Text: Titus 3:4-7
4 But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7 so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.
Sermon
Do you remember New Year’s last year? It actually is a little fuzzy to me and I had a hard time really being sure what I did. I got confused in my mind whether that was the Christmas I didn’t go see my mom due to Covid, or was that the Christmas before. I tried to sort out pre-covid and it was all a little confusing to me.
I had to look back at my pictures and posts to remind myself that it was last Christmas time that was the only time in my 50 years that I wasn’t at my mom’s house for Christmas and my wife tested positive for Covid and over her entire Christmas break my whole family of 8 was quarantined.
But I also found all kinds of memes and posts about how 2020 was the worst year ever and 2021 was going to be a year of recovery and amazing. 2020 was the butt of many jokes for being so bad. Finally in 2021 we would come together as a nation and stop all this polarity. In 2021 our economy would again fire with all its pistons and hum. In 2021, the Covid pandemic would fade away and become a memory that we would tell our grandkids about in the future and they would never believe it.
Now it’s 2022. How did our 2021 go? How did your 2021 go? Maybe for you personally it was a pretty good year, or maybe it was the worst of years. For your church or your company or for your city – there were probably some good things but there were some bad things. What will 2022 be like? Will the pandemic fade away? Will there be enough workers at your favorite post office or restaurant or school?
I am here to tell you that it is for certain – that we do not know. It could be the best of years for you personally and our city. Bucks and Brewers could win the championship, Covid could fade after everyone gets the last variant we hear about, the Omicron. Employment and inflation could all settle down. Or we could hear about Covid Variants Pi, Rho, Sigma; and Tau, inflation could skyrocket at 18% and you might not be able to find Q-tips in any of the stores you search around town. God has not promised a great 2022.
But in our lesson today, God has promised something much better that a great 2022. He has told us something that lifts us up everyday and gives us joy on the bleakest of times, when we feel and know we are lost. God tells us He has saved us, that we are saved now and that we are heirs awaiting the full enjoyment of our inheritance. Today let me encourage you:
Begin 2022 Knowing God Saved Us
Because of the Father’s Mercy
Through Baptism by the Holy Spirit
Through Jesus our Savior
For Living with Hope
Because of the Father’s Mercy
In our few verses today, the Holy Spirit packs in that all three persons of the Trinity, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit have all worked together to save you and me.
Verse 4 refers to God the Father and describes him with three words that give us hope and joy: kindness, love and mercy. But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.
Maybe you have heard of the Greek word for love “agape” that is used in John 3:16 and other places to describe the “love of choice” or “undeserved love” that God gives us. Paul does not use this word here, but these three words combine to give us the facets on the gem of God’s agape love.
The first word “kindness” in some old translations is “benignity.” It has the idea of having a temperament that just wants to love, it craves having a loving relationship with others. This kindness is who God the Father is at the core. Yes, he is just and perfect and all-powerful but it all comes from a kindness center.
The second word, which is “love” in our translation is not agape but philanthropy – or the love of humanity. Our Heavenly Father is full of love but he has a special heart for humans. Let me illustrate it this way by asking who here is a cat person? Raise your hand. Okay, who here is a dog person? I like them both and grew up with both – but I really love dogs – and you can come visit my spoiled dog Frosting any day. We God is not a dog God or a cat God he’s a people God. He just loves what you are – a human.
Kindness is at God’s core and you humans are the ultimate focus of his love so much that he saved us. This appeared at Christmas when the Father kept his promise to Adam and Eve to save them. That word “appear” reminds us that God’s kindness and love for us is not always visible for us or we might not feel it here but it is always there and our stubborn hearts and foolish minds just do not always perceive it.
To make sure we do not think that God loves us because we are lovable: 5 he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. God’s love is not caused by our lovable-ness. It is God’s mercy, that third word I mentioned. “Mercy” focuses on how shabby and unfit and messy and helpless the object of love is. We need God to step in and he did.
