livinggodlyinanungodlyworld2
LIVING GODLY IN AN UNGODLY WORLD TITUS 3:1-8
I would like you to take your copy of God’s Word and open it to the book of Titus the third chapter. We return, tonight, to look at a subject that we began to look at this morning. How do we live godly in an ungodly world? If we are going to win people to Christ, then we must do our best with the help of God’s Spirit to live a life that is attractive and brings glory to God. We have to remember that we are the only Bible that some people will ever pick up and read.
This morning, we began to look into this great passage that Paul wrote to Titus, so that he could instruct the believers in Crete of how to live in the church, with others in the faith and those outside of the faith. Our lives ought to be so different from the world that they want to know the difference in our lives. And when they ask what is the hope that is in us, then we have a right to share with them the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Certainly Paul was consumed with this very singular mandate of evangelism when he wrote this letter to Titus. And he is very concerned that the people living in the pagan culture of Crete which was utterly pagan, without any Christian influence at all, not get engaged in trying to moralize cultural behavior, that they not get involved in trying through the political avenues to create some kind of Christian culture. What he was concerned about was that they be able to demonstrate to their society that God saves people from sin. And that the primary way to do that was to demonstrate a saved life. If I'm going to tell you that Dr. So-and-so cures people from cancer, you're going to say to me, "Oh, who did he cure, let me see him." And if I'm going to say to you, "Dr. So-and-so over here makes blind people see," you're going to say, "Oh, who did he give sight to?" And if I'm going to say to you, "God is a saving God who delivers men from their sin and all that goes with it of hopelessness and helplessness and emptiness," you're going to say to me, "Show me what a saved person looks like then I'll know whether your God can do that."
Leading people to Christ is not a matter of gimmicks or techniques or marketing or through the political arena. No, salvation is a work of God in the heart of an unbeliever. The way we reach the world for Christ is to demonstrate what a child of God looks like. It is a matter of living godly in an ungodly world.
So Paul reminds Titus to remind the believers to remember your part to the authorities and rulers as well as those who are ungodly. In our passage, this evening, Paul says remember your plight because you once were what these unbelievers are now. Folks, it is easy for us to forget that it is God’s goodness and loving kindness that brought us to eternal life. If it wasn’t for God’s grace, then we would still be in the same boat as those friends and family and others out there in the world who does not know Christ.
REMEMBER YOUR PLIGHT – 3
Paul here says that we were once like those who are now lost. We were children of wrath headed for hell, except the grace of God saved us from this plight and pardoned us from our sin to give us eternal life.
Listen, before you get slanderous, before you get angry at those in authority in your country and those around you who are in sin and those who have an immoral agenda, before you get hostile and slanderous and angry and before you court those kinds of emotions that lead to venomous kinds of acts and thoughts of vengeance, before you become inconsiderate, before you fight for the cultural Christian agenda, before you attack the ungodly and attack the unsaved, Paul says remember once you were one of them. Did you forget? Did you forget? Did you forget that you used to be like that and you couldn't do anything about it?
In this verse, Paul contrast the lives of those who believe and those who do not. Yet, this is the plight of all humanity and not just a few. The Bible says, “All have fall short of the glory of God, There is none righteous, no not one.” In our human nature which is described as sinful, we are all under the wrath of God. This is not the only list that Paul gives of an unbeliever to describe their condition. You can read about it in Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 6, Galatians 5, Ephesians 2 and 4.
What Paul does in this verse is not point a finger and says that the shoe does not fit me, but he includes himself, Titus and all believers. We know that Paul was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent of the things of God. Titus is described as a Greek meaning that he was formerly a pagan. And we must admit that all of us have had these same vices as a part of our lives. Maybe no all to the same degree because some of us were saved as a child and others were saved as adults.
You look at the gay agenda and you watch the homosexual pride parade and you listen to all the lesbian advocacy and you see all of the Playboy mentality and the filth and the pornography of our time and you watch this agenda being pushed on the social institutions and taught to your children, everything from sex education to passing out birth control devices and all of the stuff going on and something in you becomes hostile to all of that and you've got to stop and realize that the people doing that are doing it in utter ignorance.
As we grow in the things of the Lord, it is difficult not to be enraged at the unbelievably rapid growth and acceptance of such things as homosexuality, pornography, gratuitous sex, New Age philosophy, abortion on demand, and school sex education that promotes almost everything but chastity. Those and many other such beliefs and practices are unquestionably evil, corrupt, destructive, and ungodly. They ravage individual lives and society as a whole and they dishonor our holy God. But these things will continue until the Lord comes back to set things in order.
Let us examine these seven vices that Paul mentions in verse 3.
VICE # 1 – Foolishness
First, Paul reminds us, we also once were foolish ourselves, ignorant and uninformed. Anoētos (foolish) denotes complete lack of understanding, total ignorance in regard to a particular area of knowledge. Paul’s point here is that, no matter how advanced a person’s education and intellectual accomplishments may be, if he does not recognize God and trust in Him for deliverance from sin, he is foolish concerning the most important truth regarding himself. With God, even the wisdom of men is foolishness (cf. 1 Cor. 1:20, 25).
