And so Titus this morning, let's begin again at verse number 9. This is where we left off last Sunday. And then we're going to go down to chapter 2 at verse number 1. Just that short little verse number 1. Here's what Paul is telling Titus, who was to go to the island of Crete and set up to organize Christians into organized churches with leaders. And amongst those leaders were those he calls elders or overseers, presbyters, bishops. And they are to, he says in verse nine, hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, literally according to the teaching, teaching the apostles, so that he may be able to give instruction or to exhort in sound or healthy doctrine. and also to rebuke those who contradict it. And then it's that latter part we didn't look at last Sunday and we'll come to that now and then look at verses 10 through 16 that pick up that theme there of the minister's duty to rebuke those who contradict the word. For, here's why, there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party. They must be silenced. since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach. One of the Cretans, that's the island where Titus is, one of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons. This testimony is true. Therefore, rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in the faith, not devoting themselves to Jewish myths and the commands of people who turn away from the truth. To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure. But both their minds and their consciences are defiled. They profess to know God, but they deny him by their work. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work. But, as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine." And to these words, all of God's people say, amen. So what's a pastor? What's a pastor? It's a weird thing for a pastor to preach on, the pastoral epistles, 1 Timothy and Titus, because it always feels a little bit like I'm pumping myself up here a little bit. The question is, what's a pastor? And Paul instructs Titus to instruct others and to appoint men to be ministers or pastors, elders, presbyters, overseers, bishops, all these terms that he uses. And we'll see there's another one here as well that I omitted last Sunday because I wanted to get to it today. There's a lot of different terms here, but what's a pastor? Well, some think that pastor is primarily a leader. And if you look at the books that are published by Christian publishers, what's a pastor, you'll see lots and lots of books on the pastor as a leader. Some think that the pastor, kind of appropriating cultural imagery, is more like a chairman of the board. chairman of the board, delegating work to others. And again, if you have spent like myself and like many of us here, any time in an American evangelical church, you'll see that that kind of of a model exists with a quote unquote board of elders and the pastor usually at the chair at the top of that or the head of that table or is the pastor primarily a counselor something the pastor is primarily a counselor and this might even be the prominent image feature of the American Ministry, but as we turn again to what Paul says to us in this little pastoral epistle to Titus we see In chapter 1 verse 5 that we looked at last Sunday that the pastor is called a pres Buddha Ross Or a presbyter is the sort of English version of that a presbyter or an elder this is a title of his status because The elders at the city gates in ancient Israel were the leaders and typically there were the older men So the elder or the presbyter is to be like, the minister is to be like a presbyter or an elder, meaning one of the city gate like in ancient Israel. So it has this sort of status title. But then in verse 7 we saw last Sunday that the pastor is also called an episkopos or a bishop or an overseer. as it's translated here, as an overseer. Because like in the Old Testament prophets, again, these images don't just come out of nowhere, they come from the Old Testament. Just like in the Old Testament prophets, they were to be watchmen over Israel's city. They were to stand on the walls of Zion and to look out for enemies. So the pastor is an elder, a presbyter, because that's the title of status that he has, to be somewhat of a wise person who does lead. There is no doubt an idea of leadership there. but also an overseer or a bishop, right? Literally looking down over on the people. But there's something else here. Notice about this elder overseer in verse 7. He's also called an oikonomos. An oikonomos, which translated here as a steward. A steward. So, kids, what's a steward? You've probably never heard that word before. A steward. Maybe your mom makes stew, but not stew, okay? A steward. A steward. So, S-T-E-W-A-R-D. What's a steward? Well, a steward is someone who was given the task to have responsibility over a house. So to take care of a house, not just a building, but everybody in it. So a household, to take care of a household until the owner returned. So an owner had a house and all the things in it, all the people in it, and the steward's job was to oversee the whole household because the owner was away and was to take charge of it until the owner returned. So maybe we would translate it, not as a steward, if we were to... The New Testament happened today. A steward is kind of an idea of a house sitter, right? That's