It's nice to see you. If we have not yet met, my name
is Cole. I'm the lead pastor here.
I get to preach on the majority of the Sundays.
If you've got a Bible, though, let's jump right into it for the
last time. Go ahead and turn that open to
the book of Titus. We are at the very end of the
book of Titus. We are just going to preach on
the last couple verses, which are the verses that you
generally skip over. It's a few obscure names, a
couple peace be with yous, and that's, that's really it.
But 18 weeks in the book of Titus and we're crossing the
finish line. So thank you so much for your
patience. If you have sat underneath my
leadership for a while, you know that I absolutely love the army.
Cross slowly through the word of God and explore every every
little nook and cranny that God's word has to offer.
And that requires us to get nerdy sometimes.
So I appreciate your patience and even the positive feedback
we've had in the book of Titus. As you're turning there, let me
poke you. I hope, I hope that you do not
exclusively come to Jesus for the forgiveness of sins.
Exclusively. I hope you do.
That's one thing that Jesus offers, but it's one thing of
many. Amen.
And so I hope that you don't own.
I think the temptation is, I think the temptation is to
shrink Jesus down to like 10% of our life, to delegate him to
like one day out of the week Sunday, or to delegate him to
like one need that he meets. He's the forgiveness guy.
And when we do that, we essentially reduce Jesus to like
10% of our life. And I think that every
relationship with Jesus begins with us coming to him for the
forgiveness of sins. And that's a wonderful thing.
Maybe that's true for you. Maybe one night you woke up in
the middle of the night and your soul just felt like a sore
tooth. There was something wrong with
it. It was throbbing with pain while
the rest of the world slept. That night you tossed and
turned. There was the weight of sin on
your heart. There was this weight, this
suffocating weight of pain, this dread of some terrible thing
that you've done because human beings do human things.
And what I hope this pain did was I hope it drove you rightly
to the cross of Jesus where it can and will be forgiven.
But I also hope that you know that everything you could ever
need is in Jesus Christ, right? We've already sang that this
morning. If I thirst, I want to go to
Jesus. If I fear, I want to go to
Jesus, right? He's the beginning and end of
all things. He's the Alpha and Omega of all
things. He created all things, sustains
all things, and in Him are all things.
So yes, in Jesus there is forgiveness, but also in Jesus
there is righteousness. In Jesus there is life.
In Jesus there is hope. In Jesus there is growth.
In Jesus there's power. In Jesus there's meaning.
In Jesus there's fulfillment. Like, what do you need?
Just be honest with yourself this morning.
Like what's the thing that you need?
That thing is, in Jesus everything you could possibly
need is in Jesus. In Jesus there's joy.
In Jesus there's happiness. In Jesus there's treasure.
And when you start to understand Jesus as the fulfillment of
anything you could ever need, then you are only dipping the
very fringe of the distal edge of your toenail into the sea of
all the riches that are in Jesus.
And I'm bringing this up because this morning what we need to
explore is that in Jesus alone there is significance.
Significance because we're going to walk into these last couple
verses and we're going to see a couple small, obscure,
insignificant names. And I think these small obscure
insignificant names pose a question, which is do you feel
insignificant? Do you feel like I nobody,
sometimes I feel like the vast majority of your life is hidden
and like nobody sees it. Because if you do, what does
Jesus have to say about that? If you're able, let's go out and
stand for the reading of the Word of God, verse 12 of chapter
3. Again, a few verses.
Paul's farewell has greetings at the end of the letter.
I don't think anybody in our church has these verses tattooed
on them. Paul says when I send Artemis,
you guys know Artemis or Tiki Kiss to you.
And then we got a few people in our church named after Tiki
Kiss, right? A couple of ties.
Do your best to come to me at Nakopolis, for I've decided to
spend the winter there. So do your best to speed Zenith,
the lawyer and Apollos on their way, see that they lack nothing.
And for like the seventh time let our people learn to devote
themselves to good works so as to help cases of urgent need and
not be unfruitful. In fact, all who are with me
send their greetings to you. Greet those who love us in the
faith and grace be with you all. Artemis, it's the first name.
Tiki Kiss, that's the second name.
Zenus, that's the third name In Apollos, that's the fourth name.
What do these names mean to us, Heavenly Father, right now, in
this moment, I ask that your Holy Spirit would stir.
