Book of Titus - Ch. 1, v. 11

Alrighty, well, let's see, last week we began the final section of chapter 1 in Titus.

Yes, ma 'am, we're in Titus chapter 1 still. We're in verse, kind of verse 11 today, but verse 10 and 11 kind of go hand in hand.

In this final section of chapter 1, we're calling the elders' battle. We're taking a look at one of the reasons, of many, but one of the most important reasons why all of those qualifications we spent weeks and weeks going through and breaking down, why all of those are so important in the first place, why they are necessary even.

And so we can go ahead and read this section together just for context, and then we'll kind of pick it up where we left off last week.

So if y 'all want to look at verse 10, we'll read a few verses here. It says, For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, especially they of the circumcision, whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not for filthy lucre's sake.

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

This witness is true. Wherefore, rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in the faith, not giving heed to Jewish fables and commandments of men that turn from the truth.

Unto the pure all things are pure, but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure, but even their mind and conscience is defiled.

They profess that they know God, but in works they deny him, being abominable and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate.

So we've got quite the group of people we're dealing with here, specifically Titus and these young elder candidates we'll be dealing with.

Not that they're young in age, but certainly young as far as the experience goes in this new job of being an elder, being an overseer, etc.

And so last week we dove into verse 10 quite a bit. We talked about a number of implications with the idea of these men being unruly, being vain talkers, being liars, being deceivers.

We talked a little bit about the fact that these character traits, these negative character traits of verse 10, are in fact the exact opposite of all of the character traits that we look at in the preceding verses that are necessary for elders.

And so that's an interesting contrast there. And one of the common denominator for all of these negative character traits on the side of these bad guys that Paul is talking about is self -control.

So we looked at a number of passages that demonstrate the power of self -control and the fact that believers have a unique capacity for self -control in all things.

So if you don't want to be unruly, you need to have self -control. If you don't want to be a vain talker, if you don't want to be a liar or a deceiver, you have to have self -control.

And so it locks so well with everything

Paul had just finished talking about in verses essentially 5 through 9 with regard to the character traits of these elders because all of those character traits require self -control.

And so then immediately after that's over, you're looking at the guys that Titus and the elders are going to be up against and you see that they don't have it.

They don't have self -control. And because of that, they're liars, they are vain talkers, and they're subverting whole houses, as we'll look at momentarily, and all of these things.

So you have the opposite of the character traits that you want in an elder.

You have the opposite of that there in verse 10. And so we talked about the fact that people who refuse to be disciplined as they are informed by God's Word, as they're informed by Scripture, they are going to be idle talkers.

They're going to be deceivers or liars. And these people, they don't have self -control in any way, shape, or form, as is demonstrated there in verse 10.

And so what do they do? They indulge their every impulse. They indulge all their desires, and it leads to unruliness.

It leads to empty talking, lying. And of course, again, this is a little bit of review, but in the context that Paul is talking about, he does have a particular group of people in mind, and that is, as he says, they of the circumcision.

And so these are people on the island of Crete that were what we would call Judaizers that were teaching that subscription to the

Mosaic law was necessary for salvation. And we talked briefly last week about the fact that that has never been true.

Even at the time that the law was given to Moses, it wasn't even true then. The law was never for salvation.

The law was to show man how sinful they were, and of course given as a mode of the

Lord's commands to get obedience back from his people. But as we learn with Abraham, salvation has always been by faith in God, and it was that faith where Abraham received the imputed righteousness of God.

So that has never changed. And so in the 400 years of darkness between Malachi and John the

Baptist showing up on the scene, you had the Pharisees come up and start propagating a twisted view of God's law, a twisted view of Scripture, to the point where they got the conclusion they came to, and that they were convincing everybody was fact, was that you had to do this, this, this, and this to be saved.

And they used part of God's law in there, but they also inserted some of their own law that they just invented over the course of that time.

And so Jesus rebuked that thoroughly. The apostles continued to rebuke it thoroughly. Here we have an example of Paul rebuking it, and again just applying these terribly bad character traits to this group of people that happened to be they of the circumcision.

That's the Jews that were trying to tell these young Christians on Crete that had not been discipled yet.

They didn't really know how to approach God's Word. They were true believers.

They believed that Jesus was their Savior, but they were so new in the faith that they were easily deceived.

And so you had these Judaizers come in, they of the circumcision, and tried to convince all these new believers that they needed to be circumcised themselves, that they needed to be doing this, that, and the other.

