WWUTT 727 For the Sake of the Faith of God's Elect?

The Doctrine of Election in Titus 1:1-4

At the beginning of Paul's letter to Titus, he said that he does what he has been commanded by God to do, so that those whom God has elected to faith would come to faith through the preaching of the gospel when we understand the text.

This is when we understand the text, studying God's word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ. Thank you for subscribing, and if this has ministered to you, please let others know about our program.

Here once again is Pastor Gabe Hughes.

Thank you, Becky. We come back to the book of Titus, chapter 1, and as with yesterday, I'll begin with the first four verses. The Apostle Paul writing to his servant Titus, who is on the island of Crete.

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, in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began, and at the proper time manifested in his word through the preaching with which I have been entrusted by the command of God our Savior, to Titus, my true child in a common faith, grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.

What a beautiful introduction. In fact, I'd probably say it's my favorite introduction from the Apostle Paul in all of his letters, because in just this greeting to Titus, we have such rich language concerning the doctrine of election.

And it's just three verses, because verse four is, to Titus, my true child in a common faith. So these first three verses are one sentence, and it's expounding upon an understanding of God having elected from before the foundation of the world, whom he was going to save and the means that he would provide to bring about their salvation.

So we start with Paul identifying himself in this letter. He introduces himself, Paul, we know he is the author of this letter to Titus, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ. And remember, once again, that apostle means sent one.

And God had called his apostles, whom he would send to the world, preaching the gospel, those who were eyewitnesses to the risen Christ. So Paul is, his ambition is to serve God. His purpose is to be a servant of God, one who is sent by Jesus Christ to preach the gospel to the world.

And then he goes on to say, for the sake of the faith of God's elect. So he's a servant of God. He is sent by Jesus Christ to preach the gospel. And he does this for the sake of the faith of God's elect, that those whom God had elected from before the foundation of the world would come to faith by what Paul is doing, preaching the gospel.

The Gospel Proclaimed for the Salvation of the Elect

So if a person has heard the gospel and they repent from sin and they believe it, that happened because God had elected from before the foundation of the world that that person would be saved. We don't know who the elect are.

We don't know who God means to save and whom he will not save. Our responsibility is to fulfill the Great Commission, to go into all nations, to preach the gospel, to baptize in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that Christ has commanded.

This is the Great Commission that God has given to his church. And so we are to fulfill this. We are to obey God. We are to love the brotherhood. We are to grow in our knowledge and understanding of God through his word.

We need to be obedient to the things that the Bible commands us to do. But we don't get to know whom God has elected from before time began. Our responsibility is simply to preach the gospel. God will bring about the salvation of his elect.

And this is the means that he has provided that that salvation would occur. Christ paid for their sins on the cross. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died on the cross for our sins. He rose again from the grave, showing that he had the power over death itself.

Our sins are forgiven. Death, which is the wages of sins, has been conquered so that all who have faith in Jesus Christ, their sins are forgiven and they are granted eternal life. And so this is the the payment that was made for us to be able to have salvation, the means that God provided.

And then we receive this gift by faith, believing in Jesus Christ, the person and work that he accomplished with his death on the cross and resurrection from the grave, believing in who he is and what he has done affects your salvation.

And so this is the the means that God has provided to save those whom he elected for salvation before the beginning of time for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth. So it's not just that by preaching the gospel, somebody hearing it and repenting of their sins would come to believe it, but also that they would grow in the knowledge of it.

It's not just about justification. It's also about sanctification. It's not just about conversion, but that a person would grow in holiness and and in the knowledge of God being shaped more and more like Christ.

So here Paul says their their faith came about through the preaching of the gospel and also their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness. So a person who has been saved has not just been saved in a moment, but they will also pursue godliness that they might become more and more like God as they grow in holiness and this process of sanctification of being made in the image of Christ.

This is what God is predestined, not just a person's salvation, but also a person's sanctification. Those whom he has justified, he will also sanctify. If a person is not being sanctified, then they've never been justified.

So God is predestined both the justification and the sanctification of believers. Verse two, in hope of eternal life. So here is the promise. Here is the reward for those who have faith, grow in the knowledge of this faith and grow in godliness.

They receive the hope of eternal life. For now, it is a hope of eternal life. When we die and we go to be in heaven forever with God, then we will then, you know what Horatio Spafford said, and it is well will come to be for us.

Our faith will be sight. So we have the hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began. He is fulfilling a promise that he had set forth before mankind was even created, that those whom he had elected for salvation would be saved and receive the gift of that salvation, which is eternal life.