He would stir our souls. And my heart feels far from this
sermon right now. It feels kind of cold, kind of
tired, kind of exhausted, and kind of indifferent.
I don't feel like you have any surprises for us in the sermon.
I fear it will be insignificant and do nothing.
And so I just, I'm taking my heart, Lord, and I'm putting it
before you and I'm asking you, would you change it?
Would you put my heart on the edge of its seat?
If our hearts are far away from the Word of God, would you grab
our hearts by the shoulders and pull them in clothes and make
divine eye contact with us and just do something amazing in our
hearts? Maybe we've just never even
thought that Jesus had anything to offer us besides forgiveness.
Maybe nobody told us that He is the fulfilment of every desire
the human heart could ever have. Maybe nobody's told us he's the
beginning and end of all things, and whatever our need is, we can
come to Jesus for that. Maybe nobody ever told us that
he makes us significant and infuses our mostly invisible
lives with purpose and dignity and value.
And so change our hearts this morning.
It's in the precious name of Jesus that all God's people
prayed. And then you can have a seat.
I'll go ahead and I'll give you the main point of the sermon,
right, right up front. You don't have to wait for OK,
this text, like you just read this text is Paul's conclusion.
And like most of Paul's conclusions in most of his
letters, it's really just a couple throwaway phrases and
some names that are hard to pronounce.
But here's the main point that's going to come across these
couple of names from these few verses.
I'll give it to you right up front.
Here's going to be the main point of the next 30 minutes.
The work of changing the world for the gospel.
The work of changing the world for the gospel is mostly done by
faithful nobodies. Faithful nobodies look at verse
12. Paul says when I send Artemis,
if you've got a pen, go ahead and circle the name Artemis
right there. Now, you probably went to
school, high school with an Artemis, So I'm guessing that
you're probably familiar with that name.
And of course, if you know your Bible, then obviously you know
who Artemis is. Artemis is the faithful leader
of the people of God, who speaks to God in the burning Bush and
like George Washington in the Delaware crossing, give me
victory or give me death. Artemis is the man who
faithfully led the people of God out of slavery in Egypt and
through the parting of the Red Sea to the Promised Land.
That's Artemis right now. That's Moses.
The name Artemis appears in all 66 books of the Bible Exactly.
And I'm being exact when I say this exactly 0 other times
besides right here, it's not in any other book of the Bible.
This is the one and only time we see the name Artemis.
We know nothing about him. We don't know if he had a
family. We don't know if he had a
spouse. We don't know where he was born.
We don't know how he died. We know nothing about him.
And one of the most helpful phrases I've heard on this comes
from Philip Towner, one biblical scholar.
Philip Towner says quote. What strikes the reader is how
little we actually know about these Co workers at the end of
the book of Titus. Their anonymity in the
historical record only underlines how many faithful
believers labored behind the scenes to support and extend
Paul's mission. Artemis is a nobody, but he was
a faithful nobody. Are we learning this morning or
what? Artemis is a nobody, but he's a
faithful nobody. Look back at verse 12 when I
send Artemis or Tiki Kiss to you, If you have a pen, go ahead
and circle Tiki kiss right there.
We're just going to call him Ty when I sign.
When I send, we're just going to westernize it like we do
everything. When I send Artemis or Tie to
you, do your best to come to me and Acopolis for I've decided to
spend the winter there. Pause for a second.
What's happening is Paul is writing Titus this letter to
help Titus lead these churches on the island of Crete.
And we don't know where Paul is writing from.
We've got some guesses, but at the end of the day, we don't
really know. But what's happening here is
there's some sort of ministry swap that's going on.
It's like the trade deadline in the MLB.
He's sending a few people to go help out with the church plants
over in Crete and Titus over and Crete is going to send Paul a
couple people to help out Paul with whatever it is that Paul is
doing. And so Paul's going to send
Artemis. I know buddy.
And he's also going to send Ticky Kiss, Ticky kiss tie Ticky
kiss. Ticky Kiss was my nickname in
high school. Don't ask me why it wasn't, but
it's obvious why ticky Kiss is in this verse, right?
It's because Tikikis is the man who slew the giant Goliath and
warfare and established the worship of the people of God and
wrote many of the 150 psalms in the Old Testament, right.
Joseph Levi looked it up for Joseph.
That was good. That was good, bro.
