Titus 1:11

Book of Titus, chapter 1, verses 9 through 11, our focus on verse 11. Holding fast a faithful word as he has been taught that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and convince the gainsayers. For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, especially they of the circumcision, whose mouths must be stopped, whose subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not for filthy lucers say. God bless to us, he is sacred this morning or this evening. In an English village in 1792, there was a domestic servant by the name of Jonah, or Joanna, I should say, Southcott. And she made a startling announcement. She declared she was the bride of Christ, and she was going to be the mother of the second Messiah. Shortly thereafter, Joanna was established in London, where she became very popular. She soon cultivated over 100,000 followers, and this religious sect became known as the South Cotians, and from what I can tell, it’s still in existence today. This woman made a fortune through her sale of prophecies, which were incoherent and written in rhyme, and from the sale of certificates, guaranteeing salvation for those who purchased it. After long evading the question, Joanna finally prophesied the date when she would give birth to the new Holy Bay, October 19, 1814. But nothing happened, and she died of a brain. disease 10 days later. Paul has told Titus to ordain elders in every city so that they may proclaim the truth of the word of God and, by sound doctrine, convince those who are in error. Now, is there a good reason for this as we saw last week from verse 10? Because false teachers are very prevalent. They were rebelled. toward the commandments of God. They have worthless ministries that really are vain, and, of course, they are deceivers, as he says. Satan always acts to deceive the minds of people. He even uses very strange and foolish people, like Joanna Southcott, to do his bidding. The most subtle false teachers, however, are those who sneak into the church to spread their heresies, as Paul points out, especially they of the circumcision, the Judaizers, those who would demand some type of obedience to the law as part of your justification before God. There are many of them, we say, not just a few. And they plagued the churches with their deceptions. So when we think about this, we shouldn’t just think about those popular radio and TV evangelists that are so prevalent today. Or maybe those who were authors of popular religious books. A false teacher may just be someone who comes in and sits next to you in church. And yet, his whole goal is to spread heresy within the church. itself. We want to talk about silencing false teachers. I’ll begin tonight by saying this. You should realize the mouths of religious seducers must be shut. He says here in this text his mouth must be stopped. Now we should consider the necessity of silencing the promoters of error. There’s always a need to vindict. God’s truth. And by that I mean because the false teachers come along and twist and distort and pervert the scriptures for their own ends, it’s necessary that the truth of God’s word be carefully expounded in order to confront them. We have the example of Christ himself in the gospels who demonstrates the manner in which this is to be done. He vindicated the law. from the misleading and the corrupt expositions of the scribes and the Pharisees of his day, as well as those who were in the past. Many times you remember in the sermon of the mountain, Jesus would say, ye have heard, but I say unto you. The Jewish rabbis have been teaching certain things concerning the law of God and putting a false spin on what God’s law was saying. They were perverting the truth. Lord comes along and what he does is he sweeps it all away. He says, this is what this commandment is teaching. So he confronts the erroneous interpretation and presents the truth. The scribes and the Pharisees limited. You remember the commandment thou shalt not kill to the actual taking of someone’s life. And Jesus had to carefully explain the true meaning of the commandment goes beyond the actual physical act of killing someone to the heart condition that leads to such action, which is unjustified anger, as he says in Matthew 5, verse 22. Because it is a breach of the decalogue. You don’t have to have a dead body lying somewhere around in order to violate the commandment, thou shalt not kill. That’s what he says. Jesus said, it hath been said. whoever shall put away his life, let him give her a writing of divorcement. Now the Jews taught you could divorce your wife for all sorts of reasons, often very trivial ones. If she burnt the lasagna, maybe she was a poor lover, maybe if she nagged you too much, whatever the case may be, as long as you use the proper procedure. From Deuteronomy 24, as long as you gave her. a legal document of divorce. You were okay, according to scribes in the Pharisees. You are not in violation of the law. Jesus teaches this is wrong. The Bible indicates there’s a very limited ability to divorce your wife. In fact, Jesus mentions the one reason here is adultery. Paul will later on mention another, which is abandonment. But this is it. In the scripture, Salas, as Jesus indicated. Otherwise, you’re causing her to commit adultery as she seeks out a new husband. So what he is doing in all these cases throughout