Well, it's wonderful to be back with you this evening, and our scripture reading tonight is taken from the epistle to Titus, Paul's letter to Titus, and that's found on page 1184 if you're using the church Bible, and we're going to be reading the opening four verses. Hear now God's holy word. 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. Thus far the reading of God's word. Let's pray before we open it together. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for this word and we pray now that by your spirit you would illumine our hearts and our minds that you might help us to receive it with joy and with gladness and to submit to it in every way. And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen. Well, it's a very small letter that we open this evening. In fact, Titus is such a short letter. It's only three chapters. I invite you to keep it open in front of you this evening because we're going to be referring to it. Three chapters, 46 verses, just over 650 words in this little letter. That is in the original Greek. If you're counting the English words, it's something over 900, which just goes to show that you should come to Westminster Seminary and you can study Greek, which is an elegant and concise language and can manage to do in 650 words what English takes 900 to do. Now, I won't subject you to that necessarily, but I do invite you to come and join us sometime. I'm enjoying this semester reading through this little epistle with a group of students in a class. And as we're doing that, we've been encouraged and we've been challenged as we've looked at these opening verses. And you might think, goodness, how are we going to have a sermon just from these four opening verses of this letter this evening? Surely there's not a whole lot here. Couldn't he just stand up and summarize it this way? Oh, hi, Titus. It's me, Paul. Greetings in the name of Christ. And that's that. Isn't that all he's saying here? Well, actually, no, that's not at all what he's limiting himself to in these opening verses. There are very important things that are mentioned in these opening verses that guide us to understand this entire epistle and things that we need to pause and consider together this evening. Our communication style, of course, is much different these days. I don't know how many of you still write letters or if that's something that you don't do any longer. If you do write a letter, perhaps, you know, how do we open our letters? Well, dear Uncle Jim, I'm sorry that it's been a while since I've written to you. How are you doing? We are well here. That's a sort of formulaic letter greeting, isn't it? But maybe you don't write letters. Maybe you send texts. And maybe you've received a text from a son or a daughter that goes something like this. You know, Dad, can you come pick me up? We're finished now. Or, Mom, I need a little bit more money. And there's no greeting at all. We skip the greeting entirely, don't we, in some forms of communication that we use. I read once about a corporate email strategy, which evidently drew from the military's experience. And it said, this is how you should start your email. You should say right away, this is the point of the message. This is why you should read it. Now keep reading. But I have to confess, I learned something a few months ago in our trivia night. Those of you who, like me, had no idea what T-L-D-R meant, but were there that evening. Do you remember what Mark Memelar told us that meant? Too long, didn't read. And this is often the header of long messages. Well, those are ways that our modern communication opens letters or messages. but Paul opens his letters in a very specific way. Yes, there are some formulaic elements. He identifies himself as he does in verse 1, Paul, and then he tells us to whom he's writing. Sometimes that's to an entire church, as with the Corinthians, Paul to the Corinthians. Here, it's to an individual, verse 4, to Titus, my true child in a common faith. But Paul is not simply formulaic in the way that he opens his letters. What he gives us in these letter openings is what some people have called the key to understanding the entire letter. That is, Paul lays out the themes, the key themes that he's going to touch upon in his letter, and he condenses that and he gives that to us in his letter openings. So Paul's letter openings are very strategic. They're very important summary previews, we might say. He highlights things that he's going to unpack. And in this case, what is it that he highlights in these opening verses? If you're listening, you realize that he highlights something about God's character and also something about God's action on behalf of his people. And those are the things we want to understand this evening in Titus. You might also be wondering, as we open this letter, who was Titus exactly? We know who Paul is, or most of us know Paul well, as the apostle to the Gentiles. You probably also know who Timothy is. He gets two letters. Titus only gets one letter. So who is Titus? Well, Titus is one of Paul's long-term ministry partners. We don't know exactly where he's from. He shows up first in Galatians chapter 2 where Paul says, I took Barnabas and Titus with me when I went up to Jerusalem. So sometime in the mid to late 40s AD, Paul knows Titus. Titus is a younger man and Paul takes him under his wing and begins to train