He Saved Us | Titus 3:4-7 (8-20-2023 Mark Evans)

The speaker is continuing a sermon series on the book of Titus. The scripture reading is from Titus 3:4-7 and emphasizes that God saved us not because of our works, but according to His own mercy. The speaker discusses the concept of being born again and how all Christians are born again through the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit. The speaker highlights that salvation belongs to the Lord and that all of salvation, from beginning to end, is the work of God. The speaker also addresses the unhelpful Christian cliches that have emerged over time, emphasizing the importance of understanding the depth and significance of God's saving work in our lives. If you have your Bible, do make your way to the book of Titus, and we continue on our sermon series through this wonderful epistle. And our Scripture reading for this morning comes from Titus chapter 3, and will be in verses 4 through 7, Titus 3, verses 4 through 7. And these are the words of the God who was, who is, and who is to come. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, He saved us, not because of works done by us in unrighteousness, but according to His own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. And the grass withers and the flower fades. Let us pray. Our gracious God and Heavenly Father, what a simple confession. He saved us. Forgive us, Father, we so often let it roll off of our tongues without knowing the fullness of what it means that You, our great God, have saved us. As we do pray today, You would open our eyes more, You would give us an increase of faith, and help us to know more and more of what it means to say, He saved us. In Your name we pray, amen. Amen, you may be seated. Well, every age has its unique Christian phrases or Christian idioms, Christianese, as it's sometimes called. And depending on the time periods, these clips can be quite good. The Reformation, for instance, had the phrase, post-Tenebrax looks, which just means after darkness, light. The ancient church was also quite good, had the expression, Christus Invictus, which just means Christ the victor, Christ the victorious one. Even the medieval period, not all too shabby, with the phrase, ora et labora, which just means pray and work, pray and work. Unfortunately, the quality of these Christian clichés tends to drop off dramatically in the modern day. When I was a boy, it was WWJD, so to the uninitiated, that means, what would Jesus do? Another common one was to let go and let God. Or perhaps even more painful, Christianity is a relationship, not a religion. One can nearly hear God groaning. But one of the most unhelpful phrases was the expression to be a, quote, born-again Christian. It was in the 70s and 80s you would hear well-meaning, enthusiastic believers talking fervently about born-again Christians. And I say unhelpful because the phrase started to give off the impression that there are normal Christians and then there are born-again Christians. There are ordinary Christians in one class over here and then there are born-again Christians in a separate class. But what we see this morning is that all Christians, without exception, are born-again Christians. That is to say that for all of His people, God removes the heart of stone and He transplants the heart of flesh. The old man is crucified and a new man is born. All Christians receive this washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit. And that really is a most amazing truth when you think about it. Has it dawned on you that to be in Christ really means you are a new person? You are a new creation? In fact, all the commands that we have looked at so far in Titus hang upon this reality. After all, how is it that you could live a self-controlled, upright, and godly life? How is it that we, that you, could be zealous for every good work? How is it that the young woman could love her household? How is it that the old man could be sound in faith and endurance in love? How are these things even possible? Because you see, to perform just one of those things requires a new heart. Well, it's Titus' unique privilege to show us that truth this morning. And so we're going to walk through this short, but be warned, very dense, very packed section looking at, hopefully, three simple truths. That would be God's regeneration, secondly, God's renewal, and then thirdly, what is the result? And you can hear in just those three headings that we have a lot to say about God and not much to say about man. So you might be wondering, in all this talk about our salvation and my new heart, where is man? What part does man play? What does man bring to salvation? Well, the only time that man makes an appearance in these verses is to underscore exactly what man has not done and what man has not contributed to his salvation, that God saves us not because of our works, but according to His mercy. And it's that overarching truth that we see today. Salvation belongs to the Lord. And you might be saying, well, yes, of course. God does His part and we do ours. No, no, no. All of salvation, from beginning to middle to end, belongs to the Lord. In fact, we can see that as we set up our entry point into verse 4. Let's just first revisit the cliffhanger that we left off last week in verse 3. Look once again at this dreadful diagnosis of verse 3 as to who we once were, that we were foolish, disobedient, led astray, even enslaved to our various passions and