Titus 2:1-10 A Visible Theology

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Don Filcek; Titus 2:1-10 A Visible Theology

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You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches from his series to the next generation, learning from Paul's words to Titus.
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Let's listen in. Well, good morning and welcome to Recast Church.
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I'm Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor here. Is this on? Are you guys hearing this through this? How about now? Yeah, now, there we go.
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I don't need to say that all again, but I have been saying that almost every Sunday morning for 15 years.
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And I say that because when I visit churches, we had an opportunity while I was away on sabbatical to visit seven different churches.
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And I always appreciate knowing who's talking to me. Like when I visit a church, it's like, who is that? Is that the youth pastor?
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Is that the pastor? Is that a volunteer? So I always say that. And I know most of you in the room, and I know some of you well.
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I know some of you a little, and I know some of you not at all yet. But if you've been around here for a long time,
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I want to just say, I'm really glad that you're here this morning. And if you're just here, maybe you've been here a few times, or maybe this is even your first time here,
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I want to just give you a welcome as well. We're a church that seeks to take God seriously, but not take ourselves too seriously.
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So we don't even mind making mistakes in the middle of our sentences like I just did. We don't take ourselves that seriously, including kind of decorum.
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Obviously, I'm wearing shorts. I'm comfortable with that. But we do take God very seriously.
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And we are a gathering of sinners seeking to grow together in faith, in God, seeking to grow together in community with each other.
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And we desire to use the gifts that God has given us to serve one another here in this community.
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That's grow in faith, grow in community, grow in service is what we're really all about here. We are committed to the
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Word of God as the capital T truth. And many of you might not know this, but many of you do, that our name is an acronym for our core values, replication, community, authenticity, simplicity, and truth.
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If you happen to get some donut holes, you'll notice that right above that is a sign that represents that. But the capital
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T is for truth because we believe that God's Word is the truth. In that sense, we are kind of like a
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Bible church. We believe that the Bible is both a faithful guide for us as individuals in our daily lives, as well as a faithful guide for the way that we are to do community together, that we function together at Recast in a way that is consistent and seeks to be consistent with God's Word.
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And where it's not consistent with God's Word, we want to come in line with this. I say this because we often come up against passages like the one that we're going to be looking at this morning, passages that cut against our cultural sensibilities.
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The kinds of ways that our culture is moving in a direction, and sometimes it feels like the church might be moving in a different direction, and that's okay because we're going to take what
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God's Word says over the direction of our culture. And what I want to point out is my observation, you might experience it differently.
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I'm just telling you what I think. I think we're a pretty soft and increasingly soft culture.
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We're an increasingly non -confrontational culture. You say, Don, there's divisions everywhere. There's all this stuff, but I would say unless we're online or behind the wheel of a car, we are otherwise being encouraged to be increasingly passive.
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Do you guys know what I'm talking about? Anybody know what I'm saying? And I think even more so to the point, our culture and our media are increasingly telling
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Christians particularly to sit down and shut up. You guys feeling that? And that's coming,
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I feel like, from outside of the church, but it's increasingly those calls are coming from within the church as well.
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I saw a post from a pastor surrounding the Olympic ceremony start that was basically telling
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Christians, You can't hate this. You can't speak against this because you just have to love everybody.
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And are we allowed to talk into sin? Are we allowed to talk into public spaces? Or are we supposed to just sit down and shut up?
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Do you hear what I'm saying? And it's a question over us. This text is going to say there's a line, there's a place to stand.
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Loving our neighbors means, does not mean rather, the world is telling us, that loving our neighbor means that we are never to say a negative word about sin, and that's not true, but our text is going to highlight one very important reason that God calls qualified men to lead within a congregation.
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Last week, we saw that the purpose of leadership in a church is to help us all grow in our faith. It's to help us grow in the knowledge of the truth and to grow in godliness in our daily lives.
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And Paul expresses to Titus what a leader in the church must be like. That's what he's been talking about.
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That's what he talks about in all of this first chapter that we're going to be wrapping up this morning. And all around, what's a leader in the church supposed to be like?
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An all around good guy, loved and respected in his family, self -controlled, not quick -tempered, not violent, but hospitable, and yet he is also called to be a bit weird to ungodly people.
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It is good to be perceived as weird by ungodly people.
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Amen? That's good. But our text ended last week highlighting that a fundamental requirement to be a leader in the church is that an elder or a pastor must hold firmly to the
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Word so that he can teach healthy doctrine and, this is a big and, and be able to rebuke those who contradict it.
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Not just hold to it, not just believe it's true, but be able and willing to rebuke those who would contradict the very truths found in God's Word.
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An elder must not be a man, in other words, without a backbone. There is a type of man who meets all of these other qualifications, but couldn't rebuke another if his life depended on it.
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He couldn't swat a mosquito. How many of you know what I'm talking about? Otherwise qualified, but there's no dog in him.
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There's a type of person who will only come up short on the last qualification in the text that Paul is going to break out for us in more verses here and all of those qualifications, and this is the one that he's going to major on here in the remainder of chapter one.
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That's why I wanted to take it off as one section. Able to rebuke those who contradict the
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Word. And man, oh man, oh man, is this a big deal in our current context, in our current culture.
