This week we sent our son back to school as he had his first taste of Junior High. Sometimes I look back to my High School years and believe it or not I wish I could do it over again and learn those lessons that I didn’t take so seriously and also not worry so much about things that don’t matter like peer acceptance and making the right impression.
Very few of us are ever going to be in school again as a student but this morning as we look to the Word of God, we will see that we are always to be in HIS school. It’s a school that started the day you trusted in Christ as your Savior. Maybe that was your infant baptism or maybe you left his school and only returned later in life. Maybe your first day of school was only a few years ago. But the point is that if you trust in Christ, you are enrolled in God’s school.
Why? As in all schools, the goal is graduation – to complete the courses and to learn the knowledge passed on from the teachers and finally you will prove yourself complete and ready to enter the adult life.
The goal of God’s school is that you become just like his Son Jesus Christ. This is your highest goal in life – to be like Jesus. He repeatedly said: “Follow Me!” What does that mean? That we are to do what he does. To be “conformed to the image of His Son.” (Rom. 8:29) When you said, “I trust you!” then you committed to follow Jesus – to be like him - to conform your life to him as your model, mentor, example.
But there is a crucial difference when we enter into His school. You don’t wait for your diploma! With the School of Christlikeness, your first day, the day you receive Christ as your Lord, you get the diploma! All the work, the exams, the hours spent studying have been completed by Jesus Christ. He paid the price for your graduation.
After all, it says in Titus 2:11 “For the grace of God has appeared bringing salvation for all people.” Completed from the start! Already holy, righteous, and worthy! Diploma stamped with the signature of the King of Kings on day one! Read what God declares to those that trust in Christ’s work for us: “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Romans 5:1
What is that called? GRACE. Grace is when we receive something which we haven’t worked for or earned. It’s getting something good which we don’t deserve. The diploma on graduation day cannot be called grace unless you really deserved to flunk out. You earned it! But God’s diploma – his stamp of approval allowing you into his kingdom is totally unearned and not-worked for. We can only receive that by grace! Do you see the incredible and wonderful gift that is?
But if we as students of Christ already have our diploma, then what’s the point of being in his school. Let’s just drop out and live like the world. The whole point of Christ paying our price, is so that we can freely live for him, walk after him, learn from him. Only then can the real training begin. Yes, we are right with God. But our behavior, our mind, our actions are not like Jesus and that’s our life project!
Titus writes that the salvation has come for all people “training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope.” The word Titus uses is “training” which is the word “paideo.” It really is a word to use for school-children and comes from the word for boy or girl. It means - to bring up a child and guide him toward maturity – to instruct, train, and educate.
This word is not just for youth but it’s for all of us – we are all students of Christ learning to be like Jesus. God is changing our habits, changing our mindset, changing our way of talking and living.
1. As students of Christlikeness School our first lesson is to renounce the past. It’s something we learn to do every day! Our text says “renounce ungodliness and worldly passions.”
When school is in session, students no longer live free and easy lives. No more sleeping until noon. No more hours to fill their time with their own interests. When we become followers of Christ we enter into HIS rules and HIS standards and surrender our own. We are in his training course.
We refuse to follow, obey, or recognize any further anything that is not godly. When confirmands come before the congregation, they are asked to renounce the devil and all his works and all his ways. We are children of the King and not of Satan and therefore we deny anything that is associated with his kingdom.
We renounce our vulgar language.
We renounce our laziness.
We renounce our hatred for our enemies.
We renounce our lusts.
We renounce our greed.
We renounce our envy.
Renounce our pride.
And on and on it goes. Those are things that we naturally will do but we are going to confess that these are not part of our present life as students of Christ.
Part of that is renouncing our old passions. We renounce our self. Lifting self up - praising self. The world revolves around us when we are not submitted to Jesus Christ. That self has to be surrendered and renounced in order to follow Jesus.
2. Secondly, as students in Christlikeness School we focus wholly on the PRESENT task God has given to us. “to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in the present age.”
We are to not just give lip service and say – I’m not going to follow my ungodly desires. We follow through on that by using self-control. Self control involves two areas: first we stop ourselves from doing things we ought not (hold our own desires, impulses and emotions in check.) Second, we control ourselves to do certain things we should. We make sure our self is under God’s control and not our own!
