Titus 1:9 - Elders for Gospel Order: Christ-Centered Teaching

So yesterday we had a full house in our gymnasium.

We had uh just about 160 women there, all delighted to be together, beautifully dressed, tables finely set, and uh enjoying some food and fellowship and the sound of uh word of God, a message from God's word together.

And they were kindly and generously served by 32 of our men who were dressed in black trousers, white shirt, and bow ties.

So I thought I'd wear a bow tie today in tribute to those guys.

Some of them are not here today.

I think they they got worn out yesterday.

I didn't realize how worn out they they we were.

Um I got home and looked at my smartwatch.

I put over 12,000 steps in yesterday.

And all I did was move between two buildings that are 10 feet apart from each other.

How do you do six miles of walking 10 feet at a time?

So, and I just want to honor the men and their service.

I think it was uh wonderfully done and cheerfully done.

So we're back in the book of Titus together.

It's been a little while since we've been here.

Uh a couple weeks ago, we celebrated the resurrection and looked at a passage in Corinthians where it says that God is a God who raises the dead.

And then last week we had our mission's emphasis week, and we turned our attention to God's heart for the nations.

Now we're back here.

We've returned to the island of Crete, if you will, to a young minister named Titus, and to a church that needs some order, that needs some clarity, and needs some protection.

So let's pray as we enter in again.

Father, as we step into this moment, we want to do so with eager hearts, to hear everything that you have for us today, and to hear it well, not just for our information, but for our formation, that we might, as individuals, be brought into an awareness of Jesus Christ and conformity to his person, but also that we might be a well-ordered household that is yours.

And we pray that you would give us an understanding of those points in time when we have to consider and approve and welcome church leadership.

And for those who are already set in place there, that they might receive well these guidances for how they are to conduct themselves within your household.

So, Lord, give us all understanding, we pray, and may you be praised in it all.

And we ask this in Christ's name.

Amen.

So take a look at verse five.

Verse five, Paul writes to Titus and right at the outset speaks about the churches in Crete and says that he'd left Titus there to set right what was left undone.

And as I directed you to appoint elders in every town.

Apostle Paul had to leave.

Something still needed to be done in order to help these young churches.

And one of those things was to help them with appointing church leadership.

Now, Paul here is not talking about how to develop a religious organization.

As we see in this verse, he uses a household terminology a few times.

And so what he is talking about is setting the household of God in order.

And that's an important setting for us to understand.

That is the atmosphere in which we are to see church leadership.

We have all kinds of models of leadership in this world, but God wants us to see it in this context: that it's God's household.

Christ is the head, the church belongs to him, and that church leadership are to act as stewards within God's household.

If you can imagine a large household in a Roman, Greco-Roman world, including more than just the nuclear family, but all the dynamics that a household would entail in taking care of all the things that pertain to it.

And the head of the household is stepping aside for a little while, but he says, Here are all my instructions for carrying out the things that need to happen in my household.

This is how I want everyone to conduct themselves.

This is the business that I want them to take care of.

This is the way when I return, I want my household to be ordered.

The Lord Jesus Christ has gone and he said, These are my instructions.

And these are the people that I'm going to task with the responsibility of ensuring that these instructions are carried out.

So leadership is not finding the most winsome or the most attractive or the most intelligent or obviously not, right?

Person, but the person who says, here is what I want done, make sure it gets done.

And those are elders.

And we've looked at elders now for two weeks in the past couple weeks.

And we're going to look at it today and also next week.

So a total of four messages on church leadership.

In our first message, we began to look in a two-weeks section on what these men were to be, these men who were entrusted with this responsibility.

And so the first emphasis was on their character, their character.

Because there are two things that God wants church leadership to pay attention to.

One is modeling what Christ-like behavior looks like.

And the second is maintaining the line with a Christ-centered message.

So modeling and message are dealt with in this section, as Paul writes to Titus.

And in our first message, he began to point out to us what that character looks like.

So take a look at verses six and seven.

An elder must be blameless, the husband of one wife, with faithful children who are not accused of waldness or rebellion.

As an overseer of God's household, he must be blameless, not arrogant, not hot-tempered, not an excessive drinker, not a bully, not greedy for money, but hospitable, loving what is good, sensible, righteous, holy, self-controlled, holding to the faithful message, and it goes on.

