Legalists Beware | Titus 1:15-16

Well, I thought I would start this morning by using a couple of the most impactful thinkers

in Christian history to set and frame the discussion for our text today.

In the year 426, Augustine, who was a North African bishop in the town of Hippo, which

today is a city in Algeria, Augustine described in his famous work, The City of God, what

he describes as the foundational sin of mankind.

Here's how he referred to it.

The willful redirection of our attention and love from God to self.

The willful redirecting of our attention and love from God to the human self.

Our souls, he said, were created with this unique shape, made in God's image, made to

reflect his glory, but of course in the fall, mankind lost that likeness.

We became twisted and bent out of shape because that's what sin does.

It distorts everything about us.

And famously, Augustine pointed out that there are two ultimate loves in this life, love

of God and love of self, but clearly love of God is primary because we only love ourselves

rightly when we first acknowledge our creator, when we see ourselves as his image bearers,

as we live in his likeness and bring glory to him.

But when we turn away from that truth and our sin, we fall short of his glory and we

distort our shape and that causes us to move away from God and move towards self.

This is how Augustine explained this concept.

So whether consciously or not, our new object of worship as a fallen man becomes what?

Our own needs, our own wants, our own desires.

Not God, no longer God.

We make ourselves the center of the universe and by doing so, our soul turns inward, separates

itself from the true source of life and nourishment and being deprived of spiritual oxygen, it

shrivels up and dies.

That's from the city of God.

Now fast forward about 1,100 years actually.

We hear Martin Luther in his lectures on the book of Romans address this very same subject

and he uses a term in, there it is, in Corvitus to describe what Augustine had been talking

about earlier, the picture of mankind's soul being turned inward on itself.

Luther says that our fallen nature is so deeply curved in on itself that we not all bend all

of God's gifts to our benefit, but we wickedly seek all things in this world, even God himself,

for our own selfish benefit.

And here's the important point of this this morning, I'm going to put this statement on

the screen so that you see it clearly.

Because natural man is so entirely turned inward, he's convinced himself that he can

be morally good all on his own.

And that by striving in religious things, he can achieve a level of righteousness that

gives him a right standing before a holy God.

Now think about it, how many religious systems, how many religious systems are built on that

very idea?

Do this good work.

Abstain from that thing.

Participate in this ritual.

Be a part of this ceremony.

Pray this prayer.

Follow these rules.

Keep striving.

Keep working.

Look to your own resources.

You are in control of your eternal destiny.

You have the strength to climb out of the myri pit of sin and reach all the way to heaven.

But that's not what scripture says about salvation.

That is the basis for almost every religion on the planet.

But that is not what scripture says.

The scriptures describe salvation is actually dying to self and looking to God alone and

to his merciful grace in order to be saved.

That actually saving faith is a gift that comes from him.

And that's the only way that we can be declared righteous in his sight.

And we know Luther is such a great test case for this.

He came into the monastery as a monk believing that, believing that, and then he came to

understand this picture of grace, commenting later that Incurvitus makes it very difficult

for natural man to accept that salvation has to come from outside of himself, that he cannot

earn it.

He cannot do it.

It has to come from outside.

Grace is what's needed.

And it can't be earned.

It's a gift.

And that is so hard for fallen man to receive.

And man just sees that, and you've probably heard this before, that's too simple.

It can't be.

I've got to do some things.

And again, that's because self-centeredness and self-empowerment are so deeply rooted in

the heart of man.

So that's the introduction.

Grab your Bibles.

We're going to go to Titus chapter one.

If you're visiting with us this morning, welcome.

We are finishing chapter one today, which means we're already a third of the way through

the book, which is crazy.

It's a shorter book than you might think.

Titus chapter one.

Now let me quickly go back to the outline as we finish the chapter.

We started, we laid this out in the outset of the series.

Each of the chapters has a particular theme.

Chapter one's about godly leadership in the church.

Chapter two's about godly saints in the home.

And chapter three's about godly citizens in society.

So it breaks down very nicely.

Now if we then zoom into chapter one, it gets broken down like this.

After Paul's greeting in the first four verses, and you probably see that there as you're

turning there, we then see him present a distinct contrast between two groups of people, qualified

leaders in verses five through nine and disqualified teachers in verses 10 through 16.

And so this morning we're going to look at those last two verses, verses 15 and 16, about

these disqualified teachers.

But let's back up to verse 10 and we'll read it in context.

So because I know we took a week off last Sunday, let's read it in context and let's

make sure that we understand where Paul is going in these last two verses.

Verse 10.

