Our script you're reading this evening is taken from Paul's epistle to Titus, chapter one. Titus, chapter one. Although positioned third in the pastoral epistles, Titus is undoubtedly earlier than 2 Timothy, just the way that the editors have grouped Paul's epistles together, with the two to Timothy being put together rather than in chronological order. So Titus chapter 1. Paul, a bond-servant 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 Saviour. Titus, a true son in our common faith. Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour. For this reason I left you in Crete, that you should set in order the things that are lacking, and appoint elves 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 to subvert whole households, teaching things they ought not for the sake of dishonest gain. One of them, a prof of their own, said, Critics are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons. This testimony is true, therefore I rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith, not giving heed to Jewish fables and commandments of men who turn from the truth. To the pure, all things are pure. But to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure. Even their mind and conscience are defiled. They profess to know God, but in works they deny him. being abominable, disobedient, and disqualified for every good work. May God bless the reading of his holy word. Now, we've come in this series looking at the pastoral epistles under the general heading of church and ministry to the epistle to Titus. And in Titus, we see the two aspects of church life. There is faith. and there is order, there is what is believed, and there is the structure that is then based upon what is believed. The faith creates the order, and the two are always found together. Faith and order belong together. Now, as I said already, Titus is earlier than 2 Timothy, and Titus' position is that he is effectively a second-generation missionary. Paul, it would seem, in a period that is not otherwise recorded, had been to Crete and he had evangelized the island. People had been converted and gathered into churches. But, it's now Titus as the second generation, that is the missionary who is there after Paul. Paul's the pioneer, he's the second generation. He now has to organize a local church with native leaders. It's that vital stage in any mission that it has to go from being led by outsiders to being led by insiders, that is, members of the first generation of converts. And this is the challenge that Titus has. And it's important to recognise that situation because of Titus being told here that he has been left in Crete to appoint elders. the idea that you have this person outside the local churches, as it were, this man who's got oversight of all the local churches on the island, who is appointing elders. This is not the normal situation, this is a situation fairly early on in the history of these missionary-established churches. And so we see, first of all, here, there is the faith, and then there is the order. The faith, first of all. And Paul, in his greeting, expresses the faith. That he is an apostle, a bondservant of God, an apostle of Jesus Christ, first of all. That he belongs, in a sense, to God. He is serving God. And he has been sent, that's the force of the word apostle, one who is sent by Jesus Christ. And that he has been sent according to the faith of God's elect. That is to say that his mission is to do with the faith, and in this sense it has to be in terms of that content of faith, the teaching that belongs to God's elect. Here again he touches on, as he often does, upon this great subject of election. That God has chosen whom he will save. That out of the great mass of fallen humanity, all of whom are lost and ruined in the fall, none could be saved apart from a loving kindness of God. And God in his loving kindness has chosen whom he will save for nothing in them. nothing in them, God's choice and God's alone. And that this faith is joined with knowledge, the acknowledgement of the truth which accords with godliness. And so this faith, the objective content of Christian belief, accords with The acknowledgement of the truth there is that knowledge knowing what the truth is and this then of course with godliness which is about conduct that it leads to a particular way of living. Christianity is as J. Gerson Machen says in Answering the Liberals, who said, Christianity is a life, not a faith. Machen says, no, Christianity is a life built upon a faith. The faith is the foundation that produces how we live, or what we believe leads to our behavior, what we believe about God, what we believe about the future. And particularly, verse two, in hope of eternal life. there is a hope of the life of the world to come. And the life that we look for then forms how we behave, just as the Apostle Peter says in his second epistle, 2 Peter chapter 3. Verse 11, Therefore, since all these things, that is, the visible creation that we see, will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought it to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless, we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. So we are looking forward to living in the new creation. And that expectation then forms how we live now. Because we live knowing that that is the future to which we are going. And this hope, and of course in the Bible hope is not just a matter of, well I hope it will happen, which generally means I'm pretty sure it won't. But hope is the certainty of faith. Hope is sure and certain. