Book of Titus - Ch. 1, v. 10

Okay, that's fine, but we can get started then. I'm not super worried about time because I ran out of printer ink this morning, so I wasn't able to print my full lesson.

So y 'all can keep talking for a while. I'm just kidding. No, I have the sneaking suspicion it won't be an issue.

If y 'all want to turn to Titus, we will begin our next session, not session, section of our study.

Titus, we're still in chapter one. Of course, after introducing the book, we started breaking our study into different sections, beginning with section one, which was the first four verses, kind of covering

Paul's mission, his ministry throughout his life from the time that he was called all the way through the time of writing 2

Timothy, his final epistle, and then of course, being executed for his faith. So the first section of our study was talking about Paul's ministry, but then of course, that moved right into section two, which was the leadership and family qualifications for elders, of course.

We spent a good amount of time on that. And so today, we are now moving into section three, which

I'm gonna call the elders' battle. The elders' battle. So turn to Titus chapter one, let's start in verse 10, and it'll pick up right where we left off last week, including section two, verse nine.

Let's see here, it says in verse 10, "'For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, "'especially they of the circumcision, "'whose mouths must be stopped.

"'They subvert whole houses, "'teaching things which they ought not "'for filthy lucre's sake. "'One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, "'said the

Cretans are always liars, "'evil beasts, slow bellies. "'This witness is true. "'Wherefore, rebuke them sharply, "'that they may be sound in the faith, "'not giving heed to Jewish fables "'and commandments of men that turn from the truth.

"'Unto the pure, all things are pure, "'but unto them that are defiled "'and unbelieving is nothing pure.

"'But even their mind and conscience is defiled. "'They profess that they know God, "'but in works they deny

Him, "'being abominable and disobedient, "'and unto every good work reprobate.'"

So there's our next kind of section of verses there, beginning in verse 10.

Today we'll hone in mainly on the first couple of verses, 10 and 11, but eventually we'll make our way through the whole thing.

Now, as we have established well up to this point, the immediate context of this final section of Titus chapter one is the character qualifications of elder candidates.

Now, let's keep the immediate context in mind for a second. Obviously, we broadened the scope a little bit.

We talked about a number of situations from those preparing to be ordained to those that are already ordained to those that are veteran ministers.

But just to bring things back into the immediate context again, we are talking about elder candidates specifically and preparing them, making sure

Titus gets the right guys and making sure they're prepared for the job. And so again, the immediate context is the character qualifications of elder candidates.

Now, in this final section of the chapter, we learn why these qualifications are so important.

Why was Paul so intentional with the character qualities these guys had to have by mandate, as well as some particular skillsets that they have to have by mandate?

Why was Paul so serious about these things? Well, beginning in verse 10, we start to learn why.

Now, one last reminder. If you look up just at verse nine, you'll remember that elders are to be holding fast the faithful word.

That's one of their qualifications. That's something that elders of the church, pastors, have to be constantly thinking about and of course, doing.

They have to be meditating on the word, but they have to be holding fast to it as well. They are, by doing so, to be able to exhort in sound doctrine.

So they're supposed to be able to get up, exhort their people, exhort in sound doctrine, keep them on the straight and narrow.

But on the other side of that, they're supposed to also be able to refute those that contradict God's word.

So by holding fast the faithful word, they are able to do both of those things, exhort their people, refute the gainsayers, as the

KJV puts it. And then you get to verse 10. And again, we start to find out the reason why all of this is necessary.

It's a necessity. It's not optional. None of the qualifications of the pastoral ministry are optional. They're all necessary.

We find out why. It's because the church is overflowing with people whose mouths must be stopped, as Paul puts it in verse 11.

Dad, will you turn the mics down just a hair? I'm hearing a lot of ringing. Now, interestingly enough, a significant part of spiritual leadership, those that are in a position of spiritual leadership, pastors, elders, bishops, a significant part of that job is the ability to silence people who should not be speaking.

