Titus 1:1-9, “Starting Over,” Dr. John B. Carpenter

Covenant Reformed Baptist Church

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Titus chapter 1, we'll be reading from verse 1 to 9. Hear the word of the

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Lord. Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth which accords with godliness, in hope of eternal life which

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God, who never lies, promised before the ages began and at the proper time manifested in his word through the preaching with which

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I have been entrusted by the command of God our Savior. To Titus, my true child in a common faith, grace and peace from God the

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Father and Christ Jesus our Savior. This is why I left you in Crete, so that you may put what remained into order and appoint elders in every town as I directed you.

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If anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife and his children are believers and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination, for an overseer as God's steward must be above reproach.

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He must not be arrogant or quick -tempered or drunkard or violent or greedy for gain but hospitable, a lover of good, self -controlled, upright, holy and disciplined.

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He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.

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May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his holy word. Have you moved?

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Probably every one of us has moved at some time. I don't know if you moved recently. Well, moving is a pain.

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It's a lot of work. The one good thing about moving is that it forces you to decide what things are worth keeping and what aren't worth packing and taking with you that are better off just being thrown away or given away.

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Moving is the best way to clean house. When you move, every object in your house you have to pick up, you have to decide, hmm, is this worth keeping?

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Is it worth me packing and putting in a box, taking it somewhere, then unpacking and putting back somewhere else?

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So it's often easier you look at this thing, I don't, you know, it's not worth all that. It's easier just to dump it in the trash. Moving is a great way to start over with what is really essential.

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Of course, how much you take with you, how much of your stuff you move with you depends on how far you move.

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If you're just moving across town and it's easy, you're much more likely to pile things in the back of a pickup truck and unpile it wherever your new place is.

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You could take a lot of baggage with you. If you're moving across the country, like to California, well, you're much more careful about what you could pack and take.

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If you're moving across the Pacific Ocean, as I've done four times, Mike and Nancy and Joyce have made that move.

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If you're crossing an ocean, you can only take a few things, only what can fit in a few suitcases or maybe you can mail some things ahead of you.

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That means deciding that some things you'd love to keep, that you want to keep, you have to decide to leave behind.

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When we were in Singapore, we were given a beautiful desk, solid wood, not this press board kind of stuff.

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Mahogany, I think. It had belonged to a Swiss banker. Okay, now imagine what kind of desk a

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Swiss, a rich executive Swiss banker had. Gave it to us. It was sturdy, it was L -shaped.

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I loved that desk. We moved a couple of times within Singapore, both took it with us even though it's a hassle to move it, but we did.

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But when it came time to move back to the U .S., it was too big to take with us. I wanted to.

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I even had a shipper come to measure it and give me a quote, how much it would cost to ship it to the

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U .S.? Too much. I think you've got to buy a new desk for what it costs to ship it. And so we had to leave it behind.

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Sometimes a move is so far, you have to leave behind things that you would love to keep, things that you're attached to.

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But sometimes you've still got to leave them behind to start over. When the

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Protestant Reformation moved away from the old religious tradition, the Reformed knew that it was a long move, that they couldn't take much with them from the old religion.

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The Lutherans thought they could take a lot with them. They thought it was just a short move, kind of like a cross town. But the

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Reformed, especially the Puritans, treated it like was moving across the Pacific. They picked up every teaching, every ritual, every song, examined it by the

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Word of God, and asked whether they could take it with them to where they were going, being a biblical church.

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Now, at first, most of them didn't get it right. They still clung to at least one major tradition. But anyway, they had to dump all the unbiblical traditions that accumulated over time.

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And when we started this church about a decade and a half ago, we were starting over. Like with the Reformation, there had been teachings and rituals, there's expectations of the church.

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There were not from Scripture that had been picked up from the culture or just kind of accumulated over time.

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And you may notice that some of them are missing from our church. And that's not just like unintentional.

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It's not like I got lazy and decided, I don't feel like doing an altar call. No. There's a reason I don't do it.

