(Titus - Part 1): A Biography of Titus — A.W. Tozer

Occasion to call attention to a piece of advertising put out by Youth for Christ. And I just mentioned it, perhaps gave it half a dozen sentences and passed on. And some beloved Judas Iscariot, present, hoping to do me a favor and Youth for Christ, raced immediately the headquarters of Youth for Christ and said I was criticizing Youth for Christ.

And they wrote me a mournful letter and said that they thought that that would do me injury and also them and divide my church. I've noticed a rending like the rending of a great oak in the midst of a storm.

But anyway, when I told them what I'd said and I said I'd say the same thing if it'd been the alliance, then they invited me to preach for them. And I got a call then later from their Wheaton headquarters saying they were having a convention of the leaders of Youth for Christ, I think all over the country, and they wanted me to preach for them.

And I said, not just a minute, I don't agree with Youth for Christ on everything. And they said, that's why we want you to come. So Wednesday at noon, 1130 to 1210, that gives me 40 minutes, I am going to talk to the leaders of Youth for Christ.

And I am going to tell them what I believe is wrong with modern Christianity and what we can do to correct it. Will you pray? And if the person who thought that he was doing me a favor could be present, kindly note that it didn't work.

There's much use to run to anybody and say, I told you I said this and that, because they like me anyhow, and they'll invite me around. If they don't, I'll know that it's all right anyway. Thought I'd just let you know and ask your prayer.

I do want to be honest with these friends, tell them what I think, and they're looking forward to my talk, and I am looking forward to it too, and I wish I knew what I was going to say. Now, the book of Titus, let me read about four stanzas.

Paul's Introduction to Titus

I say stanzas chiefly, I think, because some of these letters of Paul are divided up into verses, but they're singable. Philippians and Titus are hymns almost, and so I'll read you the opening introduction here.

Paul, servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God's elect and the acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness, in a hope of eternal life which God that cannot lie promised before the world began, but hath in due times manifested his word through preaching, which is committed unto me according to the commandment of God our Savior.

To Titus, my own son after the common faith, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father unto Lord Jesus Christ our Savior. Now that's as far as I'll go. Paul, a servant of God, to Titus, my own son after the common faith, grace, mercy, and peace be to you.

Now I announced that I should be preaching on the book of Titus over the next few Sunday mornings, that is sermons from the book of Titus, and this I hope by the grace of God to do. But in studying the New Testament about this man Titus, I was so impressed with the man himself that I felt I must present a short portrait of the man before going into the letter which Paul wrote to the man, and which is a part of the New Testament-inspired canon.

Titus as the Embodiment of Christian Doctrine

There's a great need always for examples, and the oft-quoted passage from Pope, the proper study of mankind is man, is true because you'll find people will take more interest in people than they do in ideas.

Very hard to get people interested in abstract ideas, but it's not hard to get them interested in people. And where you find a man who is the incarnation of a great idea, then you've got a jewel, a gem, indeed a treasure.

And in both Paul and Titus you have this. You have in the man Paul an incarnation of the doctrine he preached, and in Titus his son, in a lesser degree, you have also an incarnation of the great doctrines of the New Testament.

So I want to be as brief as I can, but I thought that as a sort of introduction to the man Titus, to the lessons in Titus, that I'd talk about the man Titus, and divide it up like this. Titus the man, and Titus the Christian, and Titus the assistant apostle, and Titus the missionary, and Titus the doer of good, and Titus the organizer, and Titus the optimist.

There are seven point sermon for you, and seven chapters in a book on Titus if you want to write it up. But here was a man, Titus. Now he wasn't a Jew, he was a Greek. And he had a Roman name, Titus, later on, or about that time, a little later I think perhaps, Titus the emperor, Roman emperor Titus took over.

Titus the Man: Greek Background and Antioch

And the man's name was Roman, though he himself was a Greek. He was an uncircumcised Greek, and in many ways he was a big man. He was a native of Antioch in Asia Minor, where was the strong aggressive church.

You'll read the 11th of Acts and the 13th, you will find there that the church at Antioch was not founded by Paul, but Paul certainly had gone there and had much to say in that church, and preached often, and was highly, highly venerated there.

But he was a native of a city where a strong church existed. Says, you know, they that were scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose about Stephen, they went to various places, and among them Antioch.

