Sunday Sermon: Unfit for Any Good Work (Titus 1:10-16)

You're listening to the preaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on this podcast we feature teaching through a New Testament book, an Old Testament book on Thursday and our Q &A on Friday.

Each Sunday we are pleased to present our sermon series. Here is Pastor Gabe.

Reading Titus 1:10-16 and Praying for Discernment

Let us stand together in honor of the word of the King as we read Titus chapter 1 beginning in verse 10. I'm reading from the English standard version. Hear the word of the Lord. For there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party.

They must be silenced since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach. One of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.

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. To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure.

But both their minds and their consciences are defiled. They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work. You may be seated as we pray.

Heavenly Father, as we come into this passage today, I pray that we would likewise be warned of the false teaching that is in the world, even the false teaching that may arise from within our own midst if we are not careful.

And so we heed these warnings that we would not be led astray by our flesh, looking for teachers that will tell us what our flesh desires. We will not be led astray by the schemes of Satan who tries to woo us with those things.

That we will want.

And we will not be led astray by the ways of this world. For as our own corrupt bodies live in this world, may we not be led on by those who try to promise us things that will never truly be fulfilling.

But we will find ourselves fully fulfilled in Christ. If we have made Christ our greatest desire and our greatest satisfaction, then what can the world offer us that is greater than this? Teach us and guide us in your truth, and may we be filled with it.

In the Holy Spirit that dwells within us, in the name of Jesus, to our Father in heaven, we pray, amen.

Amen.

Christ's Warning to the Church at Thyatira

In Revelation chapter 2, verses 18 to 29, Jesus addressed the church at Thyatira in this way, I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first.

But I have this against you. You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols.

I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her own sexual immorality. Behold, I will throw her onto a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation unless they repent of her works.

And I will strike her children dead. All of the children or all of the churches will know that I am He who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works. Notice that the address began with a congratulatory remark, look at your love and faith and service and your perseverance.

You are clearly maturing in the deeds that you are doing now in that they are greater than what you were doing at the first. But what did Jesus hold against them? You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who is a false prophetess, and because you tolerate her, because you let her say what she says, and it goes unchallenged, she has deceived the brethren so that there are many who go after her sexual immorality with her, and they will come into the same judgment that will fall upon her.

Last week we considered the qualifications of a sound teacher in the faith. If you'll recall verse 9, jumping up one verse, where it says that he is to hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught so that he may give instruction in sound doctrine and rebuke those who contradict it.

My wife gifted me with a framed image that shows a preacher calling the sheep to himself in one frame, and then in the second frame it has the preacher with his staff and the sheep behind him, and he's shouting at wolves that are coming to devour the sheep.

And this is a picture of a quote that comes from John Calvin who said, the pastor ought to have two voices, one for gathering the sheep and another for driving away wolves. And so now this week, after we have heard these words about what the sound teacher is supposed to look like, and the character he exhibits, and the teaching he teaches, now we have the contrast.

We see what happens when a flock does not have a sound shepherd who directs the sheep and fends off the wolves. There's a contrast between the sound teacher described for us in verses 5 through 9 and the false teachers now Paul warns about in verses 10 through 16.

The sound teacher is to be listened to, the false teacher is to be silenced. My friends, in recapping last week and in coming into this week, I want you to recognize that the messenger matters. It matters, not just what we hear, but whom we hear it from, because his life will be a reflection of the message that he proclaims.

What is the fruit of this word, you will see it in his life, and you will see it in yours.

As well.

Now here in verses 10 through 11, Paul says, there are many rebellious men, they are empty talkers and deceivers, and because they go unchallenged, they upset whole families, teaching things that they ought not to teach for dishonest gain.

The next part is in verses 12 through 14, Paul says, what these people are like where Titus has been sent to minister, and because they are like this, here's how you are to deal with them. You need to reprove them severely so that they will be sound in the faith.

Then in this last part in verses 15 to 16, Paul again contrasts the sound with the unsound, but more than that, he once again connects this to doctrine and life. Remember that we talked about this in the introduction to Titus, that doctrine and life go together.