more of an appropriate way of describing what a steward is. A house sitter. Maybe your family has a friend that has a nice house and they're away on vacation. And you get a little bit older, you're like a teenager, you've got to make some money, you need a job. And they say, hey, would you mind being my house sitter? for the week. That's what a steward is. You're just basically taking care and making sure that the mailbox is not overflowing, the water, the sprinklers are not broken, and maybe feed and give water and take a walk with the dog. So a steward is kind of like a house sitter, if you will. We might say in more official terms today, a steward is like a property manager, right? You own a house, and you're away, you move away, out of the country, say, out of the state, and you wanna keep your house, you hire a property manager to take charge of your house while you, the owner, are away. So that's what Paul says here of the minister. He's also a steward. He's the one who's in charge of a household. Note that Paul speaks here, though, of the church as God's house, and the pastor is to care for the house by means of of God's word. That's the big thing here, right? Isn't it? The teaching of the word. How do we care for the word? How do we care for the church? How do we oversee the house of God? Well, again, verse number nine, he must hold firm to the trustworthy word as he's been taught according to the teaching. And notice the so that, the so that there in verse number nine. He might be able first to give instruction, literally to exhort. In sound doctrine, what did I say last Sunday? What's the imagery there of sound doctrine? The ministers that teach sound doctrine, what does it mean by sound? Paula, you should remember this. You were here last Sunday. Healthy, good, good. Shane, thanks to the, is that you? Yeah, Shane, thanks for the assist. So, sound doctrine Literally healthy doctrine, that's the imagery. Healthy doctrine, right? Teaching that nourishes and sustains and builds us up. But notice also the minister, the steward, the elder, the overseer is to hold firm to the trustworthy word, the word of God, so that he might be able also secondly to rebuke Those who contradict it. Literally, to control, is what he said. In other words, we're gonna see in Titus, there are all these people who are teaching false doctrine, and the job of this steward is to make sure that those false teachers don't overrun the house. God's house, the church is God's house. The minister of the word is to teach sound doctrine to the household members so that they can eat and grow up and be mature, but also to watch out that those outside who are teaching unhealthy doctrine, that they don't come in. and overwhelm the church. They contradict the teaching, notice verse 9. And so the minister's job also is to rebuke them or to control, is the imagery here. To take charge of the house and make sure that there is no false doctrine. In fact, notice verse 9, it's kind of like an outline for us. in the rest of the letter. And I'll be coming back to this, but if you like to see how the flow of these letters work, verse nine is an outline for the rest of the letter. Notice what we're gonna look at this morning, verses 10 through 16, Paul focuses on the second part, the rebuking part, the controlling part. So there's exhorting in sound doctrine, there's rebuking those who contradict it. And those two images are going to now flow into the rest of the letter. This morning, rebuking. In chapter 2 up to verse 14, he speaks again positively of exhorting, of teaching the word, the positive side of teaching. Notice in chapter two, verse 15, he comes back to this twofold image of rebuking and exhorting, or exhorting and rebuking. Chapter three, verses one through eight, he speaks again of the positive side of exhorting. And then finally, chapter three, verses nine through 11, of rebuking. In other words, as I mentioned last Sunday, you see that big quote there on the outline, John Calvin once said it like this, the pastor ought to have two voices. The pastor ought to have two voices, one for gathering the sheep, that's the instruction part, that's the exhorting part, that's the healthy sound doctrine part, and another voice for warding off, driving away wolves and thieves. That's what Paul is telling Titus to tell these new pastors to do, rebuke. Ward them off. Protect the church. Control the house. Make sure that the food that comes out of the kitchen is healthy food. It's served up to nourish you. There's no poisonous food here. There's no spoiled food. That's the task of the minister. And so we want to look this morning at this other voice then. of the pastor, the voice of the shepherd who speaks positively, who exhorts us, who encourages us, who preaches a gospel to us, who teaches us the teaching as he's been taught, the teaching of the apostles, that it's sound, it's healthy, but there's another voice. rebuke those who contradict the teaching of the word. So notice, first point here, I'm gonna change the first point, but it should say the need of this other voice. So the need of this other voice, we see that here. So what's the need? Why does Paul speak this way? Well, these elders and these overseers, right, these are interchangeable, the elder overseer, on the island of Crete, those that Titus is not gonna ordain and set apart over these