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul. Because God, who cannot lie, has promised it before time began. And of course, to say God cannot lie is to state negatively the same truth as to say God is faithful. God is faithful, therefore he cannot lie. God's faithfulness is expressed in this negative sense here, God who cannot lie. Such a contrast, of course, to us who can lie and often do lie. We can be mistaken, but more than that, human beings lie. We say things at times that are not so. But God cannot lie, as indeed Balaam acknowledged, much to his chagrin, of course. Numbers 23 and verse 19. God is not a man that he should lie, nor a son of man that he should repent, as he said, and he will not do. Was he spoken, or will he not make it good? Balaam, of course, would very much love for God to change his mind, because he'd been asked to bring God's message to Balak that Israel will be cursed but God of course does not change his mind and so Balaam is left having to repeatedly say to Balak, I can't tell you what you want to hear because God won't let me. God cannot lie because he is faithful. And his promise goes back before time began. It is an eternal promise, the promise of salvation. And has been manifested in due time, at the right time, through preaching. And through preaching here is not so much through the act of preaching as through the message that is preached. The message that is proclaimed by Paul is Manifesting God's Word. It's not just manifesting Paul's opinion. It's manifesting God's Word. And this has been committed to Paul. The message that Paul has is God's message. and it's been committed according to the commandment of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then he introduces us to Titus. Who is he writing to? To Titus. Now, we're told very little about Titus in the Bible, and all of it is found in Paul's epistles. The very earliest mention of Titus, chronologically, not in terms, again, of the arrangement of the Bible, because Paul's epistles have been arranged in a particular manner, which is longest through to shortest. with some variation based upon putting where there's two for the same group or person together. We meet him first in Galatians. Galatians chapter 2 and verse 1. Paul is giving his account of what he has done and his background. Then after 14 years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas. I also took Titus with me. And then he goes on to say, verse three, not even Titus, who was with me, being Greek, was compelled to be circumcised. So we are told that Titus was a Greek. He's not a Jew. He is a Gentile. And for that reason, the Judaizers said they wanted him to be circumcised and he would not be, Paul would not let this happen because Paul understood that doing this would be to betray the Gospel. He's also found mentioned in 2 Corinthians several times. So first of all, 2 Corinthians chapter 2 and verse 12. Sorry, verse 13. I had no rest in my spirit, because I did not find Titus my brother. But taking my leave of them, I departed for Macedonia. He's someone then that Paul feels is important. He's someone that Paul values his work. We find he's mentioned again in 2 Corinthians 7 and we're reading from verse 5. For indeed, when we came to Macedonia, our bodies had no rest. But we were troubled on every side, outside were conflicts, inside were fears. Nevertheless, God, who comforted the downcast, accompanied us by the coming of Titus. And not only by his coming, but also by the consolation with which he was comforted in you. When he told us of your earnest desire, your mourning, your zeal for me, so that I rejoiced even more. So Titus is one who Paul has found encouraging. He's one that Titus has helped. And he's someone who's known to the Corinthians and they've encouraged him. Titus then is a valued co-worker of the Apostles and there are various other references I could mention but won't. And now Titus has been left in Crete. So we come to our second part which is the order, the order that he has been left to establish. I left you in Crete, you should set in order the things that are lacking. You should set in order the things that are lacking. The Greek is actually a mixed metaphor. It's along the lines of to untangle the things that were bent. Not to straighten out the things that were bent, but to untangle the things that were bent. Our translators have rendered it in a rather safe way. It's a mixed metaphor. Think of these letters as Paul is pacing up and down speaking and somebody is writing down what he's saying. He's giving dictation. He's not sitting down as we might sit down to write a letter. And that's why you get some of Paul's long run-on sentences. That's why you get Paul's mixed metaphors, because he's talking. And what's lacking here is structure and leadership in the local churches. Now this is unavoidable in an early missionary context like this because you have this situation where basically everybody in the congregation is a first generation convert. But nobody there has been brought up in the faith and everyone there pretty much has been a Christian for the same length of time. And so there's no more mature people. But as time goes on, then there are people who are more mature, people who are more capable. And elders are to be appointed. The time has come. And because it's this second generation situation, the local churches are not yet able to elect their own leadership. They need help from outside to decide which men in the congregation are capable and so Paul gives a list it's very similar of course what he's already said to Timothy and it's largely about moral qualifications there is an aspect in terms of spiritual intellectual but it's mainly first of all moral and if a man is blameless the husband of one wife, and of course the husband of one wife is this idea of faithfulness. Polygamy was not common in ancient Rome. The Romans didn't approve of it. But the closer you were to the east, so Ephesus, for example, where Timothy was, well, that's very much eastern Asian where polygamy was normal. Crete, polygamy happens, but also Crete was not known for its high moral standard, as Paul comes on to later. And the husband of one wife, of course, divorce happened in the Roman world. And the idea here is that this must be a man who is faithful to his wife and his children, having faithful children, not