Instructions for Church Survival in an evil world

I think he's already in trouble. I meant I forgot one thing. I said, He keeps himself in trouble, doesn't he? Yes. Yes.

Oh, he just dig and differ. That's right. Alright. Take your Bibles if you would to Titus chapter three. Titus chapter three.

And I appreciate you being here this morning. They say when the cats away, the mice will play. So, pastor's gone. So, I appreciate you being here today and what I want to look at today, I've entitled our message, instructions for church survival in an evil world. Instructions for church survival in an evil world.

Do you believe we live in an evil world? I do. Do we live in a dark world? We do, unfortunately. And it seems like it gets darker all the time.

I find myself, and I probably said this last week, I find myself more and more saying, I remember back in the good old days. Now, I'm only 49 years old, so some of you are a little older than me and you remember good old days. But, you know, the world seems to be getting darker and more divided and more angry all the time. And so I want us to kind of think about that this morning and how as a church, how as Christians, how can we survive? Testimony?

How can we let our light shine in a very, very dark world? I know you've heard it said before that the light shines brightest in the darkness. And so, you know, if we have a little light, it's very much noticeable in a dark world. I remember years ago, I don't know why I was there, but I went to a caverns up in Virginia. I was with my sister.

That's why I don't remember why I was with my sister there. But we went inside and, it was, you know, you've probably been in these caverns before and what do they do? They get you way down in there and they flip the lights off. They tell you we're gonna turn the lights off and you've, man, you've never seen such darkness. You're way down under the ground.

You can't see anything. And my sister had a camera with her and she couldn't stand the darkness so she turned the flash on, not the flash, but she turned the little flash on the camera and there's this little tiny orange light. And I mean little light just to show that the flash was ready. And when she did that, you could see this, you could see it on the floor. And the tour guide was like, who has a light on?

And that little tiny light that normally you wouldn't even be able to see, it was noticeably bright in there. So that's how our lives are going to be. If we're in a dark world, people will start to notice us. And the brighter we shine for Jesus, the better. So I want us to kind of think about that this morning.

Now, haven't you always heard that men don't know how to follow instructions? Haven't you always heard that? They say men don't follow instructions. Men never ask for directions. I guess I'm not manly enough because I'm a person.

I love to read instructions. Now a family makes fun of me because you know when you get those instructions, you're putting something together and you open up this huge piece. A lot of times it was made in China and it's been poorly translated. I always think those are kind of funny. And I open that out and I even go and do what it says.

First, open and read through the instructions and then it says to inventory all the parts to make sure that you have everything. So I do, I set out all the parts and I follow the instructions. But most of the time, man, we don't like to follow instructions. I remember a few years ago, I was up in Virginia visiting my family and my nephew and my father were going to put together a gas grill and so what did they do? They didn't follow the instructions and they thought they knew how to do it better.

And they're throwing this thing together in record time. You know, they're going to prove how fast they can put it together. They were going to put the wheels on last and there was something about that you had to put the wheels on first because the top part slid over it and then after they did that, they couldn't get the wheels on there. And so then they had locked everything in place and I hear my dad out there with a hammer beating on the new grill trying to get it back apart so he can stick the wheels on it. And then my mom had to tell him, you see, you're supposed to follow the instructions.

That's typical for us men. We don't like to follow the instructions. Well, the passage that I want us to look at today very much reads like a set of instructions. It's going to be step by step of how we deal and it's going to probably seem basic. It's probably going to seem very obvious but I'm going to suggest that for us as Christians, for a very, very long time, we have not been following these instructions.

And I believe that a lot of the problems that we see in our churches today, a lot of the problems we see in our world today are because we haven't been following these instructions. Now, I wish I had time to, I love the book of Titus and it's it's short. You know, you have these three little chapters here and they're just packed full of information, full of good things for us. And I want us to see that even though this was written ages ago, decades, centuries ago, it's just as applicable to us today. This is very, very vibrant, very, very real, very relevant for today as the Bible always is.

