We haven't met. My name is Cole Lee, pastor here
at Frontier Church. If you've got a Bible, go ahead
and get that open to the book of Titus that's in the New
Testament. If you don't know where that's
at, that's fine. Keep on going to the back 25% of
your Bible and you'll you'll find it there.
If you don't have a Bible, there should be one in front of you.
If there's not, that's OK. We'll have all the words on the
screen in front of you really quickly.
I've got a a lot to say this morning, so let me tell you what
to expect over the next 40 minutes.
OK, over the next 40 minutes, all I'm going to do is I'm going
to point at a very, very, very small bit of text at the very
beginning of the Letter of Titus.
We're going to read that out loud.
I'm going to circle one word that stands out in that text
after I've circled that word for us.
We're going to go as deep as we possibly can by forming kind of
a biographical sketch of what's going on in these churches that
Paul is writing to. It's happening on this island
called Crete, this small island where a couple, strangely
enough, a couple small churches have popped up.
And we want to know how that happened, what's going on there.
It's going to feel incredibly, incredibly out of touch.
You're going to be frustrated for probably 30 minutes in the
sermon being like, dude, I just want to know if God is real and
if he loves me and you're talking about the soil
conditions of an ancient island and if you can stick with me, I
swear there will be a payoff at the end.
I'm just not going to skip to it.
Sound good. You guys with me.
Cool. I'm going to pray then we'll
jump into it. Heavenly Father, please open up.
Please open up your word to us. I pray that through joyful
faithful preaching and joyful faithful listening to the Word
of God being preached, my prayer is that these words just, they
don't remain ink on a page. It requires the work of your
spirit to make it come to life. And so often when we read it,
it's ink on a page. We skip words.
We read without wonder and we miss it.
We miss it. And so my prayer is that the
Holy Spirit would magnify the words on the page, make them
leap off the words of the page, give them arms and legs so that
the words can run around, coach us, speak to us, fill us with a
life, and that we might actually exit this morning as different
people than what we walked in the building as.
And so, Lord, May, may nobody walk out this morning.
I don't care how good or how bad the sermon is, I don't want
anybody walking out this morning without hearing and believing
the gospel. So would you grip a heart this
morning, Father, for those who don't know or don't believe that
Jesus Christ was crucified for their sins and to give us his
very own righteousness, would you open those hearts up this
morning? Work a work a miracle among us
this morning. It's in the precious name of
Jesus that all God's people prayed.
Amen. I was, I was watching a stand up
comedian a couple weeks ago and the guy was not a Christian, but
he was, he was funny. And so that's probably going to
become evident in the story that I tell.
He was he was doing stand up comedy and he had this little
bit where he talked about getting into an argument with
his and this was his words, not mine, his quote UN quote very
devout Catholic brother-in-law. And so he got into an argument
with his brother-in-law over some theological issue.
I don't even know what it was. They were arguing about
religion. You can probably guess, right,
that a family gathering, they're arguing and in the middle of the
argument he says his brother-in-law looks him in the
eyes and says, well, what do you think about what Paul wrote to
the Corinthians in First Corinthians about this issue?
To which he said, I'm not a Corinthian.
And by the way, what are you doing reading somebody else's
mail? Isn't that a punishable offense?
And I thought it was funny. You didn't.
That's OK, but you liked it. Spade is a stand up comedian.
That's the only approval I need yours and gods.
It's an interesting question though, isn't it?
Who is going to become really evident as we read these first
couple sentences that Paul is writing for the sake of these
Christians in Crete a long time ago?
And that begs the question, are we just reading somebody else's
mail? Who?
Who was the book of Titus even written for?
Was it written for the Cretans a long, long time ago, or was it
written for you and me and us? If you're able, let's go ahead
and stand for the reading of God's Word.
And you'll see Paul pretty clearly says it's for the
cretins. Here's how Paul signs on verse
one. Paul, a servant of God, an
apostle of Jesus Christ. That was last week's sermon.
For the sake of the faith of God's elect.