Through Baptism by the Holy Spirit
But it is not just the Father who has saved us, he did that with his teammate, the Holy Spirit. God the Father did not just zap us saved, instead our lesson tells us:
He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us generously
God uses means to save us. Baptism is one of the ways God works on our hearts and gives us faith. It is water on the outside but it actually pours the Holy Spirit generously on the inside so that the Holy Spirit sets us residence in our hearts as His temple.
If you have been baptized, 5 or 50 years ago, the Spirit is still working on you today. It’s good once for all. Don’t you wish that’s the way it would work with exercise. That if tomorrow one time you got up and did an hour workout every day after that your body was burn calories and get the same effect the next day. If I told you that, you would know I would be scamming you. But with baptism, God really does a permanent thing. We can reject it and work against it, but the Holy Spirit is still there working.
Are you like me and have someone in your family who grew up in church, was baptized and trained in God’s word but now rejects it by his words and actions. The biggest one in my life is my brother – he’s just like me except I’m a little bit better looking. My mission is to keep reaching out to him with God’s word – but it sure is great to know that is still working on him by his baptism 53 years ago and He loves him even more than I do.
In the ministry I carry out at Chaplains in Schools, we want to give families everything from Bible study to a church community and we want to have a long term relationship with them. But it is a great comfort to know that when we baptize students, God works and pours himself on them and that those that we stop hearing from or move away to a different city or college – they may not take our business card with them but their baptism comes with them. It is though not just the Heavenly Father and the Holy Spirit who have saved us but we are also saved:
Through Jesus our Savior
The Father and the Holy Spirit get more words in our text today but Jesus is simply mentioned: through Jesus Christ our Savior. The Father does not zap us saved and the Spirit’s work in baptism is not work we do to save ourselves, but Jesus, whose birth we just celebrated is our Savior. We are saved in 2022 because Jesus willingly lived a human life in our place – that shows us how much of a people God He is that he would not just love us from afar but up close and so much he would become one of us – and He died sacrificially in our place. It is Jesus' payment for our sins that allows our just and holy God to embrace us as His people.
Like John 3:16 is sometimes called the gospel in a nutshell, these verses bring together the saving plan of our Triune God in a tightly packaged way for us to enjoy. I’m not sure what I want to call it. The gospel in a nutshell has already been used and nowadays people do not crack nuts or even see nutshells any more. I thought about “the gospel on a cone” – with three scoops, or the “gospel in a to-go box”, or the “gospel in a bowl”, or “the gospel in a Christmas present” Regardless of what you want to call it – God wants you to know in 2022 that you have been saved and these words say it powerfully and shortly.
The final result of God giving you these words is:
For living with hope
Our verses finish: 7 so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.
The result of the Trinity’s work is that we are justified before God and his children now and forever. Now a fourth important word, “grace” shows up. Just a couple verses we were told we were saved because of God’s mercy. “Mercy” focuses our eyes on how unworthy and undeserving the receivers are of something. The word “grace” focuses our eyes on the one giving something and we see his reason for giving it is simply that he really wants to give it. It is a true gift. God loves us so much he gives justification to us.
With the present in hand, then this makes us heirs with hope. An heir is someone who really has rights to property but doesn’t get to fully experience them yet. And that’s who we are. In 2022, we might not look to the world or feel much like God’s children – it could be an awful year – but we have the legal right as heirs to God’s kingdom because of the work of the Trinity.
Knowing this and living optimistically and powerfully and sacrificially is what our text means by hope. We use hope sometimes as a maybe – I hope the Packers get first seed in the playoffs. Stats told us a week ago there was a 77.1% chance that would happen. But we just didn't know. Now we have more of a biblical hope that the Packers will have a bye week – it has already been accomplished and we are just waiting for things to play out. Likewise, the hope God gives us is certain and changes the way we live today because we know the reality of the future.
We do not know what 2022 will bring. But we do know for certain what our Triune God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit – have brought us. Out of God’s kindness and his heart for humans and because of his mercy for us broken people, He has given us the gift of himself. Jesus is our Savior and we have Him because of the Spirit that has been poured out on us through baptism.
If you know that God has saved you, let me hear you say, “Amen.”