This morning, it's the idea of active engagement. I'm sure if you walk through 2 Peter, you saw how much emphasis was laid on false teachers there. And as you walk into Paul's letter to Titus, as he's establishing churches on the island of Crete, again, false teaching crops up. And this idea that we're not passive is coming to light in these passages. I was thinking about how to start off, and I was thinking about dogs. I've been talking about dogs a lot. I rode with a colleague down who has a dog, and it's like their child, and so I've been thinking about it. But dogs and their training have been a topic of conversation in my family as of late, due mainly to the compulsive purchasing of dogs that I tend to fall into. Our latest addition came in December. It's Heidi. It's our Husky. And we bought the husky. I see Bob's looking at me like, why'd you buy a husky? Well, because I have children. That's why I bought a husky. I just wanted you to know why. But Anderson wanted a husky. I don't want a husky at all. I do like the dog. It's a wonderful animal. But we've been thinking about it because we wanted a well-behaved dog. at least one, one dog. And if you're wondering how many dogs I have, well, you just have to come to the house and count them. But I think everyone who has a dog wants it to be well-behaved. It's just the effort and involvement that we tend to shy away from giving. Because here's a reality that I've learned. There's no such thing as passively training a dog and thinking you're going to end up with a well-behaved animal. Well-behaved dogs take an active engagement, which means high effort and involvement. It's going to take sacrifice and work. It requires the correct training applied consistently. Passive engagement, which by definition is something that doesn't cost much and requires low effort, will never work. If it did, every dog in the world would be well behaved. And if you've met a lot of the dogs in the world, they're not well behaved. I say all that as an illustration because we understand that, right? When I say a dog needs active engagement, if you're gonna train the dog, you're gonna have to work with the dog. You're gonna have to show some effort. You're gonna have to engage. You're gonna have to give commands. You're gonna have to teach commands. You're gonna have to go to those puppy training classes, whatever's out there, to make sure you have a well-behaved animal. You're gonna be actively involved in this. Well, a healthy church requires the same active commitment. You must engage in an active way. The church will not be healthy if it is filled and led by passive, and by that I mean low effort, low involvement, people. A healthy church requires correct, active engagement from us all. from congregants to pastor, from leadership, all the way through every component of the church. For a church to be healthy, it requires correct, active engagement. And it's an engagement that sees, first and foremost, the reality. Looking at verses 10 through the first part of 13. Paul wrote this, he says, for there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, especially they of the circumcision, whose mouths must be stopped, And if you underline in your Bible, you can highlight that. That's not a soft statement that he's saying. He says, you need to shut them up, is basically what he's referencing in that moment. Who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not for filthy lucre's sake. One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, and a poet actually, said the Christians are always liars, evil beasts, slow bellies. This witness is true. And these are realities that Titus is facing, and it demands an active engagement. They cannot be passively addressed or even considered. And reality requires, first and foremost, understanding. You have to understand what are you looking at. And the first thing listed by Paul is to understand the quantity, for there are many. This was not some small, and I put in parentheses, maybe issue. It was a fact, and Paul was making sure Titus understood there are a lot of them. In other words, you will most certainly encounter this false teaching, and the sheer number of false teachers made Titus' need to oppose them all the more urgent. This isn't a one-off. This isn't a few. This isn't maybe. This is for real. There are many of them. And as he is establishing churches all over the island of Crete, he understands that false teaching has permeated every component. I put as a thought, as Scripture is forever relevant, as it speaks to our culture as well, and we're going to see that in even the description of the Cretan population, we must have the same urgency and be prepared to engage them correctly. And when I say the word correctly, I mean biblically. We are to engage, we are to confront, we are to stop, we are to make sure truth is overwhelming the lie, and we need to do so biblically, requiring us to understand our Bibles. And so as we are walking through, as we look at what God's calling a healthy church to do, underlining the whole component of this that kind of permeates it all, you have to understand that you need to know your scriptures, that God calls a healthy church, and that's all of us, to know His Word, and to apply His Word, and to live out His Word. That's what He's calling us to do. And it's encountering false teaching in the church. Paul is not talking about what the government has passed, and he's not talking about what some crazy on the steps of some house or some place is saying, but he's instead saying, as lies infiltrate into the church, we need to confront it. The greatest danger and damage from