him and to travel with him and to use him as a helper in his gospel ministry and later on Paul tells us in his other letters that Titus meets him in Macedonia that's that's the northern part of Greece where Philippi and the letter to the Philippians is centered and at the end of Paul's life in his very last letter which is second Timothy he writes from prison once again and he tells us that Titus was all the way even further north in a region called Dalmatia. That's modern Croatia or Bosnia Herzegovina. That the gospel had gone all the way north and was making its way towards the Balkans in Europe. And Titus was the one who took the gospel there. So Titus has gone from southern Turkey down to Jerusalem to northern Greece. He ends his ministry, at least as far as we know, in the Balkans. But in this letter, where is he? Well, verse 5 tells us where he is. This is why Paul says, I left you in Crete. I've never been to Crete. If you've ever done a cruise in the Mediterranean, perhaps you've stopped off at Crete at some point. Crete is that long island in the middle of the Mediterranean, that Greek island. And that's where Paul left Titus. And what did he leave him there to do? Well, read on in verse five. I left you there so that you might put in order, put what remained in order, and appoint elders in every town as I directed. Paul had left his trusted ministry assistant, Titus, on Crete, an island with lots of cities, and he told him in this letter I want you to go city to city and I want you yes to plant new churches but also when he says put in order what remains Paul suggests that there are things that have gone wrong and as we read on in this letter we understand that that's in fact the case there are those verse 10 who are insubordinate empty talkers and deceivers especially those of the circumcision party some of those young churches that Paul, together with Titus, had begun to plant, had established, have already begun to be pulled away from the true gospel of Christ by false teaching. Others, maybe they just weren't established yet. And what's Titus's role? He's supposed to go city to city and put things in order and appoint elders who will be able to stabilize those churches, who will be able, according to verse 9, to exhort in sound doctrine, teach what's right and what's true, and to refute or rebuke those who are speaking false doctrine. That's Titus's job. And as Paul opens this little letter to Titus, he wants to remind him of what is going to give him success in that mission. And indeed, what's going to give any church success as they seek to be a church that is grounded in the gospel of grace, but also growing in their ability to do good works that, as Paul writes to Titus, adorn the gospel. So do you want to be grounded in grace? And do you want to be growing in good works? Well, if the answer is yes, then the message of Titus is also for you. It's also for us. The grace of God, Paul tells Titus, the grace of God has been revealed by God in the gospel. And it's that gracious gospel which comforts believers in their faith and which gives them what they need to make progress and to grow in their good works. Let's look at verses one to three again before we before we slowly let this uh try to apply this to our lives this evening 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 there's our first big idea the first big verb that Paul uses in verse 2. God promised something and he goes on in verse 3 at the proper time he manifested those promises. He revealed them in his word. So there's promise and then there's manifestation. Promise and revelation and that that which is promised by God and then that which is revealed by God serve the purpose of verse one for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth which accords with godliness. So I'd like to put it this way as we try and summarize what are these opening verses communicating to us this evening and what does God by his Holy Spirit want to impress upon our hearts this evening. I think it's this that the promises of God revealed in the preaching of the gospel are for the comfort and the progress of God's people. The promises of God revealed in the preaching of the gospel are for the comfort and the progress of God's people. And this is the theme that frames this entire little letter and that we want to meditate on this evening. What does this teach us? Let's start with the promises of God and the kind of God that Paul tells Titus that we have. What kind of God is our God, according to verse 2? He is the God who never lies. That's really just one word in the original. He is the unlying God. He is the God who fulfills his promises. Later on in Titus chapter 1 verse 10, we read that Paul warns Titus of false teachers. There are false teachers there. There are teachers who speak things that aren't true. But who is our God? Our God is a God who never lies, who is trustworthy. And we have to listen to him if we are going to know and recognize when someone is speaking falsely, speaking false doctrine. verse 11 says that those false teachers are stirring up upsetting whole families as they make their way around the island of Crete verse 12 tells us this isn't a surprise really on Crete in fact one of their own poets has said Cretans are always liars now you can figure out the paradox of that later but the point is this that Paul warns Titus there is