Titus 1:10-16 - The Pursuit of Healthy Leadership

Well, we need healthy leaders because without healthy leadership there is a sort of vacuum that inevitably gets filled with unhealthy leaders who downplay the seriousness of sin and ignore the purity of the church in favor of other things like making money, or feeling good about ourselves.

And really we all have this tendency to downplay our sin.

We play the comparison game…

“I’m not as bad as so-and-so.”

“At least I haven’t murdered anyone.”

“It’s only a little sin and it doesn’t even hurt anyone.”

But the reality is that our sin is very serious, we’ll see just how serious it is in our passage today.

The puritan John Owen famously wrote, “Be killing sin, or it will be killing you.”

Because we tend to downplay the seriousness of our own sin and the purity of the church to our own detriment, Jesus has given us healthy church leaders so that through their leadership he can protect us and help us maintain our spiritual purity.

The same spiritual purity he purchased for us on the cross.

And he does this as the healthy leaders he has raised up depose the unhealthy leaders that would otherwise lead us astray.

In our passage today, Titus 1:10-16, we’re going to see how healthy church leaders are to contrast their qualifications with the disqualifications of the unhealthy leaders in the same three categories from the previous passage.

Healthy leaders are to silence the unhealthy teaching, rebuke the unhealthy character, and identify the unhealthy lifestyles of disqualified leaders.

And this all happens as we, the church, pursue healthy leadership.

It’s the result of our pursuit of healthy leadership according to the picture of it that we looked at last week.

So, let’s read our passage, and then look closer at each of these categories and how our healthy leaders ought to respond to these unhealthy leaders.

Titus 1:10–11 ESV

For there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party. They must be silenced, since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach.

Titus 1:12–14 ESV

One of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said, “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.” This testimony is true. Therefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith, not devoting themselves to Jewish myths and the commands of people who turn away from the truth.

Titus 1:15–16 ESV

To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled. They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work.

So, first, in verses 10 and 11 we see that…

We must have healthy leaders in the church to…

Silence the Unhealthy Leaders’ Teaching (10-11)

Last week we saw how Paul explained the picture of healthy leadership in the church, and now he explains one of the main reasons for pursuing this healthy leadership.

The very first word in our passage today is the word, “for,” indicating the reason or purpose for what he just wrote.

You see, there was a big problem in Crete, and it’s a problem that will always plague the church until Jesus comes back.

And that problem is that there are many unhealthy, unqualified leaders who are leading the church away from following Jesus in faith, hope, and fellowship.

In this first section, Paul describes them, specifically in their teaching, as insubordinate or rebellious, empty or idle talkers, and deceivers.

The word he used for insubordinate or rebellious is the same one he used in the previous passage about how a healthy leader’s children will emulate him so as not to be open to the charge of insubordination or rebellion.

These unhealthy leaders are teaching people to rebel against and disobey God’s law!

The empty or idle talk is similar to the descriptions of idols which are really nothing.

The words that come from these unhealthy leaders are empty, idle, powerless, because the Holy Spirit is not empowering them.

They may seem powerful in the moment, but that’s because they are falsely empowered by the enemy to deceive and lead astray even the elect.

Jesus said as much in Matthew 24:24 “For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.”

These rebellious and empty words from these unhealthy leaders are meant to deceive like their father the devil, as Jesus said to the religious leaders in John 8:44 “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

Paul also says that it was especially the Jews, those of the circumcision party, who were unhealthy leaders the churches in Crete were dealing with.

We don’t really have this specific problem anymore, but in Crete and in other areas around this time there were many Jewish leaders in the church who insisted that the Gentile Christians had to follow the Law of Moses and be circumcision in order to be saved.

They were called Judaizers, and their teaching was dangerous because they were teaching that Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross was not enough to save you.

They were teaching that you had to work for your salvation by following the Law and being circumcised and denying the sufficiency of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Now, there isn’t anything wrong with following the Law of Moses, that’s actually God’s Law that he gave to the Israelites, and it shows us how God wants us to behave, it shows us what behavior pleases him.

And there’s really nothing wrong with circumcision.

But the problem is saying that these things are necessary to be saved instead of proper responses to having been saved.

We are saved through faith, in Christ, by God’s grace, according to God’s Word, and to God’s glory alone.

