When you think of the word hope, what
comes to your mind?
Sometimes we hear people saying, I hope I
win the lottery.
Others say, I hope I pass my exam.
For others, they say, my hope is in
the Lord.
The one who says, I hope I win
the lottery, is banking on hope being something
like good luck, chance.
The student who says, I hope I pass
my exam, really doesn't have the confidence in
his own personal study method, so he's banking
on, I hope the teacher is kind.
It's a wild guess.
But the person who says, my hope is
in the Lord, is saying that hope, that
trust, that confidence is based on the faithfulness
of God.
I have hope because of who God is
and his character.
Paul the Apostle, writing a small letter, almost
like a postcard to Titus, is telling us
about the hope that we have in God.
Paul starts his letter in verse 1 of
chapter 1 of Titus, saying Paul, a servant
of God, an apostle of Jesus Christ, for
the faith of God's elect and the knowledge
of truth that leads to godliness.
Paul identifies himself as a servant of God.
This kind of attitude, being a servant of
God, is not a positional idea, but rather
it is a humble idea.
Paul, being extremely educated, to the point where
today it would be equal to several PhDs,
amazing ability and logic and reason, where he
could stand with the king and reason, or
he could be with the beggar and reason.
Paul takes the title of servant, rather than
some high position, because in the Old Testament
a bond servant is one who was a
slave that was set free, but chose to
remain with the master because of love.
Not money, not position, nothing else except love.
And so Paul identifies himself as a servant
of God, based on love.
It's a great challenge for us who are
in the ministry or who have a desire
to serve the Lord.
Very often we see wrong examples of ministers
or servants of God on television, where it's
the show and the flash and the excitement
and the position and power and the fame
that people are attracted to, and yet they
do not see the Lord in the midst
of all that.
You look at Jesus' life, everything He did,
the miracles, the teaching, whatever He did, you
see that people went away glorifying and praising
God the Father.
There was something very unique in the way
Jesus conducted Himself and served His Father that
pointed all the attention to Him.
Paul, later on in 1 Corinthians 11, would
say follow me as I follow Christ.
Don't look at me, but look at me
as I follow Christ as the example.
It's a challenge for all of us not
to get caught up in the flashy, showy,
all kinds of fantastic fame and fortune that
we see very often on television with these
preachers and teachers of God's Word who use
God's Word as a means to gain fame
for themself.
And my brother, my sister, if we are
called to be a servant of God, which
literally means slave of God, or minister which
means slave also, then humility is the road
that we take.
Not the road of money, position, fame, or
influence, but the road of humility.
And Paul being great shows this title on
purpose because his road that he chose was
a road of humility.
And also he chooses Apostle of Jesus Christ
which we know on the Damascus Road, Christ
met him there and from that point on
his life was completely changed and now he
becomes the great messenger of Jesus Christ, the
Apostle proclaiming Jesus as Lord.
But the message that he proclaims is that
the faith that we have is based on
the knowledge of truth that leads to godliness.
As we grow in our understanding of the
Lord and what the Word of God teaches
us, it is not an intellectual understanding, but
it is the truth that changes us.
Jesus warning his disciples to watch out for
the Pharisees and the religious leaders and he
said to them they change God's Word to
fit their lifestyle.
They do not change their lifestyle in obedience
to fit God's Word.
Truth is truth.
It's absolute.
If you have ever listened to any messages
from Ravi Zacharias, one of the great Christian
apologists of our time, you go back in
the day and you find C.S. Lewis,
Francis Schaeffer, Ravi Zacharias, these men and their
names are those who defend the faith and
who have the heart and passion for the
Lord.
One of the things that Ravi Zacharias was
saying is that one of the greatest challenges
today is that truth has become relative.
It means it's not an absolute anymore.
It's a wrong statement and a wrong belief,
but it's a convenient idea that no one
can claim to have a truth statement.
That no one can claim that this is
absolute.
What they fail to see is in saying
there is no absolutes, you have made an
absolute statement.
There is no absolutes is an absolute statement.
There is no way to get around it.
There are absolutes.
Two plus two does equal four.
In science, mathematics, and engineering, there are absolutes.
When Paul says, the truth that leads to
godliness, Jesus said, I am the way, the
truth, and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through
me.
Paul, Pilate, asked Jesus, what is the truth?
Good question.
The answer, the truth was standing right in
front of him, Jesus Christ himself.
The truth of what God's Word tells us
that we are sinners and we need a
Savior and that God loved us and therefore
he sent Jesus to redeem us and to
pay the penalty of our sin so that
we could have a right relationship back with
God once again that was lost in the
Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve sinned,
disobeyed God, broke the relationship by taking and
eating from the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil.
And so here, the truth of God that
leads to godliness.
My brother, my sister, every time we read
God's Word and we discover the truths of
God in his Word and we are obedient
to that and we change our life according
to what the Bible says, we find that
it leads to godliness.
Why?
Because it leads you to loving God more,
reverencing God more, respecting him more, and you
find that it leads us to godliness.
