Titus 1:9a

Titus chapter 1 reading verses 5 through 9 our focus is going beyond the first part of verse 9 for this cause left I be in Crete thou should have set in order the things that are wanting and ordain elders in every city as I appointed thee if any be blameless the husband of one wife having faithful children not accused of riot or unruly or a bishop must be blameless as the steward of God not self-willed not soon angry not given to wine no striker not given to filthy lucre but a lover of hospitality a lover of good men sober just holy temperate holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers. May God bless to us his sacred word and holy word this evening. In France, there once lived a poor blind girl who managed to obtain a gospel of Mark in Braille and she learned to read it with her fingers, the tips of her fingers. And by constant reading, however, her fingers became calloused and she was having more and more difficult reading. Her sense of touch had diminished and she couldn’t distinguish the character so easily. So she cut the skin from the ends of her fingers thinking that that would increase The sensitivity, however, it only destroyed it, and now she could not read it anymore. She felt she had to give up her beloved book, Weeping, she pressed it to her lips saying, farewell, sweet word of my heavenly father. But as she did so, she realized that her lips were able to distinguish the letters on the pages of the books, and so that she could read and peruse the God’s God. gospel of Mark and braille with her lips. And so she continued to read it with her lips. She was dedicated to reading the scriptures. Sadly, not all professing Christians has such a diligence when it comes to reading the Word of God, even with perfect eyesight. Few go to the lens that this young woman have gone. Now, Paul here has been addressing the qualifications of elders of the church. And now we come to another branch of the elders’ fitness for this office. He must be a man of the word. He must value the scriptures, and he must be proficient in them. This is an essential qualification for the edification of God. This is an essential God’s people and the refutation of false teachers, as verse 9 would indicate to us. Let me begin by saying an elder must believe in the trustworthiness of the Word of God. He calls it here the faithful word. Let us see from this. The one who is going to be an elder of Christ’s church should have a high view of scripture. The word, faithful word here, these words, literally mean the trustworthy, the reliable word. The word meaning the scriptures or the word of God. The author is holy and true himself. The God who cannot lie, as we saw in verse 2. And thus the word is reliable because it is the word. of God himself. Well, men of various skills and learning penned the scriptures. Amos was a herdsman and farmer. Peter and John were a fisherman. Matthew was a tax collector. Luke was a doctor. They were led and directed by the Holy Spirit in their writing. Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. And that’s true, not only of the Old Testament, but of the new as well. As Paul declared to Timothy, all scripture is given by inspiration of God. It’s God breathed. The Holy Spirit is the actual author of the scripture. And because it is the inspired, infallible word, it is trustworthy. It is can be depended upon. It is truth. It is the absolute unchanging truth of God. All its doctrines of true, all its promises will come to pass, and since God is faithful, his word must be faithful also. His word resembles him in many ways. Is God omnipotent? Well, the Word of God never returns in vain, does it? Does it? It always accomplishes its purpose. Isaiah 5511 says, so shall my word that go with forth be, that go forth out of my mouth. It shall not return on me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing where to I send it. Is God wise? Does not the scripture indicate that it makes one wise? The holy scriptures are able to make you wise unto salvation. which is through the faith that’s found in Jesus Christ 2 Timothy 315. Is the Word of God is God pure and perfect? Well, the Word of God is pure and perfect as well. Psalm 19 tells us the law of God is perfect converting the soul. The commandment of the Lord is pure enlightening the eyes. Is God omniscient? I read that the Word of God, searches the heart, reveals thoughts, exposes sin, for the Word of God is quick, it’s living, it’s powerful, it’s sharper than any two-edge sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and spirit of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Is God the God of truth? Is not his word said to be the truth? Thy Word is truth. is what the scripture tells us in John 17. You can’t read the Bible without seeing what a high view the people of God had of the scriptures. It was held in the highest of esteem. Indeed, there are warnings by adding to or taking away from the Word of God, for you will bring God’s curse down upon you. Now, an elder must have such a respect and such a regard for the Holy Scriptures. And this can’t be emphasized enough. A man who would rule and govern in Christ’s church must treat the Word of God as holy, sacred, and reliable. But the Word of God has been preserved in all ages as something we must believe, so that what we have today, we can have have confidence that we are giving out the Word of God and it hasn’t been lost and hasn’t been somehow compromised in the meantime. This is the truth that comes from God himself and thus in verse 3. He hath in due times manifested his word through preaching which is committed unto me. It’s a sacred trust to preach the Word of God. Sadly, we live in a day when many who are religious leaders have a low view of scripture. They have no qualms about twisting it for their own purposes or finding the right translation so that it meets up with what they want to say. The Word of God sometimes is treated as common literature. No different from Shakespeare