Book of Titus - Ch. 1, v. 5

Park Meadows Church

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Titus chapter 1 verse 4, we're running it back, we're starting from scratch because you guys just weren't getting it.

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We are getting into new territory, but for context's sake, I've been watching closely.

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No worries. All right, Titus chapter 1 starting verse 4 through verse 9, not that we're covering all of that today.

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So who is he writing to? He's writing to Titus, my own son after the common faith, grace, mercy, peace from God the

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Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Savior. For this cause left I thee, he's talking to Titus, left

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I thee in Crete that thou, that's Titus, should have set in order the things that are wanting and ordain elders in every city as I had appointed thee.

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If any be blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children not accused of riot or unruly, for a bishop must be blameless as the steward of God, not self -willed, not soon angry, not given to wine, no striker, not given to filthy lucre, but a lover of hospitality, a lover of good men, sober, just holy, excuse me, just holy and temperate, there's a comma there, holding fast the faithful word as he have been taught that he may be abled by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers.

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So we move on to the second section of this letter.

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Section one that we finished up last week with the conclusion of verse four was basically the life mission of Paul.

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There's a lot, Paul's earthly mission is what we titled section one, a whole lot that was covered in those four verses, a lot of doctrine, a lot of allusions to doctrines that Paul covers in more detail in other places.

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But here in starting in verse five, we move on to the leadership qualifications of elders.

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Now this is something that we don't talk about a whole lot. As we talked a little bit about in our introduction, you know, the pastoral epistles as these letters are given, perhaps just by that title alone or that kind of tag that it's been given, we don't spend a whole lot of time there generally because it's for pastors, right?

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It's for the qualification of elders. Well, we demonstrated in our introduction that while it's a totally fine designation for these letters to have, there's a whole lot covered in these letters for everybody, whether they're the elder, a member, you know, fathers, mothers, men, women, and kids in the church.

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These are pretty exhaustive letters as far as church life goes and the standards that we're given for it.

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However, at the top, at least for Titus, we are given these qualifications for the leaders of God's men, of elders, of those that are meant to lead his flock in the local churches throughout the world.

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And so again, we generally breeze through passages like this because why? It's applicable to elders, right?

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Which is a relatively small percentage of Christians throughout the world. However, we are going to move somewhat slowly through this because I feel like it will give us a building block for understanding why exactly we can put, righteously put the blame at the feet of leaders, of church leaders, of spiritual leaders throughout the country, throughout the world as to why we're kind of in the place that we're in today, culturally speaking, as well as doctrinally.

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And so this this series of qualifications that we're about to move through are important for every person to understand well.

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And there's another reason why it's good to understand it well, in addition to holding your elders, your bishops, your pastors accountable.

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There's another reason that we'll get to near the end of it that I believe gives application of these qualifications to every believer.

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So just know that we'll get there eventually, but eventually we will be talking about how these qualifications,

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I believe, are applicable to every father at the very least, but possibly for every believer.

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And you'll see what I mean. First and foremost, the immediate context, this is to elders specifically.

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So let's start with that. Many of the qualifications that we just read going through verses five through nine are often ignored or selectively applied at best.

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So you can see many examples in the modern quote unquote church where the qualifications we just read from Paul are, for whatever reason, just put aside and left alone for the minister, for the pastor that has taken that role and for whatever reason feels that they aren't for him.

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But there are even more scenarios where we will find certain of these qualifications perhaps applied, but applied selectively.

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In other words, they're not all applied. There are there's rationalization that takes place for the setting aside of some of them, while the ones that are perhaps more,

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I want to say, easier to follow, whatever the reasoning is to selectively pick some and set the others aside, that seems to be taking place quite a bit.

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Now, in this church, my entire life, we've talked a lot about how the source of America's downfall, culturally speaking, morally speaking, has come from behind the pulpit.

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Now, I would agree with that a hundred percent. I will add, though, that I believe that the downfall, the source of the downfall, has also come from within the pastor's home.

