Remember!, Part 1

The word Paul uses here is someone who is intellectually biased against any talk of God, any reference of God, any suggestion certainly of accountability before God. Paul would refer to the same kind of person in Ephesians 4 where he writes, they are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God. Why?

Because of the hardness of their hearts. The foolish person is literally in a deliberate state of folly. I am where I want to be. Don't try to nudge me out of it. The affluent cultures of the world are driven by materialism. As Christians, we're called to something higher. It's not that possessions are bad, but being enslaved to material possessions is one of the things believers leave behind when God saves us.

There's more on the list of things we leave behind, and we're going to start working through that list today. This is Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey. Stephen's teaching from Titus 3 in a series called Remarkable Christianity.

He's calling this lesson, Remember. About 75 years after Paul wrote his inspired letter to Titus, a church leader, a man who lived in the city of Athens, wrote a letter to a friend describing the differences between Christians and those around him who didn't know the Lord. Keep in mind he wrote this just about 75 years after Paul wrote to Titus. This man wrote, The difference between Christians and the rest of mankind is not a matter of nationality or language or customs. Christians do not live in separate cities of their own, speak any special dialect, or practice any eccentric way of life.

They conform to ordinary local usage in their clothing, diet, and other habits. Nevertheless, they do exhibit some features that are remarkable and even surprising. For instance, even though they obey the prescribed laws in their own private lives, they transcend those laws. They show love to all men, and all men seem to persecute them. They are misunderstood and condemned, but they repay curses with blessings and abuse with courtesy.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it? He writes, They obey prescribed laws. Paul writes in Titus 31, Be subject to rulers and authorities.

Be obedient. A second century church leader writes, The Christians are misunderstood, but they repay curses with blessings. Paul wrote in that second verse, Malign no one. This man wrote, The Christians respond to abuse with courtesy. Paul would challenge them and us to be peaceable and gracious. This man wrote, They show love to all men.

Titus 3, 2 says, Show every consideration to all kinds of men. It sounds like the inspired letter of Paul to Titus made it from the island of Crete all the way over to the city of Athens. I wonder if it's made it from the island of Crete and the city of Athens to the city of Cary or Raleigh or Morrisville. This letter has our address no matter where we live.

It's on the label. It's ours. And you might not have caught it, but right in the middle of this man's letter, he used what I'm using as the theme for our series through Chapter 3.

Let me read it again. He basically says, They eat like us. These Christians look like us. They live around us, but they exhibit some features that are remarkable.

They stand out. I mean, nobody does this kind of stuff. You don't take abuse sitting down.

You get up and you swing back. You don't love all kinds of people. You love your favorite kind of people. You don't allow misunderstanding to go unchecked. Wait a second. Listen here. Let me set the record straight.

That's how you live and act. No wonder this description of them slips in this little letter nearly 2,000 years ago, this little word in that letter. All he can say is, These Christians, here's a summary.

They are remarkable. Now, we've already begun this study in Titus Chapter 3, and in the first two verses, we discovered that they were remarkable because they obeyed the law, they went the extra mile, they avoided the grapevine, they didn't hit back, they stayed the course, and they didn't play favorites. Now, what Paul does next is interesting. He not only reminds them of what they should be doing as remarkable Christians, he reminds them of what they used to be doing, what you used to be like. Look at verse 3 of Titus, chapter 3. For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved in various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. I want you to notice the verse begins, however, with this connective conjunction 4. For we also, which basically implies that the believer might be wondering why in the world he should ever be kind and humble and show deference and humility to others. And Paul anticipates that response and he effectively says, look, you ought to live like that, you ought to act like this toward them because of what you used to be like, verse 3. And then we're going to just slip over into the very beginning of verse 4 where he says, and when you were like that, God appeared in kindness and he saved you. Remarkable.

Lord. In other words, remember the pit from which you were dug. It'll do you good to remember the slime in which you swam, which is rather surprising. Remember the potential of your fallen nature which used to run and drag you through the mud and you enjoyed every minute of it. He began this chapter by saying, remind them, remind them, keep on reminding them, remind these believers what makes them so remarkable and then remind them what made them so despicable.