house churches on the island of Crete as he gathers together Christians into distinct congregations. These new elders and overseers on that island of Crete are going to face serious theological and practical problems. Notice what Paul says again, verse 10. There already were many false teachers there on the island. He just assumes this. Titus, I'm writing this letter to you, go to Crete. Take this task up. Oh, and by the way, many are already there. And he calls them in, notice the threefold terms, insubordinate, empty talkers, and deceivers. Insubordinates. Meaning they've learned the gospel already, they've learned the gospel already, but they have gone against it. We don't know, I mentioned the first sermon in Titus, we don't know how the gospel got to Crete. I think in Acts 2.11 there's a little hint here because there were Jews from the island of Crete there in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost who heard the gospel. And 3,000 believed and they went back to their homes all across the ancient world. And perhaps at least one was a Cretan. who went back and spread the gospel. Or perhaps Paul, on one of his missionary journeys, maybe the details, we don't know all the details of them, or maybe some other apostle made his way there. But in absence of the leadership of an apostle on the island, and a man like Titus, and like these new pastors and elders, and these overseers, in the absence of leadership, they were adding to the gospel. So they heard the gospel, but they were insubordinate. They weren't just following the gospel, they were adding to it. And we'll see more of that here in just a bit. They're also called empty talkers. What they were adding to the gospel was without substance. And they're also called deceivers. Again, what they were adding to the gospel, it had just enough truth to it. It sounded plausible enough, but it was leading people astray. They were deceivers. Deceivers and so Paul says in verse 11 that these were teaching what they ought not to teach Namely verse 14 we got to kind of connect all the dots here verse 14 they were teaching Jewish myths and the commands of people who turn away from the truth Have you ever, maybe someone's ever asked you, or maybe you've never been asked this, but maybe you've been asked, you know, if you could live in any century, which one would it be? And maybe as a Christian you've thought, you know, if we could just get back to the first century. You know, if we could just, as the church, get rid of all the trappings of religiosity and just get back to the time of the apostles, surely the church would thrive and flourish. Well, I think Paul is telling us, and he's hinting here behind the scenes, but I'm gonna tell you very clearly that there has never been any golden age era of the church on this earth. Paul is telling Titus to go to all these Christians on the island of Crete and to organize them into congregations and to ordain men over them as their leaders. Elders, overseers, stewards, ministers of the word of God. Oh, and by the way, Titus, when you do that, there are already, amongst the believers, there are already false theologies and false pieties that already exist. Sometimes we pastors, we get letters in the mail, or we get emails, or, you know, we get a phone call, you know, old school, we get a phone call from another church. And this other church says something like, Those of you who've been here long enough know that this is a prominent thing that happens in Reformed churches, but we get a phone call from an elder in another church saying, our church is vacant, we don't have a pastor, and you, and you, sort of like the game show, you are the top of our list. And you get a letter in the mail, and it's like the church profile, and it's glossy paper, and it's just nice and colorful, and we've been around for this long, we have this great building, and we have this much money in the bank, and we have this many elders to assist you, and deacons to take care of this, and all these members in the church, and we're in this great, great area, and the Lord has led us to you, and you should come over. It's sort of the grass is greener over here. And I've learned over many years from a good wife, especially, the grass is never greener, okay? Grass is never greener. If you've seen our yard, you know the grass is never greener. So, the grass is never greener. Paul's telling Titus to tell these new ministers, oh, by the way, when you get into these new congregations, you know, your first call as a minister, your first charge as a pastor, by the way, your church is full of false theology and false piety. False theology, false piety. They never tell you that in the brochure, by the way. They never give you that information when they send you the lengthy plead to come over and help us. They never tell you all the bad stuff. It's always the good stuff, right? And we pastors have our ways, right? We ask around, we figure out, okay, this is not really the place for me. Someone else, perhaps. But this church, or these churches on Crete, were already going to be full of false theology and false piety. The Apostolic Church itself was no Golden Age loved ones. It was a mess. We all know this, you know, read Corinthians, right? It just puts the death in our minds, any idea that we would wanna go live in the first century, because that was the golden