Titus Lesson 4 Continued
Titus · Mike Doyle · Aug 20, 2023
Titus, No. 14
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261932212432

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

OK, we are in Lesson 4, Titus, covering Chapter 1, verses 10 through 12. And if you don't have, I think there's probably handouts right over there of the questions for the class. down to, we finished, I think, question four last week, which was when Paul says, especially those of the circumcision, what does he mean? And we talked about that. And then in question five, well, let's do this.

Somebody read Titus chapter one, verses 10, 11, and 12. For there are many rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, who must be silenced because they are upsetting whole families, teaching things they should not teach for the sake of sordid gain. One of themselves, a prophet of their own, said, Cretans are always liars and evil beasts, lazy gluttons. They must be Democrats. Question 5, which I think is, there's a couple of really good things in this second verse.

What do you think the term, must be silenced, means? Now to give you a cross-reference, when Nicodemus went to see the Lord in the middle of the night, and they had their conversation, the Lord said to Nicodemus, you must be born again. Same word. You must be born again. And in this context, it says, who must be silenced. So this is not a suggestion. OK?

So let's talk a little bit about, is Paul just telling them to, I guess, without the, for lack of a better way to say it, telling them just to shut up? or you go ahead and make sure that they don't do what they're doing? I think this is what we were talking about last night at McCulley, see? We were talking about Miles Stanford and some of his papers, you know, written to specific men and about their doctrine and how he would go about that. And we were talking earlier in the afternoon about shooting coyotes and that just came together in that conversation.

Because you've got to get rid of the predators. You have to. They're out to kill the flock. Sure. So, now, be careful with that. I'm tying that analogy together. Sure. Well, we've got a new committee. We've got a new committee we appointed around here called the Assassin Committee, and you're already in charge of it. Take care of it. Point to it and we'll get it. We'll get it. But I think it's a serious issue. And one of the problems we have as believers is, well, who's qualified to say that?

Who's qualified to go to somebody and say, you have to be quiet now. You can't teach what you're teaching, or you can't promote what you're promoting. You can't whisper what you're whispering behind the backs of everybody. You just can't do it. because it's pretty aggressive.

The interesting thing about most of Miles Stanford's polemic papers is that, like most writers, he had a method that he used and the first part of the letter he wrote people would say would compliment them in some manner and then he would address the issue and try to state their issue as clearly as possible. And then he would go to God's Word and say, your issue is a problem because God's Word says this. It does not say what you say it says.

Now, I think one of the fears you have, and one of the fears I have, And I think Roger has the same fear, is that it isn't so much, well, we might be wrong doctrinally in confronting somebody. The issue is, are we going to upset them? Are we going to make them angry, hurt their feelings? You know, it's all about feelings. and that kind of thing. So it gets to be a fine line, but it has to be done.

I mean, Miles Stanford, that was always his attitude, because I asked him a lot of times, how do you write these polemic papers where you just take somebody right down to the, you know, he told me, he said, I get in my office by myself and I close the door. And he said, I'm so aware that I might harm this person that if you came in and surprised me, I'd probably cry. Imagine Miles Stanford saying something like that. But he said, it's got to be done. That was his, it's got to be done. And I'm your guy. He would write these things. And if you look at them objectively, they're very helpful because they spell out the issue. And it's not emotional, it's doctrinal.

Michael, I think you have to look at the flip side. If you don't take care of it, what is the damage? I think our feelings and worrying about that, you have to put it in perspective. the rebellious, empty talkers, deceivers continue without being addressed, it harms the body. And so you have to weigh that. It may be a tough, it may be hard, they may be offended, they choose to be offended. But you have to put it in perspective that if you don't do it, you're going to harm the body.

And, you know, also looking at the Greek, it's present active indicative. You continually do it. You do it. And it's a command. You must. So, I mean, again, yeah, you don't want to hurt their feelings, but you have to look at the other side. So let's see how good your observations are. Is there anything like that finding its way through Christian circles today? that if somebody showed up here and said, oh, this is wonderful doctrine, and it isn't. And you think of anything that, where do you have the courage to mention anything that's going on today and contemporary?