falsehood there are lies there is false teaching, false doctrine, and deception, and you need to be aware. And the way that you are aware, and the way that you are inoculated against that false doctrine, is by knowing the truth. And you only know the truth when you turn to the God who is truth, the God who never lies. Is this relevant for us in our world? Don't we live in a culture that delights to deceive? A culture which takes great pleasure in spinning the truth, which is of course another way to say our culture lies and our culture tells falsehoods all around. A culture in which it's no big deal if we make a promise and then we fail to follow through on our commitment. Well in a culture like that now, as in the first century, Paul says, this is a wonderful truth, Paul says, we have a God who does not lie, a God who never breaks his promises, a God who never changes his mind, a God who never forgets what he said, a God who's never thwarted by circumstances. When our God commits to doing something he will do it and he has done it what what do these verses say that God committed to do they say that he committed to grant eternal life to his people that's what God promised according to verses one and two God promised that he would give eternal life to all of his elect that not one of those people upon whom he set his love mysteriously and sovereignly even before time began would fail to be brought to repentance and faith because God promised that he would do it and he will do it and he is doing it. That's what he's done for you and for me in bringing us to faith in Jesus Christ and that's what he will do for all of his elect. So what do we do in response to a God who never lies and who keeps his promises, what's the only response that we can have? It's the response of trust, isn't it? We put our trust firmly in this God who keeps his word. We worship this God who is trustworthy and we can rest. We don't have to wonder. We don't have to be afraid. We don't have to doubt. We don't have to do any of those things because we can trust and rest in God's promises. And what has he promised? What has he promised to you, believer? What has he promised to us? He's promised forgiveness of sins to all who repent and turn by faith to Jesus Christ. What else has God promised? Hasn't he promised more than that? Not just forgiveness of sins. He's also promised that he will never leave you nor forsake you. not when you are doubting, not when you are sick, not even when you find yourself near to death. Your God will never leave you nor forsake you. How do you know that? Because he promised in his word and you can stand on that promise. You can trust in that promise. What else has he promised? He has promised to grant eternal life and we enjoy that life already, not fully, but already we enjoy that life. We know what it's like to have eternal life. And one day he's also promised that he will grant us life eternal in new resurrected bodies. And we can fix our eyes on that horizon of the future and know that God who never lies has promised that it will be so. This is the God who never lies. And his promises are wonderful. They are rich. And we need to trust them the promises of God and how do they come to us according to what Paul says to Titus here how do those promises make their way to us well verse 3 tells us at the proper time they were manifested they were revealed how in his word through the preaching through the preaching with which Paul and then Titus and then all others down through time who have preached faithfully the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. The promises of God unto eternal life come to us particularly through the preaching of the gospel. That is the wonderful means which God has appointed to reveal to us his promises. And that is something that Paul insisted that Titus remember as he got ready to make his way around to try to plant churches and try to put churches in order. And that's something that the Holy Spirit speaking through Paul to us this evening wants us to remember as well. What is the chief, the most beautiful, the most powerful way that the promises of God unto eternal life come to you, it's through this seemingly weak and ordinary means of the proclamation of the gospel. It's through preaching. That's how God's promises come to you. Here's what one of the church fathers by the name of John Chrysostom said. He said, just like a herald, a messenger who's appointed, stands up in the theater and proclaims in the presence of all, that's what preachers do. And they add nothing to the message they were given. They take nothing away from the message they were given, but they declare that message faithfully to everyone. For the excellence, Chrysostom says, the excellence of a herald consists in proclaiming all that has really happened, not adding or taking anything away. What is preaching? Preaching is public proclamation. It's heraldry. It's the messengers who are sent by God himself to proclaim his gospel and to add nothing to it and to take nothing away from it. And in that preaching, especially as we gather on the Lord's day, we get to hear the promises of God unto eternal life proclaimed to us in the gospel. And as we hear those, Paul tells us, God tells us here in this text that we will grow in our faith, that we will grow in our godliness because we listen to and we receive the preached