Did Paul or God Write Titus?

It's good to see you guys. If you've got a book or if

you've got a Bible in front of you, go ahead and get that open

to the book of Titus. If you don't know where that's

at, it's like the last fourth of of your Bible.

If you don't have a Bible, that's OK.

There should be one in front of you.

If there's not, it's OK. We'll have all of the words on

the screen for you this morning. I've got a lot to say about a

little amount of text this morning.

So I'm just going to, I'm a, I'm a jump into it.

One of my one of my buddies a while ago, I think I've said

this before. He, he told me like, dude, when

you preach God's word, you have two different types of sermons.

You have your locker room sermons that are like rah, rah,

rah, rah rah. And then you've got your

classroom sermons that are a little bit more luxury or as he

said, even more lovingly, you have your dorky sermons and your

fun sermons. And today is not a fun one.

Well, it might. It's fun for me, but it's just

going to be more on the dorky and nerdy side.

It's going to feel a little bit more like a lecture.

In fact, the way it's going to feel from as we dig into this

first verse of this little book is it's actually going to feel

like a biography of the author of the book of Titus.

We're going to do a deep dive or as deep as we can over the

course of 40 minutes into the life.

And thinking of Paul, it's, I feel a little bit like we're

chasing him around documentary style with a camera.

And I'm just going to give you my goal right up front.

My goal in all of this isn't to fill your brain with, Oh my

gosh, I know more about Paul than I ever did.

I think that'd be wonderful. That's just not my ultimate

goal. My ultimate goal in preaching A

sermon that revolves around the life of the author of Titus.

Paul, my ultimate goal is to deepen your trust in what Paul

writes, and more than that, to deepen your trust in the gospel

of Jesus that Paul preaches. If we could get there, that'd be

awesome. Amen.

Heavenly Father, bless the preaching of your Word this

morning. I heard that you would just just

make it. I just want this to come to

life, Lord, I, I want all of the words on the page to to just not

be ink anymore, but to become 3D and to jump out and to come to

life and to grab us and to pull us in.

And I think so often, Lord, so often when I read your word, all

I see is ink on a page and and that's that's not reality.

If we could see the the topography of your word

underneath every single word of your Scripture, it would go

deep, deep, deep, deep down with an entire universe of things to

explore underneath that singular word.

And so, Lord, as we just unpack who Paul is and the way you use

them and the way that you raise them, and what Paul thinks he's

accomplishing in this letter to Titus, I think we will be

struck, struck dumb by the glory of God and how trustworthy His

word is for us as an authoritative guide.

And so, Lord, would you do that? Would you, Would you take us?

Would you take us deeper this morning, deeper in our faith,

deeper in our trust, deeper in our relationship with you?

It's in the precious name of Jesus that all God's people

prayed. Amen.

If you're able, go ahead and stand the letter of Paul to

Titus. And here is where we're going to

stay fixated and focused on this entire morning.

Verse one, Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus

Christ. All 3540 minutes of the sermon

is going to be right there on those words.

However, let me read the rest of the introduction to you for the

sake of the faith of God's elect.

That'll be next week. Today is by Paul.

Next week is for the elect. For the sake of the faith of

God's elect and their knowledge of the truth which accords with

godliness in hope of eternal life, which God who never lies

promised before the ages began and at the proper time

manifested in His Word through the preaching with which I have

been entrusted by the command of God our Savior.

And then week 3 is going to be to Titus by Paul for the elect

to Titus, my true child and a common faith, grace and peace

from God the Father and Jesus Christ our Savior.

Let's have fun. You can have a seat by Paul

Every usually when when my mom and dad are here, I try to pick

a story that embarrasses my dad. If you were here last time, you

know that was an epic fail on my behalf.

I brought up a a story that I thought would embarrass my dad,

but instead what ended up happening is he in the middle of

it, stood up, took a bow and all of you applauded him.

So if we could please refrain from that this morning, that

would be great. But I think I got one that he's

got no comeback with. Actually, every every summer,

one of my favorite things is I go trout fishing with my dad and

one of his best buddies of like 30 or 4, you know, 3 or 4

decades of friendship and then his buddy brings his kids and we

just have a blast. And my favorite part every time,

every time it's actually not catching the fish, though I

catch a lot of them. It's not catching the fish.

My, my favorite part every time we do that trip are the late

nights when when the cigar smoke begins to roll and the fire is

lit and it goes deep into the night.

Because one of my favorite things to always ask is, Oh my

goodness, I'm sitting in the presence of like 3 or 4 decades

of unbroken friendship. Like all of the riches in there

is fantastic. And So what I like to ask

usually is, hey Haberman, Hey Pop, What are some of your

favorite stories of your friendship?