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When you hear weak preaching, when you hear preaching that is there intended to tickle the ears, as we learn from the

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Bible, rather than honestly and faithfully handling God's word, that kind of weak preaching is going to come from a weak man.

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It's going to come from a weak man that has decided that God's qualifications for shepherd can be nuanced and, you know, fit custom fit for his circumstances.

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And obviously, that's not OK. It's abundantly clear that the standards for God's men, specifically those serving as elders, because that's the context we're talking about right now, are very, very high.

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These are very high standards. And it's important to remember that while Paul is the one that gave these qualifications from his heart, from his pen, they are no doubt

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God's qualifications. These are higher standards that come directly from God himself, intended for the men that he would call and he would put in place to lead his people.

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So, you know, it's no surprise that these are going to be higher standards. There's no shortage, as we know, seems week after week, depending on what kind of news you keep up with, that there's another story of another fallen pastor, one that has fallen into gross, immoral sins.

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And they're committed by people that are intended by men that are intended to carry the responsibility of pastor.

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And what's worse, perhaps, is that even when their sins are brought to light, when their sins have found them out, you know, there's that passage in Numbers chapter 32, your sins will find you out.

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When that happens, the people around them, oddly, will often seek to restore that person for back to his pastoral role, back to his pastoral duties, sometimes within a or maybe months.

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But and we're going to get to this in just a minute. This, I believe, is an offense to these very standards that we're reading from Paul here.

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I don't I don't think that you are faithfully approaching the passage that we just read by initiating these these types of restoration processes for these fallen men.

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Last week, I left you guys with a question and I asked, why? Why is it that you think that congregations are so quick to want to restore men that have fallen into such terrible sin?

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And by the way, for those that may not have been here last week, I'm not talking about just the fact that a pastor is human and everyone makes mistakes and everybody slips up in certain areas, whether it be maybe not the most appropriate way of phrasing something, or maybe they let their emotions run a little bit high and perhaps a little bit of their flesh came out.

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Versus the being spirit led or who know, you could come up with a whole lot of little examples where a pastor, where his humanity comes out and there has to be grace for that.

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There has to be forgiveness for those things because God uses earthen vessels as his instruments to fulfill his will.

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That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the examples where it is abundantly clear, objectively bad, immoral, gross sins that take place.

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Again, depending on the news that you follow, you find you see cases of this throughout America week after week after week where they they hit the news cycle.

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Of course, the world gobbles that up because it is a it's an affront to the testimony of Christianity at large, even if it's well,

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I won't go into that for too long, but you kind of get where I'm going in cases where it is really, really bad often.

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And oddly enough, you still see those congregations wanting to restore their pastor. And I asked you guys last week why you all think that is

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Mimi kind of gave a preliminary answer that we will cover shortly. And again, these types of restoration programs,

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I believe, are not only a biblical, but are possibly if I could be so bold as to say an affront or an offense to the standards that God gave, because we don't see restoration in the

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Bible when these specific qualifications are not met. So God gives us a high standard.

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We have to ask what follows when these standards have been broken and in some cases willingly and intentionally broken, really, really bad cases like this.

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Now, I'll say it one more time just to cover my bases here so that I don't want anyone to misunderstand.

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This does not mean that if a man who committed, even if they're really bad sins and moral acts as a pastor, it does not mean that if he later repents, if he later has a genuine heart of repentance and confesses to the

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Lord and is right with the Lord again and apologizes to his congregation for letting them down, it doesn't mean that he should be restored to fellowship.

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He should absolutely be restored to fellowship, being a part of the congregation, being included in corporate worship and all of that types of things.

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Dad even said it last week. There's a million things that any one of us can do to serve the church and to serve our brothers and sisters.

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But this particular office, this particular role comes with standards that are above all the rest.

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While their church absolutely should forgive them 70 times seven to use Jesus's just emphasis that he gave

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Peter, they should restore him to fellowship, allow him to partake again in corporate worship as he does restore his relationship with Christ.

