Sermon: Titus (Part Six)
Living in This World
#1628
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 04-Dec-21; 77 minutes
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transcript:
It is a longstanding idea in Christendom that Christians can grow and mature spiritually better in isolation, in the wilderness away from the evils of civilization where you can go out and commune with God Himself. That seems to be the way people think that spirituality is built. If we can only find a quiet place out in the country, out in the woods, a cabin on a remote mountainside or a cottage on some isolated strand, or adobe huts somewhere in the desert near a spring, hopefully, then we can draw closer to God and achieve godliness more perfectly than we can when we are among people. And more quickly too because it is just us and God.
There is much to commend getting away. (Southwest Airlines certainly wants you to get away, if you remember those commercials.) There is much to commend being still and focused on God. Those are good things. Several monastic orders were set up for just this purpose in times past and some of them are still functioning in remote corners of the globe. Even now, some of those people take vows of silence and vows of poverty so they can remove themselves as much as possible from the culture and commerce of the world, and of course, from other sinful people. They spend their days in prayer or meditation or copying some sort of sacred text or maybe they are singing hymns at various times of the day or tending gardens or caring for the sick or whatever their sect believes is living a godly life and doing godly works.
Now, I do admire such people that can do that, for their sacrifice and devotion to what they believe is the best environment to live their lives of piety. Yet, I cannot help but think that they may have acted on impulse inspired by a misreading of Scripture. Yes, God does tell us in Revelation 19:4, tells the church, "Come out of her, My people, lest you share in her sins, lest you receive of her plagues." And such commands are given frequently throughout Scripture. There are several of those that specifically mention coming out of Babylon in the Old Testament. But physically-minded people tend to interpret what God says here in a literal, materialistic way. That we should get our things and actually move out of society. That we should take the leather express and go wherever it is that we can be removed from this world.
However, God's people are a spiritual people and they should be spiritually-minded and ought to understand this scripture which commands forsaking Babylon or this world, first of all, in a spiritual way. How can you come out of Babylon spiritually first?
How do I know this is the way God wants us to look at this command? Let us consider some flights into the wilderness. First of all, Lot. Remember Lot? He left Sodom and Gomorrah at the command of God very reluctantly. His wife of course looked back. But he left. And what was the consequence of leaving all society. Two sons, or you call them grandsons if you want, who were conceived through incest.
Moses—God put him out in the wilderness for 40 years, perhaps to humble him and get his mind ready for taking the Israelites through the wilderness. But Moses fled, at least on the outside, to escape Pharaoh because he had just committed murder, and think about it, he had 40 years in the wilderness tending his father-in-law's sheep. It was probably pretty isolated out there and he had a lot of time to think. But even so, after all that time, the first thing he did when God got in contact with him was say, "No, I don't want to be Your prophet. Can't you get somebody else to do it?" How humble is that? It is like, why not say, "Yes, Lord. I'd be happy to. Even though I've got this impediment in my speech, I'll do whatever I can." But no, he said, "uh uh." And if you go back and read the the narrative there, you find that God was incensed. He did not like the fact that Moses told Him no. He was giving him a great responsibility, a leadership responsibility for His people, and he said no after 40 years of being alone in the wilderness. And then it was not long thereafter, Moses was finally getting down to Egypt, and God tries to kill the man because he had not circumcised his sons. Not circumcising your son was basically saying you are not part of the covenant. It is a very serious thing. You know, after 40 years in the wilderness, maybe his thinking was not as perfect as we like to think it was. He had some rough edges to round off here.
How about Elijah? Elijah fled toward Mount Sinai, got there eventually, but he was fleeing the wrath of Jezebel. And you know what? When he got there, God essentially fired him from being His prophet because he was so self-centered. "Look what I've done, God, all these wonderful miracles You've done through me. And now there is no one else but me." And God says, "I have 7,000 left. Aren't you aware of them?" Then he repeats the same thing. And so God says, "Okay, if that's the way you're going to be, you do this, this, and this, and the final one is you give your cloak over to Elisha because I'm retiring you."
Notice all of these flights into the wilderness that I have mentioned so far were motivated by fear. Fear of God's destruction at Sodom, fear of Pharaoh, fear of Jezebel. They went out there, not for the best reasons. Very human reasons.
Jesus, of course, He always gives a good example. He did go out in the wilderness. He went out in the wilderness frequently. Of course, He went out for 40 days and 40 nights before Satan tempted Him and He went there to fast and pray. He was going to be starting His ministry. He needed to get everything aligned properly in His mind and have the strength to begin.
