, like, it can be translated either way. So, different kinds. There's bondservant, and then there's a different kind of servant.
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Right, right. I mean, but here it's, like, doulos. Servant, slave, both legitimate translation here.
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Um. Can I ask you a question? Yes. Is he referring to the two deities,
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God and the Son of God? Because, you know, for some reason, I'm thinking he's under God, and then you're under Jesus.
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Yeah. Right. I know. And that's a great question. You mean in verse one? Yeah. Yeah. Here, a servant of God, I think it would be
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God the Father, but it wouldn't be wrong to say it's also God the Son, right?
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Because the New Testament doctrine is that Jesus is divine, right?
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Yeah. But normally, generally, when
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God is mentioned and also Jesus is mentioned, I do often go with God the
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Father. Yeah. But theologically, it wouldn't be wrong, right?
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Because elsewhere, he would call himself slave of Christ, servant of Christ, too. So, it's not like, oh,
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Paul's only serving God the Father, right? I don't think he makes that division.
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Good question. Only in Romans and Philippians, Paul identifies himself, calls himself as a slave or servant of God.
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Jude and 2 Peter and James also call themselves by this title. And the reason is, think about what, yeah,
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I said Peter, yeah, 2 Peter. And the reason is, what did
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Jesus teach for his disciples to be? A servant. That's right, servants, right?
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So, Paul here is affirming Jesus' teaching on what it means to minister and lead, right?
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He is affirming Jesus' view of leadership, which is, just as Jesus was a servant leader,
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I, too, who am under his devotion, under him, is a servant of him.
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And remember, we get to see Jesus serving, and at the climax of it is that he died for us, right?
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He died a very humiliating death. And Paul identifies himself, although an apostle,
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I'm a servant, right? The next one is an apostle of Jesus Christ.
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What does it mean by the apostle? Yes, right.
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Apostle comes from the Greek word apostelo, which means the verb to send, right?
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So, elsewhere in the New Testament, if you see apostolos, which means apostle, it can mean just a plain missionary, anyone who is sent.
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But when Paul uses it, as Diane said, it has a special meaning.
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He is one of the special apostles, which is that Jesus has personally, audibly sent
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Paul, just as Jesus sent the other eleven apostles personally, right?
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Peter, John, Andrew, so on, James. Paul is an apostle because Jesus appeared to Paul personally, visibly, audibly in Acts, right?
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And he is specifically called to testify to the
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Gentiles, right? He also, I mean, it's not like he discriminated against the
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Jews, he did go to the Jews, right? Every time he went to a new city, where did he go in Acts?
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To the temple. To the synagogues. I mean, to the temple too. Every time he went to the
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Jews first and also to the Greeks, right? The reason being he thought it was fitting that the
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Jews hear about their Jewish Messiah too. But yeah, as Diane said, until they kept on rejecting and like trying to kill him too.
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He's like, fine, I'm going to go to the Gentiles. What this means, for about three decades,
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Paul has been doing this, right? I mean, we need to, yeah, when we read the introduction, we got to really unpack, right?
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If this is written in the mid -60s, Paul has been sharing the gospel, preaching the gospel, discipling young Christians for 30 years.
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He's a seasoned veteran. He's a seasoned minister, right?
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Now, let's go over the second half of verse 1. What are the goals of Paul's ministry, right?
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Let's take a look. Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness.
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So, what are the goals here? What do you see? He wants to have an increase in knowledge.
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That's right. Yeah. So, here, there are two goals, and that is going to be the summary of the rest of the letter, right?
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First is for the sake of the faith of God's elect. Let's go over this.
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What does it mean by God's elect? Chosen of God. The chosen ones of God, right?
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Without going into all the Calvinist, Arminian, and everything in between debate, right?
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We have to firmly hold that we are all saved because God chose to save us.
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What that means is your salvation is not an accident. Your salvation is not an oopsie.
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That means your salvation is not and must not be treated as an accidental event.
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It means God really intended that you'd be saved, and he will see through that.
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That's the minimum we got to believe. I'm not going to go over all the argument, right?
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There may be so much ink was spilled over that, but chosen here means salvation, right?
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You're chosen to be saved. 2 Timothy 2 .10
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says, Therefore, I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory, right?
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It is about salvation. You're chosen to be saved.
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That's what the choice is. You're chosen. God chose to save you, right?
