From His Heart

Dr. Jeff Schreve: You're on a mission. You may not have known it, but you are. And there's grace for you and there's peace. No matter what's going on in life, you can have peace because God is a God of grace, and God's grace ushers in God's peace.

And when you're on mission with Him and when the going gets tough, and when some people don't receive the truth very well, and they slander you and slam you and do all the things that they can do, you can still have grace. I don't need to fear the future. I just need to do His will because I'm on a mission.

Larry Nobles: Welcome to From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Schreve, who today will remind us that when we become a believer in Christ, we receive a mission assignment for our life from God. Now, it may not be perfectly clear what that is at the beginning, but He'll guide us with clarity as we mature in our faith.

You see, God has a special job for all of His children. The tragedy is that so many Christians don't see it, and they end up kind of floating through life, unfulfilled, dissatisfied, seeking happiness all in the wrong places. Do you know what your mission is? Do you know why you are on this earth for such a time as this?

We're in Pastor Jeff Schreve's series, Setting the House in Order, a study of the book of Titus for the rest of this month. And also today's message, On a Mission From God. Today, we'll specifically learn key tasks that believers are called to accomplish as we carry out God's call upon our lives, our mission. Open your Bible to the book of Titus now, the book just before Second Timothy. And here's Pastor Jeff, who, by the way, is also on a mission from God.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: Paul was on a mission from God, and he told Titus, "You're on a mission from God." And God is saying to us today, "Hey, you're on a mission for Me. There's a reason why you're here, and that's to be on a mission for Me and with Me, to do what I want you to do." I want to share with you four discoveries about your mission, my mission. It's the same mission that Paul had, the same mission that Titus had in a general sense.

Discovery number one: every Christian is called to be God's slave. This letter is from Paul, a slave of God. The New American Standard says "a bondservant of God." The Greek word is doulos. It means a slave. Paul was letting it be known that he is owned by God, a servant, a slave of God.

The scripture says in First Corinthians chapter 6, verse 19, "Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit whom you have from God, and you're not your own? For you have been bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God in your bodies." Now, a slave has one will, and that's the master's will. He has one job, and that's to do what the master says. He has one focus: to please his master.

And that's how Paul lived, and that's how Titus was living and was to live. That's how you and I are to live. And when you train your mind to wake up every day saying, "You know what? I'm a slave of the Lord Jesus Christ. I belong to God. He's purchased me. I'm not my own anymore. I don't get to make my own decisions. Lord, what do you want? What's your will? What do you have for me today? Where do you want me to go? Who do you want me to talk to? What do you want me to say? Because I belong to You and I want to please You," because any good slave wanted to please his master.

So, that's the first discovery on this mission. Every Christian is called to be God's slave. Discovery number two: every Christian is sent by Jesus to be His witness. Paul, a bondservant of God, a slave of God, and an apostle of Jesus Christ. Apostle means "one who is sent." That's literally what that word means.

But now, in the New Testament, we know that there is an office of the apostle. Jesus chose the twelve to be His disciples or His apostles. The office of apostle was something that the Lord set up to lay the foundation for the church. That doesn't exist anymore. One of the requirements of being an apostle was not only were you hand-selected by Jesus Christ, but you had to see the resurrected Christ.

So, you can't be an apostle, I can't be an apostle, nobody can be an apostle today. The Lord doesn't have that today. The Lord doesn't use apostles and prophets like He did when He set up the church. He uses pastors and evangelists and teachers. And so, when we talk about being an apostle, you think, "I can't be that." No, you can't be that, but you know what we can be? We can be one who is sent.

And all Christians are to be apostles in that way, one who is sent. An apostle of Jesus Christ means you're sent by the Lord Jesus Christ. Sent to do what? Sent to be His witness. When we witness for the Lord, "You shall be My witnesses," we just tell people what Jesus did for me, how Jesus impacted my life.

Your story is powerful. And so, God has us on mission to be His witness, to tell people what Jesus has done for us. Now, you witness; you have to keep that in mind everywhere you go because you're on. Everywhere you go, you're to be a witness. You go to a football game or basketball game or a baseball game and you watch your kid play, you remember you're a witness.

And that referee and that umpire is a human being. And you need to witness with your life and let your light shine so that you're not just going off on somebody. And then they find out, "I saw you on TV, you're singing in that choir at that church. You're not a very nice person." That kind of thing is important. You go to the cleaners, you go to the grocery store. You're on. And your job for being on this earth is to be His witness, to let people know that you belong to Jesus.