this chapter 5 of Matthew is he is properly interpreting scripture in order to put an end to the false teaching that is so prevalent in his day. It’s necessary. to bring out the real meaning of the Word of God so that the Word of God is not misused by those who are in error. And that’s what Jesus does. So you need to be able to vindicate God’s truth. And there is a need to spare the people of God from deception. False ideas do influence people, especially when they become very popular. The members of the church have to be preserved, and their only way they’re going to be preserved is by sound, doctrine. The word stopped here literally means to shut the mouth by means of a bright old muzzle or gag. And the idea is to silence these people. Now obviously Paul’s not saying we’re to do this physically, but he is using it in a metaphorical sense. You’re to correct the error in such a way that you silence them. They have nothing more that they can say. And you find Jesus doing this in the Gospels repeatedly. Our Lord was careful about casting pearls of God’s truth before the malicious Jews who were dogs and swine. And yet many times in a public setting, he often demonstrated the air of their ways for the sake of the true people of God who were listening. He would silence the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Rhodians and others. so that none could answer him. In fact, we read that they were afraid to even ask him any more questions when he got done with him. One day, the chief priest and scribe sent out spies in order to trip Christ up in his words, and they asked him whether or not it’s lawful to give tribute or taxes to Caesar. Now, they wanted him to either deny God’s authority or the Roman government’s authority. But Jesus surprised them. He perceived their craftiness, and he said, show me a penny. Whose inscription, whose image and superscription is on it. And they said, Caesars. And Christ said, we’ll render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are gods, indicating to us here that there is authority given to the Roman government. They have the right to collect taxes. But at the same time, God is the overall authority. We had to render to him what is his due. Now, these people marveled at his answer, and they held their peace in say anymore. They didn’t know what else to say. I’m reminded of those that went out at one point to arrest Christ, and they came back, said, Why didn’t you arrest him? Well, nobody ever spoke like this man spoke. And the way he answered these questions was quite good and quite amazing. But he does this for the benefit, not only correcting the error of the wicked, but for the people of God, that they may not be caught up in the error, the false teaching, the leaven of the Pharisees, and so forth. So we want to spare the people of God from deceptions. Now, there’s a need to keep eras from thinking themselves wise. Solomon says, sometimes you have to answer full according to their folly, unless they think they are wise in their own conceits. He says, sometimes you have to do that. Those in error often are quite smug and proud and think that they are able to perhaps refute anybody that comes along. They have their little arguments, their pet arguments that they use. The Sadducees were thinking like that. They have a potent argument they used against. the idea of a resurrection. They used it against Christ. There were seven brothers, and the elder one took a wife but died without any children. And the second brother married the woman. They didn’t have any children all the way through all seven, and they all died, and the woman also died, and they said, well, now in the resurrection, whose wife is she going to be? You can imagine the smug look on their face, they thought they had Jesus trapped. But Jesus said, and it’s very interesting that he indicates to them here, that there’s no marriage in the world that comes, so it’s a moot point. Now that the dead are raised, he says, even Moses showed at the bush. When he called the Lord, we call it the Lord the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, for he’s not the God of God of the God of Jacob, for he’s not the God of the God of the God of the God of God. the dead, but of the living, and so the Sadducees had to slink away embarrassed because they didn’t have any response to that. So consider the necessity of silencing the promoters of error. Consider also the manner of silencing the promoters of error. Two things, I think the Bible will tell us. Admonishment and church discipline. You’ll notice that we’re not told here how to do it, but if you look at chapter 3 in verse 10, a man that is a heretic after the first and second admonition reject. The Bible says. At first, the one in error may be tenderly admonished. Maybe they can be won over from their error. But if this person persist in his error, then he must be sharply reprimanded that he would desist from what he’s doing. But after the first and second admonitions, if this person continues on in an easy evil ways, then he is to be rejected by the church, first shunned by the church and then disciplined through the idea of excommunication where he is, there’s an expulsion from the church, that this person can no longer be considered a member of the church. Perhaps God will use this rebuke. Maybe he will use this discipline of excommunication to bring