Titus 1:1

Titus chapter 1. I’m going to read the first three verses tonight. Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ according to the faith of God’s elect and the acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness in hope of eternal life which God that cannot lie promised before the world began. But in due times manifested his word through preaching, which is committed unto me according to the commandment of God, our Savior. God blessed to us his sacred and holy word this evening. Early in 1996, the body of a former ambassador to Switzerland was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. It was America’s graveyard for war heroes. His granite tombstone read S-1C, Seam in first class, U.S. merchant Marine. About a year later, the tomb was dug up. The tombstone was hauled away. The reason for that was the man had lied. He had told others that he had served in the Coast Guard ship Horace Bushnell during World War II. and that when it was hit by a German submarine, he had been thrown overboard and sustained a head injury. In fact, the record showed that he wasn’t serving in the merchant Marines. He was actually attending Wilbert Wright College in Chicago at that particular time. He had never been in the merchant Marines. They had no record of him. How he became an ambassador and got accreditation for that, approval for it. I don’t know. But his whole life was built around a lie. But eventually, the truth came out, and his casket got removed. Paul, as an apostle of Jesus Christ, as we have been looking at from this verse 1, has been sent by God for the purpose of calling the elect of God out of this world. How is this to be done? well, it’s not done by some blind persuasion concerning Jesus Christ, merely moving people in a sentimental manner about Christ. He wasn’t just relating stories about Christ and somehow drumming up sympathy for an innocent teacher who had been put to death. And he certainly wasn’t merely embellishing things to exalt Christ, Jesus. in the eyes of others. He was, as the scripture indicates to us, teaching the truth. After all, people can be deceived about a person. We know that was the case with the U.S. ambassador to Switzerland, but Paul here speaks of the means by which the elect here are brought to faith and the result of such a faith. Let me begin by saying this. You must acknowledge the truth of the gospel, or that the gospel is the truth. Let me just take that phrase as those two words, the truth for a second. There is existence of objective truth. In days gone by, and perhaps I wouldn’t have to emphasize this, but we live in a day and age where people deny that there is actually objective truth. When someone like Paul talks about the truth, people today might dispute there is such a thing. You call it truth, but it’s just your opinion is what people say. What’s true for you may not be true for me. There is no absolute truth. You really never know if something is true or not. A former president once argued everything depends upon the meaning of the word is. What it is is. Communication becomes impossible if we don’t believe in an absolute truth. You throw up your hands with pilot and say, what is the truth? Nobody, however, lives as if the truth doesn’t exist. It’s not an open question to whether 2 plus 2 equal 4. It’s objective truth, and I will say tonight it is biblical truth. A lot of people have a two-tiered system of truth. I believe there’s only one source of truth and that is the scriptures. Therefore, if I look up in the scriptures and there’s arithmetic in the scriptures, my friends, I don’t know a lot of people think about this, but if God says two and two is four, it’s four. It’s interesting. If you read in Genesis chapter 5, for example, about Adam, he lives 130 years and he begat Seth, and then the Bible says he lives 800 years after that, and he dies. And then it says all the years of the life of Adam or 930. That tells me that 130 plus 800 equals 930. I mean, isn’t that what the scriptures is telling? Isn’t that math? And God says that’s truth. When I read in book of Daniel chapter 9 about the 70 weeks of Daniel, and I see there are 62 weeks from the time of the restoration from the captivity until they complete the walls in the building of the city. And then after that, another seven years before the Messiah comes. And then there’s one year left, or one week left, I should say, with regard to the death and the confirmation of the covenant, 62 plus 7 plus 1 equals 70 weeks. When I read in the book of Revelation, there’s 144,000 from the tribes of Israel that are separated unto the Lord. 12 times 12 is 144. 12,000 from each tribe. That’s what the scripture says. When I read in Genesis chapter 46, that 70 souls of Jacob’s family came down to Egypt. And you have, Leah has 33, Zilpa has 16, Rachel has 14, and Bill how is 7, if you add it all up, it’s 70. and we can go on and on. The scripture is clear. And God tells us that his math, his calculations are right, and it is the truth. Besides, if you’ve tried doing 2 plus 2, 6 on your IRS form, claiming your dependents, I would suggest to you that they’re going to be contacting you pretty soon. But the scripture, this is objective truth. that we can’t get around. You know, four high school students agreed to skip class and do whatever activities. They were goofering around, and they reported the school the next day and said they had a flat tire, and that’s the reason they went in school. The