Titus 3:3b

Titus chapter 3 reading verses 3 through 7 our focus is on the second part of verse 3 for we ourselves also were sometimes foolish disobedient deceived serving diverse lusts and pleasures living in malice and envy hateful and hating one another but after that the kindness and love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ, Lord. That being justified by His grace, we should be made Heirs according to the hope of eternal life. May God bless to us his sacred and holy word this evening. A young man was suffering from amnesia, and he lived a new life amid old surroundings. He could remember nothing that happened before he fell off a hay wagon. Just before falling, he had said these words, Hand me that pitchfork and I will. He was 18 when the accident occurred. Ten years later, he got into a fight and he received a sharp blow that knocked him to the ground. He struck his head on a stone, and he cried out, finishing the sentence he had started 10 years earlier, spread the hay. He arose thinking he was strews. still 18 years old and on the hayway. He wasn’t. His mind had been restored to him. The blow that struck the human race in Adam’s fall made all his sons unconscious, really, of the true nature and being of God. Man has distorted thinking. Salvation brings us. a renewal of your mind, a restoration of the image of God lost in Adam so that you now possess righteousness and true holiness, as Ephesians 4 indicates to us. Paul has been describing man’s state prior to conversion. And he has told us that your mind, is corrupted by sin so that we are foolish, we are disobedient, self-willed, if you would, and we are deceived, as we saw in our last study. He now proceeds to speak of the corruption of your will, and with it, the behavior that you have and how it’s all affected by sin. This will lead to a teaching of God’s way of salvation through Jesus Christ as we see in verses 4 through 7. So he first tells us what we were, and then we tells us how God has changed us. We’re still dealing with the first aspect of what we were. We see here it sins corruption of your will, serving diverse lust and pleasures. Now this tells us that your your will is enslaved. The word served here is the same word that’s used, it’s the verbal form, but it’s the same word that is used for servants in the New Testament, do lost slaves, if you would. You serve as a slave, a master. So he’s saying you were enslaved to diverse lusts and pleasures. This is the picture which God portrays of the natural man. And we use the word natural man. We are saying as he is born, fallen in Adam. That’s what we’re talking about. Someone unregenerated by the spirit. Your will isn’t free. It is a slave, a menial slave to diverse lusts and pleasures. You most naturally obey and fulfill them. You’re powerless to do that. what is good in God’s sight. The story is told about a very fat man in Belgium in the 14th century, who was kept in a prison that didn’t have a lock and didn’t even have a door. He was walled up and when he, he was too big to squeeze through the open entrance. All the jailer did, well, who was his brother, by the way, it was one of those situations where his brother was in power and he didn’t want his other brother to be involved in the business of running the country. All he did was said delicious fattening foods that his brother couldn’t resist. So he just kept sending these delicious meals in, and here he got fatter instead of thinner, and so he couldn’t get out. Now, if he could have restrained his appetite, he may have been able to get out of the prison, but he couldn’t. He didn’t. He lose weight. He would gain weight. It’s not that his brother was cruel to him. He made sure he had delicious food to eat, but he couldn’t resist it. Now, natural man doesn’t understand his enslavement descent. He’s like the guy in the prison. He thinks, you know, you think you can do anything you want, but the truth of the matter is you can’t. You’re actually being controlled by these sinful desires that you have. you’re a prisoner whosoever committed sin Jesus said is the servant the slave of sin. John 834. Like the Jews in Christ Day, people today resent that they resent that teaching. They get upset when you start talking about being a slave to sin. It angers you to be told and you need to be freed from such a condition. In condemning free will and rejecting it altogether, we do not deny that man has a will. We say that man does have a will. He makes choices. He makes decisions as he goes through life. You do exactly what you desire to do as an unregenerate person. But what does a person with a whole? heart that is desperately wicked, according Jeremiah 179, desire to do. See where the problem lies. What is the motivating factor behind the will of such a person? What the Bible teaches is the bondage of the will? That your will isn’t free to choose good over evil. When I use the word free, I mean uninfluenced, not under anything’s control, not restricted by any bias. In many places, scripture records the powerlessness of the will of man to do what is good in God’s sight. Note, I said in God’s side. Many people may display a measure of prudence or bravery or justice in the eyes of men. they may think they’re doing something good. But such acts are deficients because, as the scripture tells us, one, they’re not done in faith toward God. Two, they’re not done in perfect conformity to God’s word. And three, they’re not done for God’s glory. And so those three things have to be fulfilled in order to have your works good in God’s sight. Listen to what God says here about man. Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopardist spots? Then may you also do good who are accustomed to do evil? Jeremiah 1323. You’re accustomed. You’re in the habit of doing this. Can you break the habit? Can you just suddenly stop? And his answer to that is, well, do you think an Ethiopian can change his skin color? No. Can the leopard shed his spots? No. Can you change the way you live? No. Not by your power. Romans 3. 11 and 12. There is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way. They are altogether become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good, no, not one. Every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart is only evil continually. Genesis 6.5. No man can come to me, Christ said. except the father which has sent me draw him. You notice he doesn’t say here, no man can come to me except you properly use your will. He didn’t say that. He says, no man can come to me without the father’s drawing. Doesn’t the scripture say, I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion, so then it, salvation is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runeth, not the efforts of man, but of God that shows mercy. The fact that he says it’s not of him that willeth indicates to us, it’s not of your will. It’s not because you willed it. It’s because God showed mercy to you. Man’s heart is evil. He can’t do any good. He can’t change his wicked ways. If he wanted to do so, he couldn’t do so. He cannot please God. He cannot come to Christ by his own will. That is the plain Bible team. It’s not difficult. From Genesis to Revelation, that’s the teaching. The bondage of the will. Now, we should come to grips with this teaching of Scripture. Instead of denying this portrait of yourself, you need to agree with God’s assessment of situation. This is the way you were before you were converted. This is the way the natural man is to whom you were witnessing. So your will is enslaved. Now, your will is enslaved to very, is lusts and pleasures here. When he uses the word divers here, or diverse, it means different kinds of or different sorts of lust, such as we read in scripture about the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eye and so forth. The lust here is used as an evil lust. Desire the things that God forbids. Thus the idea is that strong. evil desires dominate and control your life. Be prior to conversion. Therein is a ray of lust and pleasures which are sinful, which keep you enslaved, and you desperately choose those things above anything else. Now you’re born with a covetous, selfish desire. You may find yourself inclined then to lie. rather than to tell the truth. The lust after woman rather than control your thoughts. Sadly, the vast majority of mankind, the Bible says, are lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God. You desire to enjoy yourself, eat, drink, and be merry while God is ignored. You like your pleasures. You don’t care wit about God’s commands. Maybe I could portray it this way. Suppose I took a large, thick, rare, T-bone steak and a wonderful, huge, posh salad, and I placed those two items in front of a hungry lion. What do you think the lion would choose to eat? Now, for the sake of the argument, let’s suppose we make the salad as out of the onion. as appetizing as appetizing and as colorful as possible. We use all sorts of colorful, colorful vegetables, orange carrots, red cabbage, green cucumbers, red tomatoes. We put the broccoli there, the lettuce, the radishes, the onion, the yellow peppers, or whatever. We place a lot of yellow cubes of cheese on top. We smother the whole salad with blue cheese dressing. I got news for me. that lion’s going to choose the plain old steak every single time. He may ask for the A1 sauce, but he’s never going to ask for croutons. It’s not going to happen. So consider this from a spiritual perspective. If I went into the workroom, the Keystone diesel engine company where I once worked, and I put a Playboy magazine in the men’s room, and I put a Playboy magazine in the men’s room, and I put a Bible in the men’s room beside it, I can guarantee you which one would get picked up and read and which one would sit there unopened. I know which one the natural man would choose. If people are given a choice between attending a Steelers football game and attending a Bible preaching church service, which do you think they would choose? Look at the crowds at the stadiums. Look at the crowds at the stadiums. the empty pews at the churches. And I think that would pretty much tell you what the situation is. You know the answer to that. If you could choose between partying with wine, women, and song, or going to a prayer closet and seeking the face of God, what do you think most people would choose? These are not perfect examples. And I think if you start thinking along these lines, you will see what man is really like. An honest evaluation will tell you that what the Bible says here is true. The sins corruption of your will. The will is enslaved of various lusts and pleasures. Notice sins corruption of your behavior. Next. He talks about you live in malice and envy. Now, living here, he means how you would lead your life. addresses how you act toward others. He’s speaking about your behavior as you go through this world. Malice cares the idea of desiring to injure or to harm someone. In other words, you have evil intentions. It refers to the vicious character of those outside of Christ. Before conversion, the Pharisee, Paul, he was known as Saul back then, consented to the death of the godly Stephen. Stephen. Remember how he held the coats of those who were stoning Stephen to death. He was a righteous man being stoned to death. He wrought havoc among the Church of God, throwing people into prison, consenting to have them put to death. He had a malice toward those who were