To the pure, all things are pure, he says, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure. So we're being shown that a person's doctrine and his behavior go hand in hand. Your doctrine affects your living and your living affects your doctrine.

And so to summarize this section once again, silence them, severely reprove them, and if they do not repent, see their works, that they are unfit for any good work. That is the title of the sermon today, unfit for any good work, but we highlight that as what Paul describes of these unsound teachers here so that we may seek for ourselves the good doctrine of God and the good works that result so that we will find ourselves fit for any good work, and we'll do some application at the very end.

So first of all, let's look at this first section where Paul says to silence them in verses 10 through 11. In verse 10, Paul says, for there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party.

Now, what did we read last week? Verses 5 through 9, this is a man who is qualified for elder. This is what a sound teacher is supposed to look like in the teaching that he gives to the church as he guides these saints in the understanding of God's truth.

These men are placed in a position of authority, but they are servant leaders, and they are serving the sheep as they lead them in the authority of God's word. The word itself that is authoritative over both the teacher and the ones who hear it.

So what do we have first described about the false teacher in verse 10? There are many who are insubordinate, meaning they're not going to listen to God's authority. They're not going to bow the knee to Christ.

They don't even care about these qualifications that a minister of God's word needs to have. So the very first description that we have of these false teachers, they're not even going to listen to the previous instructions that were given.

They don't care what it is that Christ has directed his shepherds in. They're going to go their own way, and they're going to teach the things that will be the most appealing to your flesh. They are ear-ticklers, as we had heard Paul describe them in his letters to Timothy.

Now, I want to be clear here to qualify that these men are not merely false teachers, but they are also false brothers. Look in the next verse, verse 11. They must be silenced since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach.

Now, certainly Paul includes teachers here, but not exclusively. I could use the term false teacher, and that would be correct, especially considering that they are teaching for shameful gain. But if I were to say false teacher and just leave it at that, then you would probably have in your mind that Paul is just warning about somebody who stands in the pulpit, and he just teaches whatever, or maybe he's a false teacher in a Sunday school class, or maybe he's got a social media platform or something like that, and all kinds of followers and viewer count and so on and so forth.

But we don't have any false teachers in our church, do we? I certainly hope not. So why should we care about the urgency that this passage contains if we don't have any false teachers here? Do you have to officially be granted the title of teacher in order to be a false teacher?

No.

You could be teaching falsely in your home. You could say something to a friend of yours that you saw online, it sounded good to you, and you pass it on, and it turns out to be doctrinally incorrect. So we recognize that these empty talkers and deceivers are not just people who have some kind of teaching platform.

This especially makes sense when you go down to verse 13, where Paul says there, this testimony is true, therefore rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in the faith. That's whether they are a false teacher or whether they are following false teaching.

So this could be the teacher or the person who follows it. These are causing a disruption among the brethren. They are first defined as rebellious, they're insubordinate, meaning that they neither believe nor obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And the gospel is not just something to be heard, but it is also to be believed and even.

Obeyed.

We obey only in this sense, that we hear the call of God and we put our faith and trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins. There is a response that happens when we hear the gospel preached. Believing in Jesus means more than just believing that he exists.

Remember that James says the demons believe that God is one and tremble, but that's not going to save them. We must believe that he died on the cross and he rose from the dead and he taught things that as God who reigns over all means that we must listen to them and we must do them.

You also believe the word that he said and you believe what he said by doing what he.

Said.

John 3 .36 says, he who believes in the son has eternal life, but he who does not obey the son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. Whoever does not obey the son will not see life. Second Thessalonians 1 .8 says that Jesus will execute vengeance on those who do not know God and who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

They don't put their faith and trust in Jesus. I saw a comment not long ago from a Reverend Jackie Lewis of Middle Church in New York.

City.

There's already a problem there with a woman calling herself a reverend, but she said, the apostle Paul did not write first Timothy. If that wasn't problematic enough, she went on to say, but also not every word of the.

