“Stopping False Teaching in the Church, Part 1” (Titus 1:10–11)

Series: “Titus: Godly People, Godly Church,” #6Text: Titus 1:10–11

By: Shaun Marksbury Date: June 2, 2024

Venue: Living Water Baptist ChurchOccasion: PM Service

Introduction

Last week, we finished considering what it meant to build our church God’s way, and the first step of that is to have sound leaders. We spent several weeks considering the qualifications of elders Paul gave to Titus because it’s such a vital role in the church. Paul calls the role both that of an elder (v. 5) and an overseer (v. 7), and he gives Titus a divine rubric for selecting these men. If they are going to help maintain the order of the church, they must first have homes set in order, personal lives set in order, and Scripture set in order.

That last point is pivotal for what we’re reading here. On that last point, they must be able to exhort or “give instruction in sound doctrine” (ESV) and “to refute those who contradict.” The first word of v. 10 is “for” — meaning that we are now seeing why elders need to be skilled with the Bible and with doctrine.

In Crete, there were a mixture of false teachings infecting the church. This is something that Paul warned about elsewhere; he said, “Now I urge you, brethren, keep your eye on those who cause dissensions and hindrances contrary to the teaching which you learned, and turn away from them” (Rom. 16:17). These doctrines were influenced by Jewish legalism, tradition, proto-gnostic mysticism — and false teachers were introducing them to the church. They were mixing the law and gospel, and Gentiles were using grace as a license to sin. Thus, church elders must be able to both provide good teaching and help drive the snakes from the island.

The situation is not so different today, as there are those who bring in false teaching. We’re going to divide this into two parts — we must silence false teachers (vv. 10–11), and we must rebuke believers (12–16). For now, we’ll see that we need to silence false teachers because of who they are (v. 10) and what they are doing (v. 11). Let’s consider the first of those.

Silence False Teachers Because of Who They Are (v. 10)

For there are many rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision,

Before we go any further, we are entering into territory that makes many Christians uncomfortable. Perhaps you were already feeling uneasy when we were talking about elders, but, at least there, we can understand the concept of bring the right kind of men into leadership roles. This, however, is talking about evaluating leaders and teachers who are already there.

Some Christians believe it is a sin to do this. One reason might be because we are “touching God’s anointed.” In the OT, this referred to harming or opposing someone whom God has chosen and set apart for a special purpose, typically kings, prophets, or priests (the anointed ones). In 1 Samuel 24:6, for instance, David refrains from harming King Saul, saying, “The LORD forbid that I should do this thing to my lord, the LORD's anointed, to stretch out my hand against him, since he is the LORD's anointed.” However, in the New Testament, we all have an anointing, signified by the presence and empowerment of the Holy Spirit in our lives (cf. 1 John 2:20; 2 Cor. 1:21–22). The “anointed” doesn’t refer to a special class anymore; there is a universal priesthood of believers today.

We are to still respect our elders, of course. However, the Lord commands us to be discerning. In Matthew 7:15-20, Jesus warns about false prophets, saying, “Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits.” The “fruit” Jesus refers to would be the visible evidence of a person’s character, behavior, and teaching. Jesus continues, “A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So then, you will know them by their fruits” (vv. 18-20). Good fruit symbolizes godly outcomes (such as love, joy, peace, patience, and righteousness), while bad fruit represents ungodly outcomes (like immorality, deceit, and division). Jesus calls believers to evaluate teachers and leaders by examining their character and comparing their teaching to Scripture.

In this passage, Paul lists bad fruit that is coming from teachers in Crete. He offers three adjectives to describe these false teachers — they are rebellious, empty talkers, and deceivers. Each of these are traits should not be in God’s leaders, nor should they be in the church.

First, he describes them as “rebellious men.” We may add to that the idea is being unruly and incorrigible. They are insubordinate or stubborn. Of course, all Christians can fall into this from time to time, and we must strive to recognize this and repent of it. However, these individuals live a life marked by an inability to be under the yoke of authority. Even worse, there are not just some, says Paul, but many who refuse to submit to rule. All these Cretans are not insubordinate to simply elder-rule but to Bible-rule as a whole. Have fun with that, Titus.