And obedience to God’s Law is a response to that salvation, not a means to become saved.

The Judaizers are gone now, but we have a similar problem, unhealthy leaders teaching things like the prosperity gospel, or the social gospel, or that we need to abandon the Old Testament entirely, or that God created everything through evolution rather than by speaking it into existence.

All of these are examples of how unhealthy leaders cater to the feelings and whims of the culture rather than standing firm on the solid foundation of God’s Word.

The unhealthy teaching now is that you don’t need to worry about being saved or not because God would never be so unloving as to send anyone to hell.

They tell you not to focus on Jesus’ death and resurrection on your behalf, and instead to focus on other things like claiming your blessings, or manifesting what you want to happen in your life, or to simply believe in yourself.

Or they get the gospel so out of whack that it doesn’t resemble anything found in God’s Word anymore.

This is a big problem, and the healthy church leaders must deal with this problem by silencing them.

Paul emphasizes the importance of silencing these unhealthy leaders by using a fun little Greek verb that’s woodenly translated, “it is necessary.”

It is necessary to silence these unhealthy leaders, and the ones to silence them are the healthy leaders in the church.

Paul doesn’t clearly state how these unhealthy leaders are to be silenced, but in the context it seems to me that they are silenced by the clear and authoritative teaching of God’s Word.

The unhealthy teaching is characterized as rebellious, empty, and deceitful, so the heathy leaders in the church must silence them by teaching what is according to God’s Word, empowered by the Holy Spirit, and focuses on the truth of the gospel.

The exact opposite of their unhealthy teaching.

And these unhealthy leaders must be silenced because their teaching, both then and now, upsets or tears apart whole families.

Entire households are torn apart as some of the family follows the truth of God’s Word through healthy church leaders, and others in the family follow the rebellious and empty deception of unhealthy leaders.

Paul very simply describes the content of their teaching as “what they ought not to teach.”

This is that same fun little verb we looked at before.

The force of the Greek phrase is that it is necessary for them to not teach what they are teaching.

It’s kind of like God saying, “thou shalt not teach these lies!”

And the thing that gets me… the thing that sort of makes my blood boil when I hear of it today… is that these unbiblical, rebellious, lies are taught for shameful gain.

These unhealthy leaders are getting rich off of the lies they teach.

It’s no wonder that Paul told Titus that the healthy leaders he is to appoint should silence these predators.

So, first, healthy leaders in the church must silence the teaching of the unhealthy leaders.

And next, second, we see in verses 12-14 that…

We must have healthy leaders in the church to…

Rebuke the Unhealthy Leaders’ Character (12-14)

In verse 12 Paul anonymously quotes a Cretan prophet who identified the character of most people from Crete as liars, evil beasts, and lazy gluttons.

This is the character everyone assumed of someone from Crete.

And this isn’t a racist comment because one of their own said this, and Paul simply quoted what this Cretan prophet said about his own people.

This sweeping immorality attributed to the inhabitants of an entire island makes me think of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis chapters 18 and 19.

In Genesis 18:20–21 it says, “Then the Lord said, “Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave, I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me. And if not, I will know.””

Later in chapter 18, Abraham pleaded with the Lord to spare Sodom and Gomorrah if fifty, forty-five, forty, thirty, or even only ten righteous persons were found there.

Well, in chapter 19 only Lot and his wife and two daughters were found to be righteous, so they were commanded to flee before it was destroyed.

An entire valley full of cities and only four people found to be righteous.

Well, Crete was similar in its rampant and unchecked deceit, evil, laziness, and gluttony.

And in verse 13 Paul said that this testimony from one of their own prophets is true, and in the context this unhealthy character was also found among the unhealthy leaders.

And the healthy leaders were to rebuke them sharply.

This word for “rebuke” is the same word used at the end of verse 9.

In verse 9 the healthy leaders are to hold fast to the trustworthy Word as taught so that they may be able to both encourage those who agree and to REBUKE those whose teaching, character, and lifestyle contradict God’s Word.

But here and in verse 14 Paul explains the desired outcome of that rebuke, that they may be sound, or healthy, in the faith and not devote themselves to wrong teaching.