Because there's always something. We've been through the prayer of Jabez, spiritual formation, The easy ones are charismatic movements, legalism. You know, not only the popular book types, the Prayer of Jabez, the Purpose Driven Life, and all that, but it's, you know, it's Covenant Theology, it's Legalism, it's all those things. Those are every bit as much as the popular book titled ones. Yeah. Yeah.

And I don't know, you know, if we are in a position to put out a book list of you can't read these things or you shouldn't read these things. I mean, I think the biggest issue, and I think you're right, Courtney, the biggest issue is in Reformed theology. There's no bigger issue in terms of how it affects so many people. You know, and either through ignorance or no one's ever taught them the truth. So they're ignorant about grace or they do know what they're doing and they think it's the right way.

And we had a guy here one time. 15 years ago was a hyper-dispensationalist and he would pass out little tracks in the parking lot and stuff like that. And we had to go tell him, you know, you can't do that. We're glad to have you fellowship with us, but you know, your ultra-dispensational viewpoint, you have to, you can't, you can't promote that viewpoint because it's not biblical. Well, of course he, he was sincere guy. He said, well, You know, I believe what I believe, and that's, you know, I like your church, and I will be quiet because you told me to, but I'm not going to change my doctrine.

Probably the hardest is what we talk about as covenant legalism and all that. I think there are definitely believers, but there's no growth. Catholicism, you know, and I think that's almost hardest. I know some of brother-in-laws and missionaries, some of the hardest is to break Catholicism and point them to a personal relationship with Christ. Sure. It's the knockoffs that are, you know, that are the hardest, I think, you know, if it's a Muslim or a Hindu or whatever, okay. But it's the one who, and again, I think we have this discussion, millions and millions of people who are covenant and Baptist who are very legal, they're believers.

They just don't grow because they don't know the identification. Right. But I think that's the hardest thing, rather than a guy who's, like I said, a Muslim there or something like that. It's just think differences. It's when it's a close, that's the one that it seems the hardest. And that's always the one that's the most harmful.

And you know, I was thinking here too, there's a difference between a fellow believer who is caught up in a false doctrine and someone who is turning around and teaching it and espousing it. And I was reminded of, I've been in the other James class, but I've been listening in, and I know you talked about The Chosen, right? And we've got friends who are really into that, but they're not espousing it. They're just expressing their interest in it. So with them, there's a certain gentleness, like, okay, you know, we just have a conversation about it.

But when you turn around and start teaching it, then it reminds me of what we looked at in the James class, you know, James three let not many of you become teachers Knowing that as such we incur a stricter judgment. I think that ties into what we're saying here if you're gonna teach this stuff Then then you're in a position to be to be judged and reviewed when it's that's a great point JD Around silencing and the first thing is is that when we do Silence someone and what we're asking them to do We're doing it on the authority of God's Word, not the authority of ourselves. So we submit to an authority and we have to call that out.

The other thing is that I was reading, I was looking at that word silenced, and in 2 Peter 3.15 it says, For such is the will of God that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolishness. This is ignorance versus, I mean, it could be tied into false teaching, obviously. Um, but they, they're more knowingly doing what they're doing less ignorantly, but there is a character of the one who is correcting and silencing that they do the will of God as well as submit to the authority of God themselves. And so it's not a power trip.

Um, and it can be easily turned into that, who, you know, you say this, I say this, and then it gets into a church split. You know, those are, those are very common scenarios, but. the closer we are to the authority of God's Word, the better we can shed light on darkness, right? We can elevate what the truth of God's Word says versus the worldly perspective or the confused perspective on it. Yeah, and I think that really when you investigate a circumstance like that, most of the time you find that the person propagating something that isn't, that's just a bump off, really isn't a student of God's Word.

They've heard it someplace, or they have sounded good to them, they are mostly engaged, and so they, oh, this is really cool, you know, well, you know, that's, if you spent the last 35 years at Holly Hills, if you've never learned anything you learned, you better go to the Bible and check. You better be a Berean. You better get enough biblical education so that you can find things and you can rightly divide the word of truth.