So you can see there that he begins to sort of clear the scene a little bit by talking about a series of disqualifying patterns of behavior, that these men are not to be characterized by these aspects: anger and self-control or self-will and controlled by their appetites, or drawn toward dishonest gain.

And what Paul is telling Titus here is that those kind of guys are not just a bad fit for leadership, they are out of step with the heart of Christ.

And so don't choose men who are consumed by those characteristics.

And so he clears away the distortions so there might be those kind of men who portray a much clearer view of what Christ is like.

And so in the second message in verse 8, we looked at these more positive aspects: hospitable, loving what is good, sensible, righteous, holy, self-controlled.

And essentially what Paul is saying here is that these men should be models of what mature, gospel-formed life is like.

They're to be examples of the very life that every believer is called to live.

Their homes, their habits, their relationships should all bear these characteristics of what God's grace can do in an ordinary person's life.

Now, several weeks have passed since we've looked at these, so it might be easy for us just to think of them as isolated messages, but they're not.

We're continuing a theme here and unfolding this one idea of what church leadership is.

So I want us to feel again that connection.

So verses six through eight are talking about a person's life, his character, his home, his habits.

Now we're going to look at a verse that talks about his relationship to the word.

We've looked at the modeling, and now we want to look at his relationship to the message.

Verses six to eight talked about what kind of man is he.

Verse nine, we'll talk about how does he handle the word?

How does that focus shape him?

What are his convictions?

What is his speech?

And the reason why this matters is because Crete was not a neutral territory.

It wasn't an environment that was kind or generous or welcoming to the gospel.

Take a look at verse 10 and 11 for a second.

It says there that there are many rebellious people full of empty talk and deception.

And it is necessary to silence them because they overturn entire households by teaching what they shouldn't.

So we'll walk through that next week more deeply.

But what Titus is meant to do is to appoint elders in the middle of that kind of environment.

It's not a calm, quiet, spiritually safe environment at all.

He's pointing them into a space where there are men entering into it and doing damage, who are who are upsetting families and who are distorting truth and and wrecking lives.

Constant barrage of voices.

Sometimes they're just a tap away on the screen of our phone, or sometimes they're on the radio or television, or they're in our homes, or in our offices, or on our streets.

There are people that are offering confusion about God, who are destroying truth, who are twisting morality, who are bombarding our understanding of our identity and reality.

And so here we are in the same kind of world, feeling pressures on our hearts, feeling concern for our children, our grandchildren, watching people that we love being drawn away by these destructive teachings.

So we want to hear well what Titus receives from Paul about what to do in Crete.

So underneath all of this, it's not a theoretical question.

It's not just simply a discourse on church leadership, as though you were sitting in a seminary room and trying to understand it in some sort of conceptual way.

What Paul is telling Titus here is this is how Jesus cares for his people.

By putting in place men of character and conducting themselves appropriately with my word.

Their manner, models, and their message shapes.

So we're going to ask a question here of verse 9.

We're going to spend all this time in one verse in verse 9.

We're not going to move very far from this.

When we were going through Isaiah together, we would sometimes do three, four chapters at a time.

Today we're doing one verse.

So we're going to pay a lot of attention to what it has to say.

And what we're going to look for are three things.

We're going to ask ourselves, what does it mean for a man to hold to the faithful message as taught?

What does it look like when an elder encourages with sound teaching?

And also, why is it an act of love to refute those who contradict God's word?

So those are the things that we're going to be looking at.

But out of all of that, here's what I want you to capture that Christ safeguards his people by giving them elders who hold to the word with conviction, who teach it with clarity, and who defend it with courage.

So let's step into it.

The first one, that first one.

The elders' conviction, holding to the faithful word.

Take a look at verse 9, the first part.

Holding to the faithful message as taught.

This is not a casual relationship to scripture, is it?

Especially when you understand the Greek that underlies it.

What Paul is describing here is a grip, right?

A clinging to, a clenching, as he holds on to this faithful message as taught.

This is describing a person who has found something so trustworthy, so stabilizing, so life-giving that he's never gonna let go of it.

That's what it's talking about.

