So in late 2017, the Pew Research Center did a poll, and the poll was on what Americans believe about God and what they think when the word God comes to mind. And what they found is that 89% of Americans said they believed in God or some higher power or force. 56% of the ones that believed in God described God as the God of the Bible. 77% believe that God or a higher power has protected them. 67% believe God has rewarded them. 61% believe that God is going to judge people based on what they've done in their lives. Now, of those who believe in the God of the Bible, the 56% of Americans, 97% of those people believe God loves all people regardless of their faith, or their faults. And it's another survey conducted by Ligonier Ministries and Lifeway. They found that 51% of evangelical Christians, listen to this, believe God accepts the worship of all religions. Only 69% said God is perfect and doesn't make mistakes. Only 70% affirmed the Trinity. Almost 6 in 10 agreed that the Holy Spirit is a force, not a personal being. And only 53% agreed with this statement. God accepts people not because of their works, but because of faith in Jesus. Only 53% of evangelicals affirm that. 35% of evangelicals believe God will reward faith with material blessing in this life. 78% believe Jesus is the first and highest creation of God. 60% say that religion is a personal matter of opinion, not true for all people everywhere. I mean, I could go on and on. You're like, you already did that. I could continue to do that. You know? I think it's pretty easy to see that there's deep confusion about who God is, not just among Americans, but among people in Bible-believing churches this morning. Surveys like these are what convinced me that instead of speeding through Titus, that I need to slow down and not assume that all of us are on the same page with these things. But that each of us needs to be reminded of the truth because there's so much confusion out there. And confusion about a simple question like, who is God? What is He like? What is a valid way of describing Him? And for that, we're going to go back to Titus chapter 1. So if you're not there, you can turn to Titus chapter 1. If you got one of those blue Bibles, that's page 1100. Today, with all the confusion out there, my hope, my prayer has been that each of us will both recognize and revel in the Father and in the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. That we will see Him clearly, and that because of what we see, we will enjoy Him, revel in Him, worship Him. A.W. Tozer, a Christian author, put it this way. He said in the opening lines to his book, The Knowledge of the Holy, he said this, what comes into your mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you. However, so today, what it means is I'm not gonna try to fill your head with a bunch of facts and knowledge and data dump all of this stuff on you. Knowing God is not just about the intellect. Your intellect is incredibly important, but to know God rightly is to love God deeply. And that's my hope, is that as we see things that we all, that if you've been in church in any amount of time, you already know what we're gonna see. But that it's the recognition of what those things mean will cause your heart to revel in the God that these truths are about. So to see him clearly in the pages of his word is to worship him deeply because of what we see. Like the Grand Canyon, you cannot see God and be unaffected. And that's our hope here this morning. So let's see him first by looking one more time at Titus 1.4. Start halfway in the verse. The blessing in this letter begins, grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus, our Savior. The blessings of salvation, grace and peace, as well as all the blessings that Titus needed to fulfill his ministry on Crete, both come from the Father and from the Son. So Paul connects Father and Son with that little word there, from. There's a connection here between the two, that grace and peace come from both the Father and the Son. Now, how does that happen? Well, it happens like this. The Father is the source of grace. 19 times in the New Testament, the phrase grace of God is written. And when it is written, what that means is grace comes from God. He's the source of grace. Now grace has nothing to do with all you can do. Grace has everything to do with what God has already done. That grace comes from God as the source. That he shows mercy to rebels, those who sinned against him. And that's all of us. What does it mean for God to be the Father? Well, the atheist Sigmund Freud suggested that religions created the idea of a Father God to cope with all of the fears in life. And if I was alive in that day, I wish I would have said something along the lines of, an atheist created the idea of atheism because of their fear of judgment. Instead of dealing with motives, let's deal with facts. And the facts are this, a myriad of religions are out there, and the ones that don't reference the Bible, when you study them, they understand God or the gods as a father in the sense that he's the creator. He's the father of all humanity because he created