I was just going to say, I think that with There's a wisdom about how to go about that stuff. The silent scene has a character of maturity associated with it in the body that, you know, these folks have an axe to grind. How do we deal with those kinds of folks? Well, we do. We offer to go through the scripture with them or the correction based on his authority. Does that always work? No, but then you have other authoritative scripture that seems to play in those roles. But yeah, this is an authority issue, and it's biblical, and it has to be done. That's what I was going to bring up, too. We're myopic in verses 10-12. go back to what he just went through for elders.

Sure, there you go. Not self-willed, not quick-tempered, not a dictionary, not for be hospitable, loving what is good, sensible, just, about self-controlled, holding fast to the faithful word which is in accordance with teaching so that he will be able to both exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict. There you go. I mean, he just said it, laid it out. Now he's saying do it. Yeah.

Yeah, and on Wednesday night we're studying 1 Thessalonians, and boy, do they parallel with here. This last week we studied about Paul exhorts the Thessalonians to live a certain way. And when you first read it, you think, really? You know how I and you demonstrate your love to the brothers? It's economics. Number one, you live a peaceful life. Number two, you stay out of other people's business. And number three, you work. How about those three?

I mean, I'm looking at that and thinking, oh, got to go to work, better get a job. You know? Why? Because it puts me in a position to help somebody else down the road. So, and it fits. And we went back to the first, you know, verse 7, 8, and 9 of the character. Well, yeah, they go together and they make a lot of sense. So, we're not moving very fast. A couple other things I thought you'd find interesting.

This word, epistomazio, originally means to put something into the mouth. It's a bit in a horse's mouth. The noun form is used to stop of a water pipe. We could have done that. Hopefully, that happened yesterday. The verb, metaphorically, means to reduce to silence. Vincent says, whom it is necessary to silence. So, that comes from we. So, how do I say this?

You have to get opinion out of it. And that's hard to do sometimes. You know, Mike? Yeah. One thing that's odd is the reformers think we're nuts. No, that's true. They do. That's the kind of irony of it is. And we aren't nuts, but they're thinking they need to get to us and try to save us from ourselves, you know. So that'd be a ravager. I'm not going there. Thank you.

No. So question six is what's the motive of the false teachers? according to the verse. Why do they do what they do? And they're always, how do I say this? The motive is personal gain. Now, when I saw this, I got to thinking about, I remember back when Vern was first here and we were, how do I say this? There were some guys that were floating around here and their whole job, the only reason they were here was to get enough education so that they could get a job in a church someplace.

And I always thought, do you serve the Lord because you need a job? And are you going to go to a church that pays better than this one over here? And how do you make your decision? If you decide in your heart that you want to serve the Lord, do you go job hunting? And if you do, what are you looking for? Would not the Lord bring you to the place where he wanted you to be? And you would know it, and they would know it. And I can remember, most of you remember Art Lauther.

Art was a really interesting guy. And you know, a guy sometimes that you have to push back with him because he was opinionated. But I remember we were having a meeting about when we had 25 or 30 candidates of which there was only one that was worth investigating and it was Vern. So then the conversation evolved to, well, can we afford him? And Art, to his credit, said, the guy that the Lord brings here isn't going to be worried about the salary. I thought, I hope you're right, Art.

Because in those days, we didn't have any money at all. So the motivation, according to the verse, is that mostly Jews And they were involved in preaching and teaching for dishonest gain, probably by teaching falsehood under the guise of truth accordingly. And you see that today all over Christendom. Again, one of my favorite subjects is go look at the preachers on television.

So they got a half an hour. They spend two or three or four minutes talking about Docker and the rest of the time they're hawking something, which is they're either selling something or inviting you to support them. You know, that one guy, Jimmy Swaggard, he has a sell-a-thon every month. He raised millions of dollars every month and it goes on and on. He's got his channel and you know, they're all about the money and That's a tip-off, at least in my mind, that there probably aren't somebody you ought to be listening to.