them this person to repentance. But it’s a severe step. and after the first and second admonition, that is what is to take place. Let it be noted that in the Church of Christ, there are none such thing as freedom of misleading speech. You can’t go on in error and say, well, I have freedom of speech. No, you don’t have freedom of speech. If you don’t speak according to this word, there’s no light in you. The scripture says. Err must not be allowed to be propagated, so miles have to be stopped. Now, this indicates to us that we must have knowledge of the Word of God, and we must have sound judgment if we’re going to be able to do this. Being an elder requires a great deal of biblical knowledge. When the false teachers teach things that they ought not, the elder has to be able to see it as error, as in conflict with what the Word of God says. So an elder must be someone who is constantly in the Word of God, knows what the word of God says so that he can refute error. This means a careful, systematic reading of scripture is necessary. Not merely book learning, but the book learning. I always have emphasized this. Read the Word of God first before you pick up some other book and start reading it. getting some other man’s idea. Read what God has to say about it. Ask him to be your teacher. I would suggest that every year an elder read through the entire Bible once at least. In fact, every Christian should be well versed in the Word of God. How can you refute an adversary if you’re unskilful in the Word of Righteousness? So you need to know what the Scripture says. And I find that the more you read the Scripture, these words, these phrases will come to your mind as you deal with those who are teaching false doctrine. God will bring them to your mind because you’ve been studying and thinking about these things. False doctrine interlinks. For example, what one believes about Jesus Christ and who he is is going to, because if you don’t believe that Jesus Christ is fully deity, then he can’t be one of the three persons of the Holy Trinity, and therefore it undermines the doctrine of the Trinity. If one promotes the doctrine of free will, he ends up undermining the truth that salvation is solely by the sovereign grace of God and without really perhaps overtly teaching this, they are interjecting works into salvation because it’s what the man does. It ends up saving him. If one does, if one does, denies a physical resurrection from the dead, this impacts the gospel. As Paul says, then Christ must not have been resurrected from the dead if there’s no resurrection. It also helps to be well-versed in the confession of faith. This gives us an understanding of what the church has believed down through the years and has committed it in a very concise manner for our benefit so that we can contend for the faith once delivered under the saints. To all of this now, must be added sound judgment. And by that, you have to be able to infer good and necessary consequences from the principles of the Word of God. Not everything in the Word of God is going to give you a black and white answer to the problem that you may be confronted with. So you have to be able to think about what the principle of the Word of God is teaching, And how does that extrapolate to the situation that I find myself in? If God has given you all things that pertain unto life and godliness, according to 2 Peter 1.3, then it doesn’t necessarily have to have everything spelled out in the Word of God, but you can use the Word of God to reach an answer about everything you’re going to need in life. There are times you may have to deduce something. Remember Jesus deduced from the burning bush passage that since God spoke of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the present tense, they must still be alive. If they’re still alive, there must be a bodily resurrection. That’s how he argued the case. And so we have to look at Scripture and be able to, with sound judgment, apply this to all kinds of circumstances. And be able to get the basic principle, and then see where that leads us. We also should have one mind concerning the truth. Not only the elders, but the whole church should have a grasp of sound doctrine so that they are an agreement about the truths of God’s word. Now, this is important because when these false teachers come, the whole church needs to be aware, and the whole church needs to be able to confront, if necessary, this individual. A house divide, as I said this morning, is not going to say. to be able to stand. And so the church needs to be not a mixmash of many different doctrines among its members. We can’t just be a loose gathering of people and it doesn’t matter what we believe. As if, you know, if we can have Armenians and Calvinists and dispensationalists and all-millanialists and feminists and feminists and conservatives and those who believe in miraculous gifts and those who believe that the gifts have seized. all in one church and think that everything is just going to be fine and dandy. This is why there ought to be a substantial agreement to a confession of faith, I think, among the members, so there’s one-mindedness. In this manner, all the people of God can provide a strong opposition when error arises in the church. Their mouths have to be stopped, and that would be a good way to do it, when all say, hey, this is wrong and