all humanity. So whether it's Greek or Roman religions, Assyrian, Babylonian, Moabites, Hinduism, Zoroastrian, or a whole bunch more, this is how they saw their god or gods, that he is the father because he's their creator. Now listen, this is not how the Bible views God as father. The Old Testament almost never pictures God as father. And on the rare occasions when it does, it sees God as the father of the Jewish people, not the father of humanity. And then Jesus shows up in the primary teaching in the New Testament when this topic of God the father comes up. is that God is the father of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is the son of God. God is his father. Jesus never spoke of God as the father of humanity. So Jesus didn't come to teach that we are already sons of God. He came to make us children of God by his death and resurrection. In fact, father was the metaphor Jesus used more than any other to address God. And then he teaches this metaphor to his followers and says, this is how you're to address God, which means this. Our relationship, if you're a follower of Jesus, your relationship with God is not meant to be like an adherent to a system or some vague and distant deity that you're some servant of or like a slave to a tyrant. No, your relationship with the God of the universe, if you're a follower of Jesus, is one of a child to a parent. That was unheard of in religion before Jesus. And Jesus even uses a personal term of endearment and family intimacy for God, right? The word Abba, meaning something like daddy or papa, most scholars say, but not in a childish or trivial way that those terms might convey. Abba is a term that carries two ideas. One is intimate closeness, and the other is infinite authority. So the Christian is intimately close to the infinite authority, God himself. Now, it might sound strange to you, but according to the New Testament, we are not born children of God. We become children of God. And I want you to see this. I don't want you to take my word for it. I want you to see it in the Bible, that there was a time when we were not God's children, but after salvation, that's what you become. Take a look at John 1.12. John is written by Jesus' cousin, his closest friend on this earth, and this is what John writes. But to all who did receive him, that's Jesus. To all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to what? Become children of God. They didn't start out that way, but that's what they became. How did they become that? What does the text say? By receiving Christ, by believing in Him to save you from your sins. Look at another passage, Galatians 3, 26. Here's what it says. In Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God. How? Through faith. not through creation, through faith. So those who are in Christ are sons of God. And how did that happen? How did they become sons of God according to the text? Through faith. In other words, before a person believes in Jesus, they're not a child of God yet. And Paul picks this theme up in Galatians chapter four, starting in verse four. He says this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who are under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons. Question, if I'm born a child of God, why do I need to be adopted? I'm already part of the family. You don't adopt people, you don't adopt your children unless they weren't your children, but you brought them into your family. We need to be adopted because we aren't born children of God. He makes this, Paul makes this clear in the next verse, verse six. And because you are sons, God has sent the spirit of his son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. We'll come back to that in a second. But notice what it says. So you are no longer a slave, but a son. If you are no longer something, what does that mean? That means you were that thing at one point, but you aren't anymore. No, the opposite of a slave is a son. And if you're a son, then an heir through God. So Jesus is the son of God by nature. Christians are children of God by adoption. And did you notice in that text, who's calling the father Abba in this passage? Christians. Jesus taught his followers to address God the father as the father when we pray to him. How ironic, the one who had no physical father reveals something unique to every religion on the planet. the intimate closeness of the fatherhood of God for all who trust in Christ. So I want you to think about this though. the way that Jesus addressed the Father, which was easy for Him, because this is how He always addressed the Father, right? There's infinite, and there's this perfect, intimate relationship between Father and Son, going back eons of eternity. He's calling God Father, because there's never been a moment of separation. There's never been a moment of sin between them. He then takes His relationship with God, the Father, and gives it to those who believe. so that it's not weird for you to call the father the same thing that Jesus calls the father, because he takes his relationship with the father and gives it to you. That should blow our minds. There's no reason in the