In addition to faith in Christ, in order to be saved. And we looked at a passage, we looked at Galatians 2, at the end of last week's lesson just as a parallel, where you have

Paul talking about the same group of people, different location, but the same sect of the

Jews. That is those that were specifically after these new believers. They were essentially

Pharisees, and they were after all these new believers trying to get them to adopt the

Mosaic Law as a means of salvation, which of course is heretical. So that's where we left off last week, and now we have verse 11.

So again, verse 10 says, For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, especially they of the circumcision.

So you have this sect of Judaizers that are trying to get people into legalism.

And then in verse 11, what does Paul tell Titus to do about these guys? He says, Whose mouths must be stopped.

They subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre's sake.

Now that little addition there, we'll talk about this more in a second, is really interesting. Because there's the concept of people that are just simply ignorant, but they're zealous.

We learn in the Old Testament about those that have zeal without knowledge. And so there's sometimes...

Well, I'll get to it in a second. But just keep in mind the fact that he mentions their motive here, for filthy lucre's sake, is of interest.

We'll get to that in a second. Now, first let's address this idea of how exactly do we stop the mouths of these heretics?

Because that's how Paul starts it. Their mouths need to be stopped. How do we do that? Well, briefly, again, just for a little bit more review, last week we talked about that just a bit as we kind of introduced this section.

Because we asked the question. We know that Paul later in other places tells the men of God to avoid quarrelsome debates and quarrelsome contentions and things like that.

In fact, one of the character traits of an elder, one of the qualifications, is to not be a contentious person.

So you have that. And then right here in verse 11, Paul is telling us that the elders need to be able to shut the mouths of these guys.

So what's the deal there? And so we talked a little bit last week about how a significant part of spiritual leadership that elders have to have is the ability to silence people who shouldn't be speaking.

But in order to silence people who shouldn't be speaking, that implies that they need to be good at a couple of other things first, or a few other things.

Number one, that elders need to be very discerning. They need to be very careful about who they let speak in their church.

So let's fast -forward this just to modern day for a second. Obviously, this is still New Testament.

But just fast -forward to today. We have churches everywhere. So we have shepherds, elders, overseers, and all of these local churches.

Number one, the first step in being able to accomplish what Paul is asking here in verse 11 is, be careful who you have in your church, especially who you let speak in your church.

So being able to discern who you should or shouldn't have speaking at your church is a great thing for elders to be aware of and be thinking about.

Secondly, elders should know the difference between, again, foolish contingents, which

Paul tells them to avoid in other places. They need to know the difference between that and then what

Paul is talking about here, which is commanding them to ensure you stop the mouths of these guys that are spouting heresy around their people.

And then thirdly, elders should know the distinction between knowing when to answer the fool and when not to answer the fool.

And we looked at Proverbs 26, verses 4 and 5, where Solomon gives you two specific approaches for two distinct situations, when not to answer the fool according to his folly and when to answer the fool according to his folly.

We talked about all that last week. And so elders, there's a few areas right there where elders can start in knowing when to address guys like this, when to engage in, if you want to call it debate, we'll call it that, when to engage in debate and stopping the mouths of these guys, and when not to, when it's just quarrelsome, when it's contentious but for not really any good reason versus doing it, actually engaging these guys.

So we talked about all that last week, but I want you guys to consider one more that we did talk about this last week.

So what's one other way that godly men, but really any

Christian at all, can begin with stopping the mouths of the fools? You don't have to turn here.

I'm just going to read one quick verse. But in 1 Peter 2, verse 15, Peter tells us,

For so is the will of God that with well -doing, ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men.

And so in addition to those other things we talked about last week, one other thing you tack onto it, and again, this is applicable to all believers, but certainly elders living as the ones that are leading by example, they need to be thinking about this.

One weapon of attack that all believers have access to is that by simply doing the right thing, living your life good, living our lives doing good, following the

Lord's commands, by doing that, that alone can be an affront to the ignorance of fools around us.

And that's really an amazing thing. It's one more example of how God's ways of doing things, the way that he ordained things to work, is far different than how we would have done it ourselves.

And so Peter tells us an amazing truth, that by the Lord's will, if you do what is good with well -doing, you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men.

So think about the power of your Christian walk and apply that to some of the

Proverbs, where Solomon tells us that those that aren't so quick to speak are often the ones that appear the most wise.

I'm paraphrasing, of course. So think about that. You don't necessarily have to be talking all the time. You don't necessarily have to be running through an argument or an opposition to every single attack that's going on around us out there.

In fact, if you tried to do that, it would use up 100 % of your time. You don't have to be doing that.

Where you start is by living your life good, doing what is good, doing what is true, obeying the commands of the

Lord, the imperatives we're given throughout the New Testament. Just doing that, in and of itself, can bring silence to the ignorance of foolish men.