false teaching is always from within. And Paul's telling Titus, it's not a maybe, it's a reality. You have false teaching woven into the fabric of the church that is coming in in some way, shape, or form, a reality that the word many makes crystal clear. Yet Paul doesn't want Titus or us to approach them naively, so we must understand the description. We understand the quantity. We realize that it's not a maybe. The church is going to be afflicted with false teaching from within. It's going to encounter this lie. And then we need to understand the description of false teachers. These people are unruly. That word means they're insubordinate, they're rebellious, they're undisciplined, they're disorderly. they're not ruled by law. And then you have to ask yourself, when Paul says, they're not ruled by law, whose law is he talking about? And we know what that is. They are not ruled by God's law. That means they are against God's law. They're against God's truth. One writer said this about them, they are spiritual and moral insurgents, the enemies of God, his truth, and his people, speaking of his church. So understand this as Paul starts out, not casually, but instead says to Titus, you've got a huge problem. The church is going to be attacked from within. Yes, we know the world lies and the world preaches its rhetoric, but you're going to have lies coming in from within that fill in. And he wants us to understand something, because we tend to be very compromising. And Paul's not giving Titus the option to compromise. He starts off saying, they're rebellious people. They are literally the enemies of God, they're the enemies of his gospel, and therefore they're the enemies of his church. They're not people you compromise with. False teachers are not simply confused. They're not just off a little bit. Well, they must be a little confused. Must be how they were raised. Well, they got a little off on this one. They must have read the wrong book. They're not confused people. They must be seen for who they are. They are against God, ultimately, and they need to be confronted. Now, as God's enemies, they have nothing of value to say. They are, as he says, vain talkers. And the word vain talkers means you speak no truth. They're devoid of truth. They speak things that do not bring the results that are promised. And I want you to remember that. They are going to say things, they're going to promise things, they're going to promote things, they're going to give a commitment to something that will not come true. Shakespeare describes it this way, full of sound and fury signifying nothing. I'm going to give us an example. It's not necessarily of something that's in the church, but it's sadly coming to the church. And again, it's an example of how false teaching can permeate. Take the promises or talk of this world. I'm going to reference some. I'm sure you've heard them. Just be you, they say. Claim whatever existence or identity you desire. Do whatever your little mind can imagine. And I added the word perverse because that's what they're basically saying. Let your mind do whatever you want. And here's the promise that comes in from the world that actually we can see preached or heard preached in God's church as well, sadly. If you do this, you'll be happy and you'll live peacefully and you'll be content. Yet what you often see, which is never shown, is rampant turmoil, chaos, brokenness, personal depression, even suicide. The world promises this, they promote this, they say it will all work, and what we find is utter collapse in society. And then the church takes that same rhetoric and they gobble it up. They'll sit and talk about it. They'll literally say they're thinking about it and decide to go with what the world says and think that that's going to please God and or make that person in some way happy, which goes against all of scriptural teaching that the world is going to make them ultimately happy. And I say that for this point, we spend too much time trying to see validation in some component of false teachers, to find the speck of good and ignore the mountain of problems presented. And I know it's a kindness that we offer people, right? Well, let's see the good in this person. And I'm going to say this bluntly, stop looking for what's good in a false teacher. You are going against what God has said. They're vain talkers. They are devoid of truth. There's nothing there that you should want. We need to spend more time recognizing reality. They are vain talkers who are devoid of ultimate truth. And I'm gonna say something, because any truth they use, any smidgen of the Bible that they end up grabbing and using is done to move away from gospel truth and promote another agenda. In other words, whatever truth you happen to see, whatever shiny part of their character, every shiny part of what they say, you say, look, they're doing this good. Paul says, stop it. Whatever they're manipulating is exactly that, a manipulation to control or turn something away from God's truth and move to their own agenda. And so in understanding who these people are, Paul states bluntly now, they are deceivers. Now, the word in Greek, has a lot more weight than the word cheating or tricking someone. To be honest, when we talk about deceiving somebody, when we say that word in English, it doesn't carry the weight of that word in Greek, the word that Paul chose to use. There's another Greek word that would fit. We don't have an English word that describes what Paul's trying to say. And here's what the Greek word is saying, because there's another one for that cheating, tricking someone in a circumstance. You deceive