pleasures, hating and being hated on. In other words, we were wholly unable to save ourselves and unwilling to save ourselves. And so we're meant to feel the full weight of that diagnosis of death, that there we were, slaves to sin, wallowing in darkness, wandering in our disobedience. And it is in that corrupt condition that verse 4 invades with that little word, but, as in we were slaves, but, we were disobedient, but, we were led astray, but the goodness and loving kindness of our God appeared. That word there in verse 4 for loving kindness is actually the Greek word philanthropia, of which you can hear our word philanthropy. God is the true and pure philanthropist. He is the great lover of mankind, for God does not just merely love man. No, God loves man in his foolishness. God loves man when man hates God. God loves man when man is rebelling against him and breaking his laws. When man is passing his days in malice and hatred in that condition, the great love and goodness of God overwhelms and overcomes the sinner. And now these words, love, goodness, kindness, those may seem a little vague, a little abstract, maybe even a little sentimental. But when God loves us, he does not love us from a distance. He doesn't send us his loving thoughts. He doesn't send us his loving wishes and hopes and dreams. No, you see there, God's love made an appearance. You see that word appear there in verse 4. In other words, love put on humanity. Love became one of us. Love came down and took on our flesh and our blood in order to save us. Love has a name, and the name of this love is Jesus Christ. In him, we see God's love, and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. How much the world speaks of love, and it doesn't even know love's name. The love of God is in Christ Jesus. Now we might be tempted to say, well, perhaps we are loved because we are lovely. Perhaps love came down because we are so lovable. Now we've already seen how bad we were in verse 3, but perhaps if we said, what if we are the best version of ourselves? We're running at our highest moral capacity with all the might that man can muster. Maybe that is God's reason to love us. Well, you see verse 5 deals a death blow to man's pride, humbling man, as it reads that God saved us precisely not because of our works done in righteousness. Notice verse 5 does not say your works done in unrighteousness. No, the verse 5 says, sure, let's consider your works done rightly. Let's put your good works on the table. Here is man's finest hour, and as you see these righteous works give no cause, no merit, no motivation to our salvation. As Isaiah says, your best works are but filthy rags before a holy God. And so man is now out of the picture, and so it leaves us wondering, okay, well, if not our righteous deeds, well, what then is our reason for salvation? What could possibly be the motivating cause for our salvation? We see it right there in verse 5. It's not of us, but according to His own mercy. That is of God's very unchanging character to be merciful. Mercy, nearly by definition, means that God would not punish us as we deserve. Right as the psalmist says, the Lord is merciful, He's gracious, and He does not deal with us according to our sins. This is the good news, that God deals with us according to His mercy. But that said, we still need to fill in and fill out this concept of mercy. What does it look like when God is merciful to us? What happens to us from mercy? And you see mercy flows to us in two ways, in regeneration and in renewal. You see the first big R there in verse 5. God is merciful towards us by this washing of regeneration. Now what is this fancy word, regeneration? Well regeneration is just a compound Greek word with the word again and the word become. And so it means to become again, or more simply put, it is our word of the day, to be born again. Alright, it's the simple truth that Christians are born again, born anew, born from above. We undergo a second birth as it were. And now to be clear, God is the author of all life, so we have to stop and recognize that God authors our physical birth, our first birth, our natural birth. It's not as if nature is just on autopilot, independent of God. As the psalmist says, Oh Lord, you knit me together in my mother's womb. But that said, there's something special about our rebirth, our regeneration that this verse wants to proclaim. It's one thing to come out of your mother's womb, it's quite another thing to come out of the spiritual grave. So remember that curse of sin that God decreed to Adam, that in the day of eating it, you will surely die. And so when Adam sinned, he plunged us into death. As the covenant head of mankind, when he sinned, we all sinned. When he fell, we all fell. When he died, we all died. He was the conduit of death. As Romans says, death spread through Adam. And so man comes into the world as DOA, dead on arrival, and incapable of resuscitating himself. And so we're right to see that we do not cause our rebirth any more than we cause our first birth. Kids, you could ask your parents later today, Mom, Dad, how much did I cause my first birth? How much did I at all make myself? I'm sure your parents will let you know that while they are glad that you are here, you in fact contributed nothing to your birth. And so it is with man's regeneration. As 1 Peter says, in the plainest language possible, God has caused us to be born again to a living hope. But there's more to see in verse 5 because