Our testimony is a very powerful thing. And again, that is for all Christians, but certainly for elders as well.

Now, back to verse 11 here in Titus. Still looking at this phrase, whose mouths must be stopped.

The Greek terms that are used for this opening phrase are very expressive, as Paul was very good at being.

Another way you could render this same phrase is something along the lines of whom it would behoove to shut up, which actually gives a little bit of the force of the

Greek there, maybe more so than the English translation, because the verb, the verb to essentially stop, to stop the mouths of these guys, the

Greek verb there literally means to put a muzzle on an animal's mouth. So you have to muzzle them.

You have to shut them up. Let's talk about one more contrast really quick that just popped in my mind.

There's another place. There's a weird law in the Old Testament that is talking about muzzling the ox and not muzzling the ox specifically.

And in that context, it is talking about the literal animal. In the New Testament, and we'll get to it eventually because it's in either 1st or 2nd

Timothy, I believe 1st Timothy, Paul quotes that scripture that's talking about an actual ox in the

Old Testament and applies it to preachers in the New Testament. Now, it's a wonderful example of you can only do that when you're inspired by the

Holy Spirit. But literally borrowing and taking an Old Testament quotation like that and making that kind of application, you can only do that when it's under the inspiration of the

Spirit. And so in the same pastoral epistles, Paul expressly tells us not to muzzle the ox.

And what he means by that is it doesn't matter how offended people may be when the called man of the

Lord is prophesying, proclaiming the word, is letting the

Spirit lead his preaching. There are going to be some hard truths that come out from time to time. And even when that's the case, you don't try to muzzle the ox.

So think about for a second, we just made contrast between all the qualifications of the elders and then verse 10 where this is what it looks like when men aren't meeting these qualifications.

They're liars, deceivers, vain talkers. So there's a contrast there. But here we have another contrast because it doesn't pop out in the

English, but in the Greek when he says whose mouths must be stopped. These are guys that do need to be muzzled.

These are oxes that do need to be muzzled. That's the opposite of how it should be for called men of God.

They shouldn't be muzzled. They should be proclaiming. They should be letting the Spirit lead even through the hard truths of Scripture, the stuff that people don't want to hear, the ears that want to be tickled.

They're not being tickled. They're being like, it's more like a little kid with the chalk at the chalkboard, not quite doing it right and that squeaky sound as they're writing their letters, which we hear that every day as our kids are up there writing their letters and stuff.

Mommy can get up there just so smoothly, just eloquently write something across the board and the kids go up there and it's like, as they press down a little too hard.

And so the tickling ears want to hear what they want to hear. But then a called man of God gets up and starts preaching into them.

It sounds more like the chalkboard, except the reason it is is because they are not informed by Scripture.

They're wanting to hear the things of the world. They're not wanting to hear the things of Scripture. And so they want to muzzle that ox, but they don't get to.

Paul says you can't. Here in contrast, Paul is telling us to muzzle this ox.

So when you have an heretical, when you have a heretical teacher get up, a false teacher get up and start talking about things like, well, you have to be circumcised or you're not going to be able to go to heaven.

When you hear something like that, that is something that must be muzzled. So contrast after contrast, we receive throughout all of these pastoral applications and things like that, whom it would behoove to shut up.

That is what the elders need to be able to do when they are talking to these false teachers.

Do y 'all have any thoughts or anything so far before we press on? Let's see here.

Okay. So let's see. So yeah. So again, he uses very expressive language.

One of the reasons that Paul is so expressive here is because he knows that these heretics are a menace to society.

So one of the reasons why we have the contrast, the stark contrast, it's not just because Paul is being mean.

It's not because Paul is just trying to be authoritative for his own sake. He is authoritative, of course, but he didn't care about his own authority.

He cared about what flowed from the teachings from the Lord. And so the reason why he is being so harsh in his wording here, in the terms that he's using, is because he knows that this isn't a simple matter.

These are guys that are a literal menace to society. They're going to hurt people. They're going to hurt houses.

And it kind of reminds me a little bit of how harsh the law was in the

Old Testament when it was still in full application, all three sections of the law, if you will.

And Moses was delivering it and talking about how people that tried to lead you away, even if it's your spouse, if your wife comes up to you and starts saying, hey, come over here and check out this idol that I've been worshiping.

Not only was she supposed to be stoned, but you were supposed to cast the first stone. And of course, the same was true in reverse.

If the husband came to the wife and tried to lead her away from the camp and from God's statutes and precepts and say, hey, come worship this idol over here.

I've been doing it and I've been fine. She is supposed to report that he's supposed to be stoned and she is supposed to throw the first stone.

