Beeson Podcast, Episode #139 Name Date >>Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now your host, Timothy George. >>Timothy George: Dr Robert Smith Jr and I are here again to introduce you to a great preacher of the gospel, Dr Ralph Douglas West. He is he founder and the senior pastor of the Church Without Walls in Houston, Texas. He first preached as a 16-year-old in his native Houston. His church where he is now begun with 32 members. They now embrace 24,000 families meeting in three locations, holding six services each. So, this is a remarkable church. And among other things, I’m very proud to say that Dr Ralph Douglas West is a graduate of Beeson Divinity School. He received his Master of Divinity at Southwestern Seminary and his Doctor of Ministry right here at Beeson. So, Dr Smith, introduce us to this sermon preached by Dr West at our own Beeson pastor school. >>Smith: George, I think this is vintage Dr Ralph Douglas West. I am always amazed how he draws the hero into the sermon immediately with some kind of engaging illustration. And since he’s preaching on Titus, chapter 1, verses 10 and following, these things we have declared, he opens up by just saying that it’s hard to let someone go and be what they’re meant to be when it means that there is separation in terms of distance and he does this, of course, in talking about his oldest son, Ralph II, going away to college. That’s how he opens it up, that Paul left Titus in Crete to set things in order. He really is a person who flows with his idea of exposition on narrative preaching. And yet, here he’s very traditional, points, alliterations. He really preaches the whole counsel God as relates to heilsgeschichte, the salvation history from creation to the cross to the return of Christ to the consummation. Extremely eclectic quoting plethora of persons, DT Niles, John RW Stott, and others. I think this message has forward strength practicality for those who are in ministry, who have to be in Crete to do things that aren’t savory in terms of the task in order to carry out what God has called them to do. >>Timothy George: This is a sermon, Dr Smith, that’s biblical. >>Smith: Very biblical. >>Timothy George: It’s applicable. >>Smith: Yes sir. >>Timothy George: It’s pastoral in its intention. >>Smith: Yes. >>Timothy George: Experiential. I think we’re going to enjoy hearing Dr Ralph Douglas West as he preaches here at Beeson Divinity School. Let’s go to the chapel and listen to him. >>West: Letting go is a difficult thing, especially when letting go involves the releasing of a person or thing that you love. Yet we have to let it go in order for it to become what it or that thing is supposed to be. The gravity of that statemen hit home to Shereeta and I this summer when we took our oldest son, Ralph, to Atlanta Georgia to begin his studies at Morehouse College. Taking him to a new environment to leave him in the care and custody of people that we did know to educate him, yay even to cultivate him, was one of the more difficult experiences as parents that we have had. In fact, we began asking questions amongst ourselves. Did we choose the right school? Should we have let him stay home a year to age? How would he adjust? Would he and his roommate mesh? How will he get along away from home? And of course, there were other questions that we asked nonverbally. We just housed them away in our hearts. But the eventful day to leave had arrived and as it loomed before us, I wanted to give my son one last gift, a lasting gift. And I pulled him to the side as we exited the dormitory and I was on my way to another place to speak and I said to Ralph, placing my hand upon his shoulder, “I’m proud of you. I love you and there’s nothing that you can do today that would make me love you any more than I already love you. But I want to confess to you, and I felt like maybe some person who sits on the opposite side of a priest behind brass lattices in a confession booth at this time. Ralph, I confess that I have made some mistakes. I want you to forgive me because you’re my first child. I’ve never been a parent before, so I didn’t know how to rear children. So, I want you to excuse me for my errors and my ways. Please don’t hold it against me. Of the times that I know that you needed me to be there, and I let ministry get in the way of it. Excuse me for the times where you just needed for me to listen, not offer you any instructions, just to listen as you were maturing and growing.” And then I said, “but I want to leave you some things that have become things that have governed my life for more than 26 years. These things, Ralph, are things that will navigate you through the treacherous seas of life as well as the tranquil streams of life if you can remember these things. Ralph don’t forget God. Remember God in your youth while the evil day is growing nigh when you’ll say there’s no pleasure. Remember God. Ralph, remember to read your Bible. Read your word. It is the compass for your direction. Ralph don’t forget to pray. Talk to God. You don’t need anybody else to talk to God for you. Just talk to God on your own. In your own language, talk to God.” And then I said, “finally Ralph, go to church. The church is the place where your faith will be forged. You’ll be fastened, fastened to the rock of your faith. Go to church. You’ll be encouraged there. You’ll meet people there. Go to church. Ralph