Well, I think we're going to finish Titus today. So Titus, let's go to the book of Titus. We've been working our way through this book, and I was sort of cramming some study in Well, this morning, actually, because being sick and the type of cold, head cold, it was a little bit hard to focus on things earlier this week. So it was trying to figure it out and work it in whenever you could during work. And I ended up getting up a little earlier on Sunday morning this morning to cram some things in. So I hope it makes some sense to you this morning. We're going to finish this book up this morning, this little three chapter in your Bible's letter. Paul wrote this letter to one of his sons in the faith, a guy by the name of Titus, who was commissioned to the Greek island of Crete, where he was setting up churches there. where there were churches established there, and he was the overseeing elder of these churches, and Paul gave him instructions on how to get the churches on the right track. So let's do this, since we're probably gonna finish up today. Let's read, it's a short, short book. So let's start reading in verse number one of chapter one, and we'll go to our final text that we'll get to. So let's read this, it won't take us long. Let's read through the book of Titus, chapter 1, verse 1. Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ according to the faith of God's elect and the acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness and hope of eternal life which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began. but hath in due times manifested his word through preaching which is committed unto me according to the commandment of God our Savior. To Titus, my own son after the common faith, grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Savior. For this cause I left thee in Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders in every city as I had appointed thee. If any be blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children, not accused of riot or unruly. For a bishop must be blameless as the steward of God, not self-willed, not soon angry, not given to wine, no striker, not given to filthy lucre, but a lover of hospitality, a lover of good men, sober, just, holy, temperate, holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers. For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, especially they of the circumcision, whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not for filthy lucre's sake. One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said, The Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, and slow bellies. This witness is true. Wherefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith, not giving heed to Jewish fables and commandments of men, that turn from the truth unto the pure. All things are pure, but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure. But even their mind and conscience is defiled. They profess that they know God, but in works they deny Him, being abominable and disobedient, and in every good work reprobate. But speak thou the things which become sound doctrine. That the aged men be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith and charity and patience. The aged women likewise that they be in behavior as becometh holiness. Not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things. That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good. obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed. Young men likewise exhort to be sober-minded, and all things showing thyself a pattern of good works, and doctrines showing uncorruptness, gravity, sincerity, Sound speech that cannot be condemned, that he that is of the contrary part may be ashamed, having no evil thing to say of you. Exhort servants to be obedient unto their own masters and to please them well in all things, not answering again, not purloining, but showing all good fidelity that they may be adorned the doctrine of God our Savior in all things. For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lust, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world, looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke, with all authority, let no man despise thee. Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work, to speak evil of no man, to be no brawlers, but gentle, showing all meekness unto all men. For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving diverse lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. But after that, the kindness and love of God our Savior toward man appeared. not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which He shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that being justified by His grace We should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. This is a faithful saying. And these things I will that thou affirm constantly that they which have believed in God might be careful to maintain good works. These things are good and profitable unto men. Now here's our passage that we're going to discuss today. But avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and strivings about the law, for they are unprofitable and vain. A man that is an heretic, after the first and second admonition, reject, knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth being condemned of himself. When I shall send Artemis unto thee, or Tychicus be diligent to come unto me at Nicopolis, for I have determined there to win her. Bring Zenos the lawyer, and Apollos on their journey diligently, that nothing be wanting unto them. And let ours also learn to