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If you think the moving from church as normal around here to being a biblical

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Reformed church was just a short move, it's not that big a difference from what church is to what it should be, then you think we can bring a lot of baggage with us.

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But if you realize that it's a long way from where we were to where God calls us to be, it's like moving across the

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Pacific Ocean, then you realize we have to leave a lot behind. Even if some of those things, yeah, I kind of like.

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For example, people all around us now view the church not like their favorite restaurant.

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You know, where you're the consumer, you get fed. That's even a way a lot of people talk about the church.

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Oh, I get fed well there. Okay, really? I get fed well at Outback too. So, well, they enjoy the service, but you have no more connection in their minds to the other people who happen to be there than you do to the other strangers who happen to be eating in the same restaurant with you.

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You know, when you go to Outback, you're not connected with the other diners there. Your relationship to the people who lead the church is like your relationship with the staff of that restaurant.

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They're there to serve you, and if they don't do it to your satisfaction, you'll skip on the tip and take your business elsewhere.

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That's the baggage that people have been bringing with them for the church for generations now.

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But if we want to start over and cross that ocean to be what God wants us to be, then we'll have to leave all of that behind.

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Do you want to start over? Are you willing to put away what you assume, all that baggage that's in our culture and that's crept into the church, baggage of consumerism, individualism, self -sufficiency?

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Do you want to? Some Reform people are very good at seeing what's wrong with the old church in the 16th century.

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They're not so good with seeing what's wrong in the culture all around them now.

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Well, if you want to reform now, you want to move from the environment of the world now to what

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God wants us to be, then, well, here's where to start, Titus. Paul's letter to one of his most trusted disciples telling us what the church is to be, how it is to be led, and how we're to live together and live in the world.

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Here in the first half of the first chapter, Paul unveils all of that. Now, first, leadership with himself as an example.

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Getting leadership right is crucial if we're to start over. In here, in verse 1, we see that the leader is a servant of God.

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That's how he described himself. Paul, a servant of God. He works for God, not for us.

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Now, that right away strikes at the heart of these three baggages, consumerism, individualism, self -sufficiency.

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Consumerism says that the leader is like the waitress at the restaurant. He serves me.

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Individualism and self -sufficiency recoils at the idea of even needing leaders. What's all this talk about leaders?

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We might need staff. You get that. You need someone to bring the food out to you. But not leaders.

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We can do it on our own, we think. The baggage keeps us from seeing why we need spiritual leadership at all.

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But this whole letter, Titus, is premised, in other words, founded with the assumption on the idea that Christians are called to be together in a body, members of the church, and for that, they need leaders.

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Now, notice in verse 1 what leaders working for God are called to do. He says that the call is for the sake, this is the purpose then, the sake of the faith, it's for their faith, of whose faith?

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Of God's elect. Another version has it, to further the faith of God's elect.

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That is, God's servants are to build up the faith of those people whom the Lord has chosen to be his people.

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That's the elect. The elect are those people whom God elected. We have elections and we choose political leaders.

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God had an election and he's the only one who got to vote and he chose his people. And so those people are his elect.

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So, if you're the elect, that is, you've been chosen by God, the pastor works for God, remember, by building up your faith.

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That's what he's doing. And to build up your faith, he is then trying to get you to put the weight of your life, the center of your loves.

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You can love all kinds of things. Some people don't even love anything besides Jesus. No, you can love all kinds of things in the world, your friends, your family, football, but you love them with Christ at the center for his sake, for the glory of God.

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You put all of that on God himself. And then the apostle Paul joins to faith for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth.

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So, the leader does not just create feelings, a sentiment about life, you know, all is well, and my feelings are that I love

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God, but my idea of God is very different from yours, it's very different from the Bible, it's whatever I feel like.

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No, there is the truth and God's servant wants you to have knowledge of it, to understand it.

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So, he educates, so you learn, have knowledge, to edify, that is, to build you up.

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That's why we have Sunday School program, even if it's online now, to further your knowledge of the truth.

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Want more knowledge of the truth? Well, avail yourself of what we have. It's not knowledge for knowledge's sake, like in school.