And they always have a lot and they're always great.

My favorite 1, though, that's come up every year is, is the

story of the ice house. It's a story about ice fishing.

There was a day, I think 20-30 years ago, right?

20-30 years ago, they went ice fishing.

And so Haberman, my dad's buddy and him, they're, they're

dragging their ice house out onto the ice looking for the

spot where they want to drill the hole to go fishing.

My dad is hauling the portable ice house with them and they

finally find the spot. They're ready to kind of drill

it in and it's a windy day, which is important for the sake

of our story. And so my dad jumps into the ice

house to keep it from blowing away in the wind while my dad's

friend is supposed to anchor it down.

Think think like ice screws to anchor it down, but think like

tent pegs but for for ice. And so my dad jumps in.

My buddy is kind of, you know, on pack full on fold the

portable ice house up. And then suddenly there is a

gigantic roosh of a wind blows through and it's a massive wind

and it fills the entire ice house, right.

And in a way that you can, you can feel the bottom start to

lift. And so my dad is he's in the ice

house. The wind comes along, whoosh

fills up the ice house. Suddenly my dad's eyes go wide,

right. He looks at it.

He looks at his buddy who's holding on to the ice house.

And suddenly, a smile spreads across his face, and a light

bulb goes off above his head. My dad sees this, and he says,

Haberman, don't you dare let go. What do you think his friend

did? I'll give.

Yeah. I'll give you a hint.

I'll give you a hint. To be a friend of Steve Dyke for

any amount of time is to be a victim of countless pranks, and

so his friend had suffered countless pranks at the hands of

hands of my dad. That means that he's experienced

a 11:00 in the middle of card games getting taken down with a

double leg takedown in a living room type of thing.

I think one time they told the story that my dad brought a

goldfish with him to school and snuck it into his friends water

bottle while he wasn't watching. I too have suffered many pranks

at the hands of my dad. An ordinary moment in the summer

waking up included pots and pans above my head.

Donk donk donk donk donk. Sometimes just ice cold water

being thrown on me. So if you have been the victim

of countless pranks like that, what do you think my dad's buddy

did? The wind comes rushing through,

it fills up the ice house. My dad's eyes go wide.

My buddy smiles, holding on to the ice house.

My dad says don't you dare let go.

What do you think he did, Joseph?

He let go. And I wish you could see the joy

and the Glee every year with which my dad's buddy tells that

story. Watching my dad trapped in an

ice house get blown across the entire pond while trying to claw

his way out of it unsuccessfully until eventually it slowed down.

Or they, I don't even know. Maybe they just, maybe they hit

the edge of the pond and it broke.

But it it poses a question, which is why wouldn't you want

to spend your life being blown around in whatever direction the

winds of the world are blowing? And suppose you didn't want to

be blown by the winds of culture every time there's a new gust.

What would even be a dependable, trustworthy anchor to keep you

in place? If you've got a Bible, look down

at verse one right now. We're going to circle three

things in our text this morning. The first thing is maybe you

just want to do it in your imagination.

Maybe you really have a pen with you.

The first thing I want you to circle is simply the word Paul.

Paul, who is this guy? Paul, who is this guy who is

writing this letter? I remember having a conversation

with a young guy during my first year of pastoral ministry.

We were preaching through the book of Philippians, which Paul

also authored, and we had a fun conversation together.

But his question, I think, is a valid question, which was gold,

bro. I keep hearing you call this the

word of God. You're telling us that it's been

written by God and authored by God.

But look at Philippians. That's not the claim of the

text. The text says clearly cult.

It says that it's written by Paul.

It's not written by God. It's written by Paul.

Which puts you in an interesting predicament if you're reading

it, if you want to do X in your life.

But Paul, a 1st century Jew who lived about 2000 years ago, says

don't do X. Why would you give any weight or

authority to what he said if it's just Paul's word?

And why should you submit to Paul's writing as though it

might be the word of God? Who wrote?

Who wrote the book of Titus? Was it Paul or was it God?

Obviously, we're going to take the long road to answering that

question. Was it Paul?

The answer to that question is yes.

Paul was actually born with the name Saul.

The book of Acts, a New Testament book, tells us that

Saul was actually born the son of a tent maker, which is

interesting on several different accounts.

What this tells us, being born the son of a tent maker, is that

most modern Christians tend to view Paul as a brainiac,

armchair philosopher. He is the doctor of doctrine.

He's the defender of the faith. He's a brainiac.