No, that's King David. Who's Tikikis.
We know almost nothing about Tikki kiss.
He doesn't show up and several different places in the New
Testament 3 or 4 times, but whenever Tikka shows up, he
never shows up as the star of the plot.
The most specific thing we learn about him is when Paul is
sending him to Ephesus and calls Tikka kiss in the book of
Ephesians quote. A beloved brother and faithful
minister in the Lord. That's it.
We know nothing about his family, nothing about his wife,
nothing about his story. He is mostly strangely absent
from the rest of the biblical drama.
Here's what biblical scholar John Stop says about him.
Quote the very obscurity of these men.
And Paul's final greetings in Titus reminds us that most
Christians service is unspectacular and unnoticed.
Yet God uses such obscure believers to accomplish his his
purpose. What is ticky kiss?
Ticky kiss is a nobody, but he's a faithful nobody.
Look at verse 13. Paul goes on to say, do your
bet. Here's the trade.
I'm going to send you Apollo's and Tiki Kiss to help you plant
this church. But you got to do your best to
give me Zenus the lawyer speed, Zenus the lawyer my way.
Pause. This is name #3 Zenus.
We do know something about Zenus.
Zenus was the towering historical theological figure
who over the course of his life, preached 3500 sermons that
filled over 65 volumes of books and preached to up to 20,000
people in a single setting. Right Right now, that's Charles
Spurgeon. Zenus wasn't a towering
theologian or preacher. Look at the text.
What was Zenus? You can say it.
He's a lawyer. Why would Paul need a lawyer?
Because Paul's always getting in trouble, always, right?
It's like he gets to go do the fun stuff and preach about
Jesus, and then Zenith is like, oh gosh, more paperwork, right?
That's their relationship, probably in a nutshell.
If you Leopold's ministry in the New Testament, he's constantly
travelling, getting arrested, being pushed into hearings about
Jesus. And I don't know if you know
this about charismatic authors or teachers or even some
preachers, but sometimes the reason why some preachers are so
good at teaching is because they're so bad at everything
else. Paul was a brilliant preacher,
but he did not know how to run QuickBooks or fix the boiler.
You know how to do that. So for his mission, for Paul's
mission, Zenith was probably carrying legal documents
connected to Paul's defense and providing him with the legal
help that Paul clearly didn't know how to do on his own.
Paul needed this guy. The mission of God needed this
paper pusher. I was, I was talking to
somebody, I know somebody who started a bookstore.
And a couple of weeks ago, I was in a bookstore and I was, I
needed some recommendations. So I was asking about some books
and she was sharing some recommendations.
It's a beautiful bookstore in downtown Des Moines.
And I, I stepped back and I was like, I was like, hey, is this
what you thought it would be like when you thought about your
expectations of what it would be like to start your own coffee
shop or not to start your own bookstore?
Like, is this what you thought it would be?
And she laughed at me, Right. I've actually, I've been asking
people that question a lot the last couple months.
I'd say, hey, is your life what you expected it to be?
Almost everybody laughs at that question.
So I said, is this what you thought it would be like to run
and operate and own your own bookstore?
And she laughed, and she said, you know, when I imagined myself
opening my own bookstore, what I imagined was me spending all day
talking to lovers of literature about plot devices and rich
character development and our love of extraordinary
literature. And for the most part, I spend
most of the day in the backroom behind a computer.
Isn't that? Isn't that adulthood?
Isn't that just adulthood right there?
You just spend most of your days in the backroom behind a
computer. That's Zenith.
One mention in the Bible. One mention Other than that, he
just spends a lot of time in the backroom behind closed doors.
Zenith was a nobody, but he was a faithful nobody.
Look at verse 13 again, do your best to speed Zenith the lawyer
and Apollos, that's name #4 Apollo's on their way.
See that they lack nothing and let our people learn to devote
themselves to good work so as to help cases of urgent need and
not be on fruitful. So time out for a second,
Apollos. Now Apollos, we actually do have
some information on him. I'm not making it up.
I know I've misled you the last couple names, but Apollos was a
brilliant orator and teacher that Paul took on the road with
him to be on mission for the gospel.
His name does roughly show up 10 times in the New Testament.
And in the book of Acts, Luke refers to him as quote, an
eloquent man competent in the scripture.
So Apollo's he does get some airtime in the Bible.
