So much, and thank you for your presence
here today.
This fellowship with those who are involved in
the Lord's work is a great and special
privilege to me.
Now, yesterday morning I was trying to open
up something of the first chapter of Titus
in our time together, and I want to
turn this morning to the second chapter of
Titus, although we didn't finish the first one
yesterday.
I want to read with you chapter two
of Titus and think with you about the
theme of that chapter, which has been described
as directions for a faithful teaching ministry.
You will notice how often the word teach
or teaching occurs as we read it.
Chapter two of Titus then, you must teach
what is in accord with sound doctrine.
Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy
of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith,
in love, and in endurance.
Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent
in the way they live, not to be
slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to
teach what is good.
Then they can train the younger women to
love their husbands and children, to be self
-controlled and pure, to be busy at home,
to be kind, and to be subject to
their husbands so that no one will malign
the word of God.
Similarly, encourage the young men to be self
-controlled.
In everything, set them an example by doing
what is good.
In your teaching, show integrity, seriousness, and soundness
of speech that cannot be condemned, so that
those who oppose you may be ashamed because
they have nothing bad to say about us.
Teach slaves to be subject to their masters
in everything, to try to please them, not
to talk back to them, and not to
steal from them, but to show that they
can be fully trusted, so that in every
way they will make the teaching about God
our Savior attractive.
For the grace of God that brings salvation
has appeared to all men.
It teaches us to say no to ungodliness
and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled,
upright, and godly lives in this present age,
while we wait for the blessed hope, the
glorious appearing of our great God and Savior
Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to
redeem us from all wickedness, and to purify
for himself a people that are his very
own, eager to do what is good.
These, then, are the things you should teach.
Encourage and rebuke with all authority.
Do not let anyone despise you.
Now, the title which I think actually appears
on one translation of the New Testament, Directions
for a Faithful Teaching Ministry, really is a
suitable title for this particular chapter of Titus.
At the beginning of chapter 2, the NIV
from which I was reading fails to translate
a strong adversative but, which links the beginning
of chapter 2 with the end of chapter
1.
Paul is describing in that second part of
chapter 1, which we simply read yesterday, the
ruinous effects of false teaching.
And you will realize that this is the
great burden of the Apostle in relation to
false teaching.
It is not so much that it fails
to meet his own orthodoxy, it is the
damage, the moral damage, that false teaching does
in the church of God.
And he is therefore warning them against the
ruinous effects of false teaching.
And Titus, by contrast, is therefore to teach
at the beginning of verse 2 what is
in accord with sound doctrine.
So, the chapter really begins, but as for
you, a common way to link different sections
as it happens in the pastoral epistles.
So, he is appealing in verse 1 both
for a contrast and an accord in Titus's
ministry.
There must be a contrast between Titus and
the purveyors of false doctrine, and there must
be a harmony between Titus and sound doctrine.
You must teach contrary to what the false
teachers teach.
You must teach what is in accord with
sound doctrine.
What that simply means is that there is
a body of truth from which Titus is
not to deviate.
Paul calls it sound doctrine, and the word
sound, as you probably know, is a characteristic
of the pastoral epistles occurring something like eight
times throughout these three letters, not only in
relation to doctrine, but also, for example, in
verse 2 of this chapter to faith, and
in verse 8 to speech.
It really means healthy or whole, and has
the sense of undamaged and free from corruption.
It's a very significant thing, I think, that
Titus is being warned by Paul against the
whole tendency that clearly he sees in the
contemporary situation in the church of moving away
from that body of sound healthy doctrine and
corrupting it, and he is concerned about it,
as I say, because of the spiritual and
moral condition that teaching produces one way or
another in the church, and that is the
basis of Paul's counsel to Titus.
There is no question in our own experience,
I'm sure you will be aware of it,
that the teaching that is ministered in a
particular situation does not just affect the orthodoxy
of the hearers.
It affects the morality of the hearers.
Their whole pattern of life will be formed
and shaped by the teaching.
That, of course, is why the fruit of
the teacher's life and ministry is the test
of what he is doing, because there is
a moral effect in the lives of people
from our teaching.
The content of healthy teaching, therefore, is that
it will match sound doctrine, and it will
produce spiritual and moral health.
The doctrine which is unsound will produce spiritual
and moral sickness.
So the conclusion that Paul draws is that
there is a pressing necessity for wholesome sound
teaching for the sake of the spiritual and
moral condition of the people.
