filling in for me last minute. Last night my voice wasn't even singing one verse, it was cracking all over the place from laryngitis. So we'll hopefully get through the sermon this morning and the talk, but if you would turn with me to Titus chapter 1. I want to read verses 10 through 16. 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. One of them, a prophet of their own said, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons. This testimony is true. Therefore, rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in the faith, not 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, but 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. Amen. Father God, we come to your word. We proclaim that it is the light that we want to shine on our paths, and I pray that you would help us to embrace it, to live it out, to be consistent with it. I pray that you would anoint my lips and enable me to preach as I ought, and each one of us to hear and embrace it. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. You may be seated. On this series of sermons, we've been looking at the need to have multiple officers, not just a senior pastor, but associates, perhaps even assistants, and not just to have teaching elders, but to have ruling elders as well. It's in one sense been a marketing attempt for the election of officers, and I'm a candidate as well. Once we get to the voting of officers, we have to vote for everybody, because at that point, that will be the establishment of the church and particularization. At this point, we're a mission work. Now, today after the service, as I've mentioned earlier, we're going to be having a congregational meeting. We're going to be answering questions and getting feedback from you. But in any case, we saw already that in Exodus 18, God said that for every ten families, there needs to be a ruling elder. And after reading Brian Abshire's books and his essays, I've been convinced, you know, that's really a max if the ruling elders are doing what they're supposed to do. Now, granted, in many churches, maybe even most churches, ruling elders aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing. They're ignoring their work and they're micromanaging everybody else's work. But if they're really doing what they're supposed to be doing, Brian Abshire points out it's an incredible work. It's a very, very important work and it would take quite a bit of time. We looked at verse 5. We showed how verse 5, in the context of the whole book, shows not only the importance of the office of elder, but we showed that there was a contrast between teaching Elder Titus' work and the ruling elders who were to come on to his team, even though they were all elders, they all had a parity of work. We looked at the foundation for the ministry of elders in verses 1 through 5. We looked at the qualifications for elders, verses 5 through 9. And now we're looking at the work of the ruling elder. And so that's the context. And the first point that I want to make is that leadership is unavoidable. Even if you don't have any formal leaders, there are going to be people with leadership abilities that are going to come to the fore. It's happened in our church. There have been... godly leaders who have come to the bat on various issues, and I praise the Lord for them. And there have been bad leaders who have caused trouble and dominion in the past. And anytime there is a vacuum of leadership, like what happened with Titus when teaching Elder Titus was stretched too thin in the things that he was doing, automatically there will be people who will step into the void and will provide one form of leadership or another, and that's okay in many situations. But often what happens is exactly what happened in Titus's first congregation. He had some negative people who were tearing things apart. Now, if you read in the context as a whole, it wasn't just bad leaders. There were good leaders that were present as well. In chapter 2, he encourages these mature men and women to continue in the things that they were engaging in. The older men to be, you know, working with the younger men and the older women, to be working with the younger women. He was saying, that's great. And he's telling Titus, look, Titus, you need to take advantage of the leaders who are in your congregation, even though it's on an informal basis. And we'll be looking at that in chapter two. But just because you are not an officer and maybe never will be an officer does not mean you will not have leadership influence. But it is important that that leadership be done in a godly way and in a biblical context. Now, when I have gone in the past to General Assembly, there's some different friends that I get together with, and there are a couple of friends in large, influential Southern congregations, and a couple who are in small congregations, who have said, you know, their elders really are not the leaders in the church. And they said, really, it's the powerful woman in pew number 25 and the rich man in pew number four who are the leaders in the church de facto. And if the elders ever do anything that crosses those two, they're going to hear about it and they'll probably have to change their vote. And I thought, boy, that's a sad state of affairs, you know. But even if, I mean, that's obviously a bad way to use their money to try to push their way around in the church. But even if they were godly and they never flaunted that leadership, it's just a fact of life that there are going to be people in the congregation that others will look to for their opinion. That's just the way God has made them with those leadership profiles, and they're going to have some kind of an influence. I think it's unavoidable. But it's my contention that that informal leadership can be a good and a very helpful thing if there are solid officers who were in place. And we're going to get to that, Lord willing, in chapter 2. And so there was good leadership in Titus' church, but what we're going to be seeing a little bit later on is they had the