Titus -- Lesson 1

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Titus, a short, yet power packed book. How does the Gospel undergird all ministry?

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.
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No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ. Based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the
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Apostle Paul said, But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.
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In short, if you like smooth, watered down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.
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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the
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Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.
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No Compromise Radio ministry, my name is Mike Abendroth. It is a Saturday night at about 6 o 'clock, it seems like about 10 o 'clock after this time change.
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It's about 6 o 'clock on Saturday night. Actually, this is
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Thanksgiving week in real time. Kim, my wife and I, not Kim, my wife and I, that's two different people, but Kim, that is my wife and I, that is my wife, and I went to New York City with my three daughters.
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My son's in Los Angeles, he should be home for Christmas. Anyway, it's just a short week.
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Thanksgiving weeks and other holiday weeks are wonderful, but they don't give you much time if you're a pastor and you need to preach on Sunday morning.
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Well, you can write us, crazythingshenno, at nocompromiseradio .com,
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H -E -N -N -O, and you can write me, mike, at nocompromiseradio .com, or info, at nocompromiseradio .com.
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I am, I don't know, it's not the woe is me time, but about 1 ,500, 1 ,600 shows, and I'm just tired, and giving's down, morale is down.
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More and more I think, you know what, maybe I do need to change it, maybe the money will motivate, but it is hard, rough going.
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I kind of switched a while ago, as Fred would know, to three new shows a week here in the studio, one new show that is
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Monday, which would be a sermon of mine, chopped down by Charlie, to about 25 minutes, and then
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Friday reruns. So I don't know what's going to happen. I guess I could go to one show a week and just, you know, make it an hour podcast type of thing.
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Lots of ministries do that. That would probably make it easier for me. It is difficult.
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I'll be in on a sabbatical next year, and so that'll make it probably rerun haven. I'm not exactly sure.
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I say to myself, do people really need to hear from me for 25 minutes a day, and are they encouraged?
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Can they get that information from someplace else? I can't even talk today, so that probably tells you a little something about the host.
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I rode my bike this afternoon. I'm trying to get in a certain amount of miles, and it's weird.
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My lips, I think, are frozen. It's so cold here in New England. I rode 53 miles today, and it wasn't that long of a ride.
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It just took me a long time because my mile per hour average is low these days.
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Number one, I'm old. Number two, it's cold, and when it's cold, I've got all the different gear on, the extra gear that, you know, they used to wear those special suits that help people swim faster.
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Well, these special warm suits help me pedal slower. Although I listened to quite a few podcasts on the show today,
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I mean on the show, on the road today, on the road show today. Hey, that's what we could do, a road show. There actually is a secular idea, a non -Christian idea that I had for a podcast, and I thought, you know what?
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That's where I could – that's where I would excel. But I can't tell you the idea.
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So maybe my mind is elsewhere. I'm working on the S. Lewis Johnson Colossians commentary.
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Hopefully, I – let's just say that's going to be out in March. March. I want it to be out in December, but I'm focused on the discipleship ministry here at the church and preaching.
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And so I've been quite busy regarding that. Then there's a new book on hell that maybe that will come out in July next year, something like that.
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It will be a shorter book, but hopefully, it will encourage you to be thankful and encourage you to evangelize.
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Well, my name is Mike Abendroth. And after all the woe is me stuff, I found some years ago how the media would handle the end of the world.
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You know, we're all concerned about the media and it's the fourth wing of the government and there are all the news sites, fake news sites.
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You know, it's all the rage today. How the media would handle the end of the world.
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So anyway, before I forget, if you want to email me and say, shut it down, change format, keep going, any of those things, or you can just say hello.
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You can say hello. Wall Street Journal says
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Dow Jones plummets as the world ends. That would be their headline. Man, this is hard talk today.
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Ink Magazine, INK Magazine, INC, obviously
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INC. 10 ways you can profit from the apocalypse. USA Today says we're dead.
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All caps. Rolling Stone, the Grateful Dead reunion tour.
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Sports Illustrated, game over. Ladies Home Journal, lose 10 pounds by judgment day with our new
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Armageddon diet. That's pretty cute. Clever. Have I ever said cute on NoCo Radio?