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It's to open your eyes, to be enlightened, to see true things.

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Not just so you know the opinions about all kinds of issues, is what so -and -so thinks, so -and -so thinks.

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It's to get you to the truth, and truth that will change the way you live. And true faith and knowledge, he says, results in, that is, it produces godliness, that's living in a

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God -centered way with him in the center, godly, righteous living. It's knowledge of the truth that will change the way you live.

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Then, in verse 2, he tells us that true faith is forward -looking. There is a hope of eternal life.

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Notice he says, hope of eternal life. There's a hope because it's a faith in things that aren't yet fully here.

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But true faith sees it. It's already settled for those whom

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God has chosen. Now, to them, it says, God has promised eternal life, and he promised it before the ages began.

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That's why they're the elect. God elected them. He chose them before the ages began that have eternal life. In other words, before history, in eternity past, the

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Lord decided that he would save certain people, and those are the elect. And their eternal life is firmly established in a promise

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God made before the world was ever created. So, they will be preserved, since it's based on God just promising, before we've done anything good or bad, they will be preserved no matter what happens.

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You can be assured of your eternal life, because God never lies.

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He says, the God who never lies, so you're assured of it, and you have hope of eternal life.

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The eternal life, which is in the future, something you hope for, is now, he says, manifested, or it's revealed. He says in verse 3, it's revealed now.

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He says, in this season, it's revealed, right now. The fullness of it's still in the future, that's why you hope for it, but the revelation is now.

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The hope, which is partly still in the future, is revealed now, he says, through preaching.

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That is, God promised great things to his people before the beginning of time, when the time was right, now.

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And he brought them to life, he revealed them to his people through words. Now, preaching, there,

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I think in verse 3, is an overly narrow translation of that word. Now, for my own sake,

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I wish I could skip that and say, no, you need me to be doing this, or it all comes just through me. No, preaching there just means any proclamation, any announcement, any communication of the gospel.

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And it can be done through any way of declaring it. When we read preaching, we think of a certain style of speaking, like what

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I'm doing right now, but that's not what he means by this word, it's from kerygma, any communication that you give the gospel through.

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It could be you sharing it in a conversation, with back and forth, with a friend. But it does require words.

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Francis of Assisi famously said, preach the gospel at all times, if necessary, use words. Dumb saying,

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Francis. I'm not an admirer of Francis of Assisi. It's probably the only time I've ever quoted him, and it's dumb.

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At all times, it is necessary to use words. There's been a trend of Christians not supporting the word lately.

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It's a bad trend, I think. Supporting missionaries who dig...well, maybe some do need to be doing that, but they should be paired with others who preach the word.

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But supporting missionaries who dig wells, but they don't preach. Or there's been a trend of some churches that's kind of periodically, like once a month or so, calling off their

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Sunday service, and they go out and do some kind of community project, you know, paint the benches in the park or whatever, as though words aren't necessary.

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They don't leave tracks or do any speaking through it, they just do good works. They think that's godliness,

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I guess, but that somehow communicates just without words. It doesn't. That's the baggage of our own culture where we've been denigrating the word.

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Eternal life is made known, that is revealed, manifested through words.

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As the Apostle Paul writes in Romans 10, faith comes from God, yeah, through hearing, and hearing what?

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Through the word of Christ, the trustworthy word.

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That's why we have our Jim Jr. and Jim Outreaches. We do a good deed by getting them off the street where they could get in trouble, and they hear them playing basketball under good supervision.

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Yeah, that's a good deed just by itself, but we don't just do that. Now, almost all the time, we share a lesson or a brief gospel message, we present the word, what he calls here, the trustworthy word.

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The leader's main task is to communicate the trustworthy word. And so we start over, when it comes to leadership, as we come to verses 5 to 9, the leaders are called...notice

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what he calls the leaders? We're used to calling leaders in churches, pastors. Okay. The New Testament actually only uses that word as a noun only once in Ephesians 4, verse 11.