So, that's our mission: to be God's slave, and we're sent by Jesus to be His witness. Discovery number three: every Christian is commanded, not only to be His witness, but to share the truth. He says in verse one again, "This letter is from Paul, a slave of God, an apostle of Jesus Christ. I have been sent to proclaim faith to those God has chosen and to teach them to know the truth that shows them how to live godly lives."

And then in verse three he said, "And now, at just the right time, He has revealed this message. God's revealed this message which we announced to everyone. It is by the command of God our Savior that I have been entrusted with this work for Him." Paul said he was commanded by God, given authority by God to share the message. So are you as a believer. So am I as a believer.

Not only to be a witness, but then to really share the message, share the truth. See, when you share your testimony, you're just sharing what Jesus did for me. But it goes further than that to really share the gospel with someone. And the Lord's called us to do that and commanded us to do that and empowered us to do that. And so, we have authority to share because the Lord said, "I've given you authority. You are My ambassadors, and you need to be an ambassador for Me and get out there and talk."

Now, as we share the truth, the truth is good news. We've got something really good to share. It is good news. And Paul said he was sharing the truth with folks, and it was good news because it was the news of eternal life. He says in verse two, "In the hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised long ages ago." That's tied into the truth. And so, when you share with somebody about Jesus, you're sharing with them the hope of eternal life.

Now, when it says "the hope of eternal life," don't ever get the idea that Paul was saying, "I'm hoping that there's something out there. I'm hoping that we have life eternal." Because we use that word hope like, "I hope Texas can beat Kansas State Saturday." If my hope of eternal life is the same as my hope that Texas can win a game, I'm in trouble. That's not the way the Bible uses the word hope.

The word hope literally means "confident expectation." In Acts chapter 16, Paul cast a demon out of this little demonized girl who had the spirit of divination. And she was like a fortune teller and people would come to her. And somebody owned her. And her masters were making a bunch of money on her. And she ticked Paul off because she kept bugging them saying, "Listen to these guys. They're proclaiming a way of salvation," and trying to cause trouble. And so, Paul rebuked her and cast out the demon.

And so now, she wasn't a demonized slave girl anymore with the spirit of divination, and the fortune-telling business went down the tubes. And it says this: "When their masters saw that their hope of profit was gone," then they arrested Paul. The hope... it wasn't like, "I wish this girl could make us some money." They knew she was making them money. It was confident expectation that she was making them money, but when the demon was cast out of her, they saw that their confident expectation of making money was gone. And that's when they went after Paul and Silas.

So, what's the point there? When he talks about the hope of eternal life, that is confident assurance that there is life eternal that the Lord offers to us. Now, we have that hope to share. You think about it, when you get up in the morning and you go to work, you have the message of eternal life and you're rubbing shoulders with people all day long who are dying and they're one heartbeat away from eternal death.

It's like going to MD Anderson, the cancer hospital in Houston. And all these people have cancer, and you have the cure for cancer. You'd want to go to every room and tell every person, "This is what you do. You can get off of this chemo and everything. Here's how you can get cleansed and healed and cured of your cancer." So, we have something to share that's far better than that. It's the gift of eternal life and how to have eternal life. So, the truth is good news, and God cannot lie, and God has promised. The Bible says in First John chapter 2, "And this is the promise that He Himself has made to us: eternal life."

Larry Nobles: You're listening to From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Schreve, reminding us today that God doesn't know how to lie. Grammy Award-winning Christian singer-songwriter Bruce Carroll has a wonderful song called "God Doesn't Know" that echoes this sentiment. Part of the lyrics say, "God doesn't know a sinner He can't love, a broken heart He can't mend, a fallen tear He can't dry. God doesn't know a place where He can't be in a moment's time to meet your every need."

Yes, there's some things God just doesn't know. And our eternal souls depend on a dependable, capable, trustworthy, powerfully sovereign God. And He loves you and gave you a mission for your time here on this earth. The title of today's message, On a Mission From God, from Pastor Jeff's series Setting the House in Order, a study of the book of Titus. You can find out how to get this series when you go to fromhisheart.org.

From His Heart is a listener-supported broadcast ministry of Pastor Jeff Schreve, who receives no income from the ministry. He's our chief volunteer, and that's why we unashamedly ask for your continued and regular support that is so vital to our efforts to broadcast on hundreds of stations around this nation and the world each and every day.

