Titus 1:10-16 - Confronting False Teaching and Fruit

I invite you to take your Bible and go with me over to the book of Titus.

The book of Titus.

In the early 1800s, a ship by the name of the Earl of Aberbegini, Govinny, so I got it backwards, left England with about 400 people.

It was a large ship, strong, built well.

But in February in 1805, a ship was coming close to the coast of England, and one of the pilots came in a small vessel and took over control of the ship in order to direct it through some troubling waters.

The man appeared to be confident, experienced, and so the ship's captain and the crew trusted him.

The passengers, their very lives were in his hands.

And as he sought to bring that ship into harbor, he misread the currents and the channels.

And he brought that great vessel of 400 people directly into a sandbank.

And before it was recognized what kind of trouble they were in, the ship began to break up.

And there, in the very sight of land itself, over 200 people died.

It's a terrifying and very, very humbling and sobering occurrence.

And it brings a thought to my mind that the people we put our trust into and the voices that we listen to have an effect upon us.

I remember one of my mentors telling me, he said, the books you read now and the people you listen to now will make you who you are in five years.

And I thought, I better listen to that, and I better be careful today, because tomorrow depends on who I'm who I'm saying yes to in my life.

The voices we trust shape the direction of our lives.

Those very lives of those 400 people were in the hands of that one man.

And so when those voices are good, it can be very, very beneficial.

But when those voices are wrong or purposely misleading, it can be extremely dangerous.

And consequences can be very real.

Marriages, life, families, and even churches are influenced by voices.

Paul understood that, and Titus is learning that, and the church that Titus is serving and the churches that he's serving are facing that.

And it's important for us to remember that and to learn that as well.

And as we open up Titus chapter 1 here, particularly in the last part of this chapter, in verses 10 to 16, we enter into a world where words are having their effect.

Titus 1 · chapter mention

They're doing damage.

And when we read this passage, Paul is not writing some sort of distant unbiased theological essay about church leadership.

He's writing into the middle of a pastoral crisis.

In the middle of this situation are households that are being unsettled.

Teachers who shouldn't be teachers are gaining an influence, and messages that promise depth are doing no more than people bringing people away from the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And right in the middle of all of that is Titus trying to shepherd these congregations and trying to help them see that what they're hearing is nothing but cheap deception.

And so as we read this, we need to remember that we live in a similar situation with similar voices, with similar purposes and designs that we'll read about here in just a moment.

And this morning, I want us to do more than just identify false teachers.

I want us to understand something better than that and bigger than that.

And that is that Christ cares for his people, and he does so in the middle of a world that's just like what Paul and Titus are facing and just like what we're in now.

Because Paul is going to show us that Christ shepherds his people, that he takes care of them, that he strengthens them and protects them and nourishes them, and he has the means to do it.

And as we've been looking, he does it through godly leadership, through men who can, by way of their character and their communication, lead people to Christ, who have the form of Christ in their behavior and the focus on Christ in their speech and in their preaching.

And so today I want us to understand more of why that's the case, because we now get into the situation itself here in Crete.

And so Paul takes Titus here, and he takes us and he brings us into this world of per persuasive voices, of distorting messages, and of hearts that are untouched by grace, and tells us that Christ is not here in a panic.

He's here speaking clarity, calmness, and courage that will keep his people.

So let's take a look at this passage of scripture and see how Christ cares for his people by alerting them to some trouble, but also directing them to how they might be stable.

And the first thing I want us to see are the misleading voices that are here on Crete.

Take a look at verse 10.

He says, There are many rebellious people, full of empty talk and deception, especially those from the circumcision party.

Now, Paul begins here moving through the character and the communication of the church leadership by their modeling and their message.

He tells them why this is important.

It's important because there are misleading voices out there.

Paul is not talking in some distant theoretical realm.

He's speaking about real people in real time.

And he's saying that these voices are present and they're multiplying and they're persuasive.

And he even uses the word many there to describe them.

These people who sound spiritual but have nothing really sound to offer.

And he gives a description of these men in three different words.

They're rebellious, they're empty talkers, and they're deceivers.

Those are strong words, but they each have their own sense of flavor about them.

First of all, they're rebellious, and it talks about their posture toward the truth.

They are in direct contradiction to God, his word, and his authority.

They are resisting his lordship, they are rebellious people.

And then he says that they're empty talkers.

And it's talking about the substance of their message.

It's empty.

Now they might be speaking with a lot of words, they might sound persuasive in their arguments, they might be able to pull out a number of verses that they stack together, but when you put it all together and give it a title, Paul says they're empty talkers.

They might be able to fill up a radio broadcast or a television show or a YouTube video or a blog or a podcast.