But what this tells us is that Paul actually probably grew up

closer to what a hardened 19 century man would call a man's

man. Saul spent his childhood days

with his dad, following his dad around, making and selling tents

in the hot, unforgiving, scorching Middle Eastern sun.

You got to realize this, Saul. He knew what it felt like to

have sweat drip down his nose because the manual labor was so

challenging. Saul knew the feeling of laying

in bed sore and thanking God for a well deserved rest.

But here's where it gets more interesting.

What? What kind of people in the

ancient world buy tents? Well, the type of people who buy

tents in the ancient world are visitors.

People passing through, people on the move.

What kind of people were visitors in the ancient world?

Usually non Jews. So even though young Saul grew

up a faithful Torah observant Jew, he did.

Saul grew up going to synagogue every week.

He memorized his Torah. He had the first five books of

the Old Testament memorized by heart.

He prayed multiple times a day. But because Saul was with his

father in the public square selling tents to visitors, what

Saul probably grew up seeing was his father dialoguing with a lot

of non Jews about different worldwide religions.

But it seems to suggest to me that Saul grew up with God

already at work and young Saul's life shaping and transforming

Saul as he watched his father argue with visitors about who

the true God of the world was. Without even knowing it, Saul

was probably becoming fluent. He was probably becoming fluent

on other religions. He was probably becoming fluent

on other philosophies. He was probably becoming fluent

on theology. And he was probably already

slowly becoming the type of young man who could spot and

recognize false teaching from true teaching and nourish people

with deep biblical doctrine. God's hand was already at work

and shaping the trajectory of Saul's life.

But then, of course, young Saul had had a major challenge in

front of him, and it is a challenge that every young boy

has in front of him. What was that challenge for

Saul? Well, suddenly Saul's voice

started deepening. His shoulders got a little bit

broader and young man, young soul, is that a beard I see

coming out of your face? The challenge that Saul would

have faced like every other young boy is all of a sudden God

began pumping excessive amounts of testosterone into young Saul.

Homie hit puberty. It happens.

And when this happens, a healthy society will always thank God

for the excessive testosterone and then seek to put that to

good use in order to build a healthy and protective society.

That's what a healthy society will do.

And unhealthy society, however, will make one of two errors.

They will either demonize a boy's masculinity or they will

try to radicalize it. The era of modern society, of

course, is to demonize it. An unhealthy society who

demonizes masculinity. What they end up doing is they

will end up treating the young boy as what?

PhD Warren Pharrell. He wrote a fantastic book on

this called The Boy Crisis and he says that the main error of

the modern world is that they treat boys as deficient females

and they demonize their ambitions and energies.

That's modern societies error. That is not the error that

ancient Israel would have made with young Saul.

What's the other error? The other error is to take that

and to radicalize it. And this is what happened for

young Saul. His surrounding society saw the

testosterone problem as an opportunity to seek to

radicalize young Saul into a violent, extremist version of

religion. And that is the direction that

young Saul went. I don't use those words with

hyperbole. Young Saul grew up to be a

radical, violent Jewish zealot. So the word zealot here is just

not a generic term for zeal. It's a technical term.

What a Jewish zealot was in the ancient world is something

specific. And there are wonderful things

about Jewish zealots from 2000 years ago.

Namely their passion for God is admirable.

However, and this is where the terms radicalized and extremists

come into play, Jewish zealots opted to use physical violence

in order to try to keep is real pure.

You want to know why they would have done this?

Here's this is the story they would have had playing in their

head a long time ago. And you can read about this in

the Old Testament. The glory of God was with the

people of God. And after idolatry, the glory of

God sadly departs from Israel's temple and they're left alone

without the glory of God in their presence.

And of course, things go from bad to worse eventually.

Hundreds of years go by and they find themselves at the turn of

the century in subjugation to the evil empire of Rome.

And so the Jewish people, and you can't overstate how

important this story was to their imaginations, the Jewish

people were waiting eagerly around the time of Jesus for the

glory of God to come back to return to them and set them free

from Rome. And young Saul, as a Jewish

zealot, believed there was a very, very, very, very, very

specific reason why the glory of God was not coming back to

Israel. It was because of the idolatry

of Israel. And so young Saul believed that

it was his God-given mission to purify Israel by putting to

death the idolaters so that Israel become pure enough for

the glory of God to return to Israel.

Are you guys with me? Good.

Because here's where it becomes very important.

Think about the way that young Saul would have thought about

that. And now what do you think,

Frontier Church? What do you think went through

young Saul's mind when he first heard of this small faction of

Jews who were worshipping, of all things, a human being?

What do you think you would have thought?

Idolatry. They got to go.

