Titus intro and lesson 1
Titus · Mike Doyle · May 28, 2023
Titus, No. 02
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261931282342

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

I didn't note where I stopped last week. Where was I? Anybody put a mark? I was working through the introduction and I talked a little bit about the background and who Titus was. that I talk about the emphasis of what the letter's about, the fact that it's a pastoral position, an epistle, and so it's gonna talk about things like the qualification for elders.

It's not the only book that talks about them, but it does talk about them, and it stresses, it's gonna stress sound doctrine. That's one of the cool things that We do here, we seek to know the truth and not to exegete into the word. We wanna know what God has to say precisely. It's gonna talk about the ethical obligations of elderly men and women and also young men and women and servants. And it warns against false teaching.

The two main doctrinal issues are in chapter 2, the first 14 verses, which is grace, and chapter 3, verses 4 through 7. So in the form of an outline, one, there's a qualification and duties of elders. What are they? You'll be able to judge Roger and myself. The need of elders, do we need them? Personal prerequisites to being an elder, doctrinal qualifications, ability to refute opponent of sound teaching, the ability to identify deceivers.

And in the case of Titus, It talks about the character of, you know what a cretin is? I looked at it and thought, what is a cretin? What is a cretin? C-R-E-T-A-N. What is that? Oh, somebody from Crete. That's exactly what it is. He was the elder of the church on Crete.

How do I describe them? They weren't exactly at the top of the intellectual level or their behavior either. So they were pretty tough to deal with. So we'll talk about that. Then we'll talk about the pastoral work in terms of various groups. Then older men, older women, younger men, younger women, and servants. And then the appearance of life-changing grace. I'll talk about grace later, too. And then an exhortation to godly living, which has to do with subjection to others, behavior based on mercy shown to sinners, and the need for continual sound teaching and leading to good works.

So, in conclusion, the last two chapters of Acts tell us of Paul's arrival and imprisonment in Rome and brings us approximately to the year 62 AD. Between that time and his death, five or six years later, we have three New Testament books written, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. And those three books actually share a common theme. Each is written to an individual man rather than to a whole church.

Both Titus and Timothy have a unique position of, in the early church, that they were authorized representatives of the Apostle Paul. So he identifies Timothy and Titus as, these two guys represent me. And so you can trust them. Titus represents Paul and the church in the island of Crete and Timothy in the city of Ephesus. Figure the dates are 62 to 64 for Timothy and Titus and 67 for 2 Timothy.

OK. A couple of notes on introduction. So Paul had a very personal relationship with Timothy, and this is one thing we'll notice as we go through. This relationship is set aside here. And his apostolic authority is stressed, giving the letter an official tone. So this isn't a letter written to my son Timothy or my buddy Timothy. This is doctrinal. This is how it's supposed to be, Timothy and Titus. 1 Timothy contains instructions for Christ's servants at all times.

Paul had seen Jesus Christ, was commanded by Jesus Christ, and thus had the authority of Jesus Christ. That's what the authority of an apostle is, and that's how you got to be an apostle. The way Paul expresses a divine relationship to his apostleship is unusual.

In other places, he speaks of being called, Romans 1.1, or being commissioned by the will of God, 1 Corinthians 1.1. But here, he refers it to a divine commandment. He is an apostle by divine imperative.

Kind of interesting. So he's going to open up the book with the reminder of his apostleship office, because it's more than a personal letter. It's full of instructions for future workers and the cause of Christ. The fact that Paul was an apostle by the commandment of Christ not only shows the importance of his writings, but indicates that all of his writings are inspired. So lastly, by the interchange of terms referring to God and Christ, Paul clearly implies that Christ is deity.

And we'll get to that in a minute. OK, so any questions? That's really clear, right? Okay, so let's look at the first four, actually, the first three verses. And Paul starts out, really interesting, he says, Paul, a bondservant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the faith of those chosen of God, and the knowledge of the truth, which is according to godliness, it would take me an hour to write a sentence like that. There's so much in there. So Paul, a bondservant. The first question that I sent out to you was, what's a bondservant?

What does it mean? Slave and slave. Slave, not bad. It's the Greek word doulos. In English, we use the word servant. If we did, we'd think of just a worker. But the Greek word doulos involves a lot more than that because it implies surrender of one's will to another. In this context, the surrenders to, yeah, it implies all surrender of his will to God. So the designation of men as servants of God in the Old Testament was applied to Moses and all the prophets. To be a servant of God is to carry out his will, and to carry out his will, it must be known, gotta know what his will is.

Amos 3.7 talks about that.

