We are continuing in the Book of Titus,
the second chapter of the Book of Titus,
and the man of God says, For the
grace of God that bringeth salvation to all
men hath appeared, teaching us that, denying ungodliness
and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously,
and godly in this present world, looking for
that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of
the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ,
who gave himself for us, that he might
redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto
himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.
Now, I have on a previous occasion dealt
with some care, with that denying ungodliness and
worldly lusts, and living soberly and righteously and
godly in this present world.
Now, looking for that blessed hope and the
glorious appearing of the great God and of
our Savior Jesus Christ.
Those words will engage our attention for a
brief time.
Now, if you will note here, and it
is always well to follow punctuation carefully in
our King James Version, and not break into
verses without regard to punctuation.
If you will notice what it says here,
that the grace of God teaches us to
live looking, teaches us to live, of course
there are some adverbs coming in between, soberly,
righteously, godly, and a phrase, in this present
world, but it doesn't in any wise destroy
the force of the passage, teaching us that
we should live looking.
Now, I want to just talk about that
a little bit, that the Christian lives looking.
That is, the Christian life is a joyous
anticipation.
Everybody knows what anticipation does for human life.
If you did not have some hope of
something you planned to do, somebody you hoped
to see, some advance you hoped to make,
your life could soon level down to a
drab, colorless existence that wouldn't be worth the
living.
If you were to take joyous anticipation out
of the hearts of men, the suicides in
the world would be so many that literally
there would not be enough technical help to
dispose of the dead.
We must have something to look forward to.
We should live looking, says the Holy Spirit
here to Christians.
We Christians should live looking.
Now, what is it that a Christian looks
forward to?
A Christian looks forward to what the Bible
calls the blessed hope, which is the glorious
appearing of the great God and our Savior,
Jesus Christ.
Now, this is the epiphany that the churches
talk about, the shining forth used for the
coming up of the sun, and used also
for the coming of Jesus Christ to the
world, used of his first manifestation to the
world, and also used of his second.
The churches, the ritualistic churches that follow the
church calendar, have certain times when they celebrate
the epiphany, the shining forth, the coming, the
appearance of Jesus Christ, our Lord.
And the Bible also talks about another epiphany,
a shining forth.
The two of them are found together in
the books of Timothy.
Paul wrote Titus, from which the text is
taken.
He also wrote 1st and 2nd Timothy.
Now, here's what he says.
God, who has called us, saved us and
called us with a holy calling, not according
to our works, but according to his own
purpose and grace, which was given us in
Christ Jesus before the world began, but is
now made manifest by the appearing of our
Savior, Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death and
hath brought life and immortality to light through
the gospel.
There, after an eternal purpose, I want you
to understand, I've said this and continue to
say it, because it is a very basic
spiritual truth, that the Bible-taught Christian is
not an orphan.
He is not somebody who by some accident
has happened upon a book and is now
a Christian.
He is a part of an eternal purpose,
which God purposed in Christ Jesus before the
world began.
And this eternal purpose, says the man of
God, is now made manifest by the appearing
of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who hath abolished
death and hath brought life and immortality to
light through the gospel.
Now, those are all past tense expressions.
That's something that hath, has in our modern
English, has been done.
Now, if you have the same kind of
Bible I have, Collins, just cast your eye
up just a quarter of a page and
you will read these words, where the man
of God says, same man, writing in a
different letter to the same man, I give
thee charge in the sight of God, who
quickeneth all things, and before Jesus Christ, who
before Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession, I
give thee charge that thou keep this commandment
without spot, unrebukable until the appearing of our
Lord Jesus Christ, which in his times he
shall show, who is the blessed and only
potentate, the King of kings and Lord of
lords, who only hath immortality, dwelling in the
light which no man can approach unto, whom
no man hath seen or can see, to
whom be honor and power everlasting, Amen.
Now, below, he has brought life and immortality
to the light through the appearing of Jesus
Christ, our Lord.
That's one.
He will show, in his own times, at
the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ, who
only hath immortality, dwelling in light.
Now, there we have the two epiphanies, the
two shinings forth, set before us in sharp,
beautiful contrast, the one to the other.