me, right? You tricked me in a business deal. That's not what they're talking about. It's not that you were slick, that you were a used car salesman. Sorry to any used car salesmen out there. You didn't sneak a deal in there. You weren't a lawyer. I'm going to pick on myself now. You're not a plant salesman. You're not one of those people. You're not even a pastor. This is what you're coming in. This word is not about a slick move that you made in a circumstance. The word in Greek speaks of mind delusion. It is altering them. Their deceit was never intended to stay at the surface, to only damage in the moment or in a particular circumstance. This is not getting something over on somebody. This is not upselling them at a plant sale. Right? This is, not that that was bad. I'm just, sorry, picking on myself now. It's not this circumstance. It's not a moment in time. It's complete mind delusion is the word. The goal they had was to alter the psyche in a permanent way of the person. The deception, and Paul is saying this, they are deceivers to the extent that they're coming in to affect the whole of their audience, the mind, the emotions, and the activities of the person being deceived. They want to alter how you think, they want to alter how you feel, and ultimately alter what you do. It is not a surface-level deception. It is all of you. You're completely sucked into the lie. And then there's another sad implication in this word. The propagator of the lie is sucked in as well. This person is not an outside fraud selling something they don't believe in, sadly. The person propagating this believes their own lie. They've bought it. They're in it. And so when Paul says this is a description of this person, they are rebellious, they're the enemies of God, they have nothing of truth to say. Stop looking for truth in there. Stop seeing glimmers of verses they may twist and use. One illustration I have, I remember a political figure, an unsaved reprobate, stands up and uses Amos and quotes it in a speech, and it infuriated me. Leave God's word alone, you don't believe in it, but he's throwing it out there. Why? To manipulate the audience. And that's a political side. That's nothing compared to what these people are doing, who are going to take some truth and twist it to alter what people believe in and move them in a different direction. Described for us here are the enemies of God purposefully against his rule, devoid of truth, even though they dabble in truth for their nefarious purposes, outright and deep deceivers, many of whom sadly are manipulating Jewish practice and tradition. That's why I say especially they have the circumcision. On the island of Crete were people taking Jewish tradition and manipulating that in a different way to gain what? Followers. These are dangerous people, people who have a goal to change generational thinking, which becomes clear when we understand the tactic. It says here, who subvert whole houses? And houses there is households. It's this concept of the whole family. And so when Paul writes that, he's saying this, they're not just looking to move a segment of the population. Instead, they're after all generations. They are destroying whole families. And when you look at a family unit and you go back to ancient times, the family unit or a household might encompass more generations than we're used to seeing, though maybe in some places you see it more, from grandparents down to grandchildren, from older to very young, when they come in and say they're convincing whole households, it's speaking to the fact that they're coming in and they're getting the kids, and they're getting the teens and they're getting young parents and they're getting grandparents, they are polluting all of society. And so they've targeted the family unit. They want households. Because then the propagators of the lie go from every segment of the population, and so kids can pollute children, and teens can pollute teens, and 20s can pollute 20s. They're after everyone. And their underlying motive is just base gain, right? Teaching things which they ought not for basically profit. Now, it's not just money. It's not just a quick scam. That's the whole idea of them being deceivers. They want the profit of this person. They're not looking for a quick sale. They're looking to steal the farm. They want it all. They want to control this person's life generationally. And so Paul states bluntly, their mouths must be stopped. In other words, this is a serious matter, twisting and deceiving whole families, and that warrants our closest attention. If a water line breaks in your house right before church, you're not going to be here. Why? Because you've got to stop the water. It's going to cause immediate damage. It's going to destroy your home. And that's the idea that Paul is saying when he says, shut their mouth. It's to silence, and the idea is to block water flow. Because when water keeps coming in, it comes constantly. It warrants immediate and focused attention. It is necessary to negate their influence and to not give them an audience. And I'm going all the way back to now the vain talkers. Quiet them. You want to quiet a false teacher? Have no one listening to them. They have no one to talk to. They have no audience. You know what we sadly do in our culture? Constantly give false teachers an audience. Constantly give them an ear. Constantly find some way to give them credibility. Well they're good at this. They said that that was helpful. Paul's already told you they're just manipulating truth. Then he comes to this idea you need to shut their mouth. Now it'll be a dangerous thing. I'm not asking you to