Who's he writing this for? For God's elect, which we'll
find out in the next paragraph, is these churches, these
Christians in Crete, this little seemingly insignificant island,
for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge
of the truth which accords with godliness in hope of eternal
life, which God who never lies. And this is in conjunction with
the doctrine of election he mentioned earlier, which He
promised before the ages began and at the proper time
manifested in His Word through the preaching with which I have
been entrusted by the command of God our Savior.
And next week we'll focus on 2 Titus, my true child, in a
common faith, grace and peace from God the Father and from
Christ Jesus our Savior. Who's this for the elect?
You can have a seat. Really quickly, let me give you
kind of the exegetical feel of the overall trajectory of these
couple verses. Here's what Paul, Paul is
saying. Paul is super clear upfront
about why he's writing these Christians.
He wants to make his purpose really clear.
What he's about to write them is going to help them with their
knowledge of the truth. Did you see that in verse 1 so
that they would grow in truth? It's going to help them even
with their godliness and practically how to live their
lives. That's at the end of verse one.
And interestingly enough, Paul wants them to know that this has
actually always been God's plan to save these Cretans, to build
them up, to help them walk in godliness, to help them know the
truth since, and these are Paul's words before the world
even began. Did you notice that in verse 2
he says this is in the hope of eternal life which God promised
before the ages began, even though he waited thousands of
years to reveal this plan through Paul's preaching of
Jesus Christ. That's how it's coming to bear.
That's verse 3. It's coming through Paul's
preaching of the gospel, through Paul's preaching of Christ.
And so here's kind of the big ideas of verses one through 3.
Paul saying, cretin Christians, I want you to know before I say
anything to you that God has always had his eye on you and
before you did anything good or bad, He has chosen you to be his
precious possession since before even the world existed.
And so this letter I'm writing to you is coming at exactly the
right moment in time to help you with your theology, help your
brain get filled with truth and your ethics, how to actually
live your life and follow Jesus in a practical way.
What Paul, this is Paul's very unique and wordy way of saying
what you're about to read is going to be the most mind
melting, brain blowing, spine stealing, spiritually edifying
letter that you've ever received.
And what he calls them is what if you have a pen, a
highlighter, a pencil, grab that right now.
If not, just follow me. He calls them God's elect.
What's that mean? It's not the way he always
starts his letters. If you read the Corinthians, he
says to the churches in Corinth. If you read Galatia, he says to
the Saints in Galatia, but to this group of ragtag Christians
all the way in Crete, he wants them to know that they are gods
elect. What could that possibly mean?
And that's the subject of the rest of the sermon.
And as you can imagine, to answer that question, we're
going to take the back roads. So Frederick Nietzsche, he was a
famous anti Christian philosopher.
He famously said that Christianity, and this was his
biggest criticism of Christianity, that it was a
religion for the weak. So if you read Niche, what he
says is quote Christianity is the religion of the downtrodden,
the boldly, the weak, the poor and the slave.
And Niche's famous essay called The Antichrist, he says quote
Christianity has taken the side of everything weak.
That's why Nietzsche hated Christianity so much.
She believed that the only way you could form a strong society
was by allowing the strong to devour the weak.
And he hated Christianity because he said it propped up
the weak and gave them significance that biology had
not imbued within them. And that was his famous.
That was actually, yeah, his famous critic.
We look at that and we're like, yeah, it's great that it was for
the week. That was his criticism of
Christianity. So a long it kind of in the wave
of Friedrich Nietzsche comes a classic American lit author who
I think is one of the best classic American lit authors of
all time. His name is Jack London.
Anybody read Jack London here. Phenomenal.
Of course, Casey, the phenomenal author.
Actually, he's who I have a son named Jack.
That's who we named our son after, right?
No, we didn't. But I do have a son named Jack.
And Jack London was a tremendous leader.
And what London would do was he took Nietzsche's ideas that the
weak should be devoured by the strong, and he framed those
ideas in the form of fiction. So Jack Lennon has a fantastic
short story that's called The Law of Life.
And what the short story is about is it's about an aging
week older chief. It was part of this tribe.
And this tribe, their land goes dry, their land goes barren.
And so the tribe needs to move and find different land that's
more fruitful. And what they do for the old
man, since he's old and useless, is they build him a bonfire and
they leave him to die. And as the title of the short
story suggests, this is just the law of life.