We should live looking.
And what are the directions, for there is
not one, but there are two.
What are the directions that a Christian should
live, should look in his living?
Well, at our communion services, we often quote,
in fact, almost always quote somewhere, we do
show forth his death till he come.
A Christian is one who deeply appreciates the
past for what has been done, but who
does not anchor to the past, knowing that
the past is a prelude to the future.
And therefore, his gaze is sometimes back for
reassurance and sometimes forward in happy anticipation.
When he looks back, he sees the epiphany,
the shining forth of Jesus Christ to be
born of a virgin, to suffer under Pontius
Pilate, to be crucified dead and buried, to
rise again from the dead the third day,
to go to the right hand of God
the Father Almighty, to be seated there at
that right hand, ever making intercession for his
own.
That's the past.
But then we tear our eyes from the
past and gaze into the future, to that
time when he shall appear and there shall
be another world epiphany, when he shall be
shown forth to the world as the potentate
and king, the only potentate, the only king.
The way they're getting rid of kings these
days, it looks to me as if we
were kind of cleaning house for the coming
of the Lord.
There was a day when we had so
many kings.
Every third fellow you'd meet in Europe either
was a king or was related to one.
But now, either they aren't kings or they're
ashamed to admit they're related to them.
We don't have many kings left, very many
potentates left, nor plenipotentiaries.
I remember when we had a confluence of
big shots, political big shots, come to this
country some years ago.
I listened on the radio to the speeches
and the introductions, and they talked about the
plenipotentiaries and potentates.
Well, the plenipotentiaries and potentates are sort of
petering out, and we don't have so many
of them anymore because the Lord is bringing
us to a time when it shall be
seen who is the only potentate, who only
hath immortality, who is king of kings and
lord of lords, who dwells in the light
which no man can approach unto, to whom
be glory and honor everlasting.
Now, even if we should die, yet we
will see this epiphany, this awaited revelation, because
in 1 Thessalonians 4, notice that again.
We're just reading from the Bible itself.
Paul says, shall
not go before them which are asleep.
For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven
with a shout and with the voice of
the archangel, and the trump of God, and
the dead in Christ shall rise first.
Then we which are alive and remain shall
be caught up together with them in the
clouds to meet the Lord in the air,
and so shall we ever be with the
Lord.
Isn't it rather ironical that we reserve the
reading of passages like this for funerals?
Isn't it rather a cynical twist of the
human mind or of the devil himself that
we should have taken all such beautiful passages
as say John 14, Let not your heart
be troubled, ye believe in God, believe also
in me, that we should take these and
reserve them almost exclusively for funerals.
My dear little old mother was a great
lover of flowers.
She raised them and had flowers every little
spot where a flower could grow, she had
flowers.
But she insisted that they grow, that they
have their roots in the ground.
When they were cut and put on a
table she shied away from them.
The reason being she had gone to so
many funerals and had seen so many cut
flowers and had smelled the heady fragrance of
so many bouquets for the dead that she
instinctively associated the smell of cut flowers with
a coffin.
So mother didn't care for cut flowers, she
liked the kind that grew in the ground.
They reminded her of sunshine and rain and
wind and clouds and birdsong and beauty, whereas
cut flowers reminded her of the dead.
And we find the same thing true of
such a delightful passage as this, Let not
your heart be troubled.
There's Jesus cheering up his people.
And isn't it unfortunate that we have relegated
this to the dead with the cut flowers
and the silent tread and the sonorous, solemn
tone of the minister?
Isn't it too bad that we can't see
that this is the Lord calling his people
to look forward with anticipation to the Father's
house and the many mansions?
So it is with the Thessalonian passage here.
For if we believe that Jesus died and
rose again, soon as you start to read
that you look around for the coffin and
you wonder whether who died and how you
got at the funeral without knowing it.
Well the simple truth is this is not
for funerals only, this is the word of
the Lord for all of his people all
of the time.
I tell you again, I've said this many
times, in fact I don't say anything anymore
that I haven't said many times before, but
I tell you again that there are lots
of worse things than dying.