There was a guy not too long ago, like a year ago, and I saw a headline. some southern preacher and he was very upset that his congregation wasn't going to fund him for the Gulfstream 5. Oh yeah, that was, what's that guy's name? Gulfstream 2 was not adequate enough for him to do his ministry. Yeah, he had ministry around the other side of the globe and he needed a plane to get him there. And he needed an upgraded one.

I think the funniest thing, when I was a kid, this is way before I was a believer, there was a guy in Chicago that was one of the first television preachers, and he was on the radio and television, and he wore a white suit with a white vest, and he was really groomed. And his deal was, don't send me any of that hard money, just send me the folding kind. I mean, I'm a little youngster, and I'm listening to this guy, and I'm thinking, I don't think this guy doesn't sound legitimate to me. Let's see.

When a teacher or a preacher looks on his teaching or preaching as a career designed for personal advancement and personal profit and gain, He's in a perilous condition, and Barclay wrote that. I thought that was really good, because you can tell, especially with seminary graduates, they're looking for a job. That's really what they're doing. And not that it doesn't have to be something that they can support their family on, but why do you do that?

OK, so the next issue. The next issue is the verse 11 says, who must be silenced because they're upsetting whole families. Let's talk about that word upsetting. One of the guys that I read said that the word upsetting isn't really strong enough to describe the Greek word that's here, it could mean to overturn, overthrow, destroy. And notice how he puts it, that they're trying to destroy whole households. Whole households. They're to pervert whole families according to according to Wiest. Think that's what they're after?

Courtney, you mentioned MacArthur's graduates from, what's the name of his seminary? Master's Seminary. They must have a course in that seminary where they teach their guys, you're right and don't let anybody tell you you're wrong. Because especially in California, I have several friends out there that sort of circle around, and one of them is in a church where the two guys that are running the place are from Master's Seminary, and you know, they have that old, old Christian disease, which is, they'll confuse me with the facts I've already made up my mind, and they will not listen.

And he calls him up, and he's a fairly astute guy scripturally. And he'll get together at lunch with him and have a Bible study with all of his notes and stuff. And they quietly sit there and listen to him, and then they'll just say something to him like, well, you're totally wrong, and that's it. And what they preach on Sunday is reform. This guy's kind of a, my friend is one of those guys that doesn't sit quietly. It really upsets him and he gets all worked up about it. But I think you find that idea of, I know what I'm talking about, permeates the legalist.

The problem with, I mean, if you just cursorily study, Calvinism, any reformed theology, there's no hope there. There's no assurance. You know, how do you know that you're safe? Only if you persevere to the end and do all these wonderful works and that kind of thing. So it makes it really difficult to talk yet on the other side of that coin. And, uh, uh, you know, you live your life and you bounce off of people and you have somebody comes in your life and they're grace-based and it's like the antennas go up and you, you know, like you did with the people in Thailand, bang, there they are. And, uh, I think those people, Every one of those kinds of people that are grace-based, you want to get to know them and hang out with them for the rest of their life and your life because there aren't many of them.

You agree with that? Yeah. What do you think? We're talking about reformed and to grace in the way that we understand it. But I think this whole household and family and upsetting families was a situation, just kind of looking at parallel passages.

These folks were going around house to house, and looking at 1 Peter 5.13, sometimes they also learn to be idle as they go around from house to house, and not merely idle but also gossips and busybodies talking about things not proper to mention, and it goes on. to talk about getting married and give them no occasion, give the enemy, and you see all this as an enemy, and eventually in 15, they have already turned aside to follow Satan. So while we're talking about, I don't put reformers in the category of following Satan by any stretch, but I was just curious how we would elevate this to that level of false teaching. teachers as it says in scripture that are teaching falsely about how do they get obviously we're not we're not having satanic you know teachers coming to our houses but how does that that following satan and propagating this through families how is that happening for us today and how does the overseer protect that level of false teaching yeah that's that's a great question because you're not at their house when the doorbell rings or You know, the JWs come around and I think they're satanic. There's no, I agree, you know, and they, you know, have a certain way of doing things that it's like they're practiced in their, their approach. And the same thing when you get, you know, two young guys who come and knock on your door and they're, they're Mormons. and their practice, you know, and they'll, they'll agree with you about anything.