Now, this implies a few things, of course. Number one, it implies that elders should be incredibly careful with who they allow in their church, certainly who they allow to speak in their church.

In other words, the people that they bring in to talk to their people, people they bring in to fill their pulpit, people they bring in to teach, to lecture, to maybe conference with, you name it.

So elders have to be particularly careful about that, who they bring in to teach their people.

That doesn't necessarily mean that they have to have people that believe 100 % like they do on every single secondary doctrine you can come up with.

But certainly, they would need commonality in what you might call the fundamentals of the faith, the first, not secondary doctrines, but primary doctrines and things like that, the most important aspects of the faith.

So number one, they need to be very careful about the types of people they bring in to teach their congregation, their people.

But secondly, it implies that elders should know the difference between foolish contentions, foolish debate, quarrelsome debates, which is something that we're gonna talk about when we get to our study in 1

Timothy. They need to know the difference between foolish contentions and then what

Paul is talking about here in this passage in Titus, where he's saying these guys, their mouths need to be stopped.

You need to be able to refute what's coming from them. So what's the difference here? How can

Paul in one case say, we need to avoid these quarrelsome debates, we need to avoid these foolish contentions, and yet we need to be able to debate effectively?

Well, obviously there's a distinction that needs to be made, and Paul assumes the distinction.

I think just given the context, you can figure out the difference. A foolish contention, a foolish debate, may be a pastor using up all of his time during the week when he could be shepherding his people online, debating people over secondary doctrinal issues all week long.

That would be perhaps a quarrelsome debate. That would be perhaps a foolish contention, not to say that there isn't a time and a place, but my point being is if he's using up all of his time doing that, it doesn't even have to be online.

It could be going out and talking to people too. It's not using your time effectively, and yet on the flip side of that, if you are out there, and perhaps some of your people are around, and you have a false teacher come up and start sharing false doctrines, and you're there and you're aware of it, and your people are hearing it, and maybe they're confused by it.

They're absorbing it, but they don't really know what to do about it. They know it's different. They know it doesn't sound quite right, but they don't know why.

In a context like that, the pastor has to be able to, as Paul puts it in verse 10, or excuse me, verse 11, their mouths must be stopped.

You have to be able to refute in a context like that. So Paul isn't contradicting himself. He's giving us two different contexts.

One is a waste of time, and one is absolutely necessary. In one case, debate would be not effectively using your time.

In another case, debate would be absolutely necessary. So elders, when they read this passage, they need to understand that.

So number one, they need to be careful with who they let speak in their church. Number two, they need to know the difference between foolish contentions and what

Paul has in view here. And thirdly, elders should know the distinction in a couple of exhortations we get from Solomon.

I want you guys to hold your place in Titus because we'll be right back. But flip over to Proverbs 26 for a second because I want you all to see these verses with me.

Proverbs chapter 26. And Solomon has some wisdom in this same topic.

At what point do you do this? At what point do you do that? When do you approach debate? When do you leave it alone? If you're approaching the foolishness of men, what approach do you take?

If you look at Proverbs chapter 26, let's start in verse four. We'll just read a couple of verses.

Solomon says first, "'Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou be like unto him.'"

But then look at verse five. "'Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.'"

Now what Solomon just did there, as is the case with so many of the inspired writers, the

Holy Spirit has a very special way of being very succinct in his argumentation. He is very concise with the knowledge he's delivering to us.

What Solomon just said in a couple of brief sentences could take a debate teacher volumes to delineate and pass on to his students and showing them all of the context in which this is appropriate or that's appropriate.

And then Solomon's just like, no, here it is. So number one, when people, just a quick summary of one of the themes of the

Proverbs, when people don't fear the Lord, they're fools. So if you were to summarize a big portion of what

Solomon is talking about in the wisdom literature, when people don't fear

God, when they don't fear the Lord, they are fools. That's the biblical definition for foolishness is not fearing the

Lord. Of course, the opposite, the inverse of that is the beginning of wisdom. The beginning of knowledge is fear of the

Lord. So Solomon reminds us of that often. All right, so that's just a running theme throughout Proverbs.