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I know churches, personally I know churches, that have faltered in theology and practice because they had a good godly man leading them who couldn't bring himself to rebuke false teachers, and the false teachers ran away with the church.
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So check out this passage where Paul tells Titus to muzzle false teachers, to rebuke them sharply, concluding that they are disqualified from doing any good work by the end of this text.
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So open your Bibles or your scripture journals or your devices to Titus one, verses 10 through 16, and my hope and prayer is that this is what shines in our gathering, that this reading of the
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Word that you see, that this is what matters, and I'm gonna give some thoughts and try to unpack it for us, but keep coming back to this church.
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This is the most vital thing that we do in our gathering each week, is to hear what God has to say.
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Titus one, 10 through 16. For there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party.
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They must be silenced since they are upsetting whole families by teaching, for shameful gain what they ought not to teach.
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One of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.
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This testimony is true. Therefore, rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in the faith, not devoting themselves to Jewish myths and the commands of people who turn away from the truth.
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To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure.
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But both their minds and their consciences are defiled. They profess to know
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God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you for your word that clarifies and brings to light warnings like this.
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It's not all rainbows and butterflies and gumdrops in the Christian life, but there are enemies.
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There are those who would seek to infiltrate. There are those who have an alternative message. There are those who would seek to deceive your people.
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It seems like a timely message. Father, I pray that you would speak through your word truth, not through my opinions, not through my thoughts, not through my cultural commentary, but Father, that you would speak through your word truth into our hearts to highlight for us the value, the importance of your word, that there is a good message to defeat all of the bad messages, that we don't need to delve into all of these conspiracies and all of these problems and all these issues in the culture.
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We need to major on what is true and bring this glorious message of hope through Jesus Christ to a world that is just all over the place right now.
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Into those divisions, the gospel. Into those political discussions, the gospel. Into our fears and those who are terrified of the next steps.
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Into that, the gospel. The simple truth that Jesus Christ came to rescue sinners like us, that by faith we can be made whole and right and we have hope in a life that is to come and a kingdom that is not this kingdom, but a kingdom under Jesus Christ who will reign and rule over us forever and ever.
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Father, I pray that our worship would be fueled by that kind of hope, by that kind of truth.
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And Father, that you would empower our praise of you this morning with joy and with gladness and with this glorious truth of the gospel.
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And it's in Jesus Christ's name that I pray. All right, yeah, you can go to be seated.
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Get comfortable. Find your place to Titus chapter one, verses 10 through 16 so that you can see that what
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I'm saying is coming from God's word and if at any time during the message you wanna get up and get more coffee juice or donut holes, those are available back there.
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Use the restrooms. And I'm really grateful for those who come early and make the coffee.
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How many of you like the coffee and the donuts? People go pick that stuff up. Go ahead and give them a hand. Just say thanks to them for doing that for us.
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I, many of us don't love it when our alarm goes off early and theirs did this morning, so I'm grateful for them.
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This passage this morning that we're looking at is interlaced with descriptions of false teachers and instructions on how to deal with them.
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And it's kind of like a little bit of a winding thing, but there's some structure to it. Verse 10 is a description of false teachers.
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Verse 11 is instruction to how to deal with them. Verse 12 is a description. Verse 13 is instruction how to deal with them.
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And then verses 14 through 16 end with a longer section of description of false teachers so that we know who we're dealing with and the nature of them and then also how we in the church are to deal with them.
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So each of these, so that's not necessarily a helpful outline. That's just to show you that there's some structure that's a little bit harder to outline.
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But each of these cycles in this passage ramps up the force of Paul's concern. We start and end with descriptions of false teachers so that we understand fully what's at stake when we allow people to be our teachers, when we allow people to influence us.
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And I'm increasingly shocked at how many Christians would just Google a passage and use that as the means to study the word.
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Please don't do that. Okay, the first 50 hits on anything that you
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Google are trash, okay? And not many of us are gonna scroll past those first 50. So if you have some interest and some desire to study
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God's word or a passage that you're, maybe study you're reading and you don't understand it, could you do me a favor and just text me first?
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Just so that I can even guide you to some other things. You don't even have to take my word for it. You might think my answer's not great, but I can at least guide you to some good resources, but that's not in my notes.
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What's at stake though when we allow people to be our teachers is pretty high. The New Testament, by the way, is full of cautions about false teachers.
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Words like wolves in sheep's clothing, that kind of imagery is there. There are preachers for hire who will say whatever you pay them to say.
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And even it's said that in the end times that that will proliferate. There will be more teachers for hire.
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There will be more teachings to make you feel good about yourself. The phrase that Paul uses is tickle itching ears to kind of just make you feel good.
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And there's all kinds of teaching like that that's available today. Did you guys already know that? All kinds of places you can turn to just have feel good messages.
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Rah, rah, more pep in your step. Churches that would ascribe to themselves the idea that they are just a cheerleading gathering for your week.
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But this is a passage particularly that isn't primarily cheerleading. It's a little bit of rebuke and correction and taking this on.
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It's important that we understand there are really bad people, there really are, with really bad motives who will seek to be your spiritual authority.