maintain good works, for necessary uses, that they be not unfruitful. All that are with me salute thee. Greet them that love us in the faith. Grace be with you all. Amen. So there's the book of Titus. I think that it's always beneficial to read God's word, and that being a short book, I think that it was also beneficial to read through it again here in our time together. We're gonna cover the last few verses. There's really two things that divide this from verses nine to 15. First, final warning, and then final instructions. So you get verses nine, 10, 11. He gives one last warning to Titus on what to do in the church. So one more warning and instructions for church government, church polity, how to handle yourself in the church. And then after that, he closes the letter like a letter. Then he talks about acquaintances. And so he gives some final instructions on Titus, on receiving certain people, and some interesting things in that. So let's break this down. First of all, final warnings. I've got this split up into controversies to avoid and people to avoid. So controversies to avoid, verse number nine says, but avoid Foolish questions and genealogies and contentions and strivings about the law, for they are unprofitable and vain. 2 Timothy 2.23, the other pastoral letter that Paul writes later to Timothy at the Church of Ephesus while he's in prison says, but foolish and unlearned questions avoid knowing that they do gender strifes. Foolish questions is what it says. The word is Zetisis, and it really means controversies. Foolish controversies. This is one of the devil's favorite tricks to get us sidetracked. Now, let me say this. He does not say avoid controversy. That's not what he says. It doesn't say, stay away from controversy. If something's controversial, don't do anything about it, just avoid it. That's not what he's saying. He's saying avoid foolish controversies. So then it begs the next question. Yeah, what determines what's a foolish controversy and what's just a controversy that we need to contend for, we need to fight for, that would be considered false teaching, that we need to protect the flock over? So there's your dividing line. What's foolish, avoid. Stay away from. Don't get involved with. But the other side, we have to fight for. And that's why we spent the first part of the letter talking about some of those things. This is about Christians becoming involved in futile arguments about matters of philosophy or even theology that are based on human reason and imagination rather than God's Word. We should not spend 30 minutes or an hour spending time discussing or debating, and could God create a rock so big that even He could not lift it? That's ignorant. There are some really ridiculous questions. I struggled to find a commentator that would really go down the line and define an aspect of what foolish controversies are to what others. So, I sort of levied a line, and this is my opinion, but I would say controversies that arise in church most of the time that do not have to take their root, or that do not take their root in the Bible. That would be criteria number one. Now, are there things that could arise and stir up a debate that is in the Bible that would be considered a foolish thing to argue about? I think so. But I think that's a little bit more subjective and a little bit harder to define. But I think the first criteria we use is we need to be careful about getting sidetracked, debating things that don't even find their root in the Bible. Like getting involved with a controversy over with another church or other believers or letting it well up into this church and spending a series preaching on whether women should wear pants or not. That's ridiculous. You don't find pants in the Bible. You find a principle of modesty and that's where it stops. So we teach and we preach modesty But we stop there. We don't then start govern our list of what modesty means to us and say, you must do my list of modesty. That's foolish controversy. And so many times I saw this when I was in college, where churches would get in such, I mean, the headquarters would change something and all the churches around the nation would get up against this. And Bible college goes against Bible college across the country over things that aren't even in the Bible. So we have to be careful with that. Paul's point here is that wasting time discussing them is a seriously foolish behavior for God's people to be involved in. What are some other areas that might be considered foolish controversies? Now, I hit on Christians' attitude towards government and that kind of stuff pretty hard last week. Pretty hard. But let me say this. We need to be careful as believers and as a church bringing controversies that exist in the political realm and in the governmental realm into the church. That's a foolish controversy because those things don't take its root in Scripture. Now, you heard me say this before and I'll say it again. Are there times where issues butt up against the Bible, where we will knock against them, where we will be coming through the Bible and certain issues that face itself out there in the culture or maybe in the political realm actually do have instruction from Scripture? Yes, and we will speak when that happens. But constitutional impeachment laws are not in Scripture. Is that too specific? Okay? Now, I'm great with you guys having your opinions about it. But we're not going to discuss it on Sunday mornings in church. Because it's not in the Bible. That would be considered, getting sidetracked on those things