We thank you, Father, for giving us your son. We thank you, Father, for leaving your spirit until your work on earth is done. Let his work be done today in this chamber, among this household of God, this local church. We ask it in the name of Jesus. Amen. And you may be seated. And so Paul wrote. Epistles, which is a Greek word for letters, and he wrote them to churches. It's always been my concern, and if you've been around here a while, you know it's always been my concern, that somehow it seems that evangelicalism has become very individualized, almost what some call radical individualism, as though the Bible is written to us personally. Now I know that we've been groomed in that so much in the culture that we forget that we are a communal culture, and Paul wrote his letter to churches gathered in his name, and we are to take them as such. And so I'm going to read for you this morning some lines from Titus. Titus was a friend of Paul. He doesn't appear in the book of Acts, but he's throughout the epistles, and Paul is very much encouraged by the presence of Titus. He needs him close to him, if I may say this, sort of like a charm or a rabbit's foot or something, but he wants Titus around him. Remember when King Saul, the namesake of Paul, was despondent and depressed and he needed David to come in and play songs for him. That's kind of how Titus was to Paul. Paul loves this young man Titus who he preached to and reaped for the kingdom of God and groomed as an elder in the churches of Crete. And so we're going to look into this chapter for a couple of reasons. The authority of the word is always premier with the apostle. The concept of the elect of God is always premier. And the concept of the rightful ordering of God's churches, it's always there and it's here. And so I'll read the first 11 verses of Paul to Titus. And he said, Paul, a bondservant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God's elect, and the acknowledgement of the truth which accords with godliness, in hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began, but has in due time manifested his word through preaching, which was committed to me according to the commandment of God our Savior, to Titus, a true son in our common faith. grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Savior. For this reason I left you in Crete, that you should set in order the things that are lacking and appoint elders in every city as I commanded you. If a man is blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children not accused of dissipation or insubordination, For a bishop must be blameless as a steward of God, not self-willed, not quick-tempered, not given to wine, not violent, not greedy for money, but hospitable. a lover of what is good, sober-minded, just, holy, self-controlled, holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and convict those who contradict. For there are many insubordinate, both idle talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole households, teaching things which they ought not for the sake of dishonest gain." I'll read one more verse for you. And then Paul says, one of them, a prophet of their own, said, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, and lazy gluttons. And then the apostle said, this testimony is true. Therefore, rebuke them sharply. Oh, Father, in Jesus' name, let us reap the benefits promised to us and facilitated by the Holy Spirit, who makes your word plain to us and grinds it into our being. Oh, Lord, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. So there it is. Paul, of course, when he left Crete, it's obvious that he had read some of the local poets. That poet is named Epimenides, the one who said that bad thing about Cretans today. And Paul goes ahead and says, well, it happens to be true, so we've got to change that. Paul is out not just to reap souls for the kingdom, but to affect society for the better. But he always begins with these words, Paul, a bondservant of God and apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God's elect and the acknowledgement of the truth which accords with godliness. In other words, if you are saved by faith in Christ and are here and have the Holy Spirit and are filled with truth to the point where you have the mind of Christ which recognizes truth, when it hears it, you will recognize that Paul is the rightful apostle of God and leader of the new evangelical churches that he is planting. Even the ones he hasn't planted, he takes leadership in and teaching, a doctrinally teaching role. So Paul, as you may have noticed, as you've read through the New Testament, is very fond of these lengthy introductions. It seems he can hardly say hello without offering us his resume. And with good reason, friends. Because he said there are many insubordinate out there. There are idle talkers. There are deceivers. Friends, deceivers are very successful in their work. And Paul is aware of this. Deception is very We are very susceptible to it, it seems, and the deceivers can be very powerful in their deception. They can create dots that don't exist and then connect them and move us to think, well, this must be true. He's demonstrated it. So there's idle talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, which were the Judaizers, the Jews who did not receive Christ and were in agreement with the Pharisees and Pontius Pilate and Herod, who actually crucified Jesus for his, quote, crimes of claiming certain things about himself that only God could claim. And so they were very