terrible disadvantage that they did not have church authority to back them up in the kinds of things they were trying to influence for good when these other guys were influencing for bad. They didn't have that authority, all they could do was advise and exhort, they could not discipline. And then, as I mentioned, there were men who provided a very negative leadership influence. They weren't officers, but again, because of the void in leadership, their negativity had an incredibly harmful influence. And we've had in this church gullible people who have been taken in by the negative influence of such people ourselves. And because adequate shepherding was not taking place, I didn't even know about it till after it was too late. And so this whole chapter is a further argument for why we need elders. And I'll be explaining a little bit more about that in a bit. But let's look at the character of these bad influences first. What kind of bad leaders were filling the void? Verse 4 says, for there are many insubordinate. Verse 10 says, why did I put down verse 4 here? There are many insubordinate. This is not the only age when people don't like to be under the authority of other people. It's been true ever since the time of Adam and Eve. And yet to have legitimate authority, you need to be a person who is under authority yourself. Some of the most dangerous influences, I think, that have been in this church and some other churches have been people who have never wanted to join the church and have never wanted to join any other church, but they have wanted to influence. Not to be under authority, but to be in influence. The Greek here literally means to be put under someone or to be made subject to someone. They didn't want that. And it's the same word that's used in verse 6 of children who refuse to be subject to their parents. Now, here's one of the ironies. Many times parents and other leaders, they don't recognize that, but they are modeling insubordination to the very people that they are trying to influence. They don't like it when their children are insubordinate to them, but they're doing exactly the same thing. And one of the things I think is important to realize is that insubordination always breeds more insubordination. And that's one of the things that you mothers really need to take to heart, is that you may be able, when your children are real young, to force them to cooperate and get along, but if you are insubordinate to the authority that God has placed in your life, eventually you're going to lose moral authority over your children. You just are not going to have it. And many men have the same problem. Many male leaders, they want to be respected by those that they're influencing at the very time that they are tearing down authority. He goes on to describe them as idle talkers, or as the new American standard has it, empty talkers. In other words, there was no action that accompanied their words. You know, they didn't, we say, they didn't walk their talk. And, you know, that happens all over the place, but we need to be examining ourselves, right? It's very easy here in Dominion Covenant Church for us to be having great theology, but not walking the talk, not implementing it. And if that's the case, then all we've got are people who are idle talkers. Now, even though, and I believe it takes organization in the church to get a church running smoothly, and even though individuals may be very godly, even if there is no leadership whatsoever because they're very self-motivated, I think the law of entropy tends to be at work in churches just as it tends to be at work everywhere else. Law of entropy is that in any system, unless there is effort put into it, there is energy or something from outside put into it, In any system, there's a tendency toward disorganization and toward decay. And I believe that's what happens many times in churches as well. And sometimes those churches have to have revitalization efforts to get them going. Next phrase, and deceivers. Not only have these people believed a lie, but they're promoting it. And the Greek word indicates an active leading astray. Now, it may seem a harsh thing here for Paul to call them liars. and to speak of the things that they are saying as fables and these lies. But we need to name theology for what it is. If theology deviates from the Scripture, it is a lie. And to the degree that it deviates from the Scripture, that's the degree to which it is a lie. Now, there are sincere people who have bought into the false theology in this congregation. and elsewhere from these informal leaders. And to such people, Paul would say, and there's a parallel situation in Ephesus that Timothy was facing. Paul says, and a servant of the Lord must not quarrel, but be gentle to all. able to teach, patient in humility, correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance, so that they may know the truth and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will." That's 2 Timothy 2, 24 through 26. Now, in that case, The enemies are the theology of the devil and the bad teachers, not the people who are being deceived. And Paul makes a big difference between people who have been deceived and the deceivers themselves. People who have bought into a bad theology and the people who are actively and willfully promoting the bad theology. The one he has no patience with, the other he is very patient with. He treats the two groups negatively. But anyway, in this passage here is a group of people who have been causing havoc, both theologically and ethically. Verse 11 shows that their influence cannot be ignored. They're going to influence the church otherwise, whose mouths must be stopped. I want you to notice the imperative there, must be stopped. While immaturity and lack of understanding is one thing, and Paul is very patient with those, he has no patience with those who are willfully and deliberately seeking to undermine the theology and the ethics and the practice and the vision of a church. The bottom line is there are some people you just need