- All right, we start a new series today entitled Titus for Beginners. This will be lesson one of this series, the Introduction lesson. We'll be covering Titus chapter
one, verses one to four. Well the letter to Titus is
the third in a group of letters that include First and
Second Timothy and Titus, referred to as the pastoral epistles because they were written
primarily to teach and guide and encourage two evangelists,
Timothy and Titus, who were left in certain places by Paul. Timothy was left in Ephesus,
and Titus was left in Crete. They were left there to
defend against false teachers, also to set the church in order and to establish and appoint
men to the role of elder, thus establishing church leadership. First Timothy and Titus contain many similar ideas and phrases. And because of this, it is
believed that these two epistles, First Timothy and Titus,
were written on the same day, somewhere between 62 and 64 AD, when Paul had a brief time of freedom after being released from
his first Roman imprisonment. And we learn later on that he
was rearrested a second time. And during that time wrote Second Timothy. Well while on this
brief period of freedom, the apostle used this time
to revisit many congregations that he had established in
order to encourage them. And it was during this period
that he instructed Timothy to remain at the church in Ephesus, we read about that in First Timothy, chapter one, verse three, and gave instructions to Titus to remain at Greece, Crete, rather. And we'll read about that
in the letter to Titus in chapter one, verse five. A little information
about the location here. The island of Crete is southeast of Greece located on the imaginary boundary between the Aegean and
the Mediterranean Seas. Aside from its appearance
in the letter to Titus, Crete is mentioned two other times in the book of Acts, actually. First of all in Acts,
chapter two, verse 11, in that particular location, Luke writes that people from Crete were
among the crowd in Jerusalem on Pentecost Sunday, which may explain how Christianity first
made its way to that place. Converts on that day may
explain the presence of a church on the island some 30 years later. We don't have the details of that, simply that there was one there. And then in Acts 27, Luke
mentions that the ship that was transporting Paul to Rome sailed by the island of Crete. Titus is mentioned several times however. We don't have much
background information on him as we do Timothy, for example. We know that he was a Gentile
convert to Christianity, and he was an early disciple and traveling companion of Paul. And we read about that in
Galatians, chapter two. Let's read that passage. Paul writes: Then after an
interval of fourteen years I went up again to
Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along also. It was because of a
revelation that I went up. And I submitted to them the gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, but I did so in private to
those who were of reputation, for fear that I might be
running, or had run, in vain. But not even Titus, who was with me, though he was a Greek, was
compelled to be circumcised. And then we read about Titus again. He was sent to Corinth to see if problems that had existed there had been resolved according to Paul's
teaching in the first letter to the Corinthians. So we read that one in Second
Corinthians, chapter seven. Paul writes: For this reason
we have been comforted. And besides our comfort,
we rejoiced even much more for the joy of Titus, because his spirit has been refreshed by you all. For if in anything I have
boasted to him about you, I was not put to shame. But as we spoke all
things to you in truth, so also our boasting before
Titus proved to be the truth. So he had told Titus
that he had high regard for the Corinthians,
that they would respond to his epistle, and so on and so forth. And after Titus's visit and confirmation, Paul is writing that he was happy to note that Titus brought back good
information about the church. We know that Paul leaves
Titus on the island of Crete to organize the church and
to appoint elders there. Let's read that passage. It says: His affection abounds. Let me just finish up
Second Corinthians here. It says: His affection abounds
all the more toward you, as he remembers the obedience of you all, how you received him
with fear and trembling. I rejoice that in everything
I have confidence in you. Yes, that passage right there is where Paul kind of
summarizes the situation with the Corinthians, how
Titus's news about them had confirmed Paul's hope
that they would respond. All right, now let's read
Titus, chapter one, verse five. It says: For this reason
I left you in Crete, that you would set in order what remains and appoint elders in every
city as I directed you. So here, this passage here in Titus, tells us why Titus was in Crete, that there was a church there, that they were needing elders. And Paul had left Titus there in order to complete this work. Also in another place, Paul mentions that he would
meet up with Titus in Nicopolis. It says: When I send
Artemas or Tychicus to you, make every effort to
come to me at Nicopolis, for I have decided to
spend the winter there. Paul also refers to Titus a final time in Second Timothy, chapter four, verse 10, saying that he had traveled to Dalmatia, which is in Croatia, for
reasons we do not know. He simply mentions that