Now you will notice, just for the completeness,
that in verse 7 and 8, Paul deals
not only with the content of the teaching
and its outcome, but with the manner in
which Titus is to teach.
In verse 7, in everything, set them an
example by doing what is good in your
teaching.
Show these characteristics.
So here is the manner of their teaching,
and it is threefold.
One is integrity.
That is, Paul is urging Titus, as he
has several times urged Timothy, that he is
to show in relation to his handling of
the truth the same kind of integrity that
he would show in handling money, because the
word is more often applied to our dealing
with finances than with truth in Scripture.
But you will see the importance of this.
We must be as honest with God's Word
as we would want to be with God's
money.
And if we keep this whole idea of
integrity before us, it will transform the way
that we deal with the truth.
We will no more consider manipulating the truth
in our ministry than we would consider manipulating
the accounts in our church life.
Now it is a very striking thing to
me that very many people will gladly manipulate
the truth, who would never dream of manipulating
the accounts.
But if you are a man or woman
of integrity, your integrity will be seen in
the way you refuse, as Paul puts it
in 2 Corinthians 4, to practice cunning or
to handle the Word of God deceitfully, you
will show absolute integrity in relation to it.
Now that is an enormously important thing, because
what it means is that we will never
allow ourselves to use the Word of God
for our own ends, to teach what we
wanted to say.
And don't tell me that's not a temptation
to us.
We will be under the Word of God
in the sense that we will simply want
to expose it and allow the Word of
God itself to be heard with absolute integrity.
Now that's a very important principle in a
teaching ministry.
The second characteristic of this teaching ministry in
verse 7 is seriousness.
In your teaching show integrity, seriousness.
Now I don't think that that means unaffected
solemnity, nor does it mean the suffocation of
a natural sense of humor.
But it does mean that Paul is anxious
that Titus should never be mistaken as anything
other than serious about God's Word, that he
takes the Word of God seriously, and that
when he expounds and teaches it, he expects
other people to take it seriously as well.
It is therefore an absence of flippancy and
frivolousness about the Word of God.
We are to be serious about it in
our study of it, and in our teaching
of it, or people will not be serious
about it in listening to it.
So we are to handle the teaching with
integrity, with seriousness.
And the third mark also in verse 7,
going into verse 8, is unsoundness of speech
that cannot be condemned.
I think what that means simply is that
the teaching of Titus is to be of
such a kind that the sheer soundness and
wholesomeness of the teaching will itself be so
presented that it will be unanswerable.
I don't think cannot be condemned means cannot
be criticized, but I think it does mean
that it is unanswerable, and you see that
in the latter half of verse 8, so
that those who oppose you may be ashamed
because they have nothing bad to say about
us.
So the quality of Titus' teaching is to
be marked by integrity in relation to the
truth, seriousness in relation to his manner, and
soundness of speech which be condemned.
Now if you come back with me to
verse 2, between verses 2 and 9 there
are five categories of people who are to
be taught in this teaching ministry with a
view to their moral and spiritual transformation.
The primary implication, I think, is that this
teaching which Paul is urging Titus to undertake
must be both sound in content and relevant
in application.
And so he turns to five different categories
of people divided really according to age and
sex and, in the last case, social position.
And he begins with the older men.
You must teach what is in accord with
sound doctrine, verse 2, teach the older men.
Now these are the presbutai, what someone has
called the gray beards, and they are normally
regarded with respect in the community and in
the fellowship.
But Paul is saying that they are to
be in the fellowship, and you can see
how he is spreading this teaching in an
applicatory fashion round every section of the fellowship
of God's people.
They are to be respected because they have
earned that respect.
In other words, respect does not simply come
with age.
It has to be earned.
Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy
of respect.
And so they are to be taught to
be temperate, not only in relation to wine,
I would judge, but as a general restraint
upon self-indulgence.
They are to be taught self-control, the
middle of verse 2, and it's interesting to
see that in three out of the five
categories of people to whom Titus is to
apply his teaching, they are urged to practice
self-control.
You get it again in verse 5 in
relation to the younger women, and in verse
6 in relation to younger men.
But the older men and the younger men
and women are urged to practice self-control.
In some ways you would expect it in
youth, the need for self-control.
But my increasing conviction is that in age
it is every bit as necessary for us
to be disciplined to the end of our
days.
