Latest / The Daily Word / June 29 – To the Pure
Transcript
- Cory: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, good wee hours of the night. Whenever you are joining us, welcome to the Daily Word Podcast from Lakeshore Christian Fellowship. My name is Corey Barnes. It's my privilege to pastor our Katawa campus, and I'm excited to be sitting down with you for another Daily Word episode where we're going to be doing a devotion based out of the New Testament portion of the Bible reading plan that we're joining in together on as a church. Now, today is June the 29th, and we are jumping into the book of Titus today. Now, whenever I ⁓ start looking at a new book of the Bible for a read-through, I always like to find out something, look into ⁓ some of its context, its author's objectives, like what were they trying to accomplish with this book, and maybe even an overview of. Of, like, the author's flow of thought and the logic that they used in composing ⁓ this book. Now, one really convenient resource that I use all the time ⁓ for this is the Bible project. You can find their videos on YouTube. Most of you are probably already familiar with them. They have little 10-minute animated videos with With a guy explaining ⁓ the purpose and objective and what different books of the Bible are all about. ⁓ the videos run about 10 minutes. Now, some books of the Bible that are bigger have more videos, ⁓ but most of them just have one. And it's a good way to have ⁓ get some grounding before you start jumping into a book. And with that in mind, let's cover just a little bit of the context of Titus. ⁓ this is Paul's letter. To Titus. And you know, we just finished up first and second Timothy. And just like Paul sent Timothy to kind of pastor and oversee the church network in Ephesus, now Paul is sending another spiritual son of his, Titus, to do the same thing in Crete, which was an island off the coast of Greece. And this letter contains some instructions that Paul is giving to Titus about how to get the churches where they need to be. Now, in this first chapter, we can see that Crete has run into that old pesky circumcision group that has been dogging Paul's heels in so many different places. Now, I want to make this clear. ⁓ Yes, Paul called them the circumcision group, but it's understand it but it's important to understand that while they did have the label circumcision, it's not like that's the only issue that these guys were focusing on. No, what they were doing and teaching was that if someone wanted to follow Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, then they had to follow all of the old testament laws and Except Jesus, and that was the only way to salvation. So that means that putting the word circumcision in their label, the circumcision group, it was more of a representation. The word circumcision is just a representation of all that they believed. It's not just like that's their only pet peeve. And the verses that I want to focus on for today's devotion actually come from a time where Paul is speaking directly about. About the circumcision group. He addresses ⁓ he's he's talking to Titus about what he calls idle talkers and deceivers, especially the circumcision group. So it's very clear that this is who he's talking about. And in verse 15, I'm reading out of the New King James, Paul says, To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but even their mind and conscience. are defile. Now this is is a verse that ⁓ you'll sometimes people this is a verse now this is one of those verses that you'll sometimes see people pull out of context and they do that in the with this one to justify ⁓ sinful behavior you know to the pure all things are pure man but But but sin can never be pure. So that's not at all what Paul is talking about here. Remember, Paul's addressing teachings that have been spread in Crete, that it was necessary to follow the law, including like its dietary restrictions, its holy days, and and yes, circumcision, in order to follow Jesus. And Paul's point here is actually just a different way of phrasing the same rebuttal. We've seen him employ other places in his writings to deal with that are with to deal with to deal with that teaching, namely that Jesus' sacrifice was all sufficient and that is all that is needed to be made righteous. His his logic here in Titus is that Jesus has purified those that believe in him, and to the pure all things are pure, even the The things that Jewish society would deem perhaps not to be sinful, but definitely to be impure. And while all things are pure for the pure, those that are defiled and unbelieving, aka non-Jesus followers, absolutely nothing is pure, down to their mindsets. And consciences. Now, for us today, as Christ followers, this is some good news that we've seen Paul present time and time again, namely that we have been made righteous by faith in the finished work of Jesus. And because of that, it doesn't matter if we eat pork chops or if we go to church on Sunday instead of Saturday. To the pure, all those things. Or pure. And and that brings us to the the application portion of today's devotion. And I guess it's another time that we look and ask ourselves some questions and do some introspection. Namely, are are there any areas of our lives where we are trying to earn the righteousness that Jesus has provided for us by checking all of our boxes and And and doing all the right things, or are there any areas of our life that while they're not they're not sin and we've never actually experienced the Holy Spirit convict us about those things, but but they're still like a source of of shame and they make us feel like we aren't worthy, areas that maybe we aren't doing something we we feel like we should be doing. Or maybe we are doing something that that it's not sinful, but we we don't feel like we should be doing it, even though God's never spoken to us about that thing. And I know that this application for this devotion isn't isn't all that different than than some of the applications we've done in in the past with Paul's writing. And I think that's because ⁓ this is a theme Paul hit on a lot throughout his writing. It's a foundational. Topic, belief for the Christian, that righteousness comes by faith, not by works. And it's something that Paul just spilled a lot of ink about in many of his letters, wanting to get this across to his audience then. And now it's something that we can see the Holy Spirit quickened him to write about so many times. Because we need those reminders for ourselves. Because I'll be honest with you, even today, being a pastor who's who's known Jesus for 25 years, I still struggle from time to time with these things, feeling like I have to earn things from God, or feeling like I'm not doing enough for him, even when he hasn't asked me for more. These are things that I have to return to and remind myself of. That everything I have that comes from him is a gift and I don't earn any of it. I just say yes to what Jesus has already provided for me. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for sending Jesus to die for us. I thank you that through his sacrifice we were washed pure. We were purified from the corrupting influence of sin in our lives. We have freedom and power to overcome sin. And I thank you, Jesus, that because of that, all things are pure to us. Not sin, because you you are quick to convict us. On that, but all the other things that's that's pure to us, Lord. I thank you, Jesus, that you have given us liberty, you've given us freedom to live pure lifestyles and to pursue you. So we just praise you and we thank you, Lord, that you gave us everything we need to follow you, to live for you, to have relationship and connection with you through the sacrifice. Of Jesus Christ, and there's nothing we have to earn. There's no works we have to do. There's no list we have to check off to get those things. It's just by faith. ⁓ Jesus, thank you that every time we come to you, every time we open your word, you start revealing things to us. You start speaking to us and showing us new things that help us to live our life and grow closer to you day by day. We love you, Jesus. We really do. Amen.