The Blessing of Order

Welcome back to our women's Bible study in the book of Titus that we called While We Wait. The last question that we had in our study guide last week went something like this. What difference would it make in our lives if we considered how we should be living while we wait for Jesus to return? What difference would that make? In church on Sunday, we sang that song that had a chorus something like this. We'll be a church ready for you. Every heart longing for our King. Come Lord Jesus, we wait for you. Oh, that meant so much to me because of where we're at in the word together. And we're waiting. We are longing for our King. We're waiting for Jesus. Remember, we're waiting for a whole bunch of other stuff to be made right in our life too. We're waiting on other things, broken areas of our life. Does God care how we live while we wait? Does he care what we do? Does he care how we spend our time? Does he care what sort of people we are to be? Well, this short letter from Paul to Titus gives us a roadmap. Chapter one, which we're doing today, is the importance of the church. Chapter two will be the importance of relationships in the home. And then on to chapter three, the importance of respect toward outsiders and authorities. So what we're going to do today is finish chapter one. We did the first four verses yesterday. We're going to pick it, pick up right where we left off in verse five. So Titus one, verse five says this.

I have titled this lesson, The Blessing of Order, because order brings a blessing. And Titus was left behind in Crete with some tasks to accomplish. The reason, remember, the reason Paul wrote this letter was to inspire Titus to equip the Christians to evangelize their neighbors. Let me say that again. Paul wrote it to inspire the pastor Titus to equip the believers in order to evangelize those around them. And so what was the first step in evangelizing? Was he to gather up people and say, listen, I want you all to tell five people this week that Jesus is the Messiah. No. Step number one, appoint elders in every town. Isn't that interesting? Now, when we go through this lesson, because I pointed out in the study guide that a lot of areas in the New Testament, elders, pastors, overseers are used somewhat fluidly and synonymously. So if I say either elder overseer isn't in my vocabulary very much, but if I say elder or pastor, I'm talking about the same sort of office here as we go through this lesson. So here was his instructions in verse six. Let's read.

