Guarding Grace: Cultivating a Healthy Church Culture

1. "And the same is true in the church, okay? We'll see that in our passage today. I want you to note that Paul is telling Timothy there will be some problem people that arise, and you need to be ready to defend against them, to guard against them and the things that they try to bring into the church. So one thing that we need to note, though, from this passage is that it flows from the previous section that we covered last week. Section that we read this morning starts out with that word, for. It's a transitional word. So what Paul is saying is the reason that we should be striving to live out grace -driven lives with all of the good character traits that we talked about last week, the reason those should be displayed in our lives is because we need to hold fast to the faithful word of God and do all those things because it's inevitable that problem people will arise in the church. And notice what it says about these kinds of people. He says they're insubordinate. They have a problem." ([00:00:55] (65 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


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2. "See, Paul's goal in this letter, as we'll see as we go through, and as we've titled the, series, Grace Driven, Paul's goal in this letter is that grace would be flourishing and evident in the church. That's his goal, is that grace would be flourishing and evident in the church. That individual believers, would be growing in grace, flourishing in grace, and that the culture of the church would be one of grace, a healthy environment. In fact, the word sound there that says that they may be sound in the faith. We're gonna see it come up four different times, I believe. It's five times in just a few short sections of this letter, but we're gonna see it next week said several times in how he talks about the culture of a church. That word sound there, it actually comes from a Greek word where we get our word hygienic." ([00:03:53] (52 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


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3. "Paul, he tells Titus that allowing problem people to go unchecked will ultimately cause huge problems for the church and for individual believers. So, I hope each one of us will this morning glean something in how we can be guardians of grace from what Paul tells Titus here in this passage. How do we do this? How do we guard? How do we guard grace? Number one, I think first of all, we must defend the doctrine of grace. Number one there, defend the doctrine of grace. Now, to understand this point, we need to know a little bit of background information that Paul refers to here. He warns against those of the circumcision in verse number 10. So, the thing that started to happen when Christianity spread so quickly is that people were converting to Christianity. They were putting their faith and their trust in Jesus for salvation from all sorts of lifestyles, from all sorts of faith backgrounds, from all sorts of religious backgrounds, from all sorts of familial backgrounds." ([00:06:13] (68 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


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4. "And here's the problem with that. The Bible teaches very clearly that salvation comes by grace, through faith, and it's not of any works that we could do. Anything that requires doing something to be saved is called legalism. That's what it's called, legalism. And anything that requires doing something for salvation is legalism. And in their day, they saw people coming and teaching, again, they had to be circumcised, or you had to stop eating certain meats, or you had to follow the sacrificial system, or you had to ceremonially cleanse your hands or yourself in some way before eating food, that you had to do all of these things to be saved. But even in our day, there are some who try to teach a form of legalism. They say you must get baptized to be saved. If you don't get baptized, it's believe in Jesus, but it's also get baptized. You have to do this in order to be saved. Some of them would add you have to speak in tongues in order to be saved. You have to experience holy laughter in order to be saved, or that you have to take communion to receive God's grace, that you have to go to confession, that you have to say certain prayers, that you have to attend church, that you believe in Jesus, yes, but you also have all these things you have to do to keep your salvation and to be saved. That's what many, we have this taking place even in modern Christianity in America, that people would teach these things. But all of those who teach these things are teaching that you have to do something in order to be saved. And God tells us there is nothing we can do to be saved, nothing that we can do in and of ourselves. God tells us the work has already been done by Jesus." ([00:10:43] (100 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


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5. "Paul doesn't just say that we need to beware of those who might teach legalism, but he also warns us of people who would be legalistic, or as it's worded in our second point, this, we must contend for our culture of grace. So first he says we must defend the doctrine of grace. But second, he says, we must contend for a culture of grace. You might be asking, Michael, what did you mean when you said there's a difference between teaching legalism and being legalistic? Well, here's the difference. Legalism teaches that God accepts you by your works. That's unbiblical. But being legalistic says this, God accepts you by grace, but I accept you by your works. That's being legalistic. So legalism says God accepts you by your works. That's unbiblical. Being legalistic says God accepts you by grace, but I accept you by works. And that's unethical." ([00:16:40] (59 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


