Two brothers were in the woods early, mid afternoon, building a tree house when they ran into a problem. They needed to make sure the flooring was not only secure, but it was straight. Came across several pieces of wood that they thought were straight, but they could not come to an agreement. One looked at peace and concluded that it was straight, while the other petitioned and was completely convinced that it was crooked. Search went on for several hours, so the boys finally gave up after much frustration and went home. During dinner, as they were discussing their predicament, their father overheard their problem and just listened. The conclusion of Dinner, the father summoned both of them to the garage where the father had an eight foot two by four. Father took it out, examined it, and said, the boys, in order to determine whether something is straight or crooked, you need a standard. If all you use is your own opinion, it just won't work. You need a standard outside of yourself. Take this two by four with you and lay it on the ground. And any stick that you can't agree on, lay it on top of it. If it's crooked, you'll be able to tell. If you would, please turn to Titus chapter one. Titus chapter one. Just as a summary and reminder, we need to ask the question, who is Paul writing to? Paul is writing to the various Christian communities within the island of Crete. We don't really know particularly how many of them there were, but we know that there were at least 30 cities in the small island of Crete. And in verse five, we see two commands by Paul. This is why I left you in Crete. You might put what remained in order. That is to finish Paul's task and also to to appoint elders in every town as well. Now here's the question. Where is Titus going to get these elders from? Where is he going to get these leaders from? Titus is going to get these leaders or elders from each individual congregation. In verse six, the if is conditional. The if means that there are going to be men who do and men who do not fall within these categories. The reality is that who would know these men that are going to be appointed the best would be the congregation in which they serve. The reality is that Titus needs to appoint men for leadership, and these should be their characteristics. And these are verses six through eight. Now, just as a heads up, what we've been studying is not just for pastors and for elders. They're also for the whole congregation as well. Or permit me to ask you a few questions. Assuming you are a Christian this morning, verse six, should you not just the leadership, but should you pursue a life of blamelessness? Men, if you're married, is it a good, virtuous, honorable thing to be devoted to your wife singularly and no one else? Or is that just the leadership thing? Parents, is it a good quality to have Children's submissive to you? Or is that just a leadership thing to the congregation? Should the absence of arrogance be a trait that is only for leaders? Or should it also be something that all of us are pursuing? Should only the leadership be long suffering, or should we be long suffering with one another? Is avoiding drunkenness only a leadership thing, or is that something that everybody should be avoiding? Is it virtuous for a member of Crossway to be greedy for gain, or is that just something that the leaders should avoid? Should extending hospitality to strangers just be a leadership thing, or is that something that all of us should be doing? If as a congregation here at Crossway, there are not men who are growing up in these areas, there will be no future leadership unless God sends men from the outside. If we are not growing to maturity and if we are not discipling, what exactly are we doing? And I would also submit to you as well that evidence of a healthy church is that there are qualified men who are growing up. There are some in here who just want to drink milk all day, and you will remain a spiritual baby and miss out on what God would have in store for you. If you remain an infant all of your life, if there has been years and years of no progression spiritually with the things of God, with the Word of God, your regeneration can be called into question. Children grow up. There are some of you here this morning who say, I don't want that milk. Give me that meat. Give me that triple burger with sanctification on the side. Feed me. I want to eat. I have an expectation. If all we have is a congregation which is not here, but if all we have is a congregation that flatlines spiritually and aren't growing, you have an unhealthy church. When the Word of God is preached and people are convicted and rebuked and growing and encouraged, the Word of God is scattered as a seed. God will send the rain and the sun and cause it to grow. Leaders are not born, they are made. They are made by the Holy Spirit and by the Word of God. Or let me ask you a simple question. Other than the husband of one wife, which discourages women as elders and pastors, other than that, which one of these qualifications from verses six through eight would you look at and you say, nope, not for me? If there are any part of these qualifications that you shy from and