This is the way things are, is what London is saying.
And the ending of the short story is horrifying.
And no, I'm not going to paraphrase it for you.
You have to read it. Here's what goes on.
London says, quote. Kushkusha's.
He's the the chief who gets left behind.
Quote for long Couscous pondered on the days of his youth, till
the fire died down and the frost bit deeper.
He replenished it with two sticks at this time, engaged his
grip on life by what remained. For a while he listened to the
silence. Perhaps the heart of his son
might soften and he would come back with the dogs to take his
old father on with the tribe to where the Caribou ran thick and
the fat hung heavy upon them. He strained his ears at that
fire. His restless brain for the
moment stilled. He's blind.
Not a stir, nothing. He alone took breath in the
midst of the great silence. It was very lonely then.
Hark, what was that right? He's alone out of fire.
He's blind. He hears something.
What was that? A chill passed over his body and
the familiar long drawn howl broke the void as it was close
at hand. What's he here?
A wolf? A cold muzzle thrust against his
cheek, and at its touch his soul leaped back to the present.
His hand shot into the fire and dragged out a burning stick.
The wolf retreated, raising a prolonged call to his brothers.
But greedily his brothers answered, till a ring of
crouching jaw slobber Gray, was stretched round about the fire.
The old man listened to the drawing end of this circle.
Surrounded by wolves, he waved his bran wildly, and the sniffs
turn to snarls. But the panting brutes refused
to scatter. Now one of the wolves wormed his
chest forward, now a second, now a third, but never A1 drew back.
Couscous thinks. Why should he cling to life?
He asked, and he dropped the blazing stick into the snow.
It sizzled and went out, and Couscous dropped his head
wearily upon his knees. What did it matter after all?
Was it not the law of life? So he's left behind because he's
weak, he has nothing to offer. He's fragile, he's blind, he's
left behind by his tribe to be devoured by wolves.
And London is saying that's just the way life is.
And the reason why I want to read that story for you and the
ending of it. I want you to hold it in your
imagination, because when I read that story and I think about
Couscous, this old unwanted man who no longer brings anything of
value to his tribe, what I think about is I think about the
island of Crete. This is the island that has
Christians on it now that Paul is writing to and in the ancient
world, one of the most important things to understand about the
island of Crete is that it is undesirable, small, weak, and
immoral. It is an island that is the butt
of all the jokes. It's not Jerusalem, right?
Jerusalem's got morals and that's where the temple's at.
It's not Rome, right? Those guys aren't moral, but at
least they have political power, right?
Crete is neither of those things.
It's filled. It's probably the least likely
place in the ancient world to be touched by Christianity.
It's filled like Jacqueline and Story, with wolves.
There are these snarling, hungry, voracious wolves on the
island who want to devour and destroy all that is true, good
and beautiful. You would not expect the Gospel
to penetrate the soil there on Crete.
If anything, what you would expect Christian to do, what
you'd expect the Apostle Paul to do, is just leave Crete behind
like Kush Kush to be devoured by the wolves.
Let me put some flesh on this claim right here.
I'm going to give you 3 reasons why Crete was populated by
wolves, and this is going to take about 10 minutes.
And this is the part in the sermon that's going to feel
really disconnected from your life, but I promise you it has
relevance. OK, so this is going to form
kind of a biographical sketch that's going to be helpful for
the rest of the sermon series about the island of Crete.
Here's the first thing that strangely you have to know about
the island of Crete. The first thing you need to know
is Crete had bad soil. And I swear this is weirdly
relevant. So the soil on the island was
bad. And the reason why this is
relevant is because soil conditions played a massive role
in the agrarian world in shaping where cultures would pop up.
And then what type of culture it would become creates an island.
And not just any old island, it's an island dominated by
three massive mountain ranges. Which is important because if
the island was dominated by mountains, what was there?
Not a lot of room for farming. Not a lot of room for farming.
Even more so the soil that was on Crete because of the mountain
ranges was rocky and because of that it was infertile.
Now, most cultures in the ancient world were agrarian
cultures, and that means that they were shaped by what they
were shaped by. Farmers, good old fashioned
Bible Belt farming, people who work hard and are honest.
That was most of your ancient world.