go into their church and go punch them in the face right on stage. That's illegal. Don't give them an audience. Don't give them opportunity. Don't open the door to it. One of my biggest disappointments in people that I respect is who they give their pulpit to, who they'll let teach in their church. Oh, they're famous people, but they don't believe in a biblical creation. They negate it. And then you still dump that person up and let them teach. Oh, he'll never teach on that topic. Yeah, but you've given them an audience. This liar has an audience. And I think that we've become undiscerning in the chasing of popularity. And so we must understand how serious Paul is. It is necessary to negate their influence, to not give them an audience, a need that becomes even more emphasized when you understand the culture. Now there's a shift that takes place, and some people miss this. Some commentators even miss this. So we're talking about false teachers, and then Paul suddenly describes the island. And I want you to understand, he's not just zeroing in on false teachers. Now he's talking about the people Titus is reaching, the people in the church. What is the reputation of this culture? And he quotes a Christian poet philosopher from the 6th century BC, Epimenides. I don't even know if I'm pronouncing it right, but you probably don't know either. So we're going to jump in there. He shared a bit about the island's people. It was his people. He's from this island. He was famous, one of the seven ancient wisdoms. And so even though this is 600 years later, this is how culture is described and Paul ties to it. He says, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, slow bellies. And then Paul says something. This witness is true. This is accurate, Paul says. This describes the culture. And Paul wanted Titus and the elders that were being set up in these churches to have healthy local churches all over the island. He wanted them to grasp who they are attempting to reach. Who is their audience? And sadly, in communication, in their words, they are liars. And the word means incessant liars. There was a verb to cretinize meant you were a liar. Oh, you're cretinizing me. You're lying to me. That's how much they lied. And what does that tell you about this culture? Dishonesty was accepted by them. I would say it was promoted, and it increased their susceptibility to being deceived. Honesty was obviously not valued, so you didn't run your words and your life through any filter. we would check what we're going to say to make sure it's true. A Cretan would make sure that nothing was true. Who cares? Truth is not important. You don't run what you're saying against any facts. So it's not just that they're out there lying to people because it's so much fun. Oh, let's tell my friend a lie. Let's see if I can get him to... No, that wasn't the case. It's that they never filtered anything. There's a whole story. They took Greek mythology and the Cretans, this is their big lie, that they said Zeus was dead and buried on their island. Which is interesting because Zeus is said to be immortal in their whole religion. And so they're the biggest liars ever. The head god in our Greek pagan culture is dead and buried on our island. And they stuck with it because they like to tell a story. They like to turn. They didn't run anything through fact. And so it's not valued, so you don't filter anything. And then I put, let alone filter things through God's truth. That never entered their mind. They never took what they said and funneled it through any type of filter. And so what happens to a society? They don't take what they hear and funnel it through any type of filter. Sadly, because they're deceivers, they become deceived easier. Because they so easily lie, they also naturally lack biblical discernment. And so they're susceptible even more so to twisted theology. So with the dishonesty being the norm in communication, then you move to evil beasts. This is their morality or their emotions. And they were, as it says, evil beasts. And what it means is they're wild animals. They were instinctual. Reacting to life's circumstances by the passion of the moment. You frustrate me, I attack you. They were greedy, they were mean, they were savage. They gave into whatever desire or appetite that struck their fancy. So understand how they are. Liars. They are dishonest. They don't filter anything they say. Therefore, they're not going to filter anything they hear. Then on top of that, they are like wild animals. They will react to a circumstance with whatever passion they have at the moment. If they feel like being patient, they're patient. If they want to be greedy, they're greedy. If they're mean, they're mean. If they feel like engaging the basis of emotions and desires, they do so. They're evil beasts. Their culture had set themselves as the standard. What do I do? Whatever I feel like doing. Sound familiar at all? You see that in our culture today? You be you, you do what you want, you do what your emotions tell you to do. There's no standard. Don't let anyone tell you you can't do that. You can do this all you want. In other words, that island looks like our country. And there's not much difference there at all. And so when you line up with that type of thinking, it's no wonder that after you communicate a certain way and after you react with your will and your emotions and your passions, your morality is a certain way, there's no doubt that your actions then, and he describes them as slow bellies. And the direct translation is idle gluttons. And Paul's making a point. He's basically saying this, you have no work ethic. None