In his fascinating book The Intellectuals, Paul Johnson, one of the foremost contemporary historians of Western civilization, documents the morass of unspeakable moral filth and ungodliness that has characterized most of the leading intellectual architects of modern Western culture. Their astounding mental capacities and their profound impact on modern society are incontestable. Yet they are precisely those whom Paul described nearly two thousand years ago, whom, because “they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave … over to a depraved mind” (Rom. 1:28). Their biographies are studies in wretchedness. A brilliant mind not only is capable of gross evil, but, because of that very brilliance, is capable of the most heinous evils. The appalling atrocities of the Nazis, for example, were conceived and perpetrated by brilliant men in arguably the most intellectually, scientifically, and culturally advanced nation of modern times.
VICE # 2 – Disobedient
Bryan Chapell explains that the word "carries a nuance of being "not persuaded" and thus culpably not compliant" [PTW: 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, 359]. To God? Of course and consequently to all authority instituted by God. There is in the heart of man rebellion. It is bound up in his heart. It's bound up in his fallenness. That's why you spank your children, to knock the rebelliousness under some control. But where God isn't there and the Spirit isn't there to restrain it, lawless resistance to truth and virtue will run amuck...and that is just depravity doing what depravity does. And we haven't seen it fully in American in the past because we did have some residue of Christian constraint in the system. That is all gone and now we're going to see depravity like it was seen in pagan Greek culture. We will be more the kind of church the church used to be in its early beginnings. They are disobedient. They are disobedient to God and to authority. They care not for the Bible. They laugh and mock at the Scripture overtly or covertly. They are resistant to truth and virtue.
Through Jeremiah the Lord revealed that “the heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9). Jesus declared that “out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders,” and everything else that defiles a man (Matt. 15:19-20). It is for that reason that, although human laws and powers are ordained by God to help restrain and punish evil behavior and maintain a certain amount of social order and safety, they have no power to change the human heart, from which every evil, every sin, every defilement, every debauchery emanates.
VICE # 3 – Led Astray
Third, as unbelievers we were once, by our very nature, deceived. Planaō (deceived) has the basic idea of being purposely led astray. Satan’s objective is to lead sinners into ever greater sin and ungodliness. John refers to him as “the great dragon [who] was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world” (Rev. 12:9). Whether they acknowledge it or not—and the vast majority do not—all unbelievers are children of their “father the devil, and … want to do the desires of [their] father,… [who] was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature; for he is a liar, and the father of lies” (John 8:44). Reflecting the nature and following the example of their spiritual father, “evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived” (2 Tim. 3:13). In the end times, “false Christs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect” (Matt. 24:24, emphasis added).
Lost people just want to live at a whim and whatever impulse that might come there way. The idea is that of wandering or roaming. In late September 1864 Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest was leading his troops north from Decatur, Alabama, toward Nashville. But to make it to Nashville, Forrest would have to defeat the Union army at Athens, Alabama. When the Union commander, Colonel Wallace Campbell, refused to surrender, Forrest asked for a personal meeting, and took Campbell on an inspection of his troops. But each time they left a detachment, the Confederate soldiers simply packed up and moved to another position, artillery and all. Forrest and Campbell would then arrive at the new encampment and continue to tally up the impressive number of Confederate soldiers and weaponry. By the time they returned to the fort, Campbell was convinced he couldn’t win and surrendered unconditionally!
VICE # 4 – Slaves to Various Passions and Pleasures
Although the unsaved, natural man willfully chooses to sin, he does so because his very constitution is sinful, and he has neither the desire nor the ability to be anything but sinful. He is therefore both willingly and inevitably enslaved to sin in its many and various forms.
In Romans 3:10-18, Paul graphically depicts the sad state of sinners: As it is written, “There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God; all have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, there is not even one. Their throat is an open grave, with their tongues they keep deceiving, the poison of asps is under their lips; whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood, destruction and misery are in their paths, and the path of peace have they not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
A multitude of different epithumias, evil desires. It might be for money. It might be for sex. It might be for lesbian sex. It might be for homosexuality among men. It might be for power. It might be for food. It might be for alcohol. It might be for drugs. It might be for murder. It might be for rape. It might be for who knows what all. They are driven by the only impulse they have within them and that is their lust. And he adds pleasures from which we get the word hedonism, hedone, pleasures. They live for what makes them feel good. They follow their passion and their pleasure.
So when you say, "Oh, isn't it a terrible thing? You know, we know there's immorality in the streets and we know there's homosexuality in the streets, but when it happens in the Congress or when it happens in the Senate, or when immorality happens in the President's cabinet, isn't it terrible that men who have the public trust and men who are lifted up don't live moral lives?" My friend, they don't have the capacity to live a moral life. They're going to live the same kind of life that the guy in the street is going to live, they're just going to be more sophisticated at it because they're going to be slaves, bondslaves, douloo, they're going to be slaves to their lusts and their pleasures. That's all there is for them.
