Titus 1 (Part 1)- A Transformed Church — A ‘Christian Growth’ Message

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Our gracious God, thank you that you’re a speaking God. We pray that you would help us to be a hearing people. We ask that your word that we look at this morning would bring the right challenge and comfort, and that you’d help us to honour you in the way we respond for Jesus’ sake, amen.

We’re going to spend 3 Sunday mornings in the little New Testament book called Titus. And if you want a good reason why we should do this, apart from the fact that it’s part of God’s word which is inspired, profitable for teaching, I would say that also this little book is going to teach us what it means to be in safe hands.

And if I’m not mistaken, everybody here this morning would like to be, and is grateful to be in safe hands. I remember once, uh, when I had the privilege of going to Poland back in the mid 80s, and, uh, we walked across the tarmac to fly in one of the planes from one place to the next, and the pilot welcomed us at the foot of the stairs into the plane, and he seemed to me to be about 19 years old, and I remember he was quite a spotty boy.

And just had a few hairs sticking out of his chin, and it didn’t give the greatest confidence, as we stepped into the plane that we were in very uh experienced hands. The person who flies a plane, of course, has a very responsible job.

And the person who runs a school or runs a hospital or even runs a restaurant has a very responsible job. I dare to say to you that the person who pastors or ministers in a church has even more responsibility because he or she is dealing with the, the souls of those who come, we’re talking about eternity. Uh, I mean if you think it’s important to have an able pilot at the front of a plane.

It is extremely important to have an able pastor in charge of a congregation, and the church minister in some ways is a pilot dealing with people’s eternity and direction. The church pastor minister is a teacher of course, and in some ways a doctor and in some ways a cook. Now the New Testament has 3 letters that are addressed to a church minister, to Timothy and 1 today to Titus. Titus was a friend of the apostle Paul. Strangely, he doesn’t appear in the Book of Acts, but he does appear in some of the letters and uh he seems to have been one who accompanied the apostle Paul, and uh he’s now been left to serve the Lord on the island of Crete.

Now there are many churches today on the island of Crete that are actually called Saint Titus.

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But the question that I would ask as we come to this little letter is what would you say, what do we say to the young man, assuming Titus was a young man, who is being given the job on the island of Crete with no building, no pews, no prayer books, no piano, no coffee machine, he has the scriptures in his hand. What do you say to him? What should he do?

And you’ll see the answer is very wonderfully set out in the little letter of Titus. So we’re going to think about chapter one for these few minutes under the heading of God provides verses 1 to 9, and then God protects verses 10 to 16. 1st of all, God provides.

If you look at chapter one verse one, you’ll see that the apostle introduces himself, and this is important for Titus to remember who Paul is, and the way Paul describes himself in chapter one verse one is first of all a servant of God, literally a slave, and then an apostle of Jesus Christ, in other words, a messenger. And this is a very beautiful blend of um humility and authority.

That is, Paul is a servant, but he is an apostle. Uh, he has a style which is gentle, but he also has a message which is vital. Uh, you don’t want, dear friends, a minister in a church who’s proud and heavy-handed, you want a servant, but you also don’t want a minister who’s weak and uncertain. You want somebody who actually believes the word of God.

And this combination of serving and yet authoritative uh was found in the Lord Jesus himself and was then seen in the apostle Paul. It’s going to be needed by Titus if he’s to do the work well, and it’s needed by all who serve the Lord Jesus.

So you notice in chapter one verse one Paul describes himself and then of course he goes on to describe his ministry. And he says in the first verse that his ministry is to help people to faith and to knowledge and to godliness, and that is quite a wonderful progression. Faith in Jesus Christ, this is of course how people begin eternal life by putting their faith in Jesus Christ.

Uh, we live not too far from one of the big hospitals in Sydney, and every now and again there’s a helicopter flying overhead, which is going out to pick somebody up or bring somebody into the hospital. And I know the helipad of the hospital is quite a small little place, and you can see this helicopter very carefully landing on the pad.