region and that he was there, and he was hoping that he would see Titus. We know from references
in Second Corinthians that Paul was fond of Titus. But this feeling is less
noticeable in his letter to the young preacher. Unlike the fatherly tone
that we sometimes hear in First and Second Timothy,
Titus is all business. That letter's all
business, all instructions, what you need to do, what
you need to be careful for. In this letter, Paul includes
much of the information given to Timothy, but he adds
sections of practical teaching concerning church life
specific to Titus's ministry and still revelant to,
relevant, rather, to us today. It's why we study it. We study First and Second Timothy because there's so much
information in these two epistles that relate to the work of the minister, the work of elders today in the church. And in the same way, the book of Titus contains a lot of information
that helps us today and guides us in our work today as well. A little bit of background
about the letter itself. In his brief letter to Titus, Paul teaches one important lesson, and that is there is a relationship between what we believe and how we act. That's the kind of the theme, the point, that he's getting across in this letter. Bad theology or bad philosophy
produces a bad society. For example, Nazism had a
moment when it was doing good for the German people,
making the trains run on time and bolstering their economy. But eventually it led to
war, and war led to ruin. You cannot live right
if you are taught wrong. To say it more simply, bad
teaching leads to bad actions. So in this letter, Paul
is going to charge Titus with the task of preparing leaders who will be able to
correctly teach the church. And he gives examples of
the teaching and results as a guide in order to measure
progress in the church. Now the reason that Paul takes great care in emphasizing this idea, bad
teaching equals bad living, was that in the first
century, as in our day, there was a great danger
that the purity of the gospel would be polluted by false ideas and thus render it powerless. If you change the gospel,
if you change it around or take something out of
it or add something to it, you dilute it. You render it powerless. It doesn't do the thing
that it was designed to do. So the gospel is the power
unto God for salvation so long as it is maintained. But it has no power to
save if you change it or if you pervert it. This is the reason why
maintaining sound doctrine is so critical. Today we have so many isms
that are trying to dilute or replace the gospel. Humanism, where man is supreme. Existentialism, where you
create your own reality. Emotionalism, the idea,
just follow your heart, that's emotionalism. Not to mention the effects of atheism, well there is no God in atheism. And spiritual pluralism, the idea that all roads lead to God,
and all gods are equal. All those ideas are running
rampant in our society today. The presence of these influences try to move us towards
being a more worldly church, or a more ecumenic group. In other words, we accept
the ideas and the teachings of everyone in order to maintain some sort of peace and
harmony among believers. And maintaining the pure
essence of the gospel is a great challenge in the
face of these clamoring voices disguised many times as
catalysts for change, when in reality, they
are unsuspecting agents of unsound and improper teaching. Change, there's nothing wrong with change. Change is good. We want to change things
to do things better or more effectively or
to keep up with the times or the needs of the times. Change, there's nothing wrong with change. But we mustn't change the gospel. If we change the gospel, well then we've actually lost the war, because we've taken away the one thing that has power to change an individual, and that's the gospel of Jesus Christ. Well in the day of Titus, the
presence, or this pressure, came from a particular group
of teachers and teachings referred to as gnosticism. That was the challenge of the day that we don't necessarily face today but that was prevalent in the time when Titus was a minister. Talk a little bit about gnosticism here. Gnosticism is really a modern
name for a system of teaching that was prevalent in the
first and second century. And then it died out shortly after. It didn't have a body of
teaching, but very much like, remember the New Age movement of the 90s? Gnosticism had many strands
of teaching and ideas that were woven into a
loose system of doctrine. Now the strands that
conflicted with Christianity, and that Titus had to deal with, was a combination of
Jewish and Greek gnosticism that had been intertwined
and was being offered and taught to the church
by various individuals. Basically, it revolved
around the false teaching regarding the origins of the earth. Doesn't that sound familiar, false teaching about where
the earth comes from? Well this was going on
back in the first century. Basically, it revolved
around false teaching regarding the origins of
the earth in this way. The Greeks had developed a teaching which proposed that the earth was created by the descendants of the gods, and the god of darkness was the one who had created the earth. They also taught that
man's spirit was good because it had been created by the good god, the god of light. And man's spirit desired to return to its source, the good god. But the material world,
which was essentially evil, prevented this from taking place. This was the classic