Dying is one of the easiest things possible
and one of the most delightful for a
Christian.
So that we ought not to associate all
the hopeful promises of the Lord with dying
and dying with something we don't want to
do.
The Lord says that we are to live
looking.
That is there is anticipation there.
What do we anticipate or rather who is
it that we anticipate?
Well he says the great God and Savior
Jesus Christ our Lord.
You know the great God and Savior Jesus
Christ, that Christ is God is taught here,
you'll hear me, that Christ is God is
taught here.
This is the book of God and that
Christ is God is taught in that book
all through that book.
Now there are some who consider that Christ
is not God, that he is only a
very extremely good man, oh nearly as good
as Albert Schweitzer, but that he is a
very good man not as wise as Albert
because he didn't know of course how to
perform operations and cure up yaws by an
injection of penicillin, but they're willing to put
him along at least with Albert Schweitzer, but
he is not God.
My brethren why can't we be honest with
ourselves?
I have a great deal more respect for
an out and out unbeliever who stands up
and smiles and says I respect your faith,
but I don't own it, I don't have
it, that can say with Emerson why should
the robe on him allure which I could
not on me endure.
He said why could I?
He said I love a church, I love
a call, I love a prophet of the
soul, yet not for all his faith can
see would I that good cleric be.
Why should the robe on him allure which
I could not on me endure.
I confess I'm modernizing the English, but that's
it generally.
And the man said now I respect your
right to believe.
I don't care what you believe, but I
just don't believe it.
I respect that man.
I could shake hands with him and live
alongside of him and borrow his hose and
lend him my grass cutter, have no trouble
with him and be perfectly tolerant, and he
with me and I with him.
But what I can't understand is the person
who says I am a Christian and then
denies or doubts or holds in foggy uncertainty
the deity of the Son of God.
Now brethren, why don't we do one thing
or the other?
Why don't we get over onto one side
or the other?
If the people of the Lord or the
people who claim to be people of the
Lord were just to get over on one
side or the other, what a fine housecleaning
we'd have.
There wouldn't be any trouble, no difficulty.
We wouldn't fight and we'd still be Americans
together, but at least we'd know where we
stood.
So many of us, we don't know where
we stand.
Now, when they said Jesus was God, the
old scribes of Jewish days thought he was
blaspheming.
The Unitarians of the day reject his deity,
many liberals reject his deity, and many cults
reject his deity.
But the man called Paul, who wrote as
he was moved by the Holy Ghost, said
we look for the great God and Savior,
Jesus Christ our Lord.
Now either he was wrong or else somebody's
wrong today.
And I have decided that I'm going to
go along with Jesus, who claimed to be
God, and with John and Paul and Peter
and Jude and Luke and Mark and Matthew
and James, who said he was God, rather
than go along with those who doubt that
he is God.
For to doubt or deny the deity of
the Son of God is to reject the
Holy Scriptures.
And you have a perfect right to reject
the Holy Scriptures.
Remember that.
Nobody is bound in any wise to accept
the Holy Scriptures.
You can reject the Scriptures and you'll get
no argument from me whatsoever.
I would never spend one minute of my
time arguing with anybody, not even pleading with
anybody to believe the book of God, because
not all men have faith.
And if you have not been touched by
the mighty Holy Ghost, you won't have faith.
You know, the Presbyterians in their prime taught
election and predestination.
And they believed that when God touched a
man, he believed.
He believed.
When he was touched, he had to have
some work done on him, some previous work
done on him before he could believe.
That's pretty well gone down the drain now,
but I still happen to believe it.
I believe that no man can come unto
Jesus Christ except the Father draw him.
And if the Father draws the man, if
that mystic something settles on the man and
draws him toward the Son of God, he'll
come.
And when he comes, he'll believe.
And when he believes, he'll be saved.
That's Bible, my brethren.
The whole book of Gospel of John teaches
that.
And our spiritual fathers, the Methodists and Baptists
and Presbyterians, taught that.
Well, the Methodists taught it, but not with
such finality, perhaps, as our Presbyterian forebears.