in church, in the pulpit, would be considered foolish controversies. And what does he say here? Avoid it. Stay away from it. Next thing he says is, I keep looking at Philemon. Next thing is genealogies. Genealogies. Now, some of you are probably, yeah, we don't need to study those genealogies. Are there genealogies in the Bible? Yes, there's genealogies in scripture. There is genealogies in Genesis and the Gospels. There's the book of Chronicles. Oh, they got lots of genealogies. Is it profitable for us to study the genealogies? Yes, it is. There is great insight to get from the genealogies. That is not what he's talking about here. He's not talking about a void discussions of genealogies and biblical genealogies. What he's discussing is Paul's warning to Titus concerned rather than many fanciful and allegorical interpretations of such genealogies that have fascinated many Jews for centuries. What happened a lot of times was that the Jews would take their genealogies and they would take these genealogies and they spent so much time in genealogies and say, oh, see here, because this guy begat this guy, that comes in my line and that means that I'm better than you. And so they would take this tribal type of hierarchy and they would try to lord it over by spending hours and hours into manipulating the genealogies. And a lot of times, the rabbis would take it and they'd take allegorical lessons out of names. They'd take a genealogy and they'd come up with some kind of crazy story based off of just what's in the names. And so, Paul has instructions here. Now again, the majority of the new believers during the time the New Testament was written actually were Jews. The majority of them were coming to faith. So a lot of this is with the Jews. Remember what he said at the beginning of chapter 1? He said, watch out especially those of the circumcision. That's the Jews. He had a major problem that as the Jews were coming into the church, other Jews were coming in there and seeing Christianity sort of appealing and trying to influence Christianity and take the Jewish teaching and force it upon the Gentiles that were getting saved. We see that in the letter of Galatians. The whole letter of Galatians is about, listen, now that you're saved, you don't have to follow the law. You're not bound by the law. That doesn't mean the law is of none effect. It just means that you can't sit there and dictate to a guy that gets saved that he now has to go get circumcised if he's a Greek. And therefore, he's not saved if he doesn't do that. So there were many important things that were happening with the church during this time. Genealogy was something that was sidetracking a lot of these believers. The next one is, he says, contentions. And this is strife. Getting in arguments over certain things. The next one then is disputes about the law. This is another Jewish thing. Sort of referenced it already. He says strivings about the law. They were disputing about the law. It's interesting today that that still goes on, even in churches, where somebody will pull out a passage, and they'll take all kinds of Old Testament Deuteronomical passages in the law, and they will take them, and they'll try to enforce those passages on New Testament believers while ignoring all the texts around it. The most famous one is the one about tattoos. Oh, you should not mark your body. That's what it says in Deuteronomy. Or read the next two verses. Men don't need to be cutting their beards. That stinks for me. I can't even grow a beard. I'm in violation of Deuteronomy. So, I mean, we've got to really study our Bibles and figure out what is going on there. I mean, the other part, you read a few verses after where it talks about the whole marking your body thing, and that was prohibited for them. And it talks about how men shouldn't be, they need to not cut the, you know, you see the Jews, Jewish, the traditional Orthodox Jews, they have the curly lines that come down there. That's from that verse, and that verse is right there. And so all of us are in trouble because we don't have those dangly lines because we cut our hair right there. we have to be careful about how we handle the Scriptures. And this is what he's saying. Avoid these things that get into mismanaging the Old Testament law and all these things. Again, I am not a hyper-dispensationalist. And that's two big words. It basically means I cut the Bible in half and say this part of the Bible doesn't apply to us at all. No, we don't do that. All Scripture is profitable for doctrine for reproof for instruction and righteousness, but we have to make sure that we accurately interpret it. Because some has profit to it, but some doesn't have equal application to us all. Okay, so that is controversies to avoid. Next, people to avoid, divisive ones. Verses 10 and 11, look at verse 10 and 11. A man that is an heretic after the first and second admonition reject. This is interesting. We throw that word around quite a bit in today's... See, I'm still battling this cold, so I'm having a hard time spitting words out. We throw this word around a lot today in today's church culture. Heretic, heretic, heretic. The interesting thing about this word is that this is the only place in the English Bible that this word takes place. It comes from a Greek word, and with my track record this morning, I don't know if I'm going to pronounce this right at all. Hereticos. The basic definition of the Greek term is a schismatic, or someone that chooses. Really, that's what it means. The idea is this. It's someone who, although