you’re standing for the wrong things. Many years ago, when I was in seminary, we used to have to do a certain visitation work, and I would have to do it along with other students with two or three of us would go out and, well, we did cold calls in those days when you knocked on the door and try to talk to people about Christ, invite them to church and things of this nature. On one occasion, we were down in the Fort Worth area, I visited home, which had been exposed to the Jehovah Witness cult, and the Jehovah Witnesses had been meeting with them in the home and trying to train them in their doctrine, indoctrinate them. And so these people were unsaved and certainly confused about salvation. And we spent quite some time that day, the three of us talking with them about the things of God. But now they had this conflict. who’s right? Are you right or the Jehovah Witnesses right? So they said, could you come back next week? And they were going to have some of the representatives of the Jehovah Witnesses there, and it was going to be a confrontation, a battle royal, evidently, between us and the Jehovah Witnesses. Now, the problem I had was that I had come to the doctrines of grace and I was a Calvinist. Well, the other two students that were with me were Armenian. So when I began to expound scriptural before this couple and the Jehovah Witnesses, I emphasized God’s sovereign grace and salvation. I talked about man’s total depravity and his inability and how that God must reach down and save men. How else could I teach? Because that’s what the Bible lays out before us. You can’t change yourself. You need to be regenerated by the power of God. The Armenians interrupted me. It stated that they didn’t agree with me and began to explain things from a free will perspective. You can imagine how I felt. Not only I had the Jehovah Witnesses here, not only have people who are confused in this couple, but now I have my people that I came with me and they’re opposing me too. And so what else could I say? So they presented the Armenian approach to things. But my friends, the strongest arguments against the Jehovah Witnesses are those that come from sovereign grace because that’s a works-oriented religion. The incident, you know, burned into my soul, the treacherous nature of Armenianism and how dangerous it was to the true God’s. What a hindrance it was. Because what happened is, of course, the Jehovah Witnesses, see, well, see, they can’t even agree among themselves about what doctrine is, so they stay with the Jehovah Witnesses. It’s not that I brought up unconditional election, it’s not that I talked about limited atonement, but because I brought out man’s hopeless condition, his spiritual deadness, it is incapable doing any good. That was too much even for my Armenian friends that were with me. I realized at that point in time, the Calvinism and Armenianism cannot be mixed. It is not going to work. How can’t. can I work with these people and be faithful to God’s word. So the fundamentals of the faith have to be agreed upon. General inclusivism devalues the truth of God’s word. You know, there are churches that are non-denominational. They don’t have any doctrinal position. They sort of just gather everybody in. It doesn’t matter what you believe, evidently. You can believe any, all kinds of things, and it’s okay. My friends, that is not going to work. You’re never going to be able to confront and stop the mouths of these types of people that come in if the church is all over the map when it comes to what they believe. So the mouths of these religious seducers have to be stopped. Now, you should realize why the mouths of these religious seducers must be shut. They overthrow a person’s faith. They subvert, is what the King James says here. Literally overthrow. these deceivers not only shake a person’s foundation in the true religion, but they try to overthrow the faith that they profess to have. Someone says they don’t merely prune a tree by cutting off a few branches. They uproot the tree. They lead you away from the simplicity of the gospel. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. To another gospel, a soul damning teaching. how do these men overthrow a person’s faith and salvation? Well, Paul’s already identified, these false teachers, as I said, as those of the circumcision. They add the law is one thing. But there are two fundamental truths that Paul emphasizes, like the two pillars that Samson toppled in the Philistine Temple. One is the resurrection. If this is denied, all preaching is in vain. All our efforts are in vain. If Christ did not. rise from the dead, then we mousal eat and drink for tomorrow we die, and there is no hope. The second is seeking righteousness apart from Christ. The scripture says the Lord, our righteousness. And that’s how the scripture presents Christ. He is our righteousness. He’s the one we’re counting upon. But as Galatians 221 indicates to us, if righteousness come by the law, then Christens is dead. vain. If you can gain righteousness by your own works, your law keeping, or whatever, there’s no need for Christ to have died. You could earn it yourself. So those two things. The first thing we should realize, though, in this is not all who profess faith are truly safe. There are those who will get caught up in fatal error and they will fall away, but the indication of Scripture