Truth Tightly Packed (Part 2 of 3)

Music playing For example, people wonder if God chose his people before the dawn of time, what's the purpose for evangelism? Well today on Truth for Life, we're going to consider the role of God's sovereignty in election as well as our responsibility. Alistair Begg is teaching today from Titus chapter 1 verses 1 through 4. Music playing I want us to consider the opening four verses from the perspective first of Paul's position, then Paul's purpose, then Paul's preaching, and then Paul's partner. So first of all, then, let us look at what we're told about Paul's position. He describes himself, first of all, as a servant of God. A servant of God. Secondly, his purpose. Why is he a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ?

Well, he tells us. For the sake of the faith of God's elect. For the sake of the faith of God's elect. Who are God's elect? The people of God. Those upon whom God has set his love.

Let's pause in here for just a moment, because this is the little phrase that sometimes unsettles people, and we ought not to be unsettled at all. The storyline of the Bible is the storyline of God taking the initiative in seeking out a people who are his very own. Completely out of the blue, as it were, from a human perspective, he calls Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees. He calls Abraham to himself, and he entrusts to Abraham the privileges that will flow from him, and tells him that through his seed all the nations of the earth will be blessed. By the time you get to the book of Deuteronomy, you have the record of what God is doing and why God has acted as he's acted.

And let me just read to you Deuteronomy 7 and verse 6. God says, For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasure possession. Out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth, it wasn't because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for the you were the fewest of all peoples.

But it is because the LORD loves you, and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh the king of Egypt. Know therefore that the LORD your God is God the faithful God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love," and so on, for a thousand generations and on. When you get to the New Testament, you find that the apostles pick up this terminology and use it to describe all who have been embraced by the Lord Jesus Christ, so that the elect of God comprises those who in every age have been redeemed on the basis of the work of Jesus on the cross, so that the Old Testament believers have been redeemed, put right with God, on the strength of a sacrifice that was prospective to them. The New Testament believers, and all subsequently, are redeemed on the strength of a sacrifice that is retrospective to us. But all who are included in the family of God are there as a result of grace through faith. And so you have this amazing juxtaposition of the people of God of the Old Testament being married into those who are added in the New Testament. The one who is a child of Abraham is not, says Paul, the one who has been circumcised or comes from a certain lineage, but it is the one who shares the faith of Abraham, and the one who, like Abraham, has been declared righteous in God's sight, who has been justified. Now, there's tremendous mystery in that, but there is no dilemma in it when you realize that it sits on the very surface of the Scriptures. So here we are with the reality of the doctrine of election.

Three things concerning it. Number one, it is a biblical doctrine. It is a biblical doctrine. It is impossible to read your Bible without being confronted by it.

It is revealed in Scripture, and therefore it is to be believed. Secondly, it therefore follows that it is an essential doctrine. It's essential. There's nothing there that is irrelevant to us. The fact that it has been and is the occasion of debate and disagreement is to be regretted because of its essential nature.

And thirdly, it is practical. It is practical in the sense that in the face of all that threatens to unhinge us and to undo us, the children of God are able to rest in the security of the initiative of God. We saw that, didn't we, when we studied Romans chapter 8? What shall we say, then, in response to all of this? If God be for us, who can be against us? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn, and so on. So when we find ourselves confronted by all these onslaughts, when we are made aware of our own propensity to wander and to stray, our security lies in the fact that we've been loved before the dawn of time.

Loved before the dawn of time. Now, that is an immense thought, isn't it? He chose us in him, says Paul to the Ephesians, before the creation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless in his sight. So that the significant identifying feature of these Christians in Crete was going to be not simply the healthiness of their doctrine but the loveliness of their lives. There were other people in Crete who said a lot of things about God, but their lifestyle denied their profession.

So says Paul, let me remind you that I am writing here to you, Titus, and the reason that I have been set apart as God's servant and as Christ's apostle is in order that men and women might come to faith through my preaching—and we'll see that later in the sentence—and that they might grow in faith as a result of the letter that I am writing to you now. But immediately that you address these issues, somebody says, Well, if that is the case, that God has chosen his people before time ever began, then surely it follows that there is nothing for us to do. There is no point in us going out to tell anybody about Christ if he's already made up his mind who are his own.

Well, that would seem to be legitimate concern, wouldn't it? Until we recognize the fact that Jesus didn't operate that way. And I have a very simple rule—you may think it's strange after my comments about your favorite bracelets—but I have a very simple rule, and that is that when I come to some area of doctrine, I say to myself, If it doesn't work for Jesus, it doesn't work for me. Or if it's not a problem for Jesus, it's not a problem for me. And this is no problem for Jesus. Otherwise, why would he say, Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest? He doesn't say, Come to me, all those that God has chosen. He doesn't issue a call to the elect of God to waken up and come to him. He issues a universal call to all and any to come to him. Jesus says, Whosoever comes to me, I will never turn away.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. So that the free offer of the gospel is exactly that—the free offer of the gospel. To say to people, God commands you to repent and to trust in Christ.