world that we should have the same relationship Jesus has with him. He's sinless and perfect. We're sinful and imperfect. And yet, salvation is more than just forgiveness of sins. Salvation is more than just being accepted by God. Salvation is more than just adopted into the family, because you could be adopted into a family, but all the true children, they're treated well, but the adopted kids aren't. That is possible. but not when you have the same relationship of our elder brother, Jesus, not when you have the same relationship that Jesus has to the father. There is no separation between Jesus' relationship and ours. And that's why he says you can refer to him with the same way I refer to him, Abba. Now, if that's true for you, well, let me say this before I say that. God's kids want to please him because he's already our father. Not so that he could become our father. Not so that we could show how worthy we are that he is our father. I hope your kids don't treat you that way. That's not how God would treat us. We revel and want to please Him because we're already adopted, we're already accepted. And if that's true for you, if you're trusting in Jesus alone to save you from your sins, your sins are forgiven and you're adopted into the family of God, then you revel in the Father. And point number one, you trust in the Father's love and care. Trust in the Father's love and care. In context, the proof of His love and care in verse four is the grace and peace that God's shown you, that God's gifted you, that God's given you. giving you salvation and every blessing you don't deserve. And he's shown you favor in your life and forgiven your sins. And on top of that, he's made peace with you. The innocent seeking the guilty us to be reconciled, that there's reconciliation that he accomplished, even though we're the ones who broke the relationship. And then he's at work in our lives and removing conflict and helping us get out of conflict when we follow what he says. And though you were a rebel against him, you've been adopted into his family. And like I said before, the same relationship Jesus has with the father, you have with the father because you are in him and every spiritual blessing, including his relationship with the father is yours. Now there may be someone here that has a hard time seeing God as their father because they had such a horrible example of a father and then they take that experience and they project it on God when they hear that God is a father. So listen, God is the absolute best father. And why do I say that? He's the best father because he's perfect. Matthew 5, 48, Jesus said, your father is perfect. While none of our earthly fathers were. He is the best father because he's wise. 1st Timothy 1.17, the father is called the only wise God. Our parents thought they knew, our fathers thought they knew what was best for us, but the father only knows what's best for us. And he is constantly working what's best for us in our lives. He is the best father because he's the most loving. Our parents loved us, but God the father is love. 1st John 4.16, Our love for our kids, if you have kids, is steel compared to the intimacy and the softness and the love that God has for his children. And he's the best father because he's eternal. Our earthly fathers can't be the best fathers because we die. And grief is caused as a result of that. But the father lives forever, 1 Timothy 6.16. So God is the absolute best father. And again, we just do this with the attributes of God all day, comparing God the father to earthly fathers to show there's no competition. He's the best. He's the absolute best. And if that's true, can you separate him from your earthly father in your mind? Can you see he's everything your earthly father isn't, if that's an issue? And since the father is the best possible father, can you trust him? No matter what's going on in your life today, can you trust Him? Can you trust in His love for you? Can you trust in His care for you? See, when we come to church, what happens is we've had all of this input for the past six days, all of this stuff that probably doesn't have a lot of God in it, and there's experiences and ideas and things that we hear and see, and all of that's just in our brains. Then we come here on Sundays, and all of that, just like a part is made through that, and we get to hear and sing reality. And we can experience, like, okay, this is the truth. And what you and I have to deal with is, okay, there's everything I experience, and there's the truth of Scripture. And one is going to, one is going to interpret the other. We're going to take our experience and go, yeah, I don't know about what the Bible says about God's love and care. Look at all this going on. Or we can say, God is a loving father and I can take that and I can put that on top of everything else going on in my life. We will all make the decision on what is going to grab most hold of our hearts, either our experiences or the truth. So can you, can I take this truth and say, no matter what's going on, I'm going to trust in the love and care of my father in heaven. This love, this care, this