But at the end of it, all that's been spent is nothing but your time.

And then they are deceivers.

Their posture is rebellious, their substance is empty, and their effect is damaging.

They're deceivers.

They are literally influencing people away from the truth, not toward it.

And Paul says something about them.

He said they must be silenced.

It's necessary in verse 11 to silence them.

Why?

Because they're ruining entire households by teaching what they shouldn't.

The effect is real.

People are being harmed.

These are not just opinions that are being offered that can be simply dealt with in a theoretical fashion.

People are finding themselves hurt by what they're hearing.

Households are receiving the effect of these rebellious, empty, deceiving teachers.

The gospel is being distorted, and their consciences are being burdened by things that God would not lay upon them.

Sadly, this is not a new thing in Scripture.

All over the Old Testament, the prophets talk about other prophets who proclaim peace, peace when there is no peace.

Teachers who promise blessing, but ignoring people's sin.

Leaders who use spiritual language that actually masks their own self-interest.

And here we find in here why there must be spiritual leadership who has the modeling of Christ in their behavior, the form of Christ and how they live their lives, and the voice of Christ in their message.

Because Christ is meant to be on display by modeling and the message.

And so he doesn't leave his church vulnerable here.

He's already explained what the antidote is.

Now he's talking about the force of that so that we might understand its effect.

It is a good effect, and it protects us from these kind of people.

Paul's world is no different than our own.

In fact, it's perhaps even more imperative for us that we listen to this.

Because in Paul's world, you had to meet those messengers face to face somewhere.

Perhaps you might be able to read their writing in some fashion.

But now we have YouTube channels, we've got TikTok reels, we've got Instagram, we've got books that can be published by yourself.

You don't even have to persuade a publisher to give it some room.

All of these teaching opportunities are available to say nothing about radio and to say nothing about television.

Or churches and pulpits and classrooms.

Some of those voices out there are faithful.

Thank God they are.

But there are others who are sincere, misguided people, and then there are spiritually empty people who are persuasive, and then there are those who they know what they're doing, and they're twisting and perverting the truth for their own purposes.

These people are not just locked into this time and space, they're brought into our own time and space.

And those voices are out there.

There are voices that are saying you can have a Christianity without repentance.

That sin is really something other than the limitations that hold you back from being the true self that you really ought to be.

And they use Christian vocabulary and empty it of any of its deep theological meaning.

They make the cross something other than the meeting place of judgment and mercy.

And then there are those who piggyback on that who say that Christianity is really just about personal fulfillment, gaining a healthy vision of yourself, and that the highest good is for you to be able to affirm yourself.

And so yourself becomes the authority rather than scripture.

And then there are those who turn Christianity into a set of techniques.

They talk about manifestations, they talk about declarations, they talk about spiritual laws, they talk about promises of outcome.

And it replaced the trust that we should have in Christ with formulas to express, words to speak out.

And if there's any failure at all, you're left asking yourself, did I activate the principle in the right way?

This really was brought home to me with one of my cousins, a dear, dear cousin of mine, who had gotten caught up in this kind of teaching.

And he had fallen off of a wall that he was working with the rest of his family in construction on, and he landed 10 feet down flat on his foot.

And he said he immediately rebuked Satan in the name of Jesus.

My first word would have been, ouch.

And he said to me, as sincerely as he could, the pain went away.

Like, okay.

He said, but I woke up the next day and my the bottom of my foot was completely bruised, black and blue and dark and everything.

And then he said this to me if I had only had more faith, I think I could have even made the bruise not show up.

I said to him, I said, one of these days, you're gonna realize that that doesn't work, that that isn't what God says.

And you're going to start to question the God that you think has given you these formulas, because the formulas aren't going to work.

He said, I want you to know something.

This isn't how God operates.

And I want you to be able to look at him with truth and understanding, even when life is filled with trouble.

He married a lady who had had of a full hysterectomy, and they had convinced themselves, if they had just enough faith, that somehow she would be pregnant.

It's tragic what was happening, how absolutely perverted his understanding had become, because these per persuasive voices had spoken over and over and over and over again that if you simply repeat these formulas, that somehow you could actualize the impossible like that.

There's teaching today from rebellious, empty talkers who are deceiving people.

There are others who are fusing political ideology with the gospel, thinking that allegiance to a party is the same thing as being aligned with Christ.

And it's causing people to be filled with fear and suspicion and ready to mark out division.

Our country is filled with that sort of atmosphere.

And you pick your party, I'm not mentioning a single one of them.

Because it's on both sides of the fence.