Amos 3.7 says, sure to the Lord God does nothing unless he reveals his secret counsel to his servants, the prophets. That's from Chester Macaulay. So Amos tells us, that if you're a bondservant of the Lord, he's gonna tell you his will, and he's gonna let you know what he would have you do.

Well, in the case of the body of Christ the church, is that only to a select few, or is it to the whole body? Think so? I think so, too. You think about in 2023, every one of us owns at least one Bible for our own instruction. We're indwelt by the Holy Spirit so that we can understand what he wrote. And so in terms of understanding the secrets of God's will, we've got it. In the Old Testament, You know, people like the prophets, sometimes, I mean, they couldn't go to your local Christian bookstore and buy a copy of the Old Testament. And neither could the believers at the time of the beginning of the church.

I think we're all in that position as members of the body of Christ. You know, in the Lord Jesus, you see it in John. He goes, he starts to work with the disciples and then he gets to the point where he calls them friends. And he says, I don't call you servants anymore, you're now friends. And then he calls them brothers. And so the whole idea is that the relationship that you have with the Lord Jesus is one of intimate fellowship.

So in the Old Testament, you didn't see that. There was just, yeah. Isn't that interesting? And that's a part of it that we don't think about, that God asks us or actually tells us that because we're one in Christ, we should submit our will. But he's done it to us, too. He's not standing in the White Tower doing this. That's what Reformed theology teaches you, this. And he's saying, look, we're one.

And the behavior of the believer is exactly what my behavior is, because you have the same life. And the great thing about believers, for all eternity, I don't know if I can portray this We like to think about heaven. We like to think about going home. But I've thought that if I'm in Christ, united to him, in him, whatever, however term explains it, when we get to glory, the triune God, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit are one. And that means that their minds and their wills and everything is in unison. They're not persuading each other. They're not having a meeting about what we're going to do. They know. And they're all in unison.

So if we're in Christ, we get plugged into that triangle, right? We're not deity. But we get into that stream of the mind of Christ in that relationship with the Father and the Holy Spirit. I mean, your mind can't grasp what that's going to be like, but if we're one in Christ, that doesn't mean that every afternoon he's off somewhere with the Father and the Holy Spirit. There's no place that he goes that we're not there in him. Getting back to what Joanne said, his bond to us goes back to Christ in me or I'm in Christ.

Which is more important or which is greater? Christ in me is amazing, but I'm in Christ. Both of those are amazing aspects of where we are right now. Actually, going back to the due laws, I was looking at Zodiates, and I think it kind of had an interesting twist.

It's a slave, one who is in permanent relation of servitude to another, his will being altogether consumed in the will of the other. I'm wondering, does that describe us? Am I consumed by His will? Can I pitch in a thought? This goes back to something we read in Rite Out. You referred to this in Deuteronomy 15.

It shall come about if he says to you I will not go out from you because he loves you and your household since he fares well with you Then you shall take it all and pierce it through his ear and the door and he shall be your servant forever also you shall do likewise to your maid servant and And we talked about that a bit then but um, there's the um Also in the context of talking about the fact that if the master gives you a wife, as a slave, gives you a wife and you have a family, then you are, by accepting that, you're willfully choosing to be his servant forever. I think for us in the body of Christ, of course, The the the master I think it's interesting that he's he refers to himself as a do-loss of god and then the apostle of jesus christ because god is the father and the master who has given us, uh to uh To his his son as a bride and and because of that union There's a permanent uh, there's a permanent position of uh do-loss Within god's household. Does that make sense?

That's good. Another thing I read or found about a doulos is the Greeks thought of it as a servile term in use among the Greeks for a slave. This abject servile attitude on the part of a pagan slave finds an expression in the true Christian humility on the part of the Christian who regards himself as a slave of Jesus Christ. This is not, you know, in most cultures in the Old Testament, you could buy your way out of servitude or slave.

These are people that made a decision that I'm sticking, I'm staying with my master because Maybe I love him, or we think alike, and I really like being involved with him. It's interesting that in the New Testament, God is always revealing to us what his will is. And it's always based on grace. And it's always based on a life that's His life. We call it the life of the resurrected Christ. And we have the nature in us that is in harmony with that life. And we want to be that way.

Would you say that the Lord Jesus is a servant of the Father? I think so. Yeah. How about the Holy Spirit? Is he a servant to the Father and the Lord Jesus? Yeah, I was really impacted by that in the book of John, Jesus all the time talking about, I'll only do the will of my Father in heaven. Yeah. That's the nature of a servant, always doing his work.

Maybe to sum this question up, the problem we have is that we have sin natures. And you know what the hallmark of the sin nature is? Me. I am the center of the universe. And God has to, if there is a God and we agree that there is a God, he still has to cater to me. We have to work this out somehow so that I'm satisfied.