But notice it was 40 days and 40 nights, it was limited. It had a time restraint there. And He returned then after the 40 days to the hustle and bustle of Judea and Galilee. And what did He do? He worked among the people. He did not stay up in a monastery and write them letters or something. He actually went out and did something among all the people there in Judea. He sent His apostles out into the world too. He did not tell them to go found some kind of monastic order. He said go out there and preach the gospel to every creature, to everyone. You cannot do that without being among them.
So none of them hid in the hills or in the deserts. They lived in the big cities. Paul wrote to Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, and all those other places in Asia Minor. Those are big places, many people dwelling in the same place, and they went there and they preached for months or years, he and his entourage. And they tried not to be on the road as much as possible. They tried to be with the people. Of course, Paul was a little stymied by being arrested time and again. But even then he used that time to preach and we find out that in Rome he actually had people coming through his house like a river and talking to him and he was discussing the gospel and whatnot with friends and enemies. So the church cannot preach the gospel to the world while physically removed from it. It has got to be in the world.
Now, I do understand that in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus does instruct us to go into a private place to pray so that we can have conversation with God without anybody else seeing or hearing. And He tells us in that same chapter, in Matthew 6, that we are to do good works and fast in secret. Do not let other people know what you are doing. Do not let your right hand know what your left is doing as much as we can. Those are the works that He wants us to do where we are not trying to do it vaingloriously. We are not trying to get a pat on the back from God or from anybody else in the community. We do not want to necessarily be seen of men doing those things. Let God see them and He will reward you openly, He says. But those are temporary things. Those happen throughout the day, throughout the week, throughout the year, and then we go back to normal living.
But His comments here in Matthew 6, if you look at it closely, they clearly indicate that when we do those things: pray, fast, do good works, give alms, or what have you, they are done within a community, in a city or in a town where other people live. Because He understands human beings are social creatures. We need to be around people, even if we are the most introverted people in the whole world, we still need to go out and talk every once in a while. We need to rub shoulders with people, we need to get out there and do things every once in a while, even if we hurry and come back into our isolation because we are that much introverted. (I am only talking about myself.)
But we have to understand that God wants us among other people. That is why fellowship is such an important spiritual tool because it is how we we act and react to others in a community. There are very few people that actually do well in isolation. If you stay too isolated, you start hearing voices and you start doing weird things and you take your own ideas a little bit too far, because they have not had the sharpening that they need from somebody else, and pretty soon you can be really wacko. Maybe you are not insane, but you have got some weird ideas and the kind of ideas that usually push other people aside. So while we are to seek out periods of alone time with God, we are, like Christ and the example He set, to return to live normally within our communities, whatever they happen to be.
Let us go to John 17. This is Jesus' prayer for us. This is how He set things up for us to understand how we are to live in this world, at least the basic principles of it.
John 17:11-13 [He says] "Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are. While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Your name. Those whom You gave Me I have kept; and none of them is lost except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now [as things are beginning to change, He is going from being the physical presence there as Jesus among the disciples, to having a more spiritual presence. Well, it is almost completely spiritual after the day of Pentecost, and things have to be reordered a little bit.] I come to You, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves."
He is looking throughout the scope of their whole life and what is going to come with this great transition, and He wants them to have a joyous life, even though things are going to be changed. He will not be physically with them, but He will be spiritually with them. And He asked God to make it so that they understand that His presence is still there.
John 17:14 "I have given them Your word; . . .
That was the first thing that comes to mind, here, of the tool that they would need. They have got the Word of God. They have got the qualifications and the new understanding, if you will, the reason why Jesus came to give the gospel and to show the New Covenant and the way things were going to be. They have that as a basis for what they are going to be doing.
John 17:14 . . . and the world has hated them because [as we will see, it is this word and the truth that is in that word that draws this hatred because it is so different from what this world believes] they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. [In giving them His word and all the instruction He had put them in a different category, far closer to Him than they were to the people in the world. And so it drew the same type of reaction—hatred.]"
Look, this is a situation now where they are not ready for the resurrection yet. They are not ready to be changed into Spirit, they still have a work to do in the world. So, like Him, they have a job that they are going to do in this world. He is going to die and ascend to heaven after His resurrection. But they are going to be in the world in the same kind of way that He was in the world. So, it says "they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world."
John 17:15 "I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, . . .
Jesus says here very clearly, "Father, I don't want You to take them out of the world. I'm not going to ask that of You. I want them in the world because there are things that they need to do in the world."
John 17:15 . . . but that You should keep them from the evil one."
That is what He asked the Father. Do not separate them from the world in this way, making them into monks and hermits and isolated and what have you, or even, as the Protestants might think, taking them off to heaven. That is not what He is asking here. He is saying, "I want them to stay in the world, but I want You to give them protection. Keep them from the evil one." Put a hedge about them, if you will. Make it so the they can do their work without Satan's interference, as much as possible. Satan is always going to try to interfere. He is always going to ask God if he can do this or do that, and sometimes God gives His permission. But as we see in the book of Job, it is always something that is under His control and He either gives the permission, but He gives makes limits on things.