mobilized, if you will, to go about and oppose the right teaching of the Word of God. Paul said their mouths must be stopped because they subvert whole households. It's a very sad thing, and you see it rampant today. In the last days perilous times will come for men will be lovers of themselves, Paul said. So Paul is insistent that those who receive this correspondence, and Titus especially, are aware that it does not originate from some spurious source, but from God himself. So he is not afraid to state his calling before God. And he states it here to Titus, who is an intimate friend of the apostle. so that he can be certain beyond doubt that the instruction he receives are from his hand and the product of his pen. For then as now, there are not few friends, but many who for reasons of their own would try to interfere with the godly development of the churches. There are many who would interfere with the godly development of the churches. And this apostle is not willing that the churches he founded with Titus in Crete would be part of the world, or that part of the world should fall under the influence of ungodly men. Titus is the leader of the churches of the island of Crete. Whenever I think of this passage and I think of the island of Crete, its measurements are 156 miles by 30. Sound like anything to you? How about Massachusetts? Isn't it pretty similar? It's about the size, it seems, of Massachusetts. And so I feel like in ancient times, that's a pretty big swath of land. And most people travel by foot or ship. If you're on an island, you can go around from port to port. But it's a pretty big section. People talk sometimes as though you hear the commentators talk as though there was a single church planted there. But Paul seems to intimate that there are several. He says, appoint elders in every city. Well, they're not elders of a city. They're elders of a church within a city. So it seems to me that Titus is at work to expand the faith by evangelism, friends. But evangelism in that day is a little different than it was in our day. And I'm going to get to that. Crete is a major island of the ancient world at the mouth of the Aegean Sea. And it is not only pagan, friends, but it is notoriously immoral And the people there are notoriously untruthful. For a person to be called a cretin was a devastating slur upon his character. And you hear that even to this day. People call one another cretins. So the apostle labors over his personal introduction. He willingly calls himself a bondservant. A bondservant is little more than a slave, friends. In fact, it's synonymous with slave. Paul's not ashamed to be called a bondservant so long as his master is Jesus Christ, and no wonder. He elsewhere calls himself a prisoner of the Lord, Ephesians 3.1. He calls himself the chief of sinners, 1 Timothy 1.5. He calls himself the least of all the apostles in 1 Corinthians 15.9, and he says in Ephesians 1.8 that he's less than least of all the saints. So he's rather self-effacing and humble in this admission. However, we have to understand something about election. God calls people that we might not call, and God called Paul. He's the living example of Christ's dictum that the last shall be first and the first last, and that the greatest among you shall be the greatest servant. And certainly the biographies we have of Paul are that he was indeed the greatest servant of Christ, perhaps, that ever lived. And so just as he's not ashamed to note his previous disposition toward the saints, Paul was a great persecutor of the church, you might remember. And he persecuted the churches of God. He's not ashamed to publish his official title as apostle now. Things have changed in the world. And with apostleship comes what? Authority. And Paul is not squeamish about claiming apostolic authority. And it's an authority that derives from the very throne of divinity and is the product of divine revelation. So Titus recognizes the language of his master. He knows him well. He may give the letter all the honor that it deserves as deriving from the hand of God himself through his personally chosen messenger. Titus readily receives Paul as apostle and author of the letter. And you might remember Paul wrote similarly to other churches, to the beloved church of Thessalonica, he wrote this. For this reason, we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but it is in truth the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe. Friends, that's the way God does it. You might remember back in Exodus, God called Moses up to the mount, to Sinai. But he cursed the base of the mount that if anyone else came near, he would zap them out of existence, man or beast. God could have invited the whole of Israel up to the mountain, or he could have just come down and spoke to them like Jesus on the sermon on the mountain, right? But he just invited Moses, and when Moses came down, he had the authority of God as one man, and they had to receive Moses' word as God's word, and we're not generally good at that as believers, or as human beings, are we? It's seen, friends, in the carnal sense as just sheer arrogance. that you think you've heard from God, and he would only talk to you and he wouldn't talk to me. Who do you think you are? And Paul knows that's the nature of man. But it doesn't keep him from enforcing the truth of his apostleship, his authority, and the special revelation that he has from God. Paul knows he's writing scripture from the mouth of God. And so here Paul seeks to authenticate himself as