Amazing Grace, Amazing Graciousness

Greer teaches chapter 3 got a notice before Paul gets there, he brought you face-to-face with your gravity foolish disobedience. He rated and maybe sometimes you want to skip over this and get to the gospel.

You will never appreciate you will never weep for joy. You will never be moved to the behaviors that he is telling you to be moved to until you understand the depravity of verse three in the but God of verse four and his forgiveness and sing the songs that bring us joy and comfort is a whole lot more pleasant than the parts about being enemies of God today on Senate life pastor JD Greer reveals that without the bad news of sin. Good news be so good. British series called everyday theology can listen to all the previous messages@jdgreer.com. Now here's pastor JD with a message titled amazing Grace amazing graciousness Bible Titus chapter 3 Titus chapter 3 is returning they'll tell you that several years ago I read a book about being a Christian on a college campus and asked one of the most honest and insightful questions that I have ever considered my question was this awesome. What do you do when you feel like you want your neighbor to go to hell Randy Newman. The author explained that many Christians feel a considerable amount of anger for the cultural around them. They feel angry at how they seem to constantly be portrayed in the media how the other side seems to twist reality and get away with it. I'm watching a show right now with my wife.

One of the characters on the show as a Christian politician.

She is judge mental. She is mean she's gone home and nobody seems to object to the fact that she is presented this way. In fact, some of you feel like the more than a movie or show does this, the more the critics seem to love it or when the news find somebody to represent the evangelical Christian perspective. After a tragedy. I don't know how but they always seem to find that God you know who I'm talking about. The reason a tornado can do here is get out of date. People and Democrats now live in our society and this is a Christian perspective, and I like how did they find that guy well I have a chime in church. The church I pastor has 9000 Christians together on the weekend and I don't know that God, you're probably here somewhere. No, but you'll make up the majority. You do not make up the prevalent or why it needs all day.

The other 8999 people year lot.

Christians feel anger always been presented this way.

Metal MSA in the world of victims of some awful persecution on the citizen. The feeling we have of always having a hostile culture looking at you are tired of liberal professors rewriting history you are tired of activist judges redefining morality are tired of liberal theologians rewriting the Bible you hear a guy like Christopher Hitchens who is acknowledged as one of the leading the Lakers ridge of the gospel delete the leading intellectuals in our society say this faith causes people to be more mean more selfish and perhaps above all, more stupid Randy Newman the author the book I was telling you about said quote. Many Christians appear angry in the media because they are angry and while we would never really voice this out loud.

We have this attitude in our heart of well it's okay yours. One day you'll get yours one day is coming to you is anybody. By the way tracking this course is like confessions of a pastor if you know exactly what I'm talking about in Titus chapter 3, Paul talks to a group of people that are in this situation and talk about how the gospel reshapes how we feel about people on the outside they are in a culture that was probably worse than ours. In this sense they have been mistreated and misrepresented outright persecuted. So Paul talks to them about how you relate to people who dislike you, misrepresent you. He says this in verse one.

Remind them that is the believers to be submissive to rulers and authorities, even ones that don't share your perspectives to be obedient to be ready for every good work to speak evil of no one to avoid correlating to be gentle and to show perfect courtesy toward all people. That's a key word there all people, not just Christians, not just people were nice for you. You show it to everybody, especially your enemies. He tells them to disagree without dishonoring a great example of this is in the movie that just came out Selma that depicts the life of all of the late Martin Luther King you got a guy representing a group in our country who had every right to be angry, but what you see in the movie is Dr. King, leading people to be gentle and courteous. In response to return good for evil, not evil for evil to be both submissive toward government and subversive at the same time to disagree without dishonoring that is the command that Paul gives but I want you to watch what he does next to this is so classic Paul that once you learn this pattern you will see it everywhere in Paul's writing verse three was the first word for or because in them. Paul is about to give one of the clearest and most concise explanations of the gospel down anywhere in all of his letters know this is the key to interpreting all Paul's teaching commands always flow out of gospel declarations are never separated. It's not that we do these things and that makes us better people and God approves of us. It's that when we become aware of what God has done for us in Christ, then we become all of these ways that he is describing Martin Luther said it this way. Listen imperatives in the Bible. Always follow indicative's not a shipment in English class in a while you just got this image of having the diagram sentences which is in the third level of hell then then imperatives and interdict a big imperatives are commands to do indicative's are statements of declaration. So in other words, imperatives, what God commands us to do always come out of indicative's or declarations of what God has done the way we said here is before the gospel tells you to behave or become it tells you to behold because beholding is the way to become, and when you become, you will behave. Beholding makes your heart become righteous and when you become righteous. You will do righteously. So we don't start with behave.