Second, he describes them as “empty talkers.” One dictionary explains that this is “speech that is in vain, resultless, speech that does not bring the results that it should; thus, an empty talker, one who utters empty, senseless things.” In 1 Timothy 1:6–7, Paul expands on this: “For some men, straying from these things, have turned aside to fruitless discussion, wanting to be teachers of the Law, even though they do not understand either what they are saying or the matters about which they make confident assertions.” There would be people who would have some truth from the Scripture, but they would take that and talk about their own ideas. They wouldn’t compare what they thought to other believers or even think deeply about their interpretation and application of Scripture. Rather, they just talked.

Some teachers can sound smooth, or they may sound like they are conveying some deep truth because of how they speak, but they have empty or vain ideas. That might not seem so bad, but for what comes next.

Third, he also describes them as “deceivers.” Another Bible dictionary notes that this is ‘one who leads along the wrong path’ or ‘one who says wrong is right.’ In Gal 6:3, we see the one who is vainly proud, the one who “deceives himself.” Here, the false teacher also deceives the minds of others.

This is nothing new. God had to deal with it in Jeremiah’s day: “Then the LORD said to me, ‘The prophets are prophesying falsehood in My name. I have neither sent them nor commanded them nor spoken to them; they are prophesying to you a false vision, divination, futility and the deception of their own minds.’ ” (Jer. 14:14). He continues in 23:32, “ ‘Behold, I am against those who have prophesied false dreams,’ declares the LORD, ‘and related them and led My people astray by their falsehoods and reckless boasting; yet I did not send them or command them, nor do they furnish this people the slightest benefit,’ declares the LORD.”

These are those who major in the minors, as the saying goes. They love to pull some big, life-changing principle from a dusty corner of Scripture and generate buckets of ducats from it. So, as one example, books like The Prayer of Jabez top the New York Times bestseller list and sell nine million copies. This book is then rewritten for teens, rewritten for children, rewritten for women, and later expanded upon in follow-up books, small-group studies, sermon series, etc. The whole enterprise is based off two verses ripped from a genealogy in the Book of 1 Chronicles — and replaces the genuine gospel with one of personal prosperity!

That is one example, and it continues. I remember watching this video stating that the Bible predicted 9-11 because Isaiah 9:10 talks about bricks being knocked over! Deceivers read the “real” prophecy between the lines. They crunch numbers and watch calendars, because the four blood moons have appeared in a row in the year of the Shemitah, or because a couple of solar eclipses cross the United States. (Get your checkbooks and credit cards ready to cash in before you get caught up in judgment!)

Friends, this stuff is no different than the Gnostic nonsense of the early church. Oh, I can hear them say, “You don’t study like we study, and you don’t know like we know!” That’s precisely what the Gnostic mystics said — they were the initiated (everyone else are the sheeple, man!). They refused to submit to Scripture’s authority, talking idly, and deceiving the church with some fresh thing.

Here’s a general rule of thumb. No matter how fascinating a topic is, if the Holy Spirit hasn’t prompted Christian leaders to talk about it in the past 2,000 years of church history, that new and amazing thing presented on a supposed Christian broadcast network is anything but Christian. Despite what you may have been told, God does not want us to be innovative, and these are the very things Paul tells Titus to silence in the church.

Paul says that these false teachers were especially prevalent among “the circumcision.” That’s a reference to the Jews, of course, and Jews lived in Crete according to Acts 2:11. In this case, these were Jews identifying as Christians, which would be fine if they were not teaching people that you had to come to Christ through obedience to Moses. They were called the Judaizers, and they troubled the whole church, not just Crete. For instance, the circumcision party criticized Peter in Acts 11, and intimidated Barnabas in Galatians 2. This was a particularly nasty group.

We don’t know what they may have been teaching. Paul mentions Jewish myths in v. 14, and they may have been advocating a kind of asceticism, where Christians must deny themselves something in addition to what God commanded. That continues today, where Christians say every Christian should give up meat, or certain kinds of drinks (like wine), or some other activity God doesn’t condemn. When Christian leaders tell you they have the secret to the a fruitful Christian life, and it’s in doing something or abstaining from something God doesn’t command, they are teaching falsely!

Such legalistic teaching troubles the church. That brings us to our next point:

Silence False Teachers Because of What They Are Doing (v. 11)

who must be silenced because they are upsetting whole families, teaching things they should not teach for the sake of sordid gain.

He commands a silencing of opponents of the Gospel. This literally means “whom it is necessary to silence by stopping the mouth,” as in putting something in the mouth to bring about silence (to gag). This language may seem harsh to some modern ears, because folks tend to want pluralism and egalitarianism — we want to be inclusive in today’s culture, giving everyone a chance to have their say. The church, however, requires no pooling of ignorance; God commands us to gag voices in the church that teach contrary doctrine.