we don't just have rebirth. You see that phrase there, the washing of rebirth. What is this washing of regeneration? What does washing have to do with rebirth? As Scripture says, such were some of you, but you were washed. Well, washing is familiar territory in the Old Testament. Washings were frequent for God's people. You could just read through Leviticus alone and you'd find washing 36 times. If the Israelites were anything, they were a washing people. So, for instance, to consecrate a priest, he'd have to be washed. On the Day of Atonement, you would have to wash to make a right sacrifice. If there's a skin disease, you would wash. When there comes a leper, his clothes would have to be washed. You might remember Naaman, the Syrian knight, commanded to wash seven times in the river. Clearly, God was teaching His people something through washing. The best example comes from Ezekiel that we read earlier this morning, this great promise that God said, I will sprinkle you with clean water and then I will give you a new heart. I'll remove the heart of stone and I'll give you a heart of flesh. And so it was no accident when that man, Nicodemus, came to Jesus and Jesus tells him, Nicodemus, you must be born of water and spirit. You must be born again. How are you, the teacher of Israel, unaware of these things? This is all over the pages of the Hebrew Bible. This is what the law and the prophets were speaking of. Of course, what Jesus was really telling Nicodemus was that He Himself is that rebirth, that Jesus is the new birth, that through Him, man could be born again. And so if you're here this morning and not a Christian, hear firstly this bad news that we just reviewed, that there is no amount of being a good person that will do. There's no amount of morality that will do, no amount of good works that will do, that they are but filthy rags and your trust in yourself is as foolish as it is damnable. So hear this good news, God's kindness has made an appearance in Jesus Christ and that man can have new birth through Jesus Christ, that God is a saving God to those who would put their trust in Him. And so there's the first big R of God's mercy towards us in regeneration. And that truth is of greatest significance to you, Christian. God has given you nothing less than a new heart. The old has passed and the new has come. That means you have a new heart that can sincerely love God, a new heart that can put off sin, a new heart that can truly live a life pleasing to God, that loves God's word, loves God's will and loves God's ways. But that's only the first big R. God's mercy abounds. Now let's look at the second big R in verse 5. You see there this phrase, the renewal of the Holy Spirit. What is this renewal? Well we should probably first clear up the use of the word renewal, right? We renew things all the time. Your driver's license is about to expire and so you renew it. You've got a lease or a subscription maybe, it's about to expire and so you renew it before it runs out. But that's not really the way this word is used. It's more like a resetting and that's not quite the thrust of verse 5 when it says renewal. A better image might be to think of the way that land can be renewed and be restored. Even in our modern day, we speak of regenerative farming. This idea that soil that's been depleted, it can be restored. Land that is barren, it can now be renewed. And once again, the Old Testament is our friend here, chock full of God's promises of renewal. God would renew the promised land for Israel from being barren and fruitless to now vibrant and full of life. The great promise of Joel that God would restore the years that the locusts have eaten. The promise of Isaiah that he would renew the strength of those who wait on him, even mounting up like eagles' wings. And so verse 5 is trumpeting that these promises have dawned. God's renewing power has come in a climactic way in the gift of the Holy Spirit. You see, verse 5 says this is not a generic renewal. This is the renewal of the Holy Spirit that just as God created through the Spirit, he also recreates through the Spirit. And the Spirit's great work in our lives is to renew us and renew you after the image of God. And if you think of it, it strikes right to the heart of who we are as creatures. One of the great consequences of the fall is that the image of God in us has been degraded. God's image has been tarnished. God's image has been corrupted. To be sure, it's not lost, but it's been blemished and it must be renewed and restored. I remember in military school, one of our ongoing duties was shoe shining. Everywhere you went, it smelled of shoe wax or shoe polish and that was because as cadets, you were always shining your shoes. And one of the reasons was because for any given sergeant, the standard was he wanted to be able to look down at your shoe and have your shoe be so polished, so shiny that he would say, I better be able to see my reflection, my image in your shoe. Of course, your shoes through the daily walk of life would get dirty, they would lose their luster and so you would have to polish it more and more so that the sergeant could see his image in it. Of course, that is all the more so with our God, isn't it? That God delights to see His image in us. He delights to see His reflection in us. It's the most basic truth about us, that your chief end is to reflect God's glory. You have a pulse for this very reason, to reflect God's splendor. That's the very thing