Titus Ten: Zeal
Notes
Transcript
Background to passage:
13 The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
14 In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there.
15 And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables.
16 And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.”
17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”
11 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people,
12 training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age,
13 waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ,
14 who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.
Opening illustration: Name something your zealous about?
Main thought: zeal - character trait that leads to action. Definition/synonyms: enthusiasm, eagerness, passion, fervor, intensity, affection, or extreme desire for a person or cause that leads to action.
Lukewarm: nominal, casual, shallow, mundane, apathetic, mediocrity in supremely important matters.
1) Components: knowledge, passion, and action
1) Components: knowledge, passion, and action
Explanation:
Argumentation:
Illustration: a head full of knowledge, a heart full of passion, and a life full of action—that is godly zeal
Application: theology does not dry out, but fans the flame if one truly see’s Christ. Theology that points to an inadequate Christ is dangerous. Enthusiasm that comes from down deep is contagious and sustaining. Fervor affects mission, purpose, affection, and compulsion. If these things don’t lead to action, no transformation, no life with Jesus, no ministry, no go and tell, it will never produce true zeal.
The source of Christian zeal is a true understanding of holiness, perfection, sovereignty, and all our magnificence of God.
2) The Affects of the Lack of Zeal
2) The Affects of the Lack of Zeal
Explanation:
11 Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.
Illustration:
Where are the young men and women of this generation who will hold their lives cheap, and be faithful even unto death, who will lose their lives for Christ’s, flinging them away for love of him?
Where are those who will live dangerously, and be reckless in this service? Where are the men of prayer?
Where are the men who count God’s Word of more importance to them than their daily food?
Where are the men who, like Moses of old, commune with God face to face as a man speaks with his friend? Where are God’s men in this day of God’s power?
-Howard Guiness, Sacrifice
Application: Affects on family: kids realize what you consider important, and unimportant. Generations may deem Christ beautiful or not. It can affect your churches. Church is a woman’s thing in Peru.
3) Dealing with Lukewarmness
3) Dealing with Lukewarmness
Perhaps none of the seven letters is more appropriate to the church at the beginning of the twenty-first century than this.
It describes vividly the respectable, nominal, rather sentimental, skin-deep religiosity which is so widespread among us today.
Our Christianity is flabby and anemic. We appear to have taken a lukewarm bath of religion
-John Stott
Explanation: Lukewarmness is sinful.
Realize
Repent
Word
Spirit
18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit,
Others-books, subjects, authors, deep friendships
18 I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see.
19 Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.
Illustration:
Application:
4) Setting the Temperature
4) Setting the Temperature
Explanation: Seek the boil, enter the prayer closet in many ways, exit in one way: glowing for Jesus.
Argumentation:
Illustration: Matt sets the temperature of the room for his family.
Application: This doesn’t mean that you come in with guns blazing, that you push people around, that you let authority run wild. Maybe you have a ministry. Maybe a family. Maybe a job.
Closing illustration:
“The key is this: You must actively pursue things that fuel the fire of zeal for God and actively kill those things that put the fire out.
Because the temperature of your heart will affect the temperature of those around you...Men, there is too much at stake in these times for us to settle for anything less than godly zeal.
The current of our culture is too strong. The headwinds against the mission are too great. The darkness of the world is too overwhelming.
The attacks of the enemy are too strong. We need men filled with godly zeal” -Josh Smith