So this is a pastoral letter.

This is not something in abstraction.

This is talking about the kind of guy who can stand in front of a congregation and says, This is the word of God and means every single word of it.

So let's hang, let's let's look at this very deeply.

First of holding on, holding to or holding on, clinging, embracing with deliberate strength this message.

What does that talk about?

It talks about perseverance, it talks about conviction.

But underneath all of that, perseverance and conviction is a person who's been tested with other voices.

Right?

Because you can only persevere and cling to something if you've already tested it up against everything else.

And he's heard those voices and he's seen their effect, and he said, No, this is what I'm clinging to, with perseverance and conviction.

This is a man who's chosen over the course of his life, time and time and time and time again, to anchor himself in God's revelation.

Let's look at the next phrase, the faithful message.

The faithful message.

Now, Paul's not just throwing out a religious word there.

Sounds spiritual to say faithful.

He's what is he talking about there?

What he's saying is this message is something you can stake your life and eternity on.

It's a faithful message.

In fact, he uses this term a lot, especially in the epistle or epistles that are written to the the to Titus and Timothy.

Listen to 1 Timothy 1, verse 15.

1 Timothy 1:15

This is a trustworthy and uh deserving of full acceptance.

This saying is trustworthy or faithful and worthy of full acceptance.

That Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

You can hang your soul on this, is what Paul's saying.

Titus 1.2.

The God who cannot lie.

How faithful, how trustworthy a message is.

It comes from somebody who cannot lie.

He uses the same formula in 1 Timothy 3 1, 1 Timothy 4 9, 2 Timothy 2.11, Titus 3.8.

It's all over the place in these pastoral epistles.

And what he wants is that elders feel the weight and they feel the certainty of this message that they're proclaiming.

And so Paul is saying, I want an elder who's holding fast, clinging to a faithful message.

What does it say about a person who is an elder?

It's not his own insight that he's holding on to.

It's not his experiences that he's holding on to.

It's not his leadership instincts that he's holding on to.

He's holding on to the word of God.

He's a man who's learned through study and prayer and obedience that scripture is true, not just in abstract discussions, but in real lived life.

Let's look at another phrase because we're not finished with this first one, or another part of this phrase.

Who holds to in verse nine the faithful message as taught.

As taught.

They're receiving an apostolic message.

They're receiving the message passed down from Christ to his apostles, and from those apostles to these men, and from those men to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also, just as we read in the reading this morning.

So, what does that say about leadership?

They are stewards, not editors, they are heralds, they're not designers of the message.

Their task is not to improve what God has to say, but to preserve it and to bring it to light.

Right?

So my friend David here is a waiter, and a good waiter will make sure the food gets from the kitchen to your table without it falling on the floor.

That's important.

The chefs spend a lot of time with that food.

They would like the people at the table to enjoy it as he shaped it or as she prepared it, right?

And he's going to make sure that what they have in front of them is appreciated for what it is.

And you've been to some of those restaurants where they go, and they they go, well, this is an ooza, uh sprinkled, encrusted tuna, you know, and and you're you're like, just give me the plate, please, you know.

Right?

Well, they're they're just sort of unpacking the things so you really can look at it and smell it and and sense it in all the different ways.

And as you taste it, you taste it with some expectancy.

No, that waiter didn't cook the food.

That waiter simply brought it to you, but is involved in the whole complex of that experience, right, David?

Did I get that right?

Yeah, good.

That's what a pastor does when he preaches.

It's not about how wonderful the description was.

Oh, he's a great preacher.

He's just so, so whatever.

No.

We're just trying to say this is this is God who's made this food for us, and it's wonderful.

Let's eat it together, right?

Charles Spurgeon, you know I was gonna quote Spurgeon, right?

I would rather speak five words out of this book than 50,000 from a philosopher's.

And what he was doing, he was reminding all of us that just how important this is.

And that novelty and cleverness are not it.

Fidelity is more important.

Are not nourished by creativity.

They're nourished by God's truth.

And so an elder is not tasked with generating things, but simply guarding what's here.

He's asked to hold on to this with settled loyalty, refuse to trade the voice of God for the other voices that are out there.

In a world that's full of shifting ideas, convictions, persuasive speech, popularity, the fad of the moment, we need some people who say, God's word stands.