This rebuke isn’t supposed to push them away from God, it’s supposed to reveal that they are already running away from him, and call them back.

Call them to repentance so that their faith may be healthy.

So that they may be sure of their salvation.

So that they may pursue righteousness as they have been clothed in the righteousness of Christ.

This is like what we read earlier from Psalm 141:5 “Let a righteous man strike me—it is a kindness; let him rebuke me—it is oil for my head; let my head not refuse it.”

When you are rebuked for some sin or deviation from God’s Word, recognize that it’s an act of love from a friend, a brother or sister in Christ, who wants to see you spiritually healthy, sound in the faith, instead of opposing or contradicting God and his Word.

It is a kindness to be rebuked by a brother or sister in Christ.

It is a gracious gift to be warned that we are deviating from God’s Word and his purposes.

Let us not refuse it, but cherish it, and thank the ones doing the rebuking for their love and courage to do so at the risk of their relationship with us.

This is hard to do.

Our gut reaction is to defend our wrong behavior, even if we know it’s wrong.

Our first instinct is to view the one rebuking us as an enemy, but it’s just the opposite.

They aren’t your enemy, they are your friend, and they only want what’s best for you.

As Proverbs 27:6 says, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy.”

Those who see you in sin or deviating from God’s Word and desires, if they see you there, and they say nothing or even enable your sin.

Those are not your friends, but your enemies.

They don’t have your best in mind, they have their own comfort in mind.

This is really the heart behind church discipline.

The point of church discipline is not to kick out everyone who disagrees with us.

The point is to lovingly call our brothers and sisters in Christ, who we love dearly, to call them to repent for their own good, to be sound in the faith.

The church discipline process is outlined by Jesus in Matthew 18:15–20 ““If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.””

The interesting thing about this process is that the purpose of every step is to “gain your brother,” and this comes right on the heels of Jesus’ parable of the lost sheep.

Success is not reaching the end of the process and losing a brother or sister in Christ, success is finding the lost sheep, the wayward brother or sister and bringing them back in repentance regardless of which step it progressed to.

And Jesus knew that this would be difficult for those doing the rebuking, so he promised us that we would be doing it in his authority and with his special presence comforting and upholding us.

And we are all supposed to do this with each other, but in our passage in Titus Paul specifically called the healthy leaders in the church to do this so that everyone else in the church will also do likewise.

And the primary way healthy leaders are to rebuke the unhealthy leaders or anyone who is unhealthy in the church, is by preaching and teaching God’s Word, and making sure their own character matches God’s Word.

You see, those in the churches in Crete were being wrongly influenced by these unhealthy leaders by devoting themselves to Jewish myths and commands of people who turn away from the truth.

These Jewish myths aren’t really a problem anymore for us, but we do have other myths to contend with.

Naturalistic myths like the teaching that the earth is billions of years old.

They can’t know that, it’s a myth.

Or the evolutionary myth that people and animals have evolved from other older species into what we see today.

Again, they can’t know that, it’s a myth.

And we also have commands from men who deviate from the truth, though they’re probably very different commands today than what the believers in Crete were dealing with.

The Judaizers deviated from the truth of the gospel and commanded Gentiles to be circumcised and follow the Law of Moses in order to be saved.

And in order to recognize the commands that deviate from the truth we have to know the truth.

And that’s what healthy leaders do.

They preach the truth of God’s Word, the truth of the gospel, so that deviations from it are easy to spot.

So, first we saw that healthy leaders in the church must silence the teaching of the unhealthy leaders.

And second, we saw that healthy leaders in the church must rebuke the character of the unhealthy leaders, and really anyone in the church with an unhealthy character that deviates from God’s Word and desires.

Finally, third, we see in verses 15 and 16 that…

We must have healthy leaders in the church to…

Identify the Unhealthy Leaders’ Lifestyle (15-16)

Verse 15 seems almost like a proverb or a maxim speaking in generalities, but Paul has some very specific things in mind that the historical and cultural context brings out.

He says, “To the pure, all things are pure.”

This purity is referring to a few different things.

One of those things was when God broke down the concept of Gentiles being somehow unclean.

In Acts chapter 10 Peter had a vision from the Lord of a sheet coming down from heaven with all kinds of unclean animals in it, and God told him to kill and eat.