or any other human author. It’s even ignored. It’s been replaced by other things in the worship service where it’s not given its proper place, its central place in the worship of God. Where we have the dramas and the entertainment going on in the church services and very, very little of the Word of God. And you can see how carelessly some of those who were supposedly and I put it in brackets religious scholars, for we should not consider them such, when they mangle the Word of God, and treat the word of God with such disgrace as many of the modern translations have. Jeremiah 2330, God says this, behold, I am against the prophets, sayeth the Lord, that steal my words everyone from his neighbor. Let me tell you something. There are still people today stealing the word of God by the way they are supposedly translating scripture. They’re stealing it from you. They’re stealing it from you. They’re stealing it from the people of God. Many new versions freely add words and do not translate the original languages. While at the same time pass over words in the original text without translating them and omit them altogether. I’ll give you an example. Simple example. Matthew 5 in the sermon of the Mount Jesus said, whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judge. judgment. You look at a lot of your modern translations, they’ll leave out that phrase without a cause. You know what that says? That says if anybody gets angry, then they’re in danger of the judgment. That’s not what the scripture teaches. Think about it. Didn’t Jesus get angry? The Bible says he did. Are we going to put him in that category that he has sin? How can someone take this passage of Scripture and leave this out? And yet, check out some of the modern translations today and see if that is not true. We have been saddled with dynamic equivalence where the general thought or idea the text is given rather than a word-for-word, wooden translation into the English. From the original Greek or Hebrew. The NIV, the N-R-S-V, the N-S-V, the New English, Bible, the new century version, the Good News Bible, the living Bible. We can go on and on and on and on. If one believes in verbal inspiration, one believes what the scripture says in Proverbs 35, every word of God is pure. Now think about that. Every word of God is pure. Not just a general idea. Every single one that he’s given is pure. that being the case that is a reckless handling of the faithful word not to translate it word for word. It’s a disgrace. It is stealing my words. It is misrepresenting our God. It often, if you look at a lot of the modern translations, look at some of the things they leave out, it undermines the deity deity of Jesus Christ. These are important. matters that one should consider. I read a story about an early American patriot, Ben Franklin. He loved to argue. Occasionally, he would find himself on the losing end of an argument. At such times, he would say, give me a day to think it over, I know I’m right about this. So he would go home to his print shop, set up some type in the style of the Bible, express his position and argument in biblical language. Then he would go in the next day to his opponents and proudly exclaimed whatever you may think. You can’t get away from the fact that the Holy Scripture supports by arguments, as it says in the book of John or whatever he made up at the time. He said the ruse worked every time. My friends, that’s a blasphemous approach to scripture that you’re substituting your own ideas. And my friends, most modern translations are much better. My friends, a man is useless to God. God, if he doesn’t have a high view of scripture, you might as well close the church. This is a priority in an elder. Never forget this point. Never forget it. A high view of scripture is essential. It is the faithful word. Notice that the word of God is all that is necessary. If the scriptures are the faithful word, if the scriptures are what’s trustworthy, reliable, then nothing else is necessary. My friends, we hold the Soloscriptora. We hold the fact that we proclaim the words that God tells us, as he told Jeremiah in Jeremiah 192. Proclaim the words I have told you. My friends, we don’t follow traditions and man-made doctrine and the word of God, like the Roman Catholic Church does, as if man’s reasonings could be put on the level. And man’s traditions could be put on the level with the word. of God. No. There’s only one faithful word and that’s God’s word. What’s interesting about this class of people that we see is that they have turned away from Sola Scriptora in many ways. Many years ago, I took a Bible class at Geneva College that was taught by the late Dr. John Gersner. it was, I think it was on Jonathan Edwards in Evangelism. Now, what was interesting about this class, we have students in it from all different religious backgrounds, evidently. And during a question and answer period, there was a student that made a mistake saying that God told him to do something. And as Dr. John Gersner could only do with his raspy voice, really? What did he look like? How did he appear before you? What does voice sound like? I mean, he just went off on this person. And this student was taken back and quickly retreated. But he made his point. His point was God isn’t speaking audibly to anybody anymore. The Word of God is complete. It’s all that’s necessary for salvation, for faith, and for life. As the London Baptist Confession brightly stated, those former ways of God revealing his will are now ceased. We don’t have Christ walking the earth, apostles, or prophets today. Why? Because the written Word of God is now completed. We don’t need it anymore. This is an important issue. For only the Word of God is reliable. Both the Catholics with their infallible church and an infallible Pope and the Pentecost, with their tongues movements and so forth, claim present revelations from God. this denies, or at least downgrades, the necessity of Scripture, the faithful word. if God still speaks to people in a supernatural way, well, why don’t we just get a fresh revelation? Why go to that old book? Not long ago, there was a lesbian woman who claimed that God told her to be a minister. She was a Methodist. How much, how should we react? to such a claim. Suppose a seminary student claimed, I heard God’s voice telling me to go to Africa, so I thought I would force my way on an airliner and get there. I’m obeying God. Or a person has a strange dream that decides that God’s telling him to leave his wife and children and marry someone else who’s more spiritual and better suited for him. How are you going to answer all this stuff? You’re going to wait for a new revelation from God? Obviously, the only way to evaluate what these people say is to go to the written word of God and look and see what God says. A woman is never called to preach. 