soul-versus-flesh conflict, if you wish, that Plato talked
about in his, not doctrine, but in his philosophy of dualism. It contained the same idea, this battle between two entities. Well from these teachings, if you wish, two main ideologies were
developed to solve this problem of the soul versus the flesh, the material versus the
spirit, if you wish. The first of these was asceticism. How do you resolve this battle
between the good and evil? How do you resolve this battle between the material and the spiritual, the soul of man trying to
escape the evil material world to return to its pure source. Well one way was through asceticism, in other words, the complete
renunciation of the flesh in order to liberate the soul, okay? Saturninus taught that one
ought not to marry, for example, because it just created more material, in other words, children,
right, which was bad, all right? Paul refers to this in Colossians, chapter two, verses eight to 23, or First Timothy, chapter
four, verses one to four. Many religions, Hinduism and Buddhism and medieval Roman Catholicism,
adopted many of these ideas. And then there was the other method of resolving this problem, antinomianism. Antinomianism, there we go,
that's a better saying of it, meaning no law, okay, the absence of law. This idea taught that
once the soul was released from the body through enlightenment, it no longer was morally
responsible for what the flesh did. In other words, what you did in the flesh did not affect the spirit. Once the spirit was freed from the flesh through enlightenment, well it didn't matter what
the flesh did after that. So many cults disguised and
justified their immoral behavior on the basis of a higher reasoning, a higher enlightenment, if you wish. So to this type of thinking, right, to this type of dualistic thinking the Jewish gnostics added
their particular brand of mysticism and genealogy, and their penchant for
debate and nitpicking, which gave the Greek ideas
a certain Jewish flavor. Debating genealogies,
debating various ideas, this was the specialty of the Jews, right, the Pharisees, absolutely, what one rabbi taught versus
what another rabbi taught, and they would debate these things. So to the Greek idea of
gnosticism, this dualism, this battle between the good and the evil, the soul and the spirit,
the Jewish gnostics added their flavor, if you wish, of genealogies and superstitions and of course Jewish laws
concerning food restrictions and so on and so forth. And so the result was a
church that either searched for salvation through
a works-oriented system driven by the Greek idea of dualism, salvation through self-denial, or a church so unconcerned with
sin and moral responsibility that it was in danger of losing its soul through immoral behavior, like the people in Corinth, for example. So either way the false
teaching undermined the gospel, and it had to be dealt with
by those who knew the truth and had the capacity and
the courage to teach it. This then is what Paul
is setting Titus up to do in Crete with his letter. And so we have the outline of this letter. There's the salutation,
which is Paul's mission, chapter one, verses one to four, and that is to preserve
and pass on sound doctrine. So that's the salutation and the opening
encouragement, if you wish. The body of the letter
is about Titus's mission, chapter one, verse five to
chapter three, verse 11, broken down into two sections, the first, the information or the instruction that Titus has to appoint sound elders, chapter one, verse five to 16, and then provide sound
teaching, or sound doctrine, chapters two, verse one to
chapter three, verse 11. And then the conclusion of the letter, a few short verses, chapter
three, verses 12 to 15, personal greetings and final instructions. So the letter to Titus is a
very compact three chapters, but it contains the core
teaching of the Christian faith concerning the gospel. All right, now there's
no casual greeting here. Hello, how are you? How are things? This is a statement, the
opening statement, if you wish. This is a statement and
a declaration of identity and purpose and proclamation
in the first three verses. So we read, Paul, a bond-servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the faith of those chosen of God and the knowledge of the truth which is according to godliness, in the hope of eternal life,
which God, who cannot lie, promised long ages ago, but
at the proper time manifested, even His word, in the proclamation with which I was entrusted
according to the commandment of God our Savior. And so these verses,
Paul does the following: Number one, he describes
his relationship to God. His relationship to God
is he is a bond-servant. He's not a hired hand, but one
that is completely submitted to his master, thus
the term, bond-servant. And so that's his relationship to God. Secondly, he describes
his relationship to Christ as an apostle. In other words, he's an envoy
or he's a special messenger. One word, slave, describes who he is, and the other word,
apostle, describes what he as a slave has been given to do for God, and that is be a messenger
for Jesus Christ. Third thing, he describes his ministry. He describes the message
that he as an apostle has been given to
proclaim and the ministry that this task has produced. And so he begins by explaining
the ministry itself. The faith of those chosen of God and the knowledge of the