father, as we saw earlier, none of what I've said belongs to you unless you've renounced your hope in yourself. and all of your good works, and you've renounced any hope in any religious organization, and instead, you've put all your hope, all your trust, all your faith, where? In Christ. And that's where Paul goes next. Look at verse four again. Grace and peace from God the Father, and Christ Jesus, our Savior. Now grace comes from the Father as the source, but it comes to us through the Son, through Jesus. Look at Romans 5.1. It says, therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God. How? Through our Lord Jesus Christ. And then verse two starts, through him, through Jesus, we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand. So the Father has the grace, has the peace, and he only dispenses it through Jesus, through the Son. That's what we see. That's why Jesus is called the Savior of the world. And Jesus saves, so he saves all who believe in him, all who trust in him through his death and resurrection. That's why he's called, verse four, the Savior. Savior means we were in danger. We're in trouble. And it wasn't because we felt bad about ourselves. It wasn't because bad things happened to us. We were in trouble because of our sins against God. And Jesus, in his grace, is the Savior. He's the rescuer. He's the one who delivers us from the wrath to come for our sins. First Timothy 2.5 puts it this way. There is one mediator, one dispenser of grace, one mediator between God and men, and it's the man Christ Jesus. Notice how many mediators are there? Just one. There's not even one more. There's just one. between Father and humanity, and it's Jesus, and Jesus alone. And if you believe in Jesus, if you're trusting in him alone, you are no longer a slave. You are a son. You're no longer a slave to sin, death, and hell. You are a son. You've been adopted into the family. That's what we all were. We were all slaves to that. Now we're sons. And that happened because of what Jesus accomplished. And since Jesus is the Savior of all who believe, you revel in the Son. And point number two, you rest in Jesus' saving work. Rest in Jesus' saving work. He did all the work that saves people from God's wrath for their sins. He didn't do half. He didn't do three quarters. He didn't do 99%. He did it all. Everything you need. Started when he came here. Right? He leaves heaven and comes here taking on a body. The one who is truly God and truly human lived a sinless life. He died as a substitute, our stand-in, our scapegoat for all of our sins. He rose from the dead, ascended into heaven. He accomplished every single thing that you need and that I need to be saved. There's nothing left over. We needed God to live a sinless life. None of us are going to do that. No human would ever do that. We needed God to die for a practically infinite number of sins, right? The trillions and trillions of sins and the millions and millions of people who would believe. We needed God, the only one who has the power over death. But we also needed a human to die for human sin. We needed a human to be a substitute for all humans because of their sin, because of our sin. We need a human to conquer the grave for all the rest of us humans. And that's what Jesus did. And he didn't leave anything left over for you or for me. He did it all. That's why Acts 4.12 says there is salvation in no one else, no other person, no other name. And it says, therefore, there is no other name under heaven. So heaven surrounds this entire globe. There's not one little spot on the globe where there's no heaven. And it's right there where there's another way to be saved. No, heaven encompasses the whole globe. There's no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved than the name of Jesus. There is salvation in no one else, which, hear me now, includes you. You cannot save yourself. You're not good enough. It's impossible. And some have taught that you can pay for your own sins with your own blood. That's just not true. Jesus, God only accepts the blood of Christ for our sins, not ours. And no organization can do this either. You know why? Because every organization is filled with a whole bunch of sinful people who can't save themselves either. let alone anybody else. If you were drowning and you had a life raft with a big hole in it, that would be a problem, right? But if you were drowning and you had 10 life rafts and they all had huge holes in them, that wouldn't be helpful either, right? So you can't save yourself. No grouping of sinful human beings can save themselves either. It's impossible. Imagine if you were on a hike with five friends in the superstitions this week, probably not the best place to be on a hike, right? Some stuff going on there. And you got caught in the fire and there was safety on the other side of a ravine that's 20 feet wide. Would it matter if you could jump 15 feet? And your friend could jump 16 and the other 17, the other 18, the other 19. Would it really matter if you could jump 19? Like I jumped farther than you, great, we're all dead. Right? You need someone who can jump 20 feet. And he