For there are many rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision,

that is Jewish men professing to know Christ, who must be silenced because they're upsetting

whole families or they're upsetting entire households, teaching things they should not

teach for what purpose?

For the sake of sordid gain, for their own benefit.

Verse 12.

One of themselves, a prophet of their own, said, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts,

lazy gluttons.

This testimony is true.

We talked about that two weeks ago.

For this reason, reprove them severely.

Now that command to reprove or correct them is not referring to the false teachers.

The false teachers need to be silenced.

They need to be cut off from spreading their poison in the Cretan churches.

Here Paul is referring to the believers in the Cretan churches.

They need to be sternly corrected.

Why?

Because first of all, because of their cultural tendencies that are present in Crete that

are sort of simmering in their lives and second, because of the false ideas that had already

infected the churches on the island.

And ultimately they need to be corrected for this reason, back to verse 13, so that they

may be sound in the faith.

They may be whole or healthy in the faith.

And not paying attention to Jewish myths and commandments of men who turn away from the

truth.

Which is exactly what these false teachers had been pushing.

Myths and stories and traditions that had nothing to do with the purity of the Christian

faith and huge distractions.

And we know this, right?

We can so get off onto rabbit trails about non-essential things that become massive distractions.

These guys were pushing distractions that had the potential to draw people's focus away

from the truth and actually confuse them about the path to salvation.

Now as we talked about two Sundays ago, we're not given a lot of detail here in Titus about

what exactly these false teachers were promoting.

But based on what we see in other places in the New Testament, based on what we know about

first century Judaism, it's likely some of the following things.

First of all, ceremonial laws, dietary restrictions, ascetic practices.

Now I'm going to use that word multiple times today, asceticism.

This idea that abstaining from things, separating myself from all physical things for the sake

of holiness.

So they would have been pushing ascetic practices, circumcision, all kinds of rituals and traditions

that come out of rabbinic Judaism and then are passed down through various stories and

teachings.

And the best understanding that we have, the purpose of these Jewish men teaching these

things, remember they were teaching newly converted Greeks and they wanted to bring

them in line with the traditions of what we call oral Torah, these stories and myths and

traditions that have been passed down to essentially make them more Jewish.

Why?

Well in their twisted way of thinking that would cleanse them from their dirty past as

pagans.

It would make them more pure as they were pure, at least in their own minds.

But what that tells us is they were trying to work holiness from the outside in.

Think about that, holiness from the outside in.

Do all these things and you'll be cleansed within.

Do these things, participate in these rituals and ceremonies.

Don't handle those things.

Don't touch this.

Seek this mysterious knowledge and you will become pleasing in God's sight and holy in

his sight.

That's what they were teaching.

Now red flags should go up in your brain.

That is exactly in contradiction to what Jesus taught.

Outside in, right?

Do you remember this woe that Jesus laid on the Pharisees?

He called them hypocrites.

You clean the outside of the cup and the dish but inside you're full of robbery and self-indulgence.

You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and the dish so that the outside

may become clean also.

So Paul says anyone teaching this blasphemy of external religiosity as a way to purify

you within, that teacher needs to be silenced.

And the Greek believers in the Cretan churches need to stop paying attention to that nonsense.

So he says Titus, first of all correct them and then silence these guys so that the churches

might be sound.

That make sense?

Good.

That sets up our text for this morning which by the way at first glance this might look

a little bit disconnected from what we just read but it's actually a continuation of the

same theme.

Look at verse 15.

To the purer all things are pure but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is

pure but both their mind and their conscience are defiled.

They profess to know God but by their deeds, by their works, they deny him being detestable

and disobedient and worthless or unfit for any good deed.

Okay let's start in verse 15 there and try to, this is a little proverbial statement

that Paul gives us.

You might call it a syllogism but it's basically a wisdom saying and he starts with this.

It's a contrast.

He says to the purer all things are pure.

Now who is he talking about with that?

Well this is in contrast to what comes next.

People he describes as those who are defiled and unbelieving which means that this first

statement must be referring to true believers.

True believers who have been purified by the grace of God through faith alone in Christ.

Because God purifies us within when we come to know him in salvation.

So for the pure, true believers who are justified in Christ, all things are pure.

Now that might raise a question in your mind and it probably should.

Does that mean that everything in this world magically becomes pure for us?

Everything.

I hope not.

Are there some things that we should say no to?

Obviously Paul's not making the point that now everything magically becomes okay for

you.

Clearly there are things that you should say no to in your daily walk with Jesus.

Some of those things are clear cut commands in scripture and many others exist in the

gray areas of life where you have to make important choices and you might say no to

those things out of your wisdom and discernment.