teacher accepted their excuse with a smile and said, okay, we’ll take a seat. You missed a short test yesterday. I’m going to give you a makeup test right now. So they all sat down, and, She passed out the paper and pencils and said, okay, tell me which tire was flat. There’s no subjective answer to that one. So God says there is such a thing as truth. So let’s start with the truth exists. Now, the gospel is the word of truth. Paul says in Ephesians 113, you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. And that is what he’s talking about. here in this passage of scripture. Therefore, the truth of which Paul writes here is the truth that he proclaims as an apostle of Jesus Christ. It is the message of salvation through the death, the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now, the gospel can be called truth for several reasons. First, because the gospel is the gospel of God. and God is the author of the gospel. It’s not a made-up story. It’s not some humanly devised scheme, but is a divinely given message. And interesting enough, we read in verse 2, God cannot lie, right? So what he tells us is the truth. He doesn’t practice deception. He doesn’t practice in double talk. Secondly, the penman of the Word of God, like Paul, we’re all in spite of God. of the Holy Spirit to reveal the truth of God and the gospel of Christ. They were moved by him. And he’s called the Spirit of Truth in Scripture. He tells us the truth. And of course, we could also add to this that the message of the gospel is by Jesus Christ, who is the way the truth and the life. This being the case, If we don’t hold the gospel, then we do not have the truth in our hearts. We’re under delusion. You know, the scripture talks about those who are rejecting the gospel, the word of truth, and that Satan has their minds blinded, and indeed, we find that they are embracing lies about life, about heaven and hell, about death, about God himself, because they don’t have the truth. Reject the gospel, and Satan has you deluded. To seek salvation apart from the gospel is to seek it in a sense in which we are pursuing folly and falsehood. You’re deluded if you think that salvation is possible in any religion that you may engage in. As if all are going to end up in heaven. They used to have an ancient saying, all roads lead to Rome. If you follow one of these roads, they’re all going to lead you to Rome in the Roman Empire. Somewhere along the line, you’ll get there. My friends, it is not true that all religions lead to heaven. I’ve heard people say, oh, it doesn’t matter what religion you have. We’re all going to the same place. The Bible says it is a narrow way, and few there be there. it’s fine. Paul here is not saying that you can believe whatever you want. We all are worshipping the same God, it doesn’t matter what religion you have. He says it is acknowledging of the truth that’s important. To despise the gospel is a very serious matter because there is a sense in which you are calling God a liar that he’s not telling you the truth. You know, the scripture says in 2nd Thessalonians chapter 1 in verse 8. very clearly that damnation is in store for those who cast aside the gospel. Christ comes in flaming, fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey got the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. And so we see the message here is very important. The gospel is the word of truth. Now ministers must rightly divide the word of truth, the scripture says. They have a duty, and this is what Paul was laying out for us. His duty is to preach the truth. The ministry is a sacred trust. Paul says to Timothy, commit the truth to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also. Commit the truth to others. There was a Bible teacher who told his class in allegedly Christian college that you know, don’t get into the doctrine of election. Don’t get into any of these difficult doctrines in the Bible. They’re too controversial, even if it’s in the Word of God. This young student was from Bulgaria. And so he wanted to learn the Bible. He wanted to preach. And so he started a Bible study in Chicago for Bulgarian laborers that were there. And here he’s thinking, I’ll just teach them the simple gospel. but to his amazement, guess what they question him about? Predestination and election. And the poor young man, accepting the teacher’s advice, couldn’t answer their questions because he never looked at the matter himself. Therefore, ministers shouldn’t be careless about the word of God. If everything God has given us is the truth, then we need to teach everything God has said. Here’s what Scripture. scripture says in Jeremiah 2328. He that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord. If we have God’s word, let us faithfully proclaim it. Don’t add your own chaff to it. God’s word is the wheat. It’s the substance. It is what nourishes. It is what strengthens. Don’t add your chaff to it. Teach the truth. There are false teachers that would deceive us and lead us astray, and he’ll be talking about that in this chapter, but a faithful minister is to be a herald of the truth. So you must acknowledge the truth of the doctrine of the gospel is the truth. Secondly, your knowledge of the truth is the basis of faith. He talks about acknowledging here of the truth. Some say the word here in the King James for acknowledging should actually be knowledge of the truth. The idea is. are similar. However, I actually prefer the