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But those circumstances, that is very different from restoring him in the official role of pastor, no less, perhaps the greatest office that any man could have.

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The teaching of God's word and the spiritual leadership of a congregation is not something that we get to take lightly as a church at large or the church on an individual level, people,

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Christians, we can't take that lightly. That is a very significant job description. It's not something that a local church has the right to omit in favor of putting a defiled elder through some type of extra biblical restoration process, even if it's because they deeply care about him.

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And that's kind of what Mimi hit at last week, because I asked the question, why do you guys think that happens that people are so eager to restore their pastor?

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And Mimi gave an answer that I think is perfectly legitimate in some cases. And that is just a deep love for the man, a deep care for him, especially if he did good in their lives and he had helped them through a number of tough times.

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He obviously, I mean, in some cases, a man that has really rough stuff going off on the side is still preaching the word.

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And as we know, in Corinthians, that the Lord uses the foolishness of preaching. And so even even when a man is doing so with his heart not in the right place,

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God's word still doesn't return void, even if it's coming from a less than ideal proclamation of it.

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And so I think Mimi is right. I think there are some cases where there is a sincere love for the man, a genuine care for the man.

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And that is where that drive to restore him comes from. It's more of an emotional tie.

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And while that still, I believe, does not give the right to go above and beyond God's qualifications and insert this process that isn't laid out anywhere in scripture,

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I can still understand, I can still empathize. I could empathize with something like that, even though it doesn't necessarily mean it's right.

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I get I get the closeness in relationships like that.

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Every man that seeks to minister in an official capacity must be measured by scriptural standards, not by our own, even when the relationships are really, really strong.

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Now, interestingly, I believe that one reason we have these instances of congregations being lax toward their pastor's sin is because if they can lower the standards and this is kind of what

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I was getting at last week is why I asked the question, what did you guys to think about? And I guess really quick before I get to my thoughts, does anyone have any additional thoughts other than what

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Mimi shared last week regarding why it is that. We see so many cases of an immoral act take place, it comes to light, everyone knows about it, it defies the qualifications that we just read for an elder, for a pastor to be a minister of God's gospel.

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And yet even then, see, to me, I said this last week, it seems like logically the congregation would be so offended and turned off by that coming to light that they would be eager to get him out and replace him with a man that is going to fulfill those qualifications.

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But usually it's the opposite, usually find the opposite. We see the quick putting together of a form of a restoration process or whatever it may be.

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So why do you think that happens? Why do you all think aside from any, any genuine cases of that, the love for the man and putting that kind of before everything else?

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Why does that happen so often? Go ahead, Dad. I think another area to look into is that most of the time, if you have a man like that, he's weak in his doctrines, usually, and many of them are charismatic.

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If you study church history, one of the greatest books on church history mentions several uprisings of spurious tongues speaking, as they call it in the book, throughout the 2 ,000 years, some odd years since Christ.

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And at each time that happened, that usually associated with that sexual immorality.

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So a lot of times the pastor is so weak and preaches such weak stuff that the church people don't know the scripture.

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They don't even know what you're teaching them right now. They've never heard a lesson on what you're teaching. So they don't know the qualifications of the pastor.

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And the pastor will then use inappropriate, out of context scripture to defend himself.

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I remember, I personally know two or three pastors who committed adultery.

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One of them, in particular, about six or seven wives of men in the church, got caught, got kicked out of that church, but he's still in ministry now somewhere in California.

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And the founding pastor of this church was perfectly fine in that area while he was here, as far as morality, but after he left and went to California, he committed adultery with one of the musicians of the church, and he's still in ministry.

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So the people are so, in these churches, they don't know the scripture, so it's easy for the pastors to bring up something like, usually they'll bring up King David.

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They'll say, well, King David had a problem in this area, and God forgave him, and he remained king.