We don't even start with the calm we start with behold the love of God, given for you in the gospel and that will make you become righteous and then you will do righteously.

So we will divide this message into two parts. We will divide it into the indicative and the imperative will at first to be indicative of what Paul declares to us about the gospel and then from that we will see the imperatives of what he wants us to do in response. Verse three he starts the indicative with a description of bias and bad news. It is a really decimal one. Verse three for we ourselves were once foolish. We are selling out to my people at Hollywood not, people money is maybe a thought about you sir I look at your neighbor right now neighbor and say he's talking about you.

You're foolish. Okay and I look about using the same thing your full he's talking about us foolish is a word in Greek meaning ignorant and warped. Literally our hearts became spiritually stupid.

One commentator says we became moral morons. The apostle John says we begin to loved darkness rather than light. The light look… Look like likely wrong wrong Seabright. Paul said in Romans 121 that we became twisted in our minds and disordered in our emotions. In other words, what we were supposed to love it, in love, and what we worked with love and in love and things we are close.

Love alive and I love little big for such a little of a lot. Whether Martin Luther would summarize Romans 121.

As he says the human heart curbed inward on itself. It was created to be outward toward God and others.

What it curbed inward and selfishness were once foolish. We were disobedient. It's not just that our morality got distorted. We disobeyed even those things we knew to be right right or not, just foolish. Also disobedient about what we do know to be right away that Francis Schaeffer, who was a Christian defender of the faith.about 50 years ago you had a great way describing this is that, imagine talking to people who were Christians.

He said imagine when you get to the judgment seat one day that God reveals that there's always been this little invisible tape recorder around her neck. Okay she'll remember what a tape recorder is still device that recorded stuff on it. Think of it like if you're doing a voice memo on Syria that communicate using an app on your phone and that was put there by God to run in the background in your city. It only activated whenever you said the word ought to know you said you ought to. He ought to do. They ought to see onto a minute would recorder a sediment turnoff is to percent on judgment day.

If all God did was play back your ought statements and then judging by that is not a person in any religion anywhere on the planet that would survive the test. We are disobedient to the things that we know to be right. We are led astray. That's his next word our hearts got into a condition that we were susceptible to deception. It's not that we were honestly tricked.

We wanted to be tracked is like the person who won state somebody else or already does hate somebody else and then find a bunch of reasons to justify their hatred.

You and I did not there.

People often don't want to blame their issue on those who influence them. I just hung out with the wrong crowd. That was my downfall. The reason you hung out with the wrong crowd is because you like the wrong crowd better than the right ground is not that you hung out with the wrong crowd at that you were the crowd.

That's why you chose to make your friends the wrong crowd instead of the right crowds and ogling the crowd blame yourself. We were born with a disposition toward the wrong which makes us so to sealable which is our kids only. Nobody gets up on a Saturday morning and their fifth-grader has clean the entire house there sitting there with her Bible open journaling save surrender more my life to the Lord right as a parent you get up and you like use of the backyard on fire.

Don't point your two month old sister.

She could not have done that.

That had to have been you.

Nobody had to teach my kids a lot out of your Mike Is a Lie. I Never Send My Kids to Disrespect. They Just Got All That Stuff. Naturally, Yes, Others Have Influence Them Negatively. But All That Stuff Comes Right Out Of Their Hearts. We Were Slaves. That's His Next Phrase to Various Passions, Our Separation from God, but the Gap in Our Hearts That Made Us Dependent on Other Things. Blaise Pascal Famously Described It by Saying That the Absence of God. The Absence of the Love of God Left a God Shaped Void or Literally Imprint about You. Nature Abhors a Vacuum.

So All of Our Lives Are Spent Trying to Put Things into That Vacuum to Cover up What We Lost. We Lost the Love of God. It's like Drowning When You Drown You Don't Die from Holding Your Breath When You Drown. What Happens Is You Can't Hold Your Breath Anymore Underwater and so You Breathe in Water the Same Thing Happen Spiritually. You Were Created to Breathe in the Glory and the Love of God.