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Ah, so the elect and believers are interchangeable, right?
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If I say believer, if Paul says believer, the elect are interchangeable. Yeah, and this has deep history, right?
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God chose Israel out of all the nations to save, right? God chose
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Abraham out of all the men to save, right? To call out, right? Similarly, God has chosen the believers, right?
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To save. God chose the church. It's important, right? And Jesus chose
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Paul to replace Judas. Yeah, there are arguments there, too.
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We won't go into that. Yeah. The second, what's the second goal?
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The knowledge. Yeah. That's right. Their knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness, right?
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Their knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness. As we're studying this together,
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I'll be just dropping some advice on how I would approach studying the text.
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When there are phrases like knowledge of the truth, right? Or things like that, try to see through concordance if elsewhere
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Paul uses the knowledge of the truth. Try to use concordance.
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And when you look at other instances in which Paul uses the knowledge of the truth or something similar, you can actually dig deeper into the meaning, right?
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Which leads to my next question. What's the knowledge of the truth? What is Paul talking about?
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What's the truth? Jesus Christ. Yeah. No worries.
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Let's explore it together. Right. Jesus is the truth. One instance
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Paul uses the knowledge of the truth is 1 Timothy 2 .4. Let's go to that.
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I'll read from verse 3. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our
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Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
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So there is one where God desires all people to be saved. And what is how is the knowledge of the truth functioning here?
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God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
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Yeah. People who are saved have to come face to face with the knowledge of the truth.
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If anyone were to be saved, they need to know the knowledge of the truth.
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And you know what? God desires that. Right.
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Right. The knowledge of the truth here would be the gospel, right? It's the life and death of Jesus Christ and what that accomplished, right?
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And in fact, we will go look at the knowledge of the truth in 1 Timothy 2 .5 -6.
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I was in 2 Timothy. Okay, let me flip. 1
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Timothy 2 .5 -6. Who can read 5 -6?
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1 Timothy 2 .5 -6. Where there is one
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God, Christ Jesus, who gave himself for ransom for all.
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That's right. 5 -6 unpacks what that knowledge of the truth is. Jorge says gospel truth, right?
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Amen, right? 5 -6 says for there is one God and there's one mediator between God and man,
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Jesus Christ, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.
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You have to share his death and resurrection, that he died for our sin.
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He died to pay, right? Redeem us, right?
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To buy us back, purchase us, right? That's what the content is.
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Quickly, another place in which the phrase the knowledge of the truth occurs is 2
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Timothy 2 .25. And here, Paul is saying maybe the opponents of the gospel come to repentance by the knowledge of the truth.
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It's that Paul hopes that the enemies of Christ would come to repentance by the knowledge of the truth.
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Again, right? Death and resurrection of the Lord would lead them to their repentance, turning away, living for Christ rather than against Christ.
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The knowledge of the truth here means it leads to repentance and salvation.
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So, as just as we said, we have been saying and Jorge has been saying online, it's nothing but the gospel truth.
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It's nothing less than the gospel truth, right? It has to be the gospel.
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The knowledge of the truth is what saves, right? If you're curious where else this occurs, 2
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Timothy 3 .7 as well. Paul tells us that fake believers who are always learning but never arriving at the knowledge of the truth.
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So, think about how fake believers, they may know a lot about the
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Bible, but they never get to that personal knowledge of what Jesus had done for us, right?
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That's the point. So, that's how I would study. If there's a phrase, oftentimes the temptation is, yeah, knowledge of the truth.
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Yeah, I know what that means. You know what? No doubt. I'm sure you all know what that meant, right?
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But when you're going to really teach or when you really want to delve deeper, use a concordance.
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There's like even online, there's free like concordance too, right? The various websites.
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Just find where else does the Bible have the phrase, the knowledge of the truth.
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And start from the closest circle and branch out. What do I mean?
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Start with, if possible, start with the author, as in human author.
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Start with, does Paul use this phrase elsewhere, right? Or if it's Luke, does
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Luke use this phrase elsewhere? So, like I'm preaching through Luke, right? I have been for a while.
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I would be looking at both Luke and Acts first, okay? I would look at the phrase or a word that is special in Luke and Acts first.
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And then I branch out. Other New Testament authors, right? Or maybe
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Peter uses it. Maybe John uses it, right? And then I go to the
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Old Testament. Does that make sense? Start small first. When you're using concordance, prioritize because you know what?