is these people were never truly regenerated. They were never truly saved. The second thing is, anyone who undermines the facts concerning Christ’s work or the truth that he has accomplished. The truth of what he has accomplished is an enemy of the gospel of Jesus Christ. They overthrow a person’s faith. They overthrow the faith of complete households. It’s not just an individual. But he says here they subvert whole houses. That’s pretty bad. Years ago, Ruben Brown was known on the south and west sides of Chicago as the friendly neighborhood cockroach exterminator. He used what he called the Mississippi stuff, which was a pesticide that Brown had bought in the South and had brought up to Chicago and used it in people’s houses. And it did the trick on roaches. Brown went door to door with his hand sprayer. His business grew as satisfied. customers recommended him to the next day. However, in the process, Brown single-handedly created environmental catastrophe. The Mississippi stuff was methyl parathion, which was outlawed by the EPA for use in homes. Outdoors, it would break down into harmless elements so that farmers would use it for bull weavels and cotton fields and so forth. But in the home, it persists as a toxic chemical, and it harms the nervous system, and it has the effects like lead poisoning in your system. So entire homes had to be torn apart. You know, the drywall, the carpeting, the furniture, the panel, everything had to be torn out and thrown away. The worst environmental nightmare Illinois has ever had in their history. Cleanup costs millions and millions of dollars. Ruben Brown destroyed entire households by spraying his toxic potion. Well, this is what false teachers do with their teaching. They destroy house by the poison of what they’re teaching. The family is really the basic unit of any society. And sometimes false teachers operate in very subtle ways. The Bible talks about them creeping in the houses. They do this sometimes secretly. under the radar, so to speak. And they don’t perhaps publicly or directly in the church deny the Lord Jesus Christ, nor his scriptures, nor the truth that’s plainly taught there. But privately, secretly, they undermine the truth, and they capture people. They bring them to this false doctrine. And then they go on to their next family. and try to capture it. And then eventually, they’d come out publicly, and now they have these other individuals who will back them up and help to overthrow the actual true teaching that a sound church would have. This being the case, you must be careful in your private homes to cleave to the truths that are publicly delivered in the church. Beware lest any deceiver comes along and steals away from you the truth. Remember what John tells us in 2 John 10. If they’re coming, any unto you and bring up this doctrine, the apostolic doctrine. Receive him not into your house, neither bid him Godspeed. So they overthrow the faith in complete households. And they overthrow the faith of many were told simply for the money. For filthy lokers say. It’s not that they’re focused on the truth. They’re not really focused on what the Bible’s teaching. They’re focuses on making money. And somehow or other, this is what their goal is. So they bring damnable heresies in for the purpose of gain. They gain people’s attention and their support. And then they of course receive compensation in some way. Maybe they start their own church. Maybe they have some type of means by which they can begin to gain income from this. The money, of course, can’t buy anything but earthly things. It never buys us any spiritual benefits. But motivated by covetousness, these false teachers, with feigned words, make merchandise of God’s people. Sometimes it’s for the purpose of the praise of men, the people engage in these false teachings. But whatever the case may be, I’ve spoken on this topic enough times they don’t need to belabor the point tonight. But behind a lot of these false teachers, in fact, most of them, they are little balims who are interested in Balak’s gold. That’s what it’s all about. Not in the truth of what God said. Paul says about these deceivers who God is their belly who mind earthly things. So the call to the South Cotkotkotkotkans is a false organization that made a fortune for Joanna Southcott before her death, teaching the craziest things. Satan blinds people’s minds. And he does it through their agents, who poses those who supposedly are leading you to the divine truth when actually they’re leading you to hell. These false teachers need to be silenced in the church. They need to be silenced in the church. They to be admonished. They need to be brought to church discipline if necessary and even expelled from the church. This requires, of course, a knowledge of the Word of God and oneness of mind among the people of God that we could confront these errors. Realize, finally, that these people really are in it for the money. And they bring in their damnable heresies, but really it’s all about the money. and that, of course, shows where they really are. It’s all about earthly things. It’s all about what they can gain. It’s not about truth. It’s not about standing for what the Bible says. It’s all about money. So be aware of these things, he says, and be prepared that we may confront these false teachers, these heretics who would trouble the church.