they have been given some of the information, or given the information, they choose to go an errant way. That's basically the idea there. Okay. So think about this way. We're talking about the church setting. So that's what Paul's talking to Titus about within the church. So you have somebody in the church. Something is taught. They get the information. And they decide to believe a totally different way. And I'm not talking about modesty issues, or a pants or skirts situation. I'm talking about a major theme of doctrine here. That's what we're talking about. A major theme of doctrine. It's taught from the pulpit that Jesus Christ was the Son of God and Jesus Christ was God, that the Trinity was three essence and one divine being. And maybe somebody comes to church and they say, you know what, I hear what you're saying, but I disagree with that. And so then they start trying to tell other people in the church that that's not true. The Trinity, the doctrine of the Trinity and the deity of Christ are two major doctrines that we cannot falter on. And so if somebody's sowing divisiveness within the church saying that Jesus was not God, or God is not a Trinity, they've now gotten themselves in the realm of this heretic type of situation. So he gives instruction for this. I'm not going to spend the whole time talking about church discipline, because I think this is an aspect of church discipline. It's actually sort of a, what do you call it, you have a process of church discipline, this is sort of an exception clause of, okay, if it's this specific situation, you handle it this way. And that's what this is. I did four or five Sundays on church discipline, okay. I'm not gonna rehash that. You can listen to that some other time. But this one, I just want to talk specifically about this situation. This heretic or factious or divisive person is a self-willed person who thinks they are right and who goes from person to person in the church forcing people to make a choice. A heretic is one who refuses to accept true doctrine as it is revealed in the Bible and prefers to choose for himself what he is to believe. This is the idea of a heretic, okay? They may disagree. I wouldn't even say Really, this is a thing that me and Brother Steve would really have to discuss on whether this is a division of a sound, of a doctrine. There are some things that are non-negotiables. There are some things that are negotiable. We can negotiate on. Listen, me and Brother Steve don't agree on everything. We do, sometimes we look at him, look at his face back there. We do this sometimes, and sometimes we work it out, sometimes, you know what, I'm okay, it's not a deal breaker, we go on. Or sometimes after half time, he's like, I don't know about that. I say, okay, is that a deal breaker? He said, no, it's not a deal breaker. We don't have to be robots in here. We don't have to be Nazis to where everybody has to believe exactly what I believe. That's not even feasible. You can't maintain that. Now, I've been in churches where they think that that's the way it's supposed to be. That's their definition of unity. But that's not biblical. There are degrees of separation. There's first, second, third degrees of separation. First degrees of separation is where we separate. Some people like to take third degree issues and separate on that. I remember when I was in college, and listen, I use good examples and bad examples from my time in college, but I remember when I was in college, they just started the college my first year there, and there were ministries that were separating themselves because the basketball team wore shorts instead of long pants. it sometimes you think they're like that was a tin man if I only had a brain or who was that that was the yeah now that he had courage now we're getting into a full of controversy on disputing as a tin man as Tim it was a heart the scarecrow scarecrow scarecrow needed the brain I hate that movie And full disclosure, I first watched it for the first time about five years ago. And I was sad that I did. We were going to go see a Broadway play, and Mary's like, you have to see this before we go see this. I was like, okay. My kids love it now, though. But yes, I think some people within the church, I just think, you know, your theme song should be, If I Only Had a Brain. Because they get so hung up on idiotic issues, and we need to get hung up on the main doctrines. Other things, we need to learn where we can agree to disagree and go on. And that's okay, that's not compromise. It is compromise, but it's not like the bad compromise, you know what I'm saying? Seriously, I've been in churches where you say the word compromise, and it's like you just said a fighting word. And so, how do we handle people that are heretical or, as this word means, divisive? How do we handle divisive people to church? Well, it then tells us in verse 11, well, it tells us in verse 10 and 11 how these people are to be handled. We confront them. After the first and second admonition or warning, you confront them. We confront them. This is the way you do it Christ-like. This is the Christ-like way to do it. You go to them. They don't sit there and talk about them to every other church member saying, can you believe what they're saying? We go to them. We go to them. The purpose of warning people, Newt Larson said this, the purpose of warning people who disrupt the church or mislead others is to bring about repentance in the erring believer. It's not going to them to say, you better shape up or you're out of here. That's not the