Oswald Sanders, whom most of you would have
known and many of you would have loved,
came to be in our home some months
before he died, and I have never been
more impressed in my life by the sheer
self-discipline and self-control of a man
who was what, 90 years of age at
the time, as in the life of Oswald
Sanders.
It was the secret of so much that
he was, and clearly that is a mark
of what Paul is urging Titus to impress
upon those who are in the category of
the older men.
I don't know if you have come across
Lady Antonia Fraser's biography of Oliver Cromwell.
It's a magnificent biography, and in the first
introductory page she quotes a comment of John
Milton on Oliver Cromwell.
What was the secret of Cromwell's extraordinary life,
of his magnificent gifts in government and leadership?
And she quotes Milton as giving this answer
of Cromwell, he first obtained the governance of
himself.
Now I'm sure that that is the key
to so much effective Christian leadership and example.
He first obtained the governance of himself, and
Paul urges Titus, teach the older men to
be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and
sound in faith, in love, and in endurance.
Now there is the example that they are
to set, do you notice?
At the heart of this is the idea
of being worthy of respect, and that carries
with it one of Paul's commonest ideas of
being an example to others.
And what a glorious thing it is to
covet as we grow older that we might
be an example of such things as these,
self-control, soundness in faith, that is we
have not veered away from the truth in
our conviction.
Sound in love, because so often it is
easy for truth and love to be rivals
rather than friends in our lives.
Or alternatives rather than companions.
And sound in endurance, that is the evidence
of a life where there has been perseverance.
Second group of people in verse 3 are
the older women, likewise teach the older women
to be reverent in the way they live.
Now the whole idea behind this is that
the mark of the older woman is that
she has to have a godly demeanor.
Notice it, teach the older women to be
reverent in the way they live, not to
be slanderers or addicted to much wine, which
seems to have been a characteristic of Cretan
life, and Titus as you know was in
Crete, but to teach what is good.
So they are to avoid these excesses of
the world around them, and to maintain a
godly demeanor.
Now one of the reasons for that is
that they will have a ministry amongst the
younger women particularly.
And you will see again the idea of
a model coming in, just as the older
men are to be worthy of respect, the
older women are to live with a godly
demeanor, so that the younger women will be
taught.
And Paul moves into this third category, describing
this major ministry of the older women to
the younger women.
There are areas, of course, where men cannot
really begin to be true teachers of these
younger women, but the people who are ideally
suited to do so are the older women.
And they are the key to the establishing
of a school of domestic godliness.
Now my dear friends, if there is one
thing that we need within our Christian fellowships
and families in the Church of Christ in
our generation, it is a school of domestic
godliness.
And the older women are to teach the
younger women that they might become self-controlled,
loving wives, busy at home, kind, subject to
their husbands.
And do you notice the reason for that?
It is not simply for the sake of
domestic godliness for its own sake.
It is so that no one will malign
the Word of God.
Now there is, of course, a tremendous evangelistic
impact in a community, as well as within
the wider fellowship of a church, through the
domestic godliness of which Paul is here speaking.
It is for this reason, of course, that
the high and holy calling of a Christian
woman who is a Christian wife and a
Christian mother and a Christian homemaker needs to
be affirmed in our generation.
There is a grave tendency, I think, to
demean the calling of a Christian mother and
a Christian wife and a Christian homemaker, and
to regard it as somehow or other second
-rate, either intellectually or in other ways.
But Paul is urging Titus to teach the
older women such a godly demeanor that they
will in turn become the teachers of the
younger women, so that there may be established
these centers of domestic godliness in order that
no one will malign the Word of God.
Now let me say that within the family
of God's people there is another application of
that whole matter, and it refers not just
to married women and to women who have
husbands and children.
It refers very often, in my experience, to
single women or widowed women who have been
the teachers of the young.
I think of three godly ladies within our
own congregation who have never been married and
yet have been the implements in the hand
of God in creating this very thing that
Paul is here speaking about.
Amongst younger women they have been mothers in
Israel to some of these younger women.
Now that, of course, in no sense denies
the validity of the woman who is called
by God to serve Him in a career.
It in no sense invalidates the particular gifts
that God may give to some women which
are used in other spheres.
My great concern is that our tendency in
the modern world, I think largely affected by
the secular thinking of the godless, is to
demean the idea of the godly woman who
is a mother and homemaker or a mother
in Israel and a teacher of younger women.
So, says Paul, teach the older women to
be reverent in the way they live, not
to be slanderers or addicted to much wine
but to teach what is good.