truth according to godliness are the same thing. And what is that thing? Well it's the gospel message itself, okay? Christians become the chosen of God when they believe the gospel. The truth according to godliness, which is proclaimed and
lived out in a godly way, is the gospel, okay? So he's mentioning the
gospel in various ways. He's giving it different terms,
but it's always the gospel that he's talking about. He says it is through this gospel, which was promised through the
patriarchs and the prophets, that eternal life is offered and obtained. So nothing new here in the sense
that there is a continuity. The prophets were also chosen by God. And the servants in the Old Testament were also chosen by God. And the patriarchs were chosen by God. And all of them were
there to bring into being the arrival of Jesus Christ who would live and who would teach, and
who would die on the cross and resurrect and offer
salvation to all men. Because of this, the news
of this, the story of this, called the gospel, is something
that had been prepared and transferred and
finally given to people like Paul, apostles, in order
to proclaim to the world. My task, Paul explains in verse three, now that the proper time has come, well what is the proper time? Well Jesus has appeared. He's dies, He's resurrected. He's ascended to heaven as
the prophets said He would. So my task is to proclaim this good news. I do this as a slave of God
according to His command and as a servant of Christ that I am proclaiming the
death, and the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is my task. This is my sacred ministry. For Paul, this task is not
just a job or obeying an order, but as I said, it is a sacred trust. God Himself has entrusted
Paul with this mission. And what is the mission? To proclaim the gospel
and to teach God's word. So in these opening verses, Paul has not only described
his unique mission, but also his credentials. He was sent by God. He was chosen by Christ. This he has done to establish
his spiritual authority that he will exercise when
teaching later on in this letter. We read verse four. He says: To Titus, my true
child in a common faith, grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior. So Paul now addresses Titus
with both affection and respect. He refers to Titus as his true child, the same expression he uses with Timothy in First Timothy, chapter one, verse two, calls him a true child. He says that he and Titus
have a common faith, meaning that he knows that
Titus holds the same doctrine and the same teaching as
well as the same expectation, which is eternal life, as he, Paul, does. So he and Titus are on
the same wavelength. They believe the same thing. They teach the same thing. And they're expecting the same
thing, which is eternal life. Now this point may not
be necessary for Titus, 'cause he already knows this, but it is a definite signal to the church, especially the gnostic
teachers and sympathizers that are in the church, that as far as doctrine is concerned, the apostle Paul and his disciple Titus are teaching the same thing. Just in case you thought
you could undermine Titus, just in case you thought maybe that he was teaching
something different than I am, or that he is teaching with
less authority than I have, well then let me remind you that he and I are teaching
the very same thing, okay? So this speaks to Titus's
credibility before the church and of course before other teachers. And so the apostle completes his greeting in a similar way that he did
in his first letter to Timothy. He says grace, all the blessings of God
summarized in one word, grace. Peace, the peace that
surpasses understanding that the one who is blessed experiences. If you have the grace of
God, if that's what you have, then the way you experience that is that you have peace that
surpasses understanding. The grace is what produces the peace. The source of the grace
is God the Father Himself. And the connection to the grace, how we enter into that grace,
is through Jesus Christ. So Paul writes a brief letter
to a young preacher, Titus, who was working with a young congregation or a couple of congregations in that area. We know this because they had no elders, whereas the church at
Ephesus where Timothy served already had elders. We read about them in
Acts, chapter 20, verse 17. Titus faced problems with
gnostic teachers as did Timothy, but he did so without the help of elders, which he had to establish in
more than one congregation. So Titus had a unique problem. He had a particular issue facing him that was quite daunting,
as a matter of fact. So Paul helps establish his credibility as a teacher and a leader. And he also provides him with a blueprint outlining the core principles
of the Christian faith that he, as well as any of the leaders that he might appoint,
needed to learn and teach and then pass on to the next generation. So this is what the
letter to Titus is about. These are the problems that Titus faced. And this is how Paul begins
to address these issues by establishing Titus's
credibility as a person, and the credibility of his teaching, because Titus is teaching the same thing that Paul is teaching and
hoping for the same things as a result of the
teachings that he believes, and that is eternal life. Okay, well we'll stop there. We've done the introduction. And we'll go into the kind
of the meat of the matter in our next lesson. Thank you for your attention. We'll see you next time.