But here's the thing, not a lot, not a lot.
He didn't write any of the books in the Bible.
Some people will try to attribute Hebrews to him.
I don't think that's the case. Maybe I'm wrong.
I don't think he wrote any books in the Bible.
There's no Bible verse that calls us to imitate Apollos's
life. Growing up in the church, you
didn't sing any songs called Be Like Apollos.
You didn't have any sermon series that were titled Be Like
Apollos the way that you had Be Like Esther or Be Like David.
Netflix isn't making any animated series on the life of
Apollos. I haven't seen any summer Bible
camps called All In Like Apollos.
Maybe we should do that, though. No VBS camps called all in like
Apollos. So despite his 9 or 10 passing
references in the New Testament, that's what they are.
They're passing. He's mostly well.
Here's William Barclay, an academic theologian, on the
presence of his name in this letter, Barclay says, quote,
these final names and Titus belong to the great company of
the unknown soldiers of Christ. That would make a great metal
band name. Tell me we shouldn't do that,
Joseph, the unknown soldiers of Christ.
OK, we shouldn't do it. You're right.
They did their work. They rendered their service.
Then we know nothing more about them.
And yet the church could not have survived without such men.
Apollo says mostly a nobody, but Paul needed him.
He was mostly a nobody, but he was a faithful nobody.
In fact, the whole island of Crete, this little letter was
written to Titus, who's on the island of Crete, and he's
learning to lead these new churches.
And this island of Crete in the ancient world is an undesirable,
insignificant, small, immoral little island.
Even geographically, that's true.
It was the butt of all the jokes.
It was filled with literal pirates and immoral soldiers for
sale. It wasn't Jerusalem, that great
and holy city of God. It was just Crete.
It wasn't. It wasn't even Rome, the great
horror of Babylon. It was just Crete.
It wasn't even good at farming. Crete had bad soil.
They couldn't even do that right.
Like those football signs at the game of Nebraska versus Iowa.
Crete has bad corn. They can't even do the farming
piece right. We're not good at anything.
Crete was, and it is just an island of nobodies that nobody
really cared about. In fact, when this letter was
written, less than 1% of the island of Crete knew Jesus.
It's actually much less than 1%. It's like .001% of the Cretan
island were Christians. Less than 1% of this whole
island were Christians. They were nobodies, but Paul
still loves them. All right.
Look at his greeting. Look at his conclusion.
Verse 15, the last three sentences in the book.
All who are with me, we're thinking about you.
We're praying for you guys. We love you guys.
All who are with me send greetings to you.
And so greet those who love us in the faith and grace.
Be with you all. And then the letter ends.
Grace be with you all. Was it was the grace of God with
them? Was Jesus with them?
Did they win? Because by all modern accounts
of measuring success, these little churches in Crete that
Paul is writing to by modern accounts have been failures.
Consider there are 0 known martyrs from Crete in the first
3 centuries. There are 0 celebrity preachers
or church fathers that came out of Crete.
No ecumenical councils were held on Crete where they determined
important decisions for the future of the Christian Church.
None of that happened on Crete. No major theologian represented
it. When this letter was written, no
church on the island of Crete was bigger than 30 people in
attendance. These churches were about the
size of your community group. They seemed irrelevant.
They seemed insignificant. I think that's the hardest thing
about growing up. I think the hardest thing about
growing up is feeling like with each and every passing year,
part of what maturity is, is it's actually just growing more
and more insignificant, isn't it?
It sure feels that way when you were a kid.
When you're a kid, bro, the whole universe revolves around
you and bows its knee to every single need of yours that
emerges. Even when you're in high school,
they have parades for you when you win the football game.
They they throw assemblies for you if the band wins the
competition. Even when you're done with high
school, young adulthood is kind of similar.
You still kind of feel like you're in the center of the
universe because at least you have your expectations.
And young at all, you can sit around and spend so much time
and energy imagining and daydreaming about what you might
become someday and who you might become someday.
No doubt an important CEO or an entrepreneur, or if not those
things, at the very least a manager at a reputable,
fast-paced company where you wear a casual tweed blazer with
elbow patches and people ask you to be on their podcast.
Obviously that's your future. And then adulthood hits and
you're just mostly insignificant.
Most of your life is behind closed doors in the backroom,
with you spending time behind the computer.