promises of our God. So if that's what preaching is, can I urge two very specific applications on you this evening? Here's the first application. If that's what preaching is and if that's how beautiful and how wonderful preaching is, the proclaimed promises of eternal life in Christ Jesus. You should pray more than you do for your preachers. You should pray for your preachers. Pray for Reverend Gordon. I know that you do, but redouble your prayers for your minister as he prepares each week in his study, as he opens the word, as he diligently, prayerfully prepares to bring that word of eternal life and to bring the promises of God to you from this very pulpit. Pray for him. Don't let a day go by when you don't pray for your ministers so that they could be faithful and effective and discerning and insightful as they proclaim these promises of God to you. Pray for your preachers. Here's the second application that I want to urge upon you this evening. If this is what preaching is, if this is how wonderful it is, then not only should you be praying more for your preachers, you should be preparing to receive that preaching. You should prepare to receive the preaching. And what does that look like? Well, here's what the Westminster Shorter Catechism says in question and answer 90. The question is this, how is the word to be read and heard that it may become effectual unto salvation? And there are many other places in our Reformed Confessions that ask the same kind of question. How is the word to be heard? How is the proclaimed, the preached word of God to be heard? And here's the answer to that question in the Shorter Catechism. That the word may become effectual to salvation, we, that is we who sit and listen to the preaching each week we must attend thereunto what does that mean you can hear it in the word right we don't use the verb attend as much as we use the noun attention we say pay attention well we're going to talk about how we might do that a little bit better that's the first thing the catechism teaches us we must attend thereunto how with diligence with preparation and with prayer to pay attention with diligence preparation and prayer and it goes on and to receive it with faith and love and to lay it up in our hearts and to practice it in our lives isn't that a beautiful answer how do you then come to hear the word of God yes anytime you hear but particularly when you're coming to hear the preached promises of God in the gospel you need to prepare to attend diligently prayerfully with great attention and to receive it and to lay it up in your heart and to practice it in your life this this this month I'm told marks the the one-year anniversary of the death of one of our supreme court justices and if you follow politics I'm not I'm not bringing this up to be political you'll see it's Ruth Bader Ginsburg who died a year ago. Well Ruth Bader Ginsburg over six years ago was sitting I'm told in a State of the Union address. Pretty important occasion where someone pretty important stands up front right? The President of the United States and evidently as the story goes she'd had a small tipple beforehand. I don't know if this is true but that's the reporting of the story. And Ruth Bader Ginsburg began to nod off repeatedly as she sat in the State of the Union address. And then a year later, Congress invited the Pope to come and address that body. And again, Chief, not Chief, but Justice Ginsburg nodded off as she was listening. Now, we have to perhaps give her a little bit of slack. She was growing quite old at that point she was no doubt tired and really we have to cut her a lot of slack because keep your hands down if you are one who's ever fallen asleep in a sermon before I see yes you can see what I've done there it's easy to do isn't it and yet and yet how much more important is the proclamation that comes from this pulpit than any president than any pope than any other occasion that you can think of where you want to be paying attention. You want to be awake. You want to be ready to listen attentively. Why? Because the God who promised eternal life in the gospel is speaking those promises in Christ to you. You need to be ready to listen to his word. So how can you do that? Well, we've talked about praying for your preacher. How can you prepare in these ways well in some ways it's very simple isn't it what did what did last evening look like in your house I know what it tends to look like in my house Saturday evenings sometimes people are out a bit late it's hard to get to bed on time people are tired after a day of sports and other things what would it look like however if we prepared diligently prayerfully so that we were ready come Lord's Day morning to listen with attention and expectation to what it is that the Lord has to say to us through the preached word. Maybe that's something you can think about together at home in this coming week. How could you prepare to receive the preaching of the word? Because if what these verses say is true, the God who never lies has promised and he's revealed those promises through the preaching of the gospel unto eternal life in Christ Jesus. And if you want to do what verse one says we all want to do, that is to grow in our faith as those who are God's elect, and to grow in our knowledge of the truth which accords with godliness, then we've got to attend to the preaching of