We're going to spend time in it.

And we need that.

Because we walk through times that confuse us.

We go through times when it doesn't feel like there's any solid ground under our feet.

And we often think life can be very, very unpredictable.

Some of you are in those moments right now.

And what you need is truth and stability from God's Word to anchor your heart there.

And so here is God saying, I want to shepherd your heart through the proclamation of my word.

And I want to give you some men who really hold to it so you can hear me well.

So when our church and the time comes for us to consider a person, to be an elder of the church, what we're looking for is not simply an academic or even a clever person.

We're looking for someone who is clinging to Christ when there's a world asking him to be, to take their favorites and make them his, that keeps his bearings on Christ when life gets heavy, who guards his own heart from fear and pride, from even in the middle of weariness and attempted compromise, who becomes a steady presence in the midst of God's people, so that when we're in unsteady places, there's somebody saying to us, God is in control.

So pray for the elders, please.

Make them a part of your regular, even daily prayer.

Pray for us that we would be able to shape ourselves according to God's word and help you to be shaped by it as well.

May it be also where we cultivate among our body, to call it a culture is just not quite the right word, but it's I'll use it right now.

Where we shape a culture where the word of God is not an accessory to what we are, but the center of what we are.

Okay?

Let's move on to the second one.

We look at the man's holding fast, clinging to, grasping this faithful message as taught.

But now we get into what he does with it.

It says here, so that he will be able both to encourage with sound teaching, and we'll save the last bit for the next point.

So here's the second point: encouraging with sound teaching.

This is not just a guy who clings to the word of God in private, but he grips it.

And in the overflow of that gripping, it develops a particular manner of ministry, of service to the people of God, holding to the faithful messages taught, so that he will be able both to encourage with sound teaching.

That so that is it is really important.

Because it says that his gripping hold of the word has a purpose, and that purpose is the nourishment of other people.

And it involves some competency also, able to encourage with sound teaching.

So Paul's going back to what he told Timothy in the list of elders there when he said apt to teach.

And this is the same thing, just said a little differently.

And what it means, let me say this clearly, it doesn't mean that every elder has to be able to preach from this pulpit.

Doesn't mean that necessarily.

But it does mean that every elder must be capable of opening the scriptures and to do so and help people to understand it, to believe it, and to obey it, so that they might encourage.

So Paul doesn't have in mind a specialized activity for the few, but the pervasive manner of ministry among all the elders within the body of Christ.

Do you see that?

And here's how they do it they encourage, they encourage.

And I've always been surprised by it.

There's some people that walk away, and the preacher's got up there, and he's like shripp skin off the flesh, you know, just a scathing, like denunciation of sin, and it's you know, it's vivid and it's harsh and hard.

And and I've walked away from that going, okay.

And and I've had people come up to me and go, man, that was a great sermon.

I really needed to hear that.

I'm like, yeah, parts of it, yeah.

But did we need to get beat up like that?

Sometimes there's there's this scathing, sort of searing perspective.

Now, exposing sin, speaking to the conscience of everybody, not compromising truth, holding people to the clear, declared statements of obedience to God's word, you better believe it.

But we don't need a frothing, red-faced person to make that clear.

Because the intent behind it, in its overall description, is found in this one word encourage.

You hear that?

Holding to the faithful message as taught, clinging to it, never letting it go.

God's truth, as it was passed down to you, what do I do with it?

Encourage.

Encourage.

Encourage.

To comfort, to strengthen, to come alongside, and to urge.

And it's in the same family of words when you read in the book of John that the Holy Spirit, who is the comforter, will come.

Now, when you think of the Holy Spirit, do you think of some frothing, red-faced, crazed-eyed preacher ripping you skin off of your flesh?

You don't.

So the man of God is to be an encourager with the word, like the Holy Spirit leads us into truth and righteousness.

Yes, speaks, knows what buttons to push, but does so with love, and that we might say yes to that.

So the elder, not just explaining concepts either, but coming alongside the weary, sitting down with the confused, urging the tempted or the discouraged, warning the unruly, encouraging.

Now let's look at another phrase here.

With sound teaching.

The word sound is an important word because it speaks of health.