don’t forget God. Don’t forget to pray. Don’t forget to read the Bible. Don’t forget to go to church.” I said, “these are just some things that have governed my life over 26 years. When I left Ralph, I thought about Titus 2:11 through verse 15. Paul must have felt the weight of his separation from Titus when he and Titus had evangelized on the island of Crete and now, he has left, and Titus remained in Crete. And for this reason, you are to remain in Crete so that you can put in place the things that were left unfinished by me. The tensions of Crete are not as nearly diabolical as that of your brother Timothy over in Ephesus. Nonetheless, I want you to straighten out things that are crooked in Crete and set it in order. And your primary pastoral responsibility will be two-fold. One, I want you to select qualified spiritual leaders who will assist you in not only governing the church but also in the teaching and development of faith that has been given to us in the resurrected Lord, Jesus Christ. But then secondly Titus, I want them to assist you in confuting the opponents who have taken the word and they have now used it for their sorted games that they are perverting the teachings. And they are crafting peculiar genealogies, and they are using all types of allegorical interpretations to persuade people, not to help them, but for their own profit and in their own games. And it is here that I am leaving you on this island to establish the leadership and lead the church. And I want you to combat against the rebellious people who are inside the fellowship. But when you read the letter, it seems to have a hint of tenor and tone that suggests that there was such difficulties that Titus could hardly wait to get out of Crete. When you read it, his favorite verse probably comes in the final remarks of verse 12 where when he reads the letter probably to himself before he reads it publicly where Paul says, in a little I’ll send Tychicus and Artemas to come and relieve you, he was probably shouting at that moment, hardly waiting that resignation was on its way. You know, many of us have traveled here to Beeson. We’re preachers and pastors, laity and leaders. But anytime you have this many people gathered under one roof, there is someone here who is contemplating that is there an Artemas or Tychicus who’s coming to relieve me of my duties. Is there a reassignment that God has for me? Can God place me somewhere else? Do I have to stay here with these stubborn, rebellious people? And yet with this cause, God has left you in Texas, Tennessee, the District of Columbia, Kenya, ad infinitum to set it all to the things that left in the hands of the rebellious never will get done. So, it is here where Paul begins in chapters one and the beginning parts of chapters two in a kind of awkward reversal. He usually begins with doctrine and then duty, but now he starts with duty and moves to doctrine. And when you come to chapter 2:11-15, it crafts for us the theological basis for a life that is to be lived good, for that’s the heart of the book. Seven times, do good, be good, be eager to do good shows up in these passages. And anytime you see good that many times, you know the writer is hinting at something. And so, the theological basis of it is is that this grace that has come to us in Jesus Christ characterizes itself in a way that motivates us to do what is good, to move us to doing what is good, to be eager to do what is good. I know in this setting I don’t have to qualify that you’re not mistaken that goodness takes place of salvation. You know better than that. But the result of being redeemed ought to be that some good ought to be seen in us. People ought to recognize some goodness in us. And it is here where Paul locks in. And I want to spend the remainder of moments with you to just declare these things that are things that will motivate us to do good, to lead Beeson and go back to our creevan congregations, to go back to where the rebellious and the stubborn and the hard and the rejecting is and to go back motivated that regardless of what stare us in the face of our ministry, we will nonetheless do good because it has been declared to us, do good things. Listen to what Paul says. “For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men.” That’s a good place to begin declaring. Declare the grace of God. Grace is a big term. It’s so big you can’t really put your arms around it. And yet, all of us here tonight are recipients of that amazing grace. Philip Yancey raised that question in one of his writings. He asked, “what’s so amazing about grace?” Well, the question answers itself because grace is amazing. Somebody takes it one step further, it’s amazing because it “saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now I’m found. Blind but now I see” because grace is an amazing thing. But grace doesn’t just appear in Titus 2. Every page of scripture is peppered and seasoned with evidence of God’s grace. You remember that day when Moses is in the cleft of a rock? He appeals for the glory but before that comes, it says, the Lord, the Lord compassionate who is slow to anger and abounding in love who forgives a thousands and redeems them. This is what grace is. Grace is God loving us when we know we are not deserving of that kind of love. That’s grace. So, here it is, this grace, is one of the things we ought to declare, that we ought to