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Sometimes you might be looking for words like faith. It's like there are like hundreds and thousands, right? Like where are you going to start?
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Well, if you're reading Romans or Paul's letter, start with that book first. Does Paul use the word faith in Romans?
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Of course, right? And then branch out. Does he use in other letters? Sure. Okay, what about other
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New Testament authors, right? Other epistles, then other gospels, and then the
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New Testament, then the Old Testament. That's how I would prioritize. Does that make sense?
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Yeah. And I think this is good to discuss now because we're all studying the Bible, right? It's not just me.
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It's all of us. Good. Now, godliness, right?
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It says, which accords with godliness. So, the knowledge of the truth accords with godliness.
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And if you look at other places in which this word godliness is used, quickly, 1
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Timothy 2 .2, the word godly is used. It says, pray for all so that the church can live in godly manners.
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Okay. That means the church living according to God's will.
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And is it just an internal, private thing? Yes. If it's a manner, it reflects.
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It's outward, right? 1 Timothy 4 .7
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-8, put off silly myths but train up in godliness. And it's more valuable than physical training.
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I'm not bashing physical exercise. I love physical exercise. Our family does too.
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But Paul is saying, what's more important is godly spiritual training. So, godliness is something that we need to put effort into.
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And it's something more valuable than our physical body. 1 Timothy 6 .3,
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the sound word of Jesus Christ goes with godliness. What that means is wherever God's word,
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Jesus Christ's word is preached, it produces godliness. God's word has impact.
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And the true fruit of God's word bearing fruit is not numbers, but godliness, right?
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Practical outworking of Christian living that shows and it aligns with God's will, right?
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Break this down. Have I been allowed to go to any church where the pastor researched this stuff and looked it up?
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Oh, man. And have points of reference versus one single verse and then
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I preached on that one single verse and I applied current happenings to that verse.
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Right, right. But if you further research, it doesn't mean what they're saying.
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No, this is why that's how we get the true meaning, right? The true meaning comes from digging deeper and then we can apply it.
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Right. That's right. Yeah, you're right. We do have to. We have a lot of work to do. I'm learning as much as you are.
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Right. I like this is more of Titus than I've ever known. Right.
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So we're going at it together. All right. According to godliness in the hope of eternal life.
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Yeah, we'll get to that part. Oh, yeah. So sound word of Jesus Christ goes with godliness.
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First, Timothy six, five false teachers use godliness selfishly as a means of gain.
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It means their outward expression is for selfish gain. It's not really true, genuine godliness.
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Right. God, which means godliness, true godliness must have the right motivation.
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It's one thing to just look godly. It's another thing to be be godly.
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Right. It has to come from internal transformation. You can't be godly from just behavioral modification.
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And in the same line, second, Timothy three, five says avoid people who appear to be godly, but have no power, which means being godly is it's an it's a powerful working of God inside.
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Just appearing to be godly is not enough. So summarize godliness is not a behavioral modification.
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Because right behavioral modification is just like psychology and secularism, right?
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Don't do that. Don't do this, right? Just look nice. Right. But like deep inside, you're cursing a storm cursing up a storm, right?
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That's not godliness. But it also is not a vague private experience, as in godliness is like, yes,
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I'm godly. You know, I'm developing in my godliness inside privately, which means it has to show to so it's neither just internal nor just external.
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It has to be both. It's not just a theory or by words only, but then outward expressed in life because of the internal transformation and continued sanctification.
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Yes, or in other words, let the Holy Spirit in you have his way. Let the Oh, yeah, surrender to God, right?
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But doesn't mean you're passively doing nothing. Oh, so I hope that made sense.
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I know we went really deep with that. The Holy Spirit in you have his way. So whatever he wants, then you could do that.
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Yeah. Jorge says transformation, transformation, right? The internal transformation is what is expressed outwardly.
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Now let's go over verse two. Who can read verse two? There's two.
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Chapter two. Titus one, verse two. We didn't read that.
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Yeah, but no, she read one. No, she read all four. But we're going to focus on two.
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Yeah. So who can read it out loud? Go ahead. I think I just read it.
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Go ahead. In the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time.
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OK, so first, how does this relate? I would say it is the basis for godly living for the church.
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So how does base of verse one and verse two relate? Verse two shows us the basis.