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And no one in the church is smart enough or knowledgeable enough to come back and say, okay, but this is a

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New Testament church, and the New Testament defines the fact that, you know, that's inappropriate for a pastor, and we don't have a king leading the church, we have a pastor.

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And for the pastor to hire an officer king, and so it doesn't work, but they don't know the scripture well enough, and the pastors know that they don't, and so they just talk their way out of it.

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And usually it's the pastor who comes up with the idea of, I need to get help,

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I need psychological help, I'll get a counselor, I'll go through the counselor program, and he'll set that up, hoping the church will say, okay, well, when you go through that, we'll talk about what will go from there.

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So I think a lot of it has to do with the pastor himself, and the sheep's so weak, they don't even know the rules that they got put, the imperatives that God put in the

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New Testament for the pastor, and the deacons, they don't know that, so the pastor's evil, these guys are evil anyway, they're teaching false doctrine, right?

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So that whole group, that's a good explanation, and we have one where the doctrine was good, like this recent case in South Dallas, which is heartbreaking to me, because I know him and he's preaching on the radio, and he flinches,

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I can't explain that on the inside, you would think they would know that there's nothing they can do to restore him, to pull him, but they may not know that.

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Well, so, I think that's a great case of the emotional pull, of the genuine care for the man, so that happens to be a great example of the first thing we talked about, that Mimi touched on last week, which is, you know, what is the reason why we would do something like this, or a congregation, well it's because they genuinely, sincerely love the man like a father, as their shepherd, he has helped them for decades upon decades, and that emotional connection is so strong, that even a congregation as well -fed as that one, to Dad's point, can even still be inclined to begin a process that may or may not be in Scripture, well it's not in Scripture, but my point is, like that, the emotional appeal is stronger than the qualifications, and the answer that Dad gave prior to that is fascinating, there's some overlap with the one that I'm about to share, my belief as to why this is so prevalent, but it is a little bit different, because Dad's main argument there, or main idea, is that in many cases, it is an appeal to ignorance, it is people, it is a pastor exploiting the ignorance of his people, by knowing that they're not perhaps fully aware of what the

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New Testament qualifications and imperatives are, and so they'll appeal maybe to an Old Testament story, out of context, and work their way back into staying in the job, so it's an appeal to ignorance, go ahead

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Dad? Brian Crisler noted that, he said ditto, is there ignorance in Scripture?

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Exactly, so there's that, and I think that plays a big part in it, for sure, let's go outside of the scope of Titus for just a second, and let's just think about morality in general, you know,

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God's morals are baked into nature, they're baked into everything, you have to really, it only takes the depravity of man to ignore, or to act like they're not there,

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I think that's a great testament to just how wicked man is in and of himself, you know, he needs a savior, that's why

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Jesus died, was because of how wicked we were, it wasn't because we were inherently good, it was the opposite, but depravity of man aside,

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God's morals are there, you know, you can, in Romans 1, you can use natural law, you can appeal to natural law, to nature, to not only understand that God is there, but I would thank, to even understand deep down inside your conscience, bearing witness that, you know, things like murder is not okay, cannibalism is not okay, and some cultures that engage in that, they had to get to a point where their conscience was seared to keep that going, you think about stuff that happened prior to the colonization of the new world, and a lot of what those cultures were going through, you think about what's happening in Europe right now, these things are against, inherently against nature, and so God's morals are pretty clear, for the most part, yes, there are things in scripture that shed great light on it, but a congregation, let's say in the

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Bible Belt of the United States, even with weak doctrine, they should know better than to think that it is okay for a pastor to engage in something like adultery, in the case that dad was talking about, and then to return to the pulpit with that being publicly known, even with that, let's pretend

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Titus had never been read before, let's pretend 1st Saint Timothy had never been read before, they should still know better, they're still ignorant, and that could still play a part in it, maybe they are more easily susceptible to every wind of doctrine, so to speak, and the exploitation of that fallen pastor trying to talk them into letting them stick around, because they are ignorant of those things, but they should still know better.

