In Scott Brown's sermon 'Hold Fast to the Word,' based on Titus 1:7-9, he emphasizes the need for church leaders, particularly elders, to maintain sound doctrine and resist false teachings. Brown draws a parallel between spiritual guidance and nautical navigation, warning against 'dead reckoning'—living without a strong anchor in the Word of God, which can lead to spiritual disaster. He stresses that elders must be men of character who hold tightly to the faithful Word, teaching sound doctrine and rebuking false teachings to protect the church from cultural drift and deception. Brown highlights the sufficiency of Scripture in guiding life and doctrine, contrasting it with the insufficiency of cultural norms and false teachings. He warns of the subtlety of false teachings and the importance of correcting them sharply to maintain spiritual health. The sermon concludes with a call to hold fast to the Word of God, as it is essential for the health of the church and the individual believer.

Please open your Bibles to Titus chapter 1 and find verse 7. Chapter 1 verse 7. Hard to find a better song to deal with this passage of scripture than the one we just sang, ancient words, ever true, changing me and changing you, the heart really of everything that's written here. This is the inerrant, all-sufficient, sweeter than honey. Word of God.

Verse 7. For a bishop must be blameless as a steward of God not self-willed not quick-tempered Not given to wine not violent not greedy for money, but hospitable a lover of what is good sober minded just holy Self-controlled And then we come to the beginning of the text we'll be dealing with this morning, holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and convict those who contradict. For there are many insubordinate, both idle talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole households, teaching things which they ought not for the sake of dishonest gain. One of them, 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 giving heed to Jewish fables and commandments of men who turn from the truth to the pure all things are pure but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure But even their mind and conscience are defiled. They profess to know God, but in works they deny him, being abominable, disobedient, and disqualified for every good work. The grass withers and the flower fades but the word of our God stands forever. Let's pray. Oh Lord you you have loved your church from before the foundation of the world.

You love her now and will for all eternity. So Lord come and feed your blood-bought sheep in your pasture. Uproot any false ideas, false teaching that might still reside in our hearts or those around us and that you would come and destroy the works of the devil by the power of this holy word preserved for us today. Amen. Please be seated.

So the message, The whole message of Titus is that it was God the Father's eternal purpose to save sinners by the sending of his Son Jesus Christ and then to transform them into his image. That's why Paul writes to the Roman Church, he also did predestine us to be conformed to the image of his Son. So the central verse here that we're focusing in on is verse 9, holding fast the faithful work. Now we've talked about this before that the apostle is writing toward the end of his life and he's he's highly focused here in in all of his writings and Timothy first and second Timothy and Titus really to secure the church. He knows he's going he's going to be headed be beheaded soon and he's securing the structure and the functionality and the culture of the Church of Jesus Christ before he dies.

And these verses really are about holding fast to that singular truth, that supreme source of doctrine for salvation for the functionality in the church for the functionality of our families and for our the functionality of our lives in the civil sphere. He's bringing all these things into order in this very dense book of only three chapters and 46 verses. And he addresses every matter of family life and really every matter of the heart. And all of this resting, this holding fast to the Word of Truth is really a manifestation or an application of what the Apostle Paul told the Corinthian Church in 1st Corinthians 2 verse 5, that your faith, and this is so important, should not rest in the wisdom of men but the power of God." What a blessing it is to rest on the power of God. Now there as you can see in your outline there are four main points at the end and but at the end of each section I want to give you four lessons for all of us.

This is as you can see in the first point this is the heart of the elders responsibility which the Apostle Paul has been identifying the qualifications for elders really look at these men are not highly gifted they're not they're not stars they are they are actually ordinary steady men Titus doesn't give us any gifts that are qualifiers for this man. He gives these plain, ordinary character qualities that you want in every person. You want them in yourself, but they're distinctively required for elders. And of course the whole thrust of this book, the context is Paul is writing to a young pastor on the island of Crete And this letter to Titus, I think it functions like a compass for a church. To hold fast to true north, to keep the church from drifting into dangerous waters and to protect the church from shipwreck.

Here's an illustration from the history of seafaring and nautical navigation. It's really the story of the lone genius who solved the greatest scientific problem of his time and you can read about this in in a book that was written several years ago called Longitude by Davis Sobel. But the biggest problem for sailors in the ancient world was how to know where they are in the middle of the ocean. And the solution to the problem is that you need to know the exact time at a fixed reference point. For centuries sailors could only determine latitude and they could determine where they were in latitude by using the sun and the stars, but they had no way of knowing where they were in the longitudinal spectrum.