And a great number believed and turned to the Lord. And then from Antioch, missionaries went out to Seleucia, Cyprus, and other places. So this was a strong missionary church. And this man, Titus, was fortunate enough and blessed of God enough to be born in a city, though he was himself a pagan, and no doubt was a pagan.

He was fortunate enough to be born in a city where there was a strong church. I suppose Titus in his early life had been, as the Greeks were, a believer in some kind of God. The Romans had come in some years before, and had spread around their ideas of the gods.

That there was Zeus, that was the main Greek god, and Jupiter was his counterpart, the main Roman god. And there were many others, and no doubt this man, Titus, was a religious man. We would guess that anyway, enough so that he listened to the message of God when he heard it.

Titus the Christian: Conversion and Growth

Well, he was a man, and he was a strong man, presumably had a lot of talents and abilities. And then we come to Titus the Christian, for though he was a man of size and ability, without any doubt, a big man, and we're not all the same size, my friends.

We might as well admit that. In this day of pleading for brotherhood and likeness, and wanting everybody to be like everybody else around the world, all stamped out of the same cookie cutter, all alike around the world, it's a lot of modern nonsense that'll probably die in another generation.

I hope it does, and requiescat in pace if it does, because it doesn't amount to too much. But the simple fact is we're not all alike, and when Lincoln said, repeating somebody else, that all men were born equal, and the Declaration of Independence said something to that effect, they didn't mean that we were all born the same size, they meant we were all born equal under the law.

And I believe in equality under the law. I believe that if President Eisenhower parks by a water plug, he ought to get a ticket just the same as the man who delivers my mail, or milk, or takes away the garbage.

I believe in equality before the law, but the idea that we're all the same size is ridiculous. When I'm with some people, I feel restful, in that I assume at least, it might be pride, that I am fairly equal to them, but when I'm with others, I'm strangely quiet, because I know they're bigger than I am, vastly bigger, inside and sometimes out.

So, we gotta recognize that, and know that God made some people big, and other people he just made. And we gotta do the best we can, under the circumstances, with what we have to work with. Well, he came in contact, this man Titus, he came in contact with Paul, the blazing apostle, and for that, he ought to be eternally thankful, and we ought to be everlastingly thankful, and the whole Church of Christ should be grateful eternally, that these two giants met.

That this pagan man, with a Roman name, and a Greek genealogy, met this man named Paul, with a Hebrew background, converted now to Christ. And Titus was converted, and his conversion was clear, and revolutionary, and instant.

I read something only recently, from a British paper, that I thought was very wonderful, about Charles and John Wesley, quoted a letter that John had written Charles. He said, Brother Charles, he said, you got one up on me in some things.

He said, I'm bigger than you in some, but you're bigger than me in others. And he said, where you excel me, is in your amazing ability to say things in a brief, pointed way. He said, I can't do that, takes me longer.

But he said, now Charles, what I want you to do, is to preach instantaneous religion to these people. He said, you've got the ability to do it, you've got the vocabulary. He said, go everywhere preaching instantaneous religion.

Telling the people everywhere, that God will save them, and fill them instantly. Then he said, I want, that'll give me more time. If you do that, it'll give me more time to talk about the progressive phases of the Christian life.

I think that's just wonderful. That Christianity is not a progressive thing, or an instantaneous thing. It is both instantaneous and progressive. We're converted instantaneously, but we're converted to grow.

We're filled with the Spirit instantaneously, but in order that we might grow. So John said, Charles, you tell them about the instantaneousness of it, and I'll tell them about the progress of it. So what a team there was there.

Well, here was Titus, this man of God, and his conversion has been instantaneous. It was revolutionary and clear. And his grasp of Christian truth was immediate and full. The reason I know that, I'll tell you a little later.

But, well, I'll tell you now, that within one year after his conversion, he had endeared himself so fully to the apostle Paul, and established himself in the confidence of the Antiochian church, that when they sent up two delegates from Antioch to Jerusalem to deal with that pesky problem of Judaism, they picked Paul, which would seem the natural thing to do, but who else do you suppose they picked?

They picked a man who'd only been converted one year, Titus. So Titus, a one-year convert, went with an apostle to the first and perhaps the most important council ever held in the church of Christ from the cross to this present hour.

