B | Be Heaven - Titus | January 12

INTRO

Hey Family!

Welcome back. Welcome to the new year. I’m very excited for what God has planned for us; for what He is going to do in you and through you this year; for all the ways He is changing you and shaping you into His image to reflect His glory and goodness into the world–to be a place where Heaven meets earth.

I can’t begin to express to you just how excited I am! We are in for a wild ride.

NEW YEAR PEP TALK

Do you feel it? Can you see it? I’m not sure we can really grasp it all. The gravity. The importance of what God is doing in you right now!

You may be thinking to yourself, importance? I just hope maybe this year will be better than the last. Anybody big Counting Crows fans? No? You’ll know what I’m talking about then. It’s been a long December is all I can say, I guess.

But there is a beautiful reality taking shape right now whether you can sense it or not. Here’s how crazy this is. In Ephesians 3, there’s this throw-a-way verse. You’ve probably missed it a ton over the years.

I’ve known too many, let’s say verging on elderly, people (to put it nicely) who use the phrase “if it was a snake it would have bit you”. There’s a certain generation where that is what constituted as parental advice.

But it’s so easy to breeze past this verse and be completely unaware of the mind-blowing implications.

Ephesians 3:10 says, “10 His intent [God’s intent] was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms…”

Isn’t that wild?

Pauls says, that through the church God is revealing, He is making known His plan, His wisdom to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places–to the angels, to the demons, to the Devil himself. These spiritual beings are not God’s equal. They are not all-knowing. They learn about God’s mysteries as they unfold through your life.

Heaven is rejoicing as it sees God’s plan unveiled in you! Through your life!

In 1 Peter 1:12 it says that these are things into which angels “long to look”.

They long to see God manifested in your life.

Can you believe that?

Are you grasping the implications?

As we align ourselves with God's will, we become vessels through which His divine plan is unveiled to the heavens, our actions and choices mirroring His design, revealing the depths of His purpose to the spiritual realm. We are living testaments to God's grand narrative, His story. The heavens witness His majesty through you!

Isn’t that just incredible?

You are chosen and beloved. We just heard that so wonderfully read in the beginning of Titus, “to those God has chosen”.

You are chosen. You are necessary. You are indispensable. As Seth Godin writes in his book “Linchpin”, which has nothing at all to do with Jesus, you are the driving force of the future.

He writes, “Everyone, every single person, has been a genius at least once. Everyone has winged it, invented, and created their way out of a jam at least once. If you can do it once, you can do it again. [It] is the intentional act of using your humanity to create a change in another person…

You have so much to give… You have brilliance in you. Your contribution is essential. You are precious.

You are chosen and beloved, not to mention empowered–that is filled with the great power of the Holy Spirit to create real change in the world around you.

How’s that for a pep talk to start off the new year? Huh?

And there’s probably included in there two things many of you hadn’t thought much about at all until this very moment; angels and the book of Titus. Right?

WHO’S TITUS?

When’s the last time you read Titus?

Some of you were like I just read the Bible in a year last year. Let’s go. I may have finished it in the first week of January but it still counts.

I mean come on, does anybody even know where the book of Titus is in the Bible?

I’ll be honest, I had to do the ol’ flipperoo through the pages, somehow managing to flick right over the few pages that contain this oft’ forgotten book. I passed by it several times.

Pro tip, it’s sandwiched right between 2 Timothy and Philemon. It occupies a whopping four pages depending on your translation.

So what does Titus have to do with God’s grand design for us? Nothing, and yet at the same time, absolutely everything.

We don’t know a lot about Titus. He was a companion and beloved friend to Paul. He was Greek (Galatians 2:1-3:), who was led to faith by Paul (Titus 1:4) and would have accompanied Paul on several missionary journeys.

Titus was sent to Corinth for a period of time to minister to, encourage, and strengthen the church there. In fact, he’s the one who carried the letters back and forth for Paul bringing reports of how the church was getting along (2 Corinthians 7:6-7).

After Corinth, Paul left Titus in Crete.

Titus 1:5, which says "For this reason I left you in Crete, that you might set in order what was left unfinished, and appoint elders in every town as I directed you." There were like 100 cities on the island of Crete, so not short order. And the Church in Crete had a lot of problems.

Seemed to be Titus was Paul’s go to man for troubled churches.

WHAT'S UP WITH CRETE?

Crete was a troubled place with a troubled church.