John 17:16 "They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world."
He repeats that. He did not have to repeat that for the Father's sake. He is repeating it for our sake, for the disciples' sake, to remind them that they are different. They are sanctified, they are set apart, they are in a different category. They have a tremendous responsibility to do, so they are being given the ability here to do that through the Father. So he says,
John 17:17 "Sanctify them [or separate or set apart] by Your truth. Your word is truth."
He does not mean just the fact that it is truth. He means that you are living the truth, that it is sanctifying you, that it is making you better. That it is changing your character. And it is in that that the great difference comes between you and the world. You are changing, you are becoming more Godlike and they are not, and that is going to create conflict and sometimes pretty heavy conflict, to the point where they are shouting for our blood. He says,
John 17:18-19 "As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. [so the same sort of commission] And for their sakes, I sanctify Myself, . . .
He sets Himself apart. This is an allusion to His death and all that happens after that, to His ascension, all that whole period. He sets Himself apart for those works because that is going to turn everything on, if you will. That is the key that gets the engine started for their work once Jesus goes to heaven. Remember He said a couple of chapters before, you will do greater works than I have done. So He is going to put Himself in a separate category as Redeemer, as our Savior, as our soon-coming King, and the Head of the church. He is going to set Himself apart in that so that they could do their work, and that comes all the way down to us so that we can do our work.
John 17:19 . . . that they also may be sanctified by the truth."
So He is going to go ahead and do all these things and send them the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost and give them all the tools they needed to do the work in the world. Not out of the world, in the world while they were right there.
So we can look at this in terms of a parallel here. We are very much like the disciples. We have been called to do a job. We are especially called to be witnesses of Him, witnesses of God in the world. And so we have to stay, remain, in the world so we can do that. We do other things. We support each other. It is another one of our works that we do that God has given us to do. We support a larger work that the church does. I thank you for your support for that because it allows me to get out here and talk to you face-to-face and does a lot of other things in getting the word out through our primary way, through the Internet mostly, but that is part of all of our work. But the one we do most often is that first one that I mentioned, that we are witnesses. That our lives, our speech, everything that we do reflects God and creates a good impression on others.
Let us go to another place where this is alluded to. To me, it is equally clear and it is very interesting that it is set in the midst of the marriage chapter in I Corinthians 7. We will read verses 17 through 24. Here Paul tells us that we are to stay in the same situation that God called us, whatever we were doing at the time.
I Corinthians 7:17-19 But as God has distributed to each one, as the Lord has called each one, so let him walk. And so I ordain in all the churches. Was anyone called while circumcised? Let them not become uncircumcised. Was anyone called while uncircumcised? Let him not be circumcised. Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing, but keeping the commandments of God is what matters.
We can say that this is the key to this whole bit here about being good witnesses. It does not matter; how many people are actually going to see if a man is circumcised? I mean, it is kind of funny to think about, but it does not show unless you are stark naked, right? But they can see whether you keep the commandments of God. They can see in the way you conduct your life whether you are actually living according to the truth. That is the witness. So, it does not matter whether you have taken the sign of the Old Covenant in this way as part of Israel. What matters is you have taken the New Covenant, which is the circumcision of the heart, and you are actually living it out by keeping the commandments.
I Corinthians 7:20-24 Let each one remain in the same calling in which he was called. Were you called while a slave? Do not be concerned about it; but if you can be made free, rather use it. For he who is called in the Lord while a slave is the Lord's freedman. Likewise he who is called while free is Christ's slave. You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men. Brethren, let each one remain with God in the state in which he was called.
So, we are to stay in that same situation in which God calls us. The same occupation. We do not need to change, normally. The same family situation. This is why it was after marriage because the thought process was about these people who had come into the church, but their spouse had not. And so the question comes up, should I separate or divorce from this person in order to worship God? And Paul says, "No. If they are living peaceably with you, stay married. That's a good situation, that's fine." But he says if there are problems you can consider that. But then he, here in this passage, gets to a general principle that we do not need to change our situation that God called us in. We can just continue to live as we have except now we keep the commandments of God and we are becoming a model, an example, for others to follow.
So we do not need to change our residence. If God calls us in the midst of the Detroit slums, we should stay there unless there is a good reason we should get out. Maybe God called us to be an example in the Detroit slums. That is fine. Now I think there are people who would probably want to move out of there. But, even so, the general principle is that if you are okay with that, stay there, that is fine. God does not tell all of you when you are first called to go to the nearest headquarters of the church of God. You do not have to go there and live around other people. You could stay where you are. I mean, some people have done that and that is fine too. But he says that throughout this. It is fine what you do, those are the decisions that you have to make.