And those daily choices that we make if we want to please the Lord, they do require wisdom

and discernment and maturity in the faith and a purified conscience which we will talk

more about later.

So if Paul isn't giving us permission to gauge in all things, and you can probably think

about some of those things that are clear, what is he saying?

Well remember the context.

The topic at hand is this list of man-made traditions being pushed by the false teachers

in Crete.

All these laws, restrictions, and practices, listen, that are not prescribed under the

new covenant and not taught by the apostles.

That makes them what we call extra biblical, outside of the Bible.

So Paul has in mind things which are permitted by God's word, but things which these legalistic

teachers are saying, nope, that's forbidden.

Permitted in scripture, but they're saying no, it's forbidden.

And this means everything from certain kinds of food and drink that you consume to celebration

of certain holidays, to engaging in certain types of recreation, to doing certain types

of business and more.

But to the believer who's been purified by Christ on the inside, pure in his mind and

his conscious, guess what?

He has great freedom, great freedom to enjoy all the good gifts that God has given to his

children without feeling guilt or shame over it.

He has that freedom.

Again, not things prohibited in scripture, but things permitted in scripture.

So for the believer who's purified within, all things are pure.

And this is what Jesus taught.

Remember, he said it's not what goes into a man that defiles him, but what comes out

of his heart that defiles him.

So it's not about what we eat or drink.

It's not about the holidays that we observe.

It's not about the hobbies we pick up or the business we do.

It's about what's inside a man that God is most concerned about.

Amen?

So that's what that means.

Now let's look at the other side of the coin.

To those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure.

Look at the extreme contrast.

All is pure, nothing is pure.

So picture this.

These false teachers are going around Crete professing to know God, and they're practicing

all these extra biblical regulations, things not prescribed for the believers, and they're

putting on the appearance of godliness.

And then in their pride saying, well, I'm qualified to teach others on these things.

And then they go out and lay these same legalistic regulations on entire households, even entire

churches.

And what's interesting is one of the threads that you see running through multiple letters

in the New Testament is Paul not only having to rebuke these false teachers, but also to

defend his apostolic authority in the face of their attacks.

Because these guys believe they had a higher spiritual knowledge than Paul.

It's almost a proto-gnosticism.

I've got a higher spiritual knowledge that I can pass along to you.

Paul doesn't have those things.

Timothy and Titus don't have them.

What the problem, Paul says, is that makes them defiled.

See what he says there about them?

They're defiled.

And then he calls them out.

Paul calls balls and strikes here.

He says with confidence, they're unbelievers.

Forget what they look like on the outside.

How holy they present themselves.

Forget what they claim with their mouths.

Inside where it really matters, Paul says they're defiled.

And that word in the Greek is very strong.

It means polluted or contaminated.

Jesus talked about such men in Matthew 15, quoting Isaiah and pointing to the Pharisees.

He said, this people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.

They worship me in vain, teaching as doctrine human commands.

So Jesus warned Paul in advance, warned Titus in advance, that these men would come.

And here they are.

And Paul says, Titus, here they are.

They're doing this exact same thing.

So here's the lesson.

For this type of person, nothing is pure.

You may know people like this.

There are no gray areas in life where the believer is called to practice discernment

and to choose a path according to conscience.

There's no freedom in the minds of a legalist.

There's gotta be a rule or a law or a regulation to govern it.

It's always black or white.

And the reason they come to that conclusion, Paul says in the end of verse 15, is because

inside they're bent out of shape.

It says both their mind and their conscience are defiled.

So their thoughts and desires and purposes are polluted.

Their wisdom, their discernment, their judgment is contaminated.

And here's the thing.

If your insides are rotten, you're prone to look at everything on the outside and say,

that's rotten.

That's what Paul's saying here.

Coming back to Paul's original instruction to Titus, he says these men need to be silenced

because they're defiled.

And because they're defiled, you cannot trust what they say.

You cannot trust what they teach.

You cannot trust that they're just gonna go out there and operate within the church without

spreading their poison.

In fact, if you look at verse 16, they're detestable, Paul says.

They're disobedient.

They're unfit for any good work.

And that word unfit, adakamas in the Greek, means they're not approved.

They're counterfeit.

Again, a very strong word, condemning word.

They're counterfeits.

And you gotta understand why.

God knows the truth about these men.

They're frauds.

They're fakes.

They're bulbs seeking to introduce destructive heresies into the church.

They are a threat to the flock.

Titus, you must correct the people and silence them.

So that's what's going on here in chapter one.

So for us, let's take a step back.

I wanna talk about this thing we call legalism today.

And I wanna think about how legalism tends to affect believers in the church today.