So you, uh, I don't think it's our job to engage those people. Um, but I do, you know, Paul says to shun people like that. What's that? You silence it by shutting the door. Well, sometimes I don't answer the door because I haven't got time to mess with it. Sometimes I'm feeling spunky, so out we'll go. Well, we think about someone coming to the door and propagating the conversation around Satan himself, but Satan is masqueraded as an angel of light.

So this satanic false teaching, I wouldn't put personally, but I mean, it's definitely harmful to the gospel. It is. It is. It's wrong. Yeah. And it needs to be corrected. But I think in these cases, you have false teaching can get to the point where they're promoting an angel that's masquerading, you know, as an angel of light, but it's in fact Satan. And what is the core of Satan? I will.

And so the teaching centers around What are you, you know, it's all about you. And we've got to get you back to the center of your worship because you are entitled to this. You deserve these things. And it takes away from the authority of God's word and puts the authority back in your camp. And by doing that, it upsets entire families because you've got, now you've got a battle of authority. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Just a thought. No, that's a good thought. And I think that Miles mentioned the Chosen. The Chosen is very subtle. It presents a Christ that is not the one of the Bible. And it's a warm, fuzzy emotion.

And they try to humanize him to the point that, and the people that are around him, You know, well, OK, you can enjoy it if you want to. Enjoy it as some series that you're watching. But at the same time, that will have an influence. And to tell somebody, in my position, to tell somebody, well, you shouldn't really watch it. Not today's climate. organized satanic perspective today. I agree. I totally agree.

And now put yourself as an overseer in a situation where you've got neighbors and co-workers and the like, putting that agenda at the center of the family. And then you have families that are, I mean, that's where false teaching at its epicenter. Then they come over to your house. Yeah, yeah, I know what you're saying. You know, back to that First Thessalonian things about how to love your neighbor.

If I live a quiet life, which means I'm not screaming and yelling about anything, and I just live as a believer, at rest, walking by faith, If I stay out of your business and I work, no matter what it is, those three things. And I live day after day like that. The one thing that I project to my neighbors is that I'm a person of rest. And if there's anything that wokeness projects, it's tumult, anxiety, You know, if there's anything it does, it's just angst all the time.

I've got a bit of a soapbox here. The thing about the Lord wants us to understand something very important about our identity. So identity is core to the Lord. And it starts with self. got to be satisfied with me. So there's that identity piece, but then there's the rest of it, the identification truths. What's the one thing that's at the center of this entire world program? Identity. It's breaking down identity.

And so that breaks families down. And the message is the same underneath, right? But it's just, It had a different kind of clothing in Paul's era, Titus' era. But the point is the same. It cracks down the identity of who God says we are as his creation. And it elevates us to the creator position, where we make decisions about our own identity. We have the freedom and capability to alter God's design, which makes God no longer the creator. That's the same message that's been going on since Genesis 3. Did God say? The whole Genesis temptation was, you're not who God told you you were. You're more important than that. And there's some stuff that he is held back from you. And if you if you go against him, you'll be enlightened. You know, it's all about me.

That's the secret. And this temptation is the same. He hasn't changed his game plan. for 7,000 years. It's the same game plan. And it's the sin nature is a member of that team. It's constantly telling you it is about you. You know, it's it's a it's always the angle of getting caught off his throat.

That's right. Exactly right. And so I just noticed the time. Okay. We're going to have to, the singers are going to have to go sing. So let's close. Thanks, everybody. Father Howard, thank you again for your word and the ability and opportunity to study it. We ask that you would protect each one of us, not only individually, but corporately from the intrusion of false doctrine, that we would all grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the truth. And we thank you. We pray in his name. Amen.