But what he is really concerned about is: are you keeping the commandments of God? Are you making a good witness wherever you happen to be? Your physical situation is not as critical as whether you are doing those spiritual things that God has called you to do. If you are a grocer, how much groceries would you sell up on top of a mountain? No, continue to be a grocer. If you are a grocer, you are probably in a big city or at least in a town big enough to support a grocery store. So go ahead and stay there and continue to sell your groceries. That is fine. You do not have to change once you come into the church, if you are doing something that is just fine and you are happy with it.
So there is no need to ditch whatever occupation you are in in order to do something more spiritual, or what we think is more spiritual. God can work with you right where you are. God could make you a witness right where you are.
Now, of course there are some obvious exceptions to this that hopefully are worked out before baptism, things like military service, criminal activities, jobs with Sabbath problems. Those things need to be worked out because you would not be keeping the commandments, right? You would not be making a good witness.
But the general principle is that we do not need to become monks in the wilderness to grow in grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. We can do it right where we are. And oftentimes, I would say 95% of the time, real growth occurs in the rough and tumble of the crowd, especially the crowded house, the crowded workplace, the crowded neighborhood, or what have you. It is in those close situations where we live and where we work, where we play, that we have our greatest potential to grow because we are rubbing up against people who are different and they challenge us and sometimes they get our dander up. They make us do things that we should not do and God says, "Ah hah! Found something, didn't you, that you aren't very Christlike about. Let's work on that for a while."
I tell people in my marriage counseling that the relationship between a husband and wife is the premier environment, the premier laboratory where God makes good character if He has willing and cooperative participants. Expand that out with a few children, add in some in-laws, and you have got a situation there where you could make a wonderful witness for Christ and the Father if you want to take this mission. And I hope that you do.
It is within our relationships with the people around us, whether they are converted or whether they are unconverted, that we grow, that we overcome, where we produce the fruit that God wants to see. So, my conclusion here is: hermits do not make the best Christians, but those who live in community.
This was just the run up to my Titus series here. I am going to continue in Titus and move into chapter 3. I sat down at my computer typing this all up and I thought, I am going to finish today. I am going to finish Titus—and no. I mean, look at the time already. But what this introduction that I have given, even though it has been very long, about 40 minutes long, is necessary for what I have to tell you what Paul wrote Titus, because this is exactly the sort of thing that Paul was telling Titus that he needed to teach the people in Crete.
So we are going to move into chapter 3, which begins with a reminder to the Cretan church to be mindful of their conduct as citizens in an ungodly world. Chapter 2, which we have just come through, largely concerns internal church matters, but in chapter 3, Paul shifts to its external witness.
Now, before we go any further, I need to help you remember what has been a main theme in this series of sermons that I have given, and that is what a cruddy place Crete was and how its people were just as cruddy. It was the proverbial armpit of the Mediterranean world in terms of its corruption. And I just should say the people who were contemporaries with those Cretans at the time, mid-first century AD, wrote a lot about Crete, and just how horrible a place it was and how nobody could trust the people that came out of Crete. The Cretans were considered crude, liars, rebellious, duplicitous, untrustworthy, drunks, insolent, prone to aggression, and even violence. So safe to say, Titus did not receive a plum assignment. He probably said, "Paul, why me?" And Paul said, "It'll be good for you, Titus. Just wait."
The main concentration of this series has been the parallel between first century Crete and Cretans, with 21st century America and Americans, in terms of the corruption in the world and our, as church members, reaction to it, living in it. Now, considering the mutual challenges the Cretans and we in America face is how we find helpful applications of what Paul told Titus to do. God preserved this instruction for us down 2,000 years almost so that we can have the benefit of this instruction. It is for our admonition, so we should not let it fall on deaf ears and let it go to waste. Now, I want to read the first seven verses of Titus 3. This will give us a gist of the passage.
Titus 3:1-7 Remind them to be subject to rulers and authorities, to obey, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to be peaceable, gentle, showing all humility to all men. For we ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. But when the kindness and the 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, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that having been justified by His grace, we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
In this section, Paul instructs Titus to remind the Cretans about how godly people, how Christians, should conduct themselves in the world. They were to remember and reflect on how they acted before God called them and how privileged they are, on the other hand, that God extended kindness and love and grace to them, even while they were wretched, horrible people like all the other Cretans were. It is very similar to what Paul says in Romans 5, that "while we were yet sinners, Christ died" for us. And so He calls us out of a sinful condition and brings us into a relationship with Him that has eternal consequences and He provides all that we need. All we need to do is give assent and persevere, essentially, and grow, and all those other things we think that are so hard. But God does so much for us out of His love, that you think it should be easy. But we have human nature of course, and that just puts a wrench in the whole affair and we have to learn to overcome that.