Because of the agrarian nature. That could not be the case with
Crete. This They just didn't have the
soil. There wasn't a lot of soil.
The soil they did have was bad. There was some farming, but it
was not dominant, which poses A gigantic question.
And the question is, there wasn't a lot of farming on
Crete. How did they even form a local
economy? And I'm glad you asked, because
that brings us to a second important point.
Here's the second thing you have to know about Crete.
Because of that, Crete was populated by literal pirates.
So since they couldn't generate a lot of their economy from
farming, they had to find other creative ways to generate their
economy. And so here's where it gets
strategic. Crete was an island that was
situated between a lot of major trade routes.
You've got Egypt on one side, Greece on one side, Asia Minor
on the other side. And do you know what goes
through a lot of major trade routes?
Big trade ships. What's on big trade ships?
Lots of stuff, lots of wealth, lots of things they didn't have
on Crete. And that's how Crete got a lot
of its wealth. And so it became a a haven for
literal pirates, people who wanted to live in a strategic
place where they could intercept trade ships so that they could
see those trade ships coming by, hop on their little boats, go
intercept them, hold them hostage, steal their stuff and
bring it back to Crete. And that means that Crete is an
island filled with literal pirates.
It's not the Bible Belt. I just, I know I'm saying a lot
of things to prove this point to you, but a lot of times we read
the Bible and we're like, oh, that was written to like 1950s
Leave it to Beaver families. No, it was not.
This letter was written for pirates.
I like what would what would be? Where is Creighton?
It would be like planting a church in, I don't know,
Clinton. Who would ever want to go plant
a church in Clinton? Rocky soil over there.
Cutthroat. Hostile.
I'm talking about Crete. Now you got it.
Rugged, hostile, cutthroat island filled with wolves.
Those are the normal type of people who wanted to live on
Crete. But it wasn't just pirates.
Which brings us to our third important point about
understanding Crete. The third thing is that Crete
was populated by the worst kind of soldiers.
Mercenary soldiers. Now, again, think of Crete
strategic location. It's situated between major
areas like Egypt, Greece, and Asia Minor.
So if you were, I don't know, say the type of person, the type
of violent person who was willing to sell yourself to
whatever army paid you the most money, which is what a mercenary
soldier was, where would you want to live?
You would want to live in an area that's situated between a
lot of major areas you would want to live in like the ancient
version, the transfer portal, right?
That way, all these major areas could bid on you and you could
sell yourself to the highest bidder.
So because of this location, Crete also became a haven for
mercenary soldiers who of course are the worst type of soldiers.
They were not loyal soldiers who were loyal to their cause and
loyal to their nation. They were gold diggers who were
known for being deeply disloyal because they were they were
military hookers who pimped themselves out to the largest
bidder of armies. That's what they did.
They they would fight for whatever army would pay them the
most money because they were soldiers for for hire.
And so armies from the east or West would come to creep with
their nil money, probably to hire soldiers and allure them to
fight for their cause and and and in wars.
And so all of the sudden, do you see how this shapes the culture?
Not the Bible belt, right? This, this, this makes creep an
island that gets filled with a bunch of disloyal fighters,
violent brutes who burst into fights all the time on the
island. Which is why ancient historians,
if you read about Crete, they describe it as a place of quote
on ceasing strife and fighting again.
It was filled with wolves. Yeah, bad soil.
Yeah, literal pirate. Are you got literal pirates?
You got mercenary soldiers? Little island?
How the heck did the gospel even get there?
You circle it on a map. If you did, and you would say
that's the least likely place for the gospel to ever go, you
would look at cretins in the ancient world and you'd be
tempted to say those are the kind of people who would never
become a Christian. How did the gospel get there?
How did these churches even start to pop up on Crete?
Right? This places places wild.
The temptation would be to write off rule, dismiss, prejudge and
marginalized Crete as a place that will never become spiritual
or religious. Nobody was looking at Crete
thinking, let's strategically plan a church there.
How this how did this happen, and I don't want you to get
brain matter everywhere, so I'll try to not blow your mind, but
the scriptures actually provide the answer for how these
churches got there on Crete. It's not it's not here in Titus,
but if you don't have to, but if you turn back to the book of
Acts, it actually tells you hence at exactly how there were
even churches on Crete. OK, check this out.