So, 2,000 year old writing that yet seems to parallel exactly what we see in our world today. You ever heard the expression, the more things change, the more things stay the same. And so we're going to see that even though this was written all this time ago, they have all these issues that it's going to look a lot like what our world is today. Now, I want us to kind of look and think about the setting of where this is written at for just a little bit. Paul had a relationship with a young pastor.

You know, a lot of times pastors will mentor younger men and they'll bring alongside and they kind of teach them about the ministry. They teach them how to minister to other people. So, Paul had this young pastor friend. He was mentoring and that was Titus. That's why the book is called Titus.

There's a letter written to him and so apparently, Paul was very very instrumental in helping Titus to come to the Lord. The Greek word, if we were if we were to look in chapter one that describes Titus, that Greek word there literally means true son. So, Titus was like a true son to Paul. Like a father in the faith and so Paul and Titus had traveled together to this little island called Crete and that was in the Aegean Sea. Now, it's it's an interesting little place and we'll look at that here in just a second.

The first couple of chapters are filled with instructions that Paul left Titus to help him guide these new Christians. So, it's all like a big instruction manual, a book for Titus to use with these new believers. In chapter one, he talked about false teachers and how they need to to be careful because they're going to infiltrate the church and people might come in and they'll teach things that are incorrect. So, he talks about false teachers and how to be careful. He gives them instructions and qualifications for church leaders and he helps them understand how you would choose leaders.

He talks about once again the importance of sound doctrine and making sure that it's based on the Bible and the teachings of Christ. Then, he goes on in chapter two and he gives some guidelines for Christian living and how Christians ought to stand out in the world. How to maintain healthy relationships, how to have a good relationship in the home and in the church and over and over again, Paul is emphasizing something that we as Christians sometimes are fearful of hearing. Paul is emphasizing good works. Now, brother Al this morning said he loves Ephesians two eight nine but verse 10 as well because we often read Ephesians two eight nine, for by grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.

But verse 10 shows us that we were created for good works. So what happens? No, we are not saved by our works. If we try to save ourselves by our works, scripture even in some places says that all of our works are like what? Filthy rags.

So if we're trying to work our way to heaven, we're going to fail miserably. If we think, Oh, I can attend church. I can give to the offering. I can help orphans. I can help widows.

I can be the best example in my community and that way I can earn my way to heaven. If that's the way we're trying to go to heaven, we will not make it. We're going to fail miserably. It's not by our works. We're saved by grace through faith in Jesus and what he did.

It's like he marked our account paid in full and we accept that payment. That's what happens at the moment that we're saved. But what happens when we're saved, we should have a desire to do good works. We want to show people that we're Christians. We want to show appreciation to God for all of our good works.

And so Paul is emphasizing that with Titus over and over again, Good works, good works, good works. This is why we were created. Now, again, we're going to be talking about the setting here. This takes place on the island of Crete. Now, Crete was an interesting little island about 135 miles long, 35 miles wide.

So not a very, very big place. But what was interesting was on this little island there was about 20 cities. It would have been a very highly, very densely populated area. One historian called it Las Vegas on steroids. So wow, what do we call Las Vegas?

Isn't it called Sin City or something like that? So this place would have probably been very evil, very vile, very, very dark place. It had a reputation for being very immoral. Today, we might call it a liberal city or a liberal place, a liberal island. We might say that it was vile or ugly or dark.

It had such a bad reputation that a word came to be known from it. The people that lived there, they were called Cretans. And so even to this day, some people say, Oh, those kids are acting like a bunch of cretins. In other words, they're just awful. They're being terrible, vile, horrible people.

It's synonymous with evil. You know, like today if you want to search something on the internet, what do we say? I'm going to use Google. Well just like we associate web searches with Google or we associate McDonald's with fast food, well, cretins were associated with evil darkness. And so this is the kind of setting where Paul was.

In Titus one:two, you don't have to look there, but one of the Cretans, one of their own people described themselves as always liars, evil beasts, and lazy gluttons. Wow. Sounds like my brother-in-law. No, I'm just kidding, Debbie. So anyway, just joking.

So we we hear those things and this looks like, you know, we're talking about somebody dark here. This is a terrible environment and you know what was amazing? Churches were being started. Christianity was slowly taking a foothold in this area but you have to see the two contrasts. Over here you have these very liberal, vile, ugly, immoral people and then you have the contrast to that, these Christians that are coming in, are honoring God, that are different, that are honest, that are pure in their lifestyle.