But here you see in verse 2, it
says, a faith and knowledge resting on the
hope of eternal life which God who does
not lie promised before the beginning of time
and at his appointed season he brought his
word to light through the preaching entrusted to
me by the command of God our Savior.
And so here, Paul begins to tell us
that there's hope that we have in Jesus
Christ being our Savior who went to the
cross, spilled his blood, his body was beaten
and pummeled, he died and on the third
day he rose again.
This hope in God that we have through
Jesus Christ was promised before the beginning of
time.
You remember I said some people say, I
hope I win the lottery.
Good luck.
Chance.
We'll throw it to the wind.
A student will say, I hope I pass
my exam.
They really don't have any confidence.
They're banking on the goodwill of the teacher
rather than their own study.
There is no real hope in that.
But someone who says my hope is in
the Lord, there is a confidence in that
statement.
There's no good luck in the statement or
I hope by chance something will happen.
It is a confidence statement to say my
hope is in the Lord.
And when Paul the Apostle tells us and
he's writing to Titus and reminding Titus of
the faith that we have in Jesus Christ,
that this hope of God in eternal life
was promised, who God cannot lie, he promised
it before the beginning of time.
What does that mean?
When God created the world, he created everything
so wonderful.
He created the stars and the moon and
the planets and the solar systems and the
Milky Way.
He created the earth, the plants, the animals,
the air, the atmosphere.
He created the waters and the fish.
And then on the sixth day, he created
man.
It was different.
Everything else he spoke into existence.
But for man, he formed man from the
dust of the earth and breathed life into
him.
Very unique, different, a different kind of life
because we are not simply body and soul,
our mind and capacity to think and reason,
but we have an eternal part, our spirit.
When we die, our body is gone and
our spirit continues.
That's what we read in God's Word.
Adam and Eve, the first man and first
woman, created our parents to say, God told
them in this beautiful garden of Eden, you
can eat from any tree, eat everything, enjoy
life.
Nothing is off limits for you.
Only one thing, there's a tree in the
middle of the garden, the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil and the tree
of life.
You cannot eat from the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil.
On the day you eat of that tree,
you will die.
Now why, if God is so loving, would
God put this dangerous thing in the middle
of the garden, not even on the edge
of the garden, but in the middle of
the garden?
And then he says you can eat of
all the trees in the garden except this
one tree.
Why would he do that?
God created this entire universe and put man
on earth in this beautiful garden and he
did this for relationship.
God wanted to have fellowship and relationship with
Adam and Eve, not the animals, not the
insects and birds and reptiles and plants, but
with the human race.
Relationship based on love needs an element of
being able to say no to that relationship.
If I came to your house and I
threatened you with a knife and said you
will be my friend and you have no
choice but to be my friend, you will
say yes I will be your friend, but
it is not a loving response from your
side, it is by force I am making
you.
Now in some funny movies you will find
that there are some people who will pay
someone else to be their friend for a
day or a week so that they can
be popular.
That also is not a genuine relationship, that
is a relationship that was bought with money
and that's not even a relationship, it's an
agreement, a contract.
And so God needing to have an element
where Adam and Eve could choose to not
have that relationship, the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil.
The tree itself was not evil or bad
or sinful, but the act of disobedience to
God would bring sin into their life.
And so Adam and Eve, we see they
were there for some time and Eve was
tempted by Satan to take the fruit and
eat of it and she did and also
gave it to her husband.
They both ate from that fruit and their
eyes were opened.
Not open to all the wisdom that Satan
had promised, but all of a sudden open
to the shame of their own sin and
guilt filled their life.
It says that God came walking in the
cool of the evening calling Adam, Adam where
are you?
God was not calling Adam because God did
not know where he was, but it was
a rhetorical question, it was a question asked
to help Adam to think, why are you
hiding now?
If we have this wonderful relationship, why are
you so ashamed?
And God said, Adam did you eat the
fruit that I told you not to eat?
He said, yes, but it was my wife
who gave it to me.
And he said, Eve did you eat of
this fruit?
And she said, yes, but it was this
serpent, Satan caused me to do this.
Blame shifting from the very beginning.
Husband blaming the wife, wife blaming Satan.
This is still continuing today.
None of us want to take responsibility for
our own actions, especially for our own sins.
Have you ever noticed when you ask a
child, why did you do that?
It wasn't my fault, it was my sister's
fault, or it was the dog, or it
was you know some other person's problem.
We never want to take responsibility for our
own sin.
And until we recognize that, that we need
to take responsibility, we will never come to
God to ask forgiveness if we keep avoiding
the responsibility that yes, I have done this.
And so Adam and Eve, they sinned and
now what God said would come true.
He said on the day that you eat
of that fruit, you will die.
And what God meant is spiritually on the
inside, there will be a breaking of the
relationship and you will die.
Eventually physically you will die also, but now
there is a death in the spirit and
something has to come and cause it to
be recharged and restarted and reborn is what
you see Jesus talking to Nicodemus in John's
Gospel chapter 3.