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I believe that one reason we have these instances of congregations being so casual, being so lax regarding their pastor's sin, being okay with them returning to the pulpit, even after gross sins have come to light, is if they can lower the standards of their pastor's living, of their pastor's character, it makes them feel even more comfortable remaining in their own sin.

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If the standards of God's elders, pastors, overseers, bishops can be lowered, and everyone is okay with that, then that by default lowers the bar for everybody, and then everybody can feel good, everybody can feel affirmed when they mess up in the areas that God tells us we need to be airtight in.

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The thinking could be something like, if his kids have issues, if his marriage has issues, if he has selfish tendencies, or is quick to get angry, or frustrated, or enjoys drinking a little too much, then my lifestyle is affirmed.

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If pastors can live like that, then I can. And so these aren't really areas he's messing up in.

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He's okay, we can restore him, and if he sins big time in an area that everyone objectively understands is not okay, such as adultery, breaking the covenant of the marriage vows between him and his spouse, well, he asked for forgiveness, we should forgive, let's restore him.

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And now they all know that is an emotional form of blackmail, even if it's internal, to rationalize their sin out in the world during the week.

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Well, my pastor did that, and he's a man of God, so it's probably okay that maybe

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I have, that I, you know, flirt around with this person over here, I gossip over here, or I get drunk occasionally, it's probably fine.

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You know, drinking, I understand that is an interesting area in the Bible, it's not, there's not necessarily any black and white commandment to say you cannot drink, but it is abundantly clear that you cannot get drunk.

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That is black and white. And so drunkenness is a sin, and if a pastor is engaging in things like that, people can rationalize this over here.

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If he does this over here, I can rationalize this over here. If my pastor's standards are this low in this area, my standards can be even lower in this area because I'm not a pastor.

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You get what I'm saying? And so the human proclivity to justify and rationalize sin that is a direct affront to God's law and his laws and his imperatives, because of that, we will easily fall prey to the desire to restore a man that is a higher rank than our own to a higher office than our own, because then

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I can feel a lot better about the sins that I engage in on a weekly basis. But, oh sorry

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Dave, go ahead. I acknowledge it, because a Christian compares himself to a pastor as opposed to Christ.

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Sure. Now that's an interesting thought, because I think it probably could get as low as a form of idolatrous thinking.

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Well, that's an interesting thought. I need to think about that a little bit more, because you do have the idea where shepherds are meant to be an example.

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In fact, we're going to get to that shortly. Paul said, imitate me, because I am what the?

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Imitate Christ. No, that's true for sure. So, in other words, the pastor, the elders, the deacons, and all the leaders are supposed to help you compare to Christ.

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For sure. By giving you an example of that. For sure. But if they fall short, yes. Okay, so we both agree.

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The area that I'll try to be more specific in is when the pastors, or even the deacons, we haven't even gotten to deacons yet, but when the pastors, and the shepherds, and those guys, when they fall short in being the example, to your point, it does not give the congregation an excuse not to imitate

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Christ instead. So I think maybe that's what you were hitting on. But it's still not okay for him to fall short, to break that type, and for the congregation to mirror his now bad example versus what should be a good example.

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So he's still responsible to have a prime example, to be a prime example in imitation of Christ.

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But yes, you're right. Ultimately, if you're in a congregation where your pastor has fallen that short, you still have

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Christ to imitate. You don't get to use the pastor to rationalize your sin. And that's the point

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I'm getting to, is they still have their issues. It doesn't justify their issues, it's just in their mind.

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It is now justified. And so from that point of view, it makes sense that people would be so inclined to restore, even though really bad sin may have taken place by their pastor.

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But rather than all of that mess, and all of the cases of a more relativistic morality that so many churches in America now engage in, it runs rampant these days, particularly.

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If a man is to be an elder, he must meet the list of God's divine requirements.

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If he does not, it is then the church's responsibility to blockade that man from taking back the role of pastor.

