From Titus chapter 1 verse 9, he must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine. That word sound means healthy. And also to rebuke those who contradict it. And then verse 13, therefore rebuke them, referring to false teachers, Rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in faith." Now there is something to note here. There is a question as to whether these words spoken to Titus, written to Titus, were for him to be rebuking the false teachers, or rather possibly rebuke those church members who were giving ear to them, listening to them, and thereby being deceived. Today's message I've entitled, Sound Doctrine, Healthy Saints. Let's pray. Our gracious and loving Father in heaven, we need you now at the time of the opening of your precious Word. We thank you for our Bibles. We thank You for the Word of God written, inspired, inerrant. God breathed indeed the Holy Word of Almighty God. Father, we thank You and we pray now that we will know Your power. We will know Your goodness as we open these things by Your help to the hearts and minds of these who hear. In Jesus' lovely name, Amen. Let me suggest to you that as we begin looking again at Paul's epistle to Titus, his fellow worker in the gospel, we here this morning do well to keep our minds focused upon our Lord Jesus Christ, who He is, what He has done for us, how by His life and His giving of Himself at the cross, His suffering and death, He has reconciled us to God. Indeed, Jesus, our Savior, A man of God from Wales once wrote, Jesus, Jesus all-sufficient, beyond telling is Thy worth. In Thy name lie greater treasures than the richest found on earth. Such abundance, such abundance is my portion with my God. in Thy gracious face. There is beauty far surpassing everything found in all the earth's great wonders mortal eye hath ever seen. Rose of Sharon, Rose of Sharon, Thou Thyself art heaven's delight." Brothers, sisters, remember it is through our Lord Jesus Christ and His mediatorial work the one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, the lover of my soul. It is through Him this day that we know God as our Father, as our Friend, as our never failing God. At some point, we are not exactly sure, At what point? We do know it was toward the end of his life. Paul with Titus had visited this Greek island, Crete. Now the Gospel of the Lord Jesus had gone there some thirty years or so prior because Cretans were among those who heard Simon Peter's preaching on Pentecost as recorded in Acts chapter 2. Among those who heard the glorious works of God in their own dialects were Cretans. And so it's very possible and even likely that there were some assemblies of believers in Jesus when Paul and Titus came to this island and began to go across it, proclaiming the Word of the Gospel. But Paul had since left Titus on the island, we're guessing around 63 AD, so that Titus might put what remained into order and appoint elders in every town. So, in the first century, True churches needed competent, faithful eldership for the same reasons that churches now need the same kind of men as their pastors. Some of you have heard Pastor Chuck Swindoll on the radio. He has written And I quote, Paul directed Titus to establish a group of faithful elders to oversee the doctrinal purity and good conduct of the believers on Crete, close quote. And I would add that the faithful eldership needed to be established in each congregation where there were not such men already leading the churches. It's very easy for churches to lose their doctrinal focus, lose some of the distinctives and specifics. And very honestly, brethren, the truth has substance. The faith of the gospel is the content of the gospel. And if you lose the content of the gospel, you've lost the gospel. Paul briefly then explained to Titus, why the churches urgently needed capable and godly elders, because of doctrinal dangers already at work among them. At Titus 1 verse 10, We will begin in a moment and we will see two of the often necessary aspects of this competent pastoral leadership that the elders were to provide. First, refuting the errors of false teachers so thoroughly that they are essentially silenced by the testimony of the truth. And secondly, I think this is very likely the case to sternly rebuke church members who have laid themselves open to the deceptions of false teachers. Dear brethren, we need to beware of false representations of the truth of God. And we need to welcome sharp rebuke from our pastors if need be. If it will keep us out of ditches on either side of the narrow way that leads to life. We do not need to be wandering off course because we've listened, like Christian in Pilgrim's Progress. We need not to be wandering off into by-path meadow because it looks a little more attractive. You do know that sometimes the way that leads to life, because it is narrow and because it is straight, because it is what it is, is sometimes not so appealing as what looks like this lovely ground nearby. I think I could go that way and it would be easier. Dear brethren, we need to welcome sharp rebuke if we need it. If we've been listening to deceptive voices, we need to be put in our place. Amen? We all need that. So Titus chapter 1, we've seen it verse 9, that part of the work of elders would be that they would give instruction in healthy doctrine, healthy teaching. so that the people of God would be healthy themselves, and He would then also rebuke those who contradicted the true teaching of the Word of God. But now verse 10, for this reason there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers, especially, writes Paul, those of the circumcision party. They must be silenced since they are upsetting whole families by teaching what they ought not to teach for shameful gain. He uses the word for, we could almost say, well, reason being. Paul is saying this is why a solid, competent eldership is needed in each of