And when a person comes to land, so to speak, or place themselves on the Lord Jesus and trust him and give themselves and their sins and their life to him, then we give thanks, don’t we? They’ve come to faith in Christ. But they also need to have knowledge because sometimes a person makes a decision, which is quite a simple decision. It’s not a blind decision, but it’s not a terribly well-informed decision.

And so the apostle Paul is keen that believers move to knowledge, that is, they pick up reasons for their faith and facts and good foundations. And then the third thing is that this knowledge doesn’t just become a head thing but actually transforms the life and so the person moves into godliness, and the sign of God at work in a person is always that they grow in the likeness of the Lord Jesus and they grow in godliness.

Well, you can imagine how encouraging this would have been for Titus, as he was reading the letter, he’s landed on a fairly wild and godless island, and he’s being reminded here that God is able not only to bring people to Christ, but he’s also able to bring people to maturity and even to change their life.

Well, that’ll have its impact, won’t it, if people on the island of Crete become believers and start to gather and live a completely different life to the people who are on the island, you can imagine that it’ll have a big impact on those people around who’ll be saying something like this, where did these people get their faith? Where did they get their hope, where did they get their love?

And I want to say to us this morning that uh not only is it essential for each one to come to faith, but also to grow in knowledge, that’s why you must read and gather the facts of the faith and also that we grow in godliness.

I remember hearing John Lennox at a church. John Lennox, the, uh, professor from Oxford University, I think in maths and philosophy, and he spoke at a church where I was, um, attending, and he said to the congregation, you know, many of you have got a PhD in your field of expertise. Not literally a PhD, but you really know your area well.

Whatever your midweek job, you are really something of an expert, but he said, when it comes to your faith, many of you are in preschool. No wonder you can’t answer the big questions, and it’s absolutely essential, isn’t it, that we move from a basic faith to knowledge and godliness.

So Paul introduces himself, his ministry, and then in verse 2 he introduces his hope and his hope is the very wonderful little two-word phrase, eternal life. He says in chapter 1 verse 2, eternal life, which has been promised by God who does not lie.

And has been promised by God before time began.

But now this eternal life has been brought to light by the preaching of the gospel. And this is absolutely true, isn’t it? Uh, somebody like the apostle Paul goes into a town and begins to preach about Jesus, his life, his death, his resurrection, his promises, people believe, they understand that there is a a life to be had which is eternal. They understand the reason is because Christ has risen and that he’s able to take his people with him.

And so they see this message of eternal life come to light.

Uh, Tim Chester’s written a little book on the book of uh Titus, a little commentary.

And he tells in the book of a famous day where the gospel arrived and was preached in England in 17th century England.

And on this particular occasion, the king and the councilors were listening to the missionaries who’d come to their country, and they weren’t really sure whether to welcome this Christianity or not. But after listening very carefully, one of the councilors stood up and gave his advice or his opinion, and he said these very wonderful words. He said, Your Majesty, it seems to me that life on earth is like a sparrow flying into a hole. A brief moment before leaving.

And we know nothing of what went before us, or what will follow, but this teaching of Christ has brought such information that we lack, and we should follow it.

So God in these early verses of Titus, you see, is providing the information that Titus will need for his ministry, and of course the information that the world will need in order that will, it will have eternal life. And as Titus uh does his serving and his preaching and his caring, and his reaching out, you’ll see in verse 4 that God is going to give him grace and peace for the work. Grace, sufficient grace for the work.

And peace, the peace of God, the peace which will be passed on to others, and with that very wonderful, lofty introduction in verses 1 to 4 of chapter 1, we suddenly come down to earth with a bit of a crash because Titus now has the very practical job of working out what to do with the people in front of him. You can imagine he’s got a gathering of people, a whole mix of people.

And now the apostle Paul tells Titus what to do.

He says in verse 5, I left you in Crete. They’d obviously been travelling together, Paul has moved on, but he’s left T Titus in Crete. He says, I left you in Crete to do two things, verse 51, to put things in order.

And 2, to appoint elders. The word for putting things in order in the Greek has the little word ortho, which of course leads to words like orthodontistry or orthopedics. It’s the straightening out. It’s the setting into some order.