It sounds incredibly harsh. But why? Why was it harsh? It was harsh by necessity because it had to do with the eternal state of God's people.

God cared more about the spouse that was under conviction and ensuring that they weren't going to fall into damnable worship that would cast them into eternal torment.

He cared more about that than the 21st century perception of people reading the

Old Testament thinking, ooh, that sounds scary. He cared more about stoning the one person rather than the one person leading perhaps dozens or hundreds of people on the path to hell.

And so, yes, it's harsh, but it's because there's eternal things at stake, eternal lives at stake. And this is very much the case.

Paul is being harsh about these people and he's saying you've got to shut their mouths because he knows they are a menace to society.

The things they are teaching are heretical. The things they are teaching could lead people astray all the way to the point of risking their eternal state.

Their souls are at risk here. And so Paul, this is very serious stuff to Paul. He couldn't care less about how he's coming across and talking about these guys.

They are a menace to society. When it says that they subvert whole houses, going back to verse 11, if you all want to keep looking at that.

He says they subvert whole houses. This is what he means. This is why they are a menace to these people, to the society of Crete.

When he says they subvert whole houses, it means they literally turn things upside down.

When they go in there and they affect a household, it doesn't just bring these minor difficulties that we can work out later.

And yeah, maybe this family is just led astray a little bit here and they don't have it quite right, but we'll get it straightened out as we move on, as we progress.

You know, he's not telling Titus, you do your job, let them do their thing and the Lord will work it out.

Well, yes, the Lord works it out, but we're responsible for doing what we're responsible for. We're responsible for taking what

God tells us to do, what our job description is, and playing it out. Part of our job description is putting a muzzle on these people.

And so it's not just minor difficulties. These aren't minor differences. These aren't secondary doctrinal issues, which is a phrase you hear being used a lot, and you just let it slide.

Me, Bob, a dad came over yesterday, just as a quick side note, and I was reading them a few passages, a few excerpts from this book that I'm almost done with.

It's called The Forgotten Spurgeon, and it's not a biography, but obviously has a lot of biographical pieces to it.

The main thing that it's about is the consistency of Spurgeon's theology from the time he became a minister, which was at 19, which is really crazy, all the way through his final day, the day that he passed away.

He was theologically consistent the entire time. And to illustrate that, the book covers several of the major controversies he had to deal with as a minister.

He had to deal with the Hyper -Calvinists first because even though he himself believed in the sovereignty of God and preached it full force, you had fatalists in his area that thought he preached the gospel too much.

You know, Hyper -Calvinists essentially believe you only preach the gospel to the elect. I don't know how they figured that out, but that's what they believed.

And so first he was attacked by them. Then after he got through that controversy and wrote them off, because who wouldn't want to waste their time with idiocy like that?

Then he had the Armenians to deal with. And so then he had attacks. So first he got it from the fatalists.

Then he got it from the free willers, I guess. And so it was both sides of the spectrum, and he's in the middle.

He had to fight those on the right first, then those on the left. So it tracks the controversies against Arminianism and all of the crazy stuff that was written about him in the newspapers, and his name was disparaged left and right.

Then it moves on to his controversy against him against baptismal regeneration and the Anglo -Catholics, because you had the

Church of England, they're Anglicans, which is supposed to be a Protestant sect. They started wanting to kind of remarry with Catholicism, or at least a certain group of them did, and this is in Spurgeon's day.

So the same theology that he used to fight all of the previous stuff he used to fight the Anglo -Catholics, then eventually he had to fight those in his own

Baptist union who were starting to go liberal. And so this is the point that I wanted to get to.

The reason why they went liberal is because of little bits of wrong thinking sprinkled in here and there over the course of 80 years

So when the Baptist union in London first started, it was exclusively Calvinistic.

And then 30 years after their declarations were made, they thought, well, we need to get rid of this declaration and rewrite it because we want to welcome all of our, all

Baptists into one fold. And on paper, that does sound good. And even Spurgeon thought that sounded good.

And so they rewrote their declarations to exclude a lot of the more stringent

Calvinistic doctrines and make it just about the fundamentals.

And I personally, I don't necessarily have a problem with that, but the thing is man has fallen and so it gets messy really fast.

So what happened was they bring in the general Baptists with the particular Baptists and about every 10 years after that, the general

Baptist made a little bit more headway. Another 20, 30 years goes by. The particular

Baptists were still in the majority, but the general Baptists made up now a third of the union.

And about 15 years after that, the general Baptists made up a hyper or a super majority of the union.

The general Baptists were the Armenians. And so you had, and so here's the interesting part. Again, this is the point.

It started by letting the general Baptists in, which brought in Arminianism. There, you have it split into two groups.