the churches across the island of Crete, because these assemblies, they live in a kind of danger. Because there are, he says, many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers. Now is he talking about people outside the church? No. He's talking about those from a Jewish background who have confessed that they believe the gospel, they are inside the church, they are called the circumcision party here, or so-called Jewish converts, and yet they are among those, Paul says, are unruly, they will not submit themselves to the true teaching of the gospel, they are devoted to the law, and they have added on the gospel to the law, and they are teaching others that in order to be saved, that these others must conform to Judaism, must conform to the Old Testament laws and regulations that govern the lives of the Jews in the Old Covenant. The apostle says they must be silenced. Why? Since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach. So how would the eldership silence these voices within the assembly? They would stand up and preach the truth in such a way as to refute the errors of false teachers. Now what if those of the circumcision party within the professing church or churches on Crete, what were the elders to do if then these lying voices continued to speak, continued to disturb the peace of the church, continued to contradict the clear teaching of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, what were they to do? They were then to censure them in such a way and forbid them to speak. The whole church would then stand up in solidarity against the teaching of the false teachers and stand against them who refused to comply with the gospel. Dr. John Gill wrote about this, and he is referring to those of the circumcision party, that portion of verse 10. And he writes, not the unbelieving Jews, now there were plenty of unbelieving Jews throughout Crete, because the island was settled by many Jews long before. So there were plenty of Jews on the island. Some had converted to Christianity, but some had not. But Paul is not talking about those outside the church at this point. But the elders are to teach sound doctrine and were to rebuke those who contradicted sound doctrine, because there were many already within the church who had professedly converted from Judaism and confessed Jesus as the Messiah, and yet they were teaching that everyone in the churches had to conform to the law of Moses, especially in its dietary regulations, what was clean and unclean, those kinds of things. And it does seem that everywhere Paul went, these kinds of people and this kind of teaching sort of dogged the churches. And therefore, the message of the gospel was sometimes almost overthrown, as it was in Galatia. And Galatians, you understand, is probably one of the earliest, if not the earliest, of the letters of Paul written to any of the churches. And you know what the problem was in Galatia? For the most part, it was that the people in Galatia had heard the gospel at the mouth of the apostle. And yet they had... He said, I'm amazed that you are so soon turned from the gospel that you heard to another gospel. And what was the so-called other gospel? It was a mixture of the gospel and the law of Moses as to the lifestyle that was required, circumcision and all that went with it. That was being imposed upon those people and many of them had begun to adopt it. And what Paul eventually tells them, if you're circumcised, you are essentially repudiating the gospel Because you see, circumcision was a picture of a cleansing of the person. The dietary regulations of the Old Testament, they were a picture of sanctification being set apart unto God. But now that Christ has come, now that Christ has come and died on the cross and risen from the dead and ascended to the right hand of God and from that place legislating to His people, King Jesus does not need for us to live under those figures and shadows and types because He Himself and His gospel is the reality that all those things talked about. If you had never met, let's say the celebrity amongst us, the Tennessee Hall of Fame softball pitcher, if you had never met him, and I began to describe him and then I decided I would draw a picture. And I'm not an artist, but let's say I'm a fair artist, and I can give you a general idea, and I give you some stories to flesh that out, put a caption under the picture, and you carry that around with you for two years. But now, if he walks in the door, and you meet him, and you speak with him, become acquainted with him, and hear some of his stories from his own lips, guess what? My cartoon drawing and my caption, at that point, they may have served a purpose and made you even look forward to the time you might meet such a man. But from that point on, my little drawing and my little caption would be pretty well, it served its purpose and you put it away and you might never refer to it again or look at it unless you just wanted to laugh. Because you've met the person. that the little drawing in the caption referred to. Do you realize that all of the Old Testament was in a similar way a type, a shadow, a foreshadowing, a picture and storytelling, if you will, about a reality, a great reality that the gospel really deals with. And that is how a man who is a sinner can be right with God. Not just outwardly, but inwardly. And believe it or not, there were many people who were so attached, so attached to the outward elements that they failed to get hold of the meaning behind any of them. And so they began to require Christians who were, many of them were Gentiles and not acquainted with the Jewish lifestyle and familiar with all that the Jewish people did in the way of dietary regulations and observing days and various Sabbaths throughout the year. They really weren't familiar with that and yet this was being imposed upon them. And so for this reason, Paul says to Titus, every one