It's the word, in fact, in which we get our word hygiene from.

So when Paul says to Timothy in 2 Timothy 4, that there will people who will not tolerate sound doctrine, right?

Having itching ears, they will not tolerate sound doctrine.

Paul is lamenting two things.

He's lamenting the loss of truth, but he's also lamenting the loss of spiritual health in the people who have followed the error.

Right?

It's easy for us to come in among God's people underfed.

We come in feeding on a diet of headlines.

We come in doom scrolling on social media.

We come in with our boss's words hanging over our head when we work till 3 a.m.

We come in with internal anxieties.

And all of those things have robbed our nourishment.

There are voices out there telling us who we are, how we're supposed to dress, how we're supposed to conduct ourselves, what we should chase after.

And by the time we sit down with our Bible, our souls are lean.

We feel thin spiritually.

And God says, here's some good food for you.

It's nourishing, it's strengthening, it will make you healthy, it will help you.

That's sound teaching.

Teaching that pulls you away from all those things that are drawing the life out of you and filling you with the things that will encourage and strengthen you and develop you into Christlieness.

And so it'll mean correcting and comforting and reorienting.

And the man of God who takes those things as a church leader is here as a steward on God's behalf in the midst of his household, and saying, here's how we're going to make this household as healthy as it can be.

Some of you are caring for elderly parents or loved ones.

And you walk into these places and you wonder, does anybody know how my week has gone?

Has anybody felt the hours that I've spent as I've waited upon my loved one?

Some of you are younger parents and dealing with the complexities of what did we give birth to.

And some of us have come in, just laid one of our most dearest loved ones in a place we'll never see them again.

We come in, and those things have pulled away at us day by day.

And Jesus wants to breathe life and health and strength into you through those moments.

He wants to show you how all of this flows out of his grace and how all of it is meant to be your obedience as a response to these mercies that he's got for you.

That your holiness is to be rooted in what God has already done for you in Christ.

So when we think about elders, we're not looking for distant decision makers who offer decrees from the middle of nowhere.

But guys who are willing to be right there with you and to share those moments with you, who are accessible and able to bring the right medicine into the right moment.

And so we value people who are able to operate in those quiet ways with consistent work of the word in the middle of your moments, whether they're in a living room, a hospital room, a coffee shop, or a classroom or the pulpit.

We should pray for them.

That their the focus of encouragement will be the main word they think of when they're preparing to teach.

That it'll be marked by warmth, by patience, and by a very deep awareness of the burdens all of us carry.

That it's true, that God's word is held well.

And that leads us to the last part.

Because he knows in a world like Creed, in a world like ours, a teaching can't only always be positive.

Take a look at the last one, and we look at the elder's courage here.

To refute those who contradict it.

Here, Paul completes the sentence and he adds a very weighty phrase at the end of it.

To refute those who contradict it.

Paul has just talked about nourishing God's people, holding fast to the word, encouraging with sound teaching.

The tone shifts now.

Because the ministry of the word from the elders is not just constructive, it's protective.

It's protective.

It builds up, yes, but it also guards.

It comforts, but at times it will also have to confront.

And it places this responsibility squarely on their shoulders.

So let's look at these words, just as we've done in the other phrases, to refute, to refute those who contradict it.

What does that word refute mean?

It means to expose what is false.

It means to correct what is harmful.

It means to call back to the truth.

This is not about just winning arguments because you're clever and you can twist an argument or a person's statements around on them.

It doesn't mean just being able to win debates or score points.

It's the language of a shepherd who understands that there's a danger to the flock and is going to operate and move between the threat and the flock and say you're not getting any closer to them.

You're not.

And at the very end, he says, these people are detestable, disobedient, and unfit for any good work.

They must be silenced.

And Titus is told to appoint elders in the midst of that environment.

In the midst of places where people are being unsettled, where truth is being distorted, where confusion is trying to wrangle the young, try to put burdens on the tender-hearted, and to bring instability into the midst of the congregation.

And God's answer is He's going to take these appointed leaders and anchor them in the Word, who are going to develop and shape their life and character as such over the course of time and testing that they would be steady in their convictions and they would be able to gently and yet firmly correct everything that's false.