You had the conservative Armenians that would have agreed with Spurgeon on all of the fundamentals of the faith. They would have just disagreed on salvation, on soteriology and whatnot.

But then you had the liberal Armenians. And Arminianism, the book is a great demonstration of how

Arminianism, basically emphasizing man's free will over God's sovereignty. It is a great demonstration on how that inevitably leads to liberalism.

Even if you have Armenians with the best intentions that are conservative, that could sit in here honestly in fellowship with us and maybe us in their church.

A lot of great things in common. The problem is the foundation that the doctrines are made upon starts with man versus starting with God.

And when that happens, it inevitably leads to liberalism. The book demonstrates that beautifully. And so you get to 80 years after the union started and it was nearly all general

Baptists. And then you had the liberals come in and start questioning things like the virgin birth, and questioning things like whether or not miracles actually happened, questioning things like the inerrancy of scripture, questioning the sufficiency of scripture.

So 80 years, you had this little germ and it just like yeast, leavening the whole lump after 80 years.

A little leaven, leavened the whole lump. And so the reason I brought all that up is because these false teachers coming in and spreading little things here and there, that was no simple matter to Paul because he understood that the principle

I just laid out that happened in Spurgeon's life would happen. You can't let little things here and there sneak in.

You can't let them go, because think about it for a second. These guys, these false teachers were not standing on the street corner preaching heresy.

They were going house to house to house. And so they were being sneaky about it. And they were getting them to believe a little bit of heresy here, a little bit of heresy there.

They were genuine believers, but they were trying to subvert their households. And in fact, they were subverting their households in many cases.

And so, oh yes, go ahead. Yeah, it was it.

Yeah. Right.

It's 100 % true. And by the way, it is very easy for anybody, anyone in this room, to give a little bit here and there because we understand that there is the principle of love covering a multitude of sins.

And so you might have a brother or a sister that is just dabbling here and there. But, and so in those cases, when they're a close brother or sister in the

Lord, it can be especially tricky to walk that tightrope and remain meek, remain humble, remain loving, remain gracious and merciful, but taking the leaven head on so that before that leaven, leaven's the whole lump.

And so Spurgeon, interestingly enough, he remained in the Baptist Union because he thought he could remove that leaven.

And unfortunately, he didn't have enough on his side. And so he eventually had to leave the union. That was one of the controversies, is that he had to leave the union because they went liberal.

He knew he couldn't fix it, so he had to go fully independent after that. Yes, sir. I think it's a fascinating story to consider who this man is,

Spurgeon. But he did have a majority for most of that time, but a little leaven, leaven's the whole lump.

He wasn't thinking right. He's a greater man than he is. He wasn't thinking right when he thought that would work.

Yeah, because that's another part of the story. That should be a real warning for us. If he could suddenly be turned to think that would work, so can we.

And especially our kids, when they take over, the next generation in this church, I said, if I knew what that meant,

I'd say that. Anyhow. No, that's actually a big key to the story, is that he is

Spurgeon. One of the things that Spurgeon did was he thought he could keep the union on the straight and narrow, but he thought he could do so while keeping this marriage between particular general

Baptists there intact. So he's like, we disagree on soteriology, but we agree enough on the fundamentals where we can make this work.

The problem is, if any of us were to write down just the whole narrative of the

Bible, what we would do, what any person would see when they see us do that, or when they read it back, is they would see the common theme is the sovereignty of God, his hand moving throughout all of it.

Now take an Arminian and have them do that, and it looks really wonky. Now that's an oversimplified analogy of what it looks like when you read their systematic theology, when they go through every point of the

Bible, every theme of the Bible, and talk about it. And there's a lot of inconsistencies there because they have to emphasize the will of man here, but then they have to emphasize the sovereignty of God here, and it just doesn't quite work, and you have all of this wonky stuff come out of it.

So even though, again, Spurgeon's intentions were great, he had a love for these brothers, and he wanted it to work, it couldn't have worked because deep down, even though they were conservative, some of them were conservative, their theology would not allow for consistency.

And so what it did is it led to liberalism, and he couldn't stop it at that point, and he was heartbroken.

Think of it, and this was only two years before he died. He was a Baptist at heart, and keep in mind, he's in London.

You have Anglicans everywhere. The Church of England is running rampant. And then, of course, you have the

Presbyterians and the Lutherans and things like that. And so he was like a bulwark of Baptist leadership, and so it broke his heart when he had to break off from this union.

And so there are a ton of lessons we could learn there, but the main one that Dad was hitting on there is that we have to be careful.

And so Paul here is intentionally not... Okay, let me phrase it like this.