The older you get, the more irrelevant you feel.
It's slower climbing up the corporate ladder than you
thought. Your resume is less attractive
to the sexy startups in Des Moines than you thought it would
be. Maybe you even have kids.
And suddenly, most of your life, it seems, it's changing diapers
and having wars over bedtime routines.
Right, dads? As a dad, sometimes you feel
like Pluto. You were never at the center of
the solar system, and you knew that, but at least you were like
on the poster. And then suddenly you're not
even a planet anymore. You're just an icy rock doing
your best, forgotten in some third grade school classroom.
Not even a planet. Nobody even seems to notice that
you eat the heel of the loaf of bread so that they can have the
middle slices. Such insignificance doesn't even
get noticed. And yes, I do use the pulpit to
air some of my personal stuff. Suddenly, generic questions
don't feel generic anymore, and they arrive in your life with a
force that you didn't expect. Suddenly you find yourself
asking the question, Does my insignificant life even matter?
Nobody seems to notice. All I do is clock in and clock
out at work and my boss doesn't even know I exist.
Just seems like I'm raising kids.
Nobody sees what I do. What makes me sad about this is
that what makes me very sad about this is that we live in a
world where we constantly hear, implicitly or explicitly or
both, from pretty much every strand of pop culture, music,
movies, news, social media. The messaging we constantly hear
is that hidden, obscure, small lives don't matter.
Do you feel this way? Do you feel insignificant?
It's tough. And don't act like this isn't a
big deal. Sometimes Christians act like
this isn't a big deal. You you are designed with a need
within you to be significant for your life, to matter, for it to
count, for it to count for something.
And sometimes Christians take the topic of significance and
they place it on this tertiary shelf and they're like, well,
it's not as important as the forgiveness of sins or avoiding
the wrath of God or making sure you don't spend an eternity in
hell. It's not as important as those
things. Are you sure about that?
Read Genesis 3 really closely
and what you'll notice is that if you don't have your need for
significance met in the person and presence of God, you will
make some very foolish decisions with your life.
Did you see Satan's strategy? He didn't get Adam and Eve to
bite the apple by making it look red, juicy and delicious.
It was the promise he attached to it.
Hey, if you eat this thing, what's what's the temptation?
If you eat this thing, you'll become like God.
What did Satan appeal to? He appealed to Adam and Eve's
need to be significant. Oh my God.
So if you don't think about this, if you don't think about
what's does it look like for me to go to Jesus and have my
significant significance met in him, then you will make some
foolish decisions in your life like that.
For me, like my main sin temptations in my life, it's
it's me failing to have my significance met in the Lord and
me thinking, well, if I do X&Y, then I'll finally be important.
Like is that is that not true for you?
Like if your significance is for sale and Satan will buy your
soul. Being insignificant sucks.
Being a nobody is brutal and there's only one way I think
people can embrace this cosmic insignificance.
It's possible there are people who make peace with the fact
that they are in the words of the Bible, but a miss that
vanishes after a short time. There are people who are secure
and even joyful in their recognition that all their life
is is just briefly a name that gets mentioned once in the book.
We are Artemis, right? We are Zenus.
We are ticky kiss. We probably won't be Apostle
Paul's, who plant dozens of churches and become towering
theological figures in Christian history and have statues built
in our likeness and festival days named after us.
We will probably spend most of our time clocking in, clocking
out, doing invisible work, changing diapers, laboring to
put our kids to sleep at bedtimes, struggling to come to
church. Most of us, that's who we are.
We're mostly just nobodies. How do you make peace with that?
And the answer to that question
is so overwhelmingly simple that you know it's true.
How do you make peace with that? You find your significance in
Him. That's it.
That's all I can tell you this morning.
This is all I know how to do is you find your significance in
Jesus. I don't know if you have ever
looked at the cross of Jesus and said to your soul, I have
everything I could ever need hanging on that cross right
there. Have you ever done that?
Have you ever looked at the cross of Christ and said to your
soul, there could be nothing in this entire world that could
give me close to what Jesus Christ gives me, right?
If the recent scientific speculations are accurate, and
who knows if they are about the nature of the earth as merely a
speck of dust existing in a black hole, or true, then there
could be nothing even in the entire cosmos that would give me
close to what Jesus Christ has given me.
Have you ever done that? If life gave me all the lemons
I've ever wanted, All the stupid lemons I've ever wanted.