And someone says, Yeah, well, what about the other part? Professor John Murray has helped me greatly with this, and in his Volume 1 of his writings, page 82, he makes this statement, It is on the wave of divine sovereignty that the unrestricted summons comes to the weary and the heavy laden. Any inhibition or reserve in presenting the overtures of grace should no more characterize our proclamation than it characterized the Lord's witness.

We should be no more inhibited than was Jesus. Now, you see, what you have in the Bible is you have the fact of God's sovereignty in election, and you have the fact of man's responsibility both to proclaim this gospel and to believe this gospel. So, for example, when the Philippian jailer said, What must I do to be saved? Paul did not say, Well, we can talk about that later, but it's gonna depend on whether you're part of the elect. No, he said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.

In fact, you and your household along with you. They believe they'll be saved too. So, the temptation is to either err on one side or the other, championing the cause of man's freedom and his own personal sovereignty, as it were—freedom of his will and responsibility—or championing the fact of God's sovereign purpose from all of eternity, or attempting to collapse them into one another in some strange amalgam, which usually goes along the lines of, Well, it has to do with God's foreknowledge. He knew who was going to believe, because he knew who was going to believe, then he elected them once he knew who was going to believe, which denudes it of any significance at all.

It's really a pretty worthless argument. No, the answer doesn't lie in one extreme or the other. It doesn't lie in collapsing them into each other, but it lies in believing both of them simultaneously. And believing both of them entirely.

Absolutely and entirely. That God purposed from all of eternity to have a people of his very own, that he has ordained men and women to salvation, but he has also ordained the means whereby men and women come to salvation, otherwise there was no reason for him to say, Go into all the world and preach the gospel. There would be no reason to do so were it not for the fact that it was by the preaching of the gospel that men and women would come to understand the truth, and when they understood God's truth, then they believed. So, for example, if you want it, just look at Ephesians chapter 1, which is probably Paul's most sustained treatment of the notion. And if you take it in reverse, as it were, if you get to verse 13, he's writing to Ephesians, and he's begun by talking about that God who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing, chosen us in him before the foundation of the world. And then he says, verse 13, "'In him you also'"—notice this—"when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance, until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory." So in other words, he says to them, if you think about it, here I came with some of my colleagues, and we came into Ephesus, into all of the challenge of that community, and we began to tell you that if you would read the Old Testament, you would discover that the Messiah of God had to suffer and die. And we labored hard to try and show you from the Scriptures that the Messiah had to suffer and die. And when you came to a conviction as to the validity of that view, we then told you, And this Jesus is that Messiah.

This Jesus is that Messiah. And then, in the mercy and goodness of God, you actually believed the word of truth. And the Holy Spirit invaded your life. And that same Holy Spirit is keeping you today and guaranteeing you an inheritance that is your own possession, that is reserved for you.

It essentially has your name on it. And if you've had time to ponder the immensity of God's grace and have started back from my preaching to you, if you have gone far enough back, you have now found yourself in the mysteries of God's eternal will. You have found yourself going back to say, How was it that I was there on that day? Why was it that my friend brought me to that event? Why was it that I actually understood? How come I really believed?

What is going on here? And as you go further and further back, you say, Loved before the dawn of time, chosen in my Maker, hidden in my Savior. I am his, and he is mine. But on the day you believed, whether you were four years old or forty years old, it seemed like you were supposed to do everything. You may even have felt that you did it, that you made yourself a Christian, that God kind of congratulated you for making a good decision. But of course, you know now that he didn't. If that were the case, you'd be smug, wouldn't you? Listen to how Shedd puts it when he thinks in terms of calling people to respond to the gospel.

This is what he says. When God calls upon people universally to believe, he doesn't call them to believe they are elected or that Christ died for them in particular. He calls upon them to believe that Christ died for sin, for sinners, for the world. The atonement is not offered to an individual either as an elect man or as a non-elect man, but as a man and a sinner, simply.

Hence Newton. I know two things. That I am a great sinner, and that Christ is my great Savior. Rabbi Duncan, the professor at the Free Church College in Scotland many years ago, put it so simply—and I've never forgotten this little triplet of his—this is how he put it. Christ died for sinners. Rabbi Duncan is a sinner. Therefore, Christ died for Rabbi Duncan. Christ died for sinners. Rabbi Duncan is a sinner.