And then you get to this passage and he's talking about addressing the fools. He's first, he says, answer not the fool according to his folly.

Then he says, answer the fool according to his folly. And he gives a couple of things that happen depending on what approach you take.

And what he's doing is he's giving us two different approaches, but more importantly than that, they are two different approaches for two different circumstances.

And that's the important thing to remember. In verse four, Solomon is telling us that we don't need to stoop to the level of the fool's argumentation.

We don't need to adopt the argumentation that the fool is using, and essentially willingly set aside all of our own convictions, leave all that on the table in order to start arguing based on maybe their philosophical framework, their reason, man's reason, in other words, rather than from the word.

When we do that, when we fall into the trap of, look, you need to set the Bible aside so that we can argue from reason.

And of course, apologists fall into this all the time, that there's a branch of apologetics known as evidentialism, which is essentially what they do is they take their

Bibles, they close them, and they set them aside, and then they argue apologetically for the existence of God based on the observable universe and things like that.

I will say this really quick. It's a quick qualifier. There's a time and a place. I mean, God gave us evidence to be used, and it's a grace that he did that.

One of the things that Luke starts with in the book of Acts, as he begins his sweeping apologetic work in that book, is by saying that the resurrection happened, and the resurrection was seen by a large number of witnesses and displayed by a number of infallible proofs.

So God gave us evidence. He gave us proofs, and so I'm not saying that that shouldn't be used, but a grave mistake that many

Bible believers will do is that they feel the need to set the Word of God aside because they'll say, well, the person

I'm talking to doesn't believe in the Word anyway, but what they don't think about is that the person they're arguing with has a starting place too.

Everybody has their starting, what you might call presuppositions. Dad talks about logic a lot with regard to, you can have a perfect logical conclusion based on a fine set of logical arguments, but if the premise is wrong, then it doesn't matter how good the logic is to get to the conclusion.

A logical conclusion is only as good as its starting presuppositions or its starting premise. And so the person you're arguing with are going to have their starting presuppositions too.

It may go all the way back to the Big Bang or something like that. It may go back to the singularity that they can't explain why it exists or how.

Our starting presupposition is essentially John 1 .1. In the beginning was the

Word. So that is our philosophical framework.

That is our starting point. There's maybe something else. But the trap is that because of just the way the world works and the sneaky way that the devil has worked through the skeptics throughout time is that we have come to believe that we need to be on a neutral playing field in order to argue for this, that, or the other.

The problem is there's no such thing as neutrality. Nobody's neutral. The skeptic you're arguing with is not neutral.

They believe in what they believe because of their starting presuppositions and they're not neutral about their starting presuppositions but they want you to be.

So one thing to remember, one great thing that I learned from a wonderful theologian apologist that is no longer with us, he was actually one of the heroes of Francis Schaeffer who some of you guys may be more familiar with, another guy that we look up to greatly.

But one of his heroes, his name was Greg Bonson. And one thing that he would often say is that when it comes to talking with skeptics, when it comes to talking against, excuse me, when it comes to talking to enemies of the

Word, people against the Word, is that they are not neutral so you shouldn't be.

And his point is, don't be afraid to let the Word be your drive train for all of your arguments.

So this is what Solomon is saying in Proverbs 26 four. He's saying, answer not the fool according to his folly.

Don't give up your convictions. Don't set aside the Word of God. Don't set aside the foundational truths whether or not they, just because they may or may not believe it.

Because when you do that, you set all that aside and then you stoop down to their level of man's reasoning or philosophical arguments.

All of a sudden what happens? Lest they'll also be likened to him. It's an easy way to step into a trap and become a fool yourself.

And so don't do that. Answer not a fool according to his folly if the way you're gonna do it is by leaving aside all of the foundational truths that we get from God's Word and trying to argue using human reason alone.

So that's one side. That's one side of how to approach skeptics, false teachers, et cetera, et cetera, is to answer them not according to their folly.