He's being careful in the sense that he's not going to let this slide.

He's being careful not to let anything slide. He's not being careful in how he's verbalizing it. He doesn't care who he offends.

He doesn't care what anyone thinks about saying, you need to shut these guys up. You need to close their mouths.

You need to shut their mouths. He doesn't mind defending them because he knows they're heretics that are out to be a menace to society.

And so they go around. They're subverting whole households.

It doesn't just have... It's not just minor difficulties from that point forward. These false teachers, they are really being destructive.

And again, this once again proves the utter necessity of appointing qualified elders, not just appointing elders, but qualified elders.

Why? Because qualified elders that meet all of those qualifications we've been talking about, they can handle this stuff.

They can muzzle the ox. And so this is yet another demonstration of why that is so important.

And here's the thing. Remember earlier, I mentioned the fact that Paul mentions they're doing all this for filthy lucre's sake, for money, the love of money, that that was important.

You remember that. The reason that's important is because from that, we can learn that these guys weren't just merely misguided.

They weren't zealous without knowledge. They weren't guys with good intentions, but just bad theology.

They weren't teaching wrongly, but with good motives. That was not the case. They were intentionally teaching bad doctrine for the sake of getting base profits from all these people.

They were teaching bad doctrine because they were seeking the profit of it.

They didn't even have good intentions. They had evil intentions the whole time. Now, if you guys recall, Devin and Tina were still in Titus, and we're looking specifically at verse 11 in chapter 1 this morning, where Paul is basically just really letting these guys have it, these false teachers that Titus is now up against.

He says you need to stop their mouths. He says their mouths need to be stopped. They turn whole houses upside down.

They're teaching things they shouldn't. And then we learn at the end of verse 11 that they're doing it all for filthy lucre's sake.

That's the love of money. They love the money, and that's why they're doing it. Now, if you guys recall, if you have

Titus open, look at verse 7 for a second. It says for a bishop, so in verse 7,

Paul is still talking about the elders. He says for a bishop must be blameless, is the steward of God, not self -willed, not soon angry, not given to wine, no striker, not given to filthy lucre.

So again, we have the exact opposite of what an elder should be. These false teachers are doing the opposite of that.

They're in it for the money. They're in it for the filthy lucre. They're in it for the base profit of all of it.

And so in verse 7, Paul gives us the positive side of it.

Don't be like this. And then here in verse 11, we see that the negative side is happening among these false teachers.

Elders are not to be fond of the money. Or the filthy lucre. But false teachers are.

And you can take this one contrasting parallel and you can just go down the line of all of the qualifications.

And say, if the elder is this, the false teacher is not that. For example, the false teacher, whatever the elder's characters are in verses 6 through 9, it's the exact opposite of the false teacher.

If the elder is blameless, the false teachers aren't. So if the elders are above reproach, the false teachers are not above reproach.

If the elders are to be one woman men, faithful to their wives, the false teachers are not. And often that's the case.

How many times do we see that in the 21st century? If the elders are to have faithful children that obey them and respect them and love them, the false teachers will not have that.

The false teachers have no moral control. They have no self -control.

The error that they teach does not help them control themselves. But the problem is that error is all that they know.

And so it gets worse and it gets worse. It's like a cascade of evil and wickedness and bad teachings and debasement, debauchery and error.

Again, true elders have faithful children, not accused of right and unruly. But in contrast to that, false teachers have those types of kids.

True elders are above reproach as God's stewards. They are not self -willed. They're not quick to be angry.

They're not addicted to wine. They're not contentious. They don't want the money. They don't want the filthy lucre.

But on the other hand, false teachers are the opposite of all of those things. They're not hospitable.

False teachers, they're not hospitable. They do not love what's good, obviously, because they're quick to lie.

They're not sensible. They certainly aren't holy. They're not self -controlled.

They don't handle the word right. All of those things I just listed are all the qualifications of an elder.

And a false teacher can't do any of them. They are the opposite of God's chosen leaders, the elders.

They're in it for the money. And often they will... And this is really interesting.

This is another thing that you can track. Even in the present age, and yet it was happening, even in Paul's day, 2 ,000 years ago, on an ancient island, so many times these false teachers, because they're in it for the money, they will often quit doing what they are doing as soon as the money runs out.

So if the scheme is up and people stop sending them money for the prayer cloths or something, if that's not working anymore, they just stop doing that, and then they move on to the next thing.

If they make a number of prophetic... If they make some prophecies of what's going to happen in the future, maybe they sell a number of books around those prophecies five years out in the future, they make all the money they can off those books, then the prophecies don't come true.