And let's pause right there because that's a long list. If there's to be a blessing, things must first be put into order. The church would need leaders to ensure that order. And how were they to be selected? Was it to be like lottery draw out of a hat? Were they to purchase their seat? Were they to submit resumes? Were they to volunteer for it? The apostle Paul says, you are to appoint. Okay, that is the word. They were to be appointed. And as we read through this list, the appointment was to take into account their sanctification. What do I mean by that? Well, we just read a list of qualifications, okay, that a man grows into with spiritual maturity. All those things we read, that doesn't happen overnight when you are born again. And the next morning, you look exactly like that. This speaks to the willing sanctification of the Holy Spirit in a person's life, all of these things. And so it doesn't happen by allowing the flesh to be in charge, but the Lord grows these in a person as they willingly yield themselves to him. So what I want to do is break this list into four groups for us. I always like to organize things. I'm a hopeless organizer. So here's my organization for you today. Here's the four groups, how a leader relates to sin, how a leader relates to his family, how a leader relates to God's people, and then finally, how a leader relates to the Word of God. This is not the only list of qualifications in the Bible for pastors or for elders, but it is the one we are going to contain our study to since we're studying the letter written to Titus. So the first group that I have here is a leader's relationship to sin. Paul said they are to be above reproach, and he listed that two times. Now, the NIV chose the word blameless, which I really do like. They are to be blameless. Do you know that's different than flawless? Okay, blameless means that the blame won't stick to you. Okay, above reproach, let me just say this, there is no hidden ongoing sin in your life that is not dealt with. A flawless person has never sinned. That's none of us, okay? But we are looking for someone who deals with it, who sees a sin, as we say, calls a spade a spade, and rejects it, repents of it, asks for forgiveness, and now they are above reproach. It doesn't stick anymore. You know, every time we have something going on like a Supreme Court justice nomination, don't we all just go, I hope that you have never, ever done anything bad in your entire life, because they will wheedle it out. Because we expect a flawless person, which is totally ridiculous, but we can't expect a blameless person. And so that's what we're talking about here. That is how someone relates to sin, and that is how we all relate to sin. That is a charge for every Christian. We should be above reproach. All right, how a leader relates to his family. And the text says, he is to be the husband of one wife. I love how my husband always teaches these passages, and his phrase is, we're looking for a one woman man. And that really sums it up. We're looking for a man whose heart and eyes and attention are focused at home on his wife and his children, okay? And the children are to be believers, not openly rebellious. They are not going to be, again, perfect children, but while they are under his authority, while they are in the home, while he is stewarding his own children, they should follow his guidelines. They should not be rebellious to his faith. Once his kids are gone, I just, personally, you guys, I don't think you can hold someone accountable their entire life for anything that their adult children will ever do in their whole life. If we try to do that, then we're causing problems in our thinking, because then we're turning ourselves around and saying, so if you did it right, if you parented right, you're never going to have any problems with your kids. They're going to live a perfect life. And that is not reality, and that is not what we want to propose. But listen, while he is stewarding his family in his roof, if those kids aren't following in line with that, well, then he probably shouldn't extend himself to steward the church of God at that moment, okay? He should be focused on that. So his relationship to his family. The third one is the relationship to God's church, God's people, as God's steward, okay? And this is the second time now I've taken these right in order. We hit above reproach again. He should be blameless in horizontal relationships. He should not be arrogant, or quick-tempered, or drunkard, or violent, or greedy for gain, but rather the godly character, the good qualities we should see as hospitable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined. So remember the Bible was, this letter was first written to Titus. Titus was to look for men who related to sin, related to their family, and related to God's people in these ways. Would he find any? weren't seasoned saints. They didn't have decades or centuries of a heritage in Christianity. They were fairly new Christians. Well, we also are to look for men who meet these qualifications today. Will we find any? We do have a heritage of Christianity. We do have people who have grown up to understand these things. The answer to those questions depends on how you look at this list of qualifications. And I've been using that word over and over again, even though I don't like it, because I want to point out how daunting it sounds. And the perfectionists among us, the firstborns, the OCD-leaning people, will look at this and create a list with a checkbox in front of each one. And as they measure someone's life, they will check, check, check. Oops, can't check, cross it off, throw him out. That's what we think of. Have you noticed that's not how God relates to us? God doesn't toss people out. Would Jesus' disciples have checked all the boxes on a qualification list? No. And so I want to switch from qualification to sanctification here, because this is what we're looking for, someone who willingly yields themselves to the Holy Spirit to grow in these areas, especially the ones that are tough. And all of us, men and women alike, leaders and whatever, we all have certain areas that are tough. So we don't look at that man who yelled. It's like, you know what? In April, family was getting into the car. He yelled at his son. He's quick-tempered, out. He would never be qualified for an elder. No, that's not the heart of God toward us. But I don't mean to minimize this list in saying that. That's the tension that we have to hold when we go through these, right? It is. Because a man who does not have his life ordered cannot bring order into the body as well. So these are very important things, yielding ourselves daily, bringing ourselves into order. All right. The fourth area that I said I wanted to break this into is the relationship to the word of God. And we have not yet read verse 9. And here's where we get to a leader's relationship to the word of God. Verse 9,

To me, this is the high point of the chapter. Put an asterisk by it. This, to me, is one of the most difficult and most important qualifications that we need in the church. In order for us to flourish while we wait, God's church must have leaders who hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught so that they're able to instruct in the word that feeds the sheep and so that they're able to rebuke those who contradict that protects the sheep from wolves. All right. So this brings the blessing of order into God's truth. God's church, excuse me. Order promotes truth by teaching sound doctrine. And order protects the vulnerable by rebuking false doctrine. So promoting truth and protecting the vulnerable. That word rebuking is an important one. Might be a hard one for us. But rebuking does not mean simply disagreeing. It's like, oh, you see things that way. Well, I see them this way. OK, well, you do you. And it'll all be good. No, rebuking means extinguishing. It means overturning, OK? So again, I said this might be one of the hardest qualifications for us to find. What was it like in the first century? Was it difficult to find leaders willing to do this? Well, I don't know. But in our century, who's willing? Who is willing to do this? Because isn't tolerance our highest virtue today? Isn't that the pinnacle that we have created of love for one another? Never say anything to hurt or offend anyone's views. That has become the unforgivable sin. And yet, has the word changed? Have these instructions changed? In order for the church to walk in the blessing of order, we still need leaders who are willing to put out the false doctrine. So how is Titus to find such men? This is Crete, after all. Verse 10,