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The main word is elder, also overseer. Both of them are used here.

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Leaders are called elders or overseers, and the terms are about the same office. We see that, then the Christians, we the church, need proper leaders.

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And he says, talking to Titus, we see our need then, the church in Crete, the churches, the

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Christian people, Paul had gone through Crete, preaching the gospel with his assistants, some have been converted, and he sends

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Titus there to organize these believers into churches. And he says, they need leaders, appoint the elders to set in order.

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There's a key phrase, set in order. That is, put what remains from their evangelism, what he's preached the gospel to all kinds of people, some of them believe, those are the ones who remain, put them in order.

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Every church needs elders, pastors we'd say, whatever you want to call them. And they need them to put in order.

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Now, the baggage of individualism and self -sufficiency lies to us to tell us, well, we can make it our own.

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This is me and God, I don't need anybody putting me in order. You keep your order off of me. Who needs membership?

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I don't want a preacher to entertain me with lively sermons. You know, people are not, there are people who kind of like preaching just as their form of entertainment.

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Some go for concerts, some go for football games, some go for preaching, and just kind of entertained by it.

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But they don't have any idea that they need elders to be over them to put them in order. They have no concept of that.

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They find that kind of revolting often. Here, Paul shows us that we do indeed need that. God's plan is not just to have separate individuals who are believers out there kind of roaming around, maybe going from preaching from here to there for their entertainment, but if you need a church, it needs to be set in order.

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Just like when we drive, we have traffic signs, we have laws, lane lines, police, to put our driving in order.

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And so we need elders to put us in order. And so you need to be a member of a church and that church must be set in order.

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We're not a rabble of disconnected individuals. We're not customers at a restaurant, kind of just happen to all be here at the same time.

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God cares about the order of His church and the individualist thinks, well, it's just me and God. They think the church is like a gym.

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So, you know, the gym has its equipment you can work out on and maybe it has trainers that you can come for classes and go to some fitness routines with other people that are interested in the same thing.

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But you can kind of take or leave that. You can work out on your own if you want to. That's the way some people think of the church.

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I'll go there with those other people for that spiritual workout. But if I don't feel like it, I want to work out on my own,

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I can do that too. That's baggage. Here we see that believers together as the church are to be, again, set in order.

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That means membership, means a church covenant because that kind of defines what membership means and what the order is.

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Discipline and leadership. And here we see three elements of spiritual leadership. First, the one thing that it is.

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Second, the two things that it does. And third, the many things that the men in it should be.

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First, what is an elder or overseer? You notice the two terms are interchangeable. Well, is he the main preacher?

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Then if he is, is he just mainly entertainer? Or is he a good politician?

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He's an emblem of social respectability, knowing how to make everyone feel good about themselves.

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Perhaps he's a social worker or kind of sanctified party animal.

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Very social kind of guy. If he's not the preacher, okay, maybe some people say, well,

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I know, elders aren't always the preacher. Okay, if he's not the preacher, then is he a board member who just kind of supervises the preacher?

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He's kind of a check and a balance, like Congress is to the president, like in our political system. All of that is the baggage of our culture.

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Verse 7 tells us what he is. The elder or overseer is God's steward.

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There's the word, steward. That is, he put in charge of God's house, the church.

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Not the building. Someone else can look out to the building, please. Not the building, but God's people, the members who have covenanted together.

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A steward doesn't own the property. It doesn't belong to him. He just tends to it.

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He looks after it in place of the one who really owns it. The word steward there comes from the

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Greek word for house. It's a form of the word for house or household or family, meaning it's one who is put in charge over a house.

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So someone like if you were going away, leaving your kids, all minor kids, you would probably want to have...today

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we call them a babysitter, I guess, but you want to have someone over, a responsible adult looking over the household while you're away.

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And so it is assuming, this word is assuming what Paul says elsewhere about the church.

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The church is God's household. 1 Timothy 3, verse 15, Paul writes, the household, or the word could be family, of God, which is the church of the living

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God. So here Paul specifically means local churches as God's households,

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God's family, where he's the father, he's the owner. But he has stewards to care for that family.