of these churches needs elders. Now John Gill again said, we're not talking about, Paul wasn't talking about the unbelieving Jews, but such as profess Christianity. What he calls Judaizing Christians who joined Moses and Christ and blended the law and gospel together. Who taught that circumcision and the observance of other ceremonies of the law were necessary, listen now, to justification and salvation. and hereby did a great deal of mischief among the churches, so says Dr. Gill. Now, is it needful for God's people to obey the law of God from their hearts? Indeed, it is. The blessed man is the man who meditates in the Law of God day and night. But you understand that for a Christian, for one who has believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, you understand now through the Gospel that you are right with God. You are made right with God through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him. And the only righteousness that makes you right with God is the righteousness of Jesus. Put to your account through faith. Through a simple, look unto Me and be saved kind of obedience. Must you look to Jesus to be saved? Yes. So when we talk about a Christian, Obeying the law of God from his heart. We are not talking about his justification. whether he is saved or not. You see, that's our salvation wrapped up in justification. We are declared righteous once for all through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. But once God has saved you and Christ has declared you righteous based on His merits, Christ takes that law and applies it to every one of you who believe. He writes it in your heart, so that the law of God pleasing the Lord is never something imposed on you from outside. You don't need someone to be telling you from the outside, love the Lord and live like it. Because you've got that witness written in your mind and heart. Now some folks, blend the law and gospel together in this sense that, well, we'll rely on what Jesus did to get us in, but in order to continue to be a Christian, I've got a this, I've got a that, I've got a the other, and all that I've got to do, do, do is law-keeping, and we're adding that to the work of Jesus on the cross in order to keep ourselves saved. Dear friends, that is a false gospel, which is, according to Paul, no gospel at all. Anyone who says things like that and purports it to be the truth and that that's how you are saved by God, let that person come under the very curse of Almighty God. Let him be anathema. Anyone who perverts the gospel that suggests at all that sinners are saved by Jesus plus something else that they must do. And yet, what does Christ do in the lives of those whom He saves? Does He have a use for the law? Yes. to guide you, direct you, to teach you and instruct you and to further cleanse your life day by day. What happens when you sin? Do you not experience a conviction of sin in your heart and mind? A newborn child of God has a sensitivity because he's now, instead of that old stone heart that he used to have that couldn't feel a thing, he now has a new heart within him. And he is sensitive to the truth of God. He is sensitive to the Spirit of God within him. And he longs to please the Lord in everything. Well, these people who were blending the law with the gospel and turning it into something else, and causing people rather than to look only to Jesus for your salvation. And then as to your sanctification, you must look to Jesus to help you to be obedient day to day. And when you fail, you will confess your sins and you will plead the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ and desire the forgiveness of God and God's faithful to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Isn't that what the Scripture says? He's faithful to do that in the lives of His people who are confessing their sins. And isn't that every one of us who believes? You see, we've not just confessed once upon a time, but don't we as believers day by day, living in the presence of God with the Spirit within us and before the Lord God and our Savior, do we not just regularly confess our misdeeds and our missteps? our transgressions, if we've done someone else wrong, we have a sensitivity about that. Because the Spirit of God, the truth of God, the law of God is written on our hearts, and the Savior, the fulfiller of the law, who saved us by grace alone, He is the one who administers and uses the truth of God's Word to change us from glory to glory. Listen, you think about it, how it is that a babe is It starts out so very immature, alive, but knowing very little, only what is intuitive. And yet over time, there's qualities and growth built into the life of that babe so that that babe matures and grows from glory to glory to glory. Even so, brethren, we who are justified by faith alone, We go from faith to faith, do we not? It means from one level, one bit of understanding. You can't believe what you don't know. And you can't know what you need to believe unless you learn and are taught. But as you learn and are taught, you grow. And your faith, the substance of it and the power of it grows over time. So the churches need these leaders because there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers. They must be silenced. Since they're upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach. Dear ones, there are successors of these kinds of people in churches all across our land and our world today. who are doing essentially the same kind of thing in their own context, in new context, but the substance of it is essentially the same. It's saying that Jesus will get you good and started, but you've got to make your way to heaven. The rest of the way pretty much, you know, you'll hold His hand, but you're going to be very much involved and there will be a question when you get When you get before God, whether He's actually going to let you into heaven or not, and