to ask to leave the church. Now, here's the problem. These people weren't teaching this from the pulpit. They were doing it house to house. And because it was, you know, going into houses and befriending people and holding Bible studies here and there, Titus didn't even find out about it until it was almost too late for him to do much about that. If it had been public, he would have been able to nip it in the bud right away. And so the next phrase says, who subvert whole households. It's the ongoing tense, who are subverting whole households. In other words, while I write these things to you, Titus, there are people who are subverting whole households in your congregation. And this is yet another reason why there is a need for ruling elders who are constantly involved in the lives of their people, who can quickly detect a problem, nip it in the bud, or at least point it out to the other elders. Now, here's the important point I want you to hold to. Titus was not the first line of defense. The ruling elders were. Why? It's because the ruling elders are involved on a household level, whereas Titus is involved on a church-wide level. He has no way to be as intimately involved in the lives of the people as the ruling elders would be able to be. And so they're the first line of defense. And this is precisely what's happened in our church, as I mentioned earlier. Sometime back, there was some poisoning going on behind the scenes. I wasn't even aware of it. And there were some informal leaders who were trying to step in the gap and to help things out. But, you know, those types of things very, very easily happen. And they faced the same problem that the informal leaders in Chapter 2 faced. They didn't have any church authority to be able to back them up. on it. Well, in the case, you know, of myself, they weren't involved all the time intimately either. And so there's a real need for ruling elders to be involved. Anyway, he goes on in verse 11, he says, teaching things which they ought not. Now, again, this speaks against the modern view of tolerance where people just have the idea that people can believe and teach anything that they want to believe. You just let it happen, you know, pluralism. Well, Paul says there are some things which ought not to be taught. Now, I'm not saying that there needs to be conformity of viewpoint in the congregation. You know, it's probably never going to be conformity of viewpoint in the members of the congregation, but there does need to be conformity of viewpoint in the teaching. Okay. Teachers are held to a higher standard, a higher level of accountability than others are. And if the teaching is insubordinate, verse 10, and it undermines the church, it ought not to be taught. Now, people will say, yeah, but what I'm teaching is really biblical. We want to hear what the Bible has to say right. And what I would say to such is three things. First of all, everybody says their teaching is biblical. You know, cults say their teaching is biblical. I mean, that's not a sufficient criteria. Secondly, you ought to be...if you're thinking that the teaching of the church is unbiblical and you've got the true teaching, you need to be going to the elders. You need to be going to the pastor and saying, Read this book or here's an argument why what you're teaching is wrong. You need to be seeking to influence the teachers rather than ignoring the teachers and trying to influence those who are in the congregation. And thirdly, if that is not successful as a member, your option really is to go to another church. where they are teaching the truth of the Scripture. And I'm so thankful we don't have these kinds of troubles in our church, but it's important for me, at least now we don't, but it's important for me to teach what is the biblical methodology for dealing with issues like this. And let me use myself as an example. It would be wrong for me to send members of my church and say, man, I got a passion to reform these other churches in our city. It'd be wrong for me to send members of my church into other churches as missionaries to try to undermine the teachings of those churches. That would be insubordinate. It would not be a proper thing to do, try to spin off a group. And yet that is precisely the strategy that many people take. How many churches have been split right down the middle because charismatics have gone in there, not because they have agreed with the theology of that church. It's not just charismatics. You've got all kinds of different views, but I've run across more of those than others. But they didn't agree with the theology of the church. Their purpose of going in there was to teach and convert as many families as they could before the elders found out about it so that they could spin off a church plant. That's a parasitic way of planting a church, and yet it happens all of the time. The biblical way of influencing reforming churches is not to undermine the leadership, but to work with the leadership. That's much harder, but it's more biblical. And I have a passion to see the churches of this city and to see the churches across America reformed, but that means I need to work with the leaders, not in subordinate. Now that's the covenantal way of approaching things. And by the way, this is one of the reasons why You know, we don't involve ourselves in child evangelism Efforts or daily vacation Bible school where your purpose is to reach children and then through the children reach the pagan parents and say well It's easier to reach the kids and then maybe we can reach the parents through them now God occasionally will reach children that way and the parents through them, but some people have almost been left breathless when I've suggested that's not the biblical methodology. What they don't realize is this has never happened before about 150 years ago. I mean, this is not the covenantal approach to to evangelism. In the Bible, the covenant ordinarily goes from the parents to the children, not from the children to the parents. Now, I admit the statistics