say, no, not for me, which one of them is for you? And the reality is this, none of them, all of them are something that all of us should be not only pursuing, but possessing and growing in possession. And so I must ask you the question, how does your life take on this. How does your life line up with the Word of God? The Word of God, beloved, is a mirror. That's what it is. Some of us may think we look better than we really do until we look at that mirror and we say, oh. But your reaction or how you interpret this is not just for leadership. What do you see when you look at the Word of God? As you're confronted with these qualifications, whether or not you'll ever be an elder or a pastor or deacon or in leadership, whether you're a man or woman or even young adult or child, these are things that all of us should be pursuing, right? These are all things that all of us should be growing because these are marks of spiritual maturity. When you look at the Word of God, how does your life measure up? Or As the word of God is laid down and as you're taking your life and laying it on top of it, how does it look? Text this morning is going to be Titus chapter one verse eight, a lover of good. The greek word is philagathos. And interestingly, this word is the only Greek word that is used in all of the New Testament, and it is here in our text this morning. Remember last week we saw hospitable, or last time we saw hospitable. Hospitable has the same root word phila or philos. Last time we visited Titus, it was philoxenos, love toward stranger. This morning, It is phila agathos, lover towards good or loving good. This word agathos or good means something that is intrinsically good or inherently good that originates from God. It originates from God. On your outline, you're going to see three main points. Point number one, we must understand good and start with God. Point number two, God is good. Point number three, we have a problem that we cannot fix ourselves. Point number one, we must understand good and start with God. The Super Bowl was a good game. That was a good joke. Dinner was good. That was a good throw. I just got a good grade. I had a good day. I had a good interview. I have a good marriage. Book of James is a good book. Listen to the song. It's a good one. You remember the good old days? My kids are good kids. I'd like to think that I'm a good parent. I'm convinced I'm a good grandparent. My kids are good. The doctor gave me a good report. Lowering taxes will be good for the economy. Fried shrimp is good. He's a good doctor. He's a good man. She's a good woman. God is good. What do all of these have in common? Which word? Good. Well, notice that the word good is a word that we use all of the time in English. But what exactly does it mean? Good is a general term of commendation or anything of excellence. Good is a term simply that evokes a favorable response or a favorable laugh. It means something that is attractive or praise worthy. One outlet of goodness is generosity. To be generous is to have a disposition to give to others in a way which has no mercenary motive. and is not limited to what the recipients deserve, but constantly goes beyond it. In regards to the word good, there are two generic categories that we can make, and it's important we make the distinction for this morning. One is general and the other is moral. Let's start with general. I'm gonna make a statement this morning. Our corporate singing was good. Now you need to ask this question. What was good? Was it the people singing behind you? Some of you are shaking your head. Absolutely not. Do you mean that corporate worship was good, meaning that the music was pleasing to your ears? Was it the beat? What was it? Was it the lyrics? Was it the sound? Was it the violin or the piano or the electric guitar or the guitar? What was good? You may have had a really good dinner last night. Dinner, being good, is not a moral issue unless the person cooking for you is trying to injure you. Did your wife cook your favorite meal? Is that why it was good? What made it good? Is it that it was pleasing to the taste buds? Did it smell good? Maybe it smelled better than it tasted. I'm not sure, the other way around. And so regarding music and food, if you said it was good, I think you mean that it was pleasing and it elicited a good response, but it is not a moral issue. And that takes us to the second category, morality. I don't have to get too in depth with this, but we know what is good and bad. We know that lying and murdering and stealing is bad and being truthful is good. We know that we should not murder someone because the idea of goodness in terms of morality is ingrained in our being, even though the image of God has been scarred but not lost. Now, I believe the spirit here in our text this morning has to do with morality. I don't think it has to do with generality. I think it specifically has to be morality. This is a moral statement. It is a moral description. And so in regards to what is good, we need to ask this question. Who or what determines what is good? Because the reality is before we can even find out what to love as good, we need to know what good is. We need to find out