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That's a lot of talking. 1 ,500 shows, essentially 30 minutes a show.
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That's a lot of hours of talking. That's like six weeks of nonstop talking.
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Okay, five. TV Guide said, remember
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TV Guide Magazine, death and damnation. Nielsen ratings soar.
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Discover Magazine. I thought it was Discovery, but Discover. How will the extinction of all life as we know it affect the way we view the cosmos?
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Oh, here's a good one for those of you who remember AOL, America Online. System temporarily down.
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Try calling back in 15 minutes. Christianity Today, death, four possible views of a nonliteral hell.
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They've got that right. And Money Magazine, mortgage rates and property values hit all time low.
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There you have it. How the media would handle the end of the world. What would the
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Bible say? If it was the Bible, I know the Bible's not media, but if the
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Bible were to handle the end of the world, what would it say? I think it might say something like this. Everything is going to plan.
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Jesus is Lord. Jesus is King. That's what it would say. In the meantime, as we wait for the
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Lord's return, Jesus has men, fallible men, sinful men, frail men, lead his church.
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Jesus purchases the church with his own blood, and he, sovereign over the church, decides that he would like to have men lead the church.
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Now, this show isn't about men versus women. You can get that on Twitter. I mean, it is a
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Joe obvious dumb moment. If you're arguing for women in leadership, that is to be elders and pastors, pastorinas and elderettes, you have the wrong show.
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Maybe you're saying, let's shut this thing down. God has men lead the church.
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It is patently, patently, perfectly obvious when you read the text.
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Once you do the jumping around, I said Jesus stuff, gymnastic Jesus, then you might try to get the
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Bible to say whatever you want. But God has his men leading the church.
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And actually, that makes it very fascinating and very wonderful that frail, sinful, fallible men can be used of God.
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And, of course, he uses everybody because we're all in the same boat, that is, we're not yet perfected on this earth.
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And God uses us anyway. And then, of course, he gets the glory. You could use 1 Corinthians 1 so that no man should boast.
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See, there you are again, so that no man should boast. What about woman? So what I'd like to do today and the next show, two shows, three shows, or maybe there's going to be no shows, is to talk about the book of Titus.
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I preach verse by verse through the New Testament, through the Old Testament. In the last year or two, I've preached through Ruth and Malachi and Jonah.
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And now I'm in Hebrews. In Hebrews, I'm just going pretty slow in Hebrews because it's so packed full of things.
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Even it's fitting for him, you know, the one who brings many sons to glory. That's my summary of Hebrews 2 .10.
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Just the idea of bringing. And I'm the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
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Everything about this passage, 2 .10 of Hebrews, makes you see the flicker in the background of what was going on in the
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Old Testament with God and Israel rescuing them temporarily out of Egypt.
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Well, I thought I would do a kind of a jet tour through Titus because one of our own,
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Eric Johanson, he's a deacon. And he's going to be a pastor down at Grace Church Hartford, Grace Church Hartford.
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By the time you hear this, he will be the pastor. And Eric went to Southern Seminary and he's involved here in the church in lots of ways.
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And he's actually been on No Compromise Radio once or twice or maybe more. Maybe we should have him on more now as a pastor.
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Well, anywho, I am going to preach tomorrow in real time. This is not a real -time show.
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I have the opportunity to do real time. Usually when Todd Freel asked me to host for him, which he hasn't in two years.
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I think that's, by the way, why our NoCo Radio Twitter account and Facebook account are just spiraling down.
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Oh, I got it. See, this is new to me. I got a Twitter thing the other day to NoCo Radio.
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For $12, you can get an extra 1 ,000 followers. So I think we're at 3 ,600 followers or something like that on Twitter.
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I thought, let's see, 12 times. What if I needed 12 ,000 more? I just want to get up past Phil Johnson.
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It's only $144. So maybe if I just go back to something that I said
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I'd never do and that is ask for money, I could ask for $144. We buy the Twitter followers and everybody thinks we're quite the cat's meow.
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Pastoral Epistle, that is, the book of Titus, we're going – I'm going to preach through all of it in one setting.