We'll get really practical about this.

First, how do we define legalism?

People get this wrong a lot.

It gets messed up quite a bit.

How do we do this?

Well, I'll give you a couple forms of this.

First of all, we do see a form of this in the false teachers in Crete, men who emphasize

a system of rules and regulations that are not found as commands or imperatives in scripture.

And then they lay those things on all believers as requirements for achieving a greater level

of sanctification or holiness.

Does that make sense?

Read that carefully.

That's important.

Now, as insidious as that is, that's actually the mildest form of legalism.

There are much worse ones.

And you may know some people in churches who do this, right?

Extrabiblical things that they're gonna lay on you and say, look, if you do these things,

you'll be really holy.

You'll really please God.

Okay.

The much worse form is this one.

Teaching that keeping God's law and his commandments is what makes sinners acceptable before God

in the first place.

The idea that law keeping is what saves us.

That is the ultimate most wicked form of legalism.

That you can earn your salvation by good works.

That you could do enough things to please a perfectly holy God in spite of your daily

sins.

You could just do enough.

You can outweigh it or whatever.

How do you want to try to justify that?

It's ridiculous on its face.

But that legalism is out there.

And then there's something of, I would call a middle ground type of legalism that says

this, grace is still required to be saved.

Faith is still required to be saved.

But those things are not enough to actually save you.

You have to add to God's grace your observance of certain rules and regulations and ceremonies

and practices in order to close the deal.

In other words, God will get you so far but then your hard work and your striving is required

to close that deal and essentially you can boast because you have, at least in part,

saved yourself.

And of course this is an utter contradiction to the biblical doctrine of justification

by faith alone apart from our works, which you find all over the New Testament, right?

Romans 3, Ephesians 2, we'll get to it in Titus 3.

It's all over the place.

So you might ask the question then, well if Scripture says that over and over again, well

then how did we get to this place?

How did we, how did mankind get to this place where we injected our works into the formula

given to us in Scripture as to how we can be saved?

And you can find the answer right here in Titus 1.

There's many places we could look but look at verse 14.

Go back to this phrase, the commandments of men who turn away from the truth.

God's teachers who have turned away from the truth and are preaching their own message,

their own tradition.

Such men sponsored by the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms have injected

extra requirements into God's word.

We call it Jesus plus.

Turning away from the truth about salvation.

And friends, this has real world consequences for our neighbors, our friends, our coworkers,

people all around us because there are so many well-meaning people who every week walk

into a house of worship and they trust what their leaders tell them without doing the

study on their own.

They just, they blindly trust and they're being led astray by men who in God's sight

are detestable and disobedient and unfit to be in that position of authority.

And we know people like this that are being misled.

So we've got to speak up about it.

Now let me set the record straight on something else about legalism because I mentioned earlier,

I've heard the term misused so many times and especially in this regard.

Sometimes it's said that if I seek to obey the commands of God in scripture, that makes

me a legalist.

If I set out to obey God's commands, I'm a legalist.

Is that legalism?

God forbid.

We should always seek to obey the commands in scripture.

May it never be.

And here's what that misuse of the term might look like.

Somebody casually says to you on a Sunday morning, man, I went out last night, I got

drunk with some friends and he says it kind of casually and you say to him, brother, that's

not okay.

You should repent of that sin, right?

Don't treat that casually.

And he says what?

Oh, you legalist.

I've heard it.

Is that legalism?

No, that's not legalism.

That's simply pointing out an explicit command in scripture, right?

In the New Testament, Ephesians 525, do not get drunk on wine, which leads to dissipation

or reckless living.

When you say to a person, you should repent of that, that's actually loving your brother

enough to hold him.

Don't we all talk about accountability?

But nobody really wants it.

Well, we should want that.

So we speak into his life because we love him to say, no, brother, you should repent

of that and how can I help you not do that again?

We should love that brother enough to tell him that he sinned against God.

He's disobeyed a command because that lifestyle is reckless.

It's self-destructive.

It's not loving to say, that's fine.

But that's not legalism.

I've just pointed out a command in scripture.

Now if he casually said this, hey, Jeff, I was at such and such a bar last night and

I had a glass of wine with a friend and you say you should repent of that.

Now I'm a legalist.

Right why?

Because I've gone beyond what scripture commands and I've now laid my conviction, extra biblical

standard on the shoulders of my friend.

And more disastrously, I've misled him into believing that my conviction about drinking

is really a divine command.

I've confused him.

I've misled him.

So here's the truth.

True believers, even those who mean well, can end up being legalists.

So we should be aware of this.