And at the proper time, Paul goes on to say, verse three, he manifested in his word through the preaching with which I have been entrusted. So this hope that we have of eternal life was manifested through the preaching of the gospel.

We came to an understanding of our mortality, the reality of our death, which is the wages of sin that we have committed in our rebellion against God and those who would turn from sin and worship Jesus Christ, who paid the price for sin, we would receive hope of eternal life.

We do not despair in our sin and our mortality, nor do we fear the grave. But we hope we anticipate, we desire, we long for the eternal things to be forever with God. And this has come about. It has been awakened in our hearts because we heard the gospel, repented of sin and believed it.

It was manifested in his word. Again, this is the the means that God has provided to bring about the salvation for his elect and that we would have hope of the promise of salvation, of eternal life that we are given in Christ Jesus.

It was manifested in his word through the preaching with which I have been entrusted. It's one of the greatest gifts to the Church of Jesus Christ that we would receive the preaching of the word of God.

There is no greater treasure on Earth than God's word, which is why it is such a shame that there are churches out there that refuse or neglect to teach the word of God to the people of God. You go into a church where a pastor is on stage acting like a clown or a comedian and he's giving you a pep talks or he's giving you pragmatic sermons or five ways to a better life.

But he won't actually go to the word of God, the scriptures, and he'll he'll pull a verse out here and there to kind of make his speech sound spiritual. But it's not actually going through the word of God to give people an understanding of what God has said.

It is only by the honest and sincere and faithful preaching of God's word that a person comes to salvation, that they grow in godliness, and they have in their hearts the hope of eternal life. If you don't feed people with the word of God, they will languish, they will starve spiritually, they will be starving, and many of them will even die out and drop off from the church because they were not being fed with that which grows godliness in the hearts of the hearers.

So here Paul is saying that at the proper time, the hope of eternal life that God has promised through his son has been manifested in his word through the preaching with which I have been entrusted. And we know that Paul was a faithful preacher to the letter, as he said in Acts chapter 20 to the to the church in Ephesus.

I am innocent of any of your blood because I preach the full counsel of God. There was not a part of the word of God or the gospel of Christ that Paul withheld from anyone. They heard it. Their responsibility was to follow it and continue to grow in it.

Paul has been entrusted with this message. He was faithful to it, to his death, as we read about at the end of Second Timothy. And Paul says he has been entrusted with this message by the command of God, our savior.

Paul is doing what he is doing because God has commanded him to do it. And Paul is in his ministry showing that what God decrees is going to happen happens from the foundation of the world. He elected whom he was going to save from sinful man, and he affected their salvation at the cross of Christ and with his resurrection from the grave so that all who believe in him will share in his eternal life.

We are saved by grace, by the grace of God, through faith and no other way. It is by faith in Jesus Christ and the work that he did on the cross and his resurrection from the grave that a person comes to salvation.

And this has come to take place because the gospel of Jesus Christ was proclaimed as God predestined that it would be. You came to an understanding of Jesus Christ because somebody shared with you the gospel and God elected you for salvation and the means that the gospel would be brought to you so that you would hear it and turn from sin and come to faith in Jesus Christ.

This is the foreordained, predestined plan of God from before the foundation of the world. And once again, that's what's laid out for us right here in these three verses in Titus chapter one, verses one through three.

Election, Responsibility, and the Sovereignty of God

Now, Titus, the book of Titus, is the only book that I have preached through twice at my church. The first time I didn't do all of the teaching in these three chapters, I actually broke it up with another pastor.

So he did some sermons and I did some sermons. And then a couple of years later, we came back to it again. It was about three years later or about two and a half years later, I think it would be. And because we had just gone through it a couple of years before and there were some people in our congregation who remembered us going through Titus, I didn't spend as much time in it.

This would have been in February 2015. I still remember this very clearly because there was a lot of drama that surrounded the teaching of this book and even reading this opening passage. When we did Titus in February of 2015, there were four Sundays in February and I broke it up so that on the first Sunday I would be doing the entire first chapter, second Sunday, all of chapter two, third Sunday, all of chapter three.

And then we would finish it up with a Q &A people in the congregation asking questions about what it was that that we had just read through in a blur. But in addition to this, I also did these video video devotionals.

And some of you might even remember this, even though it was before I started the podcast. So the encouragement to the congregation is that we would go through all of chapter one and then during the week, all five days of the week, there would be five minute devotionals to help to lead you in your reading and your understanding of of what we were studying there in Titus chapter one.

So that was all five days of the week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. All those devotions are actually still on our church's YouTube page. And so then it would be the next week. Next Sunday, we do chapter two.