the voice of God in his time. Friends, I can't claim that. I never have. I have never claimed the type of calling that Paul claims, but I do claim this. When I make an authoritative declaration from the pulpit of God to the people of God, I do it on the basis of the word of God alone. And that's all. And I always go back as any preacher should and show that what he is saying is grounded in the scripture, the truth of God. And that's the best I think we can do in this day. And if you have the Holy Spirit, you'll recognize that. So another consideration in this salutation of Paul that many in many instances go unnoticed is that his authority is part and parcel of the very thing that ties the individual saint to God. He says it's by faith that we recognize he's an apostle of God. It's by the faith that we've been given, a great gift of God, to recognize God's teaching when we hear it. For his dual titles of servant and apostle are not contradictory. He's a slave and he's a leader. And they're not contradictory before God and those who've been given, what Peter calls, like precious faith with us. Those who have, that's who Peter claims to write to, those with like precious faith with us. If you don't have the same faith we have, and if the faith you claim is not from God, then you will not understand the teaching of God. In other words, if you truly have faith, then you will truly receive Paul as God's current authority in the earth with regard to the founding and the direction of the various churches that are there. And note that just as faith is tied to these opening verses to legitimate divine authority, just as it is tied in these opening verses to eternal life, it is also tied to the term God's elect. What is this idea of being the elect? I want to say at the outset, I'm not giving a sermon on election today, but I have to go through this subject to get to the next. And so neither is Paul's letter a treatise on the nature of that sublime Christian doctrine. The doctrine of the elect is simply that God is the one that does the choosing. That's all it really says. Rob him of that characteristic and he's no longer sovereign. I don't know why it seems to please so many that we take that out of his hand and put it into the hand of fickle human beings like ourselves. But it must be recognized here is elsewhere as with so many other places in Paul's writings that the elect, it's just another word for the church. The church is the elect. We're not a church, friends, by some happy accident. We're not the church by our own meritorious conduct or wise decision. And Paul will reassure the disciple in chapter two, where we read that God's love toward us is not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to his mercy, he saved us through the washing of regeneration. and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Lord." Friends, we didn't choose ourselves into God's church, not ultimately. That's sort of what theologians call a second cause, because we do have to choose Christ. But I'm going to read to you some verses where it's seen that Jesus is very adamant of the fact that we only have the power to choose Christ because he'd already chosen us. We're the church by God's pouring out of his Spirit upon us. We're the church by our pre-appointment with destiny, which is none other than an alternate name for the blessed doctrine of election. It's never been anything less than an utter amazement to me that this doctrine has received so much opposition and derision from those who profess to be members of the elect. And I don't discount them because they have that. I know the Bible can be paradoxical at times, right? Paradoxical does not mean contradictory, by the way. A paradox is a seeming contradiction that with further study can be unraveled. So many who are the elect don't like the term. And they don't like it, from my perspective, for completely humanistic reasons. We just don't think it's fair. Why does the church decry so vehemently the idea that God loved us each individually enough that he would determine to keep us close to him throughout eternity? I don't have a problem with that. It can be nothing other, friends, than an overestimation of a man-centered concept of divine fairness. How can we reconcile any doctrine that God is sovereign apart from God being a predestinating God? How is He sovereign if He didn't make the choices? To the Ephesians, Paul writes this. In him, we also obtained an inheritance being predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things, according to the counsel of his will. In him, you also trusted after you heard the word of truth. So the truth is the vehicle to reveal to you and to the church that you are indeed part of the elect. It's a common belief in our time that God desired every person to be saved. and that through our own innate stubbornness frustrated God's desire. God wanted us all saved, but we wouldn't let him. So he had to settle for less than what he truly desired. Friends, it's a concrete aspect of genuine sovereignty that no desire of the Father can be frustrated by any other agency. If God ordains it, it will be done. That's genuine sovereignty, friends. Jesus said it so simply. He said, my sheep, hear my voice. I could do it, politicians do today and go, period, full stop. My sheep hear my voice. That's a doctrine, friends. Make no mistake. He says it in a pastoral manner, like a shepherd in the field, but make no mistake, that's hardcore biblical doctrine. My sheep hear my voice. There's an implication