age. The churches were full of sinners. And these false teachers were upsetting whole families, verse 11 says. Verse 15, their minds, their consciences are defiled. Verse 16, they deny God by their works. No golden age. No glossy brochure, okay? The grass is not greener over here. And so these newly minted ministers were to rebuke, verse nine again, those who contradict the word, to keep them from overtaking the house of God while the master is away. Notice the false theology, just briefly. Paul doesn't detail it for us, so a lot of it we kind of have to read between the lines or fill in some other New Testament letters. You know, what exactly was going on? We don't know exactly what was going on, precisely what they were teaching us, but we get some hints here. We get some hints here. And I think one of them is just the description, verse 10. Empty talkers. Empty talkers. Whatever they were saying had no substance. Whatever they were saying already on the island before Titus even got there was not going to sustain the souls of the sheep that they were trying to feed. Paul tells us in this context then, in contrast to what the scriptures say elsewhere about the word of God, that these empty talkers are going to give a substance-less gospel. The word of God is to be like milk, bread, and meat, the Bible says. Milk, bread, and meat. If you eat bread and meat and you drink milk, you're gonna be sustained, right? These are nourishing, healthy foods. Milk, bread, and meat, right? This is good stuff for your body. It's nutritious. But these false teachers, these empty talkers, All they offer up is junk food with empty calories. Donuts, Twinkies, Kaden, Starbucks, Better Buzz. That's the kind of theology that Paul's saying that they were teaching. It's just full of junk, right? I should have said Dutch Bros, right? Dutch Bros is like the worst of the worst when it comes to coffee. It's just pump, pump, pump, pump, pump of whatever the flavor is. And there's like this much coffee and that much junk, right? So it's not good for you. It's not healthy for you. It's junk food with empty calories. Michael Horton once gave an interview on CBS, of all news channels, way back in the day. And he was describing Joel Osteen's theology, and here's what Michael Horton said. He said, I think it's a cotton candy gospel. It's a cotton candy gospel, right? Not to pick on that one name, but you know, we all know, right? There are lots of teachers, and it's like cotton candy, right? It's like cotton candy. Our kids like cotton candy, but if you eat, all you eat is cotton candy, what happens to your teeth, kids? I said it last Sunday, didn't I? If all you eat is cotton candy, what happens to your teeth? They're gonna rot and fall out. You can't live on cotton candy, okay, as much as you want. Cotton candy gospel. Well, who are these people? Well, again, we have to kind of read between the lines, but we see in verse 10, he says, there are many, especially of the circumcision party. And that little ad, it's a Greek adverb, especially, it means in other words. So the many are the circumcision party. There are many people, that is to say, of the circumcision party, meaning overly legalistic Jewish teachers like those that Paul was dealing with already in Galatia, who were adding to the gospel. Believe in Jesus, yes. He's the Messiah, yes. But you can't really be a citizen of the kingdom of heaven unless Men, you get circumcised, and the rest of us, we all gotta eat kosher food laws, and we have to follow all the new moons and the Sabbath days and the festivals. If you don't follow all that stuff, you cannot really be a citizen of the kingdom of God and a member of the church. They're called the circumcision party. Paul just kind of says, well, circumcision is like the part for the whole. They thought circumcision was like the most important law thing that you had to do, the Old Testament law, but that was symbolic of the entire law. You gotta keep all the 10 commandments and all the 613 laws of God in the Old Testament, or else you cannot be a member of the church. So they were teaching these Jewish myths, we're told there, verse 14, commands of people. Again, we don't exactly know what he means by the Jewish myths, but there were because the Jews were in a diaspora. They had spread out from the time of the exile across the ancient world. And there are written sources that say that Jews, diaspora Jews, exiled Jews living in parts of, say, Greek and now Roman society, that they had these writings that told these sort of, we would call them tall tales, about the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to sort of fit into the narrative of the society around them to make their religion maybe more palatable, or make it sound a little more like the Greeks and the Romans and their gods and their religions and so forth. We don't know exactly what Paul means by that, but we do know when he says that they are teaching the commands of people. Does that sound like something in the New Testament? The commands of people? The Pharisees. The Pharisees. Remember when Jesus said that the Pharisees, they wouldn't even eat any food. Because they had a commandment of men, the tradition of the elders. That if you did not wash your hands first, not just, you know, we wash our hands, kids, before we eat because our hands are dirty, there's germs, we know