1 Timothy 2, 11 through chapter 3, verse 1 indicates that. Those engaged in lesbianism are given over to a reprobate mind, according to Romans chapter 1. They certainly don’t have the mind of Christ. Why would you put them in the pulpit? God’s word tells you not to steal. But he’s not going to tell you. you to go jump on board an airline without paying for a ticket. If a man doesn’t take care of his own family, he’s worse than an infidel. Thus, God doesn’t tell a man to desert his wife and its children and remarry somebody else. An elder must believe that the Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience. We can’t waver in this. otherwise the word isn’t reliable enough. And you need something in addition to it. Sola Scrip Torah must be the belief of an elder. Must be. So an elder must believe in the trustworthiness of the word of God. The second point I would make tonight is this. An elder must cling tenaciously to the truth of the word of God. He tells us here that the elder must hold fast the faithful word. He must know and be convinced of the teaching of Scripture. In the middle voice, as it often occurs here, as it occurs here, I should say, this verb hold fast can mean to hold oneself face to face with, which means to draw near or to approach closely with. And so one of the first ideas, I suggest to you, associated with the word hold fast, is to lay hold of the truth, to grasp it, to know it well, to meditate in it day and night. This is an extremely important command, is it not, for an elder of the church. He must know the teachings of the Word of God thoroughly. He must learn them in such a way that he has a clear grasp of the doctrines of the Christian faith. He cannot be someone who wavers with every wind of doctrine that blows along. He must show himself to be approved under God, a workman, that needeth not to be ashamed that rightly dividing the Word of Truth. Someone who is labors in the Word, to understand it and know it, you can’t be unsteady, you can’t be unsure of its teachings. We have to have a systematic grasp of the truth of Scripture. We ought to be able to compare Scripture with Scripture, so that what Scripture says in one place, it matches up with what it says somewhere else, and perhaps it gives us more enlightenment on that particular passage that we’re trying to understand. Now, coming to know the truth of Scripture, an elder must believe it, be convinced of it with all his heart. The study of Scripture should not be an academic exercise. It’s a lifetime of growing in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ because God speaks through His Word. The study of Scripture then becomes the way in which God speaks to us that we may speak to others. So remember, an elder is supposed to be an example in this regard. It’s not that other believers shouldn’t be studying the Word of God day and night as well, but he is to set the example. As a teacher of the church, he has a greater responsibility in this regard. So he must know and be convinced of the teaching of Scripture. He must grab hold of it, so to speak. But he must tenaciously adhere to God’s truth. To hold fast not only means to hold one’s self-face-to-face with, but it implies sort of a cleaving, a clinging, a holding tightly to the Scripture, the faithful word. Thus the verb properly signifies such holding of the truth that one will not let it be torn from them. Think about a woman who’s going through a dangerous section of town and she has her purse and she’s clinging to it. Not going to allow anybody to steal it from her. Snatch it away from her. She’s going to fight to keep it. An elder, must lay hold on the truth in such a way that he’s not going to allow it to be wrestled from him. He has a firm grip on it. He contends for the faith, once delivered under the saints. That’s what the Scripture would indicate to us. Today, there’s pressure to let go of the Holy Scriptures. It comes from a variety of directions, in particular our society is much, involved in pluralism. By that I mean the idea that all religions are really equal. We can all come together. We can all worship. We’re all worshipping the same God kind of idea. Various religious leaders accept the concept, although we’re all children of God, even though we may differ in doctrine and belief. But to come to that point, one must lose their grip on the faithful word, because that is not what God’s word says. The Bible presents only one way of salvation, and that’s through Jesus Christ and his righteousness and his sacrifice. That’s it. G.E. Lessing, the 18th century German dramatist and critic, argued for pluralism in this way. He told this story. He said, a father had a magic ring, which he was bound to bequeathed. to one of his three sons when he died. Not wanting to be accused of favoritism, he made two imitation rings, so he gave each of the sons a ring. Of course, when he died, the three sons realized they all had a ring. Now they weren’t trying to figure out, well, which one is the genuine wing? So they went to Nathan the Wise, and he told them, well, let each think his own is the true one, but do not try to persuade anyone else. The