Right after that Peter went to a Gentile’s house and preached the gospel to them, and the whole house was saved, and the Holy Spirit was poured out on them.

And Peter summed up the point of his vision and his experience with this Gentile household being saved in Acts 10:34–35 “So Peter opened his mouth and said: “Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.”

Gentiles are not unclean.

Another thing the Judaizers insisted on was forbidding marriage, and forbidding eating foods that were considered unclean according to the Law of Moses.

Paul explained this to Timothy in 1 Timothy 4:1–5 “Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.”

Somehow they got it into their minds that marriage was impure.

But they also carried over the Law of Moses which forbids eating unclean animals.

And as we saw in Acts chapter 10, God clearly removed the restrictions on unclean food to illustrate his kingdom including Gentiles as well.

The point is this: to the pure, to those who are saved and live in light of Jesus’ work on the cross, all these things are pure.

Because of Jesus, the Gentiles are included in God’s kingdom, they are pure as Jesus has made them pure by his blood.

Because of Jesus, marriage is held in high honor as husbands seek to love our wives as Jesus loves the church, and as wives seek to respect your husbands as Jesus respects and submits to the Father.

Because of Jesus, foods that were once considered unclean are now made holy by prayer so that Gentiles from all cultures, all tribes, all nations, and all peoples all with very different food customs are welcomed into God’s kingdom.

To the pure, all things are pure because of the purity of Jesus.

But then Paul explained the opposite, to the defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure, but both their minds and consciences are defiled.

The defiled and unbelieving are those who have not put their faith in Jesus, in the context of our passage this refers to the unhealthy leaders’ character.

And nothing is pure for them because their whole reason for seeking purity in these things was to somehow rely on their pursuit of purity to be right with God.

It doesn’t really matter how much you stick to the rules of purity, of circumcision and only eating clean animals, clean foods, or making sure you wash your hands before you eat.

That last one was what the Pharisees had a problem with in Matthew 15:2 ““Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.””

And Jesus explained later in Matthew 15:11 “it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.””

No amount of rule keeping or pursuit of purity will make you clean or righteous enough to earn eternal life.

That’s because apart from Christ all of our minds and consciences are defiled.

Paul explained this in Ephesians 2:1–3 “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”

Without Christ our very minds and consciences are dead, broken, defiled, and useless to earn us any measure of righteousness.

The only thing that can earn you a righteous standing before God is the blood of Christ, and he willingly paid that for you, and all you have to do is believe in him.

Paul understood how much his own pursuit of rule keeping and ritual purity earned him.

He listed all of his religious achievements at the beginning of Philippians chapter 3, and then he explained in Philippians 3:7–8 “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ”

To the unsaved, everything is defiled because nothing they can do will save them and everything they do is tainted with sin.

And this is the lifestyle of the unhealthy leaders, seeking to earn their righteousness before God by their ritual purity and rule keeping while denying the work of Christ on the cross.

Paul said in verse 16 of our passage in Titus that they profess to know God, but they deny him by their works.

Their denial of the God they profess to know comes when they deny the only way God has provided to be reconciled to him.

You can’t really know someone you are estranged from, someone you aren’t reconciled to.

So if you aren’t reconciled to God through faith in Jesus, then you don’t know God no matter how much you may claim to know him.

And Paul finally sums up identifying the unhealthy leaders’ lifestyle as detestable, disobedient, and unfit for any good work.

This is really what God thinks of their lifestyle.

God sees them as detestable.

Like the lukewarm Christians of Laodicea in Revelation 3:15–16 ““ ‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.”

And just like them God calls the unhealthy leaders to repent of their lifestyle that ignores their need for salvation through faith in Jesus.

God also sees them as disobedient.

The whole Law of Moses was meant to point God’s people, and all people really, to point us to our need for a savior to be righteous on our behalf.

We can’t do it on our own.

Obedience is not what will save us, its a response to having been saved.

And the one obedience that does save us is obeying the command to believe in Jesus Christ for our forgiveness because at that point its not our obedience that saves us, it’s Jesus.

And God also sees them as unfit for any good work.

The word for unfit, can also be rendered as unqualified, and I think in the context, any good work is specifically referring to the good work done as a leader in the church.