And When You Are No Longer Doing That Your Soul Begins to Crave Other Things and You Have To Breathe in Something so Just like Drowning Memories and Water Simple Person Breeze and Idols, and They Become Slaves to Passive the Biggest Lie in Our Culture Is That Rejecting God's Laws Leads to Freedom Is Exactly the Opposite. When You Reject God, You Become Addicted to Her Slaves to Other Passions Lewis Use the Example That I Share with You Multiple Times of the Fish He Wants to Be Free of the Ocean and Jumps out onto the Shore. He's Not Free from the Ocean at That Point He Can No Longer Live You and I Were Created to Breathe, and the Glory of God. We Spiritually Cannot Hold Our Breath. So When We Do Not Have the Love of God in the Right Place. We Become Slaves to Any and Everything Else Is the Absence of the Love of Her Heavenly Father. For Example, That Makes the High School Girl, the Slave of the Attention of Boys Always Say They Become. Many of Them Become Serial Daters When There's Never Been Any You Can Point to for Collective Days since Middle School That They Had Not Been in Pursuit of a Person by a Boy. It Is the College Guys Sense of Alienation from His Heavenly Father That Makes Him a Slave to Other People's Opinions. You Are Created to Hear Well Done My Son from God. And When That Is No Longer There Than You Look for from Anybody.

Anybody Else Who Will Give It to You. It Is Often the Absence of Purpose and Identity in Christ That Creates a Craving That Enslaves You to Your Bodily Desires. Things like Pornography and Alcohol. Or Maybe It's Just Amusements and New Toys and Hobbies. It Is the Absence of the Purpose That God Was Supposed to Give You That We Do Those Things Because Your Soul Cannot Hold Its Breath. You Have To Breathe in the Fulfillment of These False Idols to. Then We Passed Our Days in Malice and Envy, Hated by Others and Hating One Another Whenever You Put Something or Someone Else in the Place of God.

This End up Hating It Whenever It Inevitably Disappoints You. Jonathan Edwards, the American Theologian Would Say This Way. What You Idolize. Inevitably, You Demonize I Know It's Ironic but That's Just the Way It Works.

You Put so Much Weight onto Something When You Idolize It but Collapses under the Weight That You Put on It and You Hate It. That's Why Some of the Things You Long for Most in Your Life Became the Very Thing That You Hated. I Give You an Example. That's Why Marriages That Start out so Well Often Go Better If Why Vent the Really the Plot Line to Every Romantic Comedy That I've Ever Seen Is Ultimately Based on a Kind of Foolishness Because the Basic Idea Is Once You Find Him or Her. Mr. Writer Mr. Wrong and Everything in Life Is Going to Go Rosie. From That Point on, You Look at the Marriages in Hollywood Dell, That's Not True Because What Happens. Listen As You Find Some of It Is a Right within You Put All Your Souls Wait on Them and They Cannot Sustain It. Here's How I Have Summarized the Plot Line of Most of the Romantic Comedies Is You Got a Guy Floating in a Sea of Loneliness and Despair, Low Self-Esteem, along by 4 to 5 Foot Four Blonde Had a Life Preserver Was a Drowning Man Do When He Sees Life Preserver. He Clings to It. He Begins to Suffocate the Life Out Of It. He Makes Statements to a like You Complete Me Know and I Kind of Stuff Many Ends up Hating Her and Her Him Because He Is Looking for Her for Something That She Was Not Designed to Give Him If You Idolize Family. If Your Idea of the of Happiness in Life Is That Your Family Is Altogether and Tightly Closed Unit Becoming Better in Self-Pity. When Your Family Disappoints You. Or Maybe You Hate Your Spouse Because They Messed up Your Family I'm Talking to Some People That Cannot Forgive and Ex-Spouse, and by the Late Inability to Forgive Is a Form of Eight. The Reason You Cannot Forgive That Ex-Spouse Is Because They Destroyed Something That You Had Always Yearned for, and That Is This Perfect Sense of Family, You Hate Others You Are Hated by Others, Your Kids Resent You Because Your Idolization of Family Causes You to Always Try to Control Them and They Chafe under That May Resent You, Your Hated by Others or Hating One Another What You Idolize. You Demonize When You Put Something in the Place of God. It Put You into a Place for Your Soul Shrivels You Become Guarded and Hateful toward Anybody or Anything Who Threatens It a Great Picture of This Is J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings with and You Probably Artie Thought of This Book the Ring Right Ring.