But nevertheless, we live now between two mighty
vents, his appearing to redeem us and his
appearing to glorify us.
This, then, is interim.
It is interim, but it is not vacuum.
I cannot find in my Bible where any
man is ever called to live in a
vacuum, that he is called to live in
a spiritual emptiness, looking no direction.
The Bible says we live in an interim
between two epiphany, two mighty world-shaking events,
the appearing that brought life and immortality to
the light through the Gospel, and the appearing
that shall show to all the world who
is the only potentate King of kings and
Lord of lords, worthy to rule the world.
Now, between those two appearings, we stand.
And you say, well, then, when is this
second appearing going to take place?
Now, you won't fool me like that.
I'm too wise an old trooper ever to
give myself up to a prophecy of when
another appearing will take place.
Frankly, my brethren, I don't know.
I can always answer all questions, either by
giving you information which is reasonably accurate, or
by saying I don't know, and in this
case I say I don't know.
Don't be too hard on people who have
set dates and been fooled, because they meant
well.
But the Lord says, no man knoweth, not
even the Son, save the Father which is
in heaven, he knows.
But we do know that we look for
his appearing.
And incidentally, if you imagine that this is
some kind of cultism or some sort of
strange borderline or fringe doctrine, let me tell
you that the Dutch Reformed Church believes in
it.
Let me tell you that the Presbyterians, the
Methodists, the Baptists, the Nazarenes, the Evangelicals, and
you can just name them up and down
the line, and there isn't one church that
exists today that believes the Bible, but that
also believes that there's to be a shining
forth, another shining forth.
When he who once shone forth, being born
in a manger, will shine forth wearing the
robes of royalty.
Not one.
They have differences of opinion about how it
will take place.
And I, for my part, don't care one
little bit how it takes place.
I haven't the remotest care how it takes
place.
A man called me just before I came
down here, and he said, Mr. Tozer, you
don't know me, but I'm in trouble.
He said, I didn't sleep all that night
last night.
I went to bed at 7 and got
up at 7 and didn't close my eyes
all through the night, and I'm in deep
difficulty.
Will you pray for me?
And I said, yes, I'll pray for you,
and also I want to give you this
verse, that the Lord will not suffer you
to be tempted above what you're able to
bear.
And he said, but you didn't quote the
rest of the verse.
And I said, well, I couldn't quote all
the Bible at one sitting.
He said, I gave you that part of
it.
Well, he said, the rest of it is,
but will with the temptation make a way
of escape.
Now, what is my way of escape?
And I said, my friend, this is just
the neat little way the Lord works with
people.
He promises them a way of escape.
He leads them out and saves them, but
he doesn't show them how ahead of time.
If the Lord were to take you aside
and give you a schedule, or up in
Toronto they'd say schedule, of future events, your
head would get so big there isn't a
hat in Cook County would go down on
it.
Not one.
You would lose your humility and become so
proud you couldn't keep from telling your wife
and everybody else about what you knew about
the future.
So the Lord says, I will make a
way of escape, but you leave the way
of escape to me.
And so the Lord says, looking forward to
his coming.
And I said, when will it be, Lord,
and what will be the sign?
The Lord said, now don't ask me questions.
I, you leave that to me, and you
trust me and I'll take care of it.
Just believe that there's to be a shining
forth.
So I believe there's a shining forth.
And so this is interim.
But what are we to do in this?
Live in a vacuum?
No.
We are to live soberly, righteously, and godly
in this present world.
Soberly, that is my relation to myself.
Righteously, that is my relation to my fellow
man.
Godly, that is my relation to God.
And so there are the three dimensions of
the Christian's life.
Soberly and righteously and godly.
God and others and myself.
And you can't get out of that.
And it's a strange thing that as brilliant
as the human mind is, and as utterly
wonderful as it is, still we cannot escape
these three dimensions.
We cannot get beyond them any more than
you can jump into the fourth dimension in
space.
You've got to stay within them.
Everything that you can think about that touches
humanity in your life, everything has to do
either with yourself, with somebody else, or with
God, and there's no fourth place.