Bible is of God.

That's straight down rebellion, folks. That's insubordination. They do not want to believe, nor do they obey the word of Christ. You hear it in their words. You see it in their life. Paul goes on to say that they are empty talkers and deceivers.

They're insubordinate. They're empty talkers. They're deceivers. They might sound like they can talk a big game, but does their talk actually lead anyone in the truth? In John Bunyan's famous work, Pilgrim's Progress, there's a character named Talkative.

And Faithful, who is on this pilgrim way along with Christian, he's at first taken in by.

Talkative.

The guy really seems to know his stuff. But Christian is wise to Talkative's rhetoric. He tells Faithful, he talks of prayer, of turning to God, of faith, and of the new birth but he only knows talk of them.

His house is as empty of religion as the white of an egg is of savor. In his home, there is neither prayer nor sign of turning from sin. His poor family finds it so. He is such a fault finder, such a railer at, and so unreasonable with his servants that they neither know how to do for or speak to him.

For my part, I am of the opinion that he has, by his wicked life, caused many to stumble and fall and will be, if God prevent not, the ruin of many more," unquote. Perhaps when John Bunyan wrote the character Talkative, he had empty talkers in mind that Paul mentions here in Titus chapter 1.

Now, thirdly, Paul says that these false brethren are especially of the circumcision. So we have, first of all, they are insubordinate. Then we have that they are empty talkers and deceivers. And then he mentions of them a third quality that they are of the circumcision party.

These are the Judaizers who say, as in Acts 15 .1, that you must be circumcised in order to be saved and carry on all these other Jewish rituals and obediences in order to know salvation. These are men who held to their tradition, and they believed that their works would save.

Them.

Even the foods that we eat make us pure or impure. You could purify yourself just by doing certain things rather than having faith in Jesus who cleanses us from all unrighteousness, 1 John 1 .9. Now, for Paul to say, especially those of the circumcision group, I don't think that he's talking about the Judaizers exclusively, but he may have, these may have been the most prominent example of those false teachers that were leading people astray.

This is whom Paul called rebellious and empty talkers and deceivers. And what does Paul say needs to be done with them? Well, look down at verse 11. They must be what? Silenced. Why must they be silenced?

Because they are upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain what they ought.

Not to teach.

Now, this reference to families, this isn't a reference to the nuclear family like mom and dad and the kids. This is in reference to churches, church families, like we are a family. Because that is what we are.

We are brothers and sisters in the Lord. How is it that these false brothers are upsetting whole families? And it might be that these families are being thrown into confusion, resulting in unrest, uncertainty, and doubt.

When Paul wrote his second letter to the Thessalonians, he was writing to a church that, at the time, they were a mess because someone had written a letter to them claiming that the day of the Lord had already been, it had already taken place.

And so Paul has the right to calm them down and bring them back into a soundness of mind again, for this false teacher had caused them confusion. Another way that these churches are being upset is that they're being threatened.

I led a man who was a Mormon to faith in Christ, the true Christ of the Bible, not the fictitious Jesus that the Mormon religion proclaims. And this man's family immediately began shaming him because he had become a Christian.

And not just a Christian, but he had been baptized even into the Christian faith. And the Mormons have this way about them that when a member of their family were to do such a thing, and it's kind of interesting that even though you'll hear in the Mormon rhetoric that we worship the same Jesus, as soon as you become a Christian and you're baptized into that, then suddenly they don't act like you're worshiping the same Jesus.

And they'll start to shame you and cut you off and they will ostracize you and possibly even disown you because you are now following the true Christ of the Bible. And it was very, very hard for this young man whom I was discipling and he was really tormented in his soul.

And we had a lot of deep prayer meetings on a lot of evenings sometimes because he just, he didn't know what else to do. Sometimes he would get off work and he would call me and he would say, I just need a hug.

And we would come over and he would embrace me in our driveway and then we would get together and pray and ask for soundness of mind and steadfastness that he would continue in what he knew was true. He loved his family, didn't want to see them go astray.