So they were noticeably different. And Paul had left Titus there to encourage these young believers, to help their church grow, to help them go from being an immature church to being a strong church. And literally, here we have a letter from Paul to Titus that's telling him what he needs to do. I think Paul wanted these churches in Crete to not only survive, but he wanted them to thrive. And you know, as we look at churches all across America, there's a lot of churches that are just surviving.

They're just barely making ends meet. They're just barely able to to keep the doors open. Paul didn't want them just to survive. He wanted them to be thriving and vibrant for the Lord. He wanted this to impact an evil place for the Lord.

So, shouldn't we want the same for Christianity in America? Shouldn't we want to see our world transformed the way the gospel transformed some of these cities on that little island of Crete? And it sounds like an awful place. It sounds like the world that we live in today. Our world is seemingly exactly the same way.

You don't have to turn there, but in Judges chapter 21 and verse 25 it talks about everyone doing what was right in their own mind. That sounds like our world today. You know, we have all these different ideas about how life should be and everybody's just doing their own thing. They don't want to follow laws. They don't want to obey.

We want to get rid of police. We want to do this. We want to do that. And so it's a very, very evil and dark place. Now, I'm going to read you a couple of things here that I thought were interesting.

This was a blog post from a Christian writer and he described Christianity in America. And he said it's gone through three distinct worlds or three distinct time periods. Now, want you to think about this and see if this is true. And anyway, it's kind of interesting. He claims that pre 1994, so we're not talking ancient history here.

Pre 1994, Christianity enjoyed a time with a positive view of Christianity. So before 1994, Christians were considered positive. They were good people. Business owners wanted Christians to work for them because they had a good reputation. They knew they were honest.

They knew they were hardworking people. People had a good opinion of churches, of Christians because they thought, well, they're helping society. They're good people. You know, you've heard that expression. You're like, oh that, they're good people.

You know, talking about a family. You can trust. They're honest. So, that's how Christian was before 1994. Then, he goes on and his opinion was from 1994 to 2014, right here in the middle, he thought that Christianity was kind of neutral.

Nobody really had strong feelings either way. They were pretty good people but nobody really was just kind of a neutral idea about Christianity. Then, he goes on and and by the way, he said during that time, Christians weren't necessarily favored. They weren't disfavored either being publicly known as a Christian wasn't wasn't really good or a bad thing. People just pretty much accepted Christianity.

It was part of our history. Then, starting in 2014, over here, he thinks that people had a negative view of Christianity. A negative view of churches, a negative view of all of us as Christians And that being known as a Christian started to be a negative thing. That Christian morals and values became a threat to society, that we were extremists, that we're not good for the public. Agreeing with the Christian morals brings negative consequences today.

So we've gone through these three phases in just the last few years from 1994 to 2014 to where we are today. And I think you would agree we've seen that. Now in the world, Christians were considered old fashioned. We're considered bigoted. We're considered hateful people.

I read across an interesting survey when I was preparing for this message and it's kind of interesting. They asked, they broke the group into two, the survey into two groups. They surveyed Christians, people that claimed to be Christians, and they surveyed people that claimed to be Christians, even atheists. So they asked the Christians to describe Christianity, to describe Christians. And the people that were Christians described themselves as giving, loving, friendly, compassionate, and respectful.

That sounds pretty good. That's us describing ourselves. Then they asked the non Christians to describe Christians and here's what they said, Hypocrites, judgmental, self righteous, and arrogant. Do you see the division there? We see ourselves as being kind, loving, trying to help the world.

They see us as hypocritical and arrogant and hateful, judgmental. They also asked them and one in four Americans surveyed say that Christians they know represent the values and teachings of Jesus. In other words, thought that 75% of Christians did not live like Jesus lived. And so obviously there's a different view between what the world sees and what we think of ourselves. It seems like non Christians would read Titus and think that it's not a lot different than the non Christian world where we live today.