what good it is to love. And there are four potential sources of good individual, societal or cultural authority or God. Let's start with this really brief terms of an individual. If morality and goodness depends on the individual claiming it, how can you hold others morally accountable if they disagree with you? Here's the question. Who's right? Who's wrong? And who's intolerant? Or societal and cultural. The problem with this is that society and culture changes all the time. If we look back 100 years or 150 years or 200 years in the past and cry out against evil, that society saw it as good. Who are we to judge them? Or better yet, how about today? What if another country carried out horrific crimes against an American? Are they wrong? It's a different culture, right? Different society, different rules. Or better yet, what if you had a friend or a family member or relative who who had received some type of crime in another country, we all know, we all know that we would cry against justice and want justice and would not actually hold to this. Or in terms of the authority, whoever is in charge, in 1933, Adolf Hitler was elected basically to chancellor in Germany. His regime was responsible for the murdering of over 12 million Jews and homosexuals and gypsies and Children and people who were born lime and blame, uh, blind and lame. And here's the question. Was Hitler wrong? I would hope that you would say yes, but those who hold to an authoritative philosophy or goodness of truth, cannot look at anyone else and objectively call it good or bad, right or wrong. Or fourth option is God. In order for us to have any concept or any idea of what is good and hold others accountable to what is good, We have to use a standard and we must start with God because God is the only standard, only source and only bridge. We have to start with God, check it, because we are image bearers. We are image bearers. God is the source and substance of good. So we must start with God as the universal standard. You'll also notice I make a side comment, and it is this. While we're on the matter of useful or good, is that unregenerate people can do useful and even good things. Let us turn to Second Kings Chapter 12. Second Kings Chapter 12. Now within good, there are actually two avenues. There is the highest sense of good, which is done for the glory of God and for the good of man. And the lower sense would be outward good acts, virtuous acts, honorable acts. And one of them here is Jehu. And the second is going to be Joash. So Second Kings Chapter 12 verse two. And Jehoash did what was right in the eyes of the Lord all his days, because Jehoiada, the priest, instructed him. Nevertheless, the high places were not taken away, and the people continued to sacrifice and make offerings on the high place. If you would, go back to chapter 10, chapter 10, verse 29. But Jehu did not turn aside from the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, which made Israel to sin, that is, the golden calves that were in Bethel and in Dan. And the Lord said to Jehu, because you have done well in carrying out what is right in my eyes and have done to the house of Ahab according to all that was in my heart, Your sons of the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel. Now, what you need to know is that Joash was a wicked king. He may have torn down a couple of Baal altars and made a few repairs to the temple. But when his mentor Jehoiada died, he yielded and listened to wicked advisors. And ironically, these advisors actually conspired to assassinate him. And I want you to notice that in both scenarios, both did what was right in God's eyes, but they were not right with God. Joash and Jehu did what was right externally on the outside, but inwardly was unregenerated. So here's the question. Did he do good? Did they do good or did they do evil? They did good, they did well, they did what was right in God's eyes outwardly. And just in case you're still wrestling with this, let us turn to Luke chapter six real quick. Luke chapter six. We're gonna look at verse 32 and 33. Luke chapter six, verse 32. If you love those who love you, What benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do what? Good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. Now, how do we reconcile that with Romans chapter 3, verse 12. Let us turn to it real quick. Romans chapter 3, verse 12. All have turned aside, together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one. I thought Jesus in Matthew chapter 6 verse 33 just acknowledged that sinners do good to one another, right? And so how do we delineate between Jesus mentioning and acknowledging that sinners do good to one another and then here Paul in Romans chapter 3 verse 12 notes that no one does good, not even one. And the answer is not Jesus trumps Paul. The way Romans is structured In terms of chapters 1, 2, and 3 are blanket statements. Now, Romans chapter 1 deals with Gentiles. Romans chapter 2 deals with Jews. And then Romans chapter 3 takes all of humanity and brings it in and says, there is no one who does good. And here is the point. There is nobody born who are doing good for the glory of God, for the promotion of His