And uh you know of course that there’ll be times where people land in a church or they suddenly are given a ministry of some kind and they discovered things are disordered.

And um I don’t just mean that there are weeds in the garden of the property, but there is great dysfunction in the way things are done, and so this person gets to work to bring some order.

Now the key way to do this.

In verse 5, of course, is to find the right people to help you.

And uh you can imagine if Titus, according to verse 6, finds good elders or leaders in every town, as Paul says, the gospel will spread very wonderfully. Just imagine if uh Titus was able to put some key people in all the different towns of Crete, and say to them, you are to go looking for people, uh, telling them of Christ, bringing them to your home perhaps.

And uh planting little churches all over the island. This will be a tremendous spreading of the gospel. But who is Titus to pick, and we get the answer in verses 6 to 9.

And I want to remind you as Titus goes looking for people, that this is long before there were denominations like Anglican or Baptist or Presbyterian. There’s no church blueprint here of a special denominational kind. There’s no wardens at this stage, there’s no parish council.

But the first thing we see in verse 6 is that Titus is to look for responsible men.

Uh, we’ll discover in Titus chapter 2 that there’s a role for men and women, young and old, to play in the church, but God’s plan in the family, the church family, and also the human family, is that good men would wake up and lead lovingly, lead well. I know this sounds completely wrong in secular circles today.

Uh, but we would say, of course, from the church that there is absolutely nothing wrong with a woman having any secular job. But among the people of God, whether it’s the church family or whether it’s the human family, he expects men to step up and be loving leaders. And in my 45 years of ministry, whenever this has been done well, there has only been gratitude.

Well, if you’re picking a man, says Paul chapter 1 verse 6, 1st of all, find somebody who’s blameless. Now this doesn’t mean faultless or perfect, or otherwise we wouldn’t be picking anybody ever. Uh, blameless means that there are no glaring faults, no alarm goes off when you hear the person’s name. There’s nothing that’s going to hinder the gospel so that you hear, oh, this particular person has been chosen, and the person immediately says, but, but, but, but, but.

No, no, we’re looking, says the apostle Paul, for people who won’t be a hindrance to the gospel. Second, verse 6, check his marriage. Is he loyal to his wife? That’s the question. It’s going to be very difficult if he starts to proclaim the good news of uh things like forgiveness.

And uh faithfulness, reconciliation, commitment, perseverance, if he’s not practiced those things himself.

And then verse 6, check his family. Uh, is the family out of control because if the man is not capable of having his own family under some order, it’s not going to be likely that he’ll be good at caring for God’s family as well. So you see these very simple tests all bound up really in one verse, chapter 1 verse 6, where you do your homework and work out whether this particular man is a loyal man.

He is a loving man, is he’s a capable man.

And then in verses 7 to 8, these two verses, there’s a checklist of some things to avoid, or things to seek in such a man. First of all,

Avoid the man, says the apostle in verse 7, who is overbearing.

Who insists on his own way, who’s more interested in his own rule. Avoid the man who’s bad tempered.

Who is a moody, a man who breaks into rages. Avoid the man who’s dependent on drink.

He’s going to be very unpredictable. Avoid the man who’s violent, he will be destructive. Avoid the man who’s greedy.

It is uh

Amazing to me how many people in ministry have a strange obsession.

With how much they can get away with, how much they can collect, how much they can get, how many special favours they can get, it’s almost as though they really are interested more in this world than the next. So those are things to avoid. But then Paul goes on to say, look for the man who’s hospitable, the sort of man who would take people into his home and look after them.

Or the person who’s a lover of good, says Paul, that is, he just has an honourable interest in good things.

And then the person must be self-controlled, and they must be just and holy and disciplined.

John Stott says in his commentary on Titus that the minister is often unsupervised.

And so the question is, can he supervise himself in order to run a life which is self-controlled, just, holly and disciplined?

Now, you’ll recognise that as we look at these things very quickly, it’s not going to be worked out just with a CV is it?

The person who turns up for a job and says I’d like a job, yes, I’m very good at this, we’re going to need to do more homework, we’re going to need to spend more time investigating. And so sometimes we’ll need more than just the CV that comes on a piece of paper and even the references from two or three friends, we’re going to perhaps have to do a bit of homework.