King James because acknowledging means you recognize something that claimed, whatever it claims to be. You’re acknowledging that that is true. It’s not enough. Just to have knowledge of the truth. We must acknowledge the truth. You know, Jesus spoke the truth to the Pharisees and the scribes. They had knowledge of truth, but they didn’t believe it. And so I have no problem with the King James rendering here, the acknowledging of the truth as a belief of what he has proclaimed as the truth. In other words, faith requires belief of the propositions of the gospel. Specific truths that we have to understand and believe. We can read 1st Corinthians 15 and you see what he talks about, how that when Christ, when he preached Christ and the gospel, he talked about Christ dying, Christ’s burial, Christ’s resurrection. According to the scripture, he says, one must believe these truths in order to be saved. So those are the propositions that we must believe. They’re a heathen in darkest Africa can’t be saved just by believing that there is some supreme being somewhere. There are thousands of God, but there are only one true God. Nor can someone simply claim, well, I’m saved because I have a personal relationship with Christ. Well, my question to you is which Christ? Jesus told us that there shall arise false Christ. The Christ of the Liberals is a non-miraculous Christ. He’s still in the tomb. The Christ of the Muslim religion, Islam, is just a prophet. He’s not the son of God. The Christ of the Jehovah Witness is a created being, an archangel. That’s not the truth. You see what I mean? We must believe the propositions of the scripture. A person might claim I believe the gospel. But Paul says there are false gospels. Are you believing the biblical gospel? not what someone says is the gospel. You know, the gospel isn’t, you must be good, or you must let Jesus into your heart, or you must simply follow a Christ’s example, or something of this nature. Faith involves the acknowledging of the gospel as it is revealed in Scripture, specifically concerning the work and person of Jesus Christ. No matter what. claims you make. Unless you believe these biblical facts, these biblical truths, you are not saved. You will perish. So genuine faith requires right knowledge here and the acknowledging of the Word of Truth. Uncettledness regarding the Word of Truth reveals a lack of faith here. There are swarms of religious people who will tell you they have a strong faith toward God. They may talk about Jesus Christ in their church, but if you ask them what they actually believe, if you ask them about the tenets of the gospel, you may draw a blank face, because many have very little doctrinal understanding. They’re ignorant of the most vital truths of scripture. The Catholic Church does not want people reading the scriptures, because they might be revealed as not telling the truth. Like the scribes and the Pharisees, they hide the key of knowledge from people. They don’t want people to understand and know the truth. There’s no knowledge of the truth. There can’t be genuine faith. We have to believe something, merely, you know, that I believe that God exists. Well, the demons believe that God exists. In Acts chapter 19, you recall, there’s an account of Paul coming across certain disciples at Ephesus who claimed to believe. And Paul asked them, have you received the Holy Ghost since you believed? And they replied, they didn’t even know there was anything such as the Holy Ghost. Paul questioned them further about their so-called faith. Well, they explained that they had received John’s baptism. And yet they didn’t really understand what John’s baptism was all about because he actually explained to them that John’s baptism was that you were supposed to believe on him, Jesus Christ, who should come after John. So evidently some untought disciples that John had baptized these individuals. And then Paul has to provide this information that is on Jesus, on Christ Jesus. So he had to actually explain that much detail about it. They didn’t seem to know the basic facts. So here are 12 men, ignorantly submitted to John’s baptism, it seems, without understanding what it all meant. You can do the same thing. You can go through all kinds of religious rituals and ordinances and so forth and think you have faith. Faith involves the acknowledging of the truth of Scripture. Regard, in particular with regard to the guard of the gospel. I can’t emphasize this enough in this day of cloudiness and a day when we don’t want to get down to the specifics of what one believes. When Philip spoke to the Ethiopian eunuch, remember he joined his chariot, found him reading out of the Old Testament prophets, actually a scroll of Isaiah, and he was reading chapter 53. And he asked him, do you understand what you read? And he said, of whom speaketh the prophet, of himself or of some other man? And Philip began at the same scripture we read and preached unto him, Jesus. Only after this does the eunuch exclaim, I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God. He had to hear specific message concerning Christ and the way of salvation, the way of forgiveness, through Christ’s sacrificial death. He had to hear that. We don’t pin our faith on blind, religious things. We embrace the truth, the gospel of Jesus Christ. So you’re not of the truth is the basis of faith. And our acknowledging of the truth is what is important. Now, you’re embracing the word of truth inevitably