From His Heart is offering you a special and timely resource for your support this month of any amount. We'll say thank you by sending you Pastor Jeff's Soul on Fire series. It's God's plan for revival. It's a five-lesson series that will put your soul solidly on a path that God has given you. He's given you a mission.

You see, revival isn't just something the world needs; it's also something you and I need every single day. And when you support From His Heart, you're helping to revive the hearts of people around the world. Call 866-40-BIBLE or go to fromhisheart.org and request the Soul on Fire series when you make that gift today. God bless you. Now, let's conclude this lesson from the series Setting the House in Order, a study of the book of Titus called On a Mission From God.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: The truth, secondly, sets people free. Now, they were having a problem in Crete, and the problem was with ungodliness, just like we have problems today in churches with people not living it. And the problem that they were having in Crete was you had some false teachers already starting to come into this little church that hadn't been around for all that long. False teachers were coming in with their false lifestyle, their sinful lifestyle, and it was negatively impacting the church.

The false teachers in the first century, they would tell people, "It doesn't matter how you live. It's the body is evil, and so it doesn't matter what you do with your body. Only the spirit is good." And so, people would buy into that because men love the darkness rather than the light because their deeds are evil. So, if you start telling a bunch of people, "It doesn't matter what you do, and if you want to get drunk and if you want to have all sorts of sexual immorality in your life, God understands and God's not upset about that, just have at it."

Well, you start telling people that and they're like, "Okay." In the Old Testament, one of the ways that the false prophet Balaam influenced the people—and the Bible is really harsh on this guy Balaam; he's the one whose donkey talked to him—he told the king who wanted to hire him to curse the people, "God's not going to let me curse His people. But this is what you do. You go to Moab and you get some of those Moabite women, and you get them to mix in with the people and you teach them about your pagan religion. And you teach them that the way that you honor the gods of the land is you have sex with a prostitute. You teach the Jewish men that, the Israelites that, and then I won't have to curse them. God will curse them because judgment will come because of their sin."

And that's why in the Old Testament, God would always say, "Don't have anything to do with the paganites, with the Canaanites, because they will pollute you," because their religion was all based on sex and it was an abomination to God. But there's something about that, an immoral lifestyle, if you try and couple it with Christianity or some way to please God, that people gravitate toward that because their flesh wants to do that.

The deeds of the flesh are evident, which are immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, all those things that's talked about in Galatians chapter 5. So, the truth that Paul was sharing, that he wanted Titus to share, was going to help the church in godliness. Because the truth sets you free. Jesus said that in John 8:32, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." And it sets you free so that you can live a life that is truly pleasing to God, that's holy, that's set apart, that has righteousness about it.

The Bible says in Psalm 19 that "the fear of the Lord is clean." You know as well as I do when you're not living right, when you're allowing sin to get into your life, you don't feel clean inside. When you've compromised with something that you know "I shouldn't be doing this," you just feel dirty. And you come to church and you feel dirty before the Lord. The fear of the Lord, when you're right with God, the fear of the Lord is clean.

And you can go to sleep at night and you can say, "You know what? I'm not guilt-ridden because I'm living a life that's clean before the Lord. And I've gotten those things out of my life that were dragging me down." And so, the truth that we have to share, it's good news. It sets people free. Not with a freedom where they can do whatever they want; it's a freedom where they can do as they ought to do. They can do what God wants them to do.

And then the truth, important to note, it's not always well-received. Titus was going to be having to deal with some false teachers. They weren't going to like his message. He was going to have to, when you "set the house in order," you have to deal with some people who aren't walking with God right and you've got to get them in line. You've got to talk to some people about speaking the truth in love, but it's some tough medicine. People don't always respond well to that. There are a lot of people who don't want to look in the mirror.

Have you ever noticed that? I don't know how many of you have ever read the business book Good to Great, one of my favorite books. I read it a number of years ago, nine or ten years ago now. But one of the key things in the business book Good to Great is talking about companies that went from "here" to off-the-charts great. One of the things that they did is they faced the brutal facts. They looked in the mirror. They really looked at the company and they said, "Okay, where are we? Let's quit trying to just cover up and make us sound a lot better than we are. Where are we?"