But then he gives us a totally different set of circumstances in verse five. He gives us a different set of circumstances and a different approach to handling those circumstances.

In verse five, he says, answer a fool according to his folly lest he be wise in his own conceit.

Now, this one's interesting because what Solomon is hitting on is essentially the fact that if you don't abandon the foundational truths,

God's Word, if you don't abandon your convictions that are based upon God's Word, you can actually catch them up in their own contradictions.

You can actually point out to them that what they're arguing for actually isn't consistent.

In other words, you can have a materialistic atheist start talking about the evils in the world and then blaming

God for it. And yet he's a materialistic atheist that doesn't believe that there's any purpose in the universe and therefore there's no real way to define what evil is.

There's no foundation for morality. Often people attack the things in the

Old Testament, the odd passages like the attack of the Amorites. Well, how could a good God, you know, command for Joshua to go in and kill the

Amorites? Well, what's wrong with that in your worldview? The universe doesn't care about the

Amorites, so why should you? And so there's contradictions and you can point these contradictions out by what?

Answering the fool according to his folly. Okay, let's take your worldview for a second. Let's take your set of argumentation.

Let's see where that gets us. See the difference? You're not setting aside God's word and then trying to argue based on man's reason.

That's what Solomon says don't do. What you're doing is you're taking the arguments they're giving you, you're holding them up against scripture and you're realizing, whoa, you're contradicting yourself left and right.

So in verse five, we're seeing what Paul is talking about in Titus 1 .11. When he says that their mouths must be stopped and that you must refute what they're saying, this is more in line with what

Solomon is talking about in verse five of Proverbs 26. You have to answer them and answer them according to their folly in some cases, lest they be wise in their own conceit.

When false teachers walk into your community, your church, the community that you are ministering within and they begin subverting households in your area, which is what

Paul says they do, and those households are, by the way, where many of your people may live, then it's time to answer the fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own ego trip where he thinks that his philosophical arguments are where it's at and that he's going to gain from using them.

There's an interesting, just a quick thought. You don't have to go there. I'll read it really quick.

In 2 Timothy 2, verse 23, it says, but foolish and unlearned questions avoid knowing that they do gender strives.

And the servant of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient.

And then he starts talking about the context where you are needing to work with people. Maybe they're contradicting themselves.

What would he do about that? He says, in meekness, instructing those that oppose themselves, if God by chance will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth and that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil who are taken captive by him at his will.

That's the condition of these people that we may have to argue with at some point. But if we're meek about it and we approach it, again, using the wisdom of God's word, rather than what we think is our own inherent wisdom, reason, whatever it may be, then you can approach it meekly, point out where they're contradicting themselves and there may be a chance, it's not a guarantee, that's what

Paul just said, there may be a chance that God, not you, not your arguments, but God will give them repentance to the acknowledgement of the truth.

So isn't that interesting how all that ties together? All of this, all of the character traits that we just finished talking about from verses six through nine in the study of Titus, all of it is necessary because of the type of people that Titus and these new elders on the island of Crete, would be up against.

So with all that being said, let's go back to Titus, take a look at verse 10. We'll start covering these last verses of this chapter one at a time.

It says in verse 10, for there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, specially they of the circumcision.

Now, for a moment, I want you guys to, while all of the qualifications we just finished studying are fresh on our minds,

I want you guys to consider some contrasts between Christians, that would be all of us.

I know the qualifications are in the context of elders, but just think about Christianity in general for a second. Believers in the word, believers in the

Lord Jesus. I want you to consider a contrast between them in general and these types of people that we're about to start talking about, starting in verse 10, but really throughout.

Think about what's being said here in verse 10. They're unruly, they're empty talkers, they're deceivers, they're liars.

One of the greatest attributes of the Christian faith is self -discipline, self -control.

Being able to control your impulses, your desires, even your thoughts, as Paul tells us to do, it's all needed for holy living, becoming more set apart, becoming more sanctified, being closer and closer to the

Lord Jesus as we live our lives. Being able to control ourselves is one of the starting points of that.