Then they can train the younger women to
love their husbands and children, to be self
-controlled and pure, to be busy at home,
to be kind, to be subject to their
husbands so that no one will malign the
word of God.
Now to the young men, verses
six and seven.
Similarly, encourage the young men to be self
-controlled.
In everything, set them an example by doing
what is good.
Titus is, of course, himself a young man
and he is to urge the young men
to exercise the same self-control that is
obviously so important to Paul.
And in this, as in everything else, he
is to teach them by example.
That, you will remember, is where Paul told
Timothy his authority would come from.
Don't let anybody despise your youthfulness, he says,
but be an example.
Set an example.
This is exactly the same counsel that he
is giving to Titus.
The point of it is, of course, not
simply that people might ape what you do
in a mindless sort of way.
It is that we all of us have
the need of a model.
And that's why Paul so often says something
like this, be imitators of me as I
am of Christ.
Or to the Philippians, whatever you have learned
or received or heard from me or seen
in me, put it into practice.
Now that is something that we all of
us in some sense need.
And of course, it is an essential part
of the teaching ministry.
We do not simply teach by our words.
We probably teach much more effectually by our
lives.
People read what we are.
And if there is a contradiction, they will
find it more difficult to hear what we
say.
And it may be that we are able
to proclaim and teach convincingly the truth as
it is written.
But clearly, Paul is saying, we need to
be able to bring to people the truth
as it becomes incarnate in our own lives.
And that example, people will be looking for,
my brothers and sisters, they will be looking
for that example.
I vividly remember when I came first to
St. George's Tron, I went into a home
where there was a bereavement and a youngish
man had died.
And his mother was telling me how he
had come to faith in Christ.
And what had happened was that he was
in St. George's Tron during the ministry of
Tom Allen, of whom many of you will
know.
And his mother said to me, you know,
when Mr. Allen came to this church, Stephen,
her son, began to come very regularly.
He came into our home one day.
And when he went away, Stephen said to
me, there is something about Mr. Allen that
is so different from anybody else I know.
And at night, she said, after that, for
years, not weeks, she would be kneeling down
by his bedside with him.
And his prayer was almost consistently this, Lord
Jesus, make me like you and like Mr.
Allen.
I was greatly struck by that because, you
know, I think one of the things that
we greatly need is models of godliness within
our fellowships, so that people will say, young
people, perhaps, young men of older men, young
women of older women, Lord, as I grow
up into Christ, make me like that.
Now, there is no point in saying, ah,
but they ought to have the Lord as
their model.
Of course they should.
But Paul says, be imitators of me as
I am of Christ.
And it's not surprising, therefore, that we find
people like E.M. Bounds saying, while the
church is on a stretch, if not on
a strain, to find better methods, God is
looking for better men.
For men are God's methods.
And while the church is looking for better
methods, God is looking for better men.
Notice the fifth category.
It is slaves, verses 9 and 10.
Now, this is not an age or a
sex group, but a social group, clearly, and
I think we may apply it to two
spheres.
I know there is discussion and difference about
this, but it seems to me we may
apply it to two spheres where lessons are
to be learned from this particular teaching for
our own sphere.
First, to the sphere of the employer and
employee relationship, and secondly, to the difficult situations
and circumstances of all kinds in which people
have to live, because this clearly is one
of these in the first century, the extraordinary
difficulty of living in a situation of the
slave.
And there are certain lessons that Paul urges
Titus that are to be learned within this
context.
One, a humble acknowledgement of our subordination to
others.
Teach them to be subject to their masters
in everything.
The whole business of subordination to others is
one of the areas in modern life where
I think we need to apply the truth
of Scripture to the lives of people.
A ready willingness to be in subordination to
other people.
Secondly, a genuine attempt to give satisfaction.
Teach slaves to be subject to their masters
in everything, to try to please them.
Now, in the whole area of the employer
-employee relationship, this is something that business people
in the city of Glasgow again and again
tell me they are finding so difficult to
inculcate into the lives of those who are
their employees.
And I think it ought to be a
Christian characteristic, a willingness to acknowledge our subordination
to others, and an attempt to give genuine
satisfaction.
Thirdly, a specific refusal to be argumentative or
objectionable, to try to please them and not
to talk back to them.
Now, it's a very significant thing, I think,
that there is arising, certainly this is true
in Britain, within the context of the employer
-employee relationship, a lack of respect for seniority.