we can get sick. But in a Jewish house, before you walk into the house, there'd be a big stone water pot outside with water that was ritually blessed. And it would be like, Caden showed me that little, where's that little bull that was over there? Before they fixed the chapel up, there's that little metal bull over there that used to be in the front of the chapel over here because this is an ecumenical chapel where Roman Catholics could come in here and dip their fingers in the holy water and cross themselves. That's a ritual washing. before you walk into the church to purify, to cleanse yourself in an outward way. In the same way, the ancient Jews washed their hands first in a ritually necessary way before they could touch food, because if they didn't do that, they would defile the food and they would be impure to enter God's temple. The prophet Isaiah already spoke of that back in the day in Isaiah 29, where he said that they drew near to God with their lips, but their hearts were far from him. How so? Isaiah 29 verse 13 says, their fear of me, their fear of God is a commandment taught by men. Their whole religion was one of tradition. They set aside the law of God, Jesus says, for the traditions of men. And then Jesus said then, again, this is Mark 7, Matthew 15, in the context of you had to wash your hands, your pots, your pans, your plates, before you could eat, unless it all would be defiled. Jesus says, it's not what goes into you that defiles you. What defiles you, loved ones? It's what comes out of you. What does that mean? It's your heart, right? It's what's inside of you, your soul, right? Your heart, the center of your being. That's what defiles you. Not food, not plates, not water, not ritual stuff. That was all those Old Testament laws and so forth about food laws and skin disease and whatnot. It was all meant to point them to Christ by saying everyone is impure. You can never get away from impurity, but Christ can cleanse you. The Messiah will cleanse you. So whatever the specifics that they were teaching, we don't know exactly, again, the Jewish myths, exactly in this context what these commandments were, but we can think, Book of Galatians, right, all these Old Testament laws, as well as the Pharisaical traditions, whatever they were saying in specific had the effect of adding to the words. adding to the word. And thus, they were not just sticking to the gospel, and they were upsetting whole families. And they were doing this, verse 11, for shameful gain. Is there anything new under the sun, right? There were snake oil salesmen, hucksters, false prophets, televangelists in the first century, if I can put it that way, just like there are today. And then, because George asked me to this past week, I've gotta mention the Cretans. George said, the sermon's gonna be about Cretans, right? We're gonna learn about Cretans this Sunday. I said, well, maybe, I don't know, are we? Maybe we will. One of them is a Cretan, he says. So Paul's quoting this ancient poem. One of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said, quote, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons. And he even adds, this testimony is true, verse 12, verse 13. Paul is citing here an ancient Greek poet by the name of Epimenides, and he lives 600 years before Christ. So this is like as ancient as you can get, even in the ancient world. Now Epimenides in this lengthy poem of his that Paul quotes just a quick little line, in the poem, the king of Crete, His name was Minos. Minos the king was speaking in praise to Zeus, the chief god of the Greeks. And so here's King Minos, or Minos, what he said in his poem to Zeus. They, the Cretans, they, the Cretans, the Cretans fashioned a tomb for you, Zeus, high and holy one. And then comes the line, cretins, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies. But then King Minos says, but you are not dead, to Zeus. You live and abide forever, for in you we live and move and have our being. Paul quotes that in Acts chapter 17. So Paul knew Epimenides. The point of Paul here is not to say that the cretins were the worst, morally of any person on the planet. We sometimes, we even use that, don't we? Oh, he's a Cretan. He's a Cretan. That, whoever it is, just a Cretan, meaning just the worst of the worst, the bottom of the barrel, morally, ethically, spiritually. But in the poem, the king of Crete was saying that Cretans built a tomb for the For the ever-living, almighty master and life-giver of all things, Zeus, the tomb, their tomb, building a tomb for Zeus, according to the king in the poem, they were denying that Zeus existed and they were lying about him. How can you build a tomb for Zeus? Zeus doesn't die. In other words, the point Paul is making by quoting that little line, because they would have known the poem, not just the line, but the whole poem, he's saying these false theologians that Titus is going to set aside ministers to rebuke. These false theologians and false teachers, they are evil, they are lazy, they're living off others, right? They're making profit off of upsetting whole households. Don't listen to them. Just like the Cretans built a tomb for Zeus. Don't listen to these people. They're teaching false theology, and their false theology leads to false piety, false living. They profess to know God, verse 16, but they deny him by their works. They're detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work. And so that's the big first point. That's the most of it. But that's the reason why the minister has to have another voice. The need of it is because there's false theology and false living going on, already existing in that church. We're sinners too, right? False theology, false living. These are the two sides of the scale that we have to always be aware of. False theology, false living, false piety. Note the prescription Paul gives then, briefly. This other voice, right? They must, he says, verse 11. These new ministers, these new elders, bishops, overseers, stewards, they must. This is necessity and this is urgency. They must be silenced. They must be silent. Doesn't Paul say, I think it was in First Timothy, doesn't he say that false teaching is like the disease gangrene? Doesn't he say that? What happens if you get like an injury and you get this disease in your blood and it starts in one spot and it just eventually covers your whole body and you're gonna die, right? Your whole body will rot and die. False theology, false doctrine, false teaching must be silenced. We can't put up with it, he says. Look at verse 15. How do you silence them? Rebuke them sharply, literally severely. Paul's really strong here. Rebuke them sharply, severely, right? Like there's no playing around in the house of God. where the food is coming out of the kitchen that's healthy, sound food. There's no place, there's no time for messing around. Rebuke them severely. Silence them. Again, chapter two, verse 15, at the very end of that chapter, Paul says, rebuke with all authority. Notice that. Again, this is really strong. Rebuke with all authority. Do we want to hear that today in our PC culture? We don't want to offend people. Do we want to stand up for the truth or do we want to waffle on the edge of offense? Fall on one side or fall on the other side? And we're afraid and so we just waffle. And we sit down and we don't want to stand up. Rebuke them sharply, they must be silent. and do it with all authority, he says here, right? This is, again, powerful language that the apostle uses. But notice the authority, it's not just, you know, I don't have this inherent authority just because of because. The authority comes from Christ. Jesus told the disciples that all authority had been given to him, and therefore he sends them out, go, make disciples, baptize, and teach. We sometimes say that Jesus has the magisterial authority and ministers of the gospel have the ministerial authority. We can only say what God has already said. Our authority is only authoritative if it's in line with what Jesus has already taught us. in the word. Now these myths and these commandments of men for sure go against the authority of Christ and his word. And that's why we must hold firm to the trustworthy word. And that's why these teachers must be silenced and they must be rebuked sharply, whatever it might be, whatever it might be. Now there are things that are we have our own opinions about. There are secondary sort of theological level things. There are things that aren't necessary to believe in order to be saved. And I think we have a decent handle of that as a church. But there are things that are absolutely essential. We recite the Apostles' Creed that gives us a summary of those things. So he's not saying here, oh, you know, Pastor Danny, for example, he believes that women should wear head coverings, and the next pastor who comes down the pike says, no, no, no, Corinthians says that women shouldn't wear head coverings. It's cultural. Is that really an issue that we must rebuke sharply? Well, that's like a secondary interpretive hermeneutical thing, and it's a difficult thing. That's just an example. But if someone comes and says, there's one God, and he exists as three divine beings, That's heresy. If someone comes and says, Jesus, the son of God, is both God and man, but yet when he lived on earth, he set aside his divine nature, and he was only Jesus, but then when he rose again, he was God. Heresy. Rebuke sharply. If someone comes up into this church and says, when you're baptized, all of your original sins are washed away, you are forgiven, you are justified, you are elected, you are saved by virtue of that baptism, and now it's your job to stay in by your obedience and your works, that's heresy. Rebuke it sharply. Silence it. Don't allow it ever to come into this pulpit again if it's ever said. So Paul's prescription speaks to us. Again, ministers are not meant to be cheerleaders or CEOs or counseling facilitators, but ministers of the authority of Jesus Christ. And so this speaks, this is a warning to those of us who do minister the word that we are to use the authority of Christ as it's been given to us wisely and correctly and not to abuse it. How do we use it rightly? By speaking what God says in his word and applying that word Not speaking beyond the boundaries of the word. Not riding my favorite hobby horses, and I probably have hobby horses, but not riding those hobby horses. Not interning this church into a personality-driven cult or a club. We're ministers of the word, we are to speak with authority, with fear, but also with humility. Notice the purpose, finally. So there's a need for this other voice. We must rebuke, we must do it sharply, we must do it against those who contradict