"When All is Said" pt.1
Welcome everybody, I’m so glad you’re here today as we kick off a new series “When all is said”
Have you ever you just sat and thought about your purpose?
We may have career goals, family goals, life goals that we want to strive to meet
At the end of the day I think all of us would agree that the desire of most of us is to leave this world a little bit better than we found it
We want to leave some kind of lasting impact on something or someone
When all is said what are we really about?
In this series we’re going to be walking through a short book at the end of the New Testament, Titus as we seek to really answer the question when all is said what are we the church about?
We’ll get into it in a little bit, but Titus has been assigned by Paul to plant gospel centered churches in a dark place of Crete.
I don’t want to try to take every piece of scripture and compare it to what we’re walking through today, but I do believe that the instructions and warnings of Paul to Titus of building an effective church can be applicable to us today as we find ourselves still in a crazy period of life
Paul is giving us blueprints of a successful thriving church in the middle of a dark sin filled culture
When it’s all said and done these are the non negotiable attributes of the church
God’s plan from the start (vs. 1-4)
Let’s talk about the situation for a minute
Titus is what we would call a pastoral epistle because Paul is writing the letter another pastor, but Titus is actually a well rounded church planter that we see mentioned in Galatians 2 and 2 Corinthians 8.
We don’t know much about Titus, but we do know is that he was in love with Jesus and he wasn’t willing to get in the trenches of ministry and he was pretty successful in the trenches.
This time is no different as Paul has sent him to the island of Crete.
Paul saw Crete as a gateway for the gospel because of the amount of traffic that came through Crete because of its harbors.
It was a fantastic missionary strategy of Paul to send a successful church planter to plant churches in a diverse chain of islands, but if know anything about Crete, it was a pretty big ask.
Because of the harbors and traffic, Crete was more of Tortuga kind of city if you’ve seen Pirates of the Caribbean
It was full of pirates and ex Roman mercenaries that lived those kinds of lifestyles
One of there own, a poet in that day said it best of them in verse 12.
To be Cretan was to be a liar. It was almost applauded if you were a good liar.
Crete was considered the birthplace of Zeus if know anything about Greek mythology so there was a sense of entitlement because they were connected to the gods
It was a place full of immoral sexual behavior and finding someone sober at any point during the day was almost impossible not to mention the insane amount of political corruption
It was unsafe it was violent it was darker than your imagination can lead you to believe
This is where Titus has been sent
This is why Paul begins the way he does
He talks about how God is a God of truth and he uses godliness as a theme throughout this letter
Paul calls himself a servant of God to remind Titus who he belongs to
If you’ve been around here long enough, you know I like the word identity
It’s why you do what you do and why you’re here and define so where you’re going
Can I just say you belong to God
There is nothing in this world that can change that
And here’s why- to make disciples
Saved from but then saved to
The church is plan A for the story of Jesus
Cretans wouldn’t have anything concrete it was always on a whim, but Paul says that God planned out the story of redemption before the world began (before times eternal)
We are equipped with God’s plan and his message
It’s not something that we have to make up and the responsibility isn’t on us
The call for godly leadership (vs. 5-9)
This section is geared towards qualifications of pastors, but the reality of the matter is a healthy church needs a group of men who are sold out to Jesus
Leadership is influence
Think about people that you would call leaders in your life. They have always influenced you either in a positive or negative way.
Godly leaders should always influence positively
Let’s go through these quickly
Two things that I think are applicable to here
Leaders lead by following Jesus
If you want to hand kingdom influence, you have to saturate your life with the word of God
The danger of religion (vs. 10-16)
There false teaching mentioned all throughout the New Testament
““Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.” Matthew 7:15 ESV
Don’t miss this because it’s not like false teaching just disappeared
I would define false teaching as anything that puts something else before God or adds something to God
Satan has always tried to get humanity to believe that Jesus isn’t enough
Here followers of Judaism are saying that there has to be adherence to the Mosaic law but even if that was true they were telling people that out of genuine concern for souls they were doing it for money
Remember godliness is the theme, so Paul is about to contrast godliness and religion
Religion can not produce godliness
It’s a matter of shaping behavior vs character
We don’t do things because we’re scared of the outcome
If it’s about behavior it was never really about Jesus in the first place and at some point it just becomes too much so it causes people to drift back and forth
Desperate religion can not reshape the heart
It causes me to negotiate with sin because my life has literally become a balance scale.
“What the true proverb says has happened to them: “The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.”” 2 Peter 2:22 ESV
There’s no freedom in religion
God has always wanted a people that loves righteousness
Christianity isn’t about doing better it’s life changing
What we believe about Jesus affects the way we live and the way we live begins to demonstrate what we believe
The gospel isn’t good advice for us it’s good news
Can I ask you to evaluate what you hear and what you believe
You can’t get hit with that kind of force and look the same