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I'm glad you've arrived at the end of the book of Titus, Titus chapter 3, day 5.
We're going to be looking today at these verses that sort of close up the book,
but there are some things in these verses that really hit the practical life of
faith. But before looking at verses 12 to 15, just a quick question about the
book of Titus.

Why is Titus in the Bible? If you read through the Bible, you'll find that most
of what we read in Titus, we also read in Timothy. So why do we have it from two
places?

Paul wrote Timothy as somebody who was leading a group of churches in an area,
and he told him how to handle false teaching, and he told him how to bring new
leaders into the church, and he told him how to be devoted himself as a leader,
as a follower of Christ. And he also writes Titus, who's leading a group of
churches, and he tells him how to develop new leaders, he tells him how to
handle false teaching, he tells him how to be devoted. Why are there both books
in the New Testament?

It's interesting to me, I don't know all the reasons, by the way, it's in the
hand of God, but it is interesting to me that the New Testament is intentionally
repetitive. God says it more than once, maybe because I need to hear it more
than once to really hear it. That's why there are four gospels.

There could just be one gospel, you could just call it the gospel. Maybe Matthew
wrote it, maybe Mark was the one that was used to write it, maybe it was Luke.
But they wouldn't be named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, they'd just be named
the gospel of Jesus Christ, and we'd know that Matthew happened to be the
writer.

No, we have it named by the four different people that were involved in the
writing of these gospels. Why? So we could hear it four times.

So we could hear it from four different perspectives. So we could hear it in
four different ways. There's something about being repetitive that helps me to
hear the truth in a better way to live the truth.

Same thing is true with Timothy and with Titus. It also, by the way, on a
broader perspective, increases the reliability of the truth. When I see it in
these four different ways, it's like having four different eyewitnesses to the
truth of God in our lives.

Now with that in mind, let's jump into these last verses in the book of Titus.
First some greetings that Paul gives in verses 12 and 13. He says in verse 12,
"As soon as I send Artemis or Tychicus to you, do your best to come to me at
Nicopolis, because I have decided to winter there.

Do everything you can to help Zenos the lawyer and Apollos on their way and see
that they have everything that they need. " Lots of names in these verses,
Artemis and Tychicus and Nicopolis and Zenos. I always say to people, when you
see a lot of names in a verse, you're in a small group Bible study and they say,
"Would you read this passage?

" And it happens to have 57 names in two verses. And you think, "I'm never going
to get all those names right. " Here's my advice to you, read them confidently.

Even if you read them wrong, no one else knows how to pronounce them either. So
they're all going to think, "Oh, that's the way you pronounce that name. " If
you read these names in these verses, they really talk about the friendships of
Paul.

Paul served God in a team. If you have any idea in your mind that Paul was the
lonely apostle out there and it's just him and God, him and Jesus, and they're
out there making a difference in the world for God's sake, you've missed the
point of the New Testament, missed the point of Acts. Paul served in a team.

And if you want to make a difference for God in your life, you have to serve in
a team. The names of people here, we don't know all that these people did.
Artemis, he's unknown except for in this one mention.

We don't know how he served Paul or what he did together with Paul, but we know
that he served. Tychicus, he is well known. We hear him at the end of many of
the New Testament letters.

He helped to pen some of these letters. I don't mean he helped to write them, I
mean he acted as a scribe for Paul. He was also one who acted as a mailman.

He took some of these letters, but he was more than scribe and mailman. Here
it's either Artemis or Tychicus who is going to stay and continue to lead these
churches. So from doing the details of life with Paul to the great leadership
moments of life, helping to lead these new churches, they were involved in it at
all.

That's what it means to be part of a team. You do the little things and you do
the big things. Here you have Zenos mentioned.

It's the only mention of a lawyer in the Bible. And I know there's a lot of
lawyer jokes out there and here might be an opportunity for one. But instead of
that, it's just a reminder that God uses whatever profession he has trained us
for.

He can use it for his sake. He says not just Zenos, but Zenos the lawyer and
that says to me that somehow the fact that he was a lawyer not only identified
him, but also somehow it was part of how God used him in the New Testament
church. And then he also mentions Apollos, Apollos a teacher along with Paul, an
interesting relationship in his life of partnership, a lot of different
relationships in these few verses.

These relationships all go to the fact that God wants you to serve him together
with a team. Who's your team? Who are the other people in your life?

They may be some of them in your family. They may be in your church. They may be
people that are far and wide that together you encourage each other in living
out the life of faith, being and doing what God wants you to be and what God
wants you to do.

Now in verse 14 there is this one final word on the life of practical faith.
Verse 14 says, "Our people must learn to devote themselves to doing what is good
in order that they may provide for daily necessities and not live unproductive
lives. " We've read a lot about devotion in this chapter.