It’s a large island in the Mediterranean Sea. It was the home of Europe’s first advanced civilization–the Minoans. By no stretch of the imagination is it difficult to see ourselves reflected in this prosperous island nation–our culture. We, in the west. We tend to believe that we are the force driving the world, the global economy, the trade of culture. We are God’s gift to civilization.

The Cretans thought this too. They even believed themselves to be the source of Greek religion as the gods were birthed in Crete. They saw these gods not strictly as spiritual beings, but as once human who through heroic deeds were elevated to the place of deity. And as gods, they were just as troubled as the people.

It’s a demonstration of spiritual formation. Spiritual formation is an inevitability for all people. You will look like your gods. You will become what you worship. It is not just a Christian reality. It is a truth of every human being on this planet. Your heart–your inner self is being formed by something. And that inner formation pours out into your outward, external actions and behaviors. You become what you worship.

Dallas Willard said in “Renovation of the Heart”, Terrorists as well as saints are the outcome of spiritual formation. Their spirits or hearts have been formed. We become a certain kind of person in the depths of our being, gaining a certain type of character.” And this is true for everyone.

Which is a worrying message to many of us Believers. The implication is that if you are not growing in Christ-likeness, then what you worship is not like Christ. You may call it Jesus, but ultimately it’s not Jesus–it’s an idol, a false Gospel.

You become what you worship.

The gods of Crete, the gods of Greece, were evil, despicable creatures who craved pleasure and lied to get their hearts desires.

Paul says as much himself in his warning to Titus when he writes, “12 Even one of their own men, a prophet from Crete, has said about them, “The people of Crete are all liars, cruel animals, and lazy gluttons.” 13 This is true.” (Titus 1:12)

I love this. I’m not sure what translation it is. But it says, "The Cretans are alway liars, evil beasts, slow bellies". Wives try that out on your husbands sometime. Get off the couch. You’re such a slow belly.

Cretans became synonymous with the morally lax, garish brutes, womanizers, and liars.

Paul leaves Titus in this setting to raise up leaders and people from the church who would look different. They would act different. They would be different when compared with the culture around them.

This is what we talk about when we say in our mission statement that “we want to be a place where Heaven meets earth…”

We want to be a bastion of peace–a beachhead of God’s kingdom in this culture. We want to be a portal where the people around us encounter and experience the real, living God. This is true for Mountainside Community Church, this is true for our family groups, this is true of our family units, and this should be true for each individual temple of Jesus–you!

That’s why Paul spends so much time laying out instructions for the character of God’s people in Crete, first to the leaders in chapter 1 (because Godly churches persist through Godly leadership), and then to the wider family. Live in a way that demonstrates effectively the attractiveness of the Gospel and the superiority of Jesus. Be different.

This is God’s grand design for you.

GOD’S GRAND DESIGN

Have any of you ever watched the TV show “Grand Designs”?

We used to be really into those home renovation type shows. This one is from the UK and each episode follows different people who have set out to pursue their vision of a dream home by building it themselves. Each project is completely unique. The show documents this process. They don’t provide any money to the individuals featured on the episodes. It’s a lot like the “Great British Bake Off” in that. It simply documents the design, the challenges, the changes, and the compromises that occur along the way of the building process.

God has a grand design for your life.

Yes, for His Church corporately. But also for your life individually.

God has a grand design for your life.

And each of us starts out excited and zealous for a life with Jesus.

But along the way challenges are met, changes occur, compromises are made. Our life doesn’t always end up looking like the grand design we had in our heads when it all began.

And maybe that’s because we have our own ideas of how our lives should turn out. We should be married by now. I should have my dream job and my dream house with a white picket fence and two and a half children.

When God’s grand design for your life doesn’t promise those things, it doesn’t guarantee your heart’s desires, but what it does promise is transformation.

I know Psalm 37:4 says, "Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart."

But if you truly delight yourself in the Lord, what will your heart desire?

Him! His presence!

And He will definitely give you that.

The fuller context of that verse says, “3 Trust in the Lord and do good. Then you will live safely in the land and prosper. 4 Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart’s desires. 5 Commit everything you do to the Lord. Trust him, and he will help you.”

BE HEAVEN

And that’s what the book of Titus is all about.

In chapter 3 Paul writes, “3 Once we, too, were foolish and disobedient. We were misled and became slaves to many lusts and pleasures. Our lives were full of evil and envy, and we hated each other. 4 But—When God our Savior revealed his kindness and love, 5 he saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He washed away our sins, giving us a new birth and new life through the Holy Spirit. 6 He generously poured out the Spirit upon us through Jesus Christ our Savior. 7 Because of his grace he made us right in his sight and gave us confidence that we will inherit eternal life.