So what I want us to do is I want us to think about that for a second. We see our churches in decline. We see that we're no longer have favored status. We look and people think that we're hypocrites and hateful and they don't want anything to do with us. So how do we survive that?

What do we do? Well, we're going to see here that Paul knew that Titus was going to be interacting with these new believers. He knew that there was going to be challenges for them. There's going to be a real dilemma. And if we're not careful, Paul says we're going to go back.

All these people are going to be tempted to go back the way where they came from, to go back to this evil way of the Cretans. And so they would listen to the world's teaching. They'd get caught up with false teachers. They'd get caught up with the attractions of the world, and then soon they wouldn't even be indistinguishable the difference between Christians and non Christians. I heard a preacher one time say, If you were accused and put on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?

That's an old question. But would people be able to convict us? Are we any different? Is the world noticed? Are we any different than the world that they can even distinguish us?

And so the truth that can help us reverse these trends in America, in our community, in our churches, I think it's laid out here. And so I want to look at that this morning. Step number one to survive in a non Christian world is be submissive and respectful to those in authority. It's probably not what you expect to hear. What do you mean be respectful?

We need to be submissive and respectful to people that are in authority. Look at Titus chapter three in verse one. It says, put them to mind. Now remember, this is Paul talking to his young pastor mentor. Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work.

He reminds them to subject to the rulers and authorities. Now, that's interesting because would the rulers and the authorities in these Cretan cities have been Christians? No. Would they have been godly moral people? No.

And so it's kind of interesting. Paul reminds them to be respectful. Here we have Paul. He's sounding awful lot like a caring father talking to his son in the faith. He's he's called the like a son to Paul and his children.

He's talking to these young believers in the church of Crete and I don't really believe this is anything new for these believers. I think Paul and Titus had encouraged them. You need to be respectful. They had heard this before but I think that Paul wanted to remind them once again of how they needed to behave in an ungodly world. All of you that have children have probably done the same thing.

Have you stood and you know, I've I've sent my girls. They're going to go spend the night with somebody or they're going to go to somebody's house for playdate or to go when they were little a playdate. They're going to go on a trip with somebody and what do you say as they go out the door? Be polite. Be be kind.

Say thank you. Make sure you keep your manners. Don't we tell our kids that? Well, that's basically what Paul's telling Titus to tell the people. Be respectful.

You already know this. You know you need to respect the authorities. You need to be polite. Paul reminds them to be respectful. It's not in our human nature to look out.

It's in our human nature to look out for ourselves more than those around us. And so Paul was telling you need to obey and be submissive. You need to respect people. And that leads us to the second thing. Paul instructs them to be not only, respectful but to be submissive.

Now, what does submissive mean? I looked it up in the dictionary. Because when I think of submissive, the first thing I think of is a traffic circle. And what happens on each side of a traffic circle? I think I said this last week, there's a yield sign.

We don't like to yield. We don't like to yield to other people. We want to go first. We want to speed around and we want to be in the front. Well, that's what I think of when I think of submission.

But the dictionary definition is the act or fact of accepting or yielding to a superior force or to the will or authority of another person. You realize that goes against our human nature. We don't like to yield to anybody. We don't like to yield to God, but we don't like to yield to the authorities around us. And so we have to learn to submit to those in authority.

Now, that's a that principle is all through scripture. You don't have to turn there, but in the book of Ephesians chapter five, it talks about how the husband is the head of the wife and as Christ is the head of the church. And so the church has to submit to Christ just like as a wife has submit to her husband not because men are better but that's just the order that God gave. In first Peter chapter five, the church submits to the elders and we could see the principle there of church leadership and to be submissive and humble to each other. The church members should submit to one another.

We see that in Ephesians chapter five. And it says to submit in the fear of God. So we put everything into perspective and we think about this. God wants us and Paul wanted demonstrate the importance of being respectful and being submissive to those in authority. Once again, in first Timothy chapter two, we can actually see Paul encourages his followers to pray for those in authority.

Is it easy to pray for our politicians? I could ask you all, do you all love our politicians? Raise your hand. I would pretty much guess nobody here would raise their hand. We don't like our politicians.