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So in other words, doing the opposite of the restoration process. It is then the onus of the congregation, the deacons, other elders, to ensure that if that man is restored, it is restored in fellowship by means of genuine repentance and asking for forgiveness and confessing that sin to the

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Lord, apologizing to his congregation. Then he can be restored to the fellowship with the congregation as a member of that church family.

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But not to take the role of pastor ever again, because these divine requirements of qualifications have been broken, and that is very, very serious business.

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Now, the four main categories of qualifications here could be broken down in basically these categories.

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In verse 6, we're going to learn of the personal and sexual morality of pastors, what that is supposed to be.

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We learn of the requirements of their family leadership in verses 6 and 7, their general character in verses 7 through 8, and their teaching skill in verses 9.

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That goes back to one of the things that dad was talking about a minute ago, which is just their blatant disregard for faithfully handing the

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Word of God and keeping their people in ignorance. If you don't have the skill of breaking down God's Word in a way that people can understand and find the application, that's a disqualification as well.

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So you have to take these things seriously. We're running low on time, but let's take a look at verse 5.

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Everything we just talked about is a summary of how important the things we're about to start breaking down verse by verse are.

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It's kind of a weird topic, to be totally honest. It is an odd topic to be talking about these types of things, but we're going verse by verse through Titus.

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Here's where we are, so we got to talk about it. But I also want to say this. Bear with me as we go through this, because as odd as it seems, it is eminently important for every person of a church to understand.

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And by the way, I'm going through all of this as one of your elders. These are the standards that I have to hold myself to, that dad holds himself to, that Paul Davis holds himself to, and that all of you hold to us.

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And don't forget, I believe there is further application, extended application, if you will, by the end of it, especially for our dads, for our fathers in the congregation as well.

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We'll get to that when we get there. But look at verse 5 one more time. We have about eight minutes left. Let's cover just a little bit more.

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We're going to start breaking this down verse by verse now that we've summarized a good deal. It says, For this cause left

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I in Crete, left I thee in Crete. This is Paul. I have left Titus in Crete for this reason, that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting and ordain elders in every city, as I had appointed thee.

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So there's your duplicating and delegating. There is Paul preparing Titus to be his successor.

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And there is Paul preparing Titus to make successors of himself later as well. Now, Crete, just for a little bit of historical background here, was a very civilized society on a very large island in the

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Eastern Mediterranean Sea. It was a very ancient society. And it was discussed even by Homer some 800 years before Christ was ever born.

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So this is a very ancient society. And by all accounts, it was an advanced society for many centuries as well.

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But by the time that Paul is writing this letter, we learned that this society is a very corrupt one. If you look at verse 12, just get down for just a second.

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Paul says, One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said, The Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, slow bellies.

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This witness is true. So that's the kind of culture, that's the kind of society that Titus, this young man, is now having to deal with by himself, by the way, as we've discussed a few times.

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So it's a very corrupt society, very ancient, very advanced in all of the ways in which humanity looks for advancement, but very corrupt all the same.

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We don't know exactly who planted all of these young churches. If the island is so big, and it says you're going to go appoint an elder in every city, there were possibly hundreds of little cities throughout this island.

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So that's a lot of pastors that Titus has to discern, ordain, and get ready for ministry.

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Every city, I want you to appoint these elders. We don't know who exactly planted all these churches in the first place.

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We don't think it was, most commentators don't believe it was Paul, because Paul didn't have a presence until quite a bit later.

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But what we do know, and this is really interesting, in fact, if you want to turn to Acts chapter 2 for just a second, what we do know is that there were

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Jews who had come to Jerusalem from Crete, this island, to take part in the feast of Pentecost at the time that Peter preached on the day of Pentecost.

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So they were Jews coming to celebrate the feast, the ancient feast, not knowing that Peter was going to be there preaching a sermon that would bring the conversion of thousands upon thousands.

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And some of these Jews were converted at that time, so perhaps you could say those converted

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Jews went back to Crete and started planting churches. We don't really know a hundred percent, but that is certainly plausible.