And so the solution was to find an exact fixed point of reference like Greenwich mean time and then the local time on the ship. That's the only way that they could establish longitude and the difference between the times of Greenwich mean time, you know, of one point in time and where you were in the ocean revealed the longitude. But ordinary clocks, they couldn't keep time in the ocean because of the unreliability of hourglasses, the temperature changes, humidity changes the way hourglasses work, and the constant motion on the ocean. And because of this, even the greatest, most successful explorers like Ferdinand Magellan and Vasco de Gama and Sir Francis Drake. Sir Francis, let me say that again, is there a Jake in the house?

Sir Francis Drake. They lost their way and often they came ashore and they actually were at a different shore than they were aiming for. And in fact the problem got very deadly in 1707. Four British warships were wrecked in the Skilly Isles in England and 2, 000 people sank to their deaths. So this crisis just sparked a worldwide solution for the problem and a reward, a big reward for the person who could solve it.

That was 1714. In 1761, over 40 years later, It was finally achieved through a self-taught English clockmaker by the name of John Harrison. And after 40 years of struggle, international intrigue, a bribery, a fakery, all kinds of stuff over 40 years. This man created precise marine clocks, chronometers, and it allowed the sailors to determine longitude accurately. And it really, it transformed navigation and it also saved thousands of lives so in in the same way the church today must not navigate by dead reckoning The old seafarers called it dead reckoning and and if you were dead reckoning you just might end up getting dead but you needed a way to establish time.

The seafarers needed to know their exact location and where they were headed and how to make the modifications that they needed to reach their destination safely. Well I think this is sort of a parable of the church. When churches measure themselves by the surrounding culture, comparing themselves with themselves, comparing their churches with other churches. They they often drift off course. And the warning here is appropriate.

Hold fast to the faithful Word because dead reckoning meaning living your life without the Word of God as the central compass of your life will bring a life of disasters and in our lives it's not ships it's souls, and the confusion and the decline of your body and your church and your family. If you go about this world dead reckoning without proper understanding of where you are and this is what God has done here in his Word and this he's really speaking of the centrality of the Word of God there's nothing more effective there's nothing more soul-searching there's nothing more adequate there's nothing more powerful there is nothing more sufficient than the Word of God. Years ago James Montgomery Boyce said that the problem with the church is that she believes in the authority of Scripture and she believes in the inerrancy of Scripture. But he said the reason the church goes astray is because she doesn't really believe in the sufficiency of Scripture. She doesn't believe that it is Scripture alone that you need to govern your life.

Not pop psychology, not business models, not anything. Not your own brain, not your super highly creative person, these creative coolness technicians that try to create the church in this new image. This is false doctrine. And the Apostle Paul is dealing with it the Word of God the Word of God is powerful it assaults the pride of man that's both the good and the bad of it it draws men to God and and it teaches us the ways in which we should go and the only prescription in any family and any individual any church and whether whether it's the culture of Crete or whether it's the culture of Wade County It is the proclamation of the Word of God that Jesus Christ died for sinners and, and this is really what Paul is focusing in on in the book in the letter to Titus, that he died to set men free from their sins and to sanctify them. Because what happens is diseases spread.

They spread in the culture and then they spread right into the church. And these diseases are always harmful to families and wives and husbands and young women and young men and workers and everybody else. So this is a very pivotal letter. Now I just want to remind us you know nearly every major doctrine is here in this short letter and you can you can you can make the connection with the position the Apostle Paul was in. He knew the end was near and he wanted to secure the church.

He was near the end of his life and he's teaching Titus to thrive in a world where all men are liars, evil beasts, and lazy glutton. This is the purpose of this letter. And he's explaining what sound doctrine looks like. Well, it begins here from the faithful word and what he's saying is that you, the Christian actually adorns the doctrine like they like they wear clothes. You know some people wear their feelings on their sleeves.