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And my hunch is that over the course of a lifetime as being a Christian, if you've been a Christian since your youth, maybe you gave your life to Christ at a camp or in a
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Sunday school class or with your parents or something, if you've been walking with the Lord for a while, you are going to encounter these people.
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Many of you already have. They've already tried to influence you. They've already tried to speak into your life. God gives godly and qualified elders to silence, according to the text last week, to silence, to refute, and to rebuke any within the church who would seek to dispute the word of God.
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Our culture is multiplying voices that refute God's word, seek to refute God's word.
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And so let's turn our attention to God's word to see that the caution comes straight from the Almighty.
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I don't have to be paranoid to be concerned for the safety of this flock. I need not delve into conspiracy theories to think that there's a conspiracy against the church.
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I only need to remain biblical to find my calling, to be vigilant in the protection of His flock.
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I just need to remain biblical. If I study God's word, there's going to be increasing within me a desire to be protective, a desire to have my radar up, a desire to be attentive for our safety when it comes to standing firm on the word of God.
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Amen? We are at danger, church, in every hour. But we are not left ignorant of that danger through the pages of Scripture.
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God has seen fit in passage like this to warn us, church. So warning and solution is found in verses 10 and 11.
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This is kind of our first movement in the text, the first warning and solution, verses 10 and 11. Paul ties this passage directly to his last statement in verse nine with the word for that begins in the
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English Standard Version. For there are many who, and that ties it back. It's because of what he's just said prior to this that leaders must be able to rebuke any within the church.
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And that's a really important factor. Within the church that contradict healthy doctrine. Our purview, our area of primary concern is within the church, policing, understanding our jurisdiction, understanding that we police those within the church and try to formulate and continue on in healthy doctrine so that when you interact with the world outside of here, you have truth to bring into all those circumstances.
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The reason they need to be able to rebuke people within who refute truth is because there are many who will seek to refute the truth.
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Did God really say is the rally cry of all false teachers in the end, right?
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Did God really say? That is almost always the question. They echo their father, the devil.
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That's what Jesus said. That's what Jesus said of false teachers. They echo their father, the devil, who said to Eve first, did
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God really say? How many of you have heard that question before? It's increasing.
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And in Crete, the island nation of Crete, during this time, it's obvious that the church was being owned by some prevalent false teachers.
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And Paul is telling Titus, get that taken care of. Paul describes them using three words. And they're three words, but they're very helpful words.
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These describe the false teachers, at least in Crete, and to some degree, can help us to understand what false teachers might look like today.
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First, they are insubordinate. Insubordinate, the word there has overtones of rebellious, unwilling to come under authority is a good definition of insubordinate.
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I've seen this in ministry. A hallmark of many false teachers is that they reject any accountability. They must be in the lead role and must be given leadership positions.
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When a false teacher comes here and they find out that the pathway to leadership is a long and winding road, that they're not gonna be granted a speaking position right away, they often give up and go find somewhere else that they can rise to leadership quickly because they can't abide being in the ranks.
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They desire that first position and they hunger for it. They are insubordinate.
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They don't come under authority. They are rebellious against those who are over them, always casting doubt on leaders.
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They're empty talkers is the second thing that Paul identifies in these false teachers. Babbling on and on about useless and petty nuances of their own fabrication.
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Empty talkers, empty words. Paul says elsewhere that they love to quibble over words.
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The empty talker brings no substance. They bring candy to the potluck.
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There's no nutrition there. Now everybody loves a little bit of candy, but is it what we really need? Is it what's gonna sustain us?
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We need meat from the word. Interestingly, a person could be an empty talker without any malice in their heart, but more about that in a minute.
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I think a person could just be a babbler and just kind of going on and on on their own merits and just talking their own thoughts and their own feelings and their own politics and their own opinions.
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And they could go on and on about that indefinitely and not really have malice, just be, man, how many of you know somebody in your life that's got a lot of words?
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Just a lot of words. Sometimes they even use the word um to fill up space so that you can't get in the conversation.
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You guys know who I'm talking about. Not a person, just the type of person I'm talking about.
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But more about that in a minute because there are, of course, false teachers who do have deep malice in their hearts.
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That's the third word, deceivers. They are deceivers. This word demonstrates an active role in misleading.
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Some false teachers are doing it on purpose. They know that what they are telling you is false and they are still willing to bring it.
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Many false teachers know that they're false teachers. I think the word empty talkers leaves room for some level of self -deception.
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There are some false teachers who are just merely pseudo -intellectuals who believe that they've come into some new understanding and they're just babbling, talking, talking, talking, and they're ready to share it with the world.
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They are content creators spinning PR for God. Some think they're doing
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God's work when they're actually opposing Him because they're not connected to the
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Holy Word, the revelation of God. But then there are some who know better. They know better.
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They are lying and they know it. And this type of brash spiritual deception is hard for many of us to grasp.
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If you're like me, then I often give people the benefit of the doubt. I'm just like, are there really people out there who are just intentionally trying to destroy churches?
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Intentionally trying to bring down the truth? And I have a hard time imagining that person. But they're there.
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And I think I've met a couple. But we must depend on the faithful testimony of Scripture to warn us, to tell us the truth, that there are indeed evil people, deceivers looking to wheedle their way into churches.