declare the grace of God. But look what grace continues to do. Grace shows up for us, it says. It has appeared. It has appeared to us in history. This is why Titus can do good and you and I can lead our churches and our ministries because grace has appeared to us in history. God, who was way up there, came way down here. The invisible became visible. The external became or rather the eternal became external. He pitched his tents among us and camped out in our neighborhoods and walked up and down our streets. We can do good because grace has walked among us. That’s grace that’s come to us. Grace is seen in the brilliance of His birth. It is demonstrated in its deeds. It is heard in His winsome words. It is felt in the compassion of His crucifixion. It is also witnessed in the resplendence of His resurrection and one day, that grace shall be shouted at when it claps the sky in a second coming. That’s grace! Paul could talk about grace. He was a recipient of grace. On his way to do the church in, grace caught up here on him on the mountain and revealed itself to him and smacked him down to the ground. And when he looked up in the face of grace, grace called him by name to mission him to apostleship and confound him to take the gospel of God everywhere he goes. That’s grace! Grace showed up in history. But you know what? Grace also shows up universally. In that same verse it says it “appears to all men.” That word, appear, epiphany, is the image of the sun peaking its head up on a horizon and once it has lifted its head and its face begins to brighten and fill all of the earth, it is the glorious appearing. It is that sun peaking its head until the whole earth is filled with its majesty. That’s what grace is. And this grace has appeared not just in history, but it also appears universally. It shows up everywhere and you can’t keep grace out of nowhere. DT Niles, the preacher, helps define this when he writes about the barrierless love of God, how love shows up, Christ appears everywhere. Niles helps along with seeing the universality of grace. It shows up to a zealot and appears to a zealot and then it shatters the political distinctions. This grace appeared to Zacchaeus, a raunchy tax collector. Then it breaks class distinction. Grace appeared to a Syrophoenician woman, and it broke racial distinction. It appeared to a woman at the well who was craving for her appetites and her thirst to be slate by human pleasures, and it ended the sex distinction. He showed up and washed the feet of His disciples and ended servant leader distinction. He embraced all of the children, and He broke down age distinction. His grace appears to everybody and anybody that will open their arms and heart to receive the grace, then it has appeared to us. Now let me say this. I have to apologize if I sound or get a little excited about this. But when your life has been as messed up as mine and grace reaches down and picks you up, I’ve not yet learned how to talk about grace in a quiet tone. I know what grace has done for me. I know what grace has done, and it comes to us in this universality. It has appeared to all men. And He says to us tonight that if we will wind the weak down, return back to your congregations and declare these things. Declare the grace of God. But he segways now to verse 12. And in verse 12 he tells us what to do with this declaration of grace. He said, declare Christ, denounce the culture, and develop good character. John RW Stott says about verse 12 these words, “grace that was our savior now becomes our teacher.” What does grace teach us now? Grace is about to give us a lesson on what we ought to say no to and what to say yes to. Grace is taking us through the university of life and we’re matriculating in the class of grace to teach us how to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions, but to say yes to self-controlled upright living and godliness. But it appears though, if you read Titus and play it against the problem of the opposing people in the church, that many of us get the order reversed. Many of us are saying yes to ungodliness and worldly passions and saying no to self-controlled upright living and godly lives. In fact, if you’re not careful, if you would listen to the voices of our culture, that’s exactly what they’re telling us to do, to say no to the things of God and say yes to the things of the world. Paul always put these two in tension, does he not? He never just says take off and leave it off. He always says take off and put on. Take off the old self. Put on the new self. Take off the old life. Put on a new life. Take off ungodliness. Put on godliness. Take off self-centeredness. Put on self-control. Take off a world or lifestyle that’s interested only in itself and put on caring for the betterment of other people. It’s always the taking off and the putting on. These are things that we ought to declare. For those of us who are custodians of the gospel, we’re challenged all the time to cheapen our roles as communicators to appeal to the people that we have to minister to. I’m amazed at the people, I mean the conduits who tell us in order to attract the attention of people, we have to come to where they are. I understand that kind of language. But Howard Thurman says that the religion of Jesus meets us where we are and then dares us and then challenge us to come up and dares us to grow tall enough to wear