This in Acts chapter 2. I'll pull it up on the screen
for you. That's the famous Pentecost
scene. What's happened is Jesus has
just died. He's resurrected, he's ascended,
and he's promised to send his Holy Spirit to his people.
But then he doesn't, at least not right away.
What Jesus does is he waits for this season of Pentecost.
Why? Because during Pentecost, all of
these ancient Jews over all across the world would all
pilgrimage back to one place, Jerusalem, for this festival.
So Jesus waits till that moment and on Pentecost he sends down
the fire of his Holy Spirit to this diverse, ethnically
diverse, geographically diverse group of people.
And Acts tells you who is there. Is this boring?
It's kind of fun, right? Here's what Acts says.
Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from
every nation under heaven, Parthians and Medes and
Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia,
Pontius Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia in Egypt, and the parts of Libya
belonging to Siren, and visitors from Rome.
And Jews. Oh, and proselytes.
Oh, and Arabians and Cretans. You see that there's our people.
What happened is the fire of the Holy Spirit fell on these Cretan
Jews. They become born again and they
went back to Crete. With what?
The gospel in the Holy Spirit. That's how these churches got.
What a coincidence, right? Gosh, right place at the right
time. Luck.
Lucky Crete, right? No, this is not coincidence.
This is not luck, this is not chance or a matter of the right
people being there at the right time.
What this is, is the the brilliance and ingenuity of the
sovereign imagination of the God who controls everything.
Before the foundation of the earth.
God looked at this island that nobody else wanted, before it
had done anything good or bad, and said I want that island.
And then what did you do? He sent Jewish people from
Crete, the Pentecost, and then sent them back with the Holy
Spirit and with the Gospel. He really needs, he needs, OK,
he needs the Cretans to understand this because he
actually doesn't describe these people as Cretans until verse 5.
What's the word he uses for them in his introduction?
Elect. What's that, friends?
That word literally means chosen.
That's why some translations use the phrase to the chosen ones
and verses one and two there, which is a perfectly good
translation. The the word elect means to be
chosen by God before the beginning of time, and
specifically to be chosen by God apart from any human doings or
achievements or merits or good works.
And now I want you to bring this to bear on the biography that
I've been painting of the island of Crete.
How do you think it felt for these Cretan Christians who are
unwanted, the butt of every joke in the ancient world?
Of all things to be called the elect, how do you think that
felt? They were just coming to earth.
They were overlooked. They were unwanted.
The world looked at these cretins and said yuck.
If you grew up feeling unwanted, insignificant, or overlooked,
imagine hearing, maybe for the first time, that you have been
loved and chosen by God for all eternity.
This is stunning. What the world looked at, Crete,
what the world looked at and said, yuck.
God looked at and said, mine, mine, my love is going to be set
upon these Cretan Christians, right?
The election is it's at the core of God's character.
What's the word? What's the word for God's choice
to elect to set His love upon small, cosmically insignificant,
mostly overlooked, microscopically puny people
without those people earning, grossing, or deserving that love
in any way? What would you call that besides
bonkers and crazy? There's a word for that.
The word for that pops up a lot in the Bible.
The word for that is grace. But this is the grace of God
operating in real time by electing to love these Cretan
pirates and mercenary soldiers. That's what this is.
It's grace. They've there's not one single
thing about Crete, nothing that you can point at and say, oh,
that's why God loves him. Nothing, right?
If Crete were on Tinder, God would have swiped left, you
would think. Nothing in their biography
that's attractive. Nothing.
You can't point at anything. Well, they're nice people.
No, they're not honest, hard working people at least.
Nope, they're pirates. They steal.
Probably have the eye patches. I don't know.
Well, good soil at least. Nope, not even that.
So why does God love the Cretan Christians?
There's nothing in them to and this is clear throughout the
Scriptures. At one point in time, God even
says it to Israel in the Old Testament, he in Deuteronomy 7,
he says the Lord your God has chosen you.
It's the same word as election elect.
He has chosen you and he says to his people, not because you're
the most powerful or the most numerous or the most strong.