says, get on my back and I'll take you over there. And you'd be like, that's impossible. Yep. Just as impossible as you saving yourself. But jumping 20 feet, 20 million feet, it's nothing for God. Nothing at all. Only God can save you. And that's why Jesus is the only savior. He's the God man. Look at what it says in Titus 2.13. Titus 2.13. Listen to the way that he is described here in Titus. Christians, we're waiting for the blessed hope. What's that? The blessed hope is the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. He is just as much savior as he is God. It's what Paul is saying in that passage. And since he did it all, you can revel in him by resting in his saving work, instead of trying to supplement his work with yours or trying to substitute your works for his. The gospel, the good news is about what Jesus did, not what you do. There's no good news in the idea that God made salvation possible if you just work hard enough to achieve it, especially since salvation is impossible unless you're sinless like God is. And as I've said before, your good works are important. They're very important not for salvation, but from salvation, right? We do good works out of gratitude for eternal life, not to get eternal life. And if that's true, then you can rest in his perfect life. Not trying to pretend that your life is perfect when it's not. You can rest in his death on the cross to take God's wrath for your sins, rather than punishing yourself for your own sins. You can trust in the punishment on the cross. You can rest in his victorious resurrection rather than pretending that you're such a victorious person. Hebrews 4.3 says, those who believe in Jesus are the ones who can rest. If you're your own savior or some organization is your savior, there is no rest. There's only work jumping through every hoop, sprinting on every hamster wheel in the hopes that maybe I'll be good enough that God will maybe accept me. Hopefully my good deeds outweigh my bad deeds. Guess what? They won't. Ever. That's not Christianity. That's anti-Christianity. Christianity is Jesus did it all. So rest in his work that he accomplished for you when he died for your sins. Now, if you're thinking preacher, you know, God, Jesus is the God man. Like I can accept that he was a man or really like a really special man, but the God man, the eternal God became a man. That's just too much for me to swallow. Listen, my job isn't to invent Christianity, it's just simply to proclaim it. And from the very earliest days, from the apostles and even from Jesus himself, Christians have always taught that Jesus did not become a God, that Jesus is and has always been God. This is in Paul's mind in Titus chapter one. So turn back to Titus chapter one and let's start in verse two. Verse two, in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began, and at the proper time manifested this eternal life in his word through the preaching which I have been entrusted by the command of, notice this, God our Savior. To Titus, my true child in a common faith, grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus, what, our Savior. Something going on there. There are two ways that Paul demonstrates this core teaching that Jesus is the eternal God, that he did not become God, but is now and has always been God. And the first is with that title, Savior, in verse four. Jesus, our Savior. Why does that show that Jesus is eternal God? It's because of what Isaiah 43, 11 says. It says this, look at the screen. I am the Lord, and besides me, there is no what? There is no Savior. Okay, well. If the Lord is the only Savior, and Jesus is correctly called our Savior in Titus 1-4, then Jesus is the Lord, the only Savior. And second, did you notice how easily Paul switched from the Father being the Savior to the Son being the Savior, identifying both with the same word, Savior. Verse 3, God our Savior. Verse 4, Jesus our Savior. With that word Savior, he connects Father and Son in the same sentence, in the same breath, with the same word, Savior. And actually, this isn't the last time Paul does this. Turn to Titus chapter 2, verse 10. Titus 2, 10. Christians are to be, are not argumentative. Verse 10, not pilfering, but showing all good faith so that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior. Now drop down to 2.13. We just saw this. Our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. So there's that connection. God the Father is Savior. God the Son, Jesus, He's Savior. And this isn't the last time Paul does this. Look at 3.4. Well, let's start with 3.3. For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of who? God our Savior appeared, He saved us. Not because of works done by us in righteousness. I'm gonna repeat that. He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration, renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ, our Savior. Hmm. Now, connecting the Father and the Son with this word Savior doesn't mean that Jesus is the Father. That's not Christianity. What it means is what I said earlier, both the Father and the Son, and I would say the Spirit as well, all three persons of the Trinity are involved