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That's what the church is, the family of God. And you think about it, that's a very different conception, is it, than being like a restaurant?

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It's the family of God. And so you don't go to another family because they cook better.

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You go to a restaurant like that, well, the other one cooks better, so I'll go there. You don't go to another family because they cook better, or because they sing better, or because the house is better.

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Hey, mom and dad, the other family's a much nicer house, I'm going to go live with them. It doesn't work that way.

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No, you think this is my family. But today people think the church is like a restaurant.

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They might have a favorite one they go to. They go there kind of regularly. They like the food, and they know the menu, and they get along well with the staff.

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They're comfortable there. It might even begin to feel almost like home. But if another restaurant had a special, or maybe they just want some variety, well, they'll go there.

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They'll go visit there. Now, if they come back to their favorite restaurant, and the staff begins to rebuke them for their unfaithfulness, how dare you betray us?

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Where were you? They would think that's bizarre. That's overbearing. That's possessive.

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That's obsessive. It might be enough to drive them away from ever going back to that restaurant again.

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And they think the same way about the church. It's not a family. It's not the household of God. It's the restaurant of God.

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And as long as I'm getting a meal somewhere, well, it's none of your business, they think, where I'm going.

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But that is some of the baggage from the past we need to leave behind if we want to start over.

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Second, the elders have to do two things that they're called to do.

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Verse 9 says they are to both encourage in sound teaching, okay, sounds so far so good, and correct.

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So the qualifications for an elder in verse 5 to 8, you know, all those qualifications we'll look at very briefly soon, but they're remarkable for being very unremarkable.

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You read those things and you think, God, it's me, pretty much. I've failed here or there sometimes, but I meet all those standards.

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They're remarkable for being unremarkable, but the actual thing they have to do is remarkable.

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They must have the ability and inclination to instruct believers in right teaching, not only sophisticated theology, sometimes necessary, but instructions in how to live and to be able to correct those who are straying, those who are contradicting right teaching.

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So that means they got to be able to understand what's the implications of the theology and be able to expose it, reveal it, not only able in the sense that they understand it, but also able that they have the inclination to confront it.

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All Christians really should be able to meet the qualifications listed in verses 5 to 8, but not every Christian is called and gifted to do those two things listed in verse 9, encourage in sound teaching and correct.

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All the qualifications listed in verses 6 to the beginning of verse 9 are for the purpose of, in the middle of verse 9, so that, notice the middle of verse 9, all these things, so that, this is the purpose, he, the elder, may be able to what?

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Entertain? Sit on a board and be important? No. Actually, I've already given you the answer.

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I know it's not suspenseful, but it's to build up the faith of God's elect. It's in verse 1, by instruction and correction, here in verse 9.

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That's the passion of the spiritual leader. What can I do to help, to improve, to strengthen your faith?

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How can I build up the household of God? Well, he's the steward. He's the head servant who's been put in charge of the family of God.

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So he's thinking constantly, how can I provide for them? What do they need?

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How they need to be encouraged? How they need to be educated for their edification? How do they need to be confronted?

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What wrong ideas, wrong problems are coming in their life? How can I encourage them to believe what is right and do what is right?

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What weaknesses need to be addressed? That's particularly clear in the second thing the elder is supposed to do, to rebuke those who contradict the truth.

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Now, in our day, part of the baggage of the culture, again, consumerism, individualism, self -sufficiency, is that it's gray if the elder encourage.

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Positive encouraging, we like that, but not correct or rebuke, right?

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Would you listen to a radio station that was K -Wrath, all rebuke all the time? Don't know what songs they would get, but whatever.

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That doesn't sell in our culture. Because of that, the person who is often now in our culture attracted into the ministry is a people pleaser, a customer -oriented caterer.

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He's kind of like the customer service representative at a big store. Oh, I'm sorry that you're not happy with those

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Ten Commandments. Let me see if I have anything else that you might like better, that kind of thing.