In fact you are the weakest and the smallest nation of all the
world. So why does God choose him?
He says in Deuteronomy 7, he gives the most frustrating but
deepest answer God could give. He says I chose you because I
love you. That's his answer.
There's nothing in Crete that God could be like, oh, that's
why I chose you. So if there's nothing in Crete
that made God choose them, what made God choose them?
Something within himself, his love because of his own love.
And so why does God love these Cretan Christians?
Because before the foundation of the earth, before they did or
said anything, before there was even a single star burning
brightly in the black void of space, God looked at these
dishonest, undeserving mercenary soldiers and said, you're mine,
I love you, I'm going to choose you.
And that is what it means to be elect.
One of the reasons why this pops up in so many of Paul's letters,
if there's kind of a whole vocabulary around that,
sometimes it's election, sometimes it's predestination,
whatever. But one of the reasons why I
think this pops up in Paul's writing so often is because I
think Paul sees himself in Crete.
I know it's a geographical island.
It's not a person, but I think when Paul thinks of the island
Crete, I think Paul sees himself in the island.
I mean, think about last week's sermon.
Why is Paul so big on election? Because of his own personal
experience. Paul was running away from
Jesus, doing nothing to earn Jesus's love in the midst of a
plan to murder people who follow Jesus until the grace of Jesus
horse collar tackled Paul and transformed him.
Paul has personal experience with being elected by God and
being like, well I know that you chose me before my life began
because you certainly would not have chosen me after my life
began. Had to be that way.
Paul's going the opposite way. God horse collar tackled him and
just showered his grace and mercy on Paul.
And so when Paul thinks of the Cretan island, he sees himself a
disobedient, undeserving place running the opposite way of the
way of Jesus, but whose only hope is the electing grace of
God. Paul sees himself in Crete.
And I hope, I hope that you see yourself in Crete too.
I know it's it's so easy to look at the historical context of
this letter and be like, well, I'm not a pirate.
Are you not though? Are you not?
Well, no, you're not. You're something worse than a
pirate. I don't care if you grew up
sleeping on a bed of Bibles. I think that's great.
I don't care if you were the Bible verse memorizing champion
that made your mom and dad say that's our good Christian kid.
I think that's great. But no matter who you were,
Paul's description of the way that you were born is not on
third base. Paul uses words like dead and
blind in an enemy of God. You were running the opposite
direction of Jesus, maybe not with your feet, but with your
heart and the wild, sovereign, undeserving grace of God,
despite all the odds, haunted you down, kicked you off your
horse, then made you into a trophy of grace.
That's what you are. You're a trophy of grace.
I've said this story before. I'll say it again, though, I I
went back to my hometown like 10 years ago for the Franklin
County Fair and I bumped into my I bumped into my football coach.
He was like, dyke, do you still teaching English?
To which I said, no, I'm a pastor now.
To which he said, I won't use his exact words.
I'll be darned didn't see that coming, but it's not didn't see
that coming. That's Crete.
That's you surprise Martin Lloyd Jones, phenomenal theologian.
He says, quote, if you're going to write anything down that I
say this morning, write this quote from Martin Lloyd Jones
Now he says, quote, there is no greater proof of the fact that
we have received the grace of God then that we are surprised
at it. Are you surprised that you're a
Christian? That's such a good metric for
are we actually making contact with the gospel of Jesus in our
own life? Is are you surprised?
Like on my worst days, these are my bad days.
On my worst days, I'm just not surprised sometimes that I'm a
Christian. You know, my, my bad days, I
walk around and I think, I mean, it was mostly God's grace, but
I, I get it. I get why God saved me.
I'm a, I'm a pretty hard worker. I'm pretty good with words.
Some people even say I'm fun to be around.
I'm a decent draft pick. That's, that's the Antichrist
right there. That's anti gospel.
It's the opposite of the gospel. You cannot think those things
and have any meaningful contact with the gospel of God's grace,
right when you think that way. When I think that way, I'm
rejecting God's grace because that thought, I mean, I get why
God picked me. That thought.
It does not make me love God more.
It makes me love me more. It diminishes God and it
magnifies me. That's what it does, right?
When I'm like, I'd get me before the trade deadline too.