You have to do that as an individual. You have to look in the mirror. A lot of people don't want to look in the mirror. They just want to "see no evil, hear no evil," that kind of thing about themselves. "I'm just not going to go there because I don't want to think of myself as a gossip, as a gripe, as a lustful person, a greedy person, a jealous person. I don't want to think about myself like that." And so, they don't ever look in the mirror. You can't ever get better unless you're real honest about where you are.

And so, when you share the truth with people, you share the gospel with people, it's good news, but it's good news that comes on the heels of bad news. And the bad news is you're a sinner and you're lost and you can't save yourself. And if you keep going in the direction that you're going, you're going to die and go to hell forever. And that's bad news, and people don't like that. People want you to tell them that they're good enough. People want you to say, "Hey, you just keep doing what you're doing. It's great."

It's kind of like the performance review at work. I've had performance reviews over the years, especially when I worked in industry. And good bosses would tell you things that you needed to hear. It might not be so fun, but it would be stuff that's like, "You're not doing well here, here, and here, and you need to pick it up there." Because they could see where you needed to improve. And then you could improve.

Bad bosses, I had one boss—nice guy—but he never wanted to step on anybody's toes. So, you'd have your performance review and it's like, "Yeah, you're doing great. Just great. Great, great. Every category, every box. Yeah, it's just great, great, great." It's like, "Okay, well then you're not real helping me because I know I'm not perfect." But he didn't want to hurt anybody's feelings. He didn't want to step on anybody's toes.

The gospel, when you share the truth of God's word with people, it steps on their toes. People tell me that all the time, "And you really stepped on my toes." I said, "Well, it steps on my toes too. I don't write the Bible. So, when it comes out of here, it's first come into here, and it can be very convicting." But it's a good feeling to know that God is saying, "Hey, you need to work on this. You need to work on that." Because God sees everything and He looks into your heart.

And here's the sad deal for humanity: they don't want to look in the mirror. "Men love the darkness rather than the light because their deeds are evil." So, they don't come to the light. And if you don't come to the light, Jesus can't save you. He can't change you. So, as we share, just know that's not a popular message with the vast majority of people. Those who receive it, they receive the good news. They receive eternal life. Those who don't miss out. And Paul, who was sharing the truth, ended up getting his head cut off because of the truth. Every Christian's commanded to share the truth.

And lastly, every Christian can claim God's grace and God's peace. Verse four is familiar in all of Paul's letters as he talks to the recipient. He says, "To Titus, my true child in a common faith, grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior." There's grace and peace when you're on mission with God. There's grace to help you in your time of need. Grace is the unmerited favor of God. Grace is what we were singing about, "Blood of Jesus be my all." That's the grace of God, that no matter what you've done, can wash you white as snow because of God's grace.

If you ever live your life and you start thinking, "Well, I have to do all these things for God to love me," you have lost sight of grace. Because grace is not what God gives to deserving saints; it's what He gives to undeserving sinners. His grace. And there's grace for you and there's peace. No matter what's going on in life, you can have peace because God is a God of grace, and God's grace ushers in God's peace.

And when you're on mission with Him and when the going gets tough and when some people don't receive the truth very well, and they slander you and slam you and do all the things that they can do, you can still have grace and you can have God's peace. And you can know the Lord's in charge. I'm His slave. He has to take care of me. He's a good master. I don't need to fear the future. I just need to do His will. You're on a mission. You may not have known it, but you are. I'm on a mission. And lastly, question to ponder: is there something keeping you from fulfilling your mission?

Larry Nobles: Today's message was called On a Mission From God, from Pastor Jeff's eight-lesson series Setting the House in Order, a study of the book of Titus. And again, it's available in multiple formats when you go to fromhisheart.org. While you're there, we'd like to ask you to consider a gift to From His Heart this month. And for that gift, we'll send you Pastor Jeff's five-lesson series Soul on Fire, God's plan for revival. Just go to fromhisheart.org or call 866-40-BIBLE. And know that your gift is also helping From His Heart share these kinds of Christ-centered messages to you, your community, and the world each and every day.

Our time is gone. I'm Larry Nobles, trusting the broadcast was a blessing to you, and that you'll be right back here on Monday for the second lesson in Pastor Jeff's series Setting the House in Order. He addresses an issue that every church has: what do you do when you're searching for a pastor? That's next time, when we'll open up God's word and share real truth, real love, and real hope from God's heart, here on From His Heart.