You'd think there aren't many counselors, there aren't many motivational speakers or whatever, keep a practice going if they reminded people of what they used to be like as an incentive to doing what they should be doing. I mean, can you imagine? You mean Titus is supposed to challenge Christians to live for Christ by reminding them how they used to live for the devil.

What kind of strategy is that? But that's exactly what Paul is about to do. Why he does it will become clear as we end this study. Verse three, now more carefully notice, for we, and I just want to pause because I want you to understand this is encouraging, Paul shifts from talking about them to talking about us.

It's no longer, hey you guys, it's all of us. Paul never ever forgot his past. You see it slipping out in biographical statements. He's so caught up with the grace of God in his own life and I'm convinced that people who never completely get over their past are people who never quite get over their conversion.

They never quite forget who they were and they live with the grace of God in the forefront of their minds as a result of it. For we also, we, I'm including myself in this, Paul says, we also once were, the first description, foolish. I'm going to use the word biased for the sake of an outline. It's the idea here. He's not talking about people who are illiterate, people who are uneducated. That's not what foolish means here. He's not referring to silliness.

He's not referring to irrational thinking. The word Paul uses here is someone who is intellectually knowingly biased against any talk of God, any reference of God, any suggestion certainly of accountability before God. Paul would refer to the same kind of person in Ephesians four where he writes, they are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God.

Why? Because of the hardness of their hearts. This person literally scorns the wisdom of God. Solomon wrote in Proverbs 28 verse 26 about them, that the foolish person is literally in a deliberate state of folly.

I am where I want to be. Don't try to nudge me out of it. That's the idea of foolish. Deliberately choosing their folly. He's effectively the opposite of Proverbs three, five, and six then. The biased rebel is determined to trust in himself, to lean upon his own understanding in all his ways to acknowledge himself. Paul is saying, we need to remember that that's who we once were. In fact, now that we're Christians, let's not forget how close we are daily to living like that all over again.

We still need a reminder to trust him, to lean on not our understanding, but in all our ways to acknowledge him, put him first. The foolish person says, I'm first. Don't mention someone that could potentially unseat me from my throne. I'm here and I like it this way.

Don't bother me. So it automatically follows then here in this list in Titus chapter three verse two, that he's also disobedient. I mean, if I don't believe God has a right over my life, why would I ever obey him? So he's not only biased, he is secondly belligerent. This word Paul uses describes a person who deliberately chooses to rebel not only against an idea of a personal God, but against an idea of a moral standard created by a personal God. This attitude isn't just belligerence against God.

In fact, Paul doesn't even qualify it that way in this text. It's an overall categorical lifestyle of belligerence. They live disobedient lives. One author wrote that this word refers to the kind of person who chafes under any kind of authority.

Paul says, you remember how you were? Until you acknowledge the sovereign mastery of God, you chafed under any kind of authority, certainly his. Frankly, we're watching in our land today, all you have to do is read the newspaper, which I do every so often, how the authority of our land through courts and laws, there's an attempt to rest some kind of, develop some kind of control for a runaway, disobedient, belligerent culture, and the culture isn't really responding. We've watched in recent years legislative bodies begin to weigh in on all kinds of things. They're passing bans and creating laws on all sorts of activities, major and minor, weighing in where parents should even. There are actually legislative bans against things like body piercing on minors, on the sale or rental of violent video games to minors. There are even laws against junk food machines in the school lunchrooms. We're going to have a law about that. In fact, the lower house in the Texas legislature even devised a ban on overtly suggestive cheerleading for high schools. We've got to put a ban on it. We've got to make a law about that, which I thought was ironic. Texas is trying to ban suggestive cheerleading. What's even more ironic is that they, in every state in this union, would never think about banning or even discouraging sexual activity after the game. Let's just keep the cheerleaders from suggesting it during the game. Let's put a ban. Let's make a law about that. One author put it perceptively that we just simply have more and more children who are arriving in the classroom without any kind of moral compass.

Their parents didn't have one to begin with to pass along and lawmakers rightly don't even know where to begin to enforce them. Listen, you cannot have, you cannot watch an argument take place on the floor of a national political party on primetime television on whether or not you should even mention God and then expect the next generation to care about God, much less obey God. Here's the progression. You develop a personal and cultural bias against God and you will soon develop a personal and cultural belligerence against the boundaries of God, anything that smacks of authority. I am where I am. Don't mess with me.