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6. "And so, and we talked a little bit about this in our study in Leviticus, much of what they did ceremonially or what they did civilly became an area of preference. Once Jesus fulfilled all of it and did his finished work on the cross, all of these things that they were practicing in ceremony and in ritual became areas of preferences. And Paul deals with that in Romans chapter 14 and 1 Corinthians 8, 9, and 10. If you want to just eat certain kinds of meat, he says, then do it. Follow your conscience. But don't you dare impose your conscience on somebody else with something that isn't a clear biblical matter. That's what he was teaching them in Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8, 9, and 10. He says, don't take things that are preferential or cultural and preach them as if they're ways to be holy." ([00:19:40] (49 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


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7. "Is it okay to have a preference on what kinds of songs to sing and what kind of instruments to use? Yes. Is it okay to have a strong opinion on the political candidates and platforms and such? Of course it is. It's absolutely acceptable to have opinions on these areas. Everyone should have opinions. They shouldn't just let one person think for them. Everyone should have opinions. That's how I, you know, if you're actually thinking for yourself often is if you agree with one person 100 % of the time, you're not doing any thinking. They're doing the thinking for you, okay? We're all going to disagree on something. It's good to have opinions. It's even good to have standards, to have certain standards. I think that some people who struggle with a specific vice of some kind should put protections in place in their life to keep them away. To keep them away from that sin. They should. That should be a good thing in their life. The problem comes when those standards or those preferences become institutionalized and become a culture of the church or a metric by which we used to make sure that we're going to partner and fellowship and be nice to and accept other Christians based upon these kinds of things. That's when it becomes a problem. It's okay to have standards and opinions and preferences, but what's not okay is to base your acceptance, your treatment, your attitude, or your fellowship with other Christians upon these things. Paul says here in verse number 14, no, no, no, no, no. Don't allow yourself to take heed to Jewish fables or to commandments of men." ([00:22:00] (91 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


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8. "Therefore, I am perfectly willing and able to accept you based upon God's grace and Jesus' finished work on the cross. That's a culture of grace, that we accept and we love and we treat others within the church with the dignity that they are worth by being creations of God and being children of God because we are basing our partnership, our fellowship, and our treatment of them, our acceptance of them, not upon what they do, but upon what Jesus has done. That's a gospel culture. That's a culture of grace in the church. If you profess, if you profess to know Christ, if you are a child of God, then I'm with you and I'm for you. That's a culture of grace. I'm not here to compete against other Christians. I'm not here to compare myself to other people in the church. In fact, the Bible expressly forbids us to compete and compare ourselves among ourselves in that way." ([00:24:15] (59 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


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9. "I don't need to measure your performance. Why? Because the same Jesus that saved me by grace saved you by grace. He accepts me. I accept you. I accept you. Okay. He accepts me. He accepts you. We accept each other. It's taking the status or the position we have in Christ that Paul talks about in Ephesians that we are accepted in the beloved, in Christ, and we're taking that and fleshing it out or displaying it in our relationships with each other. He accepts me. He accepts you. So we accept each other. We need to contend for a culture of grace in the church. And if it sounds like, I'm being a little sharp today about these things, I would say I apologize, but I don't because Paul says here, rebuke this sharply." ([00:25:19] (46 seconds) (Download raw clip | Making vertical clip | )

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10. "How do we come against these types of things and defend the doctrine of grace or contend for a culture of grace? What's the most effective way to do that? Well, point number three is this. Live a life of grace. What's the most effective way to do this? Live a life of grace. Live a life of grace. Now, first of all, we see this being true because, as I noted at the beginning of the message, This passage flows from the truths of the previous thoughts we covered last week. So Paul says this, one of the ways, one of the reasons that it's so important to have these characteristics, a grace -driven life, the reason it's so important to have a life of grace in all of these character traits in your life, these qualities, is because this is going to take place and you can't effectively defend and rebuke against these things if you're not living a life that pictures the gospel." ([00:27:45] (55 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


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