Grace Thoughts

Guest (Male): Hello friends, welcome to Grace Thoughts, the radio ministry of Grace Connection Church with Pastor Tim Kelley. Grace Thoughts has been dedicated to preaching a clear gospel of grace for over 20 years. Here is Pastor Tim Kelley.

Tim Kelley: Thank you. Glad to be back with you again. Titus chapter 2. We started last week the series "Revolutionary." One point I want to reiterate from last week is when Jesus Christ said, "How do I reach the world? How do I reach my world?" what was his plan?

Today, I think about outreach, and I go, "Okay, I have Facebook. I have 1,500 people on church Facebook. I can use Facebook, I can use my own Facebook, I can tweet on Twitter." I have a website; everyone uses websites. We have a radio program that goes on five days a week, WTIS.

We have OnePlace.com, which is a conglomeration of different preachers in the nation. About 200 ministries are represented there, or 150. We're on OnePlace. Grace Thoughts has a 15-minute version. That's the radio show on OnePlace. You can go to that. We sew that seed literally all over the world because a lot of Americans overseas go there for their preaching. So, we have a lot of feelers out there.

But how did Jesus do it? How did he get from having just a man growing up in Nazareth to impacting the world 2,000 years later? Disciples. He had disciples. Twelve people that caught a passion and a vision and lived life at a certain way and lived life differently. Those 12 people turned the world, the Book of Acts tells us, upside down.

I don't think it's a lot different today than it was back then. We have these wonderful outreaches and in-reaches that we have. I've shared the story before with these numbers. The numbers are old, but I'm sure they haven't altered too much. 80% of the people when polled talk about their salvation experience, and they'll find that 80% of the people polled received Christ in a Sunday morning church service someplace in a church.

That's significant. 80% of that 80% didn't come in because of the church sign, didn't come in because of the church's Facebook page, their website, or their radio program. 80% of those people came into that church because they were invited by somebody that attended that church.

So, all the stuff we do to bring people in still comes down to you guys going out into your Jerusalem, into your community, and inviting people in, knowing that they're going to hear the gospel and hopefully receive the gospel when they're here.

Our mission statement—we haven't said it in a long time, and that's my bad—Grace Connection Church exists to equip its members to carry the message of Jesus Christ into their world. Your world. See, my world is different than your world. I can only reach a small segment of society, especially me because I work in a church.

I don't even consider myself front-line ministry. I consider myself back-in-the-camp ministry. I consider you front-line ministry because you're in the world. I will never probably rub elbows with who you rub elbows with. I'll never work next to that person in the cubicle next to you. I'll never have that employee or never sell that job that you're going to do. Whatever you do, I'll never probably do that, and you'll never reach the people that I reach.

So, the work of winning the world for Christ still comes down simply and squarely on our shoulders, the church of Jesus Christ. How do we impact it? How do we reach the current and next generation for Christ when the tide of culture seems to be flowing against us?

When I speak of the church, I'm talking about the church universal, especially in America, probably. Not necessarily this local assembly but the conglomeration of local assemblies that make up our country. There are about 700 or so in Pinellas County alone.

The American church is losing the battle of impacting their culture maybe more than any place else on the planet. When you look at the church universal, the church worldwide, the persecuted church where people are being killed for their faith is growing. The church worldwide, the third-world church, is growing exponentially.

You go to China, where it's against the law to be a Christian or to practice Christianity, and the church is blossoming and flowing from home church to home church. Thousands and thousands and thousands of people are coming to Christ. Thousands and thousands and thousands of people are coming to Christ in the Muslim world. You don't hear about it, but it's happening.

And these are countries where they don't have money, they don't have radio in some cases, they don't have Facebook and outreaches and resources. Here we are, the nation of resources, and we are losing the battle. Why is that? We're facing the highest percentage ever of people who claim no religious or denominational affiliation.

70% of evangelical young people—those are people who grew up in church—leave their faith as they don't see the reality of it. We can blame that on the organized church, that would be us. In some cases, some churches have become very non-relevant in society. The church is in-grown, not out-grown. In other words, they've become non-relevant. We're not going to reach anyone anymore; we've determined we're just going to do church our way.

But the churches I know and the pastors I know don't think like that. They want to make a difference. Not all, but some. Most, the ones I know, they want to make a difference. They don't want to just bide their time to get to heaven. They don't want to play churchianity. They want to do something in the kingdom of God and impact people. That's most of the men that I know right in our city. I know numerous, many of them.

I think—this is my opinion. If you agree with me, fine. If you don't agree with me, then it's somebody else's opinion. Just kidding. I think that the bigger problem starts in our Christian homes. That's where values are given. They're not going to get values for half an hour in Sunday school. It's not my job to teach kids values. It's not the church's job to teach kids values. It's the parents' job to teach kids values. We're to complement the parents' role.

In one sentence, Christian hypocrisy is ruining Christian ministry. It's a heavy-hitting sentence. I'll back it up: Christian hypocrisy is ruining our Christian children. I see that as the biggest challenge facing the church.