to use dissipation or insubordination, but to think in terms here, of course, the extended family, that until the children married, they'd be living at home even as adults. And what are they doing while living at home as adults? Well, if they're going out every night and getting smashed, going out at the weekend, getting hammered, then what is Dad really doing? Can Dad really control the household? An insubordination We must again remember this is in an ancient Greco-Roman context, the pater familias, the father of the family was a very powerful man. But then Paul, and again it's another one of these artefacts that shows that this is dictated, he started something and then he starts it again. If a man is blameless, It blames the unborn wife, having faithful children, not accused of dissipation or insubordination, for a bishop must be blameless. If then, but there's no then, because he's dictating his thoughts have run ahead, he's come back for a bishop. Well, our translation says a bishop, the word episkopos, which is the root of the English word bishop, as with a lot of words that go from one language to another, that it has suffered violence in the process, but lost certain letters, and some letters have changed to other letters. But for a bishop, it must be blameless. Well, the word episkopos literally means an overseer, one who has oversight. So elder is the office. Overseer is the work. He has oversight of the church. And ideally there are multiple elders in the congregation. For a bishop, a representative individual, must be blameless as a steward of God. He's one who has a charge that God has given to him. And then he must not be self-willed. He's not the sort of man who just insists on getting his own will all the time. Partly because he's part of a team, and if you've got one man in a team who really has to go his own way all the time, the team is going to be forever either browbeaten by him, or they are going to forever be arguing with him. And we don't want that. That doesn't mean that he must not be a man of strong opinions. That's entirely possible. But he must not be the sort of man who insists, I must have my own will all the time. because part of being an elder part of church leadership is listening and praying and seeking not our will but God's will, the whole church. We seek God's will, not our will. Not self-will, not quick temper, the two go together. Not a man who blows up over every little thing. Not given to wine. This was a real problem on Crete. somebody who is looking out for other people, hospitable, a lover of what is good, sober-minded, just, holy, self-controlled. It's all these moral qualifications. And holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught. He must not be somebody who is blown by every wind of doctrine. An elder has to be someone who is settled in what they believe. That doesn't mean someone who is incapable of learning anymore, but somebody who is settled. There are some men who, as one Victorian politician, was quite unfairly described, they said of him, that he bore the impression of the last man to sit on him. There are some people who are like cushions, like that, that the last strong personality that encounters them, they bend to that strong personality. They do, that someone reads a book and they're impressed by the book and they read a book with the exact opposite opinion, they're impressed by that and they change almost overnight. There are people like that. and they should never, ever, ever be appointed elders or deacons because they just cause chaos. They are holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught because a major part of what the elder does is teaching, either preaching or teaching one-to-one, helping members of the church that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and convict those who contradict. There is that element of defending the faith, protecting the congregation from false teachers because there is a threat to order and that is false teaching. And so verses 10 through 16, Paul deals with these false teachers. They are insubordinate. Now, who are they insubordinate to? Not Paul, not Titus, but God. They are insubordinate. These are the people in the local church who won't listen to the leadership, who won't listen to the elders or the deacons, who insist on having their own way. And they are idle talkers. That is to say, they love talking. And very quickly you discover, if you spend any time with them, that they just love talking. And what they are talking is usually idle stuff. Idle ideas. It's some thing that they watched on YouTube. Now, I say nothing against YouTube when it is properly done. But there is so much trash on YouTube when it comes to sort of the quote-unquote Christian material, but there are people out there who... I mean, I'm not sure they've ever been near a book in their lives, but they really want to talk. And there are these people who want to attack sound teachers, but they've got no idea what they're talking about. They're idle talkers, deceivers. There are people who want to gain followers. They want to get people... Many years ago, when I was at university, I knew of a church where there was a... It was a very big church. It was an Evangelical Anglican church. And there was a man there who the leadership really wanted to get rid of because at the end of the service, he'd go looking for some young student and jump on them and pour all his nonsense down their ears. And... All he wanted to do was get people to agree. And I even forget what his particular bee in his bonnet was. But he had this bee in his bonnet about something. And there are people like that. They've got this big idea. And normally, this big idea is utter nonsense. And there's so much being written against it. But still, they insist this is the thing. And they are deceivers. And in this particular context, it says the particular problem is those are the circumcision. Now, I do think Titus here will