They are unqualified to lead God’s church because of their unhealthy teaching, their unhealthy character, and their unhealthy lifestyle.

And we need to recognize when a leader is unqualified, we need to call them to repent by rebuking them, and we need to silence them by removing them from that leadership position.

And this is primarily done by healthy leaders in the church, not just anyone.

But all of us can help hold our leaders accountable to pursue the healthy qualifications we looked at last week, and to avoid these unhealthy disqualifications we looked at today.

As we pursue healthy leadership.

Conclusion

So, our sin and the purity of God’s church are very important, and if we let unhealthy leaders run wild in the church, then sin will also run wild, and God’s church will not be pure.

And God won’t let that happen, but he also designed it so that he uses healthy leaders in the church to maintain the purity he sovereignly orchestrates.

Healthy leaders in the church are called by God to pursue that healthy leadership by silencing, rebuking, and identifying the unhealthy leaders that would destroy God’s church if they were left unchecked.

Like with a cancerous tumor healthy, leaders are to cut out the unhealthy leaders who would spread their sin and lies until the whole church is defiled like them.

This is one reason it’s important to have a plurality of elders in a local church.

Yes, the whole church must hold the elders accountable to the qualifications we looked at last week.

But if an elder is disqualified by their teaching, character, and lifestyle, God has called other healthy church leaders to silence them, and rebuke them, and identify them as disqualified.

It’s difficult and uncomfortable to ask a healthy leader from another local congregation to do this when a church only has one elder who has disqualified himself.

There are many other reasons to have multiple healthy leaders in the church, but this is the one that’s before us in our passage in Titus.

So, we as a local church, Grace Baptist Church Eureka, we have to pursue as a priority a plurality of healthy church leaders, multiple qualified elders.

And Lord willing, we’ll have that by next year.

But we have to all be committed to that pursuit.

I have a couple of men I am currently working with toward that goal, but it’s going to take the whole church membership to make this a reality.

It’s important, we just saw how important it is.

So, as a first personal application, pray.

Pray that the Lord would raise up the elders he wants here that will be able to protect the church from unhealthy leaders.

And as a second personal application, specifically to the members of GBC, if you know of any other member, or even yourself, who would be a good qualified elder, then please let me know.

Toward the end of the year we’ll have official nominations and a process of vetting them before voting on them.

But even now I would like to begin the assessment and training process.

Now, our passage today had a lot to say about unhealthy leaders in the church, and how, very likely, they aren’t saved because they’re trusting in their own merit to earn their salvation instead of trusting in Jesus.

If you’re also trusting your own merit, your own goodness to sort of balance the scales, thinking that if you do enough good then it’ll outweigh your sin and you’ll be allowed into heaven.

Please know that that’s a lie.

You cannot balance the scales of your life because as Paul said in Philippians, all of your good is worthless rubbish compared to the righteousness afforded to us by Jesus.

The only thing that’ll save you and reconcile you to God so that you can live with him forever instead of receiving the just and eternal punishment for your sin.

The only thing that will do that is putting your faith in God’s Son, Jesus Christ.

He died on the cross so that by putting your faith in him you won’t have to be punished for your sin forever in hell.

And he rose from the dead so that by putting your faith in him you can live with him forever in heaven.

So, please put your faith in Jesus so that you can be forgiven and saved from God’s wrath against you for your sin.

Put your faith in Jesus, and tell him in prayer that you believe.

And tell us so that we can rejoice with you in your salvation.

Pray

Father thank you for giving us such clear instructions on how and why we are to pursue healthy leadership in your church.

Please help us to identify who you are raising up into leadership here at GBC.

Lord, I pray that you would give us the discernment to know the difference between healthy teaching from your Word and unhealthy lies that go against your Word.

I pray that you would give us the courage to rebuke those among us whose character deviates from your Word.

And for those who are rebuked, I pray that you would soften their hearts to receive the rebuke as it’s intended in love to bring them back to a right relationship with you.

And Lord, I pray that you would help us identify those who are unqualified to lead your church because of an unhealthy lifestyle of relying on their own righteousness and not the righteousness of Christ.

Please bless us in our pursuit of more elders here at GBC so that we can be a healthy church, useful for your kingdom.

We ask this in the name of your Son, Jesus. Amen.

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