Believers wear the doctrine on their sleeves and when you encounter a believer you should you should be able to hear the doctrine in their words and you should be able to see the doctrine even on their faces and observe the doctrine, the teaching of Scripture, the entire teaching from Genesis to Revelation. You should be able to observe the doctrine in their behavior because they're being shaped by this faithful word. Well the problem obviously is the culture of Crete had worked its way into the church And so the Apostle is teaching the churches in in Crete and our church as well how to live amidst the chaos of a society that's cast off the truth of God, a society that's dead reckoning and they have the bodies to show for it. And it's a little bit like today. Recently I was reading the Barna Organization who was reporting on Americans in their worldview.

What the latest information that he gathered from his surveys is that 4% of Americans have some kind of mixed worldview. And that, But at the same time among Gen Z adults it's 1%. 1% of Gen Z adults have a biblical worldview. Have a biblical worldview. Well that's compared to 2% for Millennials and that's compared to 7% to Gen X and then And that's down 12% from 1994.

And so 8 in 10 Americans, they believe in some loose biblical ideas, but they often live in ways that conflict the Bible. They're dead reckoning through the world. Barna said, the fate of our nation hangs in the balance. The national divide is an indication of the spiritual battle for the soul of America. He called it an urgent problem.

He said, when you have 1% of Gen Z, you know, exhibiting a biblical worldview, he's saying that our Christian culture faces extinction if it's not reversed. And I'll just tell you, If you or your kids are on social media or Discord or Roblox or these other places, you're being played and actually mentored and actually groomed by these social media sites and you have to understand what's going on in the world and they're the kinds of sites that that make you have some kind of affection for dead reckoning. So it's a very serious thing but Paul is dialing in on the truth this the body of truth the ancient words that are ever true and they never fail you. And people are relying on all kinds of other information to live their lives. I just read yesterday on Twitter, Elon Musk tweeted, only Grok speaks the truth.

Only truthful AI is safe. The only truth, only the truth understands the universe. Well, I'm just here to say, you do have a source of truth that's infallible. And we're always vulnerable because the devil is like a roaring lion seeking to destroy those whom he hates. And he hates, if you're a believer here, he hates you.

You got a target on your back and he has schemes to entrap you. And most of those schemes are really very, very subtle. They're not hard in your face. They sneak through the back door into your conscience and then into your life. Well, we were just in Romans, right?

Romans 12, two, Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove What is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God? So this this whole letter here and particularly verse 9 breathes the centrality of the Word of God, holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort those and convict those who contradict. Now back up, this is one of the qualifications for church elders. It's the last one that's listed and that is he is doing something, he is holding fast to the faithful word. This is a doctrinal qualification for an elder.

It keeps him from dead reckoning and it keeps his church from dead reckoning if they listen to the Word of God. Now notice here in the text there are two things that he does first to teach sound doctrine and second to rebuke false doctrine. So there's this instruction in what is true and then there is a rebuking of what is not true. And he uses a word hold fast. I think you should just meditate on that word hold hold fast to the faithful word and it indicates a fervency it indicates a fierce gripping a cling like a hard clinging to something.

I couldn't get out of my mind the story of one of David's mighty men Eliezer in second Samuel chapter twenty three verse nine and he he rose up he attacked the Philistines and the text says until his hand was weary and his hand froze to the sword. That's the kind of imagery that the Apostle Paul is bringing back when he says, hold fast the faithful word. Some of you might wonder why we have already read several passages of scripture in this church. Did you notice? Because our heart's desire, our greatest hope is that we ourselves as elders and our congregation is holding fast to the word of truth and not letting it go for anything And that's what he's speaking about.

This unwavering devotion is just breeze through this. Elders and church members should hold the Word higher than their own personal voices in their minds, in their heads. And even convictions in a congregation to hold fast the word of life. And that's why the apostle Paul in Colossians he was speaking to that church and he said him we preach warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. Well, that's really the objective of everything that your elders are doing, at least that's what we hope will be of the result of it, that we would warn every man to present every man perfect in Jesus Christ.

That's why we're here this morning. You know Timothy, Paul says to Timothy a similar thing in 2nd Timothy 1.13, hold fast the pattern of words which you have heard. Hold it fast like Eliezer, like your hand is frozen to it and hanging on to it with all that you can not veering away but then he says that there's a purpose for this that he may be able got that In order that like there's a purpose for the holding fast to the word to keep himself in the church from dead reckoning and he and there are two responsibilities that he gives that they may be able by sound doctrine to exhort and convict those who contradict. Let's break this up. Sound doctrine.