I said at the beginning it's about being devoted. We want to be devoted to being
subject to the community that is around us. Here be devoted to doing what is
good.

Why? To provide for daily necessities. This is talking about your job.

Do good things. Earn a good salary if you can so you can live a productive life.
Don't live an unproductive life.

Live a productive life. Now this isn't capitalism. That's not what this is
talking about here.

This is living out the life of faith. And there are some in the early church who
had mistaken the life of faith for a life of laziness. They thought Jesus Christ
is coming again at any moment.

So that means that I can quit my job. That means I can take whatever little I
have saved and for them that meant food in the store room and I'll just eat on
that the next few weeks or the next few months and then Jesus will come again.
The command in the New Testament is whenever Jesus comes again you want to live
a productive life right now.

That's part of faith. It's part of your witness. Providing for the daily
necessities, not living unproductive lives because that is part of the witness
that you have in this world.

However strongly you can talk about love, however great may be your spiritual
accomplishments. I went to this retreat. I prayed for this long.

I read through the Bible this quickly. I wrote this kind of stuff in my journal.
If you want to really reach the world for Jesus Christ you also have to connect
with the world and the world's working.

The world's producing. The world's working for you and producing for you and if
you rely on their work and their production without you working and producing in
some way that helps them then you've lost your witness. That's what Paul is
saying here.

That's what Paul is helping us to understand here. So you think well as a
Christian why should I work really? Why should I do something that seems so
menial?

Some of you have a job. As you listen to this it doesn't seem like what you're
doing really makes much of a difference for eternity's sake. You never know.

You never know how somebody else is watching you. You never know how the fact
that you're willing to do that and still have a smile on your face because of
God's blessings in your life is changing somebody else's life. Many many many
times you earn the right to be heard by these small acts of kindness that you do
and your work may very well be one of those small acts of kindness that is done
for someone.

So do it in kindness. Learn to devote yourself not just put up with doing what's
good but you devote yourself to doing what is good because you recognize the
good that God does through it in your life. Well then Paul ends the book verse
15 he says everyone with me again he's part of a team there's others that are
with him.

Everyone with me sends you greetings. Greet those who love us in the faith.
Grace be with you all.

To me the most amazing word is grace. At the beginning of this book we heard
about the grace of peace of God and Jesus Christ and here at the end it's grace
be with you all. Grace at the beginning grace at the end and there was grace in
the middle salvation that God gave us through Jesus Christ.

That's how I want to live my life. That's how I'd like you to be able to live
your life and that's how I believe you want to live your life. Grace at the
beginning grace at the end grace in the middle.

The only way I know to do that is day by day moment by moment even grace at the
beginning of the day recognizing God's given me this day as a gift and he's
given me salvation as a gift so I can live it in a different way than I would
have lived it otherwise. And grace at the end of the day recognizing whether by
my standard I succeeded or failed in that day or even by God's standard. There
was a sin in my life that day that grace covers it all that it was a day of
grace but also grace in the middle not just not just settling for it being a day
of grace but asking that the grace of God and Jesus Christ would motivate the
good works that he wants to be worked in my life.

I'm not motivated by guilt. I'm not motivated by fear but God please help me to
be motivated instead by grace grace in the middle. Ephesians 2 8 9 tells us that
God saved us not because of anything we've done but because of his grace in
Jesus Christ so that having been saved by that same grace we would be able to do
the good works that he is prepared for us to do.

That's the grace in the middle of every day starting by grace ending by grace
living by grace. That's how you really make an impact. This book is all about
how to make an impact and we've talked about being selective in what you hear
being attractive and how you are who you are being devoted to the things that
God wants us to be devoted to.

If that today seems overwhelming in any way go back to grace. You start with
grace you end with grace you live with grace. Let's pray together Jesus thank
you for your grace the grace that's poured out on us because of the cross the
grace that comes to us because of your love and I pray that your grace would be
the mark of my life.

We pray together that your grace would be the mark of our lives this day. Let my
life be marked by grace. Let my actions be marked by grace.

Let my conversations be marked by grace. Let my mistakes and my sins even be
marked by grace recognizing I'm forgiven recognizing I can be restored. Let my
life be marked by grace Jesus in your name amen.

That finishes this book of Titus I hope that next week you will continue with us
as we continue in daily drive time devotions or you'll go to drivetimedevotions.
com it's drivetimedevotions. com and there you can pick any of the books that
we've already done and study that book.

I am thrilled that you made it all the way through the book of Titus. says about
your heart your life that you want the word to impact my life you want the word
to impact your life and that is my prayer as we go forward let God's word impact
our lives for God's glory.