the crown of righteousness above our heads. Did you follow what I said? God meets us where we are and lifts us to where we ought to be, and He dares us to grow tall enough to wear righteousness above out head. Meet them where they are but don’t leave them there. You ought to be lifting them up to something higher than what they are. Here is what I mean. Isn’t it amazing that in many of our pulpits and classrooms you can find the same stuff that you can find on any old self-help bookshelf. Eyes like you’re just going, as I heard one preacher, prominent being interviewed, they introduced him and said, “and here’s one of the fore leading motivational speakers around.” What an insult to any preacher of the gospel. I’m not here to motivate you. I’m here to preach the gospel in your ear and let Christ do the work. And we’re to live this kind of life, look at this, he says in this present age. I believe Paul must have drawn experience as he read the wilderness account of Jesus who was faced by this same tension between whether that is good and godly or that which is ungodly and worldly passions. Do you remember the event? Jesus has been in the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights. Typically, we would assume that He’s at His weakest moment but that’s always when you’re the strongest when you’ve been in the presence of God. And Satan comes to throw out some suggestions to Him on how he can maneuver His messiahship. He says, I know your hungry, turn stones into bread. He offers Him the sensual side of life. Jesus said, man don’t live by the sensual and heathenistic pleasures alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. He tried a second time, and he comes to Him with that which seems to be spectacular. Come and jump off the mountains. Angels will come and rescue you. And he says, you can’t temp the Lord, the God. And then he comes with another character about culture. He comes to Him and says to him, try the triumphant route. Just kneel down and worship me. He says, there’s no other God by Yahweh, the true and living God. Now, back up and let me show you something. When Paul says that we ought to live godly lives in this present age, it seems that he is acutely aware of the zeitgeist, the spirit of the times, of how it permeates the culture, and is always trying to seduce us off of the right road of G od. All of us in ministry have been tempted by the sensual, the spectacular, and the triumphant. And if you’re not careful and grounded in the moorings of the faith, you will find yourself drifting away by the ebb and flow of the cultures of this water where the water’s culture weaving us, anchor that holds us firm and fixed and fastened to the faith that God has given to us. Now, he says, these things we are to declare. But then he moves on, and I’m about through now, but he comes over to verse 13. He says, while you are declaring the grace of God, I want you now to declare the glory of God. And look how he says to do it, while we wait for the blessed hope, the glorious appearing, He who has appeared in history is going to reappear in eternity. He who has come is coming back and we ought to wait for His coming. But while we wait, we ought to live as good as we can, not knowing when He’s coming back, so that when He comes back, he can find a people who have been called out as the treasured possessions. You see, the other side of the writing of Titus is simply this, it’s not nearly to be motivated to do good but that the outsiders in Crete when they look for an example, they can look at the church and see the exemplary Christian behavior and want to live like they live. And so now, we have to wait for His return, that blessed hope. But look what happens in this. In this reappearing, something is about to happen. Several sermons ago, we were over in Switzerland and the children were with us and our camera, we have this little camera, you don’t have to do anything, just click it and it takes pictures. You don’t have to focus it, just goes. I call it the stupid camera. But Ralphael had been gifted a polaroid camera for Christmas and Elle took his polaroid. And Elle wanted to take pictures in Switzerland. And Elle recklessly just started taking pictures, click snap, and out comes the sleeve. He just pulled it off. Snatched the sleeve off and he started waving like he was doing a magic trick. A black face, a black negative. And then all of a sudden, before your very eyes, that polaroid started developing and that which was invisible could not be seen. That’s how our Lord’s going to come back. And the same way we waited for the picture, we have to wait for the return of our Christ. But let me give you three motivations while you’re waiting on me. Why you can wait on me. Because now in verse 13 and verse 14, verse 14 reinnervates verse 11. And now expands upon the grace of salvation that has been brought to us. In this verse it says to us that God, while we wait for the blessed hope, the glorious appearing of our great God and savior, verse 13, who gave himself to redeem us from wickedness, that while we wait, you want to know what to declare? Go back and declare that the glory of God’s grace redeems us. Go back and tell them that the glory of His grace redeems us, that He has paid a price for us and that He has purchased us with His own self blood, and He has died up on the tree. I don’t know about you but that’s enough