So these are the common men for Titus to find. It says there are many like this. They're insubordinate. That is the antonym for willing to submit. They're lone rangers. They don't walk under anybody's authority. That's common to find. They are empty talkers. They kind of don't really make sense. They don't make logical sense, much less godly sense. They're deceivers, misleading others, sending people down the wrong path. Listen, we never want to be a person that is deceiving one of God's children. There's something in Matthew about a millstone tied around the neck. That is not where we want to find ourselves. And it says they're upsetting whole families. And that doesn't mean like, boo-hoo, I'm so upset. It is upsetting as in overturning the apple cart, making what is right to be wrong and what is wrong to be right. This is the nature of that. And so this was very important instructions. What motivated these kind of people? What's the motivation to do that? Remember last week in the earlier verses of this chapter, we clearly saw the apostle Paul's motivation. His motivation was the faith of God's elect, the knowledge of the truth, and hope of eternal life. That's what motivated Paul to do what he did. What motivates these guys? The apostle tells us, verse 11, shameful gain. That is their motivation, is for gain, either financially, politically, power-wise, whatever. They have something to be gained. So why pick on the Christians if their motivation is gain? Well, go off and get gain somewhere. Why come into the church to do that? I really thought it doesn't make, at the end of the day, the answer to this question doesn't make that much sense. But I really thought about it this week. And I thought about what the first century world was like. And I don't think there was a lot of religious things going where people gathered together, okay? Pagan religions were a matter of appeasing a deity, creating an idol, doing things that appeased a god that you have created. They didn't go around breaking bread together. This Christian thing of gathering together was a new concept. This gathering, this worshiping together and praising together and breaking bread together, it gathered people together. Where the herd is gathered together, the hunting is easier, right? Okay, it's like this. You got nine puppies to offload. They're not $1,000 puppies. Nobody's knocking down your door. You can go sit out on the county road and hope that one of the two cars that go by all day is gonna want some puppies. Or you can go down to Walmart because they already are gathering thousands of people every day and they already put in a nice parking lot. And you can take advantage of the heavy lifting that's already been done by Walmart and get your cute kids and your puppies there and you can get it taken care of. I think that was the draw to these false teachers. The heavy work had been done. The Christians were gathered. We'll just take advantage of what already is in place. And so Paul knew that and he said, now listen, you're gonna need, this is what's common. So you're gonna need people willing to watch out for that and to rebuke that sort of false teaching that's going on. And then Paul goes on to mention the national character. Look at verse 12.

The Amplified Bible tells us the name of the guy who said this. It's Epimenides, okay? And this was written hundreds of years before. It would be like this. It would be like if someone from Great Britain said, well, you know, Shakespeare said of his countrymen, blah, blah, blah. And that's true. Or in our country, if we said, well, Mark Twain characterized Southerners as, it's a common saying that had been, and so I think that the apostle was doing a wise thing, not calling names to the Cretans, but just saying, well, your own writers say this about you. But here's the deal. All cultures have characteristics for better or for worse. And this is a true negative characteristic of the Cretans. But it would serve to highlight the change that the Holy Spirit would make in people's lives. It's like, here's what's typical for you guys that live here, but now those that are being renewed by the Holy Spirit and changed, they would live in a counter culture way. They would live very differently and it would really serve to highlight the differences. Those who embrace the truth and were changed would be selected to lead the church and those who held onto deception and tried to influence others in that would need to be silenced. And so in the second half of verse 13, Paul goes on to instruct,

All right. How, remember the title of this lesson is the blessing of order. How can there be blessing with rebuking and silencing going on? That doesn't sound like a blessed place to be, but the blessing is in the outcome, okay? And the outcome is the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth. If the truth, the trustworthy word in Paul's words, the trustworthy word is taught. If you could characterize that as a mile long fence, okay? A wise friend of mine reminded me today that a mile is lost an inch at a time. So we have the truth of God's word in a mile long fence. Deceivers do not come and take the whole fence down in one day. It's just an inch today. We'll come back tomorrow and take another one. And then we'll take another one. And anyone who isn't, you don't notice. You don't notice an inch gone out of a mile. Who would notice that? Until you're down to about a half a mile and then you start thinking, what has happened here? Leaders were to be watching the whole fence line. They needed to be aware of the whole fence line. That is their task. Elders are to protect the whole mile from those who would turn away from the truth. Now, of the things that Paul listed here, some we don't deal with much. Like verse 10, those of the circumcision party. That has never been an issue in 30 years in our church here. Verse 14, he talked about those who devote themselves to Jewish myths. Now, that does come and go every once in a while. There is a Hebrew roots movement that comes in and tries to snatch people and convince them that they need to hold on to food laws and different things like that. But the third thing that he mentions, the commands of people who turn away from the truth. Let's say the demands of people who turn away from the truth, that's our address. That's what we're dealing with in our culture, okay? They turn from the truth and they demand that everyone else conform to that. Is this not true? We turn toward feelings and sentiment and turn away from scripture and reason to the point where our vocabulary isn't even the same. Compassion doesn't mean what it meant in the Bible. Justice no longer means what it means in the Bible. And so the task of elders is to silence and rebuke those who do that without showing contempt for them, without hating them, without wishing ill will toward them, but nonetheless, putting a silence to it. Okay, I wanna bring some application to this, but first we're just gonna finish the last two verses. Verse 15, 16,