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It kind of answers why it's the theological basis. Why do you live a godly life, right?
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Why is that something to pursue? Eternal life. And this is the hope of eternal life.
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The theological basis for godly living is eschatological.
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It's coming. Right. Which was a promise from the very beginning.
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Yeah. And the need disobeying within. Right. I've got a plan
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B. Right. So, yeah, and I think this is helpful when we consider what motivates the world to live.
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What? Let's think. What motivates the world to live? Like what? What are they thinking of when they make choices?
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What are they driven by? Money. Money. Money. What is it?
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That's right. Right. What is it? Money, power, comfort, pleasure. Sure.
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Satan. The point is, when would they get it? When do they want it? Now. Right.
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That's the difference. Their motivation is not of eternal life.
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It's the here and now. It's foolish. And what we're going to learn is this is what that's how the
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Cretans lived in. During Titus's time. So this introduction makes sense.
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Cretans are fools, Paul would say. And he will say it in 110. We'll get there. So despite their surroundings, after all,
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Titus is ministering in a very, very hard place. Crete is a
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Greek island. Cassandra went there serving in our military.
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It's a Greek island, and it was very heavily influenced by pagan religions.
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So despite their surroundings, Paul exhorts Titus and the church to live in a godly manner, not driven by what do
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I get now? What pleasure do I get now? But the hope of eternal life. Now, who guarantees this eternal life?
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God. God. And what does Paul say about his character? He can't lie.
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He can't lie. He's truthful. He's truthful. Right. That's right.
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That's right. It's truthful. God who does not lie. He's the most faithful being you can ever know.
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He is completely committed, right? That's what it means that he doesn't lie. He's completely committed.
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He does not swerve. That's his character. And you know what? A lot of the times we
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Christians need to remember that. Meditate on it. Say it out loud. God who does not lie.
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Whenever we feel like. That's right. That's your saturation first for a couple of weeks for Diane, right?
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That's important. God's faithfulness is often questioned before our moment of sin. Well, is
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God really going to provide for us? Well, might as well just do this instead, right?
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Is God really right about, you know, that it is actually good, right?
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Well, I'm going to take the easy route, right? But Paul says,
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God who does not lie. Now, regarding eternal life. Eternal life, as you know, is the forever in the future.
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What's unique is the promise of this eternal life happened forever in the past.
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So there's this length, this span of time that's impossible to grasp.
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This was promised by God before creation means forever in the past. What that means is we were meant to live forever.
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And it's not a vain fantasy to think about living forever. While everything around us may be falling apart, wearing down everything in us to a body stew, right?
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Falling apart, wearing down. But we were made for eternal life.
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And God has not changed his mind since the forever in the past. And that is reassuring.
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And what's also cool is God, the father, if it's the word promise. What's required when you're promising someone commitment, but not only that, can
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I promise? I mean, I guess we do use the word promise myself, but normally the verb promise means that there requires another person.
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That means God, the father promised God, the son before the creation of the world, that there would be help of eternal life.
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I think that's important. And you know what death bothers us. No matter how many times we see it, when we see it, where we see it.
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I was like on this website and there was like a lynx and then mama opossum and like baby opossum and the lynx is like circling.
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And like that still bothered me, even though I have no really connection to opossum. I was just like, man, what's going to happen to the baby opossum?
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You know, cause death is bothering. We, I think humans were designed for eternity and the hope of eternal life is guaranteed because God who does not lie made that promise.
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Not, not, not after Genesis three. This is not, this is not the father telling the son.
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We're going to have to do this again. Let me make you a promise. Right. Right.
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He knew. Post Genesis three life is not God plan
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B. God always meant his people to live forever. That's, and, and that's what we look forward to.
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I think that's the mystery. That's very difficult. Oh yeah. Yeah, for sure.
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No. Eat. Yeah. For sure.
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Uh, control. We have no way of experiencing eternity. We have like, there's nothing in our lives that's tangibly, tangibly eternal, right?
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Like things fall apart. They break apart. So just so hard. I can't even think about what the eternity past would have been like for God.
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And so I think it's interesting when people say, oh, I want to do X, Y, Z for my legacy.
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Yeah. And let's say they did something wonderful. Yeah. Exactly. Right. Right.
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Then we want to know what your legacy was. Yeah. And the odds are nine, right? Like most people don't even know
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Roman emperors, but they were the most powerful men in that, in the world.