Now that's how big this man was, how quick he was to grasp the truth, shows how quickly he threw himself and wholeheartedly threw himself into the things of God, and there's a mystery. Why is this mystery?

Why is it that some Christians are converted, and when they are converted, it takes them years and years to learn anything. If they learn, they learn slowly, and it takes them half a lifetime before the church begins to trust them and say, well, I think he's got his feet on the ground.

But somebody like Titus can come bouncing over into the kingdom of God and in one year be running around with an apostle and being a delegate to a great council in Jerusalem. That's a strange thing, I don't understand it.

Perhaps it has something to do with size, has something to do with abilities, I don't know. I only know that I have seen the beautiful sight in my day of seeing somebody converted on Wednesday and by Sunday was able to quote scripture, and by the next Sunday was able to get up and testify, and by the next Sunday was one to teach a Bible class, and I have seen others converted and they just dragged their feet and hung around.

Well, Titus was of the first kind. He leaped right into the kingdom of God like a boy into a pool in a summer's day, and he never came back out. And then there was Titus, the assistant to the apostle.

Titus as Paul's Trusted Representative

Paul was not easy to please, now I can tell you that. He would not be easy to work with, Paul wouldn't be, not because he was churlish or had bad temper, he wasn't. He was a sanctified man. But Paul expected everybody to be just as devoted as he was, and he expected them to have bid goodbye, bidden goodbye to the world, burned the bridges behind them, destroyed the old life, and living in the new.

He expected that, and if they weren't, he was disappointed. You'll remember that a man named John Mark, who later wrote the book of Mark, went once with Paul, and then he got cold feet and went home, and that was the end of him as far as Paul was concerned.

Paul said, we'll not take that boy anymore. He said, anybody that would desert us when we needed him, no good. And Barnabas and Paul had an argument over that, and the reason being, humanly enough, that Barnabas and Mark were relatives, and the blood is always thicker than water.

But later on in his old age, Paul said, send Titus too. He'd forgiven Titus, but it took him a lot of years to do it, and to get his confidence back in a man who'd walk out on him when he needed him. Well, the man Paul, though very hard to please, trusted this man Titus completely, and used him as his own representative.

When he couldn't go, he'd send Titus, and when he couldn't stay, he'd leave Titus. So Titus was the representative of the apostle, and it's a beautiful example of the unity that there is in Christ. The old ex-Pharisee, the old ex-Pharisee who had worn his long phylacteries and stood on the corner and uttered his long prayers, and who was of the straightest sect of the Pharisees, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, and self-righteous to the point that he had kept his nose in the air like an old dowager, looked down at people occasionally, that was the old Pharisee Paul.

But do you know something? God met Paul on Damascus Road, changed him completely, transformed him, filled him with the Holy Ghost, gave him back his eyesight, and made him fall in love with the young Gentile.

Why, the Pharisee Paul wouldn't have shaken hands with that Gentile heathen before his conversion, and now he calls him my son, and gives him his heavy responsibilities, and loves him, and treats him as a brother or a son.

Titus the Missionary

Now that's what the grace of God will do for people. And then there was Titus the missionary. I can only point out that Titus went to Macedonia, and he went to Corinth, and he went to Crete, and he traveled with Paul.

Do you know that missionary work wasn't as difficult then as it is now, and I'll tell you why. Then the Greek language was the universal language, and everybody almost spoke Greek. Everybody to whom Paul went spoke Greek.

Perhaps I should modify that and put a slight question mark after it, but for the most part everybody spoke Greek, and they could therefore preach in one language. But nowadays there are so many languages, and sub-languages, and what we call principal dialects.

Someday I'm going to study that up and see what Brother Sneed means when he talks about principal dialects. But anyway, they have so many of them now that you've got to spend years learning their languages.

Then they traveled around preaching in Greek, and almost everybody understood them. So it was easy for them to go as missionaries as far as the language was concerned. Language-wise it was very easy as they said.

Titus the Doer of Good and Wise Giving

Well, then there was Titus, the good man who did good. He said of Christ in Acts 10 38 that he was anointed with the Holy Ghost and power and went about doing good. And now here's Titus following in his steps, going about doing good.