don't prove anything. The Bible is the standard for truth. But it is not surprising at all for me that statistics have continually shown that when a child is the first one in a family to come to Christ, there is a 3.5% probability that the rest of the family will come to Christ. That's based on how it's always happened in the past. If the child is the first to come to Christ, it's about a 3.5% probability the rest of the family will come to Christ. If the mother is the first to come to Christ, And there are slight variations on this statistic, but it's a 17% probability that the rest of the family will come to Christ. But when the man is the first one to come to Christ, there is a 93% probability that the rest of the family will come to Christ. And every study, there's been slight variations on the other two, every study I've looked at says it's 93% of the case. that the rest of the family will come. That's just the way covenantalism works. And people can harp all they want against God's methodology. They can call God's methodology chauvinistic, but it's not going to help to butt your head against the mountain of God's will. I mean, this is the way God works. And rather, to me, it's actually all the more remarkable that in the last 150 years, most of the efforts of evangelicals have been aimed at trying to win the children and the women. And so despite the fact that we have changed our focus, we've done everything we can to win the children and the women, those statistics continue to hold true. And so I bring that up to say, you know, we need to align ourselves with God's methods rather than trying to be innovated. This is one of the reasons why evangelism has been so slow in Japan. My brother Stan works in Japan, and he's been very discouraged with the whole way that evangelism works there because the men work from early in the morning until late at night, and they work most of the days of the week. And so the most convenient way of reaching out for missionaries, and convenience shouldn't be the criteria, but the most convenient way of reaching out is to witness to the women and the children who are at home. But you know what's happened as these women and children have made professions of faith is almost never do the husbands follow suit. And even the children, as they grow up, do not persevere in their professions of faith. What I think the strategy needs to be changed is we need to have godly men who will compete in the business world and be models of what real men should be like and interact within that context. And I think that there would be a major difference that people would see. Teaching in an unsubordinate way can be a very, very subtle thing. And I don't want the elders of our church undermining the authority of the Father. Instead, I want us to be working through the authority structures rather than around them. And so Doesn't mean that I can't talk directly to women or directly to children. I'm talking directly to children and women right now, you know. There's bound to be influence that's direct and praise the Lord. If a child comes and understands the truth quicker than the parents, praise the Lord. I mean, we'll be involved in that way. But our emphasis is to work through the covenantal structures that God has put in place. Okay, last phrase of verse 11. says, for the sake, and all of that was to illustrate that it doesn't just have to be a subordinate that can be insubordinate. We can be insubordinate as elders if we're undermining the authority of the Father. It can go in many different ways. It's very subtle. Now, the last phrase in verse 11 says, for the sake of dishonest gain. Well, let me back up one more time. People have wondered why we don't have segregated Sunday school or youth groups. It's the same reason. We want the parents involved. We're not wanting to replace the work of the parents. I know a couple of youth pastors who did not want the parents ever to be present with the youth because they're afraid that the parents would disagree with what they're doing. That's insubordination. OK, it's teaching in an insubordinate way. Maybe I don't need to harp on that too much. Verse 11. for the sake of dishonest gain. Now, what was happening was that the informal leaders were taking the tithe away from the church in an unbiblical way. And obviously, that was a bad motive and commentaries talk about that. But what many commentaries miss is that these informal teachers, you know, that were in the households, they wouldn't even be able to get away with honest or dishonest gain if it wasn't expected that those who were teaching in the household would get paid. That's the thing that many times people completely miss over. Paying lay leaders was not a foreign concept. Just because there's dishonest gain by lay leaders does not mean that there cannot be honest gain by lay leaders. And in fact, that's exactly what Paul commands in 1 Timothy 5, 17 through 18. Now, Presbyterians love to pull out this verse and say, see, this proves that pastors should get paid. When you look at the passage, it says, I want the ruling elders to be paid, and especially the teaching elders. That's what he's saying. Let me read that to you. And Brian Abshire points this out, but it's straightforward. Let the elders who rule well be counted worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in the word and doctrine. For the scripture says, you shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain, and the laborer is worthy of his wages. And Brian Abshire points out that If the elders were doing what God calls the elders to do, this idea of paying the eldership would not be a surprising thing at all. But instead what's happened, as in so many other areas of life, is we've conformed ourselves to the world. And so the church has begun to act like a 501c3 corporation. And what does the IRS say a 501c corporation should do? It says it's illegal for the board members to be paid. And so what are the board members composed of? They're composed of people who are either rich or know the rich and