idea. The idea is, hey, we want you around here. We love you. You're going in a wrong direction. All right, we confront them. We know what we're saying when we confront them. First time. And we give them a chance. Second time. Okay? And then you reject them. This is the word, the Greek word, paraitumai, and it means to decline, to shun, to avoid, to excuse, to refuse, to reject. Okay? This is the word that is used in your King James translation, reject them. This is not fun. But this is Bible. And this is instruction for the church. Now again, we're talking about a specific situation. What is the specific situation? Divisiveness in the church over matters of doctrine. And then, know them. Because this is what kind of person they are. Because if they reject the first, if they do not come around on the first warning or the second warning, This is the kind of person they are. Verse 11, knowing that he that is such is subverted and sinneth, being condemned of himself. He says three things about him. Number one, he says subverted. This is an old English way of saying he's perverted. Now, a lot of times in our American culture, in our context, we say the word perverted, we think of some kind of sexual perversion and those types of things. That's not the way the word is necessarily used here. It means, it's the word, subverted is the word, extrepo, which means twisted, distorted, or turned inside out. If they are shown from the Bible their error, and they are warned twice about it, and they still don't come around, there is something distorted with them. that they have a problem. And if they stay there, they will pollute the church and lead many into false error. The second thing that says about this person is that they're sinful. They are in sin. The third thing is, is that they are condemned of himself. They are bringing condemnation on themselves. And our job here is to protect the flock. And so to keep from condemnation being brought on the rest of the church or any other members of the church, this is where the unpleasant action comes of rejecting them and putting them out. Avoid foolish questions, genealogies, contentions, and strivings about the law, for they are unprofitable and vain. A man that is an heretic, after the first and second admonition, reject, knowing that he is subverted, sinneth at being condemned of himself." That is the final warning in the church. Now let's look at final instructions. Interesting little bits of Paul as he wraps up the letter. I think if you're a Christian that's interested in growing Christ and you have a love for the apostles, you have a love for the men that God used, it's interesting to get tidbits about these people. And Paul gives us some information here that is neat, I think is neat. So final instructions, he says, meet me at Nicopolis, verse 12. When I shall send Artemis unto thee, or Tychicus, A couple of things about this here. We don't know who Artemis is. This is the only mention given to Artemis. We don't have any first century early church writings that mentions an Artemis. Obviously, he was somebody that Paul held in high esteem to send Artemis to Crete to help out and relieve Titus. Tychicus, though, we are given a little bit about Tychicus. Tychicus is mentioned in Acts 20, verse 4. He accompanied Paul on the missionary journey from Corinth to Asia Minor. And he's mentioned in a couple of the prison epistles the end of Ephesians, the end of Colossians. So when Paul was in prison, he sent four letters out. One to a guy named Philemon, one to Philippians, the church of Philippi, Philippians, Ephesians, and Colossians. And he mentions in those letters that they were being sent, the person carrying those letters was Tychicus. So Tychicus obviously was a close friend of Paul's and did many of, helped Paul out and took many, did many errands for Paul. And he tells them that he's sending these two guys to Titus and he tells Titus he wants him to come to Nicopolis to meet him. So where is Nicopolis? Now this is a little bit tricky. There were perhaps as many as nine cities in the New Testament times that were called Decapolis. Decapolis means city of victory. A lot of times whenever people would have a war, a battle, and they declared a victory, the general or the guy in charge would then take over the area and they would rename the city. victory city. That's where they had their big great victory and so that term was Nicopolis. And so many believe the Nicopolis where Paul was planning to go and spend the winter was probably on the west coast of Achaia, the southern province of Greece. It was founded by Octavian. Now Octavian was the Roman Emperor who was surnamed Augustus. This is an interesting necropolis if this is where Paul was going because this is the city that Octavian tracked down Mark Antony in Cleopatra. to defeat them and take back the Roman Empire, and more along the lines of getting revenge on Julius Caesar is what it was. Because Mark Antony was partly involved in the plot to kill Caesar. Octavian was a young man who was Caesar's adopted son. And he looked up. Caesar was his mentor. He loved Caesar. And so they killed Caesar. So when he became an adult, he got the armies on his side because Caesar loved him. And so he then started a sort of a civil war, and they hunted down Antony left Rome went to Egypt and then Octavian went after him and then they fled and he basically tracked them down to this area and that's where he finally defeated them. They were killed and he called this place Nicopolis and that's where many believe because of the geography