VICE # 5 – Malice
Malice translates kakia, meaning “evil” or, as one Greek scholar refers to it, “the vicious character generally.” To varying degrees, but inevitably, the unsaved person spends his life maliciously.
Malice means ill will towards others. It stems from selfishness and wanting our own way, even if it means harming someone to get it. If you have to lie about a rival to get him fired, well, that’s life in the real world! If you have to cheat someone out of something to get what you want, well, it’s too bad, but that’s the business world! If you have to spread nasty rumors to make your enemy look bad, well it’s a dog-eat-dog world! That is malice!
VICE # 6 – Envy
Envy is a sin that carries its own reward: it guarantees its own frustration and disappointment. By definition, the envious person cannot be satisfied with what he has and will always crave for more. His evil desires and pleasures are insatiable, and he cannot abide any other person’s having something that he himself does not have or having more of something than he himself has.
Envy led Ahab and Jezebel to kill Naboth in order to take his vineyard, even though they already had plenty. Envy led the Pharisees to kill Jesus, because He was gaining more followers than they had (Mark 15:10). It is a deed of the flesh (Gal. 5:21; Mark 7:22).
Dwight L. Moody once told the fable of an eagle who was envious of another that could fly better than he could. One day the bird saw a sportsman with a bow and arrow and said to him, “I wish you would bring down that eagle up there.” The man said he would if he had some feathers for his arrow. So the jealous eagle pulled one out of his wing. The arrow was shot, but it didn’t quite reach the rival bird because he was flying too high. The first eagle pulled out another feather, then another—until he had lost so many that he himself couldn’t fly. The archer took advantage of the situation, turned around, and killed the helpless bird. Moody made this application: if you are envious of others, the one you will hurt the most by your actions will be yourself.
VICE # 7 – Hatred Hate is a natural fruit of envy, but it is also produced by many other things. It often has no rational base and simply is expressed for its own sake. It does not need a reason. Hateful persons despise anyone or anything that stands in their way or displeases them. They find themselves hating one another and eventually hating everyone, including those who are most like them. Hatred is not an appealing sin, even to the hateful. John Chrysostom from the 4th century correctly points out that "hateful, hating one another" is what "must necessarily happen when we let loose every pleasure on the soul" [quoted by Mounce 446]. But hatred is essentially
self-centeredness and disregard for others’ feelings and needs. If someone hurts me and I respond by thinking or saying, “He can just drop dead or go to hell, for all that I care,” that is hatred. If I say, “I don’t ever want to talk to that person again,” that is hatred. So even if it doesn’t take the outward form of trying to hurt or kill someone, we all were marked by hatred before we came to Christ, because we all lived for ourselves and were indifferent towards others, unless they could meet our needs.
One of the worst cases of hatred I have ever come across is found in a will written in 1935 by a Mr. Donohoe. It says, “Unto my two daughters, Frances Marie and Denise Victoria, by reason of their unfilial attitude toward a doting father, … I leave the sum of $1 to each and a father’s curse. May their lives be fraught with misery, unhappiness, and poignant sorrow. May their deaths be soon and of a lingering malignant and torturous nature.” The last line of the will is so vicious I shudder to quote it. It reads, “May their souls rest in hell and suffer the torments of the condemned for eternity.”
So what do you have? First of all you have an ignorant person, an ignorant person and a disobedient person. And because they can't know the truth, don't know the truth, don't respond to the truth, they then wander all over the place and the only thing that leads them is their passion and it leads to lust and pleasure. And once they get a taste of lust and pleasure, they spend their whole life on consuming this kind of thing to the extent that they have evil intent toward everybody, that they seek everything they can get and don't care who has to pay the price for it. Malice and envy...envy means ill will. There's a malicious evil and an ill will bound up in the fallenness of man. They never get satisfaction because lust is never satisfied, pleasure is never lasting and so they continue to consume and to consume and whatever anybody else has that gets in the way, they become angry and hostile and malicious and envious and it feeds...envy is the sin that feeds on the living and it wants to consume them. And that leads ultimately to the end of verse 3, hateful and hating one another. They then become literally consumed with hating anybody who stands in their way, they're self-centered to the degree where they hate anyone that is at all an obstacle to them or a problem to them or anybody who disagrees with them or stands in their way or takes issue with them. And then ultimately they come to the place where they hate everybody but themselves because that's where depravity ultimately goes, it goes to ego and ego says I want what I want when I want it and you get out of my way cause I'm getting it. That's why they can't maintain marriages. That's why parents can't get along with each other. That's why children hate parents, parents hate children. The ultimate agenda of fallen man is pride and pride isolates him from everybody. That's the picture.
We are all made of the same stuff and we need to remember we were all like this once.