can get funding, you know, for the people. And there's nothing wrong with that. You know, if you're going to be a 501c3, that's great. But that's not how the church is supposed to be run. Now, the fact that he only calls for those who rule well, to be paid shows that not all ruling elders got paid. It was those who had proved themselves as being indispensable in service. And so it seems that there's some gratis service that starts out first, that they demonstrate their abilities. They say, look, these people need to be paid. I think that's the context. Now, point number four deals with, let me just check our, I think we've got time to go through on this. Point number four deals with issues of delegated or usurped authority. Now in past lessons, I've pointed out, I have no authority except for the authority of the word. And I can't tell you to do things unless the Bible gives me a warrant to tell you to do things, right? That's my authority. Well, the same is true of ruling elders. But these troublemakers were appealing to an authority that was outside of the scriptures. Verse 10 indicates the biggest troublemakers were the Judaizers. It says, especially those of the circumcision. They seem to be the major headache in almost every church that Paul was working in. They were constantly undermining the pastoral work. And if you look at verse 14, you'll see their authority. It's the authority of a Jewish man-made tradition. not giving heed to Jewish fables and commandments of men who turn from the truth." Now, I want you to notice the contrast between the truth of the Scripture that Titus appeals to and the commandments of men that these Judaizers appeal to. And, you know, evangelical churches aren't a whole lot different, and we can easily fall into this error as well, because many people will put authorities up there on the level with the Scripture. It doesn't have to be science, but it can be science. It can be any number of things. People will say, well, all truth is God's truth. And I'll say, well, yeah, but God's revealed his truth in the Bible. And they'll say, no, no, there's truth out there that we discover. And because all truth is God's truth and the scientists discover this truth, science needs to be held on an equal authority with the scripture. And so they will say that God's truth never comes into conflict. If that is truth, And if this is truth, we've got to reconcile the two. And if science says something that seems to be different than the Bible, we need to reinterpret the Bible. There's got to be a harmony between the two. And so they will hold to evolution. They'll hold to strange things like chapters 3 through 11 of Genesis not being in recent history, 6,000 years ago, or not even necessarily being history. They try to reinterpret it as poetry or something like that. They'll come up with weird views on homosexuality and on women's issues and they base it not on what the Bible says but on the so-called findings of sociology, psychology and science. In fact, some of them have had the audacity to say that what we discover out there is the Bible of nature. It's the Bible of nature. And there have been a couple who have even used the term. In fact, there's been some reformed people at Calvin Seminary who have said, what we discover from science is the 67th book of the Bible. They don't explain how the Bible never changes, but the truth claims of science are constantly changing. I mean, it boggles my mind. The more I have studied of the history of science that anybody could say that science is absolute. And yet people treat it that way all the time. You know, the biggest proof that an evangelical can come up with is, well, scientists say, and it's like, well, that's like the Bible says, okay, no argument, you won the argument. No, science is constantly changing. You look at the history of science, there is no question about that. And so we really do need to deal with this issue. Paul says you have two options. Option one is to believe verse one, that Paul is a mouthpiece for God. He is an apostle of God. Verse two, that God can never lie. And then therefore that nothing in the scripture can ever lie. Scripture is the standard for truth. So that's option one. Here's option two, to submit to the commandments and authority of men and make that your standard. Now Rush Dooney said, infallibility is an inescapable concept. We cannot function without infallibility. You couldn't have any discipline in the university if, as their axioms, you did not have some absolutes or some universals that were laid out there. It's impossible to function. We cannot reason without there being absolutes. And so infallibility is an inescapable concept. And that's true, whether the infallibility is science or the church or even your own opinion. Some people, you can't change their opinions worth beans, you know, no matter what the evidence, which means their infallibility is whatever they happen to feel like thinking right now. Right. But here's the problem. If we do not receive the infallibility of God's word, we're going to have to come up with our own sources of infallibility. And if the universals don't come from God, then the universals have to come from man. Now, the problem is to be able to know if a universal is true or false, you have to be omniscient or know someone who is omniscient. To be able to say that no two snowflakes are alike or that the speed of light is a constant, you'd have to examine every snowflake in the universe and you'd have to examine every occurrence of light waves, and if it is a wave, and there's debate on that, in this planet and every other planet and every other part of this universe. In other words, you'd have to be God. You'd have to be omnipresent. You'd have to be omniscient. And that is what the issue really comes to. Either God is God or man is God. Another way of saying it is either the Bible is the standard for truth or man is the standard for truth. This is what Paul is trying to get them to reconcile and to understand. Universals, such as the person that