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Go to Acts chapter 2 for a second, and I want to hone in on something that I find pretty interesting, just to give us a little bit more background on or about these people, about the

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Cretans, about the society, well not the society necessarily, but the saved ones that are now in this society.

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In Acts chapter 2, let's start in verse 4. So this is the day of Pentecost.

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The upper room just happened. The Holy Ghost came in, rushing wind, rushing mighty wind filled the house where they were all sitting.

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The church is born, and in verse 4 it says, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and began to speak with other tongues as the

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Spirit gave them utterance. And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men out of every nation under heaven.

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Now in this, and why is that? It's because they were all there to celebrate the feast of Pentecost. Let's see here, now in verse 6, when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together and were confounded because that every man heard them speak in his own language.

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And they were all amazed and marveled saying one to another, behold are not all these which speak Galileans?

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And how here we every man in our own tongue wherein we were born. Now listen to this,

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Parthians and Medes and Illamites and the dwellers in Mesopotamia and in Judah and in Cappadocia and in Pontus and in Asia, Phrygia, I have no idea how to pronounce that one, and Pamphylia, in Egypt and in parts of Libya about Cyrene and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, and then look at verse 11,

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Cretes and Arabians. So Cretans had their own language, the people on this island had their own language, and Jews from this ancient island are in Jerusalem getting ready to celebrate

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Pentecost, and it says, Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our own tongues in wonderful works of God.

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And they were all amazed and were in doubt. They were all amazed and in doubt saying one to another, what meaneth this?

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Some mocked it as we learn in verse 12, but some were converted by it. A couple of things, number one, we learned that the island of Crete had its own language.

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That's kind of an interesting little bit of knowledge. It's also a great demonstration that what were the tongues? They were languages.

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The Cretans weren't hearing gibbering and jabbering. They were hearing their distinct language, which was in this, you know, sometimes we think of languages like, okay, people from a broad continent that spoke their own language, maybe a pretty well -known language throughout the world.

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These men knew it or were speaking it and they heard it, but this is a very distinct dialect we're talking about here.

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This is a little island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, had their own language, and even that language was heard in their own tongue.

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So this was absolutely a miracle, but it's a different kind of miracle than a lot of people make it out to be.

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So that is possibly where all these local churches came from on the island of Crete, possibly from these converted

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Jews that were native to that island that went back after their conversion experience at Pentecost. Yes, sir.

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One really good point, as far as church government goes, is that I agree with what he knows.

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People probably went back to that island as far as churches and their houses. Maybe they got married and had a church building.

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But Paul told Titus, and Titus was not an apostle, he was an elder, that Paul had ordained as an elder.

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And he told the elder to go ordain elders in those churches. So that tells us that in the church even today, the appropriate government of the church for choosing elders is that the elders of the church ordain other elders.

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If you need another pastor, the elders ordain other men that are qualified to be pastor.

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They're not chosen by both of the church, and they have to fulfill all these qualifications that we're just about to teach them.

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Well, yes, totally agree. We're actually going to be talking about that very thing quite a bit more next week because there's one additional component.

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Dad, what he just mentioned regarding church government, how did Paul tell his emissary,

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Titus, to go do things? Well, number one, Titus was an apostle to Dad's point. He was a pastor. He was an elder, just like we are.

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These are first century pastors we're talking about that are overlapping with the apostolic age, but they were pastors.

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And it is his job to go discern who meets these qualifications and to ordain them himself.

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There's one additional component. We'll talk about it next week, and you can probably figure out what it is, but we'll look at some scriptures that demonstrate it.

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Yes? Well, that's the major problem with, you know, we're in the Bible Belt here, sir. Right. It's the biggest group that built the

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Bible Belt, I believe, in these southern states. One of the big problems they have is they don't follow scripture on this.

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They elect what they call a search committee of laity who go out and look for the next pastor.

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They're not qualified to do that. Then when they bring together them, it itches their ears, if that's the case.