Not just a human being. They, this small sect of Jewish

people, were worshipping a human being who was publicly crucified

as a criminal by Rome. Rome, Rome already is the evil

empire. They don't have a moral

backbone. And even the bad guys, even the

people without any morals thought that this Jesus guy was

a criminal. So of course young Saul would

have thought I need to go put these people to death.

Jewish people worshipping a human criminal.

Absurd. And so the book of Acts tells us

that he set off maybe by foot, maybe by donkey, I think by

horse, because it was a long road to Damascus.

And so Saul set off, I think on horse to put to death those very

first Christians in order to purify the people of God.

And yet look at your Bible verse one in Titus.

He calls himself an apostle of Jesus Christ.

That's the second thing I want you guys to circle.

If you got a pen, if you got a pencil, circle an apostle of

Jesus Christ. How the heck did that happen?

There's Saul. He's going off to murder people

who are worshiping Jesus. And here in Titus, he's calling

himself an apostle of Jesus Christ.

Well, a funny thing happened on the way to Damascus.

He was on his way to put to death these disorderly

Christians, disrupting Israel. And then something strange

happened. You can read about this in Acts

Acts 9 · chapter mention

Chapter 9. Suddenly, young Saul gets kicked

off of his horse. Literally, he's on the road,

going to Damascus. Suddenly there's bright light

all around him, blinding light all around him.

Saul crunches onto the ground as the horse box.

He curls into a ball to prevent himself from being stepped on.

And suddenly, in the midst of all of the blinding light.

So here's a voice. And what does the voice say?

In the book of Acts, there's a voice saying his name, Saul.

Saul, why are you persecuting me?

And Saul looks up into the blinding light.

And what he sees looking back at him will forever change the

trajectory of of his life. On his way to go put to death

those who worship Jesus Christ, young Saul suddenly finds

himself looking at the face of Jesus Christ.

He would have known what Jesus's face looks like.

He would have known the timber of Jesus voice.

He would have known how many or if there were even wrinkles on

the forehead of the resurrected and enthroned Jesus's face.

He encounters Jesus. And certainly, certainly Saul is

expecting death, right? He's expecting to be smitten in

that moment. He's curled up in a ball, it's

over. He's persecuting Jesus.

He's he's not looking for Jesus. He's throwing a middle finger to

Jesus. He's toast.

And rather than wrath, rather than putting to death, Saul

receives the last thing on earth he ever would have imagined.

Jesus Christ saves him, forgives him, transforms him, and gives

him a new heart. It's extraordinary.

And then Jesus commissions him to apostleship for the sake of

Jesus for the rest of his life. And this is where we're going to

get a little bit technical. You circled the phrase in

apostle of Jesus Christ. Can I hear that word?

Everybody say apostle. Now the word apostle here, it's

a technical term. It doesn't just when you read

through it, you just kind of you just think, oh, generically, oh,

that's a term for leadership and certainly it is.

But it's not just generically a leader.

And this is significant to the discussion of what Paul thought

he was doing when he was writing the letter of Titus.

Was it written by Paul or was it written by God?

What? What does Paul think?

Would Paul be surprised to discover that we found his

private letter inside us, made a bunch of copies of it, and still

obeyed it like it was from the voice of God 2000 years later?

What did Paul think he was doing?

Well, this title helps us see what Paul thought he was doing.

The term Apostolos or Apostle literally means 1 cent with

authority and so to call himself an apostle of Jesus Christ.

What he is telegraphing to you is that he has been sent with

the authority of Jesus Christ. So this is not a self given

label to be recognized as an apostle in the ancient world, 4

strict qualifications need to be met.

Somebody out there could not call themselves, hey, I'm an

apostle and get away with it. There were four very strict

qualifications for a person to call themselves an apostle #1.

An apostle needed to see with their very own eyes the risen

Christ. Paul did that on the road to

Damascus #2 an apostle had to be personally commissioned by Jesus

Christ. Paul was shortly after the road

to Damascus, commissioned by Jesus #3 the person had to

perform public signs and wonders that vindicated his authority.

This happens all over the book of Acts.

Paul, like Paul, is doing miracles all over.

But there's a moment where somebody doesn't even touch

Paul. They just touch the shadow of

Paul and they're healed. That's vindicating his

apostleship. And #4 and this is where it gets

really interesting. An apostle must be recognized by

the other apostles as such. So watch this.

There's many, many places that we can go to prove this.

This is so helpful though. Like did the disciples who

walked with Jesus think that Paul was legit?

Here's the my favorite is second Peter.

So this is Peter. This is the dude who walked with

Jesus. Peter says in second Peter

2 Peter 3 · chapter mention

chapter 3 quote, count the patience of our Lord as

salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you

according to the wisdom given to him as he does in all of his

letters which he speaks in them of these matters.