You know, the poor saints up at Jerusalem needed help. Now that's a strange thing. Jerusalem was where the gospel got its start. Jerusalem was where Christ Jesus was crucified. Jerusalem was where the Holy Ghost fell on the apostles.

Jerusalem was the very center out from which the message first started. And yet before the end of the first century, before the end of the first century, what was the date? Around 6 ,500, 30, 32 years after Christ's crucifixion, the church at Jerusalem had gotten so poor that it had to have help from the Gentiles.

Now, how did it come to get so poor? Well, there were two ways. And they'll hamstring you and use your hide to make lampshades in some quarters if you said this. But it's true nevertheless. The church at Jerusalem had, without any orders from God at all, introduced a kind of Christian communism.

Now, not the devilish atheistic communism of Russia, but the Christian communism. That is, they had given up their property and divided it up and said, now everything belongs to everybody. And they'd tried that.

That's been tried several times since. It's never worked, but they tried it. The result was they had no property. And then when the persecution came about Stephen and others, why, the authorities took quite a little they had left.

And the result was they, they were stuck, these Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. They had no money. Their property was gone. They had brought it and given it and laid it down at the apostles' feet. And that was a good thing, but it might've been a little unwise and thus giving up a source.

For instance, let's put it like this. Suppose, suppose that I'm a, let me see what, suppose that I'm a shoemaker and I fix shoes and I have a shoemaking shop big enough that I can employ three or four other young fellows who are learning the trade.

Well, that keeps me, that keeps those three or four other young fellows and it's a, it gives a service to the neighborhood. It enables four people to live and it enables me to have enough so that I can give to help others as long as I keep my shoe shop.

But suppose in a burst of enthusiasm, I say, I don't want to keep anything. I want to give it away. So I give away my shoe shop. Well, that puts three fellows out of a job, me out of a job. And then what do you do?

Now that kind of giving is not wise giving. The wise giver isn't the man who gives his farm away. The wise giver is the man who works his farm for all it'll take and then gives all the proceeds away that he can spare.

There's your wise giver. The businessman who gives his business to the mission station, he's not a wise giver, but a man who runs his business for all the traffic will bear and then gives his profits to the mission, he's a wise man because he's doing it in a proper way.

Well, the church of Jerusalem, I think, made the mistake. They were never told to do it. They just thought it up themselves. So they actually sold their property and sold their business and gave it to the apostles.

And pretty soon it was all spent and nobody had anything. And then add to that, I say, the persecution and the result was that something had to be done for Jerusalem. And now here was Paul. And of course, Paul loved Jerusalem and loved the Jewish saints in Jerusalem.

And he got interested right away in taking an offering. And where do you suppose this Jew went to take that offering? He went among Gentile Christians. And he said, now, inasmuch as we we desire, moreover, brethren, we do with you, we want you to know about the grace of God bestowed on the churches of Macedonia, how that in a great trial of affliction and abundance of joy, and out of their deep poverty, they abounded unto the riches of their liberality and gave more than they needed to give beyond their power they gave, praying with much entreaty that we would receive their gift and take the fellowship to the saints.

That was an offering they were taking for the saints in Jerusalem. That's what the eighth chapter of 2 Corinthians is about. And he said, we desired that Titus also would do something about this, but thanks be to God, which put the same earnest care into the heart of Titus for you.

For indeed, he accepted the exhortation, but being more forward of his own account, he went unto you. Now, here's an odd and rather tricky little deal. Nobody in Corinth needed anything. They were a well-to-do church, according to all the commentators.

They didn't need anything, but somebody up in Jerusalem needed something. So Titus said, I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to kill two birds with one stone, two old buzzards, and I'm going to kill these two birds, and here's what I'll do.

I'll kill poverty in Jerusalem, and I'll kill stinginess in Corinth with all with one stone. So he went to Corinth and said, you know what? I've come to give you an opportunity to do something. He didn't tell them jokes and then apologize.

He said, I've come to give you an opportunity to do something wonderful. And they said, what's that, Brother Titus? Well, he said, I've come to give you an opportunity to make an offering to the poor saints in Jerusalem.

And if some old deacon got up and said, now just a minute, Titus, we're Gentiles, and those people in Jerusalem think we're dirt, and they wouldn't have anything to do with us. Titus said, you don't know them.