And then you would have all five devotionals in chapter two. And then the next Sunday we do the same thing with chapter three. Well, we had some kind of some drama that was going on in our church at that particular time with some people that hated what it was that I was preaching on related to God's sovereignty and his predestined plan.

And it went all the way back to our study in Second Timothy, chapter one, where in that letter, Paul says, Second Timothy one, eight and nine, do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me, his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works, but because of his own power and purpose, sorry, his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began and which has now been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel for which I was appointed a preacher and an apostle and a teacher, which is why I suffer as I do.

That sounds pretty similar, pretty familiar, doesn't it? Sounds similar to what we just read here in Titus, chapter one, those first three verses. Well, when I when I went through that in Second Timothy, chapter one, there were people that were upset that I read that and then explained that understanding that our salvation is not by our works.

We are saved and called to a holy calling. You are justified and you are sanctified, not because of our works. We don't do it. We don't do anything. We have nothing to do with our justification or our sanctification.

If you are growing in sanctification, it is because the work of God is still being accomplished in your life. God has saved you and he is the one who is keeping you saved. Paul said in his letter to the Philippians, I am confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it on the day of Christ.

Your justification and your sanctification is entirely the work of God. You get no glory in this. All glory belongs to God, our Savior. Now, does that mean that you are not responsible for your choices?

No, you're absolutely going to be held accountable for your choices. As a matter of fact, we've got a verse in Scripture that mentions to us both God's foreordination and your responsibility to the decisions that you make.

It's Acts two twenty three. This Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. You crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. So it was God's plan that Jesus Christ would die for the sin of mankind.

But mankind is still responsible for Jesus death. Charles Spurgeon said the following, that God predestines and yet that man is responsible are two facts that few can see clearly. They are believed to be inconsistent and contradictory, but they are not.

The fault is in our weak judgment. Two truths cannot be contradictory to each other. If then I find taught in one part of the Bible that everything is foreordained, that is true. And if I find that in another scripture that man is responsible for all of his actions, that is true.

And it is only my folly that leads me to imagine that these two truths can ever contradict each other. I do not believe they can ever be welded into one upon any earthly anvil, but they certainly shall be one in eternity.

They are two lines that so nearly parallel that the human mind, which pursues them farthest, will never discover that they converge. But they do converge and they will meet somewhere in eternity, close to the throne of God, whence all truth doth spring.

That is absolutely beautiful. And I think Spurgeon demonstrates well there that God has foreordained, but you are still held accountable for the decisions that you make. And no one can blame God for any of their sins.

You cannot point the finger at God and say, well, this was your fault. Adam tried that. It started with the very first man. The woman you gave to me gave me some of the fruit and I ate it. That did not work for Adam and it will definitely not work for you.

Paul responds to this question in Romans 9, verse 19, you will say to me, then why does he still find fault for who can resist his will? But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, why have you made me like this?

Has the potter no right over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which which he has prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom he has called not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles.

So there you have it. God is going to be glorified in every single person. He has either predestined you for mercy or he has predestined you for wrath, says so right there in Romans chapter nine. How do you know if you are a recipient of mercy or you are going to be a recipient of wrath on that day?

Repent of your sins and believe in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. These passages rich with this election doctrine that I've read here in Second Timothy one, Titus one, Romans nine.

And it's just reading these passages that stirred up such animosity in some members of my own congregation. So like I said, kind of coming back to the story, I rabbit trailed there, but I left off. So it started by reading in Second Timothy chapter one, and it kind of reached ahead when I got to Titus chapter one.

That first Sunday in February in 2015, when I read Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Christ Jesus for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth and just reading that passage and explaining it, I had families in my church on that first Sunday in February of 2015 that were not in church the next Sunday because they did not want to have anything to do with a church that was proclaiming God's sovereignty over man's autonomy.

It's sad. And I wept for those individuals as they shunned their brothers and sisters in the Lord and went somewhere else. What they hated was not me though. What they hated was what the word of God said.

So I'll never forget that coming to Titus chapter one, verses one through three again, but I am not discouraged. I am filled with hope and awe and wonder every time I come to this introduction and I see this rich doctrine of election that Paul lays out here just in the greeting to a letter.

It's beautiful. And I hope that it has amazed you today as well to worship God as sovereign all the more and praise him for the wonderful grace and mercy he has shown you in Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen.

Closing Exhortation and Podcast Sign-Off

Pastor Gabe keeps a regular blog, sharing personal thoughts, alerting readers to false teachers, and offering commentary on the church and social issues. You can find a link to the blog through our website, www .utt .com.

Thank you for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue our study in God's Word when we understand the text.