The admiration that deep down I have craved from people.
The attention from social media that sometimes I have itched
for. A perfect group of angelic
friends who never offended me. A couple kids who always obeyed
on a first commandment. A paycheck with a number that I
wouldn't even know what to do with.
If the world gave me everything in it, I would leave it all
behind for Jesus, and leave it all behind on the coldest night
of the year and walk 100 miles barefoot for the mere sight of
Jesus. There is more to be gained in
one gazing at Jesus than in ownership over the entire world.
There's more there for you. You could never thank God enough
for the riches that he has hidden from you in this world
and revealed to you only through Jesus.
It's all in Jesus. He's the beginning, He's the
end. He's the Alpha, is the Omega.
Create all things. He's sustaining all things.
All things are in him. In Christ alone, you have
everything. Yes, in Christ alone you have
the forgiveness of sins, all that guilt deep down inside of
you that keeps you tossing and turning at night, driving you to
destroy your relationships, that list of terrible things that
you've done, because frankly, every human being has that list.
Every single penalty for every single sin perishes in the body
of Jesus. You have the forgiveness of sins
in Jesus for those who trust them.
There will not be one sin. Remember, if you trust in Jesus,
there will not be 1 objection raised to you sprinting into
glory on the day of your death. You have that.
That's just not it. That's one 100th of what you
have in Christ. In Christ you have the
forgiveness of sins, but in Christ you also have the gift of
righteousness. It's not merely that you've been
forgiven and restored to some neutral state of at least she's
not a Sinner. No, you're not neutral putty.
You're not merely sinless. You are righteous because of the
gospel. You've been clothed in the
achievements of Jesus and the prodigal son.
The Son doesn't just welcomed back and forgiven, He gets his
Father's ring on his finger. He gets to enjoy the feast that
his Father paid for. To be in Christ means that God
sees you as he sees Christ. He sees you with the merits of
Jesus. He sees you with the
achievements of Jesus. He sees you with the robe of
Jesus. He sees you with the
righteousness of Jesus. In Christ alone you have the
gift of righteousness, and in Christ alone you have the joy of
the Lord. Like the very pleasures of God.
Like think about that. There is more to praise in Jesus
than there is time in your life to do it.
There's more to enjoy in Jesus then you have time to enjoy it,
right? This, oh man, I love this.
The joy of the Lord is my strength, is what he says, not
the joy that the Lord gives. Although that's true, it's not
the joy that the Lord gets. What is it?
It's the joy of the Lord. It's the joy that's within the
Lord. It's the joy that the Lord
experiences. It's the joy that the Lord has
within himself. Think about this.
This is the joy that has existed forever in God through Jesus,
and it now exists in the end in you.
This is the joy that has no beginning or end.
This is the joy that's always existed between Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit. Before the sparkle of a single
star, before the creation of a a single Adam, there was God
rejoicing in himself for eternity.
God the Father rejoicing in God the Son, God the Son rejoicing
in God the Spirit, God the Spirit rejoicing in God the
Father. And through the death of Jesus
on the cross, you get invited into that party.
The Bible says it makes you a this is God's word, not mine, a
partaker in the divine nature. You participate in his nature.
That's why when you worship God, you sense a joy that's origin is
not in your own strength, a joy that has its roots not in you
but in The Fountainhead of God. That's why when you experience
the joy of the Lord, you experience what scientists call
flow, this transcendent experience of time melting away,
right? That experience of thinking,
whoa, how much time has passed? The reason why time disappears
in moments of joy is because you do step outside of time, and you
step into the God who exists outside of time.
You participate in the divine nature of a joyful God who
exists outside of time. That's given to you in Jesus.
And in Jesus you have significance, he says.
I was reading this this morning. He says, aren't 2 sparrows worth
a penny? Even two sparrows for a penny
worthless, Jesus said. Aren't 2 sparrows worth a penny?
And yet not one of those suckers drops to the ground outside of
the sight of God. Why would Jesus be talking to
you about the value of sparrows? He goes on to say, Are you not
worth more than sparrows? Not one hair on your head
escapes the attention of God. Think about that.
That's the most ridiculous thing Jesus could say.
What's the most insignificant thing about a human being?
One single hair? OK, in Christ that one hair has
significance to the Lord. So what about your whole life?