So he's talking about Paul's letter.

He's talking about the letter that you're reading and what's

what's Peter say about the letter?

He says this is great. He says there are some things in

them that are hard to understand, which I love.

It's just great to think of another apostle who's super

smart being like, yeah, sometimes I don't even

understand what Paul's talking about, Right?

But listen to this. He says there are some things in

them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant

and unstable twist to their own destruction, which is what they

do with the other Scriptures, too.

Did you catch that? The other Scriptures.

So what Peter's doing is he's calling Paul's letter Scripture,

putting it on par with what else he would have called scripture,

which would have been the Old Testament, which he refers to as

the other scriptures. And this is really significant

because this blows up the argument that reading Paul's

letters as the word of God, well, that's just a later

development in Christian history.

No, it's not. Even in the time of the other

apostles who walked with Jesus, they were already doing what?

Circulating Paul's letters, reading them out loud in their

churches and referring to them as Scriptures.

So he's an apostle of Jesus Christ.

And of course this begs the question, why does Paul feel the

need to introduce himself to Titus as an apostle of Christ?

That's not how letters usually get written.

If this was just a private letter, he'd be like hey what's

up Titus? Isn't the world crazy right now?

Lol that's not he. That's not how Paul rolls.

He drops 2 significant titles at the very beginning.

Why would he introduce himself as an apostle of Christ?

And of course, we're getting ahead of ourselves here.

Because at this point in the story, Paul's name is still

what? Saul.

Saul. Young Saul has been saved and

commissioned by the resurrected Jesus.

But believe it or not, early on, young Saul struggles for

acceptance and legitimacy for the first couple years among the

early Christians because he was notorious as a Jewish zealot who

put to death other Christians. You can imagine people walked on

egg shells around Saul for quite a while, even after he claimed

to be a Christian. So he's been transformed by the

resurrected Jesus. He's got this zeal that's been

transformed. He used to have zeal that

compelled him to kill those in Christ, but that gets

transformed into a zeal that compels him to care for those in

Christ. But in the early days, the

Christians don't yet trust them. They walk on egg shells around

them, and it leaves young Saul with a little bit of insecurity

and something less than a backbone.

And don't get me wrong, what Saul does after his

transformation is pretty gutsy. You can read about it in the

book of Acts. He immediately starts to go to

the Jewish synagogues and proclaim Jesus as Lord,

preaching the gospel of Jesus. But the book of Acts tells us

how his initial sermons were received.

This is Acts Chapter 9 verse 26 quote.

Acts 9:26

They were all afraid of him, for they did not believe that he was

a disciple. So the early years of Saul,

people were like, I don't know if this guy is legit.

I don't know if he's the, I don't know if he's authentic or

if he's just trying to weasel his way in to destroy us from

the inside out. Paul struggled for acceptance in

those early days of being a Christian until another early

church leader, his name is Barnabas, advocates for young

Saul and takes him underneath his wing on a missionary

journey. And it's on this journey in the

book of Acts that we really see young Saul receive his backbone.

And I would even argue the specificity of this calling in

the early stages of this journey, Saul kind of operates

as a second in command to Barnabas, following him around,

treating Barnabas as the leader, kind of like the assistant.

But then everything changes. And this is actually, this is

interesting because this is actually the this is the exact

moment where we see the name change for young Saul.

It happens in Acts chapter 13. It's this incredible scene that

Acts 13 · chapter mention

almost reads like a standoff scene from a western movie.

Young Saul is on a missionary journey and suddenly they bump

into an evil magician. I'm not making this up.

You can read this in Acts chapter 13.

Acts 13 · chapter mention

They bump into an evil magician whose name is Bar Jesus.

Or if you're nerdy with the language, Bar Jesus.

I'm just going to go with Bar Jesus because I'm from Iowa.

So he bumps in to bar Jesus this this evil magician and this evil

magician is trying to oppose Saul and trying to keep this

Roman governor from believing in Jesus as the son of God.

The Roman governor actually started it all.

He summoned Saul and Barnabas because hey, these guys are

traveling or my neck of the woods.

I want to hear what their message is.

If they're claiming that Jesus is the Lord, let's let's hear

it. And so this is a big moment and

we don't know what the motive is, but the magician bar Jesus,

all it says in Acts is quote, he he opposes them.

He's standing in the gap between Saul and the gospel moving

forward. He's standing in the gap between

Saul preaching the gospel and this this Roman governor

believing in the gospel, opposing Saul, undermining them,

probably with false teaching. Again, it's like this Western

scene from a showdown. You can you can see the

tumbleweed going down the dirt Rd.

