Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

Paul Aurandt tells of how even the disorders of life can sometimes be a blessing.

Only hours after Pearl Harbor the Japanese went after the Philippine Islands.

American and Philippine troops were taken by surprise and had to retreat to the Bataan Peninsula.

These brave troops became famous for their delay of the Japanese.

For 98 days they fought against the impossible odds before they surrendered.

But this delay gave America the time it needed to organize the defense of Australia and other vital areas.

The paradox of it all is that it was all made possible by a mistake.

General Mac Arthur's quartermaster ordered 18 thousand empty oil drums, but someone fouled up the order and sent them filled with gasoline.

This was a million gallons of unwanted fuel sent to the Peninsula of Bataan.

It was this fuel that made it possible for them to hold out for 98 days, and thereby change the course of history for freedom.

God is not limited to working only with order.

He can bring light out of darkness and harmony out of discord.

He can bring order out of chaos.

This is, in fact, one of God's specialties, but there is no escaping the truth that God's preference is for order.

You can't count on disorder.

There is no disorder in God's being, nor is there any in His revealed description of the ideal destiny of the universe, or the eternal home of the redeemed.

Perfect order and beauty with complete symmetry and harmony is what will be everlasting.

Order means beauty, and order means health, happiness, holiness, and all that is good has a direct connection with order.

This becomes the ideal we are to work for in all that we do for the glory of God.

This was Paul's purpose for the church in Crete, and this was the task of Titus to organize the church and bring order where there was chaos and discord.

According to this letter all Christians have an obligation to get their lives in order.

This would lead to order in the church, in the home, and in the state as well.

It all begins with Titus who had a unique gift for organization.

Some people just have it and others do not.

Paul says in verse 5 that he left Titus in Crete for the purpose of straightening out what was left unfinished.

Paul is saying that he left the work there incomplete.

Even under the Apostle Paul a church did not spring quickly to a state of perfection.

Paul left a lot of loose ends and he needed the help of a gifted man like Titus to complete the work.

The Cretans were a messed up people, but the Gospel is that any mess can be straightened out by the grace of God, and order can be brought out of chaos.

That is why Paul did not give up on these who were, humanly speaking, hopeless people.

He knew it was the sick who needed the physician, and the messed up who needed the organizer.

It is superficial to think that because people are saved that the battle is over, and that there is nothing much left to do.

The fact is, the biggest battle may come after conversion.

People may gladly accept the Gospel as the good news, and rejoice in having a Savior, but the hard part is in getting their lives organized so as to conform to Christ.

Calvin said, "The building of the church is not a work so easy that it can be brought all at once to perfection."

Even where Paul spent several years the work was not completed, so how much more so here in Crete?

The goal however is to get to that point where order dominates the church.

Paul had a great deal of optimism about the power of order to make Christian lives and churches the witness for Christ they were meant to be.

Only once in this letter does Paul refer to the work of the Holy Spirit.

In chapter 3 verse 5 he refers to the rebirth and renewal of the Holy Spirit.

But all through the rest of this letter he dwells on the human responsibility to bring order into their lives and the church.

This leads us to the first point about order that we want to focus on.

I. THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR ORDER.

This letter of Paul makes it clear that the church is a human organization, and men are responsible for working out the bugs and bringing it to a place where all is done decently and in order.

The reason Paul left Titus in Crete was because without a human agent the job of straitening out what was unfinished would not get done.

Maybe some told Paul to just pray about it, which we know he did.

But Paul knew he had to have someone there through whom God would answer the prayer.

Very little to nothing gets done in the church without a human agent.

God's primary tool is people.

The Holy Spirit works through people.

Christ the head of the church works through His body-the people.

The church is God's bridge over the troubled waters of the world.

Offering a way back to God through Jesus.

God designed the church, and Jesus builds the church, but His crew is made of men and women.

He started with the 12 and then chose Paul.

They in turn chose men like Titus, who in turn appointed elders in all the churches.

They in turn taught every believer how to establish order in the church, and make it an appealing bridge which would attract the world to cross over to Christ.

The point is, the primary responsibility for the orderly effectiveness of any church lies in the leadership and members of that church.

It is human responsibility to develop the order that makes a church pleasing to God and attractive to the world.

The bridges don't just happen, and neither do churches.

They are planned, organized, and built by people who want to make a way over the troubled waters of life a reality.

The church, like all else that is human, and which is for the benefit of humans, depends upon order for its success.

Blackie wrote, "In human doings and human productions, we see everywhere manifestations of order.

Well-ordered stones make architecture; well-ordered social regulations make a constitution and a police; well-ordered ideas make good logic; well-ordered words make good writing; well-ordered imaginations and emotions make good poetry; well-ordered facts make science.

Disorder, on the other hand, makes nothing at all, but unmakes everything.

Stones and disorder produce ruins; and ill-ordered social condition is declined, revolution, or anarchy; ill-ordered ideas are absurdity; ill-ordered words are neither sense nor grammar; ill-ordered imaginations and emotions are madness; ill-ordered facts are chaos."

Because it is so, nobody has a greater responsibility than Christians to be people of order.

Being Christ-like means to add order to everything of which we are a part.

Christians are to admired because they add order, and in so doing add beauty and harmony to the church and the state, and every other group they belong to.

God gives us illustrations, examples, and guides, but we are responsible for order in our own lives and in our own church.

When Paul says in I Cor.

14:40, "Let all things be done decently and in order," he was writing to a church that was promoting chaos and disorder.

It was a church that was so permissive of individual liberty that everyone did that which was right in their own eyes.

The gifts of the Spirit were used indiscriminately and haphazardly so as to make the worship service a mad house.

It was a church where disorder reigned, and where division was dominant over unity.

Paul makes it clear that it is the responsibility of Christians themselves to make order an idea they aim for, and then labor to maintain it in the church.

God did not do it for them, nor did He do it for the church in Crete.

It was man's responsibility to add order to his life and church.

Jouber said, "All are born to observe order, but few are born to establish it."

Men like Paul and Titus have established patterns of order for the church.

It is our responsibility to observe these patterns.

This concept of every person being responsible for order has some very practical implications for the family as well as the church.

Dr. Frank Main in his book Perfect Parenting And Other Myths says that one of the major problems in families today is that children do not feel they add to the order of the household.

In the old days when a child did not milk a cow the family went without milk.

If he did not chop wood the family was cold.

It really mattered if he did his chores and played his role.

Today if a child fails to do his job it can be counteracted by a microwave, or going out for fast food.

If a child does not feel his contribution really counts, he will not feel responsible, and this will lead to the loss of one of the key ingredients that will make him or her a force for order.

Every child in the home, and every child of God in the church, needs, for their own sake as well as the kingdom's sake, to recognize their personal responsibility for order.

Failure here is the cause for the disorder of families, church, and state.

If the world is a mess there is no one to blame but men, for men are responsible for order.

We cannot straighten out the messes of the world, and neither could Paul or Titus, but they could bring order to their own lives and the church that they served.

You and I can do it too, and doing it is God's will for each of us.

We do not want to be idolaters of order, and so we need to see that it is not always the first priority.

Paul did not finish the job and so we can assume it took more time for Titus to get it all together.

The first task in contact with the world is to rescue them from the river, and not to be busy building a bridge.

If people are drowning in the river and you stand on shore discussing the pros and cons of where a bridge could be built, or what it should be made of, or what color it should be painted, you would be guilty of putting order before people, and this is not consistent with the priorities of Christ.

Your first priority is to bet people out of the water.

Save them first, and then teach and train them so they can become the bridge that brings others to Christ.