in salvation. Again, the Father is the source, the Son is the mediator. Grace and peace come from the Father through the Son to all who believe in the Son. And since Jesus is the eternal God, You revel in the sun when point number three, you champion Jesus, the eternal God. Champion Jesus, the eternal God. It's one thing to know this truth intellectually, Jesus is God, Jesus is divine. And we could have spent the entire day starting from Matthew chapter one, going to Revelation 22 and highlighting dozens of verses on this one idea that Jesus is God. We can know this intellectually. But even demons know that this is true. Every time Jesus is walking around and a bunch of demons show up, they start screaming titles for God at him. Because they know that Jesus is God. The one difference between a Christian and a demon though is that Christians revel in the deity of Jesus. Paul reveals, in Romans chapter nine, verse five, he revels in the deity of Jesus when he says, quote, Christ is God over all. And then he adds, blessed forever, amen. So here he's writing this deep theological treatise called the Book of Romans. And he gets to this statement where he's talking about the promised Messiah and the Messiah has come and the Christ, the Messiah, he says, is God over all. In that moment, he just has to add worship and says, who's blessed forever. Amen. He can't help but worship just a little bit when he's writing about Jesus, the promised Messiah, being the eternal God. In fact, many scholars think Paul takes an early Christian song and turns it into what he writes in Philippians 2, 5 to 11. So a worship song about Jesus becomes scripture. Why? Because it's natural for Christians to take the deity of Jesus and connect it with worship. And in fact, Hebrews 1, five to nine, the father commands the angels to worship Jesus. So what's the point? The point is this, if the example of the apostle Paul is to revel in the deity of Jesus, and if the angels revel in the deity of Jesus, if that's what they're doing right now is you and I are here, they're in heaven reveling about Jesus, then we should too. We're simply adding our voices to the chorus that has been going for all of creation and will go for all of eternity, that Jesus is Lord. He is Savior and God. Now, when we revel in something, what that means is that we really enjoy it so much that we're caught in wonder, love, and enjoyment. And when that happens, isn't it natural to become a champion for what we're reveling in? Think about it, if it's a song or a movie or a book or a person or a sports team that we're huge fans of, don't we become champions of those things? Don't we want to tell others about how wonderful that thing is? If you think about it, isn't our enjoyment increased when we tell others about how wonderful our thing is? If it's a restaurant, don't we want people to taste and see what it is that you enjoy about it? If it's a song, don't you want people to enjoy it like you do? If it's a movie, don't you want people to see it and then they come out and you talk and you're like, wasn't that awesome? And they're like, yes, that was so great. Thank you for telling me about that. And what happens in that moment is the joy that you have over that thing increases. It increases because you've not only become a champion of it, but other people see how wonderful it is and it increases your joy in that thing too. We champion what we revel in and we increase our reveling in that thing that we enjoy when we become champions of that thing, whatever those things are. This is natural for us to do. becoming champions of what we enjoy is just natural. Well, with everything Jesus is that we just saw in Titus 1.4, only in Titus 1.4, that he is our savior and our God. And then you add to that all that Jesus did to save us, his perfect life, his death for sins, his resurrection, his ascension. I mean, is there anything better to be a champion about than him? Philippians 121 says to live is Christ. If we're going to revel, if we're going to champion Christ, let's make our lives about him. Let's make our jobs about him. Let's make our vacations about him, our education, our recreation, our relationships, our home, our future plans, all of it. Let's think about it in light of him. There's nothing better, nothing greater. We become champions of so many lesser things compared to Jesus. All of those things satisfy about as much as cotton candy compared to the infinite worth and infinite joy and infinite satisfaction that comes from Christ and Christ alone. And I'll end with this, with this last statement. If enjoyment and joy and happiness and satisfaction and Jesus If those don't go together in your mind, if that just seems like so foreign, like I can't even, that doesn't even compute, then listen, you might have the wrong Jesus. Psalm 1611 says, in his presence is fullness of joy, and at his right hand are pleasures forevermore. So now that we've recognized who the Father is and who the Son is, let's live our lives reveling in the Father and the Son by trusting, by resting in, and by being champions for our Savior and our God and our Father. Let's pray.