This standoff between an evil magician and young Saul.

You can hear the iconic whistle from the Western films in the

background music. It's bar Jesus the magician

versus young Saul the apostle. Is the magician going to strike

Saul blind? Is there going to be a spell

cast on him that will bind him? The demons?

Is this the end of the road for the gospel in the Roman world?

It's this extraordinary standoff and I love the way that one

theologian describes this moment.

Who's going to win, Saul or the magician?

NT Wright, a theologian, says, quote.

It is this point, this moment, where we sense something new

happening, something merging within the personal standing and

self-awareness of the young Saul himself.

Up until this point, Saul has been the junior partner of

Barnabas. But now he steps forward in this

moment filled with a new kind of energy, the kind of surge that

early Christians attributed to the Holy Spirit.

And he denounces bar Jesus in fierce and uncompromising terms.

He calls him a son of the devil and a deceitful villain who is

taking God's plan and twisting it out of shape.

It's this epic moment where young Saul steps up and calls

him out on his false doctrine and false teaching and preaches

the gospel instead. And it's one thing to utter and

hurl truthful accusations against an opponent.

That's easy enough. Most people can do that.

What makes this moment spectacular, what makes it

surprising, is the effect of Saul's teaching in this moment.

What, what accompanies Saul's denouncements?

The power that the impact, the authority that comes through it

is staggering. With poetic irony, this

magician, powerful magician who uses spellbinding is himself

spellbound by the teachings of Saul.

Here's the way Acts describes the moment quote Paul says.

And now behold, the hand of the Lord is upon you, and you will

be blind and unable to see the sun for a time.

And immediately mist and darkness wolf fell upon him, and

the magician went about seeking people to lead him by the hand

because he was blind and the Roman governor believed.

It's just an amazing moment, this coming of age moment.

And here's the significant observation.

This is the exact moment where the book of Acts stops referring

to him as Saul and begins to casually refer to him with his

new name, Paul. Why?

Why this moment? Well, clearly it's some type of

coming of age moment for Paul. It's almost like I saw I, I saw

this interview with Robin Williams a long time ago.

And they asked them, did you always know that you wanted to

be a comedian? And I just loved Robin Williams

answer. He said, you know, I, I grew up

with a mom who is constantly depressed.

There was always this fog of sorrow and sadness upon her.

And then one day I did something silly or said something silly,

and I saw her laugh. And it was like, for a moment,

the fog lifted. And when I saw that happen, I

thought to myself, there's something to do with my life.

That must be why I exist. And he became Robin Williams,

right? It's almost like Paul is having

that type of moment right here against barred Jesus.

This is the moment where he discovers, oh, this is what God

has uniquely called me to do in this world, to fight against

false doctrine, to fight against false teaching with the truth.

And this is important because you will see this side of Paul

show up as you read through the letter of Titus.

Is is Paul gentle? Yes, very gentle.

Is is Paul caring? Yes, very caring, very

comforting. But Paul also has other

dimensions to him. Paul's got no bandwidth for

false teaching that pops up in the church and draws people away

from Jesus. False doctrine is a hard pass

for Paul. And when that pops up in the

letter of Titus, Paul is not going to wear Kitty gloves

dealing with false doctrine and false teaching.

Why? Because he's seen the impact it

has in the world through bar Jesus, and he knows that he

uniquely has the power to overcome it.

And this observation brings us to the third and final thing

that I want you to circle. In our text, we've circled

apostle of Jesus Christ. We've talked about Paul.

I want you to circle that phrase a servant of God.

That's the third and final thing to circle in your text Servant

of God. Again, a technical phrase in the

Old Testament, not a generic phrase.

The phrase, the title servant of God is only given to the

prophets, King David and one other person, Moses.

In fact, when Paul defeats bar Jesus the magician, does that

remind you of any other moment in the history of God's people?

It's it's strikingly similar to one other moment with a leader

of God's people. It's the moments in the book of

Exodus where Moses defeats Pharaoh's magicians in order to

prove his authority of it as a servant of God.

So I wonder if you see what Paul's doing by describing

himself as a servant of God. He's using the very credentials

that would have been attributed to Moses.

This is, this is telegraphing something to you.

This is important. Referring to himself as a

servant of God means that he's aware that he's not just writing

a personal letter to his homeboy, Titus.

He wants you to know something. He's an apostle of Jesus.

He's a servant of God. By casting himself with the same

credentials as Moses, Paul is signaling that like Moses, Paul

is delivering tablets of stone with the very words of God

written on them to operate as the authority for the people of

God. So put these two titles

together, you have Paul. He thinks he's a servant of God,

an apostle of Jesus. And here's the point.