They're hard people to love and it doesn't matter which side of the aisle you come from, what political party you have. I kind of have a joke when somebody said, you know, what political party? Said, I think they're all crooks. It seems like it. You know, it doesn't seem like there's any honest people in government anymore and there's all this division and infighting and everybody's so hateful and so divided but we're commanded in scripture to submit to them and to pray for them.

Now we'll look at that a little bit more. So we should be submitting people because of who our God is and what he's done for us in Christ. Think about that Christ, God in the flesh submitted to the will of the Father. Christ was put up on a cross to die, to suffer physically. He felt that pain.

He had the father turn his back on him. But what did he do? He submitted. Could he have called down angels? Certainly.

Could he have had the power to get himself off the cross? Certainly. But he submitted. And so he's an example to us. We can see that children are to submit to their parents.

Wives are to submit to their husbands. Right here in Titus, we can see that they're to submit to rulers and to authorities. And so, I think the world thinks that Christians are just out there demanding their rights. We're boycotting this. We're boycotting that.

We're upset about this. We're criticizing this. We're criticizing this. We're arguing over this. We're arguing over that.

And so it's important for us to follow the example we see here in Titus. In Romans chapter 13 verse one, it says, let every soul be subject to the governing authorities for there is no authority except from God and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore, whosoever resists the authority resists the ordinances of God and those who will resist will bring judgement on themselves. Is it just me or is that hard to hear and understand? Now, once again, I'm not talking politics here, but we'll mention politicians.

Boy, it's hard when we see our politicians, whichever party they're from, wherever they're at, take us as a nation in a direction that's far from God. That is really, really hard for us to accept. But you realize here, we have to remember who who allowed them to be in that place of authority. God did. And I think about different examples in scripture where we can see where man had intentions to do evil and then what did God do?

God used it for good. So, we never know how God is going to use what's going on in our world today but we know that these people are not in authority. It's not a mistake. It's not that God lost control and they took over power. God's going to use them and maybe as Christians we just need to submit and understand that.

Paul shows them beyond submission and respect that they need to be involved in their community doing what? Good works. Once again, one theologian points out that the phrase translated to English where it says, Be ready for every good work. It's literally talking about cooperating in matters that involve the whole community. So we as Christians should be the first ones that are out there working hard, the first ones that are out there doing good.

And to put that passage of scripture that tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves, we should be out there doing that. How do we do that? Well, help widows and orphans. We feed the hungry. We shelter the homeless.

We offer help to those that are struggling with addictions. We share the gospel with people. We counsel people that are discouraged. So what's the first thing that we need to do? The first step in survival in an evil world is to be submissive respectful to authority.

The second step though is to be careful how you interact with others. So we're not just talking about leaders and country leaders now. We're talking about our interaction with others. Look at Titus chapter three again. Put those in mind to be subject principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready for every good work.

So that's where we see to be submissive and respectful. Then look at verse two. To speak evil of no man, to be no brawlers but gentle, showing all meekness unto all men. In other words, show humility to all people in meekness. I noticed there's a negative part to this verse.

It tells us how not to act. And then there's a positive part that shows us how we should act. So the first part it says, Don't speak evil. Speak no evil. So that's the negative.

It's telling us, Don't do that. That verb there literally means don't speak blasphemously. Don't blaspheme others' names. One pastor said, what Paul says here is the opposite of our culture's virtues today. Destroy others with your words, fight to have things your way, and show and tell others just how great you are and your ideas.

Doesn't that sound like the world? That's the way people want. I'm supposed to stand up for myself. And Paul's saying, no, submit to others. Be kind.

Don't say evil things of others. There's a Greek word in in verse two. That word that we say blaspheme, it means to speak in a disrespectful way that demeans or maligns. That's what the world does. This is what our leaders do.

And and Paul's saying here, don't speak evil. Don't damage someone's reputation. Don't say untruthful things or don't say things that are harmful or hurtful about that person. And emphasizing how important it is to be careful with our words. Then he goes on and he gives them the positive.

He says to humbly speak, like speak with peace. We need to speak with peace. I gotta tell you, I remember it's sort of like that that passage of scripture that that exhorts us to use kind words. And it tells us that to a a kind word turns away wrath. Have you ever seen somebody?