kingdom, and ultimately for the good of man. There are things that you can do outwardly that yield and that are obedient to the Word of God, but are not good in the ultimate sense that it is done for the glory of God. Self-righteousness is condemned in Scripture. This is one problem Jesus had with the Pharisees. They based their acceptance before God based on what they specifically did. And you'll see a quotation taken from various places in the Westminster Confession of Faith. I think this is well done, and I would like you to follow it in your outline. Works done by unregenerate men Although for the matter of them may be things which God commands, and of good use both to themselves and to others, yet because they proceed not from a heart purified by faith, nor are done in a right manner according to the word, nor to the right end to the glory of God, they are therefore sinful and cannot please God or make a man to meet to receive grace from God. That is from the Westminster Confession of Faith. Can people do useful things for other people and even for themselves? Yes, in a lower sense. But they cannot love doing good because they don't know God, the source and sustenance of good. And they do not even merit any favor with God or grace or mercy with God because their good works is polluted with sin. On the outside, good works appear to be virtuous. But God looks at even our best works and considers it, apart from Christ, as filthy rags. So, leads us to point number two. Only God is good. We're not going to turn to Mark chapter 17, but it is a familiar text. You'll remember the rich young ruler comes to Jesus and asks, hey, what good must I do to inherit eternal life, right? And Jesus stops him and says, what? Only what? God is good. Only God is good. And I want you to notice as well, just in terms of your memory, that he starts with the essence. The rich young ruler is trying to base his acceptance before God on what he did. And Jesus comes around and claims, only God is good. Jesus doesn't say that God just does good. God is good. And also, just as a side note, Jesus does not reject his deity. He does not reject being God. He acknowledges it. Only God is good. But I do want us to turn to Exodus chapter 33. Please turn to Exodus chapter 33. Now the New Testament has several words that elaborate or expand on God's goodness. One of the prevalent outlets of God's goodness is His mercy and His grace. If I was to ask you, what is the difference between mercy and grace, would you be able to delineate between the two? Now, within grace, there is common grace and there is special grace. Common grace is that the rain falls in the just and unjust, and special grace is salvific, which God calls sinners to himself. But mercy has to do with punishment. Mercy specifically has to do with extending clemency or reducing a sentence for someone who is convicted of a crime. Grace has to do with favor. God extends favor to those who are undeserving of it. Or, as one theologian says real well, grace and mercy are Siamese twins. When you get one, you oftentimes get the other. And so all benefit from common grace, but not all benefit from special grace. God is good to all in some ways, and some in all ways. Is God good to those who are lost? Yes, he is as good as he possibly can be, given their hatred of him and the demands of his justice. God is good to creatures in different ways and in different times, depending on their role in God's plan for history. God's goodness does not obligate him to give the same blessings to everyone or give the same blessings to any creature throughout his existence. If the lost in hell are now receiving no blessing at all, they cannot complain that God was never good to them. Why? Because during their life they were surrounded by God's goodness, although not deserving of it, just like all other creatures. In Exodus chapter 33 verse 18, we see Moses asking a very brash request. Moses said, please show me your glory. And he said, this is the Lord, I will make all my what? All my goodness? Whoa, like All? What percent is all? Is all 100%? I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you my name, the Lord. And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show mercy on who I will show mercy. Now, we need to ask this question. What is Moses's request? What happened before? We need to understand what happened before that led to this. Turn back a page to Exodus chapter 32. Many of you are familiar with the story of the golden calf. Moses goes up to receive the law, the Ten Commandments, while he's up there. We have a fiasco where people are impatient and they're making a golden calf. And we'll see in verse 21 of chapter 32, Moses said to Aaron, what did these people do to you that you've brought such a great sin upon them? Verse 22, and Aaron said, let not the anger of my Lord burn hot. You know the people, they are set on evil. For they said to me, make us gods who shall go before us. As for Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him. So I said to them, let any who have gold take it off. So they gave it to me. I threw it in the fire, and out came this calf. Yeah, right. Look, Moses, I have no idea what happened. We