of where Crete is and all the stuff that's where Paul was probably going was that Nicopolis. Now One interesting note that I do want to point out, because I'm me and I can't leave it alone, is this little part that says, for I have determined there to win her. And this is a little bit that Alistair Begg pulled out of this passage that I thought was interesting. And that is, he said, you know, Paul didn't say, God told me to go there. What did Paul say? He said, I decided to go there. And Alistair Begg said this, and I thought this was interesting. It's a little bit convicting. He said, be careful not to get more spiritual than the Apostle Paul. Sometimes, you know, you're walking with God, just make decisions. It's not a bad thing. Sometimes we don't have to have some kind of mystical decision that comes from an angel or from a sign on the road to tell us what we need to do. Paul just said, I'm going to Decapolis. That's where I decided to spend the winter. He could have said a whole lot of other things. And you're talking about a guy who did see angels. The angels did come to him. And he did go to the third heaven and said, I'm not sure if I did or not, but I can't talk about it. I mean, he just said, I decided to go to heaven. I think a lot of times so much tradition and the way we talk passes down, and we think that if we don't say it a certain way, we're being unspiritual. Don't feel like that. Don't live under that type of guilt. You decided to do something. You're not unspiritual if you decided to do something. So, next he says, meet me in Decapolis, verse 13, bring friends. And this is, he says, bring Zenos the lawyer and Apollos on their journey diligently that nothing be wanting unto them. Again, Zenos is like Artemis, we don't know anything about Zenos, except for he's a lawyer. It's interesting, Paul needed a lawyer. Well, what happened to Paul just right before? He just got out of prison. And actually what happens to Paul after this, this is the one letter that we have he wrote before he goes back to prison. So he's in prison twice. The first time he gets out of prison he writes to Timothy and he writes to Titus. That's 1 Timothy and Titus. So he made a friend with a lawyer. Now, Zenos is a is a Roman name. So this guy was not a Jew. But apparently Paul made an impact on him. Maybe he was a believer now. And so Paul wanted the lawyer to hang out with him. He probably needed some questions asked. He needed some legal counsel. Okay. Zenos was the first David Gibbs, I guess. I don't know. Speculating a little bit there. So then he says, he says, bring them and Apollos. We do have a lot about Apollos. Apollos was the guy in Corinthians where Paul says, tells him, he says, there's a problem going on in the church, and some says that I'm with Apollos, and some says that I'm Paul, and some says that I'm Christ. So Apollos was a good guy. Apollos was, from some of those writings in Corinthians, evidently a great speaker, a good preacher. People liked him. So he wanted Apollos there. And then tell the people to do good. And here we have that drum beat again, that bell rung again, this theme carried through again in this little letter. And what is that? Verse 14. And let ours also learn to maintain what? Good works. This is the theme of this letter. You are not saved by good works, but you are saved to do good works. Your salvation produces good deeds. Good deeds do not produce salvation. And this is the theme that he keeps hitting over and over and over again. You guys down there in Crete need to get busy. You need to do some things. You need to be doing things. And I think that maybe Maybe a criticism could be leveled here, a little bit about that. Maybe sometimes we need to step back and take a self-analyzation and see, is this us? And are we doing good works? Is Calvary Baptist Church known for doing good works? And Mary and I have talked about that here lately, and we got some ideas of maybe changing that this coming year. And so we're looking forward to some exciting things going on in 2020. Verse 15, conclusion. And this is reminiscent of how Paul ends most of his letters. All that are with me, salute thee, greet thee. Greet them that love us in the faith. Grace be with you all. Amen. He says he loves them. I think you see that a lot with Paul. Now Paul can lay it out straight, and sometimes you can see almost Paul's passion and his anger even a couple of times in his writing, but you know what so many times I think is looked over with Paul is his love. Paul just told all the time how much he loved people. And he loved the people there at church, and he always reiterated that. Love and grace be with you all. Amen. That is the little book of Titus. So a lot there. A lot of instruction. Considered a pastoral epistle, but I think it has quite a bit for the church. And I hope that that's been helpful for you. Of course, all of these things, as Brother Steve could testify to this too, we probably get the most out of it because there's so much more that we get with our study that we can't really get out in the time allotted. So it's really worked me over trying to get it prepared to give and serve to you. So let's pray and we'll have our morning service in just a little bit. Father, we thank you so much for all that you've done for us. You are a wonderful, loving, graceful God. And it is our desire to be your church and to bring glory to you. We love you and we ask that the singing and the scripture reading and the preaching and the giving all brings honor to your name. We love you in Jesus name. Amen.