So they step out of the prophecy field and they move on to something else. False teachers will do whatever they need to do to get the money until the money runs out, and then they move on.

It's all designed to indulge their own appetites. It's for their own belly's sake.

That's all it's about. So these are the people that Paul is telling Titus, watch out for them.

Close their mouths, muzzle the ox, don't let them speak, silence them, and not just that, make sure every single elder that you ordain and appoint can do the same thing.

It's a tall order, but it is possible if you keep all of the qualifications, if you hold fast the faithful word, as Paul tells us in verse nine.

So we'll end it there today. We'll end at verse 11, and we'll pick it up at verse 12 next week, which is an interesting one because all of these harsh things that Paul just told us about, he's vindicated because he goes on to quote an ancient

Greek poet that told the world back in the ancient days that these very guys

Paul was talking about were liars, evil beasts, slow bellies.

And Paul says what that guy said is true. So we'll talk about that next week. It's going to be pretty interesting.

Do you all have any thoughts or anything like that before we close today's class? Pretty interesting stuff.

It's quite the battle. Quite the battle. Yeah, go ahead, Devin. Question. So I sort of know this instinctively, but what do you mean?

How would you define a heretic? Sure. Well, a heretic, okay, let me say two things.

Number one, anybody can say something heretical, but it doesn't mean the person is a heretic.

So sometimes a heretical statement is made out of ignorance. So again, it's zeal without knowledge.

That was something we were talking about at the beginning of the class. Solomon talks about, I think it's Solomon, maybe it was

David. One of the two of them talks about people that have a zeal, so they want to do good.

They want to follow God's precepts, statutes, all of these things, but they don't have any knowledge to back the zeal up, so they're kind of making a fool of themselves, and you kind of feel bad for them because their intentions are good, but they just don't know anything yet.

So a person like that can say something heretical, but that doesn't necessarily make them a heretic.

What a heretic is is it's a person that consciously preaches contrary to God's word.

They intentionally preach contrary to God's word. That's one way you can define it anyway.

At least that's how I would word it. And so these guys that Titus is being warned about is a textbook example of it because what they were doing is they knew what

Titus... Here's just a quick thing to throw out there. All of these guys, they knew

Paul. They knew the apostle Paul. We know that for two reasons. In Acts, Paul was on the island of Crete, but it was before this letter was written, so he had been there before.

People knew who Paul was. They knew that he represented the risen Christ, and another reason we know that he was there is because he is writing this letter to Titus specifically to give him authority from Paul.

They all knew who Paul was, who he represented, who he stood for, and even knowing that, they preached contrary.

They were heretics. They willingly and intentionally preached against the things that Paul was preaching, such as that you had to have the law in order to be saved.

You had to be circumcised. You had to keep the ceremonies. You had to recognize these feasts, these holy days, these ceremonies.

You had to do all these things, and if you didn't, you weren't actually saved even if you did have faith in Jesus. And they did all of that knowing better.

They did all that knowing what Paul was actually preaching, that it was contrary to what Paul was preaching. So that's how

I would define a heretic. It is a person that intentionally, consciously preaches against God's word or contrary to God's word.

Hopefully that was helpful. Any other thoughts? Yes, sir. Well, anything could sneak in if you're approaching it without scriptural knowledge, and this is a conversation

Ash and I were having a couple weeks ago, and that is, we know that every human being has a conscience, and we know that the conscience is there for good reason.

What we also know is that the conscience can lead people astray if it's not informed by God's word.

So as we read God's word, we become informed with the things that should bother our conscience.

Like in other words, before salvation, you may live a certain lifestyle and feel totally fine with it.

Your conscience allows you to do it. Then you get saved, and you start reading God's word, and you start seeing these imperatives, these things, these instructions from Jesus himself and from the apostles all the way through the

New Testament. You start saying, whoa, I didn't know that I shouldn't have been doing that. But now you know, and that scripture then informs your conscience, and your conscience will from that point forward not let you do the thing anymore.

Dad has an apt example of this. After being, you know, prior to salvation, he'd go out drinking with the guys, and then after salvation, in reading the word, he couldn't do it in conscience anymore.

And so the reason I brought all that in, informing your conscience with scripture, is how do you fix the zeal without knowledge?

You fix it through Bible study. Sounds so simple, and yet people neglect it so often.

The thing that you do to fix a zeal without knowledge you want the zeal, but you want to inform the zeal.

You want there to be knowledge to back it up. And you do that through Bible study, prayer, coming to church and hearing the word proclaimed is obviously a big part of that, which is why

God commands that we do that too. And so there you go.

Yes, you can look at it from the deaconship all the way up to the eldership, and you can see zeal without knowledge, and normally it's a crash and burn, sadly.