He didn't want to be cut off from them. But he knew that he needed to love Christ more. And this is one way that false teachers will try to persuade you of their false doctrine through abuse tactics and manipulation and gaslighting in this way.

And this is why Paul says here, they must be silenced. Go back to the example that I opened up with in Revelation 2. This was a false prophetess who was going unchallenged by the church. And what was happening as a result?

She was leading professing Christians into sin, not just in the false doctrine, but then what that false doctrine resulted in and the sexual immorality. And Jesus said that if they do not repent, they will be destroyed along with her.

Bad doctrine leads to bad decisions that leads to destruction. So the false teaching must be silenced. Now, there's certainly an aspect of that for us as teachers and the responsibility that we have to have to silence false brethren.

But what would your responsibility be then when it comes to silencing those who speak in such a way? Hold on to that because we'll come back to that in the application. Not only are they to be silenced, but they are to be reproved severely.

Rebuke Them Sharply So They May Be Sound in the Faith

So first of all, silence them. And then secondly, severely reprove them. Here's our next section here in verses 12 through 14. Look at verse 12. One of the Cretans, a prophet of their own said, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.

This testimony is true, Paul says. I love how, you know, I'm not going to own these words. I'm going to attribute it to one of their own. And then I'm going to say, yeah, he's right. They are always evil beasts, liars, and lazy gluttons.

Therefore, rebuke them sharply, he says, so that they may be sound in faith, not devoting themselves to the Jewish myths and the commands of people who turn away from the truth. And so for this work that Titus was appointed to do, it was necessary for Titus to understand the kind of people that he was dealing with.

This is not Paul being a racist. He's not being prejudiced in some way. But this is the kind of character that people on the island of Crete generally have. He's making a generalization. And it's important for you to know the personality of those people so that you will know how to better witness to them.

And even after they have come to the faith, what sort of fleshly tendencies are in them that still need to be worked out? If this church were to go on mission to Zambia, we were going to go to Zambia and we were going to witness to the people there.

Who in our congregation are we going to look to, to understand what the people of Zambia are like and how we are to minister to them? Alan, we're going to go to Alan. It would actually be foolish of us to just decide, well, we know everything there is to know about Zambia, and we're going to go over there and think that as long as we just, hey, I'm going to proclaim the gospel and people are going to come to Christ.

Maybe the Holy Spirit will still work through us in that way, but we're still going to look like fools thinking that we know better than they do. If we were to go on mission to Peru, and we were going to speak to the people of Peru and share the gospel with them, who could guide us into understanding what the people of Peru are like so that we may minister to them?

We would go to Genesis, not the book of the Bible, but Genesis sitting over there. And she would tell us about the Peruvian people and what we need to know about their culture, how to communicate to them in a certain way that they're going to be receptive to the message that we share.

In July of last year, my oldest daughter went to Houston to witness to a Muslim community. There was a whole apartment complex where Muslims who had come from the Middle East over to the United States were living there, and they were even speaking the language of their native people.

Some of them knew English. Some of the people that my daughter talked to didn't know English at all and had to speak to them through a translator. But when she was with the missions team that was going over there, there were phone calls that they were part of, like Zoom calls and things like that, where there were missionaries who were versed in how to witness to this people group, guiding the missions team on what they needed to do.

And I sat in on some of those calls. My daughter was the only teenager going. Everybody else was an adult. So I'm with her on those calls, and I'm kind of listening to it. And sometimes I would provide some input to the missions team and stuff like that.

There were some gospel-sharing tactics I wasn't really crazy about. So it was good for the information that they shared with regards to, here's how to talk to these people, but they needed some help on their gospel presentation.

So in one of those phone calls, I remember them saying that you needed to be careful of what you wore, because certain kinds of clothing, though it may be acceptable in an American context, might be immediately offensive to a Muslim.

And so already when they see you, they already don't want to listen to you, because they see what you're wearing and your attire is offensive to them. The Apostle Paul to the Corinthians said, I have become all things to all people so that I might win some.