That term, sound, appears multiple times in Paul's letters and twice here in our text. It has to do with healthy or life-giving. Healthy stuff that's good for you. There's a lot of really bad stuff for you. It's junk food in the form of ideas, but here it's by healthy doctrine.

And then there are two responsibilities, exhort and convict. Now just so you know, This will give you insight on how your elders think. We're actually required to think this way and be poised this way. Don't blame it on us. We're under divine commands.

First of all, to exhort. This is actually a beautiful word that breathes the whole idea of encouragement, of instruction, and bringing actual practicality to the Word of God. It's more than just detailing facts and figures of doctrine, but encouragement and stimulus to follow the beauty of the doctrine, to cast a vision really for the superiority of all of God's commands. So that's that is parakalo or parakaleo and then the second is convict. It's a different word.

Now The term means to shame. To shame. If you've ever felt shamed by the preaching of the word in this church, then if it was done properly in love then you should give thanks because this is part of what elders are supposed to do. A Greek dictionary says it means to, the word convict means to shame, to show someone his sin and to summon him to repentance. And John Stott, one of the commentators on this verse, he said, this is to refute people is not just to contradict them, but to actually overthrow them in their arguments.

So and you find this same idea throughout Paul's letters in When he was writing to the Ephesians in Ephesians 5, he says, have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. This is a distinctive, unfashionable quality that elders must have. Paul tells Timothy in 2 Timothy 4, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season, and listen to what he said, how he says you should do this. Convince, rebuke, exhort, but then he says this, and this is really important, with all long suffering and teaching. In other words you need to stay at it because you know that there are people that won't be listening, they won't hear it.

This is the discipline of the Lord that Hebrews 12 talked about. He says, Don't despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you're rebuked by him. For whom the Lord loves, he chastens, and he scourges every son whom he receives. We read in John 3.19 Jesus says, as many as I love, I rebuke and chasten therefore be zealous and repent so you have this teaching encouragement par kaleo idea and and then you have the the exhortation the teaching informs the mind but the exhortation drives it into your life. And teaching informs, exhortation urges.

In forms exhortation urges I really I recently heard somebody say it like this this this this life of egg of exhorting is a little bit like putting wood on the fire, in the fireplace. And then to the exhortation is to light that wood on fire. That's what the exhortation, the rebuke is for. Now notice the goal here and you find this in different places in Titus, the goal is not to destroy but to restore. That's the purpose.

So, in preaching, elders must rebuke. And the rebukes are reminders because we need reminders. That's why the Bible repeats itself so much. But here's one thing it also does and I hope it does for you and you know what it needs to be for me as well. This helps the church to do one of the most important things that happens silently in the soul and that is it helps you to keep short accounts with your sin.

It's so critical that we keep short accounts. Is there any sin that's been running in your life and you haven't kept short accounts with it? It's still running. It was running last year, it was running the year before. Just take this as an opportunity to recognize that God has given the Word of God and the preaching of the Word to help the church keep short accounts so that the church is continually turning away from sin, turning toward true north, rejecting dead reckoning.

And this is a little bit like discipline. There are various levels of church discipline. Of course, there's formal church discipline where a person is actually excommunicated by the church. But there are formative disciplines. Like when you get up in the morning, hopefully you do, and you read the word of God, that's a form of discipline.

God is calibrating your soul. He's setting you back to true north. You know where you are, longitude and latitude, you know, in your life. And then there's also private discipline. You have your wife or your husband comes to you and says, Honey, I think you've drifted off course.

Okay, or when a brother or a sister sees another brother or a sister drifting Then these are these are just the normal common ways and then you have the preaching of the Word of God So there are various ways that God exhorts and corrects his church. Now this is done through slow, deliberate, daily, weekly deposits of the Word of God. And you know we are here as a church in the book of Titus. We're focused, our normal practice is to work through every verse of a book of the Bible. We've been doing this for 25 years.

But there's a brilliant illustration of how important this is. John Calvin came to Geneva to preach. He preached expository sermons for two years. And his teaching was causing so much tumult in families and churches and even in the government that they kicked him out of the city. They exiled him.

They said, get out of here. And he left. And for three years, but things got so bad in Geneva, the culture just kept drifting off into the rocks, that the city fathers said, Can you come back? So he comes back into the city after this three-year exile. And he walks into the pulpit in his church.