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This is a real true category of person. According to Scripture, these people exist.
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It's helpful to understand what could potentially motivate someone, though, to seek a position in ministry while being unqualified and empty and deceptive.
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Why would a person even, why would a person even do that? And there's a motivation given in the text that's a powerful motivation.
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And once I say it, you'll go, oh, I get why they would do that. Look at verse 11 with me for just a minute.
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They must be silenced since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for, here's the two words, what are they?
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Shameful gain. Shameful gain in the English Standard Version. A little phrase, shameful gain.
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Some enter ministry for money. That's what they do. Now that seems strange, but it is true.
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Greed is the motivation of many false teachers and still today, many of the wealthiest pastors in America are the ones who speak a false gospel.
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It's true. Many of them are the wealthiest pastors are speaking what's not true.
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They are testifying. Now, I don't know which category they fall into. Are they empty talkers? Are they deceivers? I don't know.
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But they're not speaking God's glorious gospel. Creflo Dollar got his jet by tying, giving and blessing together in a one -to -one correlation.
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He says routinely that if you give to him by faith, God will give to you more. How many of you have heard those prosperity preachers out there?
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They're real. They're empty. They're deceptive. And while you might find it distasteful to name names, let me leave you here with a direct quote from the
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Honorable Reverend Dollar. You are a fool for Christ. This is a quote from him. You are a fool for Christ, so you might as well be a rich fool.
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First hesitation, second hezekiah. I see that running.
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That message runs counter to everything that this book stands for. That is a false message.
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Do you see what I'm saying? You're going to be a fool for Christ. Might as well be a rich one. What? But in each location, by the way, and I think
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Crete is an example for us, but it's not telling us all the extent of the direction that false teachers can go.
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No, this happens to be what Satan's strategy was in Crete. Each location, the pathway for false teaching to infiltrate the church will be varied.
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There's various pathways into hearts. There's various pathways into our thinking and into our world view.
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In Crete, we see that especially Jewish teachers were having influence over the churches.
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In the English Standard Version, they are called the circumcision party. There's other phrases that are there. It's a word that we don't translate well, and nobody wants to talk about much anyways.
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Let me say as directly as possible that if there is a circumcision party, I'm not RSVPing. And I don't think you should either.
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I say that tongue in cheek, but actually don't go there. This phrase highlights a brand of false teaching that sought to wed the
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Jewish faith with the Christian faith, requiring those Old Testament, that moral code from the
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Old Testament to be followed to some level in order to be okay and acceptable to God.
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And I want to be emphatically clear that one cannot be both, and this might be a controversial sentence. If you don't like it, you can come and talk with me afterwards, and I would love to talk with you about the nuances of this, because it's a nuanced sentence that I don't have time to get into the depth of it.
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But one cannot be both a religious Jew and a
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Christian. One cannot practice the Jewish faith as dictated to us and be a faithful Christian.
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Now, one can be an ethnic Jew born of the line of the Jews and a
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Christian. The ethnicity can be fully realized in the
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Christian faith, and Paul drives for that in multiple places in the New Testament. But one cannot be a religiously faithful Jew and a
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Christian. You see, the Jewish faith is an old covenant, fulfilled in Jesus Christ, completed, finished by Him, done.
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Paul called Jews out of the religious legal practices that the Jewish old covenant required of them into the freedom of grace provided through the once and for all sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross for us.
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Salvation is available to any and all who will shed their religious or pagan or self -centered way of living, admit they are sinners, and seek forgiveness in Jesus Christ alone, and salvation will come to you if you will humble yourself or have humbled yourself and done that and asked
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Him to be your Lord and Savior. But there are always people, and these false teachers and the circumcision party highlights that there are always people who will seek to add more to Jesus.
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Many Jewish people in these early days of the church took Jesus plus dietary laws.
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Don't eat bacon, don't eat shellfish, only eat kosher things, and then you'll be okay.
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Jesus plus kosher. Jesus plus circumcision is the implication in the phrase here.
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Jesus plus Sabbath keeping. Jesus plus the ten commandments and plus the moral code.
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This isn't unique to me, but I'll go ahead and repeat it. I don't even know where it originated, and I'll just tell you I was a bit lazy and I didn't look it up, so I'm not plagiarizing,
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I'm just using somebody else's quote that I've heard repeated multiple times, but Jesus plus anything equals nothing.
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And Jesus plus nothing equals everything. That's important for us to understand.
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Jesus plus anything, and you're not saved. Christ and Christ alone or you're in trouble.
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False teachers often add more. You have Jesus, they would say to you. A false teacher would come in here and say, you have
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Jesus, good job recast, you've got a great start, now let me tell you the secret in the sauce. I've got kind of what you need, and you've done a good job so far.
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Don has carried you so far. Dave Bunt early on in the church had a guy come to him and invite him out to lunch, and he literally said this.
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Don has done a good job carrying you so far, but I've got what you need. I've got what you guys need.
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And if you would just follow me, boom, here we go. I will light this place on fire.
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I'm so grateful for Dave Bunt having my back on that one. He ended up going back to the church that he was being disciplined by, but that was a different story.