there. Somebody else's sheep hears somebody else's voice. And I know them and they follow me, he says, also doctrinal. And I give them eternal life and they shall never perish. The fifth point of the doctrines of grace, perseverance of the saints. They shall never perish. Here's another doctrine of perseverance, friends. Neither shall anyone snatch them out of my hand. The deceivers will ultimately not be successful in deceiving the elect. We will ultimately be saved because we hear his voice. He says, my father who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one's able to snatch them out of my father's hand. I almost feel like it should have said out of my daddy's hand. Just as Paul is not ashamed to be called a slave, just as he's not reluctant to introduce himself as chief of sinners, just as he's not unwilling to refer to himself as less than the least, he's not ashamed to point out that his faith is the product of a force outside himself. He didn't work it up within him. He didn't dance around a fire and cut himself until he felt faith come on him. If there was ever a biblical illustration, friends, of the doctrine of election, it is the conversion of Paul on the road to Damascus. He was thrown to the ground, you might remember, off his horse, like the Renaissance art shows him. There's no horse in the passage. He was thrown to the ground, but he didn't throw himself to the ground. A light shone around him, but he didn't shine the light. A voice said to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? But it wasn't his voice. He did not imagine the voice saying to him, Saul, Saul. He did not cause his men to become speechless hearing a voice, but not seeing anyone. He did not blind himself for three days. And he was three days without sight and neither ate nor drank. He didn't put that sentence upon himself. He was chosen, friends. He was out to do the opposite that you would think a man of God would do. What we might call the greatest man of God, certainly in his time. So after Adam, nobody argued that Adam created himself. After Noah, nobody argued that Noah of his own volition said, hey, Lord, I got an idea. We'll build an ark, save my family, and kill everyone else. How about Jonah? Throw me into the water. Pick me up as a fish for my disobedience. Friends, apart from all these obvious examples of divine election and sovereignty, surely Paul must be the poster boy of God's electing grace. Although it seems to insult the self-concept of so many who think that faith was their own idea. Paul links the doctrine of election to the very reality of true faith and legitimate apostolic authority. And he knows that those with the Holy Spirit will recognize him for what he says. Unlike the false apostles who he says are self-appointed, It becomes an essential aspect of Paul's self-introduction to note how distinct his claim of apostleship is from theirs. They are volunteers, friends. He is God's elect. They just said, you know, it might be nice to be an apostle and tell people what to think. They act on their own agenda. Paul acts strictly on God's agenda. Friends, Election deniers imagine that they are defending God's integrity by disallowing him to do as he wills and to choose whom he wants to choose. We hear arguments like this. You've probably heard them. What kind of God would create so many and choose to save so few? My answer would be Noah's God. There was a world full of people then and yet eight were singled out for salvation. It's never been about human concepts of fairness, friends. It's not about a participation trophy, is it? It's about divine things like sacrifice and mercy and justice and love. And so Calvin writes this, in fact, it's a footnote in Calvin's commentaries that I found some years ago, where Calvin says, if men be chosen by God upon the foresight of faith, see, that's where people defend election by saying, well, God looked down the annals of time, and he saw all those who would choose him, therefore he chose them. Alright? And Calvin's arguing against that, saying, if men be chosen by God upon the foresight of faith, or not chosen till they have faith, they are not so much God's elect as God is their elect. They choose God by faith before God chooses them by love, he says. And so he says that faith and not or rather that love and not faith is the cause of election. He says fire is the cause of heat and not heat of the fire. The sun is the cause of the day and not the day the cause of the rising sun. Men are not chosen because they believe, but they believe because they are chosen. Jesus said it this way very succinctly, but you do not believe because you are not of my sheep. Jesus elaborates on this thing. He said, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I'll raise him up at the last day. You did not choose me, he said, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should remain. He said, if you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. I hope that I may use the scriptures to disabuse any of us of the notion of human fairness over divine goodness. God does things for one reason and one reason only, friends, because they please him. He does not offer explanation or apology. You know, I think in my own human wisdom, I would have done a completely different job than the one God did. I think I would have done a different job. Have you ever read Judges? Have you ever read about Samson? I would not have chosen Samson. He was not a good choice, Lord. Samson never obeyed God until the last moment of his