Now we've been talking about grace from the
book of Titus, grace of God to bring
us salvation, hath appeared to all men, teaching
us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we
should live soberly and righteously and godly in
this present world.
Grace divine, how sweet the sound, sweet the
grace that I have found, wrote one old
brother.
Another one said, sweet the sound of grace
divine, sweet the grace that makes me thine.
Grace is a charming sound, harmonious to the
ear, said another one.
Now that's the grace of God, and I
have been talking about it these Sunday mornings
and have said that if the grace of
God has reached you, it has taught you
also by inward impulse.
And the first thing that it teaches is
denial.
That is, it teaches to disavow, renounce, repudiate.
And there are two things mentioned here that
are to be renounced, ungodliness and worldly lusts.
Ungodliness means, of course, impiety, irreverence, and whatever
is not of God, whatever God is not
in.
Whatever God is not in is ungodly by
definition.
Un being a negative of God, godly.
Now, the dictates of grace teach us that
whatever is ungodly, whatever is ungodly is forthwith
to be renounced.
Impiety, irreverence, forthwith to be renounced.
And it is to be renounced even if
accepted, say, at school.
We spend an awful lot of our time
in the hands of pagans, an awful lot
of time.
We start in the preschool classes with finger
painting.
And we end up with a Ph.D.
taken in some university where the name of
God is about as welcome as the name
of Hitler would have been in the Jewish
synagogue.
And the schools place their approval tacitly or
overtly on lots of things that are still
not of God.
God isn't in them.
They're ungodly.
Either we're not to be Christians, or else
we are to renounce these ungodly things even
if for upwards of 20 years we have
been taught that they're all right in the
schools.
We are to renounce them even if they
are set to music, on TV or radio,
and many of things are set to music
on TV and radio that are irreverent, ungodly,
godless.
But God isn't in them.
And the fact that they are set to
music or illustrated doesn't make them good.
The Christian's got to have backbone.
And if you know there's one kind of
person that will never get to heaven, and
that is the one without a backbone.
The fellow that has no backbone will never
make it through, because it takes a certain
amount of backbone to deny when everybody else
is affirming and to affirm when everybody else
is denying.
Anybody that thinks a Christian is a weakling,
he's never been a Christian.
He's never been much around Christians.
Any dead fish or dying fish can turn
over on his back, float belly up with
the stream.
But a salmon goes up the Columbia River
over falls high as this building.
And the Christian, the grace of God, and
the word of God unite to teach us
that we are to deny ungodliness and renounce
it for good, even if it is practiced
by celebrities.
The saints and prophets of the day are
the celebrities.
And some celebrities practice things that are ungodly.
And the fact that they are practiced by
widely known people doesn't in any wise mitigate
the ungodliness.
They're still ungodly, denying ungodliness.
And all ungodliness is to be denied by
the Christian, even if it is found in
classic literature.
The fact that Boccaccio or somebody else wrote
it doesn't make it good, doesn't make it
godly.
It's still dirty if it's dirty and it's
still ungodly if it's ungodly.
And it isn't better because it's found embalmed
in classic art.
Go to the Art Institute and you'll find
some things God isn't in.
And every Christian's to have backbone enough to
be sneered at for repudiating such things.
And even if they're approved by our friends,
good kind friends who love us, and even
if they're practiced by church people, they're still
wrong.
And even if they're defended by priests or
pastors, and outside of murder and adultery, I
don't suppose there's any sin anywhere that some
priest or pastor won't come out in favor
of.
Shakespeare said the devil could always quote a
text for a purpose.
He must have gone to church sometimes anyhow,
or been among religious people.
Now, if this sounds severe, what I'm saying
to you, my friends, remember what Jesus said.
If thy hand offend thee, cut it off.
If thine eye offend thee or cause thee
to stumble, pluck it out.
For it's better to go to heaven with
only one eye and one hand than to
go to hell having two of each.
And if you just turn back a page
here, 2 Timothy, Paul says, I charge thee
therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ,
who shall judge the quick and the dead
at his appearing and his kingdom, preach the
word, be instant in season, out of season,
reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering in
doctrine.
For the time will come when they will
not endure sound doctrine, but after their own
lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers having
itching ears.
And they shall turn away their ears from
the truth and shall be turned down to
fables.
Watch thou on all things.
Endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist,
make full proof of thy ministry.
And then the second is worldly lusts.
Of course, the old word lust in English,
and I've looked it up in Hebrew and
Greek, and it means about the same thing.
It is the word, the original word, which
was translated lusts, means desires, pleasure longings, pleasure
longings, longings for pleasure.
Now these are identified elsewhere in the New
Testament by modifiers.