at all. Which leaves you open to deception as well. If you're not willing to work for it, what are you not willing to do? I wonder if what they told me is true. They don't even waste the time asking that question. They don't run anything through. They don't do any work. They don't do any study. You want to be tricked? Don't know your Bible. Want to not know your Bible? Be lazy and don't read it. It's not that you don't have enough time. It's that you're lazy. That's what Paul is trying to tell you. I know that can step on some toes, but that's what Cretans were. Idle. They didn't want to put the work in at all. They didn't want to try to do it. They didn't want any. You need to know your Bible if you're going to be able to be discerning. They don't know their Bible because they don't want to put the work into knowing their Bible. And then on top of that, they indulge themselves to the point of excess. They never told their bodies no. And the picture that's painted in Greek is that they're walking around with their belly hanging out, doing whatever they want, walking and casually proud of the fact that they don't have a work ethic and they indulge themselves to whatever excess they can think of. I will eat as much as I want. I'll get as fat as I want to do. I don't want to do any work. I'll engage in any passion I feel like doing. And I like to lie all the time. I don't really care what truth is. I just want to say what I want to say. In other words, you get a picture of a very immediate society, a society that set themselves as the standard. And Paul's saying this reality calls for active engagement. The healthy church cannot sit idly by watching the world spin out of control And more importantly, watching the world spin right into the church. We must come to grips with the fact that many false teachers are wandering into God's church, enemies of the gospel, who are devoid of any eternal truth, committed to deceiving all generations at the deepest of levels, and they cannot remain unchecked. Why? Well, think about it. They are reaching the audience that I just described. Liars, evil beasts, Idol bellies. Culture's desire, and we see, if you look at the island of Crete and the description that we just had, and you look at our culture today, you cannot see many differences. And so here is this false teacher walking in with a rhetoric, a religion, a movement that appeals to the basis of desires, speaking to people who have set themselves as the standard. Because we are the Cretans. Dishonesty is promoted as long as it serves your cause or purpose. Engaging in whatever strikes our fancy, wherever our most basic desires lead us, and indulgent, refusing to ever say no to ourselves, refusing to have anything properly labeled as sin. Paul says, see the reality. The false teacher has nothing truth and of righteousness to share, even though they might use some words of it. And they're talking to an audience that's basically saying, feed us a lie, we want one. We want something that appeals to who we are. We're wanting to be lied to and deceived. We want to get permission to do whatever our little wicked hearts tell us to do. And we want to say never no to ourselves, but just run rampantly forward. We have to be aware of this reality because it is our reality. This is what we are facing, and it's a reality that requires an active engagement, a correct engagement. And so Paul continues now. He says, look, see the reality. Now he comes up with the response. The end of 13 and verse 14, he says, And understand this. Who is the them? The Cretans he's talking about now. Who are you rebuking now? Who are you coming to talk to? The people we just described. The island. Your audience. The audience is the same. False teachers are teaching to this audience and the audience has provided the false teachers and now God is calling the church to speak to this audience and it says rebuke them sharply. I was talking with that colleague, again another dog illustration, Now, he has one dog, and he was talking about how they're training their dog, and it's about a year old. It sounds like they're doing a bang-up job, I say sarcastically. But either way, he's got this dog, and he says, yeah, my wife and I, when we tell the dog no, it responds completely differently. He says, I say no to the dog, and he says, I say no, and the dog at least looks up. Something's different. He says, my wife goes to the dog and says, no, no. And he says, the dog looks at it like it's praise. And I was thinking to myself, well, it's helpful to remember that dogs aren't fluent in English. And so tone and method matter, right? Because the dog's not listening to you pontificate about your world's problems, right? Everyone's like, oh, the dog is such a good listener. No, it doesn't understand a word you're saying. It's just sitting there hoping you're going to pet it. Right? I don't want to ruin your image of dogs, but that's the truth. Keep talking to your dog. It's better than telling someone else. But either way, it's a great counselor if you just need someone to listen to you in that sense. But dogs don't speak fluent English. And so he's looking at tone. Or in other words, it's looking at method. If you want to correct a dog, you had better change your tone so it understands that you're no longer happy with what it's doing. And I say that because this is the point. We need to understand the method. Now, we need to note this first of all. We're called to address those in church. So we just describe these cretins and we think, wow, they're terrible. No, that's what the church is filled with, sinful people. And Paul is saying, hey, I want you to