life. Everything he could do to rebel against God and his own personal vows to God, he did. Now, I wouldn't have chosen Samson, but God chose Samson. Solomon. I like Solomon. But he started well and ended badly. God chose Solomon. And quite frankly, friends, I'm quite certain I wouldn't have chosen Paul. He wouldn't have been on my list. God loves and God hates, and the God of the Bible makes no apologies for his decisions. If you remember who Saul was, he was the coat-check man at the stoning of Stephen. And they left their cloaks at the feet of a young man named Saul. Go ahead and stone the saint. I'll watch your coats. No, I wouldn't have chosen Saul. And so we read, as it is written, Jacob I have loved, and Esau I have hated. Friends, this is not a sermon on election, and this is not a sermon on the hatred of God, but God loves and God hates. I will have mercy on whomever I'll have mercy, God said. I'll have compassion on whomever I'll have compassion. So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. For the scripture says to the Pharaoh, who it is famously said of, that he hardened his own heart, right? I did a study once because I was trying to demonstrate the sovereignty of God by showing that God hardened Pharaoh's heart. It's a very unpopular thing. God hardened his heart so he couldn't believe. And then someone said, well, it says right here, God softened Pharaoh's heart. So I went through Exodus and I found that God hardened Pharaoh's heart seven times, and Pharaoh hardened his own heart six times. Therefore, it was God who hardened it and not Pharaoh. But of course, I was kidding. It does say both. But what it doesn't say is Pharaoh softened his heart. Friends, we can harden our hearts. They're already hard. God knows. But without the intervening grace of God, we cannot soften our hearts toward God. Only God can do that. And so what did God say to Pharaoh? He said, for this very purpose I've raised you up that I may show my power in you and that my name may be declared in all the earth. Therefore, he has mercy on whom he wills and whom he wills he hardens. John 6, 70, Jesus said, I chose you, the 12, and one of you is a devil. He even took credit for choosing Judas. He didn't say, well, no, I didn't really choose that one. He was sovereign even in that. He was laying out a plan. And so then the apostle anticipates those same tired objections that the resistors of sovereignty habitually resurrect. And so Paul says, you will say to me then, why does he still find fault when it's his fault? For who has resisted his will? And then Paul gives God's answer. But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, why have you made me like this? Does the potter have power over the clay from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor? What if God, wanting to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, and that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of his mercy, which he had prepared beforehand for glory? There's not a lot of wiggle room for the sovereignty denier there. So true to my words, friends, this is not a sermon on election. Any more than the passage is a passage on that subject. We'll move on. Suffice it to say that Paul's commissioning of Titus to set in order the things in the churches, it begins with authority. First God's authority, then Paul's authority, and now Paul bestows authority on Titus. Appoint elders as I what? Commanded you, he said. And so authority must begin with election. Verse 5 said, for this reason I left you in Crete, that you should set in order the things that are lacking. Friends, the churches are to be orderly instruments of God. And not just orderly, but a heavenly prescribed order. So God himself founds the churches and orders them. And you will appoint elders in every city as I commanded you. I've taught before that ordering the church in accordance with God's own standards is of primary importance to God. That's why he has three pastoral epistles. He wrote two epistles to Timothy, that we know of, and one to Titus, and Timothy was the pastor of the Ephesian church, probably the biggest church, or one of the very biggest in that era. Alright, a big city and a big province, probably a big church, like Rome was probably. Pastor Timothy was left in Ephesus by Paul. Titus would be appointed in Crete. You know, there's no record in Acts that they went to Crete, but then it just appears. So there's some things that God didn't preserve to connect all these events together. But he left Titus in Crete, as we could see, Paul says here, and he left him there to organize the churches that they together founded. So the church is an orderly organization, or if you like, an organism. Church order is important to God because God is an orderly God. Seeing people saved was never enough for Paul. To Paul, that wasn't evangelism. Just getting a guy saved here and a guy saved there, of course he did that, but evangelism wasn't completed for Paul until he gathered them into a church. You know, during the Great Awakening, two great friends, John Wesley and George Whitefield, went out preaching, and they preached in England, and they preached on the East Coast of America. And Wesley and Whitefield were both great preachers, and they saw many people come to Christ. And later on in his life, George Whitefield, in my view, the greater of the preachers, bemoaned that he did not do as Wesley did, for Wesley penned his sheep. He organized churches, the Methodist church, the Wesleyan churches, if you will. So