Somebody came to me and said the other
day that he wanted to explain to me
why a young man in our congregation for
whom I had written a reference was being
dismissed.
And he came to me and said, I
am being dismissed because I am faithful to
Christ in this place.
And he said, they are dismissing me because
I'm being faithful to the Lord.
Now, very significantly, his boss came to me
because I had written the reference and crossed
the road.
He was in an office building on the
other side of the street.
And he came to me and said, I
want to explain to you, Mr. Alexander, why
it is that I'm dismissing this man.
Well, I said, I'd be very interested to
know.
He said, the first thing I want to
tell you is it's got nothing whatsoever to
do with his Christian faith.
I'm not a Christian, but he said, I
respect the beliefs of people in our company
who are.
But he said, he is one of the
most angular, difficult, objectionable, and impertinent young men
I've ever come across.
He says, he persists in calling me by
my first name in company.
Now, I think this is the very thing
the apostle is saying.
If practical biblical godliness does not make a
difference to somebody's relationship with their employer in
the workplace, that employer is not going to
be impressed by tracts handed to him, or
books given to him, or whatever.
This is the basic thing.
Fourth, a clear stand for absolute honesty.
Verse 10, and not to steal from them,
but to show that they can be fully
trusted.
A visible commitment to fidelity.
Now that's an area where in the modern
world, we greatly need that kind of Christian
testimony.
When I was in New Mills in Ayrshire,
we had a very wild young man who
was converted.
I remember Tom Reese coming to see me
in the very early days of our ministry
there.
When we arrived, there was one converted man
in the congregation, and he was 82.
And he said to me, I have prayed
for 40 years for somebody to come to
this place.
Tom Reese came within the first year or
two that we were there.
He said, you know what I would do
if I were here as minister?
I said, no.
He said, I would pray that God would
raise up a Lazarus.
Now, we prayed that God would raise up
a Lazarus.
You will remember that when Lazarus was raised,
many of them believed an account of him.
And the Lazarus who was raised was a
rough character whom I first met when he
was dead drunk, leaning up against the wall
of the village hotel.
And he became a strong, godly young man
who is now an elder in that church.
But I remember him coming back from an
interview that he had for a job.
He didn't have a job for a long
time, didn't want a job, but he was
a trained car mechanic.
And he went over to a nearby town
and was interviewed.
I said to him, how did you get
on?
He said, absolutely amazing.
I got the job.
I've got it.
First one I've applied for and I got
it.
I said, how did the interview go?
Well, he said, he said to me, why
should I employ you?
Tell me, why should I take you on?
And he said, I said to him, well,
I'm a Christian and there are advantages and
disadvantages in employing me.
He said, the disadvantage to you is that
I'll never work on a Sunday.
And he said, I want to have my
Sundays because I'm a young Christian and I
need to be at church and learn about
God.
So he said, I won't work on a
Sunday.
And if you want me to work on
a Sunday, I don't want the job.
But the advantage to you in employing me
is that having become a Christian, I will
never steal anything that belongs to you, either
in terms of your time or anything in
this garage.
Nothing that belongs to you will I ever
touch and make my own.
And you can rely on the fact that
whether you're here or a hundred miles away,
I will be doing my job diligently because
I'll be doing it for God, not for
you.
He said he gave me the job.
He now is the managing director of a
large engineering concern in Ayrshire, not surprisingly.
But you see, this is this visible commitment
to absolute fidelity.
And it does matter enormously.
Calvin says it is reserved for the gospel
to teach that in the lowliest of all
spheres of life, it is possible to find
a setting where the jewel of God's saving
grace may sparkle.
Now you will notice again, the reason for
this, and Paul repeats this in several places
at the end of verse 10, to show
that they can be fully trusted so that
in every way they will make the teaching
about God our Savior attractive.
Now that is where the teaching is made
attractive, in the quality of the lives of
God's people.
Notice how Paul is concerned with this at
the end of verse 5, in the quality
of living of the godly women.
He says the reason is so that no
one will malign the word of God.
At the end of verse 8, so that
those who oppose you may be ashamed because
they have nothing bad to say about us.
At the end of verse 10, so that
in every way they will make the teaching
about God our Savior attractive.
Now let me, as I finish, turn with
you to what is really the motivation for
such a way of life.
This is a description of what Titus was
to teach.
But the question that arises is how are
people to be persuaded to live in this
way?
How can they be enabled to live in
this way?