address these people. This is the audience. These are who God is giving you. They, the liars, the evil beasts, the slow bellies. to insult us all, us. He said, we need to reach into the church. We're called to reach people. We're called to reach even the ones that seem so gullible and worldly, the ones that seem so easily duped by false teachers. We're called to reach them. And Paul says, there's a way you do that when they're buying into a lie and they need a sharp rebuke, he says. And that word sharply means to cut. It's a reproof was to cut with penetrating force. That's what one writer says. Another writer said this, it's supposed to be a response of real surgery. We're not playing operation here. We're not reaching in to take the bone out and hoping we don't buzz the little things. Oops, I lost the game. It's not a game, Paul says. I want you to surgically, he says, remove and go in. I want you to rebuke with precision. As another commentator wrote this, it says, the surgeon of the soul only cuts to achieve a cure. And I hope I'm speaking to something here because sometimes we love to just load up the cannon and blast it away. And so in all the firmness that Paul has given, he says, look, stop coddling false teachers. Stop pretending like they give you truth. Understand what your culture is. Stop thinking that wicked, sinful people are suddenly going to make great, amazing biblical choices. And then he says, I want you to give a sharp rebuke. And we read that word and we think, well, good, we're going to just come down on them hard. No, he says, I want you to rebuke them with precision. The idea is that as we come in and encounter our church, people in the church as we grow, as we encounter the people God has given us to reach, that we work with precision. Our goal is spiritual health, not spiritual death. We're called to cut deeply, yet precisely. And along with that sharpness of a rebuke, they also need a refocusing or a focusing rebuke. What's the purpose? It says, There is a refocusing idea. It's to drive them to this idea of soundness, which is a word we talked about. Paul used that in the previous verses. Sound faith is a believing faith that results in eternal life. It is faith that is growing and healthy, a faith that protects and preserves life. The church must have a healthy, living faith, and that And for the church to have that, by the way, it needs to be filled with healthy Christians. That's not a leadership-only component. That's a church component. MacArthur mentioned this, and I can't remember exactly where, but he was talking about the Book of Titus. He says, this is how a church does evangelism. This is how a church reaches its community. It has to be a healthy church. It has to be sound in the faith. It is focused on sound faith. It's focused on people being true believers. It cares about that. That topic comes up. It's on our mind. We don't walk in with an assumption. We walk in with a passion to share the gospel. We want to see, as John was praying, we want those who don't know Christ as their Savior to be convicted. We want to see them come to Christ. We want to see them believing. That is the role and goal of a church. A healthy church cares about its community. It's reaching out. It is walking into the church and saying, well, who is saved? And how are we making sure God's truth is clearly known? It results in a sound faith, real faith, healthy, growing, eternal faith. That is to be the outcome of our response. That's the goal. A healthy church prods its people to avoid fables. And here it mentions this idea that some of the false teachers are twisting the Old Testament, or maybe most of them at the time, twisting the Old Testament to promote their own legends. In lieu of preaching God's Word, because by the way, the apostles preached the Old Testament. That was their scriptures they were using as the Holy Spirit inspired them to write the New Testament. These people are grabbing and saying, let's shift our attention from God's Word to now to legends. And that's exactly what that word means. Myths or legends. Stories. They're making up or propagating stories that are there. And then on top of that, they're elevating man-made tradition and religious rules. All you have to do is read the Gospels to know that's what the Pharisees did, right? They had elevated the rule of man above the rule of God. Christ condemned them for it. They created an absolutely oppressive, legalistic society. That's how they function. Now you see some of that same false teaching go off to an island full of people who are liars, evil beasts, and slow bellies, and suddenly it's morphed into whatever fits their culture. but its fables, its man-made traditions, all of which distract from the truth. That's what Paul's trying to make clear to Titus. It's all shifting people's focus in the wrong way. We must be responding with a biblical goal and with biblical precision for the growth of God's people. Don't miss the end. Why are we surgically rebuking people? For sound faith. For the purpose of them growing. Yet it's important to come, and this is to a close, to a certain realization. So Paul starts with the false teachers. We see this description of culture, right? The Cretans are liars, evil beasts, slow bellies. Paul then talks about how we must respond, how we must engage our church, we must engage our community and our culture because we're trying to reach them because they're being duped. and they're buying into it based on their own wickedness and the lies that are being taught. Now Paul closes out this conversation saying, let's come to a good realization. In other words, he's shifting