Job that never changes

By our faithful preaching of the gospel and by godly living, demonstrating the transforming power of that message, we become the conscience of the culture we live in.

You don’t become the conscience that you live in by standing on a street corner and screaming political slogans and economic demands, says Richard Jordan.

You become the power of a nation by preaching the gospel of the grace of God to people and proclaiming that message, backing that proclamation up with lives that demonstrate the transforming power of that message and that’s our calling, That’s our job in the era of this declension.

That godly attitude coupled with the godly lives that sound doctrine produces makes that saving message of the gospel of grace credible; authentic to the unsaved world.

That was Paul’s solution for the world he lived in. That was Paul’s solution for these people on Crete who were “liars, evil beasts and slow bellies.”

Titus 1: [12] One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said, The Cretians are alway liars, evil beasts, slow bellies.

He didn’t say anything about going down and educating them. He didn’t say anything about going down and doing all the stuff people think about when they reject God’s Word. He said, “You need to take that saving message and get it out to them and have it be backed up by lives.”

You have an understanding about why the culture is the way it is, and instead of going out there and blowing your stack because lost people act like lost people, that’s what Titus 3 is about:

[3] For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.

Don’t you remember what it was like when you were lost? A guy says, “Oh, I never was that lost.” Oh, yeah, you were! It may have been a long time ago for you to remember it, but that’s where you were and you know what? You carry that stuff with you still in your flesh.

People say, “Well, don’t you love our country?” Listen, God put a love for your nation in every person. But you don’t love it because of the form of government, or the economic advantages. You love it because that’s what God did. That’s what nationalism (from Genesis) is about.

One of the things you discover when you go to any country outside of the United States and they find out you’re an American, the first question they ask is, “What do you think of our country?” They all love their country as much as you love your country. That’s part of the way God fixed man in the issue of nationalism.

The issue is getting Christ into it and the attitude that you have with it, when you’re tempted with all that self-righteous criticism and to cry about the unbelievers being unbelievers, and it’s easy to find yourself being sarcastic and angry about unbelievers being unbelievers because when unbelievers are unbelievers they are dumb; they are foolish and they are everything that verse says, and it’s easy to be angry at it.

It’s easy to foster a rebellious rabble-rousing kind of malcontent response to it, but that only fosters hostility in unbelievers toward what you’re trying to say.

Listen, those unbelievers are our mission field; they’re not our enemies. They’re the people we’re trying to reach.

Look, folks, the world isn’t going to be cleaned up; it’s going to be what it is. It’s our privilege to go out and proclaim it. Sound doctrine is what will give you a message and produce the good works in your life that will make that message credible to them.

The reason Paul starts with the government there is because the culture you live in is going to be run by the government and what kind of government it is is not the issue. Our job won’t change.