whether you're really a child of God, that's all yet to be determined. There are people, and I'm sad to say, there are people who think they're justified. And yet they think they continue to be justified by their works. But that's not true, is it? That's not a true gospel. You see, the justified person is the one who beats upon his breast and says, God, be merciful to me, the sinner. Well, these Cretans, he says, one of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, that's to say, one of the native prophets, one of their wise men, one of their writers has penned a poem, a little poem line that says, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts Lazy gluttons. And Paul says, this testimony is true. What is he saying? He's saying that the general culture on this island, how do you know they're lying? As someone says, well, his mouth was moving. I mean, and you know people like that, don't you? You've met people who, it seems like they're practicing all the time how to lie more effectively, how to be more deceptive and more effective at telling and spinning their yarns. Cretins are always liars, the poet wrote. Evil beasts, lazy gluttons, and Paul says, you know, Titus, that writer has something there. That's sort of the nature of many of the people who live there. Now, another translation I found puts it this way. One of their very own prophets said, liars ever, men of Crete, savage brutes that live to eat. Well, I've heard about people that live to eat rather than eating to live, and most folks who do that don't generally work very much, not terribly industrious, and very often you can just see someone who is allergic to work, who likes to lay around, who is mean-spirited in general, and who's practicing to become a better liar. Matthew Henry has written this. He writes, quote, even to a proverb, they, the Cretans, were infamous for falsehood and lying. To play the Cretan, or to lie, is the same. And they were compared to evil beasts for their sly hurtfulness and savage nature. Think about that. Do you know anyone, have you ever met people in your life who were sly, sneaky in their hurtfulness? who seem to have a savage nature, aggressive, angry nature, and who, though they hide it, have fangs. He then says, and they are called slow bellies for their laziness and sensuality, more inclined to eat than to work and live by some honest employment. He goes on, such scandalous vices as were the reproach of heathens should be far from Christians. And we ought to give that man an amen for that. Are you listening? Let me read it again. Such scandalous vices. as were reproach to heathens, should be far from Christians." Amen. Falsehood and lying, invidious craft and cruelty, all beastly and sensual practices with idleness and sloth are sins condemned by the light of nature. You see, you don't need to have a Bible or believe a Bible to believe that all those things are immoral. falsehood and lying, craft and cruelty, sneakiness, beastly and sensual practices, violence and murder, idleness, laziness, shiftlessness, all these things, again, you don't have to be a Christian to believe that those things are just plain wrong and wicked. The apostle then tells him, Therefore, rebuke them sharply." Now, there's still a question in my mind. I think, certainly I think he's already said that these false teachers need to be rebuked and put in their place and silenced. But I think he may be saying, rebuke the church members sharply that they may... You see, you don't necessarily expect these false teachers to be sound in the faith. A few of them may sometime be recovered to the truth, but I can tell you the people who are victims here, sometimes we become victims of our own carelessness. Are you listening? If you don't pay close attention to the truth of the gospel and you don't know what the Word of God says for yourself, and you're that careless, someone may come along and sing a tune that suits your ear a little better, and you will be deceived because you've not guarded your heart. Rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in the faith." Certainly, who is it that needs to be healthy in the faith? The whole church. Especially those who are being deceived, those who are being led along by false teaching. Rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in the faith. Not devoting themselves, listen, to Jewish myths. So church members, don't devote yourself to the idea that outward forms of purity are what God wants out of you. Now should you be outwardly a Christian? Evidently a Christian, yes. But you know you're not going to prove your standing with God and your holiness by avoiding pork, You're not going to prove your holiness by becoming a vegetarian or a vegan. You're not going to prove your Christianity that yours is better than someone else's and more genuine and more sincere by attaching to yourself a list of do's and don'ts by which you identify yourself and judge other people. Are you listening? Other people who don't happen to subscribe to your particular brand of do's and don'ts. That's not how your Christianity is to be defined. That's not how your faith in Jesus is to be shown. Your faith in Jesus is to be shown by the outworking of the grace of God and the truth of God coming out of your inner man and spilling over. so that you reflect the glory of your Savior and you exalt His grace and His merit, His righteousness. You see, God's people ought to live holy lives. And we do live holy lives. Are we as holy as we ought to be? Not yet. But are you pressing on? And are you reaching forward, as we heard in our Bible class this morning? I want you to notice that phrase, that they may be, listen, sound in the faith. Now, do you remember? We would refer to chapter 1, verse 1, where Paul talks about the faith of God's elect. When he uses the term, the faith, he's referring to what? God's elect people believe. And the answer to the