And we finish that and we say, well, Paul, tell us how you really feel about them. Such a non-perky ending for this section of scripture. So the best thing with a non-perky ending is to just turn our corner and say, all right, that's what it says. This is what the passage says. What does it mean to me? What does this mean to me? How do I apply this information that we studied this week while we wait? Okay, so I got a couple things. Number one thing, some of you are raising the next generation of church leaders. Okay, some of you are raising them right now, still in your home. What do you see in this list that is important to incorporate in child training? Okay, for example, self-control is one of the most important things that we want to apply to our children. If you can teach a four-year-old some level of self-control, that will serve him well at age 14 and when the hormones are raging. And then if you can address some self-control there, that will serve him well at age 24. If we can train our children to confess their sins in order to be above reproach, train them not to hide their sins, but rather admit it, confess it, ask for forgiveness so that they are blameless, all right? If our homes hold firm to the trustworthy word is taught, this prepares our children to expect and reject deception when they leave our home. And these aren't, you guys get it, this isn't like do this and it'll all be fine, no. But when we see these things in the word, we should say, oh, what is the Holy Spirit? Anything in here is the Holy Spirit, like quickening your heart, like that's for you. I want you to work on that. Okay, another area of application. Some of you, not you in this room, some of you listening, you are looking for a church. I don't want any of you to be looking for a church, just the ones listening online. This chapter gives you the most important thing that you should be looking for in a church. And yet we don't. We take in so many other considerations, how close it is to us, how comfortable, does it have a power voice worship leader, you know, all that kind of stuff. But this is the most important thing. Are there pastors and elders that are watching the whole mile and are not gonna give an inch in the trustworthy word as taught? Some of you are already attending a church that walks in the blessing of order. And so the question is, you ask yourself, what would God have me do to help this situation continue to flourish? What's my part in this for the flourishing of this church? You know, and if you are attending a good church that cares about the trustworthy word, you are fortunate. But you know what, you guys, this is a weird time. Some churches are open, some churches are closed. Some good churches are closed and that's a bad thing. Some bad churches are closed and that's a good thing. And we get letters on the daily because a church with only a quarter mile fence left is closed and some of those people are searching and trying to figure out, is that all there is? I think there's more. And in their own personal lives, like the fence is being rebuilt. So it's kind of exciting. So we should, the last application, I think, is the church is a very important part of the lives of Christians. While we wait for Jesus to return, but while we wait for broken things in our lives to be made right, the church is a very important place. And we should not take it for granted. We should do our part to facilitate its flourishing and we should pray for those whom have been appointed to lead. What we read was those appointed to lead need a level of sanctification in their lives in order to bring order. Well, come back next week and you're gonna find out that we're not off the hook. All of us are expected to bring a level of sanctification in our lives. Chapter two starts off with old men and then young men and then older women and younger women. And we're gonna see the sanctification that we are all called to. So that's chapter two. Father, thank you for this insight that you have preserved for us and put in your word about the importance of order in the church and Lord, we do pray together for those who are your servants and your leaders that they would have the grace given to them by you to protect the whole mile of fence, to protect the trustworthy word so that it is not eroded and so that believers are not deceived and turned away from your plan and from your love. So we ask that you would give them your grace, Lord, and build them up. And Lord, we ask that you would show us each our part in this. What have you called us to, Lord? And how can we serve you in the things that we have studied? And this is what we ask in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.