And all of those things, whether it's controlling your thoughts, your emotions, your impulses, your desires, your thoughts,

I think I already said that, all of that flows from self -discipline, self -control.

Let's go ahead and look at one more passage together, just because we're talking about contrast a little bit. Turn to 1

Thessalonians chapter five. And it's one of those things, the self -control of Christians, having the capacity to even control ourselves, because humans are an emotional bunch.

It's a thing that comes with the help of the Holy Spirit, but even better than that, it's a thing that comes from the

Holy Spirit in all contexts. And just to illustrate this for you, let me show you a very dramatic context in which the self -control of the

Christian is put on full display. Look at 1 Corinthians chapter five. And we're talking about the day of the

Lord, the conclusion of human history, as we know it at least, the cataclysmic event of Jesus coming back and all of the tribulations that preceded.

Look at verse one. But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you, for yourselves know perfectly that the day of the

Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them as travail upon a woman with child, and they shall not escape.

But you, brethren, you are not in darkness that that day should overtake you as a thief.

You are all the children of light and the children of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness.

Therefore, let us not sleep as do others, but let us watch and be sober.

Keep note of that word. Let us watch and be sober. For they that sleep, sleep in the night, and they that be drunken are drunken in the night.

But let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love and for a helmet, the hope of salvation.

So in the context of a future cataclysmic event that Paul is prophesying about here in this passage, he's saying, even in a time like that, be sober.

And the Greek word that we get sober from there is in the context of self -control.

It's the connotation of keeping yourself in subjection, keeping yourself under control, keeping your thoughts under control.

And so you have the self -control of Christians in one of the most dramatic contexts you can ever imagine.

Here's another example of it. In 2 Timothy 1 .7, Paul says, for God hath not given us the spirit of fear, and we could all quote this, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

The Greek word that that little phrase comes from, a sound mind, literally means self -control. So you could read it this way.

God didn't give us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of self -control. We have the ability, we have the capacity to control ourselves in all areas of life thanks to the

Holy Spirit and his work in our lives that the rest of the world doesn't have. And then, just as one more example, just look up three verses in our study of Titus 1.

Titus 1 .8 says, but a lover of hospitality, a lover of good men, sober, just, holy, temperate.

So there's another example. It's a different English word, but same Greek connotation, self -control.

So the opposite of this character trait that we see in verse 10, because think about it for a second.

They're unruly. They are empty talkers. They're deceivers. That's the opposite of being self -controlled.

It's the opposite of having self -discipline. The opposite of these character traits that we have as believers is what we see in verse 10.

They are people that refuse to be disciplined as they are informed by Scripture. And because of that, they're idle talkers.

They're liars. They're deceivers. They don't have any self -control. They indulge every impulse they have.

They indulge every desire they have. And it leads, as we see in verse 10, to unruliness, to empty talking, to lying.

And in the context that Paul is talking about back in Titus, he has a very specific group of people in mind.

He says, especially they of the circumcision. Now, who is that, Matt, typically when we hear that phrase, the circumcision, who would that be talking about?

The Jews. It's a phrase that's essentially synonymous with the Jews. Now, what's interesting about it is, depending on the context, it could be talking about Jews in general.

However, I think Paul is talking about a very specific, let's call it a party of the

Jews, a set of the Jews. Now, these people that he's talking about are

Judaizers that were teaching that subscription to the

Mosaic law was necessary for salvation. Now, what's interesting about it is that at no point, even in the

Old Testament, was the law ever the means of salvation. Even the prophets, even the givers of the law knew that, and they never explicitly said that the law was a means of salvation.

What it was is it was a means of obedience. Well, it didn't accomplish more than that, too. It was a means in showing the world how sinful they are, and that's why in Galatians, Paul says that the law is still in play, even in this age today.

It acts as a schoolmaster. It acts as a way for the world to have a standard to look at and say, whoa,

I am a sinner in need of a savior because I can't do that. And in the Old Testament, it was used for that purpose as well.