be thinking back to all those early days when he was with Paul in Jerusalem. And the circumcision said, he's a Greek. You have to be circumcised. And he, no thanks. I don't want that. That sounds painful. And so the circumcision, do think, Titus would think, early days. And their mouths must be stopped. Literally, the idea is muzzled. This idea that, and obviously it's a word picture. It's the idea that these fellows are, they're such a nuisance, like that dog that's always barking. jam a muzzle on it so it can't and that's what's got to be done with these people, they've got to be muzzled. Now that's not by force but by sound doctrine, by correcting them. I remember there used to be a lady up in town when I'd go preaching in the open air who would come up and she'd go on and on about this, that and the other thing and I prayed about this and one day as she was yammering on, she was unbiblical. And then she started going on about something I knew was in the Bible. And I asked, where's that in the Bible, madam? And she's, uh, uh, uh, uh, where's that in the Bible? It's not in the Bible, is it, madam? Now go home and read your Bible. And she never bothered me again. And I saw her sometimes out of the open air. So she was, OK, go the other way. Because silence, just with go home and read your Bible, And she wanted to be seen as a teacher, somebody who knew better than others. Because what false teachers do is destructive. They subvert whole households. They ought not, for the sake of dishonest gain. Now, I come back to something I made a study of, because it's a fascinating study. And it's also very helpful in terms of understanding how these things work, which is early Mormonism. Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, starts off, and his big thing is, I've had these revelations, I've got these golden plates, I'm translating them. There is no way the golden plates existed. But he managed to get into certain wealthy people, to get them to give money to him. One of them is a gentleman who, he also managed to get to do some of his transcribing, so he's reading out, because how he'd do things, he'd get his hat. and rather like mine at the back there, and he'd get a stone, put it in the hat, and then he'd put his head in the hat, and he would literally talk through his hat, dictating it. And this fellow would be carefully writing out of the scribe. Well, this fellow's wife, understandably, decided that her husband had been got by a cult, because, of course, he had. But this fellow, he was very, I want to convince my wife that you're right. So he said, can I take some of these pages home with me? So he did. And she, of course, thought, these are a load of rubbish. And she then took the pages and went off with them and hid them and said, well, if Joseph Smith is a prophet, and if these pages come from a real book, then he'll be able to just read it again and dictate it again. And of course, he couldn't. And so he said, well, God's given me a revelation that those pages weren't any more important anyway. She's going to change them and pretend that they read differently. So God's shown me these new plates that are a summary of all that, because he could just remember the summary of the story. And it's an attempt, you see, to subvert a whole family and to get the money of that family. Unfortunately, he did end up breaking up that particular relationship because the husband carried on with Smith and the wife very sensibly said, I am not going anywhere with that man. And this was even before Joseph Smith started telling some of his followers, God has told me that you're to give me your wife and she's going to be my wife now. And Mormon polygamy starts there. Subverting for the sake of dishonest gain and the Cretans And this is the force of verses 12 and 13. They are vulnerable. They're vulnerable because they are people whose national characteristics make them peculiarly vulnerable. One of them, a prophet of their own, the reference is probably to Epimenides, who was a Cretan poet and who was regarded as a prophet. He lived several generations before. And he said, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons. Now, what he's describing here, this is a Cretan saying, Cretans have these problems. They're not good with the truth. They are not great in their lifestyle. And they like to eat too much. And this is a danger. This testimony is true, therefore rebuke them soundly that they may be sound in the faith, not giving heed to Jewish fables and commandments of men who turn from the truth." And here Paul picks up a statement from the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah speaks of those who teach for commandments, the traditions of men. Those who say that God's word This is God's Word when he's not. And then he comes to the final part of this chapter that the problem is spiritual. The reason why false teachers are false teachers is spiritual. The reason why people fall for them is spiritual. And one of the commandments I was talking about, Jewish fables and commandments of man, and part of those commandments of man is this insistence that Gentile converts have to keep the food laws. There are still people today who do that. When I was in London, I used to go to a Bible study in an old chapel behind the National Gallery. And the church who actually did the Bible study, it wasn't their building. They were using somebody else's building. They were renting it. And the people they were renting it from were nutters. I mean, they were absolute nutters. They were British Israelites, this idea that the British people are the lost tribes of Israel. And therefore, we all have to keep kosher. And so they had this big thing, which, quite ironically, poorly written. I have this great slide, Pig and Pork Facts. Those aren't facts. Pigs are horrible and dirty. Pigs love to be clean. Now, at the same time, pigs are old in mud because pigs get sunburn. And they don't want to get sunburn and