It is just a little step away from who do you think you are to even suggest that I move. So foolishness becomes disobedience. Bias turns into belligerence, which leads Paul to call what he says here a disobedient spirit, literally a chafing under any kind of moral or ethical authority and it's going to grow more and more obvious. One report I read recently talked about an incident where 125 Harvard University students were caught collaborating on an exam by way of email, even though on the exam printed on it was and I quote, a violating and no collaboration policy.

They could not violate it by talking to each other. But get this, many of the students were shocked when they were caught and then charged with cheating. Some of them threatened to sue the school because they didn't know it was cheating, even though it was printed on the examination. One reporter responded tongue in cheek when he wrote, are we meant to assume that students who are smart enough to get into Harvard don't know what cheating is?

Will the school need to offer later a course on why it's a bad idea to pour gasoline on a flaming toaster oven in the dormitory? All these news items and all these reports simply highlight the simple fact that apart from a moral lawgiver, you cannot have moral guidelines. Who's to say what's right or wrong? And we're watching that with such speed taking place. In fact, just this month, just this past month, the country of Brazil became all tangled up. They had passed a month earlier the legality of gay marriage. And now a notary happened to approve a three-way civil union, one man and two women, which is where we're gonna get eventually. She claimed that she hadn't broken any law and the trouble is nobody could argue with her.

In fact, she noted that Brazil approved gay marriage. The notary said there's no laws against polygamy. There are no laws on the books and so since now the definition is flexible, marriage is obviously flexible, why not?

One man, two women. Our culture is being set up for polygamy. That's one of the next hurdles in our belligerence against the standard of God. Why not though?

I mean, think about it. You dismiss God, one man famously said, and anything's permissible, right? What folly. Our world is biased in their folly, they are belligerent in their disobedience. Now thirdly, Paul would write, they are blind.

They're blind. He says deceived, fully blind is the idea. You dismiss God, follow your own path, and the Bible tells you ahead of time you're gonna go from bad to worse.

You're gonna go from a little tangle to all tangled up. Why? Because God isn't the only voice out there. He isn't the only voice. In fact, sometimes I feel his is the quietest among them.

Let me tell you about another voice out there. While God will always speak the truth to you, while God will always seek to protect you, while he will always give you guidelines to provide guidance, direction. There's another voice and that voice has a native tongue and it isn't the truth, it is lying. He is the father of what?

Lies. John 8.44. He comes up with that stuff.

It's his native tongue and he's had thousands of years to practice. From the very beginning lie, he whispered into the ear of Eve. He masquerades not as a guy with a pitchfork and a tail and horns but as an angel of what?

Light. Second Corinthians 11.14. He deceives the whole world.

Revelation 12.9. He's a master at it. The person that says, I'm not gonna listen to the voice of God, guess what? You are now open to listen to the voice of a master deceiver. The word Paul uses here to describe our fallen condition, deceived, is a word that you could literally translate misled. In our vernacular you could even use the word duped.

Duped. Paul warned Timothy that evil men will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. While they got their own scam going, deceiving others, they are deceived.

They are duped. Second Timothy 3.13. They look good, they sound religious perhaps. They might even have a collar on or stand behind a pulpit. That's what Paul wrote earlier to Titus to make him alert to those who've actually turned away from the truth and are now upsetting whole families, teaching things they should not teach. Titus chapter 1 verses 10 and 11. They're teaching things that might uplift, the spirit might please the ear, but they are, Jesus said, blind people, leading blind people and they're all eventually gonna fall into the same pit. Matthew 5.14.

The world is rejecting a creator God and is duped in the process, blinded. So here's the description, biased, belligerent, blind and now fourthly, bound. He writes in the middle part of verse 3, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures. Enslaved.

Bound. Bound in lusts. The word is epithymia, for strong desire. Keep in mind that word refers to that which is only in the mind and the heart. It is the fantasy of the mind.