They're Jews, but they're Christians, and they've changed their attitude towards you Gentiles. Beside that, they're hungry, and what's the difference what they think of you? The question is, what are you going to do for them?

So he took a great big offering from Corinth, did it of his own accord. Now that was that man Titus, a man that could go around taking an offering and not begging for it, but saying, I've come to give you an opportunity to serve.

That was his way of taking an offering. So he went to Corinth and said, God put it into his heart that he might give them an opportunity to have this service. And we praise God, said Paul, that you gave the Macedonians were poor.

And he said, now the Macedonians have given a big offering to take to Jerusalem, and they did it out of their poverty. But you Corinthians, he said, why, you got plenty. There will appear, if it isn't already in print, I see the proofs, and then I don't know whether it's got to your house yet or not, but there appears in the Alliance Weekly a letter, word for word, said, Dear Brother King, he's the treasurer, of course, of the Alliance, Dear Brother King, I'm 87 years old, and I live on a pension, and I was saving a little bit of money.

I don't know how he could do it, but I always claim a pension just means that it takes you longer to starve to death. But this man said, I'm living on a pension, and I read in the Alliance Weekly how your offerings weren't coming up the way they should, and God spoke to me and said, don't you keep that $25, you send that in.

So he said, here, I'm sending in $25 out of my poverty. 87 years old he was, I'm on a pension. He said, here's my $25. So he had nothing left but just three cents to send it in. Well, that dear old man, God bless him, giving out of his poverty because he'd first given himself, and that's the way they did it Macedonian.

Paul said, you Corinthians now, you can do better than that, because you have more than that. You always expect more from people who have more. Well, there was Titus the doer of good. He wasn't so mystical that he lived in the heavenly places and forgot that anybody else existed.

He was practical enough that he brought his mysticism down, put overalls on, and sent it out and said, now go out and work, and it went out and worked. Then there was Titus the organizer. We won't go into it other than to say that he went to Corinth and helped to straighten out that church, and then Paul says in his first, for this reason I left thee in Crete that thou should set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders in every city as I had appointed thee.

He was an organizer, this man. They said about Dr. Simpson that when he was an old man, he was reading about John Wesley. He shook his head and said, oh, there was John Wesley. He was an organizer. He was a disciplinarian.

He said, me, I'm no disciplinarian. And his society barely hung together. Dr. Simpsons, you'd give him a $20 bill for missions, which was equivalent to $80 in those days, and he'd put it down in his great big old baggy pants pocket and forget it for days and even weeks, finally find it.

Let me see now where that goes to China. But that's the way he lived, but John Wesley was a sharp, he was an organizer, so was Titus. Thank God for some men who were good organizers. I think about our friend Rymel down in Tucson, Arizona, who used to be with us here and whom we hear from occasionally.

When he went out of here, I said, oh brother, what are we gonna do? Brother Francis Chase, he's a great Christian. He's one of our strong men, but he couldn't organize nothing. He's an artist and a dreamer and a poet.

And I thought about our other man. I said, what are we gonna do? We got nobody left that can take a screwdriver and a clinical thermometer and a compass and know where we're going. And then the Lord sent along another brother whose name I won't mention because he would blush clear to the top of his hairless head if I did.

But I sent him along to be an organizer, that type of fellow that can pull things together and say, now this is the way we're going. That's a wonderful gift. I haven't got it at all. If you think I have, come up and I'll show him a desk.

Brother Edward Sandrock said one time that he had a yearning, burning desire to slip up some dark night, take my middle drawer of my desk and take it out and empty it in the alley. But I know where everything is.

It's in that drawer. That's where it is. I don't always find it, but usually do. Well, God gives different gifts to different men. And he gave a gift of organizing to the man Titus. He could walk right into a disorganized, bumbling church and pull it up into order.

Titus the Optimist and Encourager

Well, and there was Titus the optimist. I don't like the word optimist. Liberals and crackpot poets have used the word in the wrong way. But he was the cheerful brother. Paul said about him when he came to a certain place, where was it?

He said, I had no rest in my spirit because I found not my brother Titus. He was a human being, this fellow, human being. But I had no rest in my spirit because I found not my brother Titus. He says, God that comforts those who are cast down, comforted me by the coming of Titus.