And I think the Lord provides a lot of grace there. You know the foolishness of preaching can have effect.

I know we're going a little bit over, but just as a final thought, Paul in jail was hearing about all these guys preaching

Christ while he was in jail and couldn't be out there correcting and kind of steering them.

Some of them were doing it out of jealousy. They were jealous of Paul, and so they were preaching because they knew

Paul couldn't stop them. Other guys were doing it because it was the whole zeal without knowledge thing. And Paul was like, you know what?

I don't care because Christ is being preached. And so God is gracious to those people, and I think he's gracious to those that are doing it with good intentions in that he will bring them to maturity through the sanctification process eventually.

He may do that through humbling them. He may do that through, whether that's through maybe other

Bible teachers coming in and correcting error, or he may do it simply by getting them in the word and then they realize it themselves.

But for people who aren't concerned with the word of God and they want to just kind of go do it however they want to, they want to take things out of context, they want to cherry pick the passages and make whatever application they want out of it, that will crash and burn inevitably.

So really good thoughts there. Mimi, did you have a close -up thought? He was asking about the definition of...

A heretic. A heretic. In 2 Timothy 3, it talks about men who are lovers of their own selves.

Yeah. Boasters, proud blasphemers, disobedient parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truth -breakers, false accusers, incompetents, yada, yada, yada.

It goes on to say they have a form of godliness. Does that sound godly?

Well, yeah. How do they have a form of godliness when they have all of that, but they're always...

They're never coming to the truth. They're always working, but never coming to the truth. Well, the key to that is for the same reason that people thought the

Pharisees were godly. Oftentimes, people based godliness off of their own perception of godliness or their own standard rather than the

Bible standard of godliness. And so when Paul says they have a form of godliness, what he's saying is that even these guys that are this bad can dupe people into thinking they're where it's at and that they are the ones that need to be modeled.

And they can be doing all these things and yet appear godly, but they are empty, whitewashed tombs full of dead men's bones.

It's not actual godliness biblically defined. Yes, sir. Brian, the first girl in line has a statement about the preachers.

Yes. They said these false prophets...

One of the false prophets said the preachers are always liars and will be slow -bellied. This is true.

Therefore, rebuke them. He said that he thinks it doesn't mean that the statement that preachers are always liars is true.

What it means is the witness that that guy said that is true. We'll be talking about that a lot next week.

Honestly, I never thought about that myself. I always thought that's odd that Paul would agree with that.

I don't think he did agree with it. Well, we'll talk about it next week. Yes, we'll talk about it next week.

I do think he agrees with it. Well, it's a great example of two things.

Number one, that sometimes generalizations are necessary because what we do know is not 100 % of the people on the island of Crete were liars, slow -bellied, and whatnot because Christians there.

So it tells us, number one, that generalizations are sometimes necessary for our argument's sake.

But secondly, even when pagan people that don't know God proclaim something that is objectively true, it's still true, but it's not because they're pagan.

It's in spite of the fact that they're pagan. The truth comes from God. Calvin has a very interesting quote that I'll read next week in light of Brian's comment there that illuminates this a little bit.

But we'll get to verse 12 next week. Yes, ma 'am. I think it's when they have this smattering of truth in what they say that people tend to think they have a godliness.

There's a godliness there because they know some scripture or they can say something eloquently.

Well, think about... Let's use an example in our own of a guy that preached things that we would agree with because you can look at Charismatics and you can find examples of this all day long.

You can look at the Catholics and find examples all day long. How about Steve Lawson? The recent guy that came out very bad stuff in his own life.

He's totally unrepentant. And we recently found out he wasn't even a church member anywhere. Just absolutely messed up situation.

And yet for decades, he taught in the Reformed circles. MacArthur, Sproul, all of the guys that we know and love platformed him because he had a form of godliness.

He did exactly what he needed to do to get on the big stages, say what he needed to say, preach what he needed to preach.

He preached rather well. He had all the doctrine right. He had all the theology right. And yet he was a liar.

He was a total scam. And it didn't come out for about six years, but your sins will find you out.

He had a form of godliness, but he was living in sin and is now continuing to live in unrepentant sin, which to me is a sign of the kind of fruit.

It's the fruit is kind of letting us know who the person is kind of situation. So there you go.

Form of godliness, but that's where it ends. Let me pray real quick because we've used up all of our time plus some.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this wonderful morning, for bringing us all together once again and allowing us to abide in your word and with your spirit among us so that we can fellowship, be encouraged by one another and just be edified by your word.

We thank you so much for it. We ask that you continue to bless the remainder of our services and we ask all these things in your name.