And this is where I've been leading this entire time.

What Paul wants you to know is that what he's about to write in

this letter is not merely his ideas.

It's not merely his thoughts. He's writing to Titus, but not

merely to Titus. What Paul thinks he's doing self

consciously with self-awareness is Paul is writing to you what

he believes to be the word of God with the authority of Jesus

Christ. So that brings us to the huge

question. What did Paul think he was

doing? Did Paul write Titus or did God

write Titus? What do you think the answer to

that question is? Yes, Yes.

And that's why we're going to spend the next 17 weeks with

snorkeling gear on at the very bottom of the letter because

that's where the riches are. And so I just want to ask you a

question as we, as we look at this short letter and as we

think about preaching it and rooting our lives to it, here's

a simple question for you. Why should you anchor your life

down on the book of Titus? Why?

Why not just anytime there's a new ideological trend that your

friends write about on social media, Why not just blow

whatever direction the wind blows?

I love the story that I use at the beginning of the sermon,

right? I love that moment of imagining

my dad on the inside of the ice house and it filling up with

with wind, his eyes widening, my dad's friend smiling, my dad

saying don't you dare let go. And then and in the ice house,

traveling across the entire pond.

I like that story because it's funny.

And I would have done the same thing.

I wouldn't let go. I wouldn't let you travel across

the entire pond first. Sure, and loved it.

I also like that story because it's the human condition.

It's what it means to be human. If you are not anchored down on

something, if you're not anchored down on truth, you will

blow whatever direction the winds of the world blow.

It's all an ice house can do. That's all you're capable of

doing is blowing in whatever direction the wind blows, right?

This is the way people are on Anchored.

All we do is go with the flow on anchored, whatever popular

thought is we end up thinking on anchored, whatever the current

norms are or what we conform to on anchored, we will go whatever

direction the algorithm blows us, whatever direction peer

pressure nudges us, and we'll find ourselves across the pond

from where we wanted to be in life, An empty hollow ice house

shadow entered on the shore on anchored.

And my encouragement this morning is that the book of

Titus in the Scriptures as a whole, but for our purposes over

the next 18 weeks, the book of Titus is a trustworthy anchor.

You can trust it to keep you put, to keep you in place, to

keep you where you want to be as the authoritative word of God.

Knowing this my whole goal in preaching a 40 minute sermon on

Paul, it's not to make you smarter.

It's to give you more confidence that when you read Paul's letter

to Titus, you are hearing the voice of God.

You want to hear God read Titus or any of the other 65 books of

the Bible. But maybe for the next 17 weeks

read Titus. It's, it's legit.

You can trust it. It's, it's authentic.

You know why not? This is just me talking right

now. One of one of the things that I

think is the best test for the authenticity of someone's word.

I wonder if you're the same way for the authenticity of

someone's message or their word is are they willing to believe

for it, right? Like are you willing to lose for

the sake of your message and for the sake of your beliefs?

Because if you are, I think there's authenticity to it or

there's trustworthiness to it, right?

Would you lose for it? It's easy to say something that

you know is going to gain you applause, right?

I guess why it's so hard in our modern world to actually know

what a person believes in, because the average person, they

cannot distinguish in their thinking the difference between

what they believe and what they think will gain them likes and

followers. It feels the same in most

people's minds. And so the average person is

just an empty ice house blowing in the wind, a puppet parroting

the dominant narratives of the world.

And I understand why people want to belong.

I'm the same way, right? People want friends.

They, they want to belong. And so the most natural thing in

the world for a human being to do is to just listen to what

people around them are saying. And you're like, OK, this is

what people here think. I'm going to parrot that back in

my own language so that I gain acceptance.

And it's easy to do that, to say things or to believe things that

will get you a foot up in life. It's a lot harder to preach a

message and believe a message that will cause you to lose in

life. And what do we see with Paul?

Paul, he loses everything for the gospel of Jesus.

Everything. The dude had Roman citizenship

in the ancient world. That was like a fast track VIP

to a rich life. There were not many Jewish

people who had Roman citizenship.

He gave all of that up to become an apostle for Jesus, all of it.

Rome hated Paul for that, right? Paul just ran around with his

big mouth talking about how Jesus was Lord and it made him

an enemy to the state because they're like, whoa, whoa,

Caesar's Lord. Are you?

Are you saying Caesar's not Lord?

But Jesus says, and Paul was like, yes, I am then.

So Rome rejected him. You know what?

He didn't fare that well with his own people either.