It's exceeding more joy that I had because of the joy of Titus when he came. Now I'm telling you, there is a gift in itself. For though Paul was an apostle and was probably one of the half dozen great brains of all time, and certainly the greatest theologian the church ever produced, though he had all those gifts, yet he was subject to fits of despondency, and he needed somebody to come along and say, Paul, God's still on the throne.

And Paul would smile and say, excuse me, for a moment I'd forgotten it. He said, I went looking for Titus and I didn't find any rest in my spirit because I found not my brother Titus. Imagine that old Pharisee needing the consolation and good cheerful talk of a Gentile by the name of Titus, years younger.

That's a gift in itself, my dear friends, to be able to console the apostles. Your brother R .S. Roseberry, who was chairman of our French West Africa field for so long, said this, said, Brother Tozer, when I go, he said, I know my ministry.

He said, my ministry is to go and preach to discouraged missionaries. He didn't contact the natives and preach to them. The missionaries did that. He went around preaching to the missionaries and he said, I go and I find missionaries who've been out there so long, they're tired, they're exhausted, they're sick.

They've had people have backslidden and some of their converts have failed them and they're despondent. And he said, I go in and preach to them about Jesus Christ. He said, I don't talk about missions.

I talk about Jesus Christ. He said, I bring my missionaries up and give them hope. That's a great gift. Great gift. Wonderful to be able to listen to a teacher or a preacher who, when he's finished, even if you don't agree with everything he said, you go out saying, well, things aren't so bad.

God's on the throne and Jesus Christ still lives. And I believe there's hope for us. Well, Titus had that and Dr. Spence, who was dean of Gloucester, said this about him. I copied this little quotation.

I thought that you'd like it. He said this, he said, in Titus was found a remarkable union of enthusiasm, integrity, and discretion. Aren't those three beautiful words? Enthusiasm, integrity, and discretion.

Titus's Enthusiasm, Integrity, and Discretion

First there's enthusiasm. I like enthusiasm. In Wesley's day, that meant fanaticism. Wesley preached against it. But now it just means zealousness and the urgency of what we call enthusiasm. Most Christians drag their feet.

Half of the work of the preacher is to get the people to lift their feet. When I was a boy, young fellow, maybe 14, I used to help my father saw logs. That is, we'd saw a tree down, back and forth. Then wood fall, we'd saw it into lengths.

Pull the crosscut saw. I'd pull one way and he'd pull the other way. Pull one way and he'd pull the other way. And my father was very much like his son. He turned to me one day and he said, son, if you must ride that saw, please pick up your feet.

He said, don't drag your feet. I remember that down the years. If I was going to take a ride while he pulled and pushed, please don't drag my feet. Well, a great many Christians in the work of the Lord, you just have to drag them.

Push them or pull them. But not Titus. Titus was enthusiastic. He came out of there enthusiastic, out of the prayer room enthusiastic. Then he had integrity. That is, he was a sound man. And you know how, why we know he was a man of integrity?

Because when Paul wanted to appoint somebody to carry that offering, it amounted to a lot of money, to Jerusalem, you know who he appointed? Titus and one other fellow. He said, I know Titus. He can be treasurer and you won't even have to audit his books.

He said, I know him. So he sent Titus and Titus went back the Gentile and carried to Jerusalem the gifts from the Macedonian and Corinthian and other churches. So there was enthusiasm linked with integrity.

And then along with that was discretion. Some of the Lord's dear people are good, honest people, but they're not discreet. They say and do the wildest things, but not Titus. Paul trusted him because he had discretion, integrity linked with his enthusiasm.

Dear God, give us this kind of spirituality that we can be indeed Christians of the first water, that we can pour ourselves out as Titus did. God will honor us by using us or working through us. Give us a missionary mind and teach us as well that giving of our goods to feed a man that's hungry is as truly of the work of God as giving to missions or to a church and that he can give us a little gift or send somebody that has it of organization and keep us optimistic and enthusiastic so we don't add an ounce of gloom to anybody's heart at any time.

Well, that's Titus. That's the kind of man Paul wrote his lovely little letter to. The Holy Ghost embodied it in the New Testament canon, and for a few Sunday mornings I'm going to be preaching from that book.