the word. But finally, notice the purpose of it. So if we don't add this part to it, we miss. We think it's only the sharpness, it's only the rebuke, it's only the putting out, it's only protecting the church as the household, it's only keeping everything pure, but you have to add this too. Notice verse 15. The other voice has this purpose. That rebuking false teachers and false doctrine and false living has a purpose. That, verse 15, notice that again. That, chapter one, verse 15, sorry. I was looking at chapter two. That, oh, I'm in the wrong verse, am I? That they may be sound in the faith. Where is that verse? There it is, it's verse 13, sorry. Verse 13, that they may be sound in the faith. Rebuke them sharply, severely. Why? Here's the purpose. That they may be sound in the faith. So be sound in the faith, not devoted to the teachings of men, but sound in the faith that the apostles have passed down to us. What do we learn from that? that this other voice of the ministry of the word, this rebuke, this sharp and even sounding harsh at times correction and setting up absolute boundary markers, it's restorative, notice, not retributive. The whole purpose of this ministry of the word and then the elders who have the ministry of applying that in the area of what we call church discipline, right? The whole purpose of this is restorative, not retributive. It's not the minister's job or the elder's job to go around and every Christmas, Christmas season's coming up here, In every one of the church that just happens to have a non-reformed Advent calendar or a little manger scene, then you have a little baby Jesus there, you get two weeks of discipline. You get no communion for two Sundays because you had an Advent calendar that had a picture of the baby Jesus, right? That's retributive. That's just punishment for punishment's sake. Discipline's gotta be restorative. Oh, hey, you had a question about the Trinity, and it sounds like you read some things that we wouldn't agree with. Let's talk about that, right? But hey, I gotta tell you that this is wrong, here's why it's wrong, but here's what the Christian belief is. Discipline and rebuke, and even sometimes strict, harsh rebuke, is supposed to be for the purpose of restoring people, not merely just meting out punishments. The intention is to humble a person who has strayed in their theology, in their living, even their Christian living, they've slipped and fallen morally. The purpose is to humble them with the truth of what they have believed or done, that their eyes might be opened to see their situation, their plight even, and as I read from Hosea, to return to the Lord. Even the Prophet Hosea, like all these rebukes, all this judgment, all this justice of God. And the Lord's always saying, return, come back, come into the fold once again. That's the whole purpose of it. So we live in a day of political correctness and we don't want to offend people for offense sake, but we learn here from Paul that we can speak difficult words even to difficult people in the name of Jesus Christ to restore them to his grace and back into the fellowship of the church. That's the purpose of what Calvin says, you know, the second voice. the warding off the wolves and the enemies of the church. But even when we do that, it's because we want them to repent and to return to the Lord. So, you know, from time to time, the minister has to speak, you know, hey, people of God, we heard this this week, you know, the news, or hey, there's this new book that came out, and there's this person online that's saying X, Y, and Z, but that's only to restore. It's never meant just to be like a quick little hit piece, a little meme, right, a little viral moment. It's always meant to restore. And so there's lots of problems in the church of Jesus Christ. Today, just like there were in Paul's day here in Titus, true theology, true piety are attacked on all sides every day. Like the sheep of the Lord's pasture, we are being attacked by wolves at every moment. And the minister has a voice for the sheep. But he has another voice for strange sheep all the way up to wolves. Wolves aren't strange. Strange sheep and wolves aren't the same. So there's sort of a gradation. But in the sheepfold, there are the sheep, and there are even strange sheep who've kind of wandered outside the boundaries. We have a voice for them. But we also have a voice for those on the outside, the wolves, the enemies. Right, it's important, it's just as important to understand that the word comes at times with the sound of rebuke just as much as it comes with the sound of the sweetness of the gospel. And this has to be done from this pulpit. It's gotta be done in Bible studies, it's gotta be done in print at times, maybe in the church's bulletin, the website, whatever. There has to be a time and a place where we have to understand that this has to happen. that the Lord has called us to shepherd the sheep, to steward the household until he comes again by speaking the gospel, but at other times by speaking these words of rebuke. We have to do this. so that those among us who profess the Lord Jesus Christ, especially that's our concern, those who profess Jesus but are following perhaps the commandments of men or are following after false pieties, false religiosities, we do this to warn them and Lord willing to win them, amen? Let's pray.