There's a teaching that elevates personal revelation above scripture, where impressions and dreams become the authority that guides people.

I went to California to a large church that was internationally renowned, and there I talked to a guy who said that he had gone into a trance for three days and came out a stronger believer.

And I said to him, I said, I don't think that's how God sanctifies his people.

It isn't about that sort of thing at all.

No, it promises immediacy, it promises this idea that God is at work in the instant, in the moment, but it leaves people who are susceptible to that, to all sorts of deception and confusion and manipulation.

Someone says to another, God told me to tell you this, and your answer should be, God knows my address.

Right?

Okay.

And then there was something that I had to find freedom from after some years.

There's teaching that burdens consciences with rules that God did not give.

That talk about rules about your food that you eat or the clothing that you wear or the holidays that you go on or spiritual performances that you must attend to.

It sounds silly to say this, but after being bound up by that kind of legalistic frame, I had to actually inform my conscience of what was allowable or not allowable in actions to do.

And I'd gotten myself to the place where I understood that it was legalism, that the rules that they had imposed upon my conscience were not biblical, but I still had to learn to exercise my life within the freedom that's found in Christ.

And here is a crazy example.

Royal and I were told you can't go to movies.

Movies are wrong, right?

Some of them are, some of them aren't.

But we were told, don't even think about it.

Movies absolutely should not be gone to.

Anyway, there was no streaming back then.

There was no such thing.

So Royal and I, after some time, had brought ourselves to the place where we thought, I think with some appropriate wisdom and understanding, we can go see a movie.

And so with fear, not fear, but just with some has some some informed hesitancy and and and awkwardness in the moment, we went to see our first movie after we had pulled ourselves out of that legalism.

The Lion King.

Yeah.

All right.

So this message is it's personal.

It's personal for you too, I know, because I know some of your stories.

And I know some of the things I just mentioned, they don't just hover on your periphery.

They've been in your home, they've been in your head.

Paul says they must be silenced.

Not because God wants a lot of suspicious people, he wants healthy people.

He wants people who are filled with sound doctrine, healthy teaching is another way to say that same thing.

Because he cares about our stability, he cares about our clarity, he cares about our spiritual health.

He wants us to live our life without fear and anxiety and trouble and distress, even if everything outside is filled with troubled waters.

So Paul is saying here this is why, Titus, you need to find godly leadership that models Christ and whose message is centered on Christ.

Because the more you show them Christ and the more you talk about Christ, the more steady and stable and strong God's people will be, the more protected they will be against all of those voices that are out there trying to gain their hearing and trying to bear an influence over them.

So we must be discerning about the voices that we allow into our lives.

And we must ensure that we do just as the Bereans do, who took the Apostle Paul and said, We're not going to listen to you unless the scriptures speak about those matters well.

We must pray for the leadership of this church that it would maintain a direction toward Christ, bringing us all that same place to Him, and who are able with care and yet courageous spirits to answer these false things.

Now let's go a little deeper.

Point two.

That was misleading voices, but we want to see underneath all of this in point two the misaligned motives that they have.

Because Paul now pulls back the curtains of their actions and shows us what the motives are behind all of these things.

Take a look again at verse 11 and 12.

It's necessary to silence them.

They are ruining entire households by teaching what they shouldn't in order to get money dishonestly.

The reason why they're doing all of this is not driven by love for Christ, but by personal gain.

Paul is telling us here what is underneath, particularly in Crete, in the culture that's there, the moral depravity that's there in the society, and he gets it very, very personal.

And he reaches, as you can see here, he reaches for a line from one of Crete's own poets, Epimenides, and he speaks these words.

He said, one of their very own prophets says, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.

And then he says, This testimony is true.

Now, Paul is not advocating any kind of prejudice.

He's exposing the evils of the society that are there.

That this is the atmosphere that Titus is ministering in.

That Crete is a place where voices multiply because of their greed.

In fact, there is a Greek word to creetize, is how we would transliterate it, and it means to lie.

Can you imagine?

Where are you from?

Crete, liar.

That's exactly what it's talking about.

And Polybius wrote, another contemporary wrote that the normal thing in Crete was to pursue money.

It was considered the highest good.

The more I can get, the better life is.

That is the soil for false teaching.

Because you are pulling on everybody's desires that are self-interested, because everybody has themselves at the center.

And so be careful.

Because these people are teaching for the purposes of selfish gain.

And because selfish gain is in their heart, they're going to ply people who have selfish gain in their hearts with words that will sound good to them but lead them astray.

Because it's playing all of your inner inappropriate motivations, because they have inner inappropriate motivations.

And so they use spiritual language in order to build a personal platform.

They leverage their influence to receive money, our status, our control.