known as Christians. After Paul’s conversion, at one point certain Jews banded together They made vows before God, not to eat or drink anything for 40 days, or not to eat or drink anything until they assassinated the Apostle Paul, as he was brought before the religious council leaders to be judged. I mentioned this because this is malice in those who are religious people. Paul in his pre-conciles. conversion state the Jews afterwards these were religious people that we’re talking about malice doesn’t of course have to go to this extreme you could slander someone you could speak lies about someone to destroy the reputation you could steal property or damage property or something like that malice here is closely associated with envy now when we talk about envy it It means to look with ill will at others because of what they have or what they are. You may be jealous. In jealous is, if we talk about jealousy in connection with envy and difference there, jealousy is being afraid to lose of what you have. Envy chafes against another person possessing what you do not have. You may be jealous. You don’t want to lose it. You may be jealous of your mate. You don’t want to lose him or her to another love. You may be envious of Mr. Smith’s superior work skills, which dwarf your own. You may be envious of a rival having a very beautiful wife and you’re unmarried. Our English word envy comes from the Latin in video, which means to look against. envy is what gives birth then to malice. Envy of the heart leads to evil intentions toward the individual. Because you’re envious of what your neighbor is or possesses, you look with ill will at him and you think, how can I hurt him? How can I somehow take away from him what he possesses? After David’s magnificent victory, triumph over the Philistine giant, Goliath, and the route of the Philistine army. The Israelites were jubilant. You can imagine Saul and his men as they passed through all the cities of Israel, and the women came out onto the street, singing, dancing, playing musical instruments, celebrating. It was a joyous occasion. And you can imagine Saul riding along, basking in the glory of the moment. Roman. Scripture states that the people held the king in very high regard. But David had captured their hearts. And this young boy, strengthened by his faith in God, had risked his life, and faced this powerful, skilled, and massive Philistine warrior, and defeated him, saved Israel. Single-handedly, king Saul, Hearing the songs of the women, as they praised, was not happy with a chorus that seemed to be repeated. Saul has seen his thousands, but David is ten thousands. And Saul became very angry. And the saying, the Bible says, displeased him. They ascribed under David ten thousand to me, only thousands. Saul was envious of David. And what did that lead to? Malice, ill will, evil intentions toward David. So that shortly thereafter, as David came to play the harp before the king, the king takes the javel and at his side and throws it at David with the idea of striking him down and killing him. And from then on, we find David, having to flee for his life. Such behavior is so common that Paul says, this is the way of life for the wicked, for all those in an unregenerate strait. It may not be a state, it may not be this extreme, but it’s present and it’s real. You live in malice and envy. You live in hate and are hated. You hate others and others. and others hate you, the scripture says. There’s this mutual animosity and hostility display. Have you ever seen road rage? Sometimes it happens in a parking lot where people are buying for the last parking spot to people, and it gets wild and crazy what they’ll do to one another. You see this in the idea of paying back someone. in like manner, the malice that you received, the mutual detesting and loathing of another. To hate is to ultimately seek the destruction of your neighbor here, or to have something harm him in some way. Peter speaks about rendering evil for evil. Paul speaks about fighting and deviring one another. The Apostle is not saying, everyone hates everyone else, that’s not what he says. Yet there is hate expressed toward enemies and towards strangers perhaps. And many times there’s mutual hostility and hatred. Society is a dog-eat-dog place. Here’s a quote. I hate humanity. I’m allergic to it. I see no one. I don’t go out. I am disgusting with everything. Men are beasts, and even beasts don’t behave like them. Bridget Bordeaux said that. Charles Lamb said this. Don’t introduce me to that man. I want to go on hating him, and I can’t hate a man whom I know. Many years ago, John J. Harrigan, National President of the Fraternal Order of Police, a 27-year veteran of the Philadelphia Police Force, said this. There is hatred today in this country that’s growing and growing. Near where I live, a man was. walking to church, and two men came up behind him and cut his throat. Another man was just standing on a street corner when a bunch of kids came along. They said, let’s give it to him, and they killed him. And a little girl was walking up the street from where I live, and a boy just came along and stabbed her. All these things seemed to happen for no reason at all, just hatred. All you have to do is read the newspaper or listen to the news, and you know, know there are similar stories like this all the time. You know, the post office worker, you know, goes berserk, grabs a gun, goes into the post office and shoots all his fellow workers. Or a student takes a gun to school and begins shooting everybody at school. The cheerleader kills a rival cheerleader. A basketball player murders another member of the team. A deer hunter shoots several hunters over a deer stand. Children brutally