The Ring Represents the Thing That You so Want and You Become like Gollum You Know and I Got Hurt or Destroy Anybody That Comes in the Way of Me in My Precious Picture Told He Gave Us a Picture of Your Soul. Shortly after Don Told Him Published the Last of the Lord of the Rings 1950s a Woman Wrote to Him and Said I Loved Your Books but I Have To Say That Was One Part of Him Completely Unbelievable. He Said Why the Dark Lord Would Ever Have Put so Much Power in a Marine Was Vulnerable and Susceptible to Being Destroyed. She Said That Is a Make Any Sense and That Would Never Happen, Talk and Write Her Back and Says I Know It's Unbelievable but That Was Supposed to Be a Picture of What Every Single Human Being Dies, You Are the Dark Lord Ma'am You Are the One, and I Am the One Who Finds Something That We Put All of Our Hope All of Our Sense of Happiness. All of Our Sense of Identity, and It Might Be the Praise of Others, It Might Be Money. It Might Be Any Number of Things and in Regard That with Our Life and It Makes Our Soul Shrivels and We Become Exactly What Paul Describes They Are in Titus Chapter 3 Verse Three You See A Lot Of Us Want to Cut a Look at Us Ourselves Is Basically Good People Are Basically Good.

We Had a Couple Bad Spots like a Banana Got Got a, Cut out. We Got A Few Rough Spots. He's Gotta Gotta Get You Sand down. That Is Not Help All Present You Sin Did Not Just Hurt You. It Corrupted You. It Builds You. God Has a Thousand Reasons to Condemn Us. My Favorite Literary Depictions of This Is Oscar Wilde's Novel the Picture of Dorian Gray in My Memory, Messy, Moderate and High School Picture of Dorian Gray, Young, Handsome Man Named Dorian Gray Decides It Is Going to Have His Portrait Painted a Beautiful Painting Is a Beautiful Man As He Gazes at His Finish Portrait He Thinks I Know I'm Going to Age If Only I Could Trade Places with This Painting and If the Painting Would Age and I Would Stay the Same When He Gets His Wish, He Remains a Handsome Young Socialite.

While the Portrait Hidden Away in His Attic Begins to Do the Aging. The Portrait Also Begins to Bear, Wilde Says the Consequences of the Real Man's Behavior. So for Example When Dorian Makes a Cruel Comment. The Mouth of the Portrait Twists into a Cruel Grin. Dorian Nurses Hatred for Arrival to the Eyes and the Portrait Narrow into Rage. Eventually, Dorian Murders a Man in the Hands of the Portrait Begin to Drip Blood. When Dorian Finally Recognizes That the Terrible Portrait Represents His True Inner Self, He Despises the Painting so Much. He Slashes It with a Knife.

Later, a Servant Finds That the Portrait Is in the Attic and Its Vanished, and Dorian Gray Himself Lies Dead on the Floor with a Knife to His Own Heart This Is What Paul Says Has Happened to You That What Sin Did Is It Corrupted You and Destroyed You. It Made You Dislike Yourself Made You Become Self-Justifying. It Weathered Your Soul. How Was Your Day at Church We Were to Talk on Eternal Damnation. While We All Deserve It. How Was Yours Richard Met Eventually Submit That There Is a Problem. Don't You Know There's a Problem and a Promise Deep in Your Heart. Andy Stanley Was Hurting, Some like This and It Was Said Is Ablaze Either Will Have an Objection with This Assessor's Office Is As You Know That As You Get Old. One of the Keys to Successful Life Is Learning to Filter Things in Your Filter Supposed to Get Better As You Get in Your 30s and 40s Is When You Are Young and You Were like in Love You Are Infatuated with Somebody and You First Get to Know Them or Play That Game.

He Has Never Played a Game of the What You Think of Right Now That We Thing Right Now You Tell Me Is That You Learn Not to Play That It Merits Because If They Ask You That You Might Say Much Weight If You Actually Gain. That's What I Was Thinking This Is Willing to Fill These and How Would It Be If at Every Point Someone Could Read out the Thoughts That Are in Your Heart and Just Put Them on Display Sin Wipes Us out and Paul Calls That Spiritual Death.