The Jewish people rejected him too, because he went around

worshipping and following a man which they thought was idolatry.

And so Paul got chewed up and spit out, even by his own

people. He lost everything for the sake

of Jesus, right? And so I look at his, I look at

his letter, I'm like, I'm willing.

I'm willing to read what you have to write because you lost

everything for Jesus. You went from the top to the

bottom in the ancient world. Like sometimes, sometimes I

imagine, sometimes I imagine, like, what would it, what would

it have been like for Paul's friends to greet Paul when he

got back from Damascus? Everything about that stuff,

like how how awkward would that conversation have been?

Like they sent him out to go kill Christians, and he comes

back a Christian. That had to be the most awkward

conversation in the world. Like, imagine seeing Paul riding

back into town. He took a little longer than

expected and his buddies go out to greet him and they're like,

Oh yeah, hey, Paul, we, we get rid of those pesky Christian,

you know what I'm saying? We get rid of those pesky

Christians who worship Jesus as Lord.

Are there is there less scum in the world out there or what?

Bro? What did, did he just say Jesus

is Lord? He's he's messing with us,

right, Paul? You're messing with us, right?

Paul? You worship like it would have

been the most awkward conversation ever.

He gave up everything to be the man who wrote this for you, gave

it up to preach the gospel. And it's so important sometimes

to remember the historical legitimacy in the historical

basis for Paul's apostleship because, because sometimes the

gospel of Jesus sounds too good to be true, right?

I was thinking about this just last night.

I was, I was like, man, it almost sounds too crazy to

believe that Jesus Christ was crucified for me.

So that by faith alone, I can't even earn it.

I don't have to do anything to earn it.

I don't have to be a good boy. I don't I can't buy it with good

behavior. I can't impress Jesus with

fronting. But by faith alone, Jesus

forgives all of my sins and gives me all of his

righteousness. That's the deal.

You're taking my sins. I'm going to get your

righteousness. It sounds too good to be true.

Just by faith and grace alone. It sounds crazy, like a crazy

person dreamed it up. Like, and maybe you, you don't

hear the gospel freshly because you've heard it since you were a

kid. But like, it's so crazy to

believe that God loves me on the basis of what Jesus did and not

on anything I didn't or did do. It cuts against the grain of

human thinking. Like, picture yourself last

night at 3:00 AM. You're in bed, you're doing

nothing, contributing nothing to the world, right?

You're mate, you're snoring, your muscles are completely at

ease. There's nothing impressive about

you. You're not doing anything,

you're not even in church, you're not reading your Bible,

you're not being nice to people. You're just in bed in the middle

of the night snoring. If the gospel is true, then in

that moment, God doesn't love you anymore or any less than

your best moment in your entire life.

That's crazy. Like, no human imagination could

invent that. It's almost too good to be true.

Like on an average day, guys, I probably think a dozen.

I wish I were more like X or Y Thoughts.

Are you the same way? Like on a daily basis?

Right. By by the time lunch has come

around, I've thought, man, I wish I was more patient.

Or, gosh, I wish I would have said something differently

there. Or man, I wish I was more X or

more Y. That's on a daily basis.

OK. If you took all of your wildest

dreams about the woman that you wish you were, the man that you

wish you were, all of your wildest dreams over the course

of not a day, but your entire lifetime, I would have a list of

wishes about myself. That's so long that I could

probably lasso it, wrap it around the world like 10 times

in some crazy alternative universe where all of those

wishes come true and I become the exact man I wish I was.

In all of those millions of wishes I've thought over the

course of my lifetime, if I actually in some crazy world

became exactly that man, all my wildest dreams about what

Kolecki could become true. If the gospel is true, God would

not love that man anymore or any less than he loves this man.

That's insane. It's insane.

So my gut is like that's it just sounds too good to be true.

And when you study the legitimacy and the historical

basis for the apostleship of Paul, you're confronted with a

different fact. And the fact is this.

The fact is the apostle Paul saw the resurrected Jesus's face and

heard the resurrected Jesus's voice and was confirmed by the

people who walked with Jesus. And I need 4 different alarms on

a Saturday morning to wake up. Whose opinion on Jesus is better

to trust? So in those moments, I have to

remember the legitimacy and the historical basis of the Apostle

Paul who preaches this crazy gospel that Jesus loves you

apart from any good work, but by grace through faith alone in

Jesus. When it comes to your ideas

about what you think God is like, in Paul's ideas of what

God is like, I pray that you trust these ones.

I pray that you give these ones their proper authority.

And as you do, you will anchor your life down in a very windy

world. And my prayer for you is that

don't you dare let go. It'll keep you anchored.

Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of the Apostle Paul.