question, what do God's elect people believe? We believe the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. We believe the Gospel of salvation announced in the Scripture alone, by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone, to the glory of God alone. Now are the people of God then to live like it? We'll say Amen. God's people live like God's people. Amen? God's children live like God's children. Why? Because whom the Lord loves, He disciplines. You can't be a child of God and live a wicked life. If you're a child of God and you're living in sin, all I can say is you're headed to the woodshed, because Almighty God loves His people and will not let them walk in wickedness. But if you're walking in wickedness, in sin, in this kind of lifestyle, Even the heathen would repudiate and condemn. Listen, you may very well and very likely are deceived and are not truly a child of God. But now listen, sound in the faith. The term sound means healthy. Healthy. If you're going to be healthy saints, you need to be taught healthy teaching. Healthy teaching. Sound teaching produces sound believers. Healthy saints. And pastors of a church, cannot be squeamish about rooting out false and harmful teachings no matter where they come from. If they come from outside the church, through the doors, through the windows, come in through the airways in the culture, pastors cannot be squeamish about saying the truth about false teaching wherever it comes from. If it comes from the world, unbelievers can't have pastors who are afraid to stand against error that comes from the world outside, but also you can't have leaders who are afraid to confront error when it shows up within the assembly. Titus is not taught to be mean here, but he is taught to be firm, Resolute and determined to stand for the purity of Christian gospel doctrine. Are you listening? To the pure, verse 15, Paul says to the pure, all things are pure. As you read this, if you don't pay attention to the context of what's going on, you may just abstract this and say, to the pure, all things are pure. But you must understand what the Apostle is saying to Titus through this. Who are the pure? The truly pure? Those who are saved by God, by grace, through faith in Jesus Christ, believing the gospel. The pure are gospel believers. And to you who are pure through faith in the gospel, cleansed of all your sins, All things are pure. In this context, it's referring to the Jewish legal system, where certain things were considered clean, and some things were considered unclean. And people had to avoid this, avoid that, and choose only these other things. in order to be pure because they regarded these things that they ate or drank or touched, the idea of touching a dead body, that made you unclean. But to those who are pure in soul by the work of God in their lives through the gospel, all things are pure. We realize that it's not the external things that are going to pollute our soul. We understand that the things we eat and drink, they are not going to be able to make us impure. But to the defiled, now who are the defiled? The defiled would be those people who are not truly believing in the Christ of the Gospel, not resting their hope of salvation in Him. They are defiled, really, Because their sins are not forgiven. But further than that, they are defiled by any kind of partaking of something they think is ceremonially unclean. The defiled and unbelieving. To them, he says, nothing is pure. The reality is that none of these outward things are going to make you clean on the inside. But both their minds and their consciences are defiled. Tell me this. Are you a believer in Jesus? Are you really a believer in Christ who died and rose again? Is your mind cleansed by Him? Yes. Is your conscience cleansed by Him? Yes. But for those who believe that they themselves have to do, do, do, obey, obey, obey, keep, keep, keep in order to be and remain clean, nothing is clean. They can't take a step because their own hearts are rotten. They profess to know God. They say, we know God. We read it here in the Scriptures. We read this and we know that. But he says, they deny Him by their works. They have an unrenewed nature. They are detestable, he says, disobedient, unfit for any good work. My goodness. In Paul's remark to Titus, Paul has essentially just echoed what Jesus taught. The Lord says to the Pharisees, you clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you're full of greed and wickedness. Did not he who made the outside make the inside as well? Give as alms, give as gifts to God, what's within you. That's what he says. You're focused on the outside. God's focused on the inside. And you've not given anything to God when you've not given Him your very heart and soul. Well, brethren, again, the time is gone. Sound doctrine produces healthy saints. When you know and believe the Gospel of Jesus, and you know that God accepts you only for Jesus' sake, only because of what Jesus has done for you, when you know that, that purifies you before God. And that makes you able to live a God-pleasing life day by day, walking in the light as He is in the light. The Lord bless you, my brothers and sisters. Heavenly Father, what a blessing it is to know the gospel of grace. To know Your power, Your saving power. through the Gospel, by Your Spirit, O dear Lord, pour forth Your Spirit upon each of us who believes today. Grant to us sensitivity, understanding, and great desire to please You. And yet, Lord, we know that what pleases You most is that we believe in Your darling Son, the only Savior of men. Lord, I pray that if there might be any amongst us today who yet need to put their trust in Jesus, O Lord, pour forth Your Spirit. Convince them today that today is the day of salvation Even now is the right time. Hear that One who is calling upon you now and save them like you saved me for Jesus' sake. It's in His name we pray. Amen.