And he opens his Bible. And he starts with the last verse he left off years ago because he believed that it was it was the consistent expository preaching of the Word of God that keeps the church on course. You know and what is he teaching? Sound doctrine. That's called healthy teaching.

Okay what's the first lesson? The first lesson is hold fast to the faithful word because your health, the health of This church is really dependent upon the Word of God. The church is at stake. Now, you know, you are all here listening. Some of you are listening.

Some of you are not. That's normal. Some of us drift every once in a while. Now, but here's what I'm asking, how do you listen to sermons? I'm going to give you questions to ask yourself.

How do you listen to sermons so that you're not, you're constantly being pulled out of dead reckoning? Is there anything I need to correct? Is there anything I need to correct? Is there anything I need to correct in my life? Is there anything that I need to do as a result of what I just heard.

And the next question, is there anything I need to repent of? Is there anything I need to repent of? And is there anything that I needed to be reminded of and give thanks to God that he reminded you. Hold fast to the word. That's the first lesson.

So then we enter into verses 10 through 14 and the Apostle gives the reasons for this responsibility And there are four characteristics, four things going on in Crete that really require this responsibility. And he's talking about false teachers here. And, you know, my understanding of this passage, the Apostle Paul is dealing with various kinds of false teachers in this letter to Titus. False teaching about salvation, false teaching about manhood, false teaching about young women, false teaching about young men, and to get calibrated to what the Bible says. But here's what he says, first of all, there are many insubordinate.

This is why this requires instruction and rebuke. They won't submit to God. They won't submit to the appointed authorities that God has given them. And they won't submit to the word of God. They just keep ignoring the clear things that God has been teaching them from the Word of God.

They actually hate authority. This is a mark of our times. Second, they are idle talkers. Funny, it's a funny word that the apostle uses. Are you ready?

And this comes out of a dry Greek technical dictionary. This word means to be a windbag, a windbag. And then they are deceivers. In other words, they have intentional plans. They're seducers.

The word deceiver that he uses here really speaks of a motivation to seduce And then he says that they are of the circumcision. Now, who's that? Because he's talking both to Gentiles, and he's talking to those of the circumcision, to Jews. He's talking to both groups here in this letter. He's talking, when he says, especially those of the circumcision, these were law-keeping Jews.

They kept the food laws. You know, they loved the Pentateuch, and they were reading it and memorizing it but they were always adding to the law And one of the most blatant examples is circumcision. And they were saying you must be circumcised in order to be saved. But this was common among the Jews. It's still common among the Jews where they add to the word of God and thus actually defeating it.

You have the Midrash and the Talmud and they made rules. This is called fences around the law, sort of the protect the law. The law wasn't enough. You've got to add things to it to make it cooler. They actually weren't so cool.

But they had all kinds of rules for purification, like a specific quantity of water to wash and it had to be poured from a particular vessel and it had to be done twice And it was unlawful in the midrash to, if you were writing something, to erase it. That's work on the Sabbath. Extinguishing a fire. You can't do that. That's work on the Sabbath.

Carrying anything between houses. Walking, it's about three quarters of a mile. You can't walk more than three quarters of a mile on the Sabbath. Now does the Bible say that? Let's see, where does it say that?

That you can't walk more than 2, 000 cubits. It doesn't say that. It was required to have specific blessings after food. There was the doctrine of Corbin which was an unbiblical proposition that you could declare property dedicated to God and give it all away so that you don't have anything to take care of your family. That was a wicked thing.

Jesus in Matthew 7 attacks this. Which foods could be tithed? It prohibited kneading bread, baking, tying a knot, untying a knot, writing two letters, picking grain on the Sabbath. Jesus addressed this directly in Matthew chapter 12. Healing on the Sabbath.

Remember the story? Boy, this story is so beautiful. There was a lame man at the pool of Bethesda in John chapter 5, verse 10. This man had been lame for 38 years and Jesus says to this man take up your bed and walk and he took up his bed and did the astonishment of everybody who knew that he'd been lame for 38 years. He picked up his bed and he started walking and the Jews said to him, it is the Sabbath.

It is not lawful for you to carry your bed okay this these were these extra biblical laws about washings and getting your being being a pure person before God celebrating the Sabbath they they had encrusted the true north of the law of God with all these human traditions and these regulations. The Apostle Paul deals with this and Jesus does in his ministry. I won't turn there but Paul tells pastors what to do are you ready for this whose mouths must be stopped they must be stopped and he's he's using words that really speak of the control of a wild animal. You ever been afraid of being attacked by a wild animal? Like how about a pit bull?