You can make someone angry with your words. We've all done it. We get in a bad mood and we want to retaliate so we say something to fire somebody up. I'll tell you an example in my own life. I almost feel silly to say this but years ago, my father, he he used to dress up as a clown.

Now, that was not his job although he was always a clown. He didn't need makeup but he he would put on clown makeup and dressed up as a clown. He used to love to go to events and pass out candy to children. I think he he kept up with it. He gave away 3,000,000 pieces of gum in his life or something so the dentist thanked him.

So anyway, dad would always dress up as a clown. He loved it. And he was especially known for dressing up at a local racetrack that had car racing. And I loved car racing as a kid. My dad wanted us to be able to go every week so he figured out it was kind of expensive.

If he dressed up like a clown an hour before the race started, he went to the promoter, talked to him, and they said, Okay, if you do that, we'll let you have season passes for your whole family to go to the races. So my dad's like, Man, that's great. So my dad always I mean my whole childhood and teen years, we always grew up going every Saturday night to the stock car races. Well, I had this little plastic card, a VIP pass and we could go anywhere on the property. We could go in the pits, we could go in the VIP tower.

Had buffet and all this stuff. We could go wherever we wanted. Well, in these days you used to pull up at the gate and you actually used to pay at the entrance before where you drove into the park lot. And so I went one Saturday with my sister, my older sister. And it was just the two of us in the car.

My parents were already there. And my sister was married. She didn't have one of these passes. So they had told my dad, yeah, just show it and they'll let him in. So we get there and the guy at the gate is like, I can't let you in.

And I was like, well my dad's the clown and we have season passes. And he's like, well how do I know that everybody can say that? He got kind of hateful. So I got really snotty with him. And I was like, do you know who I am?

And my sister's like, just pay. They'll give you the money back. I'm like, do you know who I am? And I got really snotty here. I was this young teenage boy and I pulled out my card, my VIP card.

The most embarrassing part is it said by the name instead of putting my name on there it said, clown son. Wow, that's impressive boy. You know who I am? My dad's a clown around here. Well anyway, looking back I feel pretty pretty stupid about that.

But that guy got mad with me because I was snotty with him, he was snotty with me and we ended up having to pay to go in. And I had a season pass and boy I was mad and he was mad and he was up there on the radio complaining about me. Get to VIP Lounge where my parents were and my dad's like, what did you do? And you know, I could have just avoided the whole thing by just being kind and just saying a soft answer but I had to get all mad. And so really the idea is here that we don't need to speak negatively.

We don't need to get all angry and bitter, but we need to speak peaceably. Now, Proverbs fifteen one, I already mentioned this, a soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. Do you know who I am? Yeah, clown son. Proverbs sixteen twenty four says, Pleasant words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the bones.

And so the second thing we need to do is we just need to make sure that we live according to what we see here. Step number three, be sure to humbly remember where you came from. So Paul tells them they need to respect authority, they need to submit to it, they need to live peaceably with others. And then he reminds them, you need to remember where you came from. Look at verse three.

For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving diverse lust and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. But after that, the kindness and love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us by the washing of regeneration, renewing of the Holy Ghost. So you can see there, what's the difference? He says, we were once like that. Paul says, look at who we once were.

So he's reminding these young Christians, don't be upset with these cretins, these evil, immoral people because right before you were saved, you were the same way. And we should remember that when we're in society, when we're out and about and we get angry or we get upset or we see the world, instead of coming across as being judgmental, yes, we need to stand up for what's right. We need to point out sin. We need to make sure we live righteous lives. We don't adapt to the world to become like them but we need to remember where we came from.

We were just like those And, we know we don't need to live like the world. We need to live in obedience to God, but we need to remember where we came from. Instead of being enslaved to sin and deceived, we're now equipped to live for God. Then he tells them, look at what God's done. Now Titus three verse four, but after that the kindness and love of God, love of our God and our savior toward man appeared.

What happened? Jesus came and because of that lives were changed. They were transformed and they were new people. You see, there was a great confusion on the island of Crete. There were these people, if you study scripture, they were called Judaizers.