No, that's death, right on my healthy days, I think.
I can't believe I woke up today a Christian.
Wow, after all of my sinning yesterday, all the stupid stuff
I said and didn't say, my lack of all that stuff, I woke up
this morning as a Christian. Brilliant.
That's amazing. That's shocking.
God's grace is still on me. I was dead in my transgressions.
I was perishing in my darkness. Nothing desirable within me.
Running away the opposite direction.
The only reason I'm a Christian today is grace.
Amen. And when you think like that, it
doesn't magnify you, it magnifies God.
Like, wow, wow. I, I love you.
I love you so much. Wow, I love God so much.
Every day is just an extraordinary exploration of his
grace in a million different ways.
May we never be on shocked by our spiritual condition.
We were patients who were pronounced dead who are walking
around. You have a relationship with
Jesus that's amazing. I mean like picture, picture a
picture a pirate in your mind's eye for a second.
Like a literal pirate from Crete.
Like even it probably didn't look.
They probably didn't look like Captain Jack Sparrow.
For the sake of your imagination, picture Captain
Jack Sparrow. OK, Picture all of Jack Sparrow.
OK, did right? The sword in his hand, the
stolen gold underneath his arms, right.
The even the little patch over the eye, a sword in his hands.
The temptation is to to look at him and to categorize him into
one of two different categories. Either a the type of person who
seems likely to become a Christian, or be not the type of
person who's likely to become a Christian.
Where do you put Captain Jack Sparrow?
You don't have to tell me, right?
You put Captain Jack Sparrow in not likely to become the type of
person who might become a Christian.
Where's that thought coming from?
I can tell you. I can read your mind that that
thought is a fruit that is sprouting from the seed of
pride, namely the pride which says, well, I am the type of
person who is likely to become a Christian.
She's not, though. He's not.
And the Bible repeatedly says Bull, What are Paul's?
What's the Bible's language for you before you were a Christian?
Blind, deaf, enslaved, even better.
Dead in your sin, dead in your trespasses.
Let me ask you a question. Are are dead people the type of
people who are likely to become Christians?
No, dead people are the type of people who are likely to rot.
That's the only thing that dead people can do.
They deteriorate. It's nature unless there's a
miracle, unless grace, unless God breathes into the dead
person. That's your story that happened
to you. That's what grace is.
Apart from anything you did, God breathing his regenerating grace
into you so that you woke up 1 morning and thought, I think I
love Jesus now. God's grace broke through and
chose you. Let me see if I can strike one
more nerve and I'll be done. I read it.
I've said a lot of things this morning, and it really it
doesn't bother me if you don't 100% agree with the way that I
formulate the doctrine of election.
I'd say probably 50% of the people in this room are like, I
don't, I don't think I see election that way.
And that's, that's, that's totally cool.
This is a safe space for you to kind of tease that out and to be
like, is it really unconditional and is it really individual and
not corporate? That's that's totally fine.
You don't have to agree with everything I've said this
morning. It doesn't bother me at all, but
I do. I need you.
You need yourself to embrace your identity as the elect.
You might define it a little bit differently than me.
I wouldn't, but you might. And that's OK.
But I need you to know that that's what you are.
You need to embrace that identity because you don't.
You don't got it in you. You don't have it in you to go
through life and to experience the rejection of this cruel,
bitter, mean world and to hold on to Jesus.
You don't have it in you, right. And what I've experienced is
that the people who just they think election is the sweetest
thing. It tastes so sweet to them, it's
so warm to them. It's not a means of anxiety and
hypothesizing. It's a means of comfort.
Wow. God, the people who get that the
best are the people who have experienced a lot of rejection
in life. There's something about like I,
I grew up and I'm really grateful that I didn't
experience a lot of rejection. I grew up in small town in Iowa.
As a result of that, I just didn't experience a lot of
rejection, and I'm grateful for that.
But I think in a lot of my walk with Jesus, it caused me to be
ungrateful to the Lord's kindness and grace to me because
I didn't know what rejection felt like.
It's hard to know how sweet it is to be accepted by the God of
the universe before time began when it feels like the world
pretty much just likes you too. So I just did experience a lot
of rejection growing up and then I became a pastor.