And in the process, everybody that they're speaking to are just tools to their own personal lens.

They're not shepherds.

They're not shepherds at all.

And we see this in our day, this combination of self-indulgence and self-promotion and spiritual language being used.

And today it can be done in the millions, not just in households.

Where ministries are built around the personality of a leader, where influencers use fear to gain their loyalty.

In movements that promise blessing in exchange for money, and they use their own lifestyle as an example of how that works.

Not realizing a lot of poor people, well, they realize it, but the people don't realize it, that a lot of a lot of their giving has funded that.

And you're making yourself poorer so they can become richer, so they can say, look what happens.

And all you do is end up being a part of the vicious cycle of siphoning your own money away to that man's selfish greed.

And then there are those teachers who use guilt in order to control them.

Royal and I watched a tragic, tragic documentary this week of the fundamentalist Latter-day Saints, of people that thought that polygamy was still active today.

And one man, I don't know, married 22 women, many of them underage, not even pubescent.

Thankfully, he's in jail and won't get out ever again.

But it just shows how deceptive and how deceiving the mind can be to control people for their own perverse ends, whether it be money or sexual favors or pride.

Paul says here, rebuke them sharply.

To move into those places and to speak plainly when ambiguity is reigning, to expose what's harmful so that Christ's healing might come in.

Not to humiliate people, but so that restoration can be the atmosphere.

Because take a look at what he says here.

He says, Bring these things in so that they might be sound in the faith.

In verse 13.

Paul is saying the only way to deal with this is with loving reproof that's clear, that's restorative, that's corrective, that brings people back.

And Paul is saying that because this is the voice of Christ for his people.

Because Christ loves his church enough to speak with clarity.

Christ loves his church enough to call people who are in places of leadership to courage.

He cares enough to expose the evil motives that will harm his people.

And he cares enough to restore those who've been misled.

Isn't that wonderful?

Let's go further, because verse 15 and 16 bring us a little deeper.

Not only misleading voices and misaligned motives, but misguided hearts.

And in verse 15 and 16, he brings that straight to us.

To the pure, everything is pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure.

In fact, both their mind and conscience are defiled.

They claim to know God, but they deny him by their works.

They are detestable, disobedient, and unfit for any good work.

Now, Paul takes us beneath the culture, beneath the motives, and he gets beneath their techniques and their persuasive voices, and he gets straight to the condition of their heart.

And he makes a clear contrast.

There is a heart made clean by Christ, and then there's the heart who may speak of Christ, but whose heart has never been touched by Christ.

There are those whose hearts have been made clean by Christ where purity begins to move outward, where God's gifts are received as gifts, where the conscience is softened and the mind is renewed.

The person's not perfect, but their trajectory is moving more and more toward Christ.

And then there are those who are untouched by grace, where impurity flows out of their inward parts, where even good things are twisted, where religious practices are corrupted, where scripture is handled in a way to distort rather than to heal.

And Paul says their mind and their consciences are defiled.

The problem is not just one of behavior, it's not a problem just of motive, it's a problem of the absolute absence of Christ in their heart.

They claim to know God, he says, but they deny him by their works.

It's one of the things I say to myself often when I listen to someone, it has to pass the smell test.

Right?

And if I don't, if I don't hear about Jesus pretty quickly, actually, I'm like, I'm done.

I'm not listening to this.

You see, this is not just an inconsistency with these folks either.

They're being consistent.

They're speaking things, they're they have confessions, they talk about things, they use God's name, but they're not under God's authority whatsoever.

And it's not just a matter of wrong ideas, it's about the fact that their heart is still in darkness.

Because the problem isn't just what they say, it's who these men are.

Their teaching is corrupt because their inner life is corrupt.

Their influences are dangerous because their conscience is darkened, and their words are deceptive because their hearts are untouched by the grace of God.

Now we need to do a little self-reflection here.

David asked me a couple days ago about who one of my favorite uh professors was in Bible college.

I mentioned Dayton Burt and Third Baptist Church at Fall River, Massachusetts.

And he taught 1 Corinthians and Romans to me in Bible college.

And one thing he did all the time was he didn't allow us to get all triumphant as we read about bad doctrine.

He always went, okay, class, let's talk about ourselves.

And uh there was a lot of oh me moments in there, and they were helpful.

Paul wants us to examine our own hearts and ask ourselves, are we one of those people that are not aligned with Christ?

Perhaps we're in a place where scripture is preached, but it enters our ears, not our hearts.

We're around Christian language, we're among the Christian community, we're around Christian activity, but Christ has never settled in our heart as Lord and Savior.

It is possible.