a tarnished image cannot do. As Paul says, we have fallen short of the glory of God. We are defective images. And that's what's so special about this renewal. It's the particular power, the particular pleasure of the Holy Spirit to renew us. Now that raises the question, if the Spirit is renewing us, what are we being renewed into? You could put it crassly, what shape is the Spirit forming us into? Okay, if I told you to go draw a shape, I'm sure you'd respond, okay, well what shape? Triangle, circle, square, rectangle? We see the Spirit's great work is that we're being renewed after the true image, the perfect image. We're being renewed after the image of God's Son, Jesus Christ, the image of the invisible God. As 2 Corinthians says, we're being transformed from one degree of glory to another. As Romans says, we're being conformed to the image of the Son. And you see that truth hinted there at verse 6, God has poured out the Spirit through Jesus Christ. Indeed, our opening meditation this morning was this very promise that Joel said, the day will come, I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh. And so it was at Pentecost that God poured out the Spirit upon the church, and the words of Christ came true, I will send you another Comforter, even the Holy Spirit. And so just follow this and try not to get dizzy as we follow the persons of the Trinity here, because the mechanics of our renewal is that God pours out the Spirit through Jesus Christ, and then the Spirit makes us to be more and more like Jesus Christ. The Spirit renews us to be like Christ, all so that we can then glorify God. It is a Trinitarian party, if there ever was one, all the persons of the Trinity at work to renew us after the image of God our Creator. Right? Let us worship the triune God for this reason. So there's a word on our rebirth and there's a word on our renewal. And so Christian, once again, what a truth this is for you today. Not only have you been reborn, you are also being renewed, one degree after another, into the image of Jesus Christ. And Christian, that ought to give you great joy, great confidence that God is not done with you. This Christian life is so often laid with discouragements, with disappointments, with depressions. We see our sins so easily, our shortcomings are so visible, our blemishes right there in front of us. But know that our God is a renewing God. Our God is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think. And He will renew us, and He will renew you, and He sent His Spirit for this very purpose. So with that, we've seen God's regeneration, we've seen God's renewal, let's look now at what is God's result. Right? What end does God save us? And you see that result leaps out in verse 7. You see there that we are now heirs, co-heirs with Christ. We've got this rich inheritance. But before we get to that inheritance, you see there's a kind of prerequisite, a kind of qualification that comes before it. You see, verse 7 first describes us as, quote, being justified by His grace. You know that to be justified is to be declared righteous, right? It's legal language. It's the language of a courtroom, the language of a tribunal. And so justification is dealing with what is my right standing before God? But of course the beauty of our justification is that it's unlike any human courtroom. Even if you've never been in a courtroom, I'm sure you've watched enough TV drama, courtroom drama to know a little of how the courts operate. And one thing I'm sure you've noticed is that when the jury stands up and they render a favorable verdict, that person is actually not declared to be innocent. Now remember, where does the jury stay? The jury stands up and reads, we, the jury, find the defendant to be...they don't say innocent, they say, no, we, the jury, find the defendant to be not guilty. And that's really as far as the court is willing to go, right? The court is saying, man, we don't have enough evidence to convict you, but we're certainly not prepared to declare that you're innocent, that you're a righteous person. We can make no positive claims that you are in the right. At best, at most, all we can say is you're not guilty. And you see the beauty of the Christian's justification, your justification, is that God Himself declares not only is the Christian forgiven, not only is the Christian not guilty and not condemned, as amazing as that is, but all the sweeter. God declares that the Christian is righteous, as righteous as Jesus Christ Himself. And so if you're saying to yourself, that seems too good to be true, that seems like a gift like none other, that seems like an astounding amount of generosity and compassion and mercy that God would look upon me and say, not only not guilty, you are righteous. You can see those thoughts are compacted into that one phrase in verse 7, by His grace, that we are justified, declared righteous, clothed in Christ all by the grace of God, this free undeserved gift. And so now let us ask, okay, well how does that lead to my inheritance? What does that have to do with my inheritance? It was fairly early on in our marriage that my parents encouraged me to be sure to draft up a will. I wasn't sure why they were being so morbid. I thought I was fairly healthy. But being young and naive, I had not given thought to a will. I just assumed those things kind of take care of themselves. But they let me know, no, no, you want to make sure that the right person gets the right