It was to show God's people how sinful they were and that they needed a savior, but it was also a means of obedience for them as well.

And so the law was never for salvation, even in the Old Testament. But what you had was in the 400 years of darkness between Malachi and Matthew, when the prophets stopped speaking, you had 400 years of silence before John the

Baptist comes on the scene. You had the Pharisees born. You had the Pharisees come on, and they start taking the law.

They start adding to it. They start writing their own commentaries and their own literature and their own things on it. And they got to a point where salvation was by the keeping of the law and that only.

And of course, it was very convenient for them to do this because they were the ones that were living by the law, creating the rules to keep.

And so they were holier than thou, literally. They were the ones that were keeping it better than anyone else. And so all of that was junk.

All of that was false. Jesus refuted it soundly. If you ever want an example of that, go read

Matthew chapter 23. It is a thorough rebuke of these type of teachings, but it stuck around even after Jesus died, rose again, and ascended back to heaven, and the apostles still had to deal with it.

You had Judaizers. And what's interesting about it is you even had some Judaizers that were saved. You had some of them that actually got saved and would claim the name of the

Lord Jesus, say he was their Messiah, but you still got to be circumcised. But you still got to do this, that, and the other.

And so Paul was up against this. They were Judaizers. They were teaching that you had to keep the law in order to be saved.

And this was one of two, at least two, major battles of the first century church. The first was what you might call

Gnosticism. And interestingly enough, dad is currently going verse by verse through Colossians, which is

Paul's apologetic work against Gnosticism. But in many of his other works, the other great battle was this.

It was the merging of Judaism and Christianity. It wasn't, the crucifixion was the death blow to Judaism.

The veil tore. But you still had people that wanted to keep the law. You had people that felt that it was, that wanted it to still be necessary.

And we're running a little bit low on time. We may even end here. But if you look at Galatians chapter two, just to give you guys a little taste of what

I believe Paul is talking about here in Titus, when he says, especially they of the circumcision.

Who are the they exactly? Is it all Jews? Or is it a particular party, a particular sect of Jews that he is warning

Titus about and saying, you need to be able to refute these guys. You need to be able to stop their mouths, to shut their mouths quite literally in the

Greek. If you look at Galatians chapter two and started verse seven, the first six verses, we actually already covered earlier in this study.

He's talking about the great Jerusalem council that he went to in Acts chapter 15.

And he actually took Titus with him. Titus, the guy that he's writing this letter to. Why did you take Titus?

Because Titus was a Greek. He wasn't a Jew, but he was a brother in the Lord Jesus Christ and he wasn't circumcised.

And he didn't feel the need to be circumcised. And so Paul took Titus with him to say, are you gonna tell me that this guy isn't legit?

Are you gonna tell me talking to the Judaizers that were genuine Christians, but saying that you had to be circumcised and you had to do this, you had to do that.

He said, are you gonna tell me that this guy who is this passionate about the Lord, who has been this involved in my ministry is not a legitimate

Christian, is not a legitimate brother? And of course they couldn't say no to that. And so the first six verses is

Paul describing this council he goes to and he mentions Titus. But then you get to verse seven and he says, but contrary wise, when they saw that the gospel of the uncircumcision was committed to me as the gospel of the circumcision unto

Peter. Now, what is he talking about there? He's saying that Paul was an apostle called to preach to the

Gentiles. Those that were pagans five minutes ago, not circumcised. Paul is going to preach to them, but Peter was gonna go preach to the

Jews, the ones that needed to realize Jesus was actually their Messiah. So Paul is saying,

I went to the uncircumcised, Peter went to the circumcised. And in verse eight, he puts a little parenthetical in there and he says, for he that wrought effectually in Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision, the same was mighty in me toward the

Gentiles. So he's saying, I am just as called as Peter, just as much as Peter is called to preach to the

Jews, I am just that called to the Gentiles. And in verse nine, he says, and when James, Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given unto me, they gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship, that we should go unto the heathen and they unto the circumcision.