he quotes in verse 12, give a universal is something that says every all always everywhere. Those kinds of things are universals. The universal that he gives can only be known to be true or false by God. Now, on the other hand, if we affirm what God says, we can know it to be truly true, even though we're not omniscient, because the omniscient God has revealed himself to us in the Bible. And it doesn't matter how prestigious those Jewish authorities may have been in that congregation. He calls their conclusions fables in verse 14, because they're not grounded in the scripture. The Greek word is a muthos, just means fictional writing. as opposed to aletheos, which is truth writing. And he says fables. Well, he's just as insulting to those who valued the traditions of the Cretan philosophers. Because the second group of people, and they were the minority, but the second group of people were appealing to the brilliance of a philosopher by the name of Epimenides, whom Paul quotes here, Paul, in a few words, absolutely destroys the authority of this amazing Cretan philosopher. Now, you may wonder why believers would even mess with, you know, using a pagan philosopher as a... you know, was an authority, but it was quite natural for them to do that because they were opposed to the kinds of lying and the gluttony and the deceit and the evil that was in Crete, and so was Epimenides. Epimenides was a reformer. He hated the things that were going on in Crete, and he was trying to bring reformation, and so they felt like, whoa, we've got a point of commonality, when in reality, they did not because it was an authority they were appealing to, and that authority was leading them astray. Let me just explain a little bit. The guy Paul quotes in verse 12 lived about 600 years before the birth of Jesus, and Plutarch and others list him as being one of the seven wisest men that they had ever known in the whole world. from ancient times to the time of Plato and Plutarch and the others, one of the seven wisest men. That's saying quite something. Plato thought he was brilliant. He called Epimenides a divinely inspired man. Plutarch called him a man dear to the gods. And he was honored not just as an amazing philosopher, but he was also honored as a prophet. Let me give you an example, and I've read a whole pile of his prophecies. Plato records this one. He says, that divinely inspired man, Epimenides, was born in Crete and ten years before the Persian war, in accordance with the oracle of the God, went to Athens. And when the Athenians were filled with fear by reason of the Persians expeditionary force, he made this prophecy. They will not come for 10 years. And when they do come, they will turn back again, having accomplished nothing that they had hoped to accomplish and having suffered more woes than they will have inflicted." And he made a number of other prophecies. So Epimenides, he had a lot going for him. And some 600 years later, he was still Crete's claim to fame. And Paul takes on this intellectual giant in the same way that he takes on the Jews. What Paul is basically saying is if a truth claim does not come from the Bible or cannot be logically deduced from the Bible, then It doesn't have the credentials to be able to prove itself to be true or false. Now, he doesn't get into all of the philosophical reasons here. You have to read Gordon Clark to see those, because he systematizes some of the scriptures that deal with that. But here, Paul does just two things. He presents the scriptures as the standard for truth, a thing from which we must reason. And secondly, he shows the inconsistency of taking any other authority. Okay, look at verse 12. He quotes the authority that the people appeal to here. He says, "...one of them, a prophet of their own." Now, this is going to be key to his argument that he is a Cretan. He's one of their own. One of them, a prophet of their own, said, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons. Now, Cretans did have a reputation for being that. Many philosophers had spoken of them as being all of those things. In fact, the Greek word to Cretanize meant to lie. That was just a synonym for lying. That's the kind of reputation that the Cretans had. And if you were called a Cretan, those were fighting words. If you were called a Cretan, you're either being called a liar or one of those two other things. And yet they treated it as a virtue. They didn't have any problem with that. And so Epimenides comes in here and he says, man, this is going to destroy philosophy. We've got to be against lying. He's trying to reform and he's utterly unsuccessful. Why? Because he doesn't have the grace of God. Only the grace of God can transform people from the inside out. And so in his energy to reform, he comes up with this exaggeration. Which we'll be seeing actually ends up not being an exaggeration, but he's very frustrated and he says Cretans always lie and this developed what is known as the liars paradox and you can read about it in almost any philosophy book and And it was well discussed by philosophers long before Paul came onto the scene. And people who say Paul fell into this liar's paradox and was just plain ignorant, don't realize Paul elsewhere quotes, you know, this philosopher and other philosophers. He knew, he knew the debates that were going on on this. He did not fall into it. I think they're totally missing the point that Paul was giving a reductio argument. Now here's the liar's paradox. If Cretans are always liars, and if Epimenides is a Cretan, then Epimenides is a liar, and this is a lie about lying. And so what do we make of this statement? And it does put into question his credentials on what he's trying to reform. How do we know the statement is a lie? Remember what we said, only God can come up with valid universals because only God is omniscient. In other words, only God can say always. So you kids, when you say, but they're always doing such and such, you parents can just respond, are you God? Do you know? You know, where'd you get that valid