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And I've seen men who think that they can be an elder but are incapable of correcting. They'll talk amiably for over an hour with someone in the most obvious sin and won't touch the sin.

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That's the baggage of our consumer culture, right? You've got to keep the customer happy.

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You don't confront his sin. You can't love flowers without hating weeds.

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You can't love sheep without hating wolves. Now, certainly the most unpleasant part of being an elder, but one of the absolute necessary obligations is to correct.

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In the past, this was understood, just part of the job description.

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But today, the assumption is that if something goes wrong, if someone drops out, does something they shouldn't, then the first and probably the last person to blame is the pastor.

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He's not supposed to rebuke. He is supposed to be rebuked. That's the way a lot of people think. You don't correct people because if you do, they'll leave.

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And the church, they think, is the restaurant to serve them, and they're the customer, and the customer is always right. And, you know, if the customer says your

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General Chow's chicken is not sweet enough, well, you put more sugar in it. You don't rebuke him for bad taste.

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Well, that's business. I understand that in the business world. But here, we see that the purpose of the stewards of God's household, the leaders, is to build up your faith.

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It's not to sweeten the message to the way you like it. You don't like all those commandments?

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I'll give you more encouragement, whatever. If we've had other ideas about spiritual leadership of the church, we need to leave those behind.

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Even if we really like them, leave them behind as we start over. Now, very briefly, there are the many things that the elders are to be, starting in verse 6.

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Now, first, they are to be above reproach. You piece that in verse 7, above reproach. No one's reproaching them. And the

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Apostle Paul doesn't mean that only someone who is free from every kind of weakness is to be selected as an overseer or elder.

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That's unreasonable. No such person could be found. But it does mean that we should only have men as elders who have no disgrace in their lives that would lessen their authority.

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That the kind of the rest of the people in the town and the society point at, and that guy's a scoundrel.

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How do you make him a leader of your church? He must be a man of unblemished reputation. Then he must be the husband of one wife.

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So, by the way, that means he's a man. Now, I'm in the process of writing a series of articles for Theopolis showing, in part, how consumerism encourages what's now called egalitarianism, women pastors, for example.

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You know, if you think of the church as a restaurant, you go into a restaurant, you don't care if the chef is a man or a woman.

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You don't care. You want whoever cooks or preaches the best. This is about you and your taste, your being...getting

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a tasty meal or a good sermon. Now, if you know the church is the family of God, that changes everything.

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Only a man can be in the family, a father, a patriarch, or the husband of one wife.

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Now, in his day, this probably referred to polygamy. You have more than one wife, can't be the elder, sorry.

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You're too busy at home anyway. You don't need to be fooling with the church. You've got too much to take care of at home if you've got more than one wife.

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Now, in our day, it would apply to our practice of serial monogamy that we have rampant now.

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Serial monogamy, going from one wife to another. Here, Paul is calling on the elder to be a one -woman kind of man, a man who has been faithful to his marriage vows, a man who has enough control over his sex drive that he's not driven to pursue other women because how a man is in his family says a lot about how truly

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God -centered he is. That's why Paul next insists that the elder show that he can rule his own children well.

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He wants to rule over the church. Can he? Well, let's see what he's doing in his family. If a man cannot rule over his own house well, how can he be expected to be a steward over God's house?

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So, an elder must show an orderly discipline over his children. So, no one should be able to charge the,

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I think, live -in children. Can't really be expected to control his children if they're off living outside the home.

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But live -in children of an elder with...no one should be able to accuse him of living wildly, of being immoral, of being a brat, being disobedient and subordinate, being an unsanctified party animal.

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A man whose children are wild needs to spend his time straightening out his family.

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He cannot be the elder of a church. And he must rule himself. Look at the characteristics in the middle of verse 7 and into verse 8.

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He must not be arrogant or quick -tempered or drunkard or violent or greedy for gain but hospitable, a lover of good, self -controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined.

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All those are areas of ruling over oneself, over your appetites.

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He must not be arrogant because the arrogant man cannot control his own will, what he insists.