I'm sure many of you experienced this from, I don't know, a fellow church goer at one

time or another.

I have.

These are folks who feel so strongly about non-essential issues that they will literally

run people out of the fellowship if they don't agree with them.

Folks who demand unqualified adherence to a certain external set of standards.

And you can probably think, I made a list that you can think of some more.

The use of alcohol is a huge one.

Or dancing.

You just shoot your hand up if you're like, yep, heard that one.

Dancing?

You heard that?

Okay.

Watching movies and TV shows.

Just going to the movies.

It doesn't, even if you're going to see Bambi at the theater, you're still at the theater.

Which means people might think you're going to see something R rated.

What type of clothing you must wear to church to honor God?

The use of makeup for women.

The length of her skirt.

Whether or not Christian children can go trick or treating on Halloween.

Getting a tattoo.

I mean, the list is almost endless, right?

So there were definitely issues in the first century.

Ours are different today, but they're still the list of things that we struggle with.

And these are little ascetic taboos that we create on our own and sadly sometimes add

to the gospel.

As if God has spoken clearly and explicitly about them.

And when we insist that this is what God has said about an issue when he hasn't, we confuse

people.

And we muddle the purity of the gospel.

We give the impression that somehow salvation is more about those things than the core principles

of what it means to be saved.

Not about regeneration of the heart.

At the end of the day, we do this in spite of the biblical truth that we read in Colossians

2, which is so important for us to see.

Although such things have a reputation for wisdom, right?

Such things, by promoting self-made religion, they are not any value in curbing self-indulgence.

They don't work.

Setting rules doesn't work to change the heart.

They don't produce true godliness.

They do produce an appearance of it sometimes on the outside, but they don't change the

heart.

So Paul asks then, well, why then, if that's true, why then do you submit to the world's

regulations?

Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch.

In accordance with the commandments and teachings of men, why do you do that?

Why do you do that?

And this is the great deception of man-made religion, the idea that sin is primarily an

external problem.

So if I just clean up the outside, then I'll be purified inside.

Right?

That's why the medieval Roman Catholic Church, who are the holiest people in culture?

Well, clearly the monks and the nuns.

They were the most holy, right?

Everybody knew that.

But is that true?

Well, yeah, they took vows of celibacy and they followed mandatory fasts and they conformed

to all these rules and they cloistered themselves apart from the world.

But guess what?

God didn't command those things.

He didn't command those things.

And then since the Reformation, sadly, we've fallen into some of the same legalistic traps.

Different but still various sets of external standards.

And we'll do that sometimes even while affirming that the actual fruit of the Spirit is what?

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Not asceticism.

Not penance.

Not avoiding wine.

Not wearing a skirt down to your ankles.

So we sort of become hypocrites.

If we're going to stand up here and go, oh, all these other religions who do these things,

but then we do them, we become hypocrites.

So we've got to be careful about this.

Now there's another temptation and as human beings are wont to do, we will swing the pendulum

all the way to the other side and we'll end up in a place called antinomianism.

Raise your hand if you've heard of antinomianism.

Just a big theological word, compound word that comes from the prefix anti, which means

against, and the Greek word for law, which means, which is namas.

So basically it means a lawless person, someone who is against God's law.

So the antinomian heresy tells us that our receiving of God's grace means we can now

sin freely.

This is the extreme and wicked pendulum swing over to this well since we don't have to do

good works anymore, we can just have at it.

We can just party all night because God's moral statutes are no longer binding on us,

it goes.

God's grace is greater than all of our sin, right?

Do we not sing that song?

It's true, God's grace is greater than our sin, well then we can sin away, says the antinomian.

We can sin away because it's not going to affect our standing before God.

Because if good works don't play a role in our justification, then guess what?

Good works aren't in any way necessary in the Christian life.

This is how the argument goes.

Now there's at least three things, probably more, that are obviously wrong about this,

I'll give you all three.

First of all, it functionally denies the whole purpose and goal of sanctification, this side

of heaven.

You know God has a plan and a purpose in your sanctification.

He's preparing you for eternal life in heaven with Jesus.

And it's a beautiful, being sanctified, growing in holiness is not a burden, it's a beautiful

thing, it's a beautiful process that God takes you through over a lifetime.

And when we say, yeah, we don't have to do any of this stuff, we're functionally denying

God's purpose in that.

We're actually rejecting the beauty of growing in holiness.

That's number one.

Secondly, we're told very clearly if we're found in Christ, willfully sinning without

repenting is going to put a block, a stumbling block in our relationship with him.

And it's going to bring discipline into our lives, spiritual discipline, right?

I mean, is that what we're all signing up for?