We Are Dead in Our Sin. Verse Four Bites. That Is a Huge but Yes, I Know Exactly What That Sounds like, but the Beauty of the Gospel Is in That Word. See Got a Notice and before Paul Gets There, He Brought You Face-To-Face with Your Depravity, Your Foolish Disobedience.

He Rated an 80 Sometimes All You Want to Skip over This and Get to the Gospel Which You Will Never Appreciate You Will Never Wonder at the Beauty of the Gospel until You Understand Your Depravity.

You Will Never Weep for Joy. You Will Never Be Moved to the Behaviors That He Is Telling You to Be Moved to Members Wanted to until You Understand the Depravity of Verse Three in the but God of Verse Four. Spurgeon Would Say It This Way Too Many of Us Think Too Lightly of Sin and That's Why We Think Too Lightly of the Savior, the One Who Weeps for Joy at Hearing the Gospel the One Who Extravagantly Pours out His Possessions in Response Is the One Who Believes He Has Stood before His God with the New Sub Condemnation Rightfully around His Neck and before He Is Condemn the Voice That Says I Will Take That News and I Will Wear It in Your Place Said That Is the One Who Will Joyfully Offer His Life in Response to God so We Cannot Skip over This Part. I Know It's Not Positive and Encouraging.

I Know It's Not Going to Get Me a Gig on Oprah When We Go through Verse Three, but You Understand, Listen That That Is Where the Beauty of the Gospel Starts the but God Comes in Response to Your Depravity. That's Why Francis Schaeffer Who I Quoted Earlier Said This, What Is It Only Had One Hour to Talk to a Person Who Knew Nothing about the Bible and One Hour.

I Would Spend the First 50 Minutes Trying to Convince Them of Their Sinfulness and over the Last 10 Minutes Talking to Them about the Gospel Because They Will Never Understand the Gospel.

They Will Never Appreciate the Gospel They Will Never Weep for Joy the Gospel until You Understand What an Amazing Word, That Word in Verse Four, but Is but When the Goodness and Lovingkindness of God Our Savior Appeared, He Saved Us He Saved Was the Only Actor Anyone and I Did My Best and You Know He Kinda Came Integrated on the Curb, How He Did It All Was My Part of Salvation.

I Did All the Sending He Did All the Saving Is Not in Verse Three. I'm Not in Verse Four. What Part Was My Salvation to Be Going to Do My Best and Illness Took Care Of the Rest Know Start to Finish. It Was His Work Has To Be Received As a Gift Is Almost Hard to Describe What You Do Suddenly Woke up in the Back of an Ambulance, You Had No Idea How You Got There, but There Are Tubes That Cannot You Everywhere You Have a Mascot There's an EMTs Interviews That You Are in a Terrible Rack and You Were Unconscious and You're about to Die, but We Saved Your Life You're Going to Be Okay. He Is Not Inviting You to Get up and Hearts Are Helping to Save Yourself the Spaces That You Gotta Live There Because I'm Doing It All for You What Happens in Conversion and Suddenly You Wake up. The News That Jesus Christ Has Saved You 2000 Years Ago and He Didn't Ask You to Help Save Yourself. This Is Lie There and Let Me Know It Because I Am Going to Do It All. All He Lived a Life We Couldn't Live Ourselves to Death That We Deserved. We Just Accept This Amazing Grace and Amazing Graciousness from God's Encouraging Words Today from Pastor JD Greer Here on Senate Life This Week We're Launching a New Resource for You Called Start That Builds on the Foundational Traits and This Teaching Series in the Book of Titus Bible Study Work but That Will Take You through the Foundations of the Christian Faith in Just Six Weeks Every Week Leverages Four Ways We Learn to Help Us Process. Some of the Most Important Things Will Ever Learn Growing Closer to God, Hires Transformation, Not Just Information, Which Is Why Each Learning Style Is so Important We Learn Best by Showing Others What We Are Learning so This Is What Makes This Study so You Mean Will Send You This Work, but As an Expression of Thanks We Donate Today to Support This Ministry for the Start Bible Study, but When You Get by Calling 866-335-5220 866-335-5224. Give Online JD Greer.com. Finally, Check out Pastor JD's Newest Podcast Honest Answers to Question Can Find It Online.com I'm Only Minutes Doing This Today As We Continue. Everyday Reality. Listen Monday to Senate Life