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He doesn't know the difference between what he wants and what God commands. He cannot restrain his own ego.

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The arrogant man confuses his own opinions with God's Word. He's unteachable. And so we want to admit he's wrong and so he's impossible to work with.

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He'll tear up the household of God trying to have his own way. He must not be quick -tempered at his hot -headed, exploding at little provocations because the reality is that in the church there are sometimes people who will sorely try one's patience.

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The true elder must not be a drunkard. Here again, the key is self -control. It doesn't say he can't drink at all but he's able to say, no,

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I'm going to stop here because any more than this is too much and I would get drunk. Enough self -control that he would never do that.

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That's the theme here. The elder is someone with control. He knows how to say no to himself because he's going to have to say no to other people.

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Can he say that to himself first? He must be able to restrain himself when he is angry and not be violent.

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He must be able to restrain his desires for things, his covetousness, so he's not greedy.

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A greedy man will pursue the ministry as a hireling, as an employee, trying to get what he can get out of it. He's unwilling to tell hard truths that might turn people off.

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So you lose members and that way you have less income in the offering. And because he so longs for a successful church by worldly standards, he's greedy.

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And so that shapes what he says, how he does things. Instead of being greedy, though, the godly elder is able to let go of things to share with others, hospitable.

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He loves others because he loves good. And then the last four qualifications really focus on the theme of self -control.

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The godly elder is self -controlled. He's upright. He's holy and disciplined. He puts himself first under discipline or control and his family into order so that he can put the church into order.

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He sets in order. He does that for the church in verse 5.

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Is he fit for that? Well, first, does he do it to himself? Does he do it to his family?

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But the modern assumption is not that spiritual leaders need to set in order or to govern. He should feel.

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He should ooze, should empathize. We don't need order, people think.

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We need entertainment. We need puffing up. We need empathy.

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That's all baggage that we have to leave behind as we're starting over.

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Finally, in verse 9, the godly elder not only has a firm grasp on himself, on his appetites, but on the truth.

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He must hold, think of that word here, hold, like you're grasping with all your might, hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught.

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God's word is trustworthy and holy and he must hold firmly to it as taught.

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Here, as taught by Paul. I kind of reinterpreted in my own way. Sure, I believe all that. This is my interpretation of it.

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I saw something just this morning. To be elect means that you choose to do this or that.

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What? It's all about my choice. No, it's just emptying the words of meaning and interpreting them as I want them to be.

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Here, the elder holds firmly to the words as they have been taught.

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Here, Titus telling the people of fine men as elders in Crete, as taught by Paul.

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For us, as taught by Paul and the other apostles, we hold firmly to that trustworthy word because it is the word of God.

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It's not personalities. It's not programs. It's the word of God that builds the church.

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God's kind of elder and pastor must thoroughly understand the truth with his mind and tightly cling to it with his heart.

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And then Paul, he ends where he begins. Remember, servant of God. He was called to be a servant of God for the sake of the faith of God's elect, commissioning

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Titus to put God's family in order with leaders, to build up our faith, to stand for the truth, and to stand against opponents, sometimes to stand against the things in our own lives that are the opposite of truth, that oppose the truth, like the baggage of consumerism, individualism, and self -sufficiency.

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God has a household, a family, that he has graciously chosen to save.

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They're the elect. He loves that family so much. He sent his son to purchase that family with his own blood so that we can start over.

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Some of us maybe need to start over in a much more radical way. We all begin,

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Scripture tells us elsewhere, we begin as children of wrath. That is, we are born with an old life, with sinful baggage.

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Christ came to start over and to start us over as a new creation.

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And that's not just turning over a new leaf, you know, resolving to do things a little differently now, changing our behavior and getting a new attitude, but it's radically, completely starting over with a new heart, being born again.

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That's the new kind of life that God reveals, and that is he brings out of the open.

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Now, through his trustworthy word, if you trust that worthy word, it will start you over.

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If you're not trusted that word, if you not had that living faith transform you yet, then now would be a great time to dump the baggage of your old life and start over.