Well, that's not an attitude of a slave. You know, that's a good way to become a dead slave. Actually, I just came across something this morning, Luke 17, about the nature of a slave. Jesus is talking about it there. And we'll all be familiar with this, but he says, which of you having a slave plowing or tending sheep will say to him when he has come in from the field, oh, come immediately and sit down and eat. But will he not say to him, prepare something for me to eat and clothe yourself and serve me while I eat and drink and afterwards you may eat and drink.

And he's just talking about the nature of a servant is you don't do something because you're gonna get something for us. No, the nature of a slave is to serve, and not expecting something for it. But in our case, it's because we've already been given everything. There's nothing left that he can give us. Yeah, we're not working for rewards. We're not working for the master to be kind to us. So servitude and slavery, is something that most human beings, let me put it another way. I lost your audio feed, Mike. I lost your audio. It just dropped out here. I couldn't shut it off. There you go. So what was Paul's servitude before he was saved? What? Law? No. What's that? No. Sin. He was a slave to sin. Every human being born on the planet is a slave to sin.

So you know what the big lie is, don't you? especially we Americans, says so in the Constitution, you're not a slave to anybody. What did the Jews say to the Lord Jesus when he told them that their father was the devil? How did they react? They said, and they said, you've been in servitude all this time, and they said, we don't serve anybody. Our father is God, is Abraham and is God. while the Romans were down the street controlling everything.

The idea of slavery is a really important idea or understanding to have in terms of humanity. God set it up so everybody is a slave to something. The big lie is that I'm not. or that I am intelligent enough and capable of making decisions and carrying them out for myself. God willing, I can do all things through Jesus Christ who loves me. Really, go jump off a building and see if you can fly. Well, whoops, well, I'll invent something called a glider and then I can do it. Oh yeah, I accomplished it.

But the thing is, is that every human being before salvation is a slave to sin. Paul was born into sin when he was born. Think he knew it? No. Because the way we look at slavery now, it seems like it's a bad thing. The connotation is, I don't want to be a slave. It's a horrible thing. Get away from it. And so when you say you're a bondservant, I think a lot of people go, ooh, that's a bad thing. That's whips and chains and mistreatment and all that. And it's interesting.

And when you think about how in Paul's epistles, he never says slavery is a bad thing. No. And he just says, masters, be kind to your slaves. Slaves, work as unto the Lord. I'd say is that because we are bond servants, so it wasn't, you know, something that was, you know, it was not a great system, but none of us would love to be in a slavery system. But, you know, he never comes out and says slavery is a bad thing. And it's because of this that we are slaves. Yeah, I agree. You know, to Christ. If you're born into slavery, Slavery, let's say you're born into, well, another story just came into my mind. You ever been to Williamsburg, Virginia?

Remember the plantation that was there, which is really a small farm, maybe two acres, and it had a wall around it of wood. and it had buildings. There was a house that people slept in, the house they cooked in, the house that they ate in, and the barn that they... Well, in the house that they slept in, the mom, the dad, the kids, and the slaves all slept in the same room. The person that was the slave was a willing slave, and the master said, if you come and work for me for however long the contract is, I will feed you and protect you and clothe you.

OK, deal. And so I looked at that and I thought, well, these guys were, this was great. What a system. Because if you're just a guy that doesn't have a family or you don't have any money and you find yourself in the new land, America, Well, you're looking around for a job. Well, that's a job. I'll sell myself to this farmer, and I'll agree to work for him or help him.

I mean, because everybody in the family worked. Nobody sat around and watched TV. Everybody worked. And the slave was just another hand, you know, I think for all of human existence. people who, especially people who were farmers, were always looking for somebody to come and work for them. Because otherwise, it was your responsibility.

Anyway, a couple of things. Wasn't also, just going back to, I think, Vern, at this time when that church was being formed, didn't Vern say it's like 50% or 75% of the world was slaves? Oh, sure. I mean, it was hugely dominated by people who were slaves. And so it was kind of the accepted system, and this was, I'll provide for you, I'll do everything.

So it's completely different than what we see today, too. And even what you say, I mean, some of it was misconstrued. And yeah, there were horrible things, how they brought in slaves here and did all that. I mean, we wouldn't want to go back to that. But I think at the time, of the early church, that was the accepted system of the world. If you were in servitude to somebody, what broke the contract? Usually, especially a due loss contract. A death. That was the thing that broke it. Let me ask you this. Do you think there are people smart enough on the American southern border today that aren't inviting people to come and be slaves for a while. I bet it's happening.