Now, let me spend a little bit of time on hypocrisy. The Greek word is hupokrisis. It means, in the actual Greek language, an actor. When you act, you perform as something that's not really you. I watched *The Natural* yesterday, with Robert Redford. What a great movie. That team hits a home run at the end scene every time. Every time I watch it, he hits the same home run. It's great. I love it.

I stood next to Robert Redford. I was in the hotel industry, and he actually came in and ate one day. So, I was standing right next to him. I didn't really say much to him. That's before I think he did *The Natural*. You know, he's smaller than me. He didn't look that small in the movies. He looked pretty strong. And *Cool Hand Luke*. Remember *Cool Hand Luke*? He was a dude. He looked pretty tough too. He was up to here, weighed 130 pounds soaking wet.

What you see on TV isn't necessarily what is really in reality. They're actors. And that's the word for hupokrisis, hypocrisy: people who confess something, but they act on a stage with something that's not really them. They have a performance going on.

Everyone in here practices hypocrisy on a regular basis. If I want to take the term and really boil it down to what it means, it means when I do something contrary to my stated beliefs. I believe I'm supposed to love my family unconditionally, but I don't always love them unconditionally.

I believe I'm supposed to never have fear, but sometimes I battle with fear. I believe I'm supposed to trust God for everything, but I don't always trust God for everything. I know I'm supposed to. So, hypocrisy weaves its way in and out of our lives. I'm not talking about those day-to-day things that we battle with. I'm talking about living our lives far below who we confess that we are and profess that we are.

Now, in the Book of Titus, we find a remarkably similar situation that the Apostle Paul was confronted with. It sort of mirrors what I think the challenges we face in the American church are. Paul writes to Titus, and Titus was known for his strong leadership, about the situation in the island of Crete.

Paul probably got to Crete on a when he was shipwrecked one of these times. I'm not sure about that, but he was shipwrecked and probably spent time there and was able to pioneer a church there. Now, Crete was an interesting place. These people had a reputation, sort of like the Corinthians had a reputation and some of the other people of the day.

Quoting in Titus 1:12, Paul quotes a Cretan poet, Epimenides. This is what this person said: "Crete was without wild beasts." In other words, there were no wild animals on the island. It was just an island; they probably had some snakes and some lizards, but there were no wild beasts there. He says the poet's sarcasm was that the beastly men replaced them. In other words, they don't need wild beasts on Crete because you have the Cretans, the men. They replace the wild beasts.

So, he calls them—Paul calls them—liars, evil beasts, and slow bellies. Ever have a slow belly? Some digestive problem, isn't it? You probably need some acidophilus or something like that because I have a slow belly. What's a slow belly? It means somebody that's lazy. That's what it means. They were very lazy, they were evil beasts, and they were liars.

To "Cretanize" was a proverb back in the day to lie. When somebody lied, "Yeah, you're a Cretan, you're Cretanizing, you're lying." They were known for laziness, they were known to be dangerous, deceptive, and labeled worthless. That was the reputation of the men of Crete.

How do we reach them? Paul writes to Titus. How do we bring those people—these beasts, these slow bellies, these lazy people—how do we get them to believe in Jesus Christ as their Savior? We need a plan to do it. We need an outreach plan.

And what we have here, Paul outlines in Titus chapter 2, is his plan to win these Cretans. In a capsule, to do good, live your faith out, and the world will be attracted to you. The world will reject make-believe. The world will reject hypocrisy. Your children are going to look at your faith and say, "I don't want anything to do with that sham," if you live this way here and somewhere else a different way at home. Kids are leaving the faith like that because they don't see, and the studies show, where it is real.

Let's look at the scriptures. It sort of stands out all by itself. Teach, verse 2: "Teach the older men to exercise self-control." Older men are anything over 56. "To be worthy of respect and to live wisely. They must have sound faith and be filled with love and patience."

Okay, so these older men have self-control, are worthy of respect, and live wisely. Now, I'm going to just spend a moment with that word "wisely" because we use that term pretty readily in our English, but it has tremendous biblical significance.

It's the word we get "wisdom" from. In the Greek, it's the word *sophia*, and in the Hebrew, it's *chokmah*. They sort of bleed into one another, even though there are some differences. But the Hebrew mind—this is important to know—in the Hebrew mind, a wise person wasn't necessarily an intelligent person, even though they could be. It wasn't necessarily a smart person, even though we hope that they are.

The wise person to the Hebrew mind was simply an obedient person. That's what they saw as wisdom because they would be the first to tell you, "I'm not very wise, but we do have this," which we call the book, the Torah. But to them, this is wisdom. This is wisdom in writ.

So, I don't need to be wise; I just got to know this. I don't need to be smart; I just got to know this. I don't have to be that intelligent; I just got to know this. In fact, if I want to manage my money right, I go to this. If I want to learn how to be a family member or a husband or a wife or a child, I go here. If I want to learn how to have sound business principles, this is where I come. I come right here because it's all here.