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I know some people are probably taking bets on the back. In the back,
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I'm tired and I'm yawning and I shouldn't have ridden all those miles. It's about time to start counting calories again in anticipation of what's going on this
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Thanksgiving. Actually, no Thanksgiving turkey this year. I did have a little place called
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Milk, M -I -L -K in Manhattan. I had a milkshake with some cereal in it.
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That was kind of crunchy and interesting, huge straws, very large diameter.
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Then I had a croissant filled with turkey and cranberries and the croissant was kind of a stuffing type of material.
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That was my Thanksgiving. So as close as I got to Thanksgiving and no pumpkin pie, no pumpkin pie.
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Jet Tour of Titus. The way I'm going to break down the book of Titus is six exhortations that Paul gives to Titus that are undergirded by the gospel.
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Six things that all leaders must do in light of who they are in Christ. I could put it that way.
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Six exhortations to every elder and six exhortations that are very practical to every church member.
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I'm going to tell you on this show why that's the case. You say, well, it's just written to Titus. How does this apply to me if I'm a man or woman who was – who's not an elder?
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Well, some background information first as you're thinking through Titus. Titus was on the island of Crete.
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Can you get rid of these yawns? That makes exciting radio. Terribly good radio as my father would say.
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Wicked good radio here in New England. When the host is probably yawned eight times, I think the only ballet
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I ever went to was in Los Angeles. I was trying to expand my horizons as a kid from Nebraska and it was a yawn -a -thon.
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It was about as bad as it gets. I mean I've done the Pavarotti kind of opera with Pavarotti and tried to be cultured a little bit.
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But the ballet never again. Maybe if there's a big no -compromise donor who gave me some seeds or something.
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It was awful. Titus is on this island called Crete. There's some nasty people on Crete.
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Even when I was on the island of Crete a couple years ago with my daughter Gracie, it's known for its ne 'er -do -wells.
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Is that a word? Ne 'er -do -wells, does that all go together? Well, back in those days, it was the same.
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It's a large island, one of the largest in the Mediterranean Sea. If you look at it, it's probably 150 miles, 160 miles long and about 30, 35, 40 miles wide.
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It is south of the Aegean Sea. If you want to think
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New Englandese, Martha's Vineyard is not 20 miles, it is longer. So you've got 160 miles, so eight times longer than Martha's Vineyard.
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I don't know about Catalina, Catalina Island. I probably would know more about Catalina if I had forgotten about it because I used to live in Los Angeles.
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And I did a 10K, my only 10K I ever ran in Catalina was with Tom Cruise and Emilio Estevez. Tom actually said to me afterwards, sorry,
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I can't go to the party that I said I would go with you. I'm going to take the helo home.
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True, true story. Titus, Crete, how did he get there?
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How did Titus get to Crete? Well, Paul visited Crete and you can read
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Acts 27 to see how many times Crete is mentioned. And he goes back for ministry, leaves
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Titus there, just like he would leave Timothy to Ephesus. And off Paul goes someplace else.
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And what does Paul want to have happen in Crete? Well, every place he leaves someone, he wants to have happen the same thing, and that is solid churches to be built.
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And churches, of course, that are solid are going to proclaim Jesus Christ and His word.
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And he leaves Titus in Crete. Paul writes this letter to Titus from Nicopolis, and you can take a look at it, this is right after his first Roman imprisonment, or exactly when was it.
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You can look at the dates and stuff like that. Mid -60s, it's about the same time as 1
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Timothy written. But all those things, while interesting, while important,
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I think it's more important to ask yourself the question, why
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Paul would write this? Why was this book written?
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I didn't say written, I said written. Probably Titus was asking
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Paul some questions, and this is a letter in response. That's a good guess.
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Maybe just Paul, motivated by the Spirit of God, just writes the letter. Well, lots of times if you look at Romans or Galatians, you'll see
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Paul defending doctrine, explaining doctrine. Here, kind of the sub -theme is,
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Titus, you know doctrine. You've been taught the right thing. And I don't have to explain it to you anymore.
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I've got confidence in you. And what I need you to do is
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I need you to set up some elders because there's a lot of false teaching there. And that's what's going on in Titus chapter 1.
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Most people would say, well, the reason why this letter was written is because some false teachers were at Crete.
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And what does Paul do? He says, I'm going to deal with that. And the way we deal with that is making sure we have elders.