I want to go sin freely and party it up and whatever discipline God brings in my life,

that's fine.

Does anybody ever actually say that?

So if you're trying to live in two worlds as a Christian, you know it's guaranteed.

If you got one foot in the church and one foot in the world and you don't feel any sense

of conviction or shame for the fact that you are engaging in sins that would make a Gentile

blush, here's what's guaranteed.

Not endless pleasure, but spiritual frustration and spiritual pain.

It's the worst place to be to try to live in both sets of worlds.

But that's only if you're a believer and not self-deceived.

And that's the third problem.

If you're foolish enough to read the scriptures and come to the conclusion that you can sin

all you want and ignore all the good works that God has prepared for you to walk in,

guess what?

According to James, your faith is really dead anyway.

You're not a believer.

You can't be antinomian and say, works don't matter at all.

James says, no, no, no, that means that your faith is dead.

So those are the two extremes, right?

Legalism, antinomianism, we cannot live in those extremes.

So what I want to do here is give you three practical takeaways that will help us live

in that balanced place.

Have you ever noticed about the Christian life?

It's never the extremes.

It's always a balance of things, right?

We always want to try to come into the middle and say, all right, so let's use our wisdom

here and let's find that healthy place that pleases the Lord.

Okay, three practical takeaways from Paul's warning about the false teachers in Crete.

By the way, this is probably not going to be a surprise.

They all center on coming back to God's word.

Anybody surprised?

Make your surprise face.

Yeah, right?

And it depends on us.

Let me just say this.

All of us.

Don't just depend on me and your elders and your small group teachers and your ministry

leaders.

It's all about you.

Spend the time and the energy, right, to delve into this, to be a Berean, to really check

the scriptures for yourself.

And that's the first one.

The first takeaway is this.

You have to be a Berean if you don't want to fall into the trap of legalism.

You've got to study the scriptures and know them for yourself.

Know what the Bible commands and what it doesn't command.

But you've got to know it for yourself.

You can't just trust your leaders.

You've got to know this for yourself, right?

Because this is the problem with people in churches even this morning that are just trusting

their leaders, but they're being misled.

Now, I'm not trying to mislead you, but you should check me.

Amen?

You should check me.

And any pastor that won't say that, you should run from that pastor.

Know what the Bible commands and what it doesn't command so that when you hear something false,

that red flag jumps up in your mind and you say with confidence the Bible does say that

or the Bible doesn't say that.

But that's on each one of us.

We're going to try to help you as much as we can as an elder team, but it's on each

one of us.

That's number one.

Number two is you've got to cultivate a pure conscience.

Let's talk about this for a second because the Bible uses the word conscience.

I think it's like 32 times in the New Testament.

What is a conscience?

It's that moral compass inside of you that does two things.

It either accuses you when you do something wrong, which ought to produce in us a sense

of trouble, or it defends you when you do something right, and that produces in us a

sense of pleasure and wholeness.

So it accuses and it defends.

And every human being has a conscience, both believer and unbeliever.

Now there's differences between them, but we all have a conscience.

The scripture tells us that God has written his law on the hearts of all men.

They know enough to be able to choose between the right and the wrong.

In fact, the great philosopher Immanuel Kant said that we all have a universal sense of

oughtness within us, not hotness, oughtness, just being clear there.

Meaning we all know what we ought to do and what we ought not to do.

We all have that, but here's the problem with human conscience.

Over a lifetime, it fluctuates and it change.

It's not like God's word, which is endures forever and is eternal and unchanging.

The human conscience fluctuates and changes, sometimes in small ways, sometimes in drastic

ways, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the much, much worse.

So it varies.

A man's conscience can grow numb and accustomed to wickedness.

It can become hardened and calloused, even getting to the point where, and we see this

all the time in culture, people call what is evil good and what is good evil.

Their conscience has allowed them to do that because it's changed so drastically.

It's really nothing more than them shutting out what God has planted in their heart and

then adjusting their conscience in order to justify the things that they want.

That's what they do, right?

It's the result of incurbitus, this soul turned in on itself.

I don't want God's law, so I push that out.

What I want is this, so I'm going to, over time, align my conscience, adjust my conscience

in order to justify what I want.

Now for the believer, what we see in scripture is that our conscience can grow faint if we

engage in habitual sin without repenting.

That voice, right, gets a little bit quieter each time if we don't respond to it.

And then we see the word seared being used in the New Testament, meaning the conscience

grows dull and insensitive and eventually hardened against the voice of God in the scriptures.

May it never be, right, that our conscience would be seared so hard that we no longer

hear the voice of God in the scriptures.