I have gone over the New Testament to
find them, and there's a modifier called foolish,
foolish lusts, another one called hurtful lusts, fleshly
lusts, ungodly lusts, former lusts in your ignorance,
youthful lusts, and lusts that warn you members.
Now these are here, and they're natural to
fallen man, perfectly natural to fallen man, that
he should have foolish, hurtful lusts, fleshly, ungodly
lusts.
And of course, because they're natural, they're defended.
Defended and excused by the psychologists and the
sociologists and the modern writers and the marriage
counselors and consultants.
But the Christian doesn't ask advice about them,
he renounces them, because he's taught both inwardly
and on the pages of the book.
He's taught on the pages of the book
to renounce worldly lusts, and he's taught by
the spirit in his heart to renounce worldly
lusts.
And so when he picks up a book
excusing worldly lusts, he shuts it up and
turns it away from it, because he's taught
inwardly and by the book of God.
Now, God doesn't leave us there.
He says we're to deny, and I've borne
down heavily upon that, but he doesn't leave
us there.
God never calls us to dwell in a
vacuum, and he never calls us to sterile
negativity, negativeness, nothingness, not doing things, not being
ungodly, not being lustful, not being unbelieving.
He calls us away from those things to
something else.
He doesn't leave us in the vacuum.
He calls us out that he might bring
us in.
And so the indwelling spirit and the Word
agree that we should live.
There's your positive word.
Deny, there's your negative word.
Live, there's your positive word.
And just as this electric light has a
negative and a positive pole, and if it
doesn't have both, we have no light, just
as this recorder must have that has both
negative and positive.
And if you don't have the two, you
don't have a recorder.
So the Word of God teaches us that
there should be held in suspension the two.
We must say no and yes.
No to the ungodly, yes to the godly.
Perhaps somebody could get me a glass of
water.
I got a little laryngitis last Tuesday night.
I haven't been able to get free from
it.
I'm not sick, and I'm not discouraged.
I'm just hindered.
Now how shall we live?
I remember hearing Churchill one time during a
war make a speech and he coughed all
the way through it.
I remember that and it gives me a
little consolation to know that the great winning.
Thank you, my friend.
I don't know that cures what I have,
but it may help.
I never like to drink water while I
preach, because it makes me self-conscious.
I always remember a story about the windmill
that ran on water.
Now how should we live?
How should we live?
Well, thank God, live, live, live.
Get that word, live, live.
There's a good positive word.
Live.
We should live.
Couldn't live before because we were dead.
Now we can live.
Well, we shall live soberly, righteously, and godly,
and in this present world.
Here we have, and I'll be brief with
it, the Christian's three-dimensional life.
These are sobriety, righteousness, and godliness.
There are your three dimensions for the Christian.
Sobriety, which means temperance and self-control, this
is the self dimension and has to do
with our relation to ourselves.
A man who can't control himself, you're not
going to make much of a Christian.
Sobriety, self-control, temperance, self-mastery, this is
the self dimension.
This is Christianity as relates to me.
Then there's righteousness, which means justice, honesty, loving
-kindness.
That's the other's dimension, or it's Christianity as
it relates to others through us.
Then there's godliness, and this is the God
dimension, our relation to God, faith, reverence, and
love.
And on those three dimensions, men live.
Christians live if they deny ungodliness and worldly
lusts.
But if they do not deny ungodliness and
worldly lusts, then they're all confused and mixed
up.
If they do not deny ungodliness, they can
join a church, but they can't have godliness.
And if they do not deny worldly lusts,
they may join the church, but not have
sobriety, or temperance, or self-control.
And if they do not have godliness and
sobriety, how are they going to have righteousness?
So we find ourselves dwelling there in this
triangle, or these three dimensions.
Sobriety, that's self-control.
We're not much of a people for self
-control now.
They believed in it once, sober, serious people.
And now, an un-sober, uncontrolled, lawless generation
is writing books about those serious-minded, self
-controlled, disciplined men who lived their Christianity like
a soldier.
They're writing now, I Remember Papa, One Foot
in Heaven, Chicken Every Sunday, How I Got
On with Grandpa, the young smart alecks of
the day, who are living in Sodom, in
lusts and sinful self-indulgence, now write serial
comic books about the old Puritans and the
men of God who said, let's do right
if the heavens fall.
And they show some of their extreme and
radical beliefs.
They had radical beliefs, I suppose.
Lot was a radical in Sodom, and Noah
was a radical before the flood.
Daniel was a radical in Babylon.
Luther was a radical in Germany.
John Wesley was a radical in a rotten
society in England.
Maybe they were radical, but they were sober
men who were full of the Spirit and
who controlled themselves.