inheritance. Indeed, their warning was that if legal status is not correct, then inheritance will not be correct. And sure enough, when I met with the attorney, she let me know, yes, legal status determines inheritance. Now you'll remember in the Old Testament, for instance, just how much inheritance is determined by birthright. And that's very much the point of verse 7, that being righteous leads to this inheritance. You see that connection there in verse 7, that being justified, we become heirs. Being righteous, we now have an inheritance. And that makes a ton of sense when you think about God's world. You can go all the way back to the Garden of Eden, and you just think of Adam and Eve. And they had that inheritance of eternal life set before them. There was the tree of life. They could eat of it. Of course, we all know the story, that when they fell, they forfeited that hope, that when they fell, they were exiled from God's presence. And the path to that tree of life was sealed up. It was blocked off. Simply put, that becoming unrighteous, they lost their hope. Becoming unrighteous, they lost their inheritance. And so you see that in Jesus Christ, in the second Adam, He has come and He has overturned the tragedy of Eden. Christ, as the true heir, shares His inheritance with us, that through Him we have received back the hope of eternal life. Because Revelation says, I will grant to you the right to eat of the tree of life. And so here we are, reborn, renewed, regained all in Jesus Christ. Well, as we close, let us lay up in our hearts three truths from this text. And these will be three things simply to be believed. We actually have no commands in this text. Titus is very much full of commands, things to do. And we've seen many of them. But you see here, we just have things that are to be believed, to be embraced by faith. The Christian life is never merely one of just doing, it is firstly believing. And so firstly, let us believe that our God is a saving God. We skipped over this point all too quickly, but notice in verse 4 that God is there named as God our Savior. I remember many years ago, I was counseling a member who was enduring no small amount of hardship, no small amount of suffering. And one day she expressed a thought that I think Christians might struggle with more than they even realize. And that thought was that she was confident that Christ loved her. No doubt Jesus loves me. It's fairly obvious. He died on the cross to pay for my sins. He gave himself up for me. No doubt in her mind as to the love of Christ. But she was less certain about God's love. Perhaps God's love is not so strong. Maybe it's not quite as committed that even behind Christ lurked a reluctant God. Maybe Jesus would even have to convince, even persuade this wrathful God to love me. And so you see there's this fracture, this disruption in the Trinity, in her mind. I trust you've seen this morning that that can never be, that all the persons of the triune God work together to bless us. Indeed, as verse 4 says, it's the great love of the Father, the love and kindness of God that He would give His Son for us, for God so loved the world that He gave. Secondly, our God is a supplying God. You see there in verse 6 this most encouraging truth, that God has not just supplied us with His Spirit, that alone would be great, but you see that crowning adverb, God has not just supplied, but He has richly supplied us with His Spirit. God is not stingy with His Spirit. Recall those words of Christ, seek, knock, ask, and it will be given. Even remember His analogy that as parents, if our children ask us for a snack, we're not going to hide a rattlesnake in the mac and cheese, right? As warped as we are, we know how to give good gifts to our children. How often we come before our God as if we're better parents than He is, as if He is more miserly than we are. And so let us hear the words of Christ, it is God's unchanging character to give and to give a lot, abundantly, richly, a truth put on full display in the gift of His Spirit. So our God is a saving God, He's a supplying God. Lastly, of course, our God is a renewing God, a renewing God. There's no mistake about it, sin has a cancerous power. It spreads with a violent, tumorous growth, right? Sin affects the whole man, it affects our minds, our hearts, our will, our disposition, even our bodies. And we've seen this morning that God's grace has a restoring power, a renewing power, that when God renews us, He doesn't do it halfway, no, He renews all of us, the whole person, your mind, your heart, your will, your body, the whole man is renewed. When God transplants a heart, He always performs the heart surgery correctly. As John says, everyone who practices righteousness has been born of God. And so Christian, just ask yourself, have I been born again? What good news, the simple truth, that if you are in Jesus Christ, indeed you are a new creation? Let us pray. Our gracious God and Heavenly Father, we praise You that the promises of old have dawned in the Lord Jesus Christ, that through Him and through the gift of Your Spirit, that it is in every way true that those who are in Christ are indeed new creations, that You have removed a heart of stone, that You have given us a heart of flesh, that we are able to do nothing less than glorify You as we are being renewed, transformed from one degree of glory to another, all to the end that we would be conformed to the image of Your beloved Son. In His name we pray, amen.