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We ended up figuring out where he was coming from and getting in contact, and literally the other pastor said, oh, we knew he was off the chain, but we didn't know where he'd gone.
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Thank you for, and they reeled him back in. It was good. And I actually think that story ended well, but that's a different thing, and I'm really off my notes here for just a second.
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But people will tell us that they've got the secret, right? And I mean, the internet is designed for this.
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The internet is designed for you to get into the nuances of somebody giving you the secret, the secret diet, the secret lifestyle, the secret that you need for whatever it might be, the secret parenting thing, the secret schooling thing that your kid needs, and if you just do this, your kid's gonna be a
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Rhodes Scholar, right? Everybody's got the secret, and they're selling and they're peddling what they believe you need.
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Paul warns us here against people who will add to Christ by adding more than this simple and glorious and powerful gospel.
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The solution here? The solution? They must be silenced.
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The word in Greek is very harsh. I am actually a little appalled at the
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I think almost kind of irresponsibility of the translators here. It's such a harsh word. Muzzled is light.
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Muzzled is a light word to try to translate the idea of silencing these people.
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They must be shut up. They must be silenced. They need to be muzzled. Sometimes it's helpful to see what's not said here, by the way.
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We silenced, muzzled, not allowed to speak sounds a little harsh to our words, but let me just say a couple of things that Paul doesn't say here.
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He doesn't say they must be debated. They must be argued with.
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You must enter into healthy dialogue with them. You must prove the truth of God's word.
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You must go and debate and prove the truth of God's word over and against what they're saying. Is that what it says?
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What does the text of Scripture tell us about this kind of false teacher? Silence them. Not give them a platform in the church.
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You see, recast, we are a people dedicated to the truth found in this book as revealed by God's Spirit as men spoke as they were moved on by the very
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Spirit of God to reveal who He is. We are not a forum for debate.
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We are not a forum for the pursuit of esoterical wisdom or mystical experience.
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We are a place of faith and knowledge and godliness flowing from the teachings of the revealed
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Scriptures. Amen? We believe that the only benefit to an open mind is like the benefit of an open mouth.
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Eventually it's going to need to clamp down on something and it ought to be something good. In the case of an open mind, the truth is the we hope that an open mind will clamp down on the truth.
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These false teachers are getting entire families to follow them, Paul says. A quick aside is this beautiful concern for families here that might be lost on us.
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The basic unit of the church is the family. I would even suggest to you that the basic unit of any society, any healthy society is going to be the family.
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Some families I would just go I have no problem calling a single person who is an adult a family a family unit at least.
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Some families are made up of several people. They were generally larger back in this day without birth control and grandparents lived with their kids and all that stuff and everybody was together.
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But Paul's concern expressed in the upsetting of families to our modern ears might seem anticlimactic while it is devastating when we consider the importance of the family unit for the life of society and even the life of the church.
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A healthy church recast will be made up of healthy families. Right? And he's saying whole families are being swept away by false teaching.
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Paul refuses to give us the specifics of the false teachers teaching which I think is beautiful. I think it's kind of funny. He doesn't tell us what the content was.
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And I think he does that intentionally. What were these false teachers in Crete spewing out? Well, we don't know the details but he describes it with an interesting phrase that I think is really kind of cool.
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At the end of verse 11 he says, for shameful gain they are teaching what they ought not teach.
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That describes, that defines, that's the word, that's the phrase that he uses to describe the teaching of the false teachers in Crete.
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What they ought not to. Well, what they ought not to It seems like a weak designation for false teaching.
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What kind of teaching were they giving? Stuff they shouldn't. Okay. But it gets down to the should.
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It gets down to the ought. There is something they ought to be teaching that they're not.
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And they are teaching what they ought not to teach. What they ought to teach? God's holy word.
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What they ought to teach? The gospel. What they do teach is designated as everything else that they ought not to.
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There is one ought and bazillions of ought nots. Ought nots include my personal thoughts on politics, my armchair psychological assessments of our culture, my opinions on parenting, my opinions on schooling, my preference regarding how
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I think you should live your daily life. We are given a book to study so that our faith and knowledge of the truth might be fueled toward godliness so that we are equipped to go out into our world with the power of the truth.
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Everything else falls into the category of things I ought not teach up here. So let's keep drinking from the well of truth.
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Let's not delve into things that ought not to be taught from a pulpit. The second warning and solution cycle is found in verses 12 and 13.
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In verse 12, Paul quotes, uses a quote from a Cretan prophet. I don't know if I should,
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I prefer to say Cretan and some reason I just keep saying Cretan but it doesn't really matter. He does this for dramatic effect showing what
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Cretans think of themselves. It seems likely that this prophet is the famous Cretan prophet
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Epimenides who was from Crete and lived around 500 BC. That's not that important.
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The fact of the matter is the people in Crete thought of him, thought of whoever
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Paul is quoting here as a prophet. It was in their mind, don't think that he's a prophet of God. They perceived him to be a prophet of their gods or whatever.
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But this quote is harsh. It's direct. And he says, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts and lazy gluttons.
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How many of you feel a little sorry for the Cretans at this point? Oh, poor people from Crete.