And this is exactly what he was talking about. If I have to dress a certain way, so to be accepted by that people, so that I can witness to them with the gospel, then that's what I'm going to do. And that is a wise and worthy thing for us to consider whenever we are ministering to people.

And this is what Paul is telling Titus. You need to know something about the people that are on this island, because the way that you minister to them, and even the way that you will sanctify them after they come to Christ, it's important to know something about the personality of these people that, you know, they're all worldly.

They've all been influenced by their world or their culture, so that even when they become saved, it's not like all that stuff just magically vanishes. There's still some of the world that needs to be worked out.

And it's why, as Jesus said in John 17, 17, when he prayed for us, sanctify them in your truth, your word is truth, talking to the Father. So it's through the word of Christ that these things get worked out in us.

And we begin to look more like citizens of the kingdom instead of citizens of this world. So Paul is telling Titus what Cretans are like, so that Titus will understand the reason why Cretans need to be severely reproved.

Now, the very first time I was ever studying on this passage, I remember looking at that and going, I wonder if this is where the word Cretans comes from. You know, like a Cretan, like an idiot. You Cretan, you ever called somebody that before?

I don't know, maybe it was my culture when I was growing up, we called each other Cretan, I don't know. So I looked into the etymology of that word and come to find, no, it has no connection to the Cretans here in Titus 1 whatsoever.

I was hoping that I discovered something kind of funny, but no, it's not. No connection at all. Now, these people have a reputation for, as Paul said, being liars and being cruel to one another and to outsiders.

And they're also lazy. And Paul shows this to Titus by quoting one of their own, a poet by the name of Epimenides. Paul also quotes Epimenides when he's preaching to the Greeks in Athens in Acts chapter 17.

And again, this is so Titus understands the need for stern rebuke. Not everybody needs to be sternly rebuked. So don't see this as a passage of like, oh good, I get to go yell at my neighbor because he's a moron.

You know, that's not the permission that we're being given here. But in order to get through to the men of Crete, this is what it was going to take. In just a few verses here, Paul has said that false teaching must be silenced in order to get through to these people, reprove them sharply.

Through this, it's important for us to recognize that the Bible is not glib when it comes to dealing with false teaching. Jesus rebuked the Pharisees publicly. He did it in view of the people. When he said, you are sons of hell, making proselytes and turning them into twice as much sons of hell as yourselves.

You are whitewashed tombs. You look good on the outside, but on the inside, you're full of dead men's bones. These are some pretty sharp rebukes. And he does this in the hearing of the people so that the people who hear what Jesus is saying won't be led astray by the heresies of the Pharisees.

I didn't mean for that to rhyme. It just came out that way. Even the apostle Paul, as we were in 1st and 2nd Timothy, we've seen where he would name names. Alexander the coppersmith. He's got the coppersmith shop over there on Damascus Road.

Beware of him. And then John does the same. Diotrephes. He loves to put himself first. He doesn't listen to what we say. We'll deal with him when we get there. A pastor, and in fact, every believer must do more than simply say, stay away from false teaching.

Sometimes we have to name names. Sometimes you have to say, here's the bad doctrine, and here's the false teacher that's connected with that. The very first time I ever taught through 1st and 2nd Timothy, I would just read what the text says, and I would say, stay away from false teaching.

Love sound doctrine. Avoid false teaching. All my congregations nodding their heads, and I'm like, oh, wow. I'm glad we all agree. And then I would name a false teacher, and you could see it as soon as I would say it.

Here's the bad doctrine, and here's the teacher who teaches it. And suddenly their faces would go. And you could tell in their faces, oh, you're listening to that teacher. And suddenly you find out that what they're teaching is not so biblical.

My friends, do you believe that there is a doctrine that leads to hell? I've asked you this question before. There are things that if you believe those things, will condemn a person for eternity, right?

But do you also believe that there is a doctrine that saves? Where if you believe this, our souls are eternally rescued and placed in the company and the fellowship of God forever. That's the doctrine we are to love.