his focus back to what he started at, to understand the realization of this. It says, unto the pure all things are pure. But unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure, but even their mind and conscience is defiled." And I'm going to put a little note here. When he talked about false teachers being vain talkers devoid of truth, he's trying to let you know something here about false teaching. Stop finding truth in them when there is none. Stop finding life in a dead person. They don't know, and he's going to go on and make it even clearer. They profess that they know God. but in works deny him, being abominable," and every time I think of a snowman, which is a terrible thing, because that word actually describes the Antichrist in Scripture, he's abominable, "...and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate." In other words, Paul wants to make sure you get this idea that a false teacher has nothing good in them at all. Stop finding life in dead people. We need to see who false teachers are, who our world really is. We need to understand the inner life. As believers, Paul says, we're called to purity of mind and heart. When we're living as a believer, living as we're called in Christ to live, then all our perspectives will be pure. I'm not saying that every thought you have is pure and that everything you do is suddenly pure because you're a believer, but as you are living out the true Christian life, Align with who Christ is and as He being our identity, which Paul talked about at the beginning, we'll see this world and life from Christ's perspective, His viewpoint. The point being, as Paul starts, our identity in Christ changes everything about our life and how we perceive it. If you are living the Christian life to its fullest and correct way, as we're called to do, then everything in your life, everything you see changes. Your identity in Christ has changed you completely. You are not the same person. We still struggle with the sin nature. We still struggle with that habits that come back. Paul's not making all those good or pure. He's just saying as we identify in Christ and live it, then our perspectives are pure. He sets that up. to make the comparison, because the same principle bears fruit in the unbelievers' life, those that are defiled. They have no purity, and everything they think and do is polluted by that. Now, this is critical. Even the seemingly good they do, yet done from a twisted motive, a human-based motive, and not as an outflow of salvation. Why is that? Someone who's unsaved cannot serve God out of a motive of being saved. That's impossible, right? That means every unsaved person has a twisted motive for what they're doing. Oh, Kenny, you're being too harsh. I'm just speaking what Paul's saying. He's trying to get us to understand no matter what they do, it doesn't have eternal good attached to it. It cannot. And here's what's sad. And I'm not saying that they can't do good for society. I'm not speaking to that. I'm saying that if you're unsaved, the good you do will not bear eternal fruit. And that's exactly what Paul is trying to tell them. They can do nothing eternally good. And actually, what they do that seems good becomes a barrier to what is eternally good. It becomes a barrier to true faith, what makes it eternally dangerous. Remember we talked about how they deceive themselves? Almost the more good that an unbeliever does, it almost builds this wall, this constant layers of this idea, right? I'm good enough. And so it builds a barrier against truth, which drives us now to properly understand their outer life, even if, And even though they profess to know God, the attitude and outcome of their life negates it. They deny Him by who they are and what they do. Jesus stated in Matthew 7, 16 through 17, He says, And He goes on, And so he's confronted the lie of false teaching. He's also confronted this idea, see, we're saying, oh, but there's some good apples on that tree. And God says, no, bad trees bear bad fruit. There's a line that's in the sand, actually not in the sand, it's in concrete, and there's a wall there, and it's marketed clearly, Christ taught it, and now Paul's telling Titus, understand false teachers, lost people. They are abominable. That's a term, as I said, that's used to describe the Antichrist. What does it mean? Because again, all I think of is a snowman going, ooh, and coming down a mountain in a kid's cartoon. So it doesn't resonate in our mind. It means worthy of or causing disgust or hatred. It is worth hating. It's worth being disgusted about. To make it as casual as someone can, to really dumb down the definition, it is very bad and unpleasant. That was listed in one of the Google definitions. Very bad, unpleasant. But the idea is that it is worthy of being hated. It causes that and is that. And they move on from there. They are disobedient. What does that mean? Well, it's again that unruly. They are self-willed, in other words, driven by their own emotions and what they want, and rebellious. MacArthur notes this. Disobedient lives betray a professed faith in God. I know Jesus Christ is my Savior, but my life is completely disobedient. What is Paul saying? You don't know Jesus Christ as your Savior. You might say, well Kenny, well, I know Jesus is my Savior. Well, look at your life. I don't need to look at your life. You look at your life. You see if it lines up. Because Paul's telling Titus, hey, when you're looking out there, you better recognize who they are. And if you want to recognize who they are, just as Christ said, look at their fruit. Because you can't read into the heart there. Disobedient