They're not loud, they're not combative, and they're definitely not reactionary, but they are persistent and courageous.

And the reason is because we have a savior who's exactly like that.

He is the savior who is confronting the wolves.

He's the savior who exposes hypocrisy.

He's the savior who guards his people because he loves his sheep.

And he's saying to these elders, make sure my sheep stay protected.

So we need elders who are not afraid to speak when speaking is necessary.

Who are able to speak, yes, with gentleness, but also with clarity.

That is not the voice of the shepherd.

Who can discern what's the difference between biblical things or merely spiritual things?

The difference between the gospel and the almost the gospel.

Because it really isn't the gospel.

We're able to talk about what's true versus what's persuasive but empty.

And this is a necessary part of shepherding.

So pray for your elders to be discerning men, not suspicious men, but discerning men.

Courageous, but not harsh, and clear, but not defensive.

That's what we need to pray for.

But it also means this to recognize when an elder has to speak, that they're speaking with care and not criticism, if they have to say something that's difficult for you to hear.

That they're not trying to be contentious, that you should know them that the last thing that they want would want to be is anything but that.

Contentious and critical.

But when they need to speak with clarity and perhaps even sharpness and directness, it's because they've recognized the only way to awaken you to the embracing truth that will encourage and be healthy for you is to say, stop.

Stop that.

Now so we have to ask ourselves some questions.

Am I A place where I'm receptive to being corrected when I'm wrong?

Am I open to the possibility that I've been influenced by voices that aren't the voice of my Savior?

Am I humble enough to receive the protective ministry that God has given us in these men who are sharing God's word?

This is Paul's vision for us of what church leadership looks like.

As you can tell, it's within the context of a household, representative of the Savior Himself, ensuring that what he wants and who he is is both seen and done among us.

And not just so that those guys could do all of that that way, but so that all of us could, so that we might be a display of Christ among all of ourselves with one another and in a world that's looking at us and watching.

So these three expressions are the shepherding heart of our Savior, because he holds fast to the word, he teaches with encouragement, and he confronts the things that harm his people.

Let's pray.

Father, we come to you as your people, and we're often unsteady, distracted people.

Lord, we can feel ourselves being pulled by voices that promise things that they can't fulfill.

And we thank you that you've not left us to navigate this world alone.

That you've spoken, you've given us your word, and it's faithful and it's trustworthy.

And we thank you that you've given to your people shepherds who are called to cling to your word and teach it patiently and to guard with courage and compassion.

So, Lord, we pray that you would make us a church that loves your word.

Give us, Lord, we pray, a heart that hungers for what is true, that we might be shaped by what you've spoken, and our lives would bear the fruit of sound teaching.

So, Lord, meet us in our moments.

When we're weary, bring us your word to strengthen us.

When we're confused, bring your word to steady us.

And when we're drifting, bring your word to draw us back.

Restore us when we're wounded.

Lord, we want to pray also for those who serve as elders among us, that they would be anchored deeply in your word.

And Lord, we pray you'd guard them from pride and fear and weariness and compromise.

Give them clarity when they teach, give them gentleness when they correct, give them courage when they protect.

We pray their homes would be places of peace, that their relationship and their family and with us would be marked by grace, that their lives would be shaped by our Savior.

May they reflect Him.

We pray, Father, today for those who feel unsteady today, for those who are carrying quiet griefs or wrestling with doubts or waiting for answers who haven't that haven't come, who are feeling the tug of voices that don't lead to life.

Father, we pray you'd meet them today with your presence.

That something in the word that was spoken today and what they will read and discover the rest of the week will surround them with truth that will bring them to health.

And we pray, Father, that you would fix all our eyes on Christ.

Fix our eyes on He who is the faithful shepherd, the one who always speaks truth in the middle of our confusions, who always nourishes us with his grace, who always guards us from what would lead us astray, and whose grip is fast on us when we don't have strength in our own.

Lord, may He be that voice we trust.

May His word be that word we cling to.

And may His care be the care that we rest in.

We give ourselves to you, Lord.

You, the God who cannot lie, the God whose promises will stand for eternity, a God whose mercies come without any fail.

We come to you and entrust ourselves to you.

Lead us in the way of Christ, we pray, in whose name we pray.

Amen.