So they branched off. So they laid hands on them. They, James and the other guys who were the pillars, according to Paul, recognized that Paul's ministry was legitimate from the

Lord. So they laid hands on them. Then they parted ways. Paul and Barnabas goes and they start, they start preaching to the Gentiles, the uncircumcised.

James and Cephas and Peter, they went and they started preaching to the Jews because remember the church was born in Jerusalem.

Yes, it would spread out. And the great commission would go out to the ends of the earth, but it had to start somewhere. And it started where all the

Jews were. And so that's where a lot of the apostles went and their focus was on them. And he says in verse 10, only they would, that we should remember the poor, the same which

I also was forward to. But when Peter was coming to Antioch, I withstood him to the face because he was to be blamed.

For before that certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles, but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing they which were of the circumcision.

Okay, so that's the key phrase I wanted you guys to see that I believe is a parallel with Titus. There was a party of the

Jews of the circumcision that were legitimately saved, but we're trying to argue that the law was also part of salvation.

Now I want you guys to think about something. Paul was a defender of the purity and the perfection and even the necessity in certain contexts of the law.

He wasn't against the law in itself. What he was against was false teachers coming in and saying that the law was how you get saved.

That was heretical long before Paul. It is still heretical to this day. And so this is the party of the

Jews that I believe he's addressing when he tells Titus, especially they of the circumcision. It's these guys.

They're on the Island of Crete, but it's the same mindset. It's the same view.

And so I will go ahead and end it there because we're out of time. That pretty much finishes up verse 10.

We'll take a closer look at verse 11 next week where Paul, after laying out who these guys are, he says, their mouths must be stopped.

And he uses very expressive language,

I'll say in the Greek. We'll take a closer look at that next time to make that point. And so we'll end it there.

We'll take a look at verse 11 next week. Does anyone have any thoughts or anything before we close it out? I didn't leave as much time as I'd like to, but if y 'all have anything, you can share it real quick.

Well, that was very interesting because those two verses from Solomon have confused a lot of people for 2 ,000 years, or 3 ,000 years.

So that's a great explanation. Well, the key there isn't that Paul is, or excuse me,

Solomon is saying, here's two ways to approach it and depending on your mood, pick one. That's not really what he was saying.

The key there is that he's giving you two sets of circumstances. And if you're in this circumstance, do this.

If you're in this circumstance, do that. And so, again, in verse five, what we have in verse five of that Proverbs passage,

I believe, is the context in which you do engage in the debate that Paul's talking about in Titus.

He talks about it later in one of the Timothys as well, which we'll eventually get to. Keep in mind,

Paul himself was a debater. He stood in Athens with the pagans surrounding him and debated, and guess what he debated from?

The word of God. He wasn't afraid to set that aside so that they could be on neutral ground. In fact, what were the scriptures he had?

He had the Old Testament. He was defending the deity of Christ or the resurrection of Christ using the

Old Testament. Could we do that? We couldn't do it right this second. We could do it if we thought about it and if we were in the word enough, we could do it, because Paul did it.

But the point is, there is a time for debate, but it's a time when you are needing to shut the mouths of false teachers that are swaying the sheep.

You don't go out and you don't look for contentious, quarrelsome debates for no reason other than to feel smart, and that's the difference.

Like you said, if they're going to, a clear, it's happened to me a lot in these trade way meetings where you have people, just tons of people standing around at a break, and some guy's gonna start talking about some doctrinal thing he thinks is totally wrong, and I see three young people standing there listening, and then

I'll nail the person and try to make him look like a total fool so that they'll see his argument is stupid.

But I never would do that if those three weren't standing there, because you don't entertain foolish questions.

You don't do it because you can't do it without becoming a fool, a waste of time.

So the only time it's not a waste of time is when that person's influencing other sheep and laying little baby sheep.

Then you need to nail them, and another case would be, like you look at a lot of this, you guys, all you young guys do on YouTube, like Dr.