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And when you have elders around, they are going to take care of everything. And you can just imagine this perfect place for false teachers to show up because you've got a bunch of scumbags anyway at Crete.
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And it just filters in to the church. Of course, Satan is real and alive, and he hates the local church and Church Universal.
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And you could imagine if people are immoral at Crete, there's going to be a moral opposition against the gospel too.
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While Paul is going to say, set up elders so you can deal with the false teachers, he's going to also talk about how to really live a life that accords with godliness, to adorn the gospel, to use that kind of language.
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And that is why we call it a pastoral epistle. These false teachers, they have bad lives.
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Paul says to Timothy, you've got the real gospel. You're not a false teacher, and so your life will show it.
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And here's the cool thing. Three chapters in Titus, and chapter 1, 2, and 3, all contain discussions about the gospel.
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So that is why, that is the why, that is the motivation, that is the encouragement, that is the empowerment of what's happening here.
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You can't just do it on your own. This is not moralism. This is just not sola bootstraps. Paul really understands you have to be tethered to the gospel to do these things and to be even motivated to do these things.
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The ground of the message of the imperative in Titus is hooked to, attached to, fixed to the indicative of the gospel, to quote
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Machen, the triumph of the indicative. False teachers, they're around.
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What's the cure? The simple cure is get elders, and we're going to see that in the book of Titus.
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And as you think of maybe home Bible studies that are rogue, that aren't tied to local churches, all kinds of things go through your mind, and you begin to say to yourself, okay, how do you battle false teachers?
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It's very basic, of course, to know the truth and to have elders who know the truth.
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God's mechanism for dealing with false teachers in a church. In this day and age that we live in, maybe they aren't really real, but maybe they're just YouTubes.
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Maybe they're Vimeos. Maybe they're DVDs. Maybe they're books that show up, and you think, well, this has got false teaching in it.
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Jesus Calling, for instance, Sarah Young doesn't show up at your church, but people influenced by her do, or the book does.
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I remember when I first got here to Bethlehem Bible Church 20 years ago, I would see all kinds of Joyce Meyer books around.
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And, you know, I didn't say much at the beginning, but eventually for the people's own good,
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I had to say, you know, that's not healthy for you. That's not good for you. These are the reasons why.
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And that is what elders must do. Now, we're going to get to the passage in 1 .10
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in Titus, but if you're one of these types that don't like confrontation,
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I mean, I don't like it. Who does? But don't think it should ever exist, and you go along to get along, and everybody just has to have a big, you know, grab each other by the shoulders, and we need to be accepting and loving, and we don't want to wound people, send them off to their therapy dogs and safe spaces.
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Well, then you don't understand who Satan is, what the church is, and who
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Jesus is. Because any time you're going to have the gospel, there's going to be an attack against it.
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This book will be helpful to you, because it means you have to stand up to defend the gospel.
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It must be done. And if your elders do it, you ought not to be bugged. If your pastor does it, you ought to encourage him.
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The last thing a pastor needs is when he has to deal with some false teacher, is some congregants thinking, well, that wasn't done very lovingly.
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Have you called them first before you announce their name? And all kinds of shenanigans that go along with it.
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This is important, this book. How do you deal with false teachers? Set up elders.
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Elders who are set up take care of the false teachers, and by the way, God has given you through the gospel grace to live a godly life that will also silence the elders who are false, or the false teachers.
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That's probably more like it. My name is Mike Abendroth. This is No Compromise Radio. You can write me, mike, at nocompromiseradio .com.
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In all seriousness, these days it's hard to record so many shows. If you think there's a better format, then you can let me know.
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If you want me to just keep going, I probably would need to know that too. I don't think I have some kind of ego that needs to be massaged or anything like that.
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Of course, it's nice when people say nice things about it. I'm not after that. I'm after, you know what,
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I learn, I grow, we have a few laughs as we go, et cetera. Something like that would probably be more appropriate than, you know, giving me an email that my dog could write.
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I miss my dog. Where's my dog? Sometimes I bring in my little NoCo mascot in here to the inner sanctum, but she would probably yawn after I yawned.
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How does that work? If your dog yawns, you yawn, then back and forth. This is Mike Abendroth, NoCo Radio.
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Or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.
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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.