for me. To know that He has bought me with a price. That He has given himself up for me. But maybe you don’t know how redemption looks. You know how redemption looks? That boy who created the boat and he put his signature on the hull of it and drifted it out into the waters and the rippling effects carried it away. And then when it was carried away, it was found by another, taken from the water, and put in a shop on display in the window. And the little fellow who had lost his boat is walking the sidewalks and sees his boat and recognizes his signature on the boat. It is his by creation. He made it. It belongs to him. He goes in and says may I have my boat back? But the man says, it was lost, I found it and if you want it, you’ve got to pay for it. And the boys asks, how much? And when the price was given, he fishes in his pocket and he begins to pull out all of what he has to come up with the amount that is asked for, the purchasing of his boat. And once he gives him the money, he takes the boat, he says, it’s mine twice. Mine by creation but now it’s mine by redemption. God paid a price at the redemption center where He spilled His blood to buy back what already belonged to Him. Hallelujah to His name. But don’t stop there. When you declare the grace of God’s glory, of the glory of God’s grace, declare His redemption but also declare His reformation. That’s what He meant when He said take off and put on. There is a change that comes about us, an alteration in us that we can never be the same once we have come in contact with Christ Jesus. I don’t care who you are. You can be like the rich ruler and walk away. You never leave the same way you come. Sad might be the plight, but you never leave the same way. But there’s always a reformation and a transformation. Look at this. Look at it. Max Beerbohm tells a story about “The Happy Hypocrite” and Beerbohm says that there was this man who had a bloated face and red eyes. And this man walked around and as he sported himself, he did all the maliciousness that he could muster. He would go about, and he would steak and connive and hook and crook. But one day his attention was caught by the fancy of a young woman. And when he saw her, he wanted to win and woo that woman. And so, he donned his face with the mask of a saint, and he went up to that woman and courted her and loved her and loved her and courted her and she began to change him. And one day while walking down the street his past walked up on him and said, remove that mask from your face. Your eyes give you away. And I don’t care how you try to cover up and play the role of a saint, you can’t do it because I know the real thing. I know the sorry being that you are. Tears welling up in his eyes, his beloved looking back to figure out what is really going on. He now removes the dawn mask from his face but to his amazement and to his accuser’s amazement, the face that was bloated and evil has now taken on the shape of the mask of the saint. So, it is when you put Christ on you. Whatever you are now when Christ gets on you, after a while you will start looking like just like Him. That’s what reformation is all about. Well, let me give you one last thing and I’ll get out of the way. Declare His reformation, His reform. Declare His redemption but declare one last thing. Declare His return and His rewards. There’s a return that’s coming and a reward. You know, we live in a time, people don’t like talking about heaven anymore, even hell. I think it’s called post modernity, no absolute, nothing, you know. We just in this thing and we’re just moving about and there is nothing to connect o. But I’m going to tell you something, don’t take heaven away from me. No. Don’t take it away from me. I’m praying that what’s down here is not my home. I’m hoping this ain’t all to it. It’s got to be more than what I’m seeing. But when I lift my gaze to the glorious return of our great God, it tells me there is more than what we have here. In fact, I hear John describing that more in the words of no more. He said, down here you got some more pain. Some more problems. Some more hurts. Some more death. Some more disappointments. Some more heartbreaks. Some more setbacks. But there will come a time when Christ will return and there shall be no more. No more hurt. No more pain. No more disappointment. No more treas. No more sorrows. Hey! Declare these things! But let me tell you something. In verse 15 when Paul said declare these things, he said declare it for two reasons. One, I want you to urge the people in the fellowship. Then I want you to rebuke those who won’t embrace the truth. But there’s a last line to it, with all authority. See, Titus could do this because of his relationship to Paul. That was his authority. But you and I have another authority. We have an authority with the resurrected Lord. And it doesn’t matter what the people say when you get back. You stand up and preach with authority. Let them look at you with blanketed stares. You preach with authority. Let them call you hard and brimstone. That’s alright. You preach with authority because a charge to keep ahead. A God to glorify. A dime sold to Satan and speared for the sky. Decide this provident, my calling to fulfill. Hey! Hey! Hey! >> Announcer: You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast with host, Timothy George. 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