Only three.
That's where you live.
And so we live soberly and righteously and
godly.
Then why, why did the Lord say there's
to be another epiphany, a shining forth?
Why did he say that?
He did it because he that hath this
hope in him purifies himself even as he
is pure.
The Lord did it.
Oh, could we pull an illustration out of
the air?
Suppose, suppose that a man has been away
and, oh, say he's a soldier and he's
been on some duty in some faraway country
in the Far East or in Europe and
he hasn't been home for a couple of
years and he calls transatlantic telephone and says
I will be in at such and such
a time by Air France or some other
of the great lines and I will land
at such and such a field and I'll
take a taxi.
I should be there by 310.
Well, you know what they'll do, mother and
the girls?
They will clean up that house as it's
never been cleaned up before.
They will busy themselves fixing things up and
then the girls will dress themselves up in
their finest and wait for their father.
Now, that's what anticipation does.
It gets you ready or tends to want
to make you want to be ready, may
get your work done and be ready when
he comes.
So he that hath this hope in him
he purifieth himself even as he is our
Lord is pure.
So the hope of the shining forth which
is yet future is not a foolish notion
held by certain cults.
In fact, the very few cults hold it.
It is a doctrine held by our fathers
back to Paul, Augustine and all the church
fathers down the years.
They varied, I say, in regard to detail
and schedule but they never varied one little
bit with regard to the overt fact.
He is coming and there is to be
a shining forth.
And so in the meantime we do show
the Lord's death till he come.
And there you will find is the beautiful
meaning of the Lord's Supper.
I had not planned to bring this up
at all and this is not dragged in
by its ears in order to fit.
But it just here that I have received
of the Lord what I delivered that the
Lord took bread the night he was betrayed
and when he had given thanks he would
break it.
And he said, Take and eat this due
in remembrance of me.
There, that's the remembrance of the epiphany that
was.
And as oft as ye eat this bread
and drink this cup ye do show the
Lord's death till he come.
And there is the epiphany that will be.
So that is one of the meanings among
many of the Supper of the Lord.
That we remember that he died for us.
We remember that he's coming for us.
That he died for us is a fact.
That he's coming for us is a fact.
How his death for us could prepare us
to meet him we do not know.
When he's coming we do not know.
That he is coming we are certain.
So now we do show the Lord's death
till he come.
Only this you say what qualifies a person
for the Lord's Supper?
The answer is soberly righteously godly.
That a man examine himself is he living
soberly righteously and godly in this present world
looking that's all.
That a man examine himself have you been
living soberly?
Or have you let yourself go?
Have you forgot you're a Christian when you
were out on your vacation?
Did you do a lot of things you
wouldn't do if you'd been home?
Strange isn't it how it works?
A tame domesticated Maltese type of husband who
says yes dear, yes dear all year long
goes away on convention.
And the tamer and the more domesticated he
was while staying at home with mama the
more of a long-eared donkey he made
out himself when he got in a strange
city on convention.
Almost always that way.
Now that ought never to be so of
Christians.
Christian is one who carries his shrine with
him.
His sanctuary is in his heart.
And whether he is traveling somewhere to see
relatives out in the mountains for a rest
wherever it is he should never be out
of his sanctuary.
He should be in the holy place because
the holy God is with him living in
his heart.
Lord, I am with you always even unto
the end of the world.
How's it been with you this last week?
Have you lived soberly?
How's it been with you and your neighbor?
Have you lived righteously or have you had
a tiff with somebody two doors away?
If you have, don't take communion this morning.
How's it been with you and God?
Have you kept up your prayer life and
your devotional life and your Bible-loving life?
I don't say you haven't and I don't
ask those questions in a tone of voice
tending to accuse.
I'm just inquiring.
Now our friends, brethren, will meet us and
we will have the Lord's Supper.
We take it once a month in this
church every first Sunday.
It's not for members of this church but
members of the Church of Christ.
And if you qualify in sober, godly, righteous
living and confident faith in our Savior, you
join with us because you're a member of
our church anyway whether we ever saw you
before or not.
Let's gather.