Fasting is an ancient discipline that is very rarely practiced today except to lose weight. But through the entire Scripture, we find fasting as a common practice. It was often done in order to mourn a loss or mourn sin. But also it was practiced for other reasons – to seek God’s will, to draw closer to God, to control the physical impulses that drive us. Fasting was so common in the New Testament times that when Jesus teaches about it in Matthew 6:16 he says “when you fast….” He doesn’t say “If you fast.” He assumes that his followers will fast. Why? Because through fasting we discipline our body – we don’t allow our body to control us but instead we become Lord over our body by denying ourselves food.
Fasting is a discipline that helps us when we are faced with other temptations too. If you can deny yourself food which you want so badly, you can also deny yourself other temptations that are before you. It exercises your “self-control” muscles. How often do we really deny ourselves what we deep down want? In today’s culture, it’s not a popular concept. But the Lord says that you CAN do that: 1 Corinthians 10:13 “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.”
But walking with Christ in the present means not just denying ourselves ungodly desires, it also means FILLING our lives with godly behavior. Christians get a bad rap in this world because people believe it’s all about what we shouldn’t do: don’t curse, don’t steal, don’t gossip, don’t lust, don’t drink, and on and on the list goes. But our walk with Christ isn’t the “don’ts” but it’s the “DOS.”
Give generously of your time and of your love not only for your friends, but more importantly for your enemies. Spend time praising Jesus. Oh, how we try to fill our lives with replacements for the joy that we can easily find in God. We watch films, go to amusement parks, buy toys, buy bigger toys. Some use drugs or alcohol. Others seek passions of this world. Why? Seeking after that pleasure – that longing that we believe can only be supplied by what we seek.
But listen to Psalm 37:4 “Delight yourselves in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Do you hear that? Delight yourselves in the Lord! Fill your life with his thoughts and his presence and his praises.
One pastor illustrated this beautifully with two brass spigots. One has a red knob and the other has a blue knob. The red knob represents how we often look at the Christian life. The assumption is that the source from which the water flows is a cesspool and so we focus all our energies on turning that water off. The blue spigot is a source of pure, clean water. Our ultimate goal with this spigot is to turn the water on – to release the good that is stored up.
The point of this is that we spend so much of our time trying to control sin and keeping that red spigot off that we neglect the most important spigot of all – the blue, pure, clean, and nourishing water of the Lord. (Michael John Cusick, p. 104) Jesus is the water of life. Are you drinking of him and his word and led by his strength?
3. Thirdly, as students in Christlikeness School we keep our eyes on the future. Verse 13 “waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ,”
We are to always look ahead. Keep an eternal perspective on life. What is “normal” in this world? To fear. To be filled with worry. What will happen to us? What will happen to our country? to our church? It’s all going to Hell in a hand-basket. We can be doomsday forecasters even using the Bible to do so – after all, the world will only get worse before the Lord returns and that is the truth.
But as students in the Christlikeness School, we learn not to fear. We learn to rest our hope in Jesus and in his strength. We rest in His control of our lives and his protections. We are his, and he takes care of his own. We are waiting for our blessed hope.
If there’s one thing I hate, its bad endings to a book or a movie. Here you’ve invested 2 hours of your precious time to see a movie and then they have to ruin it in the last two minutes. And it doesn’t help any if they have an optional ending because the real ending is already shown. Why do we hate bad endings? because we were designed for a good ending. We were designed to spend eternity with the Lord.
And no matter what goes on in this world, when we are believers, there is ALWAYS a good ending. As we read last week: Revelation 22:3-6 "No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. And he said to me, "These words are trustworthy and true."
That is our blessed hope. It’s not automatic to have that hope. It takes training, the work of God on our hearts, the work of the Word of God because we naturally fear and worry and don’t trust in the Lord. But when God helps us to rest our future in Him – we can pass that future on to others and testify of all that we’ve learned.
Friends, how is your training going? Are you becoming more like Jesus? Is God transforming you? Maybe you’ve been on “spiritual vacation” living for yourself. It’s time to get back to school. It’s time to sit under the Lord again. It’s not torture but it’s the greatest pleasure and joy in life. Turn back to him! Re-surrender to him as your Lord, as your authority. Let him have his way with you!