And find out whether behind the scenes things really have been good.

Well, in verse 9, very importantly, the leader must have a grip on God’s word because in the end it’s the handling of God’s word which is going to be feeding the people of God. And so we’re looking, verse 9, for a person, a man who has a passion for the word of God in order that he might encourage rightly with the word of God and also correct. Put these two together, there’s some verses on character and there is a verse on competency.

I remember saying to a former archbishop once when a friend of mine was not being chosen for a position, and I remember saying to the uh former Archbishop, you know, how come this guy isn’t getting the job, he’s, you know, very busy and he’s uh pretty gifted and able.

And uh the archbishop said uh do you mind me being honest with you? He said this person has no real interest in the truth of God. No great passion for doctrine, for truth, for meat.

And he was right.

To avoid giving this person a very influential position. So there we are, that’s the first thing God provides. Chapter 1 verses 1 to 9, he provides the truth that we need wonderfully, and he provides the people that we need wonderfully. The second thing is that God protects verses 1, chapter 1 verses 10 to 16. God protects the church.

He protects the church with the sword of his word. Uh, you may think that the ideal minister is going to be somebody who’s just unstoppably sweet and harmless, but no leadership can be afford to be like that. The pilots cannot afford to be sweet and harmless, the headmaster, the headmistress, the CEO and uh we need somebody in a church who’s willing and able to say what needs to be said.

I remember telling you before of a member of parliament who was walking through a new hospital and uh the matron was showing him the different areas of the hospital, including the dementia ward. And uh as they were walking through this dementia ward, the member of parliament said to the hospital matron, how do you decide who can come here? And uh she said, well uh we perform a little test, we fill up a bath with water, and we say to the person, what’s the quickest way to empty the bath? I mean, would you use a spoon?

Would you use a cup? Would you use a bucket? And the member of parliament, quick as a flash, said, Well, of course you’d use a bucket, and the matron said, no, sir, we’d actually pull the plug. Would you like a bed near the window or would you like a bed in the corner? Somebody has to say what needs to be said.

And you’ll see that in chapter 1 verse 10, even inside a church, there are going to be unruly people.

The word unruly here in chapter 1 verse 10 is the same word which was used in chapter 1 verse 6 of unruly children. That is, they’re just not cooperative. And when we talk about people being cooperative, we’re not talking about people who are going to be just cooperative with the minister.

It would be a terrible thing if uh a minister got put in position and said well now I am actually the benchmark of everything that needs to happen and not happen. Now the apostle Paul is talking about people who are uncooperative with the word of God.

So um he’s not giving Titus permission to be autocratic, he’s asking Titus to take care of the people in the church who are going to be badly influenced by the unruly people who think they’re better than God.

And so in verse 10, if they do reject the word of God, says Paul, you know what will come up in its place? A whole lot of human words, personal words, opinionated words, and in the midst of all this opinion and chatter and talk and um reason there will be inevitably heresy as well, and the apostle mentions the heresy of ritual.

Bringing something into the church which is absolutely seen to be crucial but is not crucial at all, and the apostle Paul had the very sad experience of watching some of the churches that he’d founded in the past get invaded by heresy. The Galatian church was invaded. The Corinthian Church was invaded. The Philippian church was invaded.

In a couple of weeks, I hope, God willing, to be speaking in Toronto in Canada to the pastors and the lay representatives of the new Anglican Church. Uh, the reason there’s a new Anglican Church in Canada is because the old Anglican Church turned its back on the scriptures in the area of marriage. And having turned its back on the scriptures, on the word of God.

It was then in a very dangerous position of setting itself up above the word of God, and the new Anglican Church that is taking the word of God seriously has been wonderfully blessed by God and has grown very wonderfully. And uh it’s my privilege to go and to speak to the pastors and the lay representatives of this new Anglican Church. But, uh, what is Titus to do with the unruly, verse 11, he’s to silence them.

And verse 13.

He’s to rebuke them, we can imagine how difficult that is.