leads to godliness. He says here, the acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness. And what this tells us is anybody who actually embraces the true gospel, it will produce godliness of love. In other words, the scripture says that the word of truth tends to, leads to, produces godliness, Godlike qualities in people. Doing what pleases the Lord, living in a way that’s reflective of the character of God. You know, people today in our day of markets and consumers, if you told them that godly is what the result of the gospel would be in their life, you would find that not too many people would be interested in that. They may be interested in God having a wonderful plan for their life and everything going wonderfully for them in life. Personal well-being, personal fulfillment, but not self-sacrificing godly living. And yet the scripture indicates to us that if we believe the gospel, that means turning our back on subjectivism, living by feelings, and turning our back also on self-centeredness, because like Paul, we are a servant of God. And not someone who is living our life the way we want to, Christ is the Lord of our life. Godliness of life is one of the signs or marks then that you have been regenerated. you’ve been changed by God. The law of the Lord converts the soul. Psalm 19. We sang it this morning. Verse 7. The preeminent work of the word of the gospel is to move the soul to godliness. Sanctify them through thy truth. Thy word is truth. John 17, 17. What we find in scripture is that false teaching can never produce godliness. Only the truth. true teaching produces godliness of life. Godliness is a flower which only comes from the seed of truth. This is why Paul so concerned about how the people are living in the churches here on Crete, or the assemblies on Crete, I should say. They must not live like the ungodly heathen around them because that would be a repudiation of their profession of faith. The word of truth unfailingly produces godliness of life. Now, you are carnally presuming to be saved if your heart isn’t moved to godliness. There’s an odd sculpture that adorns the wall on the grounds of Ribson Hall in Yorkshire, England. It’s what’s commonly called the two-faced butler. On one side, there is a face that’s all smiles and all politeness. On the other side is one that depicts nothing but insolence. and impoliteness. It’s said that this represents just such a butler who once served in the household. One day after receiving orders from the mistress of the house, the buster was all smiles and bows. However, a moment later, he was sticking his tongue out at the woman and making impolite gestures when he thought she wasn’t looking, but she got caught doing that. He got caught doing that. He got caught doing that. And so the statute was ordered to be erected at a very prominent spot to shame him and to warn any of the other servants not to act like that two-faced butler. Those who profess faith in the gospel are not to be hypocritical about their profession. We’re not to be two-faced. Belief of the truth should lead directly to godliness of life. Every hearer of the truth should examine himself about this. We’re going to look at this in chapter 2 and verses 11. 12 of Titus, for it says, For the grace of God that bring us salvation at the period unto all men, what? Teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lust we should live soberly, righteousness, and godly in this present world, that is what the gospel produces. You haven’t learned the truth concerning Jesus Christ or right unless there is some experience of the virtue of Christ’s death in yourself. killing sin so that you no longer serve sin. Some feeling the power of Christ’s resurrection so that you walk in newness of life. Some lifting of your heart after Christ into heaven so that indeed you’re seeking those things above and not merely the things of this earth. So what has your knowledge of the truth produced? Do you merely? fairly professed to know the Lord, but in works deny him as it is said of some here in Titus 116. That’s not the way of truth. That’s hypocritical. If we really have embraced the truth, then it bears fruit. We’re going to worship God according to His Word. We’re going to hate all false worship. We’re going to glorify the name of God in prayer and praise. We’re going to keep the Lord’s Day. We’re going to give of our substance. to the Lord, we’re going to love the likeness of Jesus Christ we find in other believers. And such things of this. God would have it that others learn the gospel, not merely from your lips, but from your life as well. So that godliness of life should lead us into a verbal communication of the gospel of Christ to these individuals. they go hand in hand. Well, the ambassador to Switzerland was a complete fraud. He wasn’t what he professed to be. An examination of his life was exposed him to be a liar. You don’t have to be like that as a believer. Your acknowledging of the truth must lead to a holiness of life. The others see that your faith is real. that there is a, if you’re a child or a daughter of the Lord, then you have some kind of reflection of that character in you as you go through this life. Oh, not perfectly, of course. But there has to be some reflection of that character. How can you be a son or a daughter of the Lord and not have the image of some sort of God in your life? Let this be a message for us tonight as we look at this text. Let us. closed before.