induction from? Epimenides, what he's doing is he's got a finite mind that's taking a finite sampling of Cretans, and he is saying, based on this finite sampling, now, that must mean that all Cretans are liars. Okay, that's basically he's using an induction, and there is no such thing as a valid induction. He claims to know what everybody in the island is doing, to be omniscient. And secondly, since he's a Cretan, he's calling himself a liar. And I think this is a brilliant strategy on the part of Paul in showing that their authority is really not a credible authority. And people who criticize Paul for saying that Epimenides' statement in verse 13 is true, as I mentioned earlier, they're failing to see he's using a reductio argument. Here's the dilemma that Muslims, atheists, and many other people have thrown at Christianity. They say this disproves the inerrancy of Scripture. Paul's making a point blank error here. Verse 13, Paul says, this testimony is true. Now, if it's true that Cretans are always liars, how could any statement made by Epimenides be true? As one philosopher said, all Cretans are liars if uttered by a Cretan is necessarily false, but not paradoxical. And so there's a long, long article. It's quite a well-done article put out by a bunch of atheists trying to criticize Christianity. And they say, you don't need any other proofs. This is the only proof you need to show that the Bible is an error. is this statement here. Logically, it has to be an error. Another philosopher says, it seems that the Cretan prophet's words are true if and only if they are false. And yet Paul calls it true. How do we reconcile this? Okay, so that's the issue that people have struggled with. And so I want to go down a little rabbit trail and give you three possible answers to this. And then we'll return to the main subject of why the scriptures alone can be our authority. And this does relate. Some Christians respond that verse 12 does not say that Cretans always lie, which would make every statement of a Cretan a lie, but that Cretans as persons are always liars. Okay, so it's a noun describing a character, not a verb describing an action. And so they would say it doesn't mean that everything they say is a lie, but they are always characterized by lying. They mix the truth in order to promote error. Even their use of the truth is to promote a lie and to deceive. And so even some secular philosophers have agreed, well, this would be a technical way around this. But the atheists respond on this website and they say, well, the Greek word always in the Greek means, quote, at all times. And you look in the dictionary and see, well, that is one of the definitions anyway. Another dictionary says, always, constantly, continually. Another has always, ever, eternally. And so they claim this means Cretans could never avoid lying. They always are lying according to Epimenides. And therefore, what Paul says, this is a true statement, has to be a false statement. But you look in the dictionaries and there's two definitions. One is that it's constantly, well, let me read it here. It's continuously with no break, or secondly, episodically. In other words, it continues on, but there are breaks in between. So I think this is one credible answer. Another possible solution is to say that since Paul... Okay, basically on that they could say, The syllogism, the arguments, the conclusions are always false, even though a given premise may be true. You can have given premises even though the argument as a whole is false. So that's the first. Another possible solution is to say that since Paul called Epimenides a prophet, that God was speaking through Epimenides, and since God is not a Cretan, there's no... Now, I think it's a little bit far-fetched, but it is possible, there's at least two times in the Bible where it's used that way. For example, the high priest was said to have prophesied by God about Jesus dying for the sins of the people. And he didn't know he was doing it, but God spoke through him. So if that was the case, there would be no contradiction here whatsoever. But the solution, I believe, makes the most sense is the one that flows from Clark's biblicism. Gordon Clark. Clark points out that by definition, there is no such thing as a valid induction. Inductions by their very nature, by their very structure, are false in the sense that you cannot validly arrive at a conclusion from the inducted premises. So it's a fallacious argument. You can't start from Epimenides' finite mind, get a finite sampling, and then make a generalization that applies to everyone in a valid way. It's a false argument. Now, God may know that the statement is true, but the argument cannot prove to be true. And so it's a false argument, a lie, if you will, for Epimenides to claim he knows what all of the Cretans do. It's by definition false because there's no valid way of knowing that. But in verse 13, it is God speaking through Paul. And God says that though Epimenides could not make a valid induction, the proposition that all Cretans are liars is true nonetheless. All cretins are liars, and the only reason we can know that is because God has infallibly told us. Now, Gordon Clark says this passage really has a lot of apologetic implications. Romans says, let God be true, and every man a what? A liar. Let God be true, and every man a liar. Without revelation, we have no valid basis for knowing the truth. Here's what Gordon Clark says. Sometimes the fallacy does not lie on the surface. Evil men can run through a long series of valid syllogisms, but a way back somewhere, they've had a wrong thought. The scriptures teach that out of the heart or mind come all the issues of life, and as a man thinks, so is he. Those who disturbed Paul's congregations were fallacious reasoners. And I think this is a perfect solution to the riddle. The unbelievers may hold to some valid premises, but their argument as a whole is a lie. And so I think it solves it perfectly. Now, for those of you whose heads are spinning, I did have to deal with this