Because, I mean, look at the, it has nothing to do with, you know, if you're a master, like a biblical type master, it'd be a great thing to have. You know, it's like, And what was his name? Oh, Abraham. He said to God, look, you promised me an heir, and I don't have one, and I'm 90-some years old. Well, what's the deal? Because when I die, Eliezer is going to get my inherited. Who was Eliezer? He was a slave in his house. See?

If Paul's identification with Christ in his death, which is in Romans 6.3, one of the reasons that it's talked about, we were crucified, we died with Christ, what did we die from?

Slavery to Satan. For what reason that we might become slaves to Christ? Roman 6 says a lot more than, has a lot more ramifications than the fact that, well, we died and we're not a slave to sin anymore. Well, the only way you get free from sin is to die out of it. That's why the Lord Jesus became sin for us and died out of it. And we were included in that death. You see that? We're separated. A death did take place. We're now free, as Romans talks about, to be married to another or to be a slave to another. And who's the other? The glorified Christ.

But people that are religious and people that are of other religions, if you don't understand that principle, what's really going on is your slavery to sin and to Satan is just being used by that group to get you to work. I didn't say that very clearly. If I'm a Buddhist, who do you think runs Buddhism? I'll make it even easier. If I'm over here at the temple at Islam, who is Allah.

Who is he really? He's Satan. And am I a servant, are all those people service to Satan? There's no question that they are. They're all doing whatever they do and they think it's great and whatever they think, but they're slaves. Even if they become naturalized American citizens, they're still slaves, okay?

So before salvation, Paul was swallowed up in the will of Satan. He became a loving bondservant of Lord Jesus through being born of the Holy Spirit. After he was saved, it's a good way to put it, his will was swallowed up in the sweet will of God. I really like that phrase. After salvation, Paul became bound to the Lord Jesus in bands so strong that only death could break them. And because the Lord Jesus became Paul's life and will never again die, Paul's union with the Lord Jesus is as strong that nothing can break. Nothing can break it. Okay. How am I doing time-wise? Oh, good. We can start on this one.

Do all servants want to be slaves? So just to recap, this word doulos means one who's usually born into slavery. And the Greek had a word for a person taken in war and sold as a slave, an andropompton or something, A-N-D-R-A-P-O-D-O-N. That was a person that was captured in a war and became a slave because they were a prisoner of war, maybe put it that way. But doulos, this word doulos means that you're born into this slavery. So do all servants want to be slaves? How about all these guys in the Old Testament that were slaves, they want to be slaves? I think after the war and the conglomerate being enslaved. But that's not a doulos. That's not a doulos. Yeah. And I think Courtney said it right. He said, like a Jew, his concept of slavery was not drudgery. You know? What's that sign you see that beatings will commence at four o'clock?

I think it's also between spiritual and worldly. From a worldly perspective, nobody likes it. But from a spiritual sense, yes. And when you say willingly, Those who are not in Christ willingly serve a sin nature and love it. And we who are in Christ love being in Christ. So I think it's the division between worldly and spiritual. I don't think anybody in the world wants to be a slave, per se, other than maybe what you said in Virginia in the early days. I'll give a good example.

How about Joseph? Was he a slave? Yeah, he got to be the number two guy in Egypt. Was he still a slave? Yeah, he was a slave to Pharaoh. It's a good gig. Put it that way. The point is that, like in a Jewish custom, it was an honor and a privilege to be a slave to whoever you were in slavery to. It really was. Eliezer, do you think Eliezer was a guy that was walking around thinking, oh, I wish I could get free? No, it was the best deal he ever had in his life. We lost your audio again. You're back. I'm not going to put that in my pocket anymore. I lost my train of thought.

We think because of what happened in the South that slavery is a bad thing and all this reparation stuff that's going on that we have to pay, that white people have to pay blacks and Hispanics or whoever for slavery. Well, the problem with that is that Courtney and I come from an Irish background and there were ancestors of mine that were slaves, definitely, but they were doulases. They make a deal in Europe to come to the United States and be a indentured slave for somebody until the dentures paid off. Did you wanna do that? Yeah, it was nice to get it paid off.

But in biblical times, there wasn't any thought about being, I mean, my mindset about Eliezer is that he thought this was the greatest deal ever. Because if Abraham, he's an old guy, he's 90 years old, he doesn't have any kids. If he dies, I'm getting it. Sure he did. Yeah, he did. And I think that happens.

That becomes the attitude, which puts the onus on how the master behaves himself. All right, while we're past, we've got to get the musicians in there practicing. So let's close. Dear Father, how we thank you for your grace towards us and the fact that we are. the slaves to you and your Son, the Lord Jesus. And we're thankful for that. We pray in your Son's precious name. Amen.