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Then the church votes. The church body votes for him and makes him be the elder. That's not anymore in the

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Bible. So it's a major problem when you don't use Bible methodology.

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I 100 % agree. And another very common thing in the Bible Belt is this thing referred to as the view of a call, where it's left up to the congregation to discern whether or not he is a truly called man of God.

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Now, the intention there is great, but the issue is part of being an elder is being given by God the gift of discernment for other elders.

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That's not necessarily given to the congregation at large, which is the main point that is hitting on.

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So it's a good thing in one sense that churches are wanting to do this view of a call to make sure he seems legit.

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However, they're not the ones that have the gift of discernment in that area necessarily.

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It's other elders that should have that. And this is a great proof, I believe, of why we should have a plurality of elders, why we have three elders in this church.

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We may have more than that someday. And because you need other elders that have that God -given discernment to figure out who the next successor should be, how the next generation, how these roles should be filled in the next generation.

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Now, did you have another thought, Dad? Brian Christopher asked a question that said as far as the passage of Acts, where they were speaking with unknown languages, did the translation of those languages happen simultaneously with the speaking of them?

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I would think the answer is yes. The reason is that the speaker was speaking, but the hearer, what he heard at the exact same moment was his own language.

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Right. That's what I believe is taking place. I mean, it's a divine translation.

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I don't know if he, I don't know if Brian is trying to ask, was there a translator in between them?

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And I don't think so. It was just the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, it was part of the gift of the hearer.

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Right. This is a little different than what was spoken of in Corinthians, where it says, let there be an interpreter.

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That's obviously something different than this. And whatever that was, Paul was discouraging it.

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He said, y 'all need to start eliminating that. Yeah. Cutting it out.

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He said someday it will cease. So in this context, there was a translator, but it was the

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Spirit. It wasn't like a third person. There wasn't a third party translator. Now, sadly, we have to end there because we're out of time.

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I just want to say really quick, I know this is an odd topic. It's somewhat heavy because, you know, there is a heavy emphasis on sin that is assumed in these passages.

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These qualifications would not be given if Paul talking to Titus wasn't assuming that there needed to be a separation from sin in order for these men to meet these qualifications.

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So in giving all of the examples that I was given this morning regarding how much the American church and the global church at large, by global church,

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I simply mean churches around the world, they have fallen grossly short in this area.

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And that is worth talking about to give us contrast for why these qualifications are so important and what we need to do with them.

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So I wish we didn't necessarily have to end right there, but just know this is, you know, stick with me a little bit, stick with me for a few more

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Sundays, because as we break this down, overall, it's incredibly edifying stuff.

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It is incredibly encouraging. And it is great knowing that God gave us this workbook, this instruction manual, so that we can have proper church government, so that we can function and sleep good at night, knowing that all we have to do is just follow

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God's instructions. We don't have to figure it out. There's discernment here and there, for sure.

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And we'll actually talk about that too, like areas where, OK, how far does this go? Where's the line?

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What are the implications here? But for the most part, all we have to do is follow God's instruction manual and we'll be

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OK. And so that's why we're going to go so slowly through this. And I'm excited about it.

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We're going to pick it up. We still have quite a bit to talk about in verse 5 here. We'll segue right on into verse 6 after that.

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But we will end there for today and talk about this more. Does anyone else have any other thoughts?

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We are pretty much out of time. But if anyone has anything else, you all can share it real quick. And if not, we will go ahead and dismiss and move into our next service.

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Dave, would you mind dismissing this, please? Sure. Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your Word.

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We thank You for how precise it is and how instructive it is, especially for things like how to organize and run

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Your church. We ask You to help us to adhere to Your Word, help us to examine ourselves and our organization here, and be purposeful and intentional in more closely adhering to Your Word.

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And Father, we just ask that You bring great blessing to the church, each individual in this church, as a result.

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Lord, thank You for the teaching that Ben is sharing here. We ask that You help him to continue to be diligent in it.