because there are so many atheists and others who have thrown this argument. I wanted you to at least have what the information is, but let's go on to the implications. And the implication is, that unless we reason from the propositions of the Bible or the truth statements of the Bible, we're always going to involve ourselves in falsehoods or fables or lies, however you may want to conceive of it. Even if there's a pile of truth that's mixed therein, it's the argument as a whole. And so it's important that elders not fall into the trap that these people here, these false teachers were falling into of appealing to any other authority than the authority of Scripture. If you don't remember anything else from this point, if you can remember this point, you've got it. The only authority we have is the Bible. Science is not our authority, nor is sociology or psychology or statistics. The Bible is. And to the degree we conform to the Bible or fail to conform, it's to that degree we have the truth or we are straying from the truth, as verse 14 words it. Now, very, very quickly, we're almost done. Two more quick points. First, the informal leadership of the good guys in chapter two was not sufficient to stop the mouths of the bad guys. Why? They didn't have church authority to discipline. All of us have the authority of the word and that's a powerful authority when we bring the word. It's not our opinion It's it's the word that we're speaking. It's God speaking. So that carries authority But what do we do if people ignore the word and just reject it? These guys were insubordinate. They could care less Well, that's where he goes on He says the officers are given a delegated authority to discipline and it may simply be a discipline of rebuke a sharp rebuke mentioned in verse 13 and Peter's didn't have an or else, did they? They didn't have that authority backing them up. Chapter 3, verse 10 says, reject a divisive man after the first and second admonition. Only ordained men have the authority to be able to do that from the scriptures. And so it's talking about various forms of discipline. Now let's put that all into the context of authority. Starting to read again in verse 9. holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught, notice this next phrase, 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," et cetera, et cetera. Now, let's suppose that I was an elder in that church there, and I'm trying to stop the mouths of these people, and I just bring human authority of one sort or another of my authority. And it happens to coincide with the Bible, but all I'm appealing to is the authority of man. What's going to happen? Well, if they happen to respect the authority of Epimenides more than they do, I can argue all I want, it's going to be fruitless. But if instead I point to the scriptures and I say, thus saith the Lord, it has more rank, it has more authority than the pagan philosophers do because God's omniscient, right? And so I may not have very much credibility in the eyes of the people, but if I can show from the scripture they're much more likely to buy that argument. Now, the Jews are gonna come along and they're gonna say, ah, yes, but what we're saying is from God, it is God's way. And that needn't stump you, you just have to say, well, prove it from the Bible. And they can't prove it from the Bible, okay? It's your authority, it's not God's way. It's the scriptures alone which should govern our lives. And so, if I'm a member of a congregation, And I think that the psychological way for curing my marriage is more important than the way that the pastor is doing. Who am I going to go to if I think the psychological way will heal my marriage? Am I going to go to a pastor who's had a few courses on psychology? Or am I going to go to a person who has devoted his whole life to psychology? Well, of course I'm going to go to the shrink. You know, but if I think that the only thing that's going to solve my family's problems, if it's block by block, step by step, God builds the house and I do it his way, then who am I going to go to? I'm going to go to the pastor who has devoted his entire life to studying and applying the scripture. Can you see the difference between those two? And yet I think so many elders have lost all credibility in the church because they're trying to imitate and use the authority of the world rather than the authority that God has given to them, which is an awesome authority. I'll try to, Lord willing, finish off Chapter 1 next week. I may skip over it. I haven't decided yet. But hopefully, you've got enough to see that the leadership that fills the void must be a well-thought-through leadership for the well-being of the congregation. Leadership will always happen. but it would be better if it happens according to a plan. We're going to discuss that plan and some of the ins and outs of it after the worship service. I hope you can stay, but the Lord bless you. Let's pray. Father God, we want to be captive to your word. We want to be captive to your word. Father, may none of us as officers of the Church of Jesus Christ speak with any other voice than the voice of Christ speaking through the scriptures. Father, I pray that we would be a testimony to other churches and that we would not be prideful in it. It's very easy for us to set ourselves up and yet we recognize how easy it is for our own, in our own circles to fall. And so, Father, we just pray you are the God in Jude who has said you were able to keep us from stumbling, keep us from stumbling, O God, and help us to stand in the authority which you have given to use the methodologies that you have given to delight in the leadership standards that you have given. And, Father, that you would guide this church, bless this church, encourage and grow it. And I pray, Father, that as officers come on in the future in your perfect timing, Father, that this church would be strengthened to be an incredible Gideon's army to accomplish much for your glory in this city. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.