seeing people saved was never enough for Paul. Seeing them establish themselves into churches was his overarching purpose. Every letter of Paul, friends, was written to an established local church. The epistle to the Corinthians was written to the saints gathered in Corinth. The same was with Ephesus. To the Philippians he wrote this, to all the saints who are in Philippi with the bishops and deacons. He knew there were bishops and deacons because they were a church that he founded and they were orderly. He sometimes designated his letters to the pastors of host churches, like this one, to Titus in Crete and to Timothy in Ephesus. And sometimes he designated his letters to other people. He wrote one to a man named Philemon, and he said this, to Philemon, our brother, friend, and fellow laborer, to the beloved Apphia, Archippus, our fellow soldier, and to the church that is in your house. The Colossian church was founded in a private home of a man named Philemon, and it's a little one-page epistle he wrote to Philemon. Paul always wrote to churches. came back in the resurrected form on the island of Patmos and spoke to John, he spoke to him about the condition of the seven churches of Asia. He said to the church of Ephesus, write these words, to the church of Smyrna, write these words. And they'll say, we're always writing to churches. The Bible is a communal document, friends. So I've quoted before, and it bears repeating that one modern missionary noted Paul's missionary zeal to corral the sheep into local folds. And the missionary's name was Roland Allen. He was a missionary to China. He was an Englishman and died in the early 1900s. I think 1929 Roland Allen died. But he was a great and successful, powerful missionary of that era. And he wrote this in a book many years ago Pastor Ken gave me on the on the history of missions and it's called from Jerusalem to Irian Jaya. Look up Irian Jaya. And so Roland Allen says this, in little more than 10 years, Paul established the church in four provinces of the empire. Before AD 47, there were no churches in these provinces. In AD 57, he could speak as if his work there was done. Many missionaries in later days have received a larger number of converts than St. Paul. Many have preached over a wider area than he, but none have so established churches. Friends, the church is central to Christianity. Don't try to have Christianity without the church, and don't try to have the church without the Lord's day. Even when Jesus met with John on the island of Patmos, he said, I was in the spirit, on the Lord's day. Friends, consider this. Salvation through Christ's atoning death is our greatest gift of God. I don't think anyone will argue about that. Salvation is definitely his greatest gift. I've always put assurance right up there, as you've probably heard me say, but I'm going to bump assurance to number three next to the gift of God of the local church. The local church, rightly ordered, infused with the spiritual gifts, gathered for the purpose of proclaiming him to his people and to a lost world, is our second most precious gift from God. Value the local church. The church is our gift from God so long as we are in the world, and we are to be rightly ordered and communally gathered before him for our edification and for his glorification. It glorifies God when we come together and sing our praises to him and hear his word proclaimed and pray for one another in his sight. And this is Paul's directive to Titus, set in order the things that are lacking. Remember in the book of Revelation, Jesus came and he said to say Ephesus, he said, I recognize all your good works. You do this, you do this, you do this, but I got this against you. He's telling him, you've got to order all the things. It's always about order to God. What he said to Pergamum, I think I quoted last week, and I have a few things against you. I don't want to hear that from the Lord, but if I do hear it, I'm going to start ordering things. The church is our gift from God so long as we're in this world and we're to be rightly ordered and continually gathered before Him for our edification and to glorify Him. And this is Paul's directive to Titus, set in order what is lacking. And so he begins with doctrine. Get the doctrine straight. He moves to establish apostolic authority. and then to pastoral leadership. And so we read this. when he himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints, for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. And he goes on to the Ephesians saying, speaking the truth in love, May we grow up in all things into him who was the head Christ for whom the whole body joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effect of working by which every part does its share causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love. What a prescription for the church. That is Christ's dream for the church. If I may say it that way. The church is designed by God with a specific order and purpose. He gives us gifts to order us. He gives us gifts to teach and encourage us, to lead us. And so Paul writes to Titus of the qualifications necessary for appointing men to lead the local churches, which are so dear in the sight of God their father. And notice this, the credentials he gives for the leaders of the churches are almost entirely domestic. It's about family life. God wants family men to lead the church. I'll let you draw conclusions on your own about certain churches in regards to family life. So verse six, Paul writes, if a