murder another child. And I don’t even have to talk about terrorists who kill randomly. They don’t care. Obviously hatred doesn’t always result in murder. But you see it in the vicious manner in which people treat each other. When we talk about domestic disputes, You know, we can make a collection of wives with knives collection. You know, people getting stabbed, husband’s getting stacked. We can have sons with guns where sons, you know, shoot their fathers or their mothers or something. Daughters who slaughter. That’s another one we could come up with. On and on, we could go. This happens in the home many times. Since corruption of your behavior here is laid out. Now, since corruption of your mind, will, and behavior is overcome by God’s grace, you’ll notice that he begins verse 3 with these words, for we ourselves also were sometimes like this. I want to put the emphasis on the word were here. This is past tense. You enjoy a change state, if indeed, you are saved by God’s grace. In this verse, Paul describes how the world is without Christ. And these words sum up the history of humanity apart from the gracious work of God through Jesus Christ. This is what you are, fallen in Adam. You have a depraved nature, you act in a wicked manner. We ourselves. Paul here includes himself. Because he wants himself. once was like this. He includes Titus, to whom he writes the letter. You were like this. He includes the believers at Crete, indicating they were like this. And indeed, he includes all believers, really, in the writing here. All of us were like this. We were sometimes foolish, meaning once, in the sense of at some time or other, formally. previously, this is what we were like, and he goes on, you know, Felicians, etc. We all were like this. But I like verse four, because it begins with the word but. But, and then he begins a new section declaring how God’s people are changed by grace. What I wish to emphasize is that all those regenerated by the Spirit of God that he’s going to talk about in verse 5. are now different from the rest of the world. You were like that once, you no longer are like that now. Being born again means commencing a new type of life. All things are passed away. All things become new. There is good reason for you to remember what you once were prior to salvation. Why does Paul spend time on this? First of all, to hundred people. humble you. Yes. Look at the rock from which you were you. Look at the pit from which you were lifted out. Think about it. It’s humbling. Secondly, he does it to exalt the love and the grace of God. God could have left you in that state, but he reached out in his mercy and his love and he saved you. And thirdly, to promote whole. holiness of life. That’s the way you were, but that’s not the way you should live now. So these kinds of things come out of this, and that’s why he spends a little bit of time. In fact, he sort of really develops this thought about what we were, so we would think about it. So you enjoy a change state if you are saved by grace. Let me ask you tonight, has there been a spiritual change in your life? If you have any claim of being your life? If you have any claim of being your life, you have a spiritual change? a child of God, there has to be a were in your life. There has to be a change from what you once were to what you are now. For the conversion of the sinner is a gracious miracle of God, which is not something that remains unnoticed. So here is something you ought to search about. You have to look into this matter. find out whether you have spiritual life in your soul. For if you are called the salvation in Jesus Christ, you are no longer dead in trespasses and sins. Do you savor the things of God? Do you count the word of God as precious? Do you feel the sharp pricks of the law? Do you know something about the soothing ointment of the gospel of Jesus Christ? Christ? Are your thoughts, your motives, your words, and actions changed in any way? Is there love for Christ? Is there a desire to please God? The grace of God teaches you to deny ungodliness and worldly lust. It trains you to live a righteous and godly life we saw earlier in chapter 2, verses 11 and 12. in particular. Now some will have a very dramatic change in their life because maybe they were overtly wicked or perverse or something of this nature and it really made a difference in their life that where you could was obvious and visible. God may have preserved you from the depths of Satan as you grew up. It will be less of a change for you, but let me say this, there will be a change. ponder your thought life, ponder your desires. Remember that out of the heart proceed evil thoughts and murders and fornications and adulteries and so forth. Has your mind been transformed? For your mind is what directs your will and your affections. May God grant you discernment to evaluate yourself. To examine yourself to see whether you’re in the faith as the scripture commands. that amnesia victory victim had his mind restored and it changed his whole manner of life again. Spiritually it’s the same with us. Fallen and Adam we’ve lost spiritual knowledge, we’ve lost righteousness, we’ve lost true holiness. This is why the Bible says we have to have this renewing of our minds. Change thinking leads to the change behavior that we’re talking about. coming to know Christ results in the restoring of that lost spiritual knowledge, that lost righteousness, that lost holiness. And there will be a progressive work in these areas as you grow in the Lord. So here’s the area. Here’s what you must do. You must examine yourself regarding these things. That’s what you were. And now we’re going to look at what you are and how you got there by the work of God’s grace.