So this is why we have to watch over this part of our soul, why we have to guard our

hearts.

We have to guard it, actively cultivate purity of conscience.

Actively cultivate it.

Tell God I want to build my conscience to make it more and more pure.

And we have to remember that for the believer, our conscience is not the highest court of

appeals for what is true.

Because we get it wrong sometimes in our conscience.

That authority belongs to God's word alone.

So we're constantly testing our conscience.

Is my conscience, what I know is right and wrong, is it in line with God's word?

And if it's not, I make that adjustment.

I don't try to justify my desires in contradiction to God's word.

And in that sense, I'll give you an example of this.

We echo what Luther said at the Deed of Worms in 1521.

More church history.

At the Deed of Worms in 1521, he was under great pressure from the Holy Roman Emperor.

And he was asked if he would recant his writings.

Some of you guys know his famous quote.

In part, here's what he said.

My conscience is held captive by the word of God.

To act against my conscience is neither right nor safe.

And that phrase held captive is so powerful.

That is what we want to develop.

A conscience that is held captive to God's word.

Because it can do no other.

That is a powerful tool of sanctification in your life.

So number one, you've got to know the scriptures for yourself.

Number two, you've got to cultivate purity of conscience aligned with God's word.

And then third thing, and this is just the most practical of all, you've got to develop

biblical convictions based on biblical principles.

Because you're not going to get a command for everything.

You get like, I just, I got this little thing in my life.

Where's that verse?

It may not be in there.

So what do you have to do?

Well, you have to develop convictions about that thing.

Based on what?

My conscience?

Maybe not.

It might not be purified.

Right?

I've got to go and pull biblical principles out of the text and apply it in that situation.

This is how we make right decisions in the gray areas of life.

Was when we do this.

Right?

These are places in the Bible.

You're not going to find a command.

Do this or don't do that.

So convictions come about gradually.

Right?

Over years, over lifetime, once again, studying the scriptures and sort of culling together

all of the biblical principles that we see in the Bible.

Principles that you can apply when you are confronted with having to make a moral choice

or decision.

I like to think of it as a, I'd use the term Rolodex, but most of you guys are too young

to remember what a Rolodex is.

So it's a database.

Do we still use databases?

Okay.

So you're at that crossroads of a decision and you have a database or a Rolodex in your

head and you're spinning through it and you're like, okay, how does the Bible speak to this?

I know there's not a command for it, but how does the Bible speak to this and how then

should I respond based on how the Bible speaks into it?

That requires study.

That requires knowledge.

That requires growing in wisdom.

But you've got to be able to access that database to look carefully at what's going on.

Paul tells us in Romans 14, by the way, that this is a very important part of the Christian

life, developing convictions.

When it comes to non-essential disputable matters, he says this, and you heard it in

our call to worship.

Each person, each person must be fully convinced in his own mind.

You've got to come to convictions.

Paul encourages you to do that in the gray areas of life.

And when a person is convinced based on his conscience has been informed by the word of

God, he settles on things that are true, and then that conviction, he says, look, my conscience

tells me this.

My conscience is aligned with, is held captive by God's word.

So now this is my conviction about what is true, and it's my conviction.

What does that mean?

It's not everybody else's conviction.

This is where we often go wrong.

It's my conviction to have.

It's not my job to force it upon everybody else because it's a gray matter.

It's a gray matter.

It's a matter of discernment and wisdom.

See the problem is we often feel so strongly about something that we get convicted about

that then we run around making sure everybody else sees it my way.

Right?

And then they do what we do, do what I do.

And if they don't do it, then we get puffed up in our self-righteousness and we judge

others.

Oh, he's not as pious as me.

He's not as committed as me.

And this is where we get division and conflict in the church.

So we can have discussions about convictions.

I can share with you why I'm convicted about that, and you can share with me why you have

a different position.

But we can come together and say, I'm not going to judge you and you don't judge me.

In fact, if I, and if I do, that's legalism.

Right?

If I judge you based on my conviction on a gray area that scripture doesn't explicitly

speak to, I've now fallen into legalism.

I told you what you should do based on my conviction.

So Paul literally addresses this in Romans 14.

He says, the one who eats is not to regard with contempt the one who does not eat.

And the one who does not eat is not to judge the one who eats, for God has accepted him.

Why do you judge your brother?

Now again, there are things that are clear cut in scripture.

We can call each other out, hold each other accountable to those things.

But in disputable matters, we've got to show grace to each other.

Now, as we develop convictions, let me point out one last thing.

It's important to recognize two things.

First of all, that yes, you have freedom in Christ in the gray areas to enjoy what God

has provided.