White, he will attack them because he knows they have YouTube channels that affect thousands of people, maybe tens of thousands of people, so he has to debate them, because they're affecting maybe hundreds of thousands of people with a false doctrine.

So he's not in it just to show he's smart, he wants to knock them down in front of those people. That's how you know when to do it.

Yeah, so those would be demonstrations of the verse five of that passage. Yes, Mimi? I have an online friend who, in this case, she's a lot of people see what she types, and she's not

Jewish by birth. She is a professing Christian, but she has adopted the law as part of her salvation, and she will go to the top and just try to push that as part of salvation.

She's, in essence, a Judaizer, but, and the only way, the best way to counter that is with scripture, and that's why scripture tells us to study to show yourself approved, because you're going to be faced with these things, and you need to know what the scripture says, and undoubtedly,

I mean, obviously, there's a lot of scripture that counters the argument of law being part of the salvation, but there are subjects, without going into depth with this, and I don't want to go into that conversation, but there are subjects that we get into, particularly during an election year, like abortion, where there is not a ton of scripture that covers all the different scenarios in a situation like that, and I've gotten into these conversations with other

Christians, and you just have to study, and study, and study, and if there's not a lot of scripture covering that for all the different scenarios, you have to study harder.

I feel like that's where it comes down to putting yourself in prayer a lot more, so that you're more open to that discernment from the

Lord, not just studying the scripture, but praying for that understanding and discernment, so that you know when to speak and when to hold your tongue, like Mark Twain said, never argue with a fool, onlookers won't be able to tell the difference.

For the most part, that applies, but you have to have that discernment, and you're not going to have that without the prayer in addition to the scripture, because you're studying all you want, and if you don't have, if God doesn't give you that understanding and open your heart to his teachings, then you're just operating from the head knowledge point of view, and not the heart knowledge.

Not right and divided more of church. Yes, I would agree with all of that, and there's a reason why we've been given this word in such a concise manner, like I was alluding to earlier, why our

Bibles are so thin. It's not that it's insufficient. What it is, is it's like that, so that we have to have a relationship with him in order to rely on his enlightenment of the scriptures that we have.

And so yes, I 100 % agree that prayer is right alongside all of that, and I'll say this too, we're given, we have prayer as a way of relationship.

We're also given consciences as well, and what's funny about it, what's interesting about it, is that both the conscience and even your prayer, your prayer life, can and should be informed by the scripture, so it's almost like a cycle.

So the way that you know whether your conscience is reliable, because everyone has a conscience, and yet people have some pretty wacky ways of approaching things.

Everyone has a conscience. The way that you know that your conscience is reliable, and that it's pinging you in all the right ways, is because you've read the scriptures, you continue to read them, and so you know what

God has to say about, oh, this situation that just popped up, and now your conscience is bearing witness to your spirit, letting you know, you know what

I say about this, so now you know what to do. And so yes, 100 % agree with all of that.

You absolutely have to be immersed in not just the word, but in prayer, conversation with the

Lord, relationship with Him, to be able to figure a lot of the types of stuff we're given in order to figure them out.

So I better end it there, because I see everyone waiting in the back. I'll go ahead and close with prayer, and then we'll move on to the next service.

Heavenly Father, thanks for this wonderful day. Thank you for giving us another opportunity to join in fellowship, to discuss your word, and to just develop our understanding through your teaching of the things that you have to say, and so that we can go out into the world and can be confident in our beliefs, and our convictions, and our faith, so that we have that ready defense that you told us we need to have, and so that we have the capacity to close the mouths of those who shouldn't be talking, as Paul said, in this particular context.

Lord, we want to be able to be good representatives of your word, and to ensure that your truth is being spread.

We are the means that you ordained to spread your truth, that you didn't have to do it that way, but you did, and we're thankful for it.

We're thankful and honored to be the instruments of your gospel. So we ask that you give us that confidence, that fervor to go forth and continue to spread your word.