But God has given us so much and we need to be thankful for that because the Cretans, and us too, never, in no way, deserved what God has done and all the gifts He has given us and promises.
He tells them all this to remind them about the way they were and how God has given them all this and has instructed them about how to live, how to conduct themselves. He tells us all these things because they need to remember that God could be calling others out of the same world that we came from, around us, so it is imperative that they and we conduct ourselves as obedient Christians to make a good witness of God's way. That someone whom God has begun to open the mind so they can see what is good and right, can point to a Christian already converted and say, "You know, that person lives this and if that person could live this because I knew him from grammar school or I knew him from the garage, if he could do it, I can do it. Look how he or she has changed. This is no longer the brawler, this is no longer the profaner of God. This is no longer the wanton woman. . ." Just think of all these terrible things. You know, this is not the lush sleeping at the curb. God pulled them out of this terrible way of life and changed them.
That is the kind of witness we need to have. It does not have to be that stark, but we have to always conduct ourselves as lights in the world so that others can see it and follow it if God so chooses to put one of these people in our path.
So, this passage to everyone in God's church is an expansion of what he had said earlier in chapter 2, in verse 10. He talks about there that slaves should adorn the doctrine of God by the way they respond to their masters. It is this idea of adorning the doctrine of God that he is expanding in chapter 3. This is how you do it. You stop doing all those terrible things you did before God called you and you make a good witness so that anybody who sees you will say, God is great, look what He has done. Look, He has turned this horrible sinner around into a paragon of virtue, and they follow.
Let us get into the nitty-gritty of the first three verses. That is all we are going to have time for today. But there is a lot here. Paul was a master of shorthand in terms of giving instruction and there is so much behind what he tells Titus here.
Titus 3:1-3 Remind them to be subject to rulers and authorities, to obey, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to be peaceable, gentle, showing all humility to all men. For we ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another.
Now, Paul has in mind the well known unsavory character of the average Cretan in writing what he does here. He is remembering his recent trip through Crete and his catalog of all the terrible things that Cretan people do or that he witnessed them doing. And he is saying to himself, thinking, this is the same gutter that all of our people in Crete came out of. They all have many years of experience, perhaps decades, perhaps nearly whole lifetime full of living through this kind of slop. And so it reminds them, this is what they came out of. This is what you are used to. This is the kind of stuff, the kind of character, the traits that are ingrained in you. It has like saturated every cell of their bodies. It is natural for them to live this way.
He says, you have got to overcome these things and the easiest thing you can do is to cultivate opposite behaviors. One that is not here, but if you were a drunkard, be abstemious. That is what he is basically saying. If you stole, do not steal anymore, give. That sort of thing. He does not actually use those two examples but this is what he is setting up. You guys have to learn to pull yourself and your nature out of that evil way that you lived so long in and force yourself to do the opposite until it becomes as natural as the old way was. Change your habits from bad habits to good habits.
Cretan's were notorious rebels. That is the first thing he mentions here: remind them to be subject to rulers and authorities. They frequently broke out into armed conflict over disagreements with their rulers or even the neighbor down the street. It did not matter. They were very willing to come to blows over just about anything. They were famous for flouting all laws and rules. If it did not suit them, they did not do it or they did it just to thumb their noses at the rulers.
Cretan's were notoriously invested in doing themselves good and not others—being at the top of the pyramid. They were renowned as critics, slanderers, underminers, and defamers. They were constantly competitive and argumentative. They were rough and violent and their fierce pride was a head shaker. It was totally unwarranted. There was hardly anything good about them to be proud of, but for some reason they thought that they were just the chief of the nations.
Now, clearly none of these things are Christian virtues and it is these things that the Cretan people had to overcome. And please, as I talk here, make sure you put your own background into this and take the parallels that could help you in your own growth.
In verse 1 the first phrase concerning subjection to authorities is reminiscent of what Paul said in Romans 13, verses 1-7. I am just going to go there quickly and you can see the the parallel. I will not read the whole thing, but just the first couple of verses.
Romans 13:1-2 Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. [And it goes on through five more verses there.]
I have a suspicion that at this point in Paul's ministry, which is getting toward the end, that epistles like Romans and Corinthians and Galatians, Thessalonians, and a few others were already part of every church's library. I believe that cadre of men around Paul were not just going out and being street preachers or what have you. They were actually writing down, copying, the letters, making several copies, and then a person like Titus going through Crete could give these out at the churches and say, "Make this part of your library, read these in church," or what have you, because that was the instruction and they did not always have a minister. That is just one of my suspicions.