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Uh, most people don't even, won't know us presidents, right?
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How many of, how many people would even know on the street, like who Woodrow Wilson was, or, you know, it's like he's, he signed the federal reserve, which just changed how the money works in the whole, not just this country, the whole world, right.
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On the news, everything's on what, how much rate did the fed cut? Right. And it's not going to be just in the
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U S it's going to be all over. And, but if, if you, if you ask which of the president signed it,
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I was going to say Woodrow Wilson, 1913, right. But again, hope of eternal life, that's guaranteed for all, all the elects, all the believers.
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All right. Now verse three, uh,
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Jim, could you read verse three for us? All right.
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This is really cool from the future. And then now God, uh, Paul from the future of eternal life,
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Paul focuses on what God has done now in his present time. Right. So what does it mean by his appointed time or season or due time?
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What does that mean? Yeah, Paul, that's right.
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Yeah. Yeah. Paul's ministry is not an accident, right?
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God had a plan for Paul's ministry. Uh, not only that this, I would say this season would cover not just the apostolic time, like Paul's time, but also the time of Jesus because it's revealed manifested.
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So I would say like from Jesus to the apostolic time, this time is not an accidental time in history.
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Right. Absolutely. Uh, what also that means is God's timing does not depend on the alignment of stars or moon and the sun, right?
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God commanded. God commanded. So, I mean, uh, so many people follow horoscope and it's horrifying, right?
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Horoscope is horrifying. Yeah. It's just like, you're saying your whole life is dependent on the stars, you know, like when you were born and where the stars were, right?
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No. Very few stars in the Bible. Yeah. Now what, what, what this also tells us is
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God is actively involved in his world in real time. God is not just standing aloof, like let's see what they're doing.
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Right. He's actively involved. Uh, so what this is saying is
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Paul is saying, I've been stewarded with the gospel to the Gentiles.
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And this mystery, uh, this was a mystery until Christ. It's a, it's a rev, it has to be revealed by God.
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Right. And that mystery is how could these pagans be saved? Right.
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I mean, if you're an old Testament Jew, if you're a Jew, uh, in this time, like, that's a great question.
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These pagans are sacrificing all the wrong things and they're doing all the wrong things, aren't they?
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They're just sexually promiscuous. They're eating pigs. How are they going to be saved?
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And that miss, that is the mystery until the time of Christ, when it's been manifested, right?
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That's what it is that God had to reveal to us as he revealed
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Christ. Now, knowing this, that Paul's been entrusted by the command of God, our savior, this ministry, this manifesting this word, right.
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Preaching this, what ought to be the church's focus in ministry.
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That's right. Evangelism. Yeah, that's right.
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I guess in a way that makes them good and holy.
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Yeah, right. Everything that Christians do must be centered around the goal of the gospel.
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If you make friends with your coworkers, it's in the hopes that one day you'd be able to share the gospel with them.
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If you get to know your neighbors, it's one day, maybe the same day with the hopes of getting to share the gospel with them, right?
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What this also means is the church's job is not to create new catchy programs, but the church's deepest concern must be how and what has
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God revealed in Christ to save the world.
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It's not about a new marketing ploy or new programs. It's to spread and preach
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Christ, whom God has revealed into the world. In his time. In his time.
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Because we don't know because we can't do it. They tell people now, but then we don't know when they're going to believe because it's the last time.
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The proper time in verse three is actually what
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God has done by revealing Christ in the first century. But yeah, that would be a different thing.
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That's true for us. Well, for us, we just trust
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God whenever he wants to use us. Yeah, and we tell him, but then we don't know when.
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Sure, but we just trust God with... Do our part.
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Yeah, we just, our responsibility is faithfulness with what we've been given, which is the gospel.
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The outcome, you surrender to God. We don't know when someone's going to be saved.
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You have no idea. We just don't know. Or if that person is. Yeah, and that doesn't tell you what faithfulness is.
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Faithfulness is just obeying what God has given us. All right.
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Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
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Or is that just basically what? Yeah, that's what it is. Preaching. So Paul's job was to preach and proclaim what
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God has revealed in Christ, right? Because a Christ himself is a revelation.
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Like if you know, I mean, Christ is the word of God, right? He reveals more of God and God's salvific plan.
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But what Christ has done on the cross and resurrection is something that's revealed to and we must preach that.