It is the desire of the heart. People then, he says, are enslaved to fantasies. You can be enslaved to something that only takes place in your mind, whether you ever do anything about it or not. You see, Paul would have something to say to our culture today and the popular argument that violent gaming or pornography isn't really all that bad because you're not actually physically involved. It's just a game.

It's just in the mind. Paul would say, no, it all belongs in the same kettle of soup. And more than that, he's writing this to all of us and here's part of this point. He's saying, look, this is part of our old lives.

This represents our old life, not our new life. That belongs in the pit and yes, it wants to crawl out of that pit on every occasion it can create. Bar it up.

Put all kinds of limitations. Guard your heart. Out of it comes issues of life and death.

Here's the warning. Since we eventually act out fantasies, it begins in the mind and heart and eventually is or can be acted out. Paul then uses the next word, not just lusts but pleasures. This is a word of physically acting out sinful desire. The word Paul uses here for pleasure is actually the word hedoni which gives us our word hedonism and that broadens it all. You see, hedonism is simply the pursuit of self-satisfaction and that can be any way, anything, whatever it might be. Hedonism is the number one religion on the planet. It's at the core.

It's I, me, and mine. In fact, would you notice he uses the word here before lusts and pleasures, the word various, various. I don't know how it is in your translation but it means multicolored, variegated, many colored. Now, how many colors are out there?

I mean, you got your primaries and there aren't many more than that. Well, just wait until your wife wants to paint a room and sends you down to Lowe's to pick up blue paint. So you go to Lowe's and you walk up to the guy and you say, I'm here to get a gallon of blue paint.

He just begins to laugh at you. What kind of blue do you want? Blue.

How hard can that be? Well, go over to that wall. We got 300,000 color pieces and you look at all of the blues. Is it teal blue? Is it royal blue? Is it steel blue? Is it powder blue? Is it aqua blue? Is it navy blue? Is it baby blue? Is it Mediterranean blue? Is it cobalt blue? Is it periwinkle blue? And the guy's laughing. He's still on the floor over there at your predicament.

And then you spot it. You got it. Carolina blue. Oh, wait. Didn't you see Duke blue? You can leave now if that's your color. I just want you to know that. I mean, you had no idea there were so many colors of blue on the planet. That's the idea here. You have no idea how many kinds of sins we can come up with.

We have no idea. The word for pleasures here, by the way, is not just a reference to some kind of immoral or sexual sin. Paul actually uses it in his letter to Timothy for covetousness.

Oh, man. Materialism. Materialism.

Add that to your color palette. Materialism, this word, preciousness. Paul is effectively saying is enslaving us to want more. It thinks about it. It dreams about it. It fantasizes about it. It lusts after it. It lives for it.

It needs more money for it. Whatever it is, I want that shade and that shade and that shade and that shade. No, I want that color and that color and that color and that color. I want it all.

I want it all. See, the world thinks it's free as a bird to want anything to pursue anything. And Paul says, no, it's actually enslavement.

You are enslaved to what you have, to what you can't have, to what you shouldn't have, to what you don't have. Steven has more to teach you from this passage. However, we're very close to the end of our time with you for today. When we come back next time, Steven will do a little bit of review and then conclude this lesson. This is Wisdom for the Heart. Steven Davey is teaching through a series from Titus 3 called Remarkable Christianity.

This lesson is called Remember. Steven is the pastor of the Shepherd's Church in Cary, North Carolina. If your travel plans ever bring you through our area, we'd enjoy having you worship with us on the Lord's Day. In addition to equipping you with these daily Bible lessons, we also have a magazine. It includes articles to help you dive deeper into various topics related to the Christian life.

In the past, we've dealt with issues like how to forge friendships, a biblical look at Islam, angels and demons, and much, much more. The magazine also has a daily devotional guide that you can use to remain grounded in God's Word each day. The magazine is called Heart to Heart. We send Heart to Heart magazine to all of our wisdom partners, but we'd be happy to send you some sample issues if you'd like to see it for yourself. Our number is 866-48-BIBLE. That's 866-48-BIBLE. We'd love to talk with you and introduce you to this resource Heart to Heart magazine. Call today. We're looking forward to being with you next time as Stephen concludes this message here on Wisdom for the Heart.