To be clear, the primary way we silence false voices is not with the sword of man, but with the sword of the Lord — the Word of God. This was already stated in verse 9, where Paul said that sound teachers must be able to “exhort in sound doctrine” and “refute those who contradict.” Verse 13 has the same word; it’s translated “reprove” in the NASB, but it could also be translated “refute.” The way to silence or gag false voices is to open up Scripture and prove the other person wrong.

Moreover, the silencing of opponents here has an aim. We should desire everyone who is in error to repent. This tempers our hearts, knowing that the removal of tares may well pull up the true wheat, as well. It’s heartbreaking that, when I have refuted some false teaching, some people take it so personally as to leave. However, our goal is always that we should be stronger as a result, and refuting is done in love.

Even so, our Lord also commands a second way in which we silence false voices. That is through the process of church discipline. If someone were teaching that you can become more holy by abstaining from meat or marriage at this church, we would urge that person to stop and have to correct that teaching publicly. The sad reality of sin is that the teacher, through offence or pride, may double down on his false teaching. At that point, this individual would have proved himself to be a rebellious man, an empty talker and a deceiver. It is far better to put such a person out of the church than to allow him to leaven the whole church body.

Consider the danger of not silencing such a one. Paul says here that false teachers are upsetting or overthrowing whole households (someone translated it that they “pervert whole families”). As Paul explains in 2 Tinothy 3:6, they sneak into homes and capture weak women, perhaps widows living by themselves. Just as thieves love darkness, cults want to get people one-on-one in homes. We see that they sometimes went after the whole family in the houses of Crete, or they pitted one family member against the rest.

This can be done in many ways. We considered one of them this morning. There may be a false teacher on the outside of the church, perhaps a public school teacher, who tells a classroom of children that they need not be the sex they are, that their gender identity can be something else. They target those students which may feel the most uncomfortable in their bodies and encourage them to secretly identify with a different gender, that mom and dad don’t need to know. Soon, every teacher in that school might be calling a family’s daughter a boy, and the girl’s parents may wake up to find themselves in an unexpected court battle for custody of their own child. That’s an example from outside the church of how false teachers can upset a whole household, and that’s made worse when false teachers try to support those efforts inside the church.

We can imagine how false doctrine can do that. Of course, people get up in arms about Calvinism versus Arminianism, and credobaptism versus pedobaptism, but that’s not the kind of teaching addressed here. I’ve run into people who were teaching that, if you don’t eat kosher, you are disobeying God. It also may be political; we once ran into an issue in a youth group where someone was telling kids that their parents were racists and wicked if they voted for Donald Trump. There are many examples of potential issues that false teaching can do within families.

False teachers are “teaching things they should not teach” or are not necessary to teach. This would include finding dates hidden in Scripture for the Lord’s return or cracking some code of unlimited wealth. They teach not the things of Scripture, but doctrines that use and abuse Scripture. Understand that this is enough to stop their mouths.

Consider why they do it — for the love of shameful gain. This is why, in verse 7, we read that an elder must not be “fond of sordid gain;” there were teachers who were doing just that. One commentator notes, “The Cretans are given a bad reputation for itinerating prophets for profit.” This is always a danger; Paul warns in 1 Timothy 6:5 that there are some who see godliness as a means of gain, and in both 1 and 2 Peter, the Spirit warns of teachers who are after your money. This isn’t a condemnation of people who just happen to have money, for some gain it through honest, hard work, but the ministry attracts people who leverage a gift for gab to gain personal gifts.

Conclusion

Paul has much more to say about these teachers. I was tempted to go through v. 16 this evening, but I don’t want to rush these verses. So, we’ll continue considering how to deal with false teaching next time when we consider how to deal with the deceived.

This evening, we just considered the deceivers. It is incumbent upon elders to address false teaching. Some Christians don’t like it, and no one should enjoy confrontation. However, it’s necessary, and hopefully, you won’t get offended when a pastor here must address an issue, knowing that we do it from a place of love.

In fact, all Christians should be on their guard. If church elders are doing their job, all Christians should have enough tools to know whether they are getting bamboozled by a bad-faith preacher. At the very least, you should be able to say something sounds off because of all the sound teaching you’ve been receiving. Stay in God’s Word and know it well so you’re not taken for a theological ride!