And one of I think one of the things about pastoral ministry
and you don't need to be a pastor to experience a lot of
rejection. But I think one of the things
about pastoral ministry that I'm most grateful for is that it has
taught me how to receive rejection with gratitude to God.
It makes it so sweet. Like I remember six years ago, I
got invited to interview for a pretty elite young leaders
program in in church and I interviewed for it and they were
taking like 7 or 8 leaders to form this cohort.
And I got it. But then COVID hit.
And so they're like, actually we're not taking 7 or 8 leaders,
We're only going to take two or three.
And then I got the other e-mail, which was the rejection e-mail.
And I remember reading it was a really sanitary way of saying
it, but like, we are not going to actually be moving forward
with you for this cohort anymore.
And I remember thinking, wow, I don't like that feeling.
And if the inhale was out, the exhale was please.
And in that moment, I just remember the sweetness of having
God's unconditional predestined acceptance of me.
It just became sweet in that moment.
And when you experience, you don't need to be a pastor to
experience rejection. It certainly accelerates it.
But if you're a part of a church for any significant amount of
time, you're going to experience rejection.
People are going to walk into your life, into your homes.
They're going to want your time. They're going to want your
energy. You're going to invest in them
and they're going to leave. Sometimes they'll ghost you.
That's fine between them and the Lord.
Sometimes they'll send mass text messages out to other people
about you. And when that happens, when that
happens, you just, you need to throw yourself upon the elected
grace of God and that's why it's going to happen to you.
Some of you are going to do it in here.
Some of you, you're going to walk into a church, maybe even
this church and you love it at 1st and then I'm going to say
something. I'm going to make a decision or
I'm not going to make a decision and you're going to walk out and
you might even throw me underneath the bus.
And when you need and when you do that, I need you to know that
I will be grateful to the Lord for that.
I don't want you to. But when that happens, I will
throw myself upon the doctrine of God's election and I'll
remind myself that God has chosen me and God has loved me,
and that will get me up. And when you experience that, I
want you to do that too. You're the elect if you're in
Christ. And so that that's the answer to
the question, who was this letter written for?
Was it written for the cretins or was it written for you and
me? And the answer is yes, because
it was written for God's elect, leaving behind the weak, the
unable to be ripped apart by wolves.
It might be the the law of life. I'm not arguing with Jack London
short story. It does seem that that is the
way of the world. That is what life is like.
That is the ordinary rule of life in the fabric of reality.
But the law of life is not the law of Christ.
The law of Christ is grace. Think back to Jack London's
story. Kous Koush was unwanted, so his
tribe built him a small bonfire, packed up their bags to move and
left them to be devoured by wolves.
Suppose someone from his tribe wanted to go back and save him.
What would this person need to have done?
They would have need to leave their tribe, March towards the
fire, grab a log from the fire and beat the wolves off of Khus
Khus. That's the gospel, that's the
doctrine of election. That's what Jesus has done for
you. He left heaven, went to the
fire, came for you, forgave you, covered you in his
righteousness, made you part of his tribe and his bringing to
you to his destination in heaven.
And that's why Jesus will not, he will not leave this little
island of Crete to be ripped apart by the wolves that are
there. Jesus is on a mission to save
the weak and to relocate them with himself in heaven.
Even the unlikely undeserving ones that we count out even
yourself who you sometimes count out.
So do you know who you are. You are the elect in Jesus
Christ heavenly Father. I pray that you would help us
believe that that is the fight is it doesn't feel that way
sometimes. It feels sometimes like we're
doing all the work down here clinging on to you and that's
not what's happening. The Bible opens up our eyes and
shows us what's really happening.
You're doing all the work and holding on to us.
It feels like we choose to follow you on a daily basis, and
that's a choice we need to make. But really we are just
responding to a choice that has already happened before the
foundations of the world. And that's your choice of us.
And you loved us. Jesus, or John, makes this so
clear. He says we love God because the
operating thing that makes us love God.
We love God because he first loved us.
And so when it comes to love, nobody in this room beats God to
the punch. He's already done it, and he'll
keep us to the very end. So in the precious name of
Jesus, all God's people prayed. Amen.
And let's stand and let's worship this God together.