Titus 2:11-3:8
July 28, 2019
preached by Doug Cooper
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Time of Reflection Quotations

“‘The truth.’ Dumbledore sighed. ‘It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution.’”

~ J.K. Rowling in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

“A knight does not protect the truth; he lives inside it and the truth protects him.”

~ Ethan Hawke in Rules for a Knight

“You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

~ Anne Lamott (1954-present), American novelist and non-fiction writer

“The genius of cynicism is that it… does not usually hang around long enough to be interviewed. It is usually expressed in innuendos, passing remarks, moods, cartoons, hints, insinuations, unacknowledged assumptions, and jokes.”

~ Richard Keyes in Seeing Through Cynicism: Reconsidering the Power of Suspicion

“Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than they love the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest and sacrificial. God hates this wishful dreaming because it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. Those who dream of this idolized community demand that it be fulfilled by God, by others and by themselves. They enter the community of Christians with their demands set up by their own law, and judge one another and God accordingly. It is not we who build. Christ builds the church.”

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

“God has assigned [the Church] this illustrious position, and it is unlawful for them to forsake it because—as I said—this was no mere earthly fabrication which was delivered to them. Nor is it a merely human system of opinion that they judge it right to preserve so carefully. It is not an endowment of merely human mysteries that has been committed to them, but truly God himself, who is omnipotent, the Creator of everything, and invisible, has sent the Truth from heaven—the holy and unfathomable Word—placed him among men and firmly established him in their hearts.”

~ Letter to Diognetus (c. A.D. 150), Chapter Seven

Sermon Passage

Titus 2:11-3:8 (NASB)

Titus 2

¹¹ For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, ¹² instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, ¹³ looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, ¹⁴ who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds.

¹⁵ These things speak and exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no one disregard you.

Titus 3

¹ Remind them to be subject to rulers, to authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good deed, ² to malign no one, to be peaceable, gentle, showing every consideration for all men. ³ For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another. ⁴ But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, ⁵ He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, ⁶ whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, ⁷ so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. ⁸ This is a trustworthy statement; and concerning these things I want you to speak confidently, so that those who have believed God will be careful to engage in good deeds. These things are good and profitable for men.