But there's also this principle in 1 Corinthians 6.

All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable for me.

That is a very wise saying.

Meaning, you know what?

I'm looking at this choice.

I could engage in that.

I have the freedom to do that because scripture doesn't prohibit it.

But I'm going to choose not to because I discern that that is not going to be spiritually edifying

in my life.

That is not going to be good for me.

Now is that weakness or is it maturity?

It's maturity.

I know both what God says about it, God's word says about it, but I also know my own

heart.

And in this case, so I have the freedom to say yes, I'm going to say no, because that's

the right decision based on my conviction.

Okay.

There's obviously a lot more that could be said about this.

This should make, Jeff, this should make some great discussion in your small group.

You know, you should argue about these things.

It's good.

Have discussions about, argue is a little hard.

Have discussions about these things, right?

Deal with some of these examples because if you haven't faced them yet, you will face

them at some point in your life in the church.

And they're important to flesh out.

Okay.

Let me wrap up.

Here we are finishing chapter one.

Let's come back.

What was the theme in chapter one?

Godly leadership in the church.

So all these subject matters are being addressed by Paul so that Titus would set in order the

things that were missing in the churches in Crete.

Two things in particular.

First of all, this urgent need, we talked about it, how many weeks due to four weeks

on elders?

The urgent need to appoint qualified men to serve as elders in the church.

That is primary.

But second, to make sure these elders are on watch for false teaching, watching for legalists

who want to come in and add all kinds of things to the gospel, who want to put manmade traditions

on the shoulders of the saints.

And the elders have to be able to recognize that falsehood.

They have to know how to silence that falsehood.

And then they need to know how to turn around and help the believers be sound in the faith.

So elders, did you catch all that?

All the elders that are here this morning?

You see false things, you silence false things, and you help the saints develop sound doctrine.

It's a huge part of our job to lead, to feed, to protect.

Now the elders also have to be able to recognize how the Holy Spirit works in sanctification.

This is a big part of this.

Do the elders in the church you go to understand how the Holy Spirit changes the heart?

He doesn't do it by external regulations and rules.

He doesn't do it by ascetic practices.

That is not how people grow in grace.

If the congregations and creed are going to be sound and growing in holiness, the elders

have to be able to say, guys, guys, push that stuff aside because this is how the Holy Spirit

works to change you.

He works through your conscience, both accusing and defending, so purify it.

He works through conviction, guiding believers into what is true and what is profitable for

their life.

He works through study the Word and come to those convictions.

In all of his work, the Spirit constantly points us back to God's Word in the text of

Scripture, also in preaching and teaching.

And over time, as we saturate ourselves in truth, and I love that word, saturate.

As we saturate ourselves in divine truth, what happens?

Anybody that's been a Christian for a long period of time, they can tell you it's happened.

They can't tell you exactly how.

I can tell you this after decades and decades and decades of being a believer.

By saturating myself in God's Word, my thoughts are nothing like they were before.

My affections are completely different than they were before.

That's what he does.

He changes our thinking.

He changes our affections, our entire heart, what we love, what we worship, all of it's

changed.

Now, can I look back at the last 35 years and go, here are the 10 steps God used?

No, but he has changed me through the power of his Word.

So guys, it's not outside in.

It's inside out.

Please understand that principle today.

May our souls never turn inward on the self, but always looking up to the one who gives

us every single thing we need for faith and practice and godliness.

Amen?

Amen.

Can we bow our heads?

Father, we thank you so much for the practical nature of your Word every week.

I know I pray that, Lord, but I'm so grateful that you have not left us to figure things

out on our own, but you have told us, in this case, Lord, exactly what we should do to set

our churches in order, to have qualified leadership, to watch for false teaching.

And Lord, you've spoken to us about what it means to be sanctified, to be changed by your

spirit from the inside out and not the other way, Lord, that we might push away that nonsense

that Paul is telling Titus to avoid.

God, we are a grateful people this morning because we know that if we're found in you,

that you are right now, even this morning, transforming us.

You are correcting our thoughts.

You are changing the things that we have affection for, the things that we worship.

You are changing our whole inside, our heart, to incline ourselves more and more to you.

You promise that you'll finish that work in us.

I pray for myself and for my brothers and sisters that we will lean into that process,

that we will cooperate with the work that you want to do in us, that we might see our

lives change, that we might see the fruit of the Spirit produced in us.

So Lord, seal these truths to our hearts this morning.

May they be things that we come back to often and pray over and pray for ourselves.

And then all of that, Lord, that you would continue to do a good work in us and be glorified

in us.

Thank you for this morning.

We love you.

We praise you in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Amen.