And it was this group, was called a religious group. And they believed that the only way for salvation was through good works. So the Judaizers are teaching, you gotta work, you gotta work, you gotta work your way to heaven, you gotta do good works. Then you had some other new Christians that didn't understand and they were saying, no, you don't have to do any good works. You don't do works because we're saved by faith.

And Paul showing them here, you have to remember what God did. You have to remember where we came from and only through God's grace are we saved. And then we show the lost world through our good works. The good works don't say this. They don't appease the wrath of God.

But after our sins been paid because of our relationship with Christ, we should work in that way. And so our work serve as an example to those around us. I don't know about you, but when I read this passage of scripture, it's pretty eye opening to me. Here it is written for people living in Crete, a dark place. We live in a dark place, The United States.

Crete was an island 135 miles wide, five miles wide. A tiny place. We live in a country that's thousands of miles wide, but we live in a land that's dark and evil with people that are immoral. And so it would be easy for us to fall into the temptation of criticizing them, But we have to be careful and understand why we're not being perceived as as helpful in this world. Are we sharing the love of Christ with others or are we coming across as arrogant?

Are we coming across as self righteous hypocrites? I want to finish by reading the words to a song. Now, I think this song is pretty interesting because I think it sort of sums up what we see here in this passage of scripture. And if it wasn't for the grace of God, all of us would be just as lost as the dark world that we live in. So we have to remember that and remember where we came from.

But listen to these words and see if this doesn't describe some of Christianity in America today and where we need to be careful. It says, let me finish. Let me see here. Jesus, friend of sinners, we have strayed so far away. We cut down people in your name, but the sword was never ours to swing.

Jesus, friend of sinners, the truth becomes so hard to see. The world is on their way to you, but they're tripping over me. Always looking around but never looking up, I'm so double minded, a plank eyed saint with dirty hands and a heart divided. Think about Scripture how it says that we point out the little speck in somebody's eye when we have a plank in our own. Jesus, friend of sinners, the one who's riding in the sand, made the righteous turn away and stones fall from their hands.

Let the memory of your mercy bring your people to their knees. Nobody knows what we're for, only what we're against when we judge the wounded. What if we put down our signs, cross the over the lines, and love like you did? You love every lost cause, you reach for the outcast, for the leper and the lame. They're the reason that you came.

Lord, I was the lost cause and I was the outcast, but you died for sinners just like me, a grateful leper at your feet. Jesus, friend of sinners, open our eyes to the world at the end of our pointing fingers, but let our hearts be led by mercy. Help us reach with open hearts and open doors. O Jesus, friend of sinners, break our hearts for what breaks yours? You see, that's the world around us.

And I have to admit this is convicting to me because when we see evil people, hateful people, angry people, lost people all around us, it's really easy for us to get bitter. Our sin nature kicks in and we say, Man, I gotta show that person who's right. I gotta show them how they're doing wrong. I have to do this. I have to do that.

Instead, we should be pointing them to Jesus, the friend of sinners. He came to us. He came to us in our need. We saw Him. He offered us salvation and He helped us to be made new and He wants that for all of those around us as well.

Let's remember that as we interact. This is how we can survive as Christians in an evil world. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this passage of scripture. Father, we could look at a lot of examples in our world today that looks so much like Crete.

Father, it's really really easy. Our human nature is to want to correct problems and we need to stand up for what's right. We need to to live as Christians, but Lord help us not to come across as hypocrites. The world sees us as arrogant. The world sees us as self righteous.

They don't see us as loving. And Father, we know that you are a God of wrath. You don't tolerate sin, but Lord, it's not our job to bring down your wrath. You'll do that in your time and in your way. So, father, help us to just demonstrate the love of Christ to to live holy lives, consistent lives, and to share truth with others so that they can come from darkness into light.

Father, I thank you for this church. I thank you for these people that are faithfully here today. Help them, to be able to survive well in this dark world that we live in. Help little Missouri Avenue Baptist Church to be a lighthouse on this corner. Help people in this community to to see that there's hope here.

May we live as Christians, those little Christ that people will notice in this dark world. In Jesus name I pray. Amen. If you're here