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Paul agrees with this assessment in the next verse. So we can't get out from underneath what could feel rude to our ears by going, well, he's just quoting somebody else.
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He's agreeing with the quote. So he's like, this is true. And this assessment requires a little historical context.
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They deserved it when you actually do just a little bit of mining and a little bit of digging in.
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Crete is an island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. It was notorious for piracy and violent warfare among the city -states on the islands.
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They were always at war with one other city. Crete was notorious for practices that I don't feel comfortable saying.
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I mean, literally I think there were some practices going on in Crete that are uncovered that would make a
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Roman emperor blush. So the sentiment throughout Rome. Rome, not the cleanest of societies.
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Not the most upstanding of people. Rome by this point was starting to falter primarily on the grounds that they just didn't have internal integrity anymore.
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And everything was busted and broken in the Roman Empire. But the sentiment throughout Rome was that Crete was a dangerous island.
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You didn't want to go there. You didn't want to hang out in Crete. One contemporary to Paul writer says this about Crete.
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This is the prevailing view of Crete during this time. It says Crete had no need of wild beasts.
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By the way, it's literally documented in Roman history. There was no apex carnivore.
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No apex predator there. It was a pretty safe island from that standpoint. There were some snakes. But aside from that, there was just nothing that was going to maul you or chew you up.
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So this is the quote. Crete had no need of wild beasts, for its own inhabitants were sufficient. Okay.
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That's the prevailing view of Romans. And then one of their own says, yeah, we were pretty bad.
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We were all evil beasts and brutes and liars and gluttons and we're just not good people.
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If you take the word Crete, here's one last thing, you take the word Crete and turn it into a verb in the
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Greek language, most people likely use this word on a weekly basis. The verbal form of Crete means to lie.
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So when you lied and when you spoke of lying in this era, you were
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Cretanizing. Cretanizing is to lie. So this is the cultural soil.
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Church, take this on. This is the cultural soil into which the gospel is taken root and begun to bloom.
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Do you hear me? Could there be a more hostile environment? And yet,
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I hope you find here in the middle of this passage of stern warning against dangerous false teachers, a beautiful kernel of hope here.
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Where does the gospel take root, recast? Where does the gospel take root? In the most inhospitable of places.
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The miracle here is like finding roses in bloom on the moon. When God saves a life and when
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God plants a church and when God grows a life and when God grows a church, it is a miracle of His will every single time because the seed of the gospel is always planted in an environment that is hostile to Him and hostile to His purposes.
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And He causes it to grow. Liars. Evil beasts. Lazy gluttons.
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Americans. Ouch. I love this country. I think there are so many good blessings still to be found here.
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But many of us are terrified to watch it as it seems to crumble around us.
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What do we make of the slide into deceit and evil and ravenous behavior that seems to be increasing all around us?
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Are you guys feeling it or am I just saying that? Is that just me? Raise your hand if you're feeling that a bit. I don't usually get that many hands.
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We're all feeling it. I think so. We need to be sure that the church is preserved and protected from the wrong message.
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More so now than ever. That we are the ones who have the truth to bring. The light to bring.
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The glory of the gospel to bring into this darkness. Are we doing it church? Are we sharing it?
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Are we declaring it? Are we speaking it? A wrong message that we live by a legal code or right behavior.
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That's the wrong message. We need to be protected from that. And a wrong message that what we do doesn't matter.
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Both sides of that equation are wrong. The truth lies in the middle. In the gospel that saves us out of a sinful life into a life of loving obedience.
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That is the message that we have to bring. Protecting the church from the world is not primarily what
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Paul is calling us to. We could divert this message over into, yes, we need to attack the world.
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No, we need to proclaim truth and glory and salvation and forgiveness and freedom in Christ to the world around us.
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Protecting us from false teachers within the church and false healthy messages from within will keep us pretty busy.
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Being sure that we keep the gospel and our Lord and Savior front and center will be the primary means by which we combat the moral decay around us.
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Proclaim the gospel. Don't proclaim a moral code. That's part of how we got into this hot water to begin with is the church's voice doesn't matter to the world anymore because we've been proclaiming for probably 50 to 60 years now a gospel of good works.
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We're better than you. You need to shape up and act more like us. That's a false gospel.
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It is not a message of moral code. Anyone out there proclaiming a self -righteous moral code is joining forces with that circumcision party, and I thought we said we weren't going to go to that.
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So the second solution, Paul calls Titus, and really any church leader, he says here, when you see this kind of false teaching within the church, rebuke them sharply.
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Any man who doesn't have the I guess I'll call them guts to sharply rebuke a false teacher is not qualified to lead in a church.
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It's happened here. I've had to rebuke people sharply here. It's happened before.
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It'll happen again, and it'll happen again, and it'll happen again. These types of people are real, and some of them have found their way here as recently as the past couple of years, and this call to sharply rebuke can make a hard season for me and the elders.
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I'm able to do it. I don't enjoy it. It grieves me when I have to have these kinds of conversations because I love the gospel, though, and I'm so enamored with Christ that I have an optimism that all will see the beauty of the truth of scriptures and the gospel when it's presented to them, so I'm optimistic right up to the point that a person refuses to heed the clear rebuke of scripture over them and their teaching.