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We must proclaim that, right? There is no evangelism in which is completely silent.
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I think people often misuse this. And I don't think even St. Francis, Francis of Assisi said it.
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But they say that he said it. But he said it said something like, I preach the gospel with like something like with service.
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But then if I need to, I use words. I think it's. Yeah, it's. But I think it's kind of the opposite.
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The gospel has to be proclaimed. It's verbal. I don't think Francis said it. But, you know, people attribute it to him.
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All right. Verse four. And another thing is God, our savior, right?
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That's his title. God saves. And we will see Christ, our savior, too, in the very next verse.
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Right. And I think that really shows that, well, if God is our savior and Jesus is our savior.
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Well, Jesus must be God, you know? Yeah, that's what this last one said. Right. Now, who can read verse four?
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I'll read verse four to Titus, my true child in a common faith. Grace and peace from God, the father in Christ Jesus, our savior.
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A true son here means like genuine. This does not mean
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Paul has fake sons. You know, this is a figurative for Paul had a huge spiritual impact on Titus's life.
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And as you can see, if Paul wrote about Titus and his involvement in Paul's ministry all the way in Galatians, which is 88 about.
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I mean, that's a true son, right? Oh, I think the child meaning that Paul was older than Titus.
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And so he kind of taught him. I think it's of course, it's older, but I think it's more of a spiritual influence.
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Well, yeah, he taught him a lot of stuff. So he was supposed to teach the child. So he got to be his child.
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A genuine believer, right? A genuine believer in Christ like Timothy is what Jorge says.
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Yeah. And I think Paul probably had some huge impact in Titus's faithful response to follow
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Jesus. It also means Titus is genuinely converted. And you know what?
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30 years of knowing someone. That's a huge testament, if you can say that. If you know someone, a
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Christian for 30 years, and then there's not a thing where you'd scratch your head saying, I don't know, you know, and that's a genuine believer.
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What that means is Titus is not a questionable believer. Paul will vouch, right?
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Common faith means that their belief in Jesus, right? That's what common faith is.
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They share that faith, mutual, right? What that means is common faith.
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Faith and knowledge actually go together in the Bible, right? Because Paul is writing about knowledge, right?
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In verse 1, their knowledge of the truth. But faith also go together.
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Oftentimes, people think of faith as like blind faith. That you don't know anything, you're just blindly believing.
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Here, faith and knowledge go together. The Bible considers faith and knowledge together, right?
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Faith does not oppose knowledge. Faith is strengthened by knowledge. Both grace and peace come from Father and the
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Son. What does that tell us about the Father and the Son? That they're one mind.
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Exactly. They're one mind. They're both persons of the
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Trinity. The Father is God and the Son is God. I have to slow down when
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I speak of the triune God. Because if I say two gods, that's heresy. If I say the
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Father and the Son are the same, then that's heresy, right? But the
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Son is divine, just like the Father, right? Grace and peace flow from both the
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Father and the Son. Just as the Father is God the Savior, Jesus Christ is also our
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Savior. That's important. Salvation is a triune activity.
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Every member of the Trinity is involved in our salvation. Grace is the free gift of salvation, right?
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Grace brings salvation. We'll get to that in Titus 2 .11. And grace justifies sinners.
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We'll get to that in Titus 3 .7. Peace is not just the absence of conflict, but presence of wholeness, completeness, restoration, reconciliation.
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And both of them come from God the Father and the
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Son. Jesus accomplished our peace between us and God by taking our sin and facing the wrath that we deserved and rising from the dead so that we would have peace with God.
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And that is freely given. That's why it's grace. And grace and peace come from the triune
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God. That's where we end today. I know it's only four verses, but we took an hour.
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Any last minute questions? Good. All right.
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I'll pray for us and we'll see each other on Sunday. Remember, no women's
01:00:02
Bible study this Saturday. The Arnettes are gone to attend. Yeah, I think so.
01:00:08
Attend a funeral of their family members. Father, we're grateful for my brother and sisters in Christ.
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Thank you for their eagerness, longing, desire to learn of your word, strengthen them, grow them in their faith, grow them in their knowledge of Christ.
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And Father, we pray that as we study this word more and more that we would grow in understanding your word better and the approach to understanding your word better.
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Help us to grow in Christ, in love. In Jesus name. Amen. All right.