This is a counter-culture gospel that alters the entirety of our life from the inside out. It is a spiritual transformation.

Once again Willard writes, “Not only formation of the spirit or the inner being, but also [and perhaps most importantly for the Christian] formation by the Spirit of God and by the spiritual riches of Christ’s continuing incarnation in His people.”

Christ in you, the hope of glory. (Colossians 1:27)

Your life, becoming the image of Jesus to the waiting world, creating a place where Heaven touches earth and completely changes the cultural compromises that have been made along the way, remaking you into God’s image–His grand design.

This is what angels peer into with bated breath. This is what erupts Heaven into songs of praise. Your life becoming Heaven’s delight.

Be Heaven.

Again, some of you may be thinking easier said than done. I’m too far gone. You don’t really know me. You don’t know the depths of my heart.

And that’s true. For all the ways that I may know you. I can only know what you are willing to share. I can’t know what you haven’t risked to share.

But God knows. And He hasn’t walked away.

So I’m not walking away either.

Because that’s the promise.

“The [promise] of this good news is that through the saving work of Jesus and the empowerment of the Spirit, people really can change. The Cretans could change then, and you can change today. You don’t have to remain stuck in the image of the false gods of the day, nor conform to the culture around you. Paul says the gospel is powerful enough to transform someone into a new creation who then becomes an agent of change within culture, whether you live on the island of Crete or in [Boone, North Carolina]” (Whitney Woollard)

HOW TO BE HEAVEN?

Okay Zachary. You’ve sold me. How do we do that? How do we be Heaven?

Paul gives Titus, and therefore us as well, the practical guidelines.

They pour out of the lists addressed for Titus to encourage elders, and old men, and old women, and young women, and young men, and slaves, and everyone.

It encompasses sound wisdom such as living self-controlled and upright lives so that though the culture around may object they will have nothing bad to say against you.

Show yourselves to be entirely trustworthy.

Stand firm on the truth. In fact, Paul tells Titus to encourage the church that what they believe and the way that they act, the good works that they do, must be in agreement.

Essentially, actively embodying Christian values in your daily interactions and community life.

But I want to boil it down to one verse and encourage you to meditate on this short book, which is only like 45 verses in total, throughout the week.

In Titus chapter 2, in the second half of verse 7, it says, “Let everything you do reflect the integrity and seriousness of your teaching.”

Integrity within and dignity without.

Let all that you are from the depths of your being reflect a personal integrity empowered by the Spirit of Jesus.

And let all you do give dignity to those you encounter along the way drawing from the great well of the love of Christ.

In practicality, ask yourself these questions… You remember those WWJD bracelets. Maybe we should bring those back.

Ask yourself…

1. How would Jesus treat this person?

Answer: with dignity in whatever form the particular situation demands.

2. How would I treat this person if they were Jesus?

If you make it a practice, a habit really, to approach each situation with these two questions, asking God to strengthen you by the power of His Spirit, you won’t believe the ways in which God will transform your life to reflect His grand design.

Mother Teresa would talk about, “Seeking the face of God in everything, everyone, all the time, and his hand in every happening; this is what it means to be contemplative in the heart of the world, seeing and adoring the presence of Jesus, especially in the lowly appearance of bread, and in the distressing disguise of the poor.”

“If we recognize [Jesus] under the appearance of bread,” she explained, “we will have no difficulty recognizing him in the disguise of the suffering poor.”

Now, here’s the difficulty. It’s the season for resolutions. I have one, at least one. I want to read a chapter a day from a book other than the Bible. I always say I don’t read, well that’s about to change ya’ll.

Only I’ve already broken that resolution. Eleven days in.

Only about 8% of people actually keep their New Year’s resolution. In fact, about 80% of people who make resolutions end up failing to keep them before the second week in February. Most don’t even last that long. The second Friday in January, this past Friday, is affectionately called “Quitters Day” because that’s when many people abandon their well-intentioned resolutions.

I don’t want this to become another resolution. I want this to be what resolutions were intended to be back in the 1700s or whenever people started making them–a steadfastness of purpose, a determination.

Commit yourself to this.

Commit yourself to Christ.

Become Heaven’s delight as the angels watch and rejoice over your life.

Be Heaven.

“As you live out this counter-cultural gospel in reliance on the Spirit, declare God’s goodness and grace to your family, neighbors, co-workers, friends, communities, and the whole world!” (Whitney Woollard)

Become a place where Heaven meets earth. That’s what God has created you for.