Here's the wonderful truth, though.

Christ can receive and restore the misguided, Christ can heal the hypocrite, Christ can give hope to the people who have no light or life in their hearts.

It is possible for people to be saying Christian things years in a Christian community, active in Christian service, and not know the Savior whatsoever.

And if it's a danger out there, it is a real possibility even among us.

I don't want to end here though, because there's something underneath all of this that I said.

There is the realization that God has given us a merciful provision.

And it brings us back to what all of this is about here.

As we go back to verse 1, working all the way to verse 16 through chapter 1, we understand that God is bringing about truth into lives so that they might live wholesome lives that are full of health and vitality that display who God is.

Look at how he puts it here in the first few verses.

Paul, a servant of God and apostle of Jesus Christ, for the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness, in the hope of eternal life that God who cannot lie promised before time began.

In his own time he's revealed his word in the preaching with which I was entrusted by the command of God our Savior.

All of those words.

And then he leaves it with grace and peace from God the Father in Christ Jesus, our Savior, our deliverer, our life giver.

What is the provision?

It is people who have Christ in their hearts and who have Christ in their voices, who bring us all toward Him, so that we might understand that God doesn't lie, that God's promises are strong, and that eternal life can be yours by faith in him.

That's what it is.

So, Paul here, yes, in this subsection that we're looking at in this chapter, talks about these disruptive voices, he talks about these misaligned motives, he talks about these misguided hearts.

He's shown us all of that and the dangers of how they are overturning households and leading people astray by misusing the spiritual authority that's found in God's word, and how the danger is real, and how the human heart is vulnerable.

All of that, yes.

But Christ is near his people, and Christ has given us something that will lead us to health and to wholesomeness and to vitality within his lordship and under his care.

And it's found in the character of our Savior who loves his people, and he loves his people in order to give them those who would show Christ in their life and speak about Christ in their preaching, who would lead with the kind of care that Christ cares for his people, whose convictions are anchored in the word of Christ Himself, whose ministry is nourishing and protecting.

It may not sound like it tickles the ear, and it may not be resonating with the selfish vibrations of your heart, and it may not call to your lurid fancies, but it's true and it's deep and it's strong and stabilizing and wholesome.

Because it's Christ Himself serving his body.

Amen.

Listen to these words that talk about our Savior.

John 10, 11, he's the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.

John 17, the one who guards his people, not one of them is lost.

Hebrews 13, 20, the great shepherd of the sheep who equips his people with everything good.

Jude 24, to the one who is able to keep you from stumbling and present you blameless in his presence with great joy.

Those are the intentions of God for his people.

To bring them into all of that, all of that love, all of that sacrifice, all that care, all that truth, all that eternal stability.

That's what he means for his people.

And he does it through the word preached and the word displayed.

Because the elders are just instruments.

They're stewards of the household of God, ensuring that God's household is taken care of the way God wants it taken care of.

So we don't need to fear every new voice.

We don't need to be in a panic or confusion or suspicion.

We just need to know: is Christ being magnified in every way?

Because we need his word to steady us.

We need his truth to surround us.

We need his wisdom to guide us.

We need his spirit to renew us.

And we need his love to keep us.

Let's pray.

Oh Father, in the middle of these moments, when we are brought face to face with just how evil the human heart can be, it disturbs us deeply to know that there would be those not just outside denying you or denying the gospel or denying the people of God, but there would be those who would actually take up your name, who would seek to talk as if they were speaking with your voice, who would stand among your people and pervert it all for their own selfish benefit.

Father, protect us from these things, so that our household would not be overturned and our lives disrupted.

So, Lord, bring us, we pray, to the shepherd who leads us beside still waters, to the shepherd who restores our soul, to the shepherd who walks with us through every dark valley, who the shepherd who sends us an overflow of blessing even in the face of our enemies, whose shepherd welcomes us home, never to leave.

Lead us to the one who always intercedes for us, to the one who always holds our us fast.

And Father, may Christ always be known among us.

Father, keep us from using Christ's name as a slogan.

Because we confess our hearts are not always as steady as we think they are.

That we're too easily drawn toward things that are not helpful but unsettling.

Too focused on the urgent and not the important.

Thank you that you haven't left us to navigate this world alone.

As you've given us your word that's faithful and trustworthy and life-giving.

And so, Father, make us a church that loves your truth.

Give us the discernment in the middle of this deceptive world, give us humility in this world full of boasters self-confidence, and give us steadiness in the middle of this confusing upheaval that's called our society.

Shape us by your word, anchor us in the gospel, and keep us soft to the voice of our Savior.

And Father, we ask this in Christ's name.

Amen.