they don't have sunscreen, so they use mud instead. But pigs are clean animals. They are no more subject to internal parasites than any other animal. But, they say, oh, you've got to keep kosher. And, oh, these are unclean foods. To the pure, all things are pure. He's not talking about Entertainment and such like he's thinking about foods. He's thinking about places So the pure all things are pure these foods are all pure But to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure So on the one hand, you've got the believers who are pure sanctified by Christ and so what they eat doesn't affect them. I On the other hand, you've got those who are defiled and unbelieving. Everything they eat is unclean. It doesn't matter whether it's kosher or not, it's all unclean. Everything is defiled, because even their mind and conscience are defiled. The false teachers, and of course, there are many kinds of false teachers who bring in new food, The Adventists notoriously say that most people say that you should be a vegetarian. Ellen G. White apparently really liked her steak, but that's another matter. She was the prophetess. She had dispensations, allegedly. And they have these laws they put on everybody. They profess to know God, but in works they deny him. In works they deny him. And these works are many and varied. There are those whose works are denying justification by faith. Their works say, basically, you have to work to get to heaven. The Jehovah's Witnesses, they claim to know God. And yet, everything they do draws people away from the Bible. Because they say, you can't understand the Bible without our teaching. Never mind that their teaching changes regularly. And I suspect that most of us here, the first time we encountered the JWs, they were on about the 1914 prophecy. The generation who saw the events of 1914 shall never pass away. I think, I know in fact, that there are some people still alive who were born in 1914. But the vast majority of people who were born in... I mean, if you're born in 1914, you're 110. How many people are there who are 110 in the world? That generation's gone! And so you look at the JW literature today, and there's no mention of the 1914 prophecy. Funny that. I remember old Tom Brennan talking about how when he left the JWs in 1975, and there was that Christ is coming back. And then they backtracked. And they were saying that as the date approached, oh, well, some people speculated. And Thomson had his stack of watchtowers and went back. You said this. And so he left. They professed to know God, but in works they deny him, being abominable, disobedient, and disqualified for every good work. The leaders of all these cults They basically know that they're wrong. In their hearts they know they're wrong. If you study what these groups have done, and what they say. We've got at the moment this nascent cult, whether it will survive or not we don't know, but there was this group, again on TikTok in particular, whatever TikTok is, I believe it's some kind of online, I've never seen anything on it, but some online video sharing thing I believe, and there's this group who said the second coming, the rapture, premarital dispensationists. It's the rapture is going to be, they said, on the 23rd of September 2025. A bit later than that now. So, what have they done? Well, they do what these groups always do, which is they try to find some kind of wiggle room. I feel the Lord is saying that perhaps it would be, he's giving us two weeks grace, two weeks later on the calendars. And now it's, well, I figure, oh, see, we got it wrong, you see, because it says it would be the ninth month, but it's the ninth Hebrew month, the ninth month of the Hebrew calendar, which is kind of now. And that's not going to work out, of course. And on and on and on it goes. Abominable, disobedient and disqualified for every good work. The fact that people can't be honest and say, you know what, I was an idiot. I predicted the Second Coming and Christ says, no man knows the day or the hour, therefore anyone who does that is an idiot. They are wrong. They are deluded. They fool themselves. And of course the 7th Adventists are based entirely on somebody's mistake concerning the Second Coming. Old Miller and his Millerites. And of course he was wrong. He actually admitted it and said, you know what? That was stupid, wasn't it? And actually repented. But some of his followers said, oh no, he must have been right, because they'd gone all in on this. People sold their possessions because they thought, we need to spread the word. And so one of them... A lady who has known history as Ellen G. White said, ah, something spiritual happened. It wasn't Christ coming from the heavens, it was Christ going somewhere else in the heavens. Never mind the Bible. But this is a way to explain away the fact that you're wrong. Disqualified. Those who do that kind of thing are disqualified. Those who teach people to read their material more than the Bible are disqualified. The vast majority of cult leaders have, through history, have been morally disqualified. Joseph Smith, to the other people's wives, an adulterer, a child molester. Some of the women he allegedly married were teenagers. We see so many cults that you have Men, Jim Jones, and the list goes on and on. Morally disqualified, spiritually disqualified. Disqualified in every way. And they then are, they're the great threat. I see that Benny Hinn has been divorced again. Same wife, they remarried and now, it still didn't work out. Ben Hinn, of course, against adultery. Disqualified, lying, cheating, stealing. And that's one of the reasons why the order in the church is necessary, because there are predators who desire to exploit people. Faith and order belong together. The true faith creates the church. And the church has an order to defend the faith and protect the vulnerable, to uphold the faith. May the Lord grant that faith an order and guide his church in every way.