lives betray a professed faith in God. And then he says something else that's really helpful and goes all the way back to the false teachers and the vain talkers that are worthless. unto every good work reprobate. He didn't say they do bad things. He's basically saying the good they try to do is absolutely reprobate. It's worthless. They bring nothing helpful to God's people. They serve no eternal purpose. They have not been sent by Him. Now I'm going to go all the way back to the Old Testament because they have the same problem in Israel. Jeremiah 23, 32. This is God condemning false dreamers through Jeremiah. He says this, I am against them that prophesy false dreams." And if you highlight something, put the word against and put it in highlight there. So if you're sitting there and you want to coddle a false teacher, you are against God. Because He is against them. He's not saying, I don't like them, not my favorite person, I'll sit down to coffee but not lunch with them. I am against them that prophesy false dreams, saith the Lord, and do tell them, and cause my people to err by their lies and by their lightness." This idea of fluffing up things. "'Yet I sent them not, nor commanded them, therefore they shall not profit this people at all,' saith the Lord." I hope you can see something that God's been consistent with false teachers from the old all the way through the new as we're getting to the end of Paul's life as he's writing to Titus. It's never changed. They don't bring profit to God's people. We must realize who false teachers are and recognize that God has declared clearly what his opinion is of them. a realization that is significant for us to grasp. We must realize the truth that God has shown us about false teachers, understand their inner condition, and discern their outer actions. They are lost. They do not bring eternal good to the people of God. We are not seeking for their instruction in our life. Want to know why we're not? Not because we're competitive with them, but because God said not to. That's all. Don't do this. They bring no good. From Israel all the way through the island of Crete, there's nothing helpful eternally from these people. And a healthy church calls for an active engagement. We're not passive, and I hope you can see some of that when it says, shut their mouth, when it says that they need to be silenced, when he talks about addressing them when there's many, and how he describes them, and what they do, and who they are, and then ultimately that they don't know Christ, that they're like the Antichrist in his eyes. It calls us to an active engagement, and a healthy church will be actively engaged. We must see reality, understand there are many false teachers, understand who they are, how they work, and see the reality of our culture, their audience. And let's be honest, our audience. We must respond in a biblically deep way, one that surgically confronts our world for the purpose of saving faith. You're rebuking somebody and you're doing it for your own pride or to put them in their place or to get a zinger or to prove that you're smarter than them. That's not why you surgically work on anybody. You work because you're His ambassador and He's here and sent us here to present His gospel. We have a clear purpose and it's never wavered. It is the purpose of a saving faith. We work, we serve our Master. Let's go all the way back to what Paul said. I am His slave and I do His bidding. his bidding is for us to be ambassadors, to be a light in our community, and we're there for the purpose of saving faith. And we must realize the eternal condition of false teachers. They may claim to know Christ, but their inner and outer life deny it. And so the call from Titus as we're wrapping up this first chapter, let's be his active church and engage biblically with the world in which we live. Let's pray together. Father, thank you for the opportunity we have to come to gather together. Titus is a A confrontational letter. It is designed to lay out a mandate for a young man that is establishing churches all over the island of Crete. He's called to understand the conflict in front of him, understand the culture in which he is preaching. And as we dive into Scripture, we see the forever relevancy of it. As we look at our culture, we see the same issues. We could describe ourselves with those exact same words. We recognize that there's a host of false teaching out there, false teaching that we've let come into our homes, come into our churches, come into our lives. Paul is calling Titus to both be and to teach discernment, to recognize the reality of what's going on, to be prepared to respond in an active way, to rebuke sharply, surgically, so that people will have a sound face, so that there's a promotion of what is healthy for them, eternally healthy, not just what makes them feel good in the moment. And then understanding clearly what Scripture has told us of false teachers. They may profess to know you, but their actions deny that. Their lives deny that. Help us to be discerning Christians. Help us to be burdened Christians. As we walk into our community, we recognize here are our people, liars, evil beasts, slow bellies. And we're one of them, yet we're redeemed by your amazing grace and mercy. Help us to have a passion to share your grace and mercy with the world around us. Recognize that in this time and this age, it is our responsibility to be your ambassadors. You've left us here for that work. Let's be a healthy church, and a healthy church is actively engaging in the world and the community and in their church and all over the world. In your precious and holy name.