threw the gold out and out came this calf. It's a miracle, isn't it? And God responds in this way in verse 26. Moses stood in the gate and said, who's on the Lord's side? Come to me. And all the sons of Levi gathered around him and he said to them, thus says the Lord, put your sword on your side, each of you, and go to and from the gate Throughout the camp, each of you kill his brother and his companion and his neighbor. And the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses. And that day, about 3,000 men of the people fell. Now, what's really interesting is in verse 30. The next day, Moses said to the people, you have sinned a great sin. Who is he talking to? If 3,000 people were killed by the sons of Levi, there must have been other people who were not killed. Commentators propose that as the sons of Levi were going from gate to gate, there would have been two distinct people. One group would have actually been in their tent, weeping. What would they have been weeping over? Their sin. They are the ones who Moses now addresses in verse 30. Beloved, God is so good, that he allows disobedient people to live. And he has done it thousands of times for you and for me. So now Moses, in light of this whole scenario, is begging God to see his goodness and his glory. But the expansion of this is in chapter 34. Please turn to it, verses six through eight. And the Lord passed before him, proclaiming, The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping his steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty. So as you combine that with chapter 33, verse 19, God is going to be gracious to who he's going to be gracious. God is going to extend mercy to whoever he extends mercy, but his goodness can never ever be called into question. There will some, there will be some who will be eternally and severely punished for their sins and some by faith pardoned and saved, not because they are any more righteous or less sinful than others. but because God has had compassion and mercy on their soul. And I must ask you this question this morning. What about you qualified you more than your co worker for salvation? What did we offer to God that our neighbor or our co worker or our family who does not know Christ have? The reality is this, if you are in Christ this morning, if you have been regenerated by the Holy Spirit, God had mercy on you because he had mercy on you. He has been gracious to you because he has been gracious, and it is God's sovereign choice and decree to extend that to whoever he wills. Everything that we know about the goodness of God has its essence in him, and that leads us to point Number three, we have a problem that we cannot fix ourselves. If you would please turn to Isaiah chapter 64, Isaiah chapter 64 verse six. It is a very, very familiar passage. We have all become like one who is unclean and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf. and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. Ezekiel chapter 33. Ezekiel chapter 33, verse 12. And you, son of man, say to your people, the righteous of the righteous shall not deliver him when he transgresses. And as for the wickedness of the wicked, he shall not fall by it when he turns from his wickedness, and the righteous shall not be able to live by his righteousness when he sins. Verse 13. Though I say to the righteous that he shall surely live, yet if he trusts in his righteousness and does injustice, none of his righteous deeds shall be remembered. But in his injustice that he has done, he shall die. Even in light of people trying to do good works, which must start from the person and being of God, we run into a problem. Our problem is that even though we are commanded to do good works, our good works do not save us. They are not a means to get right with God. In our unredeemed state, we have a problem. It is called sin. Everything that is thought of is tainted with sin in our unredeemed state. Let me give you an illustration. A five-year-old son asked to go outside to play for supper. She was able to keep relatively clean, but on the way in, she fell down. And as she fell down, she caught her fall by one hand. And as she got up, her one hand had mud on it. And in her attempt to clean her muddy hand, she dirtied the other one. And then she dirtied her shirt. And this is exactly what sin has done for all of us. All of our righteous works are not only as filthy rags, but they are even tainted with sin. So the problem is that we are sinners and we need help. And if you were to ask the most religious people, hey, how do you get right with God, they are going to focus on this. Just do good, be good to people, do good works, treat people well, and they will not focus on God. Man will naturally look to himself and his achievements and place God as a debtor to him for his good works. The problem is that by works of the law, no man will be justified. The problem is that no one seeks after God in themselves. The problem is that by birth and through Adam and in Adam, we are only selfish continually. And so one of the characteristics of someone who has been born again is this, you love good. You love doing. good. You don't love doing good as a means to get right