What would you do? What would you do? Well here he's saying you must muzzle them. They're out of control. That's why Luther said in table talk, he said, I must be a soldier and a shepherd.

I must fight and resist and yes even bite and defend them against wolves. So he's saying their mouths must be stopped. Now why? Well because of their influence. Look at verse 11.

Well look they subvert whole households teaching things which they ought not for the sake of dishonest gain. And so there's lots of harmful teaching. It's not even a false gospel, it's false teaching. And he's going to talk about it in the next chapter. You know, the teaching of this false teaching is it undermines young men it distracts young wives it derails older women and it harms young men and and what and what it does what what it what dead reckoning does how devastating it is is that you're really you're really co-signing on the drift of the culture.

And the Apostle says, no, their mouths must be stopped. Vance Habner said this, he said, when the sheep get dingy the goats feel more comfortable. You know when pastors and you know when people in the church refuse to stop the mouths of bad teaching because they're trying to fit in it's a danger. Now there's so many so many elements of false teaching about creation about the home about how to govern everything but but today we have all kinds of false teachings that have really been You know purported particularly by one of the greatest enemies of Western civilization, which is feminism But you have you have even believers there they're learning how to interpret who they are through the any enneagram, you know what that is Look it up. It's terrible or yoga or mindfulness or transcendental meditation.

He mentions genealogies here, astrology, interpreting things that are contrary to the Bible, very interesting inventions of men. So that's why he's saying their mouths must be stopped because they're so harmful to families and everybody else and then he speaks of their character. One of them, a prophet of their own said, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy glutton. This testimony is true. This was said by a great prophet Epimenides.

He was kind of the Jordan Peterson of his time. Plato called him that divinely inspired man. All kinds of fables rose up around his life. People in Crete believed that he lived 300 years. Really?

You think so? But the ancient world was was filled with fables like this. Different cultures have different sin patterns. All cultures are not created equal. The culture in Crete was a disaster.

I think we have a better culture here than we had in Crete. There are actually very different. The culture in this church is the weirdest culture you'll ever encounter because you have people who are governed by the word of God. And they're not walking like the rest of this world. And so he makes this statement, all cretins are such...

Well, I think that he's... This is hyperbole. Obviously, every single person in Crete is not like this but every person has been affected by it just like you and I have been affected by many of the things in our culture that we grew up with. And they're just teaching things contrary to the Bible. You know Mormonism, androgyny, environmentalism, you know all these self-help podcasts and books that you don't need them.

You need the Word of God. And what the Apostle Paul says, you have to have the courage to correct them because they because they don't love the truth. So then what do we say about this? Here's the second lesson. The Word of God is disruptive to life patterns.

Well, you know, you probably became a Christian because you understood that you needed your life patterns to be disrupted by Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world. So that's the lesson. The Word of God is disruptive to life patterns all over. And then Titus's duty, again he returns to this idea of exhortation and correcting. He says rebuke and restore them, therefore rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in the face.

So the duty is to rebuke them and then the way that you do it. Now this is not very politically correct, okay, It's actually very offensive. How do you do it? How do you carry this out? How do you do the rebuke?

You do it sharply. You didn't think that was in the Bible, did you? You didn't think that Christians are actually deputized to do this. You will not win, you may not win all of your friends because you actually do this. We often don't rebuke because we're afraid of rejection.

Because we anticipate a reaction. And rightfully so. But here's a reality. If you're preaching or if you're in a counseling situation with someone you're always aware that if you correct you may lose that person and you may lose in their eyes you might lose your credibility because you rebuke them sharply. The man who is filled with the Spirit, the Apostle Paul and Titus, is commanding harshness.

Just let that sink in. The Bible tells me so. But why? That they may be sound. In other words, that they might be healthy.

There's hope. You know what that means? That means that some of these people can change. The people on Crete, these liars and evil beasts and lazy gluttons, they can change. This is the beautiful miracle of the gospel.

And notice that they were distracted by incorrect and unimportant things, not giving heed to Jewish fables and commandments of men who turn from the truth. Jesus said, why do you set aside the commandments of God for the sake of your tradition? That's what he's talking about here. And then he says to the pure all things are pure but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure even their mind and conscience are defiled. Now this is hyperbole because there are some things that are impure.