moral of the story is this. No one can be sure which religion is true, so don’t push your own on others. Do not be too worried about the truth. Faithful elder isn’t going to swallow that lie. God doesn’t lie, and he doesn’t make any imitation rings either. False religions, there we find that people hold doctrines of devils. Don’t tell me that we’re all worshipping the same God. Well, we’re not. There are people today that are worshipping Satan just as much as people that are worshipping idols in the Old Testament under the guise of worshiping a God. How could any child of God believe that the tremendous death and suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ was actually unnecessary? As many religions will tell us, oh, we don’t need blood atonement. We don’t need your bloody religion. An elder must be a man who holds the trustworthy message and will not let the church be robbed of it by flattering words, or fashionable arguments. This often leads to sacrifice and hardship on the part of the church. It may lead the ridicule and ostracism. Be thankful we have such men who will not give up. They will cling to the truth. My third point tonight is this. An elder must carefully maintain the message of the word of God as originally given. You’ll notice he has the words here, as he hath been taught, Paul underlines the carefulness with which elders must handle the gospel so that it’s not compromised. An elder must hold firmly to the message as he has been taught. Who’s taught him? Paul. Who’s taught him? Here’s another appointed attack on the gospel that we must pay attention with regard. there are those who say believe the truth of Scripture. They say they believe the truth of but they end up compromising or denying what is taught in Scripture. You know, we have people who are modern day critics who say, well, yes, the New Testament was the message of the apostles to the ancient world, but the world’s so much different now. You know, we need a different message today. We live in a different message. different age and age of technology. We have more understanding about psychology and genetics and people’s motives and so forth. The gospel needs to change with the times we’re told, all this talk about sin isn’t helpful. Talk about, you know, if you talk about the wrath of God, you’re going to turn people off. We want to be inclusive. We want people to feel welcome when they come to church. Why, if Christ were present today, you could imagine what they would have said to him. I mean, he was talking about too much on hellfire all the time. You’re making people feel uncomfortable. You can’t keep doing that. Does the gospel really need to be updated? I read in scripture to the everlasting gospel. That indicates to me it never changes. The idea of hell is too frightening for people. Really? A loving God wouldn’t think about damning someone for all eternity in hellfire. Really? I had a pastor friend of mine. It was actually removed from his office as pastor of the church. And this is what they told him. He told me this personally. You’re preaching too much on sin. Think about that a minute. Go through the scriptures and see how often sin comes up as a topic. You’re preaching too much on sin. Of course, we as elders, as we come to the Word of God, we’re going to put things in the modern context. But we’re going to take the principle of truth that is taught in the Word of God, and we’re going to apply it to the modern situation. The Word of God doesn’t change. The principles and truths of the Word of God, the propositions of Scripture, are always the same. They’re not going to change. You know, when the Bible talks about masters and slaves, and we’ll see this in Colossians, we might say, well, we don’t have any masters and slaves anymore. No, we have businessmen, and We have servants. If you’re working for someone, those principles still apply in that situation. You know, we don’t have people riding don’t get stuck in the ditch. Yeah, but we have them riding cars that get stuck in the ditch. You know, there’s certainly, the principle will be still the same, you see. We don’t change the message. You know, fallen man is the same, and God is the same. So the principles of Scripture are always going to be good. They’re always going to be useful. The Lord Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. We don’t need a new Christ. We don’t need a whole new definition of what he did and so forth. Man’s need of eternal salvation is the same. The grace of God still operates in the same way. So the elder must adhere to the faithful word as you’ve been taught by the biblical writers inspired by the Holy Spirit. This is the vital truth. To change the gospel is to place yourself under God’s wrath. Where Galatians tells us if anybody preaches any other gospel, what I’ve given you, let him be a cursed. My friends, we should recognize that only the faithful word is going to save the lost. And to neglect it. To tamper, you know, to compromise it, to change it in some fashion, is a most serious sin. So an elder doesn’t toy with essential truths of Christianity, but he must be one who teaches the word of God clearly without compromise and declares exactly what God has said. Well, that blind girl in France who read the Bible with her tongue showed a great desire to study the Word of God. An essential qualification for an elder is to believe in the trustworthiness of Scripture, to cling tenaciously to its teachings, and to carefully maintain the truth as he has been taught from the apostles or from the writers of Scripture themselves. In short, again, an elder must be a man of the word. Let this be fully understood by the congregation. It’s not a pleasing personality per se that you’re looking for. It’s not physical attractiveness that he’s handsome. It’s not a bunch of letters behind his name. that qualifies him to be an elder. Is he a man of the word? That is the key factor. Let us take that to heart tonight. Let us close with the word of prayer.