Because this is not merely a case of
giving people lectures, and you will notice how
Paul goes on to tell us there is
a simple answer to this question.
How can people be persuaded and enabled to
live in this way?
Verse 11, the grace of God that brings
salvation has appeared to all men.
Now it is only that that will produce
this moral transformation in people's lives which will
command and underscore and validate the word of
God.
It is the grace of God that will
do it.
Not our persuasiveness, not any intellectual conquests of
our own, not our own personal magnetism, but
the moral revolution which is the work of
the grace of God in someone's life.
Now that is why it is so vital,
my brothers and sisters, that in our ministry
of the gospel of the grace of God,
we should be so thorough that people learn
what the grace of God in Jesus Christ
does.
It does not merely alter my eternal destination.
What Jesus Christ was accomplishing by His death
and resurrection was a moral transformation of life.
And one of the problems that people have
who discover that having been converted and then
seeing no transformation in their lives, they go
off to some second stage of experience hoping
that they are now going to find the
power to live a different life.
But the power for the new life is
in the gospel.
And if we have devalued one thing more
than any other in our modern age, we
have devalued the terminology of the gospel.
Do we really believe that regeneration makes somebody
a new creature?
Do we believe that they have a new
nature and that nature is the nature of
God Himself?
Do we really believe that when God redeems,
He delivers us out of the bondage of
sin and translates us into the kingdom of
His dear Son and brings us under His
rule and government?
That is what the gospel is.
And it is the grace of God that
has appeared.
Now you will notice that he uses this
whole idea of the epiphany.
The epiphania is the appearing of the grace
of God.
But notice there is another epiphania in verse
13.
While we wait for the blessed hope, the
glorious appearing of our great God and Savior.
Now notice there are two educative influences.
The educative power of grace, the grace of
God that brings salvation has appeared to all
men.
It teaches us to say no to ungodliness
and worldly passions and to live self-controlled,
upright and godly lives in this present age.
That is the appearing of grace.
But the appearing of glory also has an
educative constraint.
He gave Himself for us to redeem us
from all wickedness and to purify for Himself
a people that are His very own, eager
to do what is good.
Now you see, this waiting for the epiphania
of glory, that has a moral consequence too.
We who have this hope purify ourselves.
That is the point of the waiting for
the coming.
The waiting for the coming of the Savior
does not merely produce intellectual gymnastics about the
time or events of His coming.
It produces moral revolution.
And that is what Paul is saying.
So we live between these two appearings.
We live between the appearing of grace and
the appearing of glory.
And both have an educative transforming effect upon
our lives.
And we need to teach this because the
grace of God teaches us.
The coming glory teaches us to live in
the light of His coming.
So says Paul to Timothy, these are the
things you should teach.
These things encourage and rebuke with all authority.
What a great ministry that encouraging is, incidentally.
I've gone over my time, which is my
habit, but let me say a word to
you about the ministry of encouraging.
Encouraging.
It is a very vital ministry for many
discouraged people in our generation.
There are many discouraged believers living in very
difficult circumstances in the world in which we
live.
Those of us who are pastors, I think
we have a special calling in these days
to encourage the weak and the needy and
the discouraged and those who are cast down,
to encourage them in godliness.
Now we will encourage them by our lives
most of all.
There is no question whatsoever about that.
That's how we encourage other people.
They will look at us, please God, and
they will say, God, if you have done
that for them, you can do it for
me.
But we can encourage them with our lips
as well.
Just let me say this to you.
I have been so thankful to God in
my life for some who have come alongside
me and been encouragers, but I'm intrigued about
one thing, and I leave it with you
and I'm done.
It seems to me that we are best
at encouraging people when they have done well.
When I need encouraged is when I've done
badly and I'm trying to scrape myself off
the floor as it were.
That's when I need encouraged.
But we tend to encourage people when they've
done well.
You know, it comes naturally to us then,
but there is a spiritual encouragement that comes
to people when they've done badly and says
to them in the words of the prophet,
rejoice not against me, O mine adversary.
When I fall, I shall rise again.
When I sit in darkness, the Lord will
be a light to me.
Now get up and in God's name, go
on.
Let's pray together.
Father, for your holy word, we return our
heartfelt thanks to you.
We so often have to acknowledge to you,
Lord, that we feel like kindergarten children in
some graduate school, and we scarcely begin to
fathom the depths of your word.
But we pray today that you would help
us and make us faithful teachers of it
and wise appliers of it to our people
for the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.