Therefore, Christ died for Rabbi Duncan. You know, the reason that many people balk at this is not actually intellectual, because there is no way for us in our human intellect to reconcile this antinomy to self-existent truths that sit side by side that cannot be reconciled within the framework of our own human intellect. But I don't think intellect is the problem in most cases. Pride is the problem. Pride is the problem. Because we want to be able to contribute something to our salvation.

We want it to be like getting into a country club or achieving a postgraduate status, so that we can then say, you know, and this is what I did, and this is what I did, and I was rewarded for this, and I was rewarded for that. But a true believer never operates that way, because we know. This is entirely gratuitous. Even my response to God's offer has only been made possible by his grace. Even my response is only possible by his grace. Well, let me finish in this way.

We'll come back to this tonight. This is how Spurgeon addressed his congregation when he was dealing with this on one occasion in the tabernacle in London. He said, O my hearers, O my hearers, if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ this morning, you are saved. I beg you to get hold of this truth of God, that according to his mercy, the Lord has saved us who believe in Jesus. Will you tell me—or rather, tell yourselves—whether you're saved or not? If you are not saved, you are lost. If you are not already forgiven, you are already condemned.

Will you not tell the person next to you or tell yourself whether you're saved or not? You see, Jesus Christ is not a life coach. He helps us in our lives. The invitation that he gives is an invitation to come and die, to die to myself, to die to my own agendas, my own initiatives, to die to my own little kingdom that I'm seeking to erect, and to believe that he has come to be Lord and King.

And he calls us to that. The hymn writer says, I heard the voice of Jesus say, Come unto me and rest. And I came to Jesus. I heard the voice of Jesus say, Come unto me and drink. The living water, thirsty one, stooped down and drink and live. And I came to Jesus and I drank of that life-giving stream. Is that your testimony?

Can you sing salvation's song? You see, when we go on in this, what we're going to discover is that the whole message of salvation is about God who does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. He regenerates us. He makes us new from the inside out.

We do not make ourselves new from the outside in. So the position he had was as a servant and as an apostle. And the purpose that he had was for the faith of God's elect, which, when understood, will be revealed in holiness and will be revealed in a genuine desire to see others brought into the realm of God's mercy and his goodness. God is the one who takes the initiative to seek out a people of his very own. We have a responsibility to accept Jesus' invitation and to proclaim the gospel.

That's part two of a message titled Truth Tightly Packed. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. We hope you'll keep listening. Alistair will be back in just a minute to close with prayer. And as always, we'd encourage you to join us and to pray along with him. In this study of Paul's letter to Titus and in all of our studies of the Apostle Paul's letters, we see that Paul prayed for believers in the early church.

He prayed that their faith would not waver, that the church would grow, and that God would be glorified. Alistair has written a book titled Pray Big that takes a closer look at the Apostle Paul's prayers, specifically for the church in Ephesus. Today, you can download that book as an audiobook read by Alistair. It's available for free when you go to truthforlife.org slash pray big. As you listen to the Pray Big audiobook, you'll learn how you can elevate the scope of your prayers by using Paul's approach as a model to follow. Again, you'll find the free download online at truthforlife.org slash pray big. There's also a corresponding free Pray Big study guide you can download as well.

This is a helpful study for a small group. And again, these resources come to you highly recommended. There's another book that all of us at Truth for Life are recommending to you. It's called Love Your Church by Toni Morita.

This is a great book to supplement our current series titled Get It Right. Toni Morita's concern for the church echoes the Apostle Paul's concerns. Christians are called to worship together, to care for one another in a way that's distinct from the culture and attractive to all. The book Love Your Church explores many practical ways you can contribute to the well-being of your church. The author even considers the most common obstacles that keep people from attending or participating in the church.

In this book, you'll learn how to maneuver around those obstacles so you can enjoy the benefits of belonging to a community of believers. You can request your copy of the book Love Your Church when you donate today. To give, simply click the image you see in the mobile app or visit us online at truthforlife.org slash donate or you can call us at 888-588-7884. And if you'd rather mail your donation along with your request for the book, write to Truth for Life at P.O.

Box 398000, Cleveland, Ohio 44139. Now here's Alistair to close with prayer. God, help us as we think our way through these things so that we might become increasingly humbled by the overtures of your mercy, increasingly reverent before the wonder of your love to us, and increasingly keen to see unbelieving people becoming the committed followers of Jesus Christ. Help us to be able to sing our song from our hearts, for we pray in Christ's name. Amen. I'm Bob Lapine. Having extensive Bible knowledge is a good thing, but we need more than knowledge if we're going to experience genuine life-transforming faith. Join us tomorrow as we find out what else is necessary. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.