God's promises in this way. And with this we finish. We're going to think very briefly about what this means to grow in our faith and knowledge of the truth which accords with godliness I think one of the keys is that little phrase right at the end of verse one which accords with godliness we want to be those who are growing not just in our knowledge of doctrine in a few weeks the young people will begin to go to their Sunday school their education classes others of us will gather in here some of you will be teaching and studying preparing to teach those classes and hopefully we will all continue to be growing in our knowledge of the truth our knowledge of what the scriptures teach our knowledge of what our confessions teach us our knowledge of sound doctrine but there will be something wrong if we continue to grow in knowledge and it's not a knowledge of the truth that accords with godliness let me give you an example several examples very briefly there's something wrong isn't there we some of you know we we have been living wonderfully in one of the parsonages just over the fence here behind all the construction the new construction that's been happening over the past year and more and every morning we know it's happening because we can hear the sounds of the construction happening and sometimes we like to peer over the fence and see you know there's a wall going up there's some there's something happening there's something wrong however if we look over that wall and we see a brick layer who has been trained in laying bricks but who cannot lay a straight course of bricks there's something wrong with a builder who says he knows how to read the blueprints and he knows how to frame things properly and he knows how to use a level and we look and we see a door frame that's all askew isn't there that's not that's not right that's not really knowledge that accords with reality that's not knowledge that shows itself for some of you are in school some of you younger people do you really know something if you say you know it and you've studied hard but then you fail the test and then you study again you retake the test and you fail it again do you really know it you don't know it do you to know something truly means that it will be shown in the way you use that knowledge and that's what verse one is speaking about a knowledge of the truth that accords with godliness and that is how we want to be growing in our faith the second helvetic confession says that faith has its increase it ought to have its increase we ought to be seeking to grow in our faith. Brothers and sisters, as we close tonight, here's my question for you. Do you want to be growing in your faith? Do you want to be those who are not just not just faithfully present in the life of Christ's church, but growing in your faith as you are present here? I think you do. And the way to be growing in your faith is to take hold of these promises offered to you, particularly in the preaching. Titus, this letter goes on to say there are two particular ways that godliness, godliness that accords with the knowledge of the truth manifests itself, and that we're lacking on Crete. Way number one, self-control. They were hearing about Christ, they were hearing about the gospel, they were hearing about what that then implied as those who had been changed by God, but they were not living lives of self-control. They were not living lives that were pure. They were not living lives that were characterized by sober-mindedness. And the second way that they needed to grow in their faith and in their godliness that repeats itself again and again in this little letter is growing in good works, good works in the service of their neighbors. So perhaps this evening, as you think about those two areas, self-control, and good works that serve your neighbor, perhaps you desire to grow in those ways, well, there's good news for you. Even if you say, yes, I have much to repent of in those areas of my life, there's good news here. Because the God who never lies promises that he gives you eternal life in Christ, but he also gives you the grace that you need to grow in godliness. He gives you everything that you need to grow in self-control and in doing good works to serve your neighbor. And he does so through his word and he especially does so as that word is proclaimed to you and Christ is held out before you. So this evening, I want to leave you with those promises in Christ. Christ, who is the one who has obeyed perfectly in your place, who has kept covenant perfectly. Christ, who has borne your sins, who has borne the curse in your place on the cross, he is the one who is offered to you freely by the God of promise in the gospel. And you need to take hold of him, not only for eternal life, but also for growth in godliness, perhaps in this coming week. Let's pray as we close. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you once again for this good word to us. We pray that we would receive it with joy and with gladness and receive it as those who want our lives to accord with the things that we have heard. But most of all, Lord, we receive it with gratitude because we know that in Christ you offer to us eternal life, eternal life that we have now and eternal life that we will enjoy with you one day in the new creation. And so we give you praise and thanks. In Christ's name, amen. Thank you.