There are many things that are not impure. He's not dealing with that. But I believe, it's a difficult phrase, I believe what he's saying is that you can do good things, you can do things that look pure on the outside but in but unless you have been purified your desires have been defiled and when you become a Christian God changes your want or he changes what you want and you actually want pure things to the pure those who have been saved those who've had their sins washed away those who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus, those who hate their sin to the pure, to those kind of pure, then all things are pure because they want pure things. The converted person is inclined toward purity. And notice he mentions the mind and the conscience.

He begins with the mind because that's where really everything starts. And then the mind affects the conscience. And he says their consciences are defiled. Here's the third lesson from this section. Don't be disturbed by sharp correction that was meant to foster soundness and health in your life.

Don't despise that. You know I think this goes with husbands and wives because husbands wives have a they have a front row seat on what's really going on and husbands you should listen to your wife and wife you should listen to your husband he's been given authority in this home but don't be disturbed by sharp correction that's designed to foster soundness and that that keeps a church and a family and an individual from the disasters of dead reckoning. And then for the fourth point, the identity of the hypocrites is revealed. They profess to know God but in works they deny him being abominable disobedient and disqualified for every good work. So he's talking about people who teach false things.

Some of those false things are false gospels. Some of them are just falsehoods that are contrary to the Bible. Matthew Henry says it like this, There are many who in word and tongue profess to know God and yet in their lives and conversations deny and reject him their practice is a contradiction to their profession now these are these are scary words in a way. A person can hear the word and make no progress. Is that you?

The word of God comes, it convicts you, but you're not transformed. You don't change. The word just doesn't change you. And you hear the preaching and you walk out the same that's the danger let me say it a different way the most dangerous thing that you can do please hear this is hear the truth without hearing the truth Jesus said having hearing you do not hear and seeing you do not see. It is actually very dangerous for you and me to hear the preaching and go away unchanged.

Because what happens to the unbeliever, the truth and the conviction and the exhortation, It just hardens him. It just makes him less sensible, less sensitive again. And it's like calluses. It just makes him insensitive to the truth. The more truth you hear, the more danger you are in if you don't love the truth.

And Jesus addressed this many, many different ways. He said to the Jews, if you were Abraham's children, you would do the deeds of Abraham. You know, Ezekiel talks about people who come. He says, they hear your words, but they do not do them. With their mouth they show love, this is Ezekiel 33, 31, but their hearts pursue their own gain.

And listen to this, Listen to this graphic illustration. He's saying this is what you're like if you do this. You are to them, you meaning the preacher. The preacher is as a very lovely song of one who has a pleasant voice and can play well on an instrument for they hear your words but they do not do them just up there playing meaningless songs and if that's true of you you're in danger. Paul loops back to this six times in these 46 verses, this whole idea.

So be careful. The fourth lesson is by their works you will know them. By their works you will know them. When we were saved, we took a grip on Jesus Christ and his word, on the sufficiency of Jesus Christ, which is the exact same thing as the sufficiency of Scripture. Jesus wrote every word of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.

The sufficiency of Scripture is the sufficiency of Jesus Christ alone. By their works you will know them. We are not saved by our works. Praise God for that. But our works prove if we were saved.

And when we are saved, like Eliezer, we are challenged to hold fast, to let your fingers freeze on the implanted word which James says which is able to save your souls. And that brothers and sisters will keep you from dead reckoning your way through this life. So four lessons, I'll repeat them and we'll be done. Hold fast to the faithful word, the health of the churches at stake. Second, the Word of God is disruptive to life patterns.

Third, don't be disturbed by sharp correction because it fosters soundness. And fourth, by their works you will know them. I want to close with a text in Titus chapter 3, but when the kindness and love of God our Savior toward man appeared not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ, our Savior." Well, that really is the message of these verses. Like Eliezer as a church hold fast. And you'll always know where you are in this raging sea that you are floating in today.

Praise God for that. You can know who you are and where you are and what you need to do. That's beautiful. Would you pray with me? Father, again, we can't look into your word, but to see its profound beauty on the one hand and that it is like a hammer and a fire on the other hand.

And I pray that this testimony which is sweeter than honey in the honeycomb might be the central shaping force in our lives. Amen. Thanks for watching!