But I think God probably would have inspired that sort of thing. He has always been at the forefront of technologies, moving His church into these areas where they can communicate better with people. And copying the epistles of Paul and the gospels and others would have been the technology at the time that could be used to make sure the people were fed the Word of God, and I am sure that they figured out some way to get the Old Testament to these people as well. I do not know how, that would have been very laborious to copy all the scrolls of the Old Testament, but that was their Bible. Maybe they had some converted Jews sneak it out of the synagogues or maybe they made deals with old copies when new ones came in. They used to burn all the old copies of the Old Testament once they made a new one. So maybe the Jews made a little bit of money from the Christians. Instead of burning them, they sold their old copies. I do not know. Like I said, I am just supposing this. But it is an interesting thing to think about.
And we know Paul was already collecting his letters. We know that from II Timothy 4:13 where he tells Timothy there to make sure he brings him the parchments, especially the parchments because he was collecting everything because he understood that he would die soon and he wanted to leave that sort of thing to his spiritual heirs.
So if that were true and Titus did have a copy of Romans 13 of the epistle of Romans, he could certainly preach out of that and teach the Cretans about being subject to authorities. The principles found in Romans 13 were so contrary to the mindset of the Cretan church members that I think it would have been quite a revelation to them. You mean, we are not supposed to throw Molotov cocktails at the governor? I do not think they even had Molotov cocktails at the time, but that was the kind of people they were. They were agitators, they were rebels, they liked mixing it up. So I am sure they understood that they should not do this, but it was very opposite of their cultural character.
But in Romans 13 especially, Paul gives solid spiritual reasons why the elect must be in subjection even to civil authorities. And it mostly comes from those first two verses in Romans 13 where he says that God is sovereign over all and He put them there. So they had to be very careful that in their rebellion, they were not also rebelling against God. And they would have been because God had allowed those authorities to be there. Overcoming this fault would have taken a great effort on their part, a great change of mind, and a lot of resolve not to slip back into their natural disdain for rulers and taxman and others in authority, which we all have too, especially in this day and age. Our authorities in civil governments are less than desired, just put it that way. We have our own version of this and we have to learn to make sure that we are subject and giving the proper respect.
He doubles down then with the next command here. He says to obey. It is quite a strong command. Do not just be subject, but actually obey. This word literally means "obey rulers." So, he said be subject to rulers and authorities, and obey rulers. He just makes sure that he lets them know that that has to be their first go-to reaction—submission and obedience. So, they could hardly miss this, that he was serious about it. That they were to submit and obey. He is telling them stop the rebellion, learn to obey. Quit being so willful and demanding of your rights, stop agitating, just get on with your life and doing what God has told us to do, which is to change ourselves.
But then he tells them to be ready for every good work. Now, this may be kind of strange at this point, if you are not in the Pauline mode of mind, but what he says in telling them "be ready for every good work" is a partial solution to the rebellion problem. He is saying, "Rebellion is pure selfishness. It's wanting what you want. It's trying to get what you demand." So if you train your mind to always be prepared to do good for others, then you are not so willing, able, and ready to go to war to get your own way. But instead do good. And maybe, just maybe, you will get your own way.
I am not saying that is why we do good, but it is a far better way to react to problems from government than fighting, than warfare. Give in, do something good, help the matter along in a good way rather than just throwing down the gauntlet and fighting. That is not going to work. So if you work for the good of the church, if you work for the good of the community, if you work for the good of the nation and not against it, good things can result. Cooperate and do good rather than selfishly create conflict to get what you want.
Now, it also emphasizes cooperation with God on matters that are above our pay grade. It is God's sovereign prerogative to promote people, leaders, governors, and also to abase them. It is not ours. We do not have a sovereign prerogative to do this. God is the ruler of all things and He puts up, raises up, and He takes down. So if we cooperate with the governments that are over us, we are at least not fighting against Him. If we also then do good works, we are working for the good and comfort of others who are also under the current government. And we are making it maybe just a bit more bearable. Even if we are living under tyranny, there are ways that we can do good and make it bearable for ourselves and for those around us.
In verse 2 he says speak evil of no one. The word literally here is blaspheme. Do not blaspheme anyone. It is blasphemeo, meaning "to defame" or "to revile," slander, insult, and of course, runs all the way to speaking of God in an impious, irreverent way. Cretans were, as I told you a little earlier, well known for slander and malicious speech. Paul is here exhorting them to restrain their natural inclination to say the worst about everybody else. I mean, I know people who have this problem. They are critics. It does not matter if the person is nearly perfect, they find something to criticize.