Incidentally, that book of Proverbs, I don't want
to steal any of the thunder of the
brother who will be giving a series on
the book of Proverbs to the young people,
but that book of Proverbs deals with that
kind of life.
It's a grave life.
Life to the book of Proverbs is a
serious thing.
There's no yak yakking and no empty laughing.
In fact, it calls laughter, the laughter of
fools, it says, is like the crackling of
thorns under a pot.
You ever take dry thorns and light them
and put them under a pot to try
to cook an egg?
Notice how they crackle and pop in all
directions and then die down.
The old man of God said that's the
way of the laughter of fools.
Well, sobriety, that's self-control, you know, the
Holy Ghost is in you and you're living
right.
That's your self-dimension.
Then there's righteousness, your attitude toward others.
The Spirit teaches us both in the word
and in the heart that we're to live
righteously toward others.
Don't cheat others, don't rob others, don't lie
about others, don't gossip about others to their
harm.
And then there's godliness, faith, I say, and
reverence and love.
That comes first, our attitude toward God's first,
but it's put third here because it starts
with self and goes up.
I am last, my neighbor is next and
God is first.
God is first, my neighbor's next and I
am last.
That's the way it's supposed to be in
the Christian life.
Somebody said, what a cold and colorless life
we'd live to be sober and righteous and
godly.
That's just where you're mistaken, my friend.
That man who fell out with his wife
here yesterday or day before yesterday went to
get her.
She wouldn't come back, he drew a gun,
she started to run, he started to fire.
And he hit her a few times, I
guess, didn't kill her, and then turned around
and blew whatever that was he had in
his head out.
It wasn't brains because his brains were cooked,
steaming with with fury.
They want me to believe that that is
superior to the self-controlled, righteous, God-fearing
man who lives his holy life so he
dares to die.
They want me to believe that bunch of
shapely mares out in Hollywood who neigh over
the fence, the shapely stallions out in Hollywood,
they want me to believe that they are
superior to those serious-minded fathers of whom
we now make fun and about whom comic
books are written, who walked with God and
were not, for God took them.
If you want to get your faith up
and get your heart helped, go to Plymouth
where our fathers landed and read the tombstones.
Go on up on the hill and read
the tombstones.
That's all I want you to do.
That's enough for a day.
That's Bible enough for a day.
You get more text there than you get
in the University of Chicago.
Right there on the hill, men of God
lived there.
They had their good old bishop's Bible along
with them and said the King James was
modernistic.
But they carried their King, their Geneva Bible
along with them.
They read it.
Righteous man, sober man, godly man.
Don't forget, my brethren, that their states were
founded mostly by sober men, godly men.
A nation was whittled out.
This is close to the Fourth of July.
I can wax patriotic and say this nation
was whittled out by men who held God
in reverence and held their neighbor in loving
affection and held themselves in control.
The other kind went along for the ride.
But the nation was founded by the other
kind, this kind, the sober, the righteous, the
godly.
And our hospitals were founded mostly by that
kind of people.
The very word hospital comes up out of
religious context.
When they marched from Europe at the preaching
of Peter the Hermit and marched for Jerusalem
and went in there, they built hospitals and
called some hospitalers.
And almost every alleviation of human suffering and
woe that's known in modern society has sprung
up out of the Christian ethic.
Sober, the righteous, the godly people.
When the human heart goes free and the
human brain runs away, and we have atom
bombs, hydrogen bombs, death rays, bacteriological warfare, destruction
of cities.
No, my friend, the Holy Ghost isn't calling
you to negativity.
The Lord is calling you to live.
Hear that word, live.
But live soberly and live righteously.
And the word righteous, always remember, is not
a negative word.
It's an explosive, dynamic, positive word.
The man who determines to live righteously in
this unrighteous world is going to have a
full-time job on his hands.
Say nothing to do, you live righteously in
an unrighteous world and you'll have something to
do.
So I call you to renounce.
Renounce what?
Renounce your prison and take all of God's
great out of doors.
But until you've renounced your prison, you'll never
go free.
Renounce your chains, take all the infinite, limitless
liberty of God.
And renounce your darkness and take all the
shining light of God that shineth more and
more unto a perfect day.
Sweet the sound of grace divine, sweet the
grace that makes me thine.
And that's what the grace of God teaches.
It teaches where to be good people, loving
people, generous, kindly people, God-fearing people, self
-controlled people, with temperance and sobriety as a
part of our natures.
But at the same time, I have all
the freedom of God's vast out of doors,
and all the liberty of the sons of
God.
And all the shining light, the light of
the world pours on us.
Amen.
Now next week, I want to talk about
the second coming of Christ, looking for that
blessed hope and glorious appearing.
That'll be next Sunday morning, the Lord willing,
at the morning hour.