And these things really are, they're life and death issues. Had a conversation with a guy not long ago, a man who was contemplating taking his own life. And I said to him, I'm saying what I say to you.

Not just because these are life and death matters, but because your eternal soul is on the line. And it matters to me. It matters to me what you do in the next few minutes and why I was there and why I was talking to him the way that I was.

If you see someone you love following after a philosophy or a religion or an ideology that the Bible says will lead to eternal damnation, are you just going to sit there and go, I wish he would believe something different, but I don't want to offend them by telling them that they're believing something wrong.

In which case, well, you're probably thinking more about yourself than you're thinking about the other person. You just don't want the backlash that that is going to cause by confronting them for believing something wrong.

I have to confront my children and things all the time that they do that are wrong. It doesn't make me their favorite person in the world when I do. But I want to guide them in the truth in the way that they should go.

So I don't just spend earth time with them. I get to spend eternal time with them as well. A couple of years ago, living in Texas, which wasn't even a couple of years ago, it was just last year. But living in the neighborhood that we lived in, Ezekiel, Bubba, loved to go play in the street.

And so if we left the door open or unlocked, he would figure out a way to open it and he would run down the driveway and he would go play in the road. He loved to play in the road. He would find the yellow line in the middle of the road and he would just walk down it, down the street.

Caught him doing this a couple of times. So we would bring him in, we would lock all the doors in the house. We would keep them locked until he got tall enough that he could even reach the deadbolt. And he would unlock that and he would still go outside and he would walk down the street.

Now, when I saw my son doing that, do you think I just kind of stood there and went,.

Oh, how cute.

He loves playing in the road. Or did I stand there and go, you know, that's not real safe. I wish he would make a different decision. What do you think that my reaction to that was? Zeke, no! And then I would run and snatch him up and he would be punished so that he would know not to play in an area that would kill him if I left him there.

And that is the way we must even regard one another when it comes to false doctrine. It's like playing in traffic. Might look like fun, but one wrong step could end your life pretty quick. And so look at verse 14.

The Apostle Paul says here that they need to be rebuked sharply not devoting themselves to Jewish myths and the commands of men who turn away from the truth. In Matthew 15 and in Mark 7, Jesus rebuked the Pharisees and said, rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites for as it is written, this people honors me with their lips but their heart is far from me.

In vain do they worship me teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. Jesus said you are good at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition. It appears as if this same problem was even happening in Crete.

But by exhorting in the truth, silencing false teaching and giving those who follow it severe reproof the brethren will not be led astray but they will be sound in the faith and their lives would even become a reflection of their sound doctrine.

Seeing the Fruit of False Doctrine and Pursuing Good Works

So let's look at the result of the false doctrine in the lives of those false teachers with this final section here, verses 15 and 16. See their works. So look at the last couple of verses, verse 15. To the pure, all things are pure but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure but both their minds and their consciences are defiled.

Now where it is said to the pure, all things are pure this does not mean that for the Christian everything is permissible for us and nothing is sinful anymore. I've heard people say that. I've heard people twist this verse that way and I can do whatever I want.

It's not even sinful for me anymore. Rather we're to understand it this way whatever God has not forbidden is good. And as Paul said to the Colossians don't let anybody disqualify you because now these things you may do and do so to the glory of God.

You can eat food to the glory of God and there's nothing that you can eat that therefore would make you unclean. That also goes back to Mark 7 that I referenced a moment ago. If the scripture doesn't forbid it then there's no reason for us to forbid it or even discriminate against one another because of it.

We still must be responsible with our Christian liberty so that it doesn't cause anybody else to stumble as Paul talks about this in Romans 14 and in 1 Corinthians 8 through 10. Nonetheless there's no reason to consider anything impure that God has not called impure.

And though there is nothing in God's creation that could be considered impure to those whose hearts are impure.

Then nothing is pure.

Since they're in rebellion against God nothing that they do is unto his glory so everything they do is impure. Take for example the fourth commandment you'll honor the Sabbath and keep it holy. Now we understand a direct application of that.