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But just like my caution comes from the Bible, my concern to protect the flock comes from the
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Bible, so also does my optimism. The call to rebuke in verse 13 has restoration as the ultimate goal.
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Look with me at it. This testimony is true. Therefore, rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in the faith.
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Optimism that we see here. We don't rebuke to crush. We rebuke with the hope of healing, of health.
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Some people love lies more than the truth, and it's always hard to see it firsthand. But now we come to the final three verses which are all warning, and this is kind of our last movement in the text.
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All warning. Some devoted themselves in Crete to Jewish myths. The phrase devoted themselves is like saying, got obsessed with.
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Obsessed with. Our culture is becoming increasingly obsessed with nuances, like so many red pilled conspiracy theorists.
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Some are sucked down the rabbit hole of things that are not gospel. Church, I'm pleading with you to make the gospel your favorite.
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Make the word your passion. If people think you're overdoing something, if you are known as extreme, if you are known for the nuances of your thoughts, if people were to critique you and criticize you, let it be because of Jesus.
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Let the insult against you be there's just a little too much Jesus and a little too much Bible going on there.
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Let that be the criticism over your life. But some will be tempted to follow all kinds of myths and fables and false narratives and conspiracy theories and all kinds of things, and even the commands of men, says
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Paul. The truth is many of us are ripe for false teaching because we like to be told what to do.
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We like checklists. We like the simplicity of black and white do's and don'ts. The Christian life as expressed in the
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New Testament requires discernment, and that is messy, and many of us don't like messy.
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You know what I'm talking about? Relationship is easier if you legislate it.
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Relationship is easier if you have rules surrounding it. And relationship is messy.
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Relating to God, like at the end of the day, I pray and I say, Lord, thank you for this day.
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I don't have metrics. Not sure how I'm doing today. Feel a little good, but in this relationship with you, some days are good, some days are bad, and I just thank you for giving me another day.
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Help me rest and start over again tomorrow. And that's a little different than looking over at my nightstand and seeing all my checkboxes.
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I read my Bible today. I prayed today. I shared my faith once with somebody today. Do you know what
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I'm talking about? There's a messiness in a relationship with God that isn't easy to define. It doesn't line up with checklists.
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Do I love him more today than I loved him yesterday? I think so. I want to.
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Do you know what I'm talking about? Anybody with me on that? It's messy. It's not clear cut, but man -made commands are a pathway away from the truth.
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The truth is, church, if you are in Christ, you are free in Christ.
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And that is scary for many who were raised on man -made religion. And so Paul tells us of two types of people in verse 15.
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A little bit of a confusing phrase. I hope to make it clear to you. There's one type of person that is pure, made pure through belief.
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The other is impure without belief. They are impure in their unbelief.
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And this verse makes sense only if we understand clean and unclean concepts from the Old Testament.
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The idea of defilement. The idea that if I'm a good Jew then
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I eat bacon. Now I'm defiled. Now I'm dirty. Now I've become unclean.
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Now I've been made unholy. I'm impure. But what he's getting at here is to the one made pure in Christ, bacon cannot make you impure.
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Amen? Whoo! Alright. But to the one who is impure, here's the gist.
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To the one who is impure, even enjoying bacon is impure because the whole life is lived in impurity.
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There is nothing holy to the person who remains unholy. There is nothing holy to the one who remains unholy in a lack of faith and trust in Jesus.
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But to the one made pure in Christ, the ritual purity stuff is done away with.
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We find our only hope for holiness in Jesus. Not in any external conformity to rules and regulations.
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It's pretty clear from verse 15 that a major problem in Crete centered on the gospel getting clouded out by laws and rules.
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Paul is concerned that Titus appoint men who are so thoroughly in love with Jesus Christ through the gospel that they will not be carried away into arguments about purity and impurity and obedience and this and that.
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But the unbelieving and impure false teachers, they profess to know God, but they deny
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Him by their deeds. They have no obedience out of love for Him, but rather have laws and rules to apply to others.
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They are abominable, says God, the Spirit, through the Apostle Paul.
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Abominable. They are disobedient. They are unfit. Think. Another translation of that is disqualified from any good work.
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Hard words. But note that these false teachers profess to know God, and this makes false teachers so dangerous.
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All false teachers in the church will say that they believe in God and likely will even say that they believe in His Word. It's tricky business, but eternity is in the balance of getting the message right.
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If we have the wrong message and place our hope in the wrong place, then our lives will be lived in the wrong way.
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In the first four verses of this letter, Paul explained that godly living flows out of faith and knowledge of the truth.
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So how are we to combat the temptation to fall into false doctrine all around us, church?
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The first is simple and straightforward, and I think we're going to just kind of carry the line together on this.
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We must be sure to appoint godly, qualified, Bible -committed leaders. Those of you that are members are going to get opportunities to vote, and when that comes around, it might just seem like so much extra and okay, somebody else will handle that.
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No, take it seriously. We desire and hunger for your feedback when we are looking to appoint more to lead us, and that happens usually on a yearly basis somewhere coming up in the fall.
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We'll be passing those out, but take it seriously. Really consider it. Really pray over it. Really take the opportunity that you have to lean into the qualifications of these men who are put forward.