man is blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children, not accused of dissipation or insubordination, to Timothy, he said, well, why does he care if we have faithful children or not? Because that's one of God's goals, that we're generationally reproducing ourselves. There's a cultural mandate, there's a generational mandate in the body of Christ. And he said to Timothy, if a man does not rule his own house well, how will he do with the church of God? You gotta start somewhere. And so, he pictures, it's almost a picture here that the household is a little piece of the church. It's a small church. It's a piece of heaven, if you will. I mean, marriage was ordained before the fall, right? And so pastors are essential to the right ordering of the churches. And these qualifications for choosing them are essential to choosing the right pastors. Moral and domestic qualities are of primary importance to God. Note, the Christian church is a reflection of the Christian family. The churches ought to be led by men who have led their families successfully with regard to personal faithfulness to wives and the personal faith of their children. I know of a church, a local church right now, that just lost their pastor because it was shown he was unfaithful to their wife. I went to a conference just a Two years ago, I think this December with Karen, it was a pastor's conference through sermonaudio.com. We had a speaker there. He's very well known. You know him. I didn't know him and many of you already knew him and had heard him online. He's a very good teacher and he worked at the academy there with John MacArthur and John spoke of him in one of those sermons I spoke about this morning. And it is totally destructive to so many souls when a man of that high order falls to a simple thing like adultery, which this man fell to. So showing yourself faithfulness to a single wife is the first thing on God's list. The personal faith of their children is the second thing. Blameless, in this case, You ready? An unkletos, which means to find no viable fault in their character. Doesn't mean sinless, right? Thereby he's unreprovable. There's nothing you can make stick with a charge. And then that man has one more quality that God's looking for in pastors. He has to be the husband of one wife. Friends, do you realize Christianity is the champion of monogamy? There are the top four great world religions, right? I would say Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity. Christianity is the only one that is totally monogamous from beginning to end. Judaism's gone back and forth, Hinduism's gone back and forth, in Islam you can have four wives, I don't know if you knew that. The prophet had, I don't know, I've read anywhere from nine to twelve, but he was the prophet so he could had special rights, apparently that's the belief. Only Christianity holds solidly to monogamy, one man for one woman for one lifetime. And though again it is advanced to the Christian norm of one spouse for one lifetime, that's Hinduism has, it used to be polygamous, even polyandrous, meaning a woman could have many husbands. Alright? That's really weird to me, I don't know. Maybe it's the male chauvinism in me, I don't know, but it seems very strange. But they've changed, and they change for cultural reasons. See, Christianity knows the end from the beginning, so it's the same today, yesterday, and forever. So the second thing that he talks about is a multi-generational view of the church. It's based, or rather it's passed down from parents to children. We pass it down from parents to children. Pastor Billy and I have passed our faith down to our children, and they all love the Lord and are in the Lord, and so have many of you passed down your faith to your children. You should sit at home at night in prayer with your spouse and thank God that you passed your faith down to your children. It is one of the greatest works God commands us to accomplish. And some people don't accomplish it, and it's not always a matter of fault, but it is always a matter of rejoicing when you see it accomplished in your life. It's passed down from parents to children, and the men who are our leaders must be able to display some success with regard to imparting their faith to their children. Suffice it to say that churches that have begun well have a much greater chance of continuing well. for imparting the knowledge of the grace of God, for fulfilling the hungering faith of the saints, for instructing and inspiring young people to continue on the path they've been granted by the gift of faithful parents, and for fending off falsehood. Those are the things that the church is established to do. Fending off falsehood, fending off false teachers of every kind, And so Paul writes of the pastors that they must remain strong in the fight and recognizing the continuing onslaught of popular culture to intrude and disrupt the right ordering of our churches. Friends, the culture is not our friend. And John wrote to us that he who loves the world, the love of God is not in him. And so in the final analysis, the churches ought to resist becoming a moral reflection of the society around us, but rather a moral refuge for it. Father, I pray that these words would sink down into our ears as the Lord said to his disciples, that we would be uplifted and renewed and encouraged to continue in the things of God that we've been taught here today by this great teacher appointed by God himself. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.