with God. You love doing good because you know God and because what you do is an expression of your gratitude in light of your love. This love towards God proceeds faith, is not a means to faith. Love for good or love towards good is the driving motivating factor for the good, not the good itself. The reality is that when you place your full faith in Jesus Christ, you become united with him and his righteousness becomes yours and your sin is imputed to him. Praise the Lord. God is good. So what has God done for man? You'll see this on this outline real quick. He has revealed himself as a creator through general revelation. This is not sufficient to save, it is not salvific, but it is a means that God uses to point people to him. The second thing he has done, which completely blows my mind, is that he has sustained the hearts and minds of those who reject him for a season. Nobody here was born righteous. Nobody was born pursuing God. So which means some of you went through years and decades of rebelling against God and God chose to keep that heart alive. He had mercy on you before you even acknowledged him. He looked on you with kindness and lavish blessings and finances and health on a sinner that was set against him. It is mind-blowing the grace that God has given to those who reject Him. And it is even mind-boggling as well that He keeps us alive in light of our habitual sin, even though we are adopted into His family. God has been good to us. He has also offered forgiveness for rebellious and sinful men through faith in Christ. So not only has he sustained rebels, but he has also offered them a right, a way to get right with him. Have you ever been offended before really bad? Is your first inclination to pray for them, to bless them and to do everything in your power to get right with them? And that's at a horizontal level. God's got you beat at a vertical. God has been good to us. And fourth, God has permitted and directed suffering as a means to regeneration and or sanctification. Sometimes we need to fight pigs over their slop and their food for we look to our Father in heaven. In five observations of a lover of good, what you will do. A lover of good will extend mercy to those who deserve punishment because God has extended mercy to them. A lover of good will provide physical, mental, and spiritual help, why? Because God has done the same to them. A lover of good will not murmur at the lot that God has given him because he knows the heart of his father. A lover of good will point others to the standard of goodness, God himself, and plead with man to be reconciled with God. And fifth, a lover of good will give God all the credit for whatever virtue he possesses because God is the one who wills and works for his good pleasure. Now, if you notice all of these points in terms of a lover of good, proceed the glory of God. I'm going to extend mercy to this person, not because I want to do a good work, but because God has extended mercy to me. God be glorified. You know, I'm going to bless this person, not so that I'm a good person, not so that I appear to be a good person, but I'm going to bless this person because God has blessed me. I won't murmur or complain about what has proceeded from the hand of God because I know my father in heaven. He's promised that all things will work together for the good for those who love God and who have been called according to his purpose. I'm going to love this person and tell them what God has done for me and what God offers them. Because being a lover of good, check it, means that you supersede physical needs to meet the heart and the spirit. A lover of good, his desire or her desire is to see the glory of God expressed. And if we want the personification of good, we need to look at Jesus Christ, God in flesh. And so in regards, in closing, in regards to these qualifications, An elder or overseer must love to do good. His chief goal is the gospel and will use whatever means necessary to it. This is what it means to be a lover of good. He loves doing good because he loves God. And the only reason he loves God is because God first loved him. So do you love good? Do you love to do good? When you reflect on your life, what standard do you use? The reality is that when we look at scripture and we compare our outward good works apart from Christ, when we lay our life down next to the two by four, we're going to notice that it is not only crooked, but it is filthy and dirty. But we can praise God that he has had mercy on us and he has provided a way to be right with him through the shed blood and forgiveness that Christ alone offers. Let us pray. Father, may we have a holy perspective at all times to point others to the gospel, to remind people that we are doing good things because God has been good to us, that God's goodness is the fueling, motivating energy and factor that helps point us towards his glory, that we may use our stuff, our materials, what you have given us to bless others as a means for the gospel. Help us, Lord, to love doing good. Help us to love you. And Lord, as we love you, we will love to do good. We thank you for what you have done and what you have purposed for us in Jesus name. Amen.