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Appoint godly, qualified, Bible -committed leaders. The second is that we would do well to become students of the
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Word ourselves. This seems like a great time to mention a class we're offering. Highfalutin Word Hermeneutics.
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We're going to be offering a class on hermeneutics, and some of you are like, I didn't even know I needed to study that. It's the
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How to Interpret the Bible. How do I study the Bible? How do I know what it means? That class is going to be offered this fall.
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I think it starts in September. James Chapman is out of town this weekend, but he's going to be the one that's teaching it.
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You can come and talk with me if you're interested. Email me would be even better. If you're interested in that, we can get you signed up.
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I don't know what night of the week it's going to be offered, so we're going to have some details. Is it Wednesday already? Do you know what time? It's going to be offered on Wednesday.
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It's in the QR code that we showed at the start, so that's another reason to download the app or get the e -cast.
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Take advantage of that. Honestly, I think that I would love for everybody in this church to take that class. I would love for everybody to participate in it, because it really comes down to ...
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I've had people who have told me I followed what you said, Don, and I said,
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I wanted to open the Bible, and I wanted to study it, and you keep saying to do it, so I did it, and I opened up the Bible, and I read
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Haggai, and I was like, closed it. I was like, I don't know what's going on there. And this class will give you some tools to be able to understand
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Haggai. What's going on there? What's the context of what's happening there? And some tools to be able to figure that out.
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That's not a hard sell for something that I gain any benefit from you taking it. I just think you gain a ton if you do something like that.
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The last thing is rejoice in the miraculous work of God. I'd like to land here. Rejoice in the miraculous work of God.
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He has taken liars, evil beasts, and lazy gluttons like us, and created a people for His glory. His gospel is transforming us more and more into the image of His Son day by day.
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Give Him praise and honor for what He has done in your life, and praise Him for what He's doing here in this gathering in His church.
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And here's the point where we need to reflect on the truth, because we see that we are supposed to attack that which is false.
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We're supposed to muzzle and silence that which is false. We're supposed to rebuke sharply that which is false. But here we come to the part of our service where we celebrate the truth together every week.
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We have cautions against errors in the text. Cautions against what we ought not to teach. And those things should cause our minds to consider the other direction.
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What ought we to teach? What are we really about, church? Jesus Christ, the eternal
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Son of God, in flesh, came to earth to live a sinless life that we couldn't live.
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To fulfill a law that every single one of us has broken and cannot keep. To die an eternal death that we could not die on our behalf.
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To bridge an eternal relational breach between us and the Father that we could not heal so that we the sinners are set free while He, the sinless one, is caught by the nails to hang their shamefully naked bleeding and dying for you and me.
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And raised again to new life on the third day. That's who we serve. That is the message.
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We come to communion every week to remember, to remember together I need this reminder that this, this, this is the truth.
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Everything else gets cloudy. In all of those things that ought not to be taught. Let's keep teaching this.
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Let's keep on this. This is the message. This is the good news. He loves us recast. He died for all who will come to Him by faith.
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Repent of their sins and ask Him to be their Lord and He will walk with us.
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He's with us day by day. If this defines you, then come to the tables this morning and remember what
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He's done for you. If that isn't you and that doesn't describe you and you haven't asked Him to save you you haven't asked
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Him to rescue you, please be bold and come and talk with me. If you have any even just an inkling of interest if there's any spark within you that says
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I want to know more about that life come and talk with me. But skip the tables and listen to the song as we close this service together.
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Come to the tables if you're at peace with others and you're at peace with God through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
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We don't need to study all the counterfeits when we come together and actively participate each week in this reminder of the truth
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I would exhaust all of our time trying to talk about how many different counterfeits there are out there.
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Here is what we ought to teach. Jesus died, suffered to rescue sinners, and rose again victorious.
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Go out this week church armed with that truth. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for this glorious message.
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It's so simple. It can be stated in just a couple of short sentences but it's the power that you have provided by which we can be made right with you.
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The power of hope for a future that is beyond the kingdoms of this world and all of the divisions and the warring and the strife and the ignorance and the legitimate conspiracies that are enacted by the evil one against us.
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All of the enemies that would array themselves including false teachers, the deceivers, the empty talkers, the insubordinate
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Father. There are so many who would seek to bring a church like us down and I praise you for 15 years of fidelity.
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15 years of faithfulness to your word. I thank you for the men who lead this church. I thank you for elders who are alongside of me pulling together.
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I thank you for that people show up to hear your word preached. I thank you for that and I ask that you would continue to help us to press ahead in understanding the truth here but then going out into the world to share it.
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Father, not just hoarding it for ourselves, not just a Benedictine kind of gathering here where we have a holy huddle here and then we kind of act timid throughout the week and then come back here and get our dose and then act timid all week.
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But Father, you would disperse us this week for your cause with power, your powerful command to bring the gospel to those in need around us.
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Let this communion time be a time of solidifying that we're together on this.
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What you have done for us to be reminded of the great sacrifice of your son, Jesus Christ, on our behalf.
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Allow this to be fuel for our souls to ignite us to burn white hot in a dark world out there and just help us to be the change that our culture needs.