People just do this naturally. It is part of the way we are. We feel free to do these sort of things, to make evaluations and judge people and tell other people what we think. And Paul is saying, "Uh huh. That's not good. That's very bad. That destroys unity." Defaming somebody in your midst is not going to do any good. It is going to make them feel bad, it might drive them away. And you are the scoundrel for saying such things. It would be far better to just hold your tongue. And he is talking, it says here, of no one, not just the authorities. We talk a lot about the governors and the rulers in the civil administration. But he says here, of no one—converted or unconverted. Do not say anything that is going to defame any other person.
Let us see what Jesus says about this in Matthew 12. And I really want you to think about this because He is pretty stern here. Our savior is not being mealy-mouthed at all.
Matthew 12:33-37 "Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or else make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for a tree is known by its fruit. Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things. But I say to you [This is normally a clue that Jesus is saying something new or that He is elevating something that most people would take just literally. He is making it into a much more spiritual application.] that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. [How many idle words have you said in your life?] For by your words, you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned."
Like I said, He was not pulling any punches here. Clean up your speech, not just profanities, but how you talk about others. Even if you talk about others. This is more than just gossip, more than defamation, more than those things. It is even the tenor of how we speak about other people. God wants us to get all these things under control because that is the sort of thing He is going to judge us on. We can do more harm by the things that slip out of our mouths than we can in just about any other occupation or whatever that we may set ourselves to do. So, make sure we get our speech right.
He goes on here in Titus 3 to say "be peaceable." And he commands this to counter the Cretan's cultural combativeness, which we have too. We tend to be very combative in the United States, some more than others. But the word here that Paul uses in Greek is amachos, and it means "not disposed to fight," or quarrel or be contentious. Not disposed. It means that that is not the first thing that we think of doing when somebody says something that we might not agree with. We have to learn to take it peaceably and not get our swords and daggers up on the first mention of something. It means not hostile. Someone can say something that we do not agree with and we do not get mad. We take it patiently. We are peaceable. Sharp tongues are often accompanied by a cantankerous spirit and aggressive behavior and that is hardly the kind, peaceable, gentle, and humble traits that are fruits of God's Spirit.
So what he is telling them here, and us, is to stop picking fights. Stop getting in arguments and generally creating and sustaining a tense, stressful, contentious environment. Stop it! Stop having a war of words. It says in James 3:18 that the "fruits of righteousness are grown [they mature] in peace." And that is what Paul is trying to create in Crete through Titus because they needed a peaceful atmosphere to begin to mature as Christians and they were not going to get it if they were all yammering at each other with all these different opinions. So he says be peaceable. Stop getting in fights.
Gentle is the next one. Epiekes in Greek. It means reasonable, gentle, mild, patient, tolerant, and forbearing. It denotes a kind of graciousness and magnanimity (that is always a hard word for me to pronounce) toward others. Such a person is deferential toward everyone else. They put the other person before them, above them. They do what they can to understand them. It is the very opposite of the disdainful, combative, competitive spirit of Cretans. Paul is still on this idea that they needed to change 180° here.
Next he tells them to show all humility. And I like how the ESV has this. It says, "Show perfect courtesy." The key word here is prautes. It is the same word that the King James translates as meekness and the New King James translates as gentleness in the fruit of the Spirit there in Galatians 5:22-23. One major lexicon that everybody calls BDAG, it is the names of the authors, their initials, explains this word prautes as "gentleness in the sense of being the quality of not being overly impressed by one's self-importance." That is, if you want a shorter definition, that you have a non-imperious attitude. Like you are the best thing since sliced bread.
No, you are humble, you are gracious. You are putting other people first. You are very deferential, as I said in the last one, and you are showing perfect courtesy to other people, making them feel elevated as you do so. So it implies gentleness of mind as well as humility, courtesy, or consideration of others, without looking or actually being servile. You just treat people nicely the way they are, as you see them. And give them as much deference as you can so that they can like being around you and maybe you can rub off on them in some way and help them. Of course, this word prautes hits directly against the general Cretan attitude of unwarranted arrogance, pride, and cockiness.
In verse 3 Paul reminds the Cretans, and us, of their sinful and disgraceful past. We have nothing to be proud of. We were a mess and deserved death for our wicked lives. We were full of sin and the automatic penalty was hanging over our head and a Redeemer came and we accepted Him and He forgave all those sins, even though we did not deserve it at all. We have a lot to thank God for in pulling us out of the quagmire of our carnality and offering us grace and hope, a future. So, because of that, we should want nothing more then to repudiate our prior sins and live exactly the opposite way, that is, living the way of God to give Him glory, give Him thanks, to give Him praise because He took a guttersnipe and made him into a child of God.