If one hair has significance before the Lord, what about your
whole life? Are you seeing the like?
You're so significant in Christ. This is the God honest truth.
You're one single hair of yours has more significance to the
Lord than your whole life does to the world.
And how, how can you taste that? How can you experience that and
still feel insignificant? Test me right now when you go to
the Lord in prayer, asking for something, anything.
I don't care what it is, a spiritual need.
Maybe you just want me to stop preaching.
Try it, try it, pray for it, pray for anything.
In this moment. Right now God is in glory,
seated on his throne surrounded by angels and seraphim who are
worshipping him and have 6 wings and weird eyes and these
incredibly majestic and powerful creatures.
When you pray, God on his throne raises his hand up to those
angels and says quiet, my daughter is speaking, my son is
speaking. You have an intimacy with the
Lord through the gospel of Jesus that even the angels don't have.
Do you still feel insignificant? You can't, because when you find
your significance in Jesus Christ, you make peace with
living your life as mostly just a faithful nobody.
Because that task, if we really do have all of our significance
in the Lord, then that task of just being faithful to Him is
enough to infuse like every square inch of your life with
significance. And that's a mission that's
worth giving all the attention that you can give to it for the
rest of your life. And that's more than enough,
even if nobody sees it. And then you can finally just
live your life for Jesus and draw people to him and tell
people about him and make his name famous and win the world to
Jesus. And all of a sudden all those
gnawing questions that arrived at your life with a force you
never imagined finally have answers.
Nobody seems, nobody seems to notice.
My life doesn't even matter. It feels like I'm just punching
in and punching out at work feels like I'm just raising
kids. I'm just showing up work.
Nobody sees what I do. Not in Christ, not in Christ.
In Christ. There's not one thing you can do
that goes on notice to God. All those things, they matter
more than you could ever imagine.
When you change diapers for the glory of God, or when you fill
out spreadsheets for the glory of God, or when all you can do
was walk into church 15 minutes late and sit in the back row at
church and chase your kid around for 60 minutes, that is
eternally significant. When you do it in the sight of
God and for the glory of God eternally.
And this ordinary experience of being faithful nobodies matters.
It matters because it was these faithful nobodies who just by
being faithful nobodies won the entire island of Crete to Jesus,
right? Think about, think about Crete
again. Think about this these churches.
Paul is writing to our smaller than your community groups.
There are 0 known martyrs in the first 3 centuries that come from
Crete, 0 celebrity preachers, 0 church fathers from Crete.
When this letter was written, no church on Crete was bigger than
30 people in attendance. When this letter was written,
less than 1% of the population on Crete knew Jesus.
Do you know what that percentage is today?
Couple years ago they did a census.
By the estimates of that census, the percentage of people on the
island of Crete that now identify as being Christian as
95%, 95%. These nobodies, they did it.
They did it. They were faithful to Jesus.
They won the island to Jesus. They won the island of Crete for
Jesus. So why can't we win the Des
Moines area for Jesus? We can.
And to do it, you don't need to be somebody.
You don't need followers. You don't need a cooler job.
You don't need more significance.
You don't need to be more remarkable.
You don't need to be more important.
You just need Jesus. So be a faithful nobody.
For the glory of God, read your Bible, pray.
Be a good husband, be a Good Wife, be a good father, be good
at being a mom, be good at being single.
Build the church, tell people about Jesus.
Do everything you do for the glory of God.
To quote Count Zinzendorf a long time ago.
Preach the gospel, die and be forgotten.
Amen. Preach the gospel, die and be
forgotten. That's as close as I can get to
a summary on the book of Titus. Hope you've enjoyed these last
18 weeks in it, because the good Lord knows I have.
Heavenly Father, make us into faithful nobodies.
We don't. We don't need anything that the
world can offer us. Our souls are not for sale.
Our need for significance has been met and the person of
Jesus. And so the only thing that
matters, the only thing that could give us life, joy, eternal
significance is Jesus. And so if someone in here
doesn't know Jesus, I pray that your Holy Spirit would wake up
their heart, shine upon their heart, illuminate the person of
Jesus, and spark a new faith journey this morning, 1% to 95%
on the island of Crete. Oh, I pray that you would give
us that vision for our city. It's in the precious name of
Jesus that all God's people prayed.
Let's stand and let's worship this Jesus together.