God, before sending Adam and Eve out of
the garden because he loved them, now in
their sinful decaying body, if they were to
go back into the garden and eat of
the other tree, the tree of life, they
would live forever in a sinful decaying body
and it would be misery.
And so because God loved them, he sent
them out of the garden, but not until
he gave the first prophecy of hope of
his son Jesus Christ coming to the earth.
He said the seed of the woman would
crush the head of the serpent.
The first prophecy of the virgin birth of
Jesus Christ, the Savior that would come later
to redeem man back to the Father through
him going to the cross, taking all the
sins upon himself, giving us a righteous hope,
a hope that is definite, not a hope
I win the lottery, I hope my teacher
gives me a good grade, no, a hope
and confidence in Christ Jesus.
And Paul says that this hope in Christ
was promised before time even began.
You know what that simply means?
God knew that Adam and Eve would eventually
sin.
He let them choose, even though he knew
what the outcome would be, instead of destroying
the world and starting over again, his love
being demonstrated that before creating the world, he
said, I will plan to send Jesus.
They had the free choice and free will
to break the relationship.
Jesus will come and die on the cross
and provide again the free will choice.
They can accept the free forgiveness of sin
and gift of God into life or they
can reject it.
He is giving us this hope of eternal
life through Jesus Christ which was promised before
time even began.
God is amazing in his ability to love
us and go to the extent and Jesus
Christ himself chose to obey the Father and
in his own will he said, I will
do this.
The Bible tells us that Jesus endured the
cross for the joy that was set before
him.
Why would Jesus allow himself to be beaten
and pummeled and hurt so terribly then crucified
and then faced death?
Because while he hung on the cross, he
was thinking about you and I.
For the joy that was set before him
when he saw so many people being brought
into a right relationship with the Father, once
again it gave him so much joy.
In a small imperfect example, like a lady
giving birth to her children, the pain of
giving birth is forgotten when she sees the
beautiful little baby.
And Jesus endured that cross and God planned
for this to happen before creating the world
so that you and I could experience God's
grace in a huge significant way.
Jesus talking to Nicodemus.
Nicodemus, one of the religious leaders at that
time, came to Jesus by night secretly and
said, how do I inherit eternal life?
And Jesus said, Nicodemus, you must be born
again.
Nicodemus said, how can I be an old
man go back in my mother's womb and
be born again?
It doesn't work.
And Jesus said, you being a teacher, a
religious teacher of Israel, how do you not
know these things?
He said, I'm not talking about a physical
being born again, but by the Spirit.
Remember, Adam and Eve, the Spirit died.
Something broke in them because of their sin.
And so Jesus would go to the cross
and when we accept the free gift of
God, of forgiveness of sin through Jesus Christ,
our spirit is born again.
It's restarted, recharged, and we have a new
birth and a new right relationship with God
the Father once again.
And Paul tells us, and he tells Titus,
reminding him this message of the good news
of Jesus Christ that we preach is not
based on some empty hope, but a solid
hope.
A hope that we have confidence and we
know that God loves us and God has
done this.
And Paul says, not only am I a
servant and a slave of God, and I
serve God not for money, not for position,
but I am an apostle, a messenger of
Jesus Christ.
And this message I give is this, there
is hope in Jesus Christ and his hope
was planned before the beginning of the world
being made.
And God loves us so much and we
too can have this hope.
And as we live in this hope, taking
God's word, putting it into our life, in
obedience to him and love to him, it
brings about the righteous life.
My brother, my sister, this is exciting news
for all of us.
Maybe you have never made Jesus Christ your
Lord and Savior.
Maybe you've never experienced the forgiveness of sin
and the peace of God that fills your
heart because of the forgiveness of sin.
Maybe your whole life you've been searching for
the answer for the guilt that you hold
inside and you carry with you and you
tried everything and there is no answer or
peace.
Jesus said, I give you peace, not as
the world gives, but a lasting peace.
The Bible tells us that if we call
upon the name of the Lord and ask
him to forgive our sins and repent of
our old ways, then we have a new
life and a new beginning.
Maybe we are already following Christ and we
have experienced this new life in Jesus.
My brother, my sister, every single day you
can wake up in the morning and have
the confidence, my hope is in Jesus Christ
and I can live this life for his
glory and I can tell others about the
hope that I have.
Let's pray and ask God to help us.
Rejoice in these things.
Father, we thank you for your grace and
your mercy.
We thank you for this hope that we
have through Jesus Christ and the confidence that
we know by him going to the cross
and our sins being forgiven that we can
have life and life more abundantly.
I pray for each of my brothers and
sisters.
Bless them.
Watch over them.
In Jesus' name, amen.
My brother, my sister, if you have never
experienced the love of God that comes through
the hope in God through what Jesus Christ
did on the cross of Calvary for you,
please write to us.
Call us and we'll explain more how you
too can have this hope in Jesus Christ,
seeing your life transformed and giving you a
purpose, a genuine purpose in life.
Remember this, the Bible has the answers for
life and God's promises always comes true.
May the Lord bless you as you experience
this hope that comes through Jesus Christ our
Lord.