Now, some might think that the list of vices in verse 3 are exaggerations and maybe they do not apply to us. But I think we at least dabbled in some or all of them in one way or another, and perhaps we have not overcome them all even now. God has redeemed us from those sins, but we still possess human nature and those sins, some of these ones that Paul mentions here in verse 3, still pop their heads up every now and then. So, these are not just reminders of what we were, but also what we strive to keep at bay by growing in the image of Jesus Christ. Because we know that our flesh is weak and that we too easily fall back into some of these old bad habits. So we have to be strong in holding them at bay as much as possible through the Spirit of Jesus Christ in us.
Of course, we cannot spend a long time with these words, but I just want to point out a few details here. Foolish: were we not foolish before God called us? This word in Greek means to "exercise poor judgment." How many times did you exercise poor judgment or behave thoughtlessly, even though you may have known the standard? Jesus called His two companions on the road to Emmaus "foolish and slow of heart to believe." (That is in Luke 24:25.) This word implies refusing to see what is plain, right in front of your face. Is that not exactly what the two men on the road to Emmaus could not do? There was Jesus Himself, stride for stride, teaching them the right way. The same way that He had taught all the disciples for three and one-half years and they did not recognize Him until He prayed and disappeared. "Foolish and slow of heart to believe." This is what He is saying. We do not want to be this way. We want to be able to recognize the truth and do it once we see it.
The next word here is disobedient. This refers to unruly behavior, refusal to obey legitimate commands, and it goes all the way up to God's commands. I mean, how many times have we, knowing the Ten Commandments, knowing what Christ said in the Sermon on the Mount, knowing all kinds of Bible principles, have just simply refused to do it. Of course this word can also mean rebellion. That is a nice Israelitish trait, is it not, which we all have.
He also then goes into serving various lusts and pleasures. This describes living for any kind of titillation or enjoyment with little or no resistance. Like every time a race comes on TV I turn it on and watch it. I just love that form of entertainment and I do it with no resistance. (Now it could be a lot worse, it could be bowling.) But that is the sort of thing I am talking about. It is doing what you want to do, what is going to get you excited, or whatever to make you "happy," yet you do not do what is better or best with your time. You are just out there trying to have fun rather than trying to learn and grow and be like Christ. So we tend to be at the beck and call of our lusts rather than calling the shots with self-control. This is what he is trying to get across in actually the entire epistle of Titus. He constantly talks about being sober and in control. We went over those words a lot in previous sermons.
Then he talks about living in malice and envy. This means that in former days we passed our lives in ill will and envy toward others, the state or habit of mind that was always malignant towards others, yet also jealous of their successes and prosperity. A person like this always has an edgy, hostile, me-against-the-world mentality. Always looking out for number one and always making the other guy the enemy. And Paul says, that is horrible. That is a horrible way to live. God wants us to have outgoing concern for other people. To love them, to do what you can to help them rather than make them the enemy all the time.
And finally, we get to the last descriptor here, hateful and hating one another. This just goes off what he had just said. The first word should probably be hated, instead of hateful. It means despicable or abominable, while the second word describes one who hates or detests other people. So as he wraps up these traits, he is saying you were worthy of contempt and you also despised everybody else. You were despicable and you despised others. The New King James just happened to use the word hate here. You were hated and you hated others. It is just constant war and conflict because of all this hate that was going around and it made for a wretched life.
Yet, after all this, after all these terrible things that Paul has talked about here that applies to the Cretans as well as to us, God decided He wanted them and us as part of His Family. I will just talk about us now. As horrible as we were coming out of the world, God decided that He liked us! He loved us! Is that not amazing? He could look through the foolishness, the rebellion, the deception, the lust, the malice, the envy, and contempt which we held ourselves and others, and He saw something—who knows what—that He could work with. He could see that you were a victim of circumstance. This is where you had lived. This is the way you had grown up. This is the way your parents taught you and the way they lived. This is the way the community worked. And you were just kind of thrown into all of that because this is a world without God. This is just the way it was.
But He is picking people out of that and setting them on a new path and one of those people was you. It is hard to fathom. "Why me, Lord?" "There, but for the grace of God, go I." That was said, I cannot remember who it was, Tindal or somebody else, but he said that about a man who was going to the gallows, and that is where our lives were headed. They were just headed toward death.
But the grace of God came into our lives, took us off the scaffold, and pointed us toward eternal life. Is that not amazing? Why us? Maybe He will tell us "why us" someday in the Kingdom. But for right now we can all give thanks that He pulled us out of all that, all that horrible deathly way of life that we were living, and set us instead on the path to His Kingdom.
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