And uh Paul doesn’t say here you should uh boot them out and excommunicate them, he just says you should silence them, and I presume one of the ways that we’ll silence a person is either to give them no public opportunities, uh, or to take away even their private opportunities of perhaps leading a small group or something like that.

And says the apostle, they should also be rebuked, probably, privately.

Uh, which may be necessary. Pastor may need to somebody, say to somebody, you’re just actually causing trouble and division in the church, and I’m warning you against it. And we’ll come up in chapter 3 to where Paul says that if a person has been challenged or rebuked once or twice and still has nothing of a cooperative nature about them, well then even more serious things need to be put in place.

So, um, the apostle Paul is not um here giving Titus impossible things to do, but he’s basically saying to him in the face of unruly people, you may need to prevent them from having any communication.

Um, because you, says the apostle Paul, are there to promote.

And uh produce excellent communication with the word of God. His aim, chapter 1 verse 13, is that the church will be healthy. The word in the Greek is actually the word from which we get hygiene. In other words, the person who handles the word of God well is a little bit like a cook giving good food.

And, uh, the aim of all of this, of course, is that the people who come to the church would receive the good food of God’s word, challenging and comforting, and they would be so clear on the gospel and so reassured, and so grateful to God, and so grateful for the people of God, and so keen to see people come into the family of God.

That they really are brand new people, and they’re also able to see through error. You see in verse 14 in verse 15, he talks about the pure,

To the pure, he says all things are pure.

Now we often hear this phrase and we think, you know, this is talking about a person who’s got a dirty mind, but the apostle Paul is not now talking about the subject of sex. He’s talking about the subject of salvation. He’s saying that when the teaching is done well, the person who is really clean, forgiven, washed, brand new, will be able to see what is important and what is not important.

Uh, during the week I got a letter from somebody who was quite crabby, uh, on the subject of wearing or not wearing robes in church, and of course there’s quite a few opinions about whether clergy should wear robes or not. What was sad is that this particular letter was criticising the, or at least pleading for the need for robes, but not the slightest bit interested.

In whether the gospel and the word of God was going to be preached as well. In other words, they put their whole interest and enthusiasm into the wrapping rather than the centre of the gift. Well, Paul wants to protect the church because God wants to protect the church. God has told Paul what to say. Paul is now saying it to Titus and uh by the preaching of the word of God, danger, error, unhealthy food is going to be driven out.

I want to finish this morning by just saying something very simple to you.

Is it obvious to you, and I hope it is because we’re just about to take communion, that God has done what is necessary to provide for you the most important thing in the universe.

A fellowship with him, forgiveness, and a future.

God has given his son in order that you might be provided for with the most important thing in the universe, and he is also able to protect you so that you don’t fall or fall away.

Paul says in Romans 8, He who did not, uh, stop giving up his only son, will he not along with him, graciously give us all things. God is a God, you see, who is provided and protected in the area of salvation. God also provides and protects His church, and that’s what we’re seeing here in Titus chapter one. He provides for the church, the truth and the people. He protects the church from error and danger.

And the simple point is this, that if God is the God who provides and protects for your salvation, and if he provides and protects for the strength and the progress of the church, will he not provide and protect with whatever you are facing at this particular time?

You may be facing at the moment some very great fears, some absolutely impossible tasks, relationship breakdown, things that nobody could properly understand or appreciate but God himself.

And we understand from the whole Bible itself, don’t we, that God is a God who provides and protects his people. If he’s done it for salvation, if he does it for the strengthening of the church, you can be sure that he’ll do it in the specifics of your life.

Let’s bow heads

Thank you, Heavenly Father, for this very precious chapter. And we thank you that you are a God who has wonderfully provided eternal life through the Lord Jesus and his death. We thank you that you give people to the church. We’re so grateful for the people who have taught and served and helped us over the years.

And we thank you too that you are willing and able to drive away what is dangerous and unhealthy. We thank you for the gift of your Son, our Saviour. We thank you for the gift of the church, such a blessing, and we thank you that you’re interested in the challenges which we face and the needs that we have. Help us to trust you, to provide and protect. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.