Titus 3:9

Book of Titus, Chapter 3. I’m going to read verses 8 and 9. Our focus is on verse 9 tonight. This is a faithful saying, and these things I will that thou affirm constantly that they which have believed in God might be careful to maintain good works. These things are good and profitable unto man, but avoid foolish questions and genealogies, and contentions and strivings about the law, for they are unprofitable and vain. My God bless to us his holy and sacred word this evening. Three men, John Newton, Lewis Weatherford, and Samuel Preston, arrived at the Ambassador Hotel in New York City. And as their cab left them off, the three men stared in amazement at the site of this 29-floor building. They checked in, took the penthouse suite at the very top of the building. And after visiting many of the sites in New York, they returned to the Ambassador Hotel to rest and catch some shut-eye. But at the front desk, they were told that the elevator had developed some mechanical. problems. And so they were not able to use it. They were given two alternatives. One, they could walk up the 29 floors to the penthouse suite. Or they could give them a smaller room on the second floor that they could use instead. Well, they decided they would trudge up all those stairs and get to the penthouse suite. Weary and worn out after 29. flights of steps, they arrived. Sam was the first to come to the door. He reached in his pocket for the key. Didn’t have the key. The other two men also searched. They didn’t have the key. Wouldn’t you know it? They forgot to get the key at the front desk. Their entire marathon effort to climb 29 flights of steps was in vain. It was a useless activity. Now, you and I have probably gone on some wild goose chases in our lives. After all, your efforts and you’re done, you have nothing to show for it. Now, what Paul says tonight is that the people of God should avoid spiritual wild goose chases. Some endeavors are not profitable to your spiritual life. there are a waste of time. Having urged the Christians to maintain good works in their lives, because that is good and profitable on the men, he tells you what’s unprofitable and the things we ought to avoid. So I’m going to speak tonight on unprofitable things from this text of Scripture. Let me begin by saying this. You should realize that elders are to avoid foolish questions. Now, let me press. this by saying there are many necessary questions. Paul does not condemn every question raised in reference to the handling of the scripture. There are many questions that might arise related to doctrinal teaching and practical application of the Christian life. The disciples asked Jesus many questions about his teaching or his actions. often they lacked a proper understanding and they were asking, you know, give us more enlightenment. We don’t understand what you’re doing or we don’t understand the teaching. For instance, they asked Jesus to explain the parable of the tears in the field in Matthew 13 13 and the parable of the uprooted plants in Matthew 15. They asked why they could not cast out a particular troublesome demon in Matthew 17. And they also asked, how often shall my brother sin against me and I feel. forgive him in chapter 18 of Matthew. Jesus has never rebuked them for asking these questions. He explained very carefully in such a way that he answered their questions. The same manner, you notice that Paul answers questions that evidently were raised by the Corinthian Church, because when he writes, he talks about the letter they had sent. And perhaps having you do with veils, with the head covering, with marriage and divorce, with meat sacrifice, the idols, and so forth, he seems to be addressing these questions that have been raised by the church. So the apostle don’t consider those things, foolish questions. He addresses each one. Solomon noted that the simple, believe every word. Proverbs 1450. And therefore indicates that there are some wise inquiries that are edifying. and certainly beneficial. We ought to be careful about what we hear taught that we fully understand it. And so there’s no problem with asking questions. It’s the simple person who doesn’t, you know, have any understanding, and he just doesn’t pay, he just believes everything anybody told him. There’s nothing wrong with asking questions to the property understand and can truly believe what is being taught. So there are many necessary questions. Here we’re dealing with frivolous and foolish questions. There are unnecessary questions which are frivolous, which are of no importance, no value for edification. Some questions are useless because they really don’t benefit you spiritually and end up leading you to idle speculation about things which God has not revealed. In ancient times, there was much disputing about the order of angels and the heavenly high. hierarchy when the people of God arrive in heaven. Evidently, you know, whether a seraphim is higher than a cherubim is of importance to some people. The scriptures don’t really tell us, and therefore, why speculate about it? How many levels, you know, I rank above my fellow believer in heaven based upon my fine religious works is a vital inquiry for some people. and let’s spend ours discussing that. But truly, is this really important? We ought to be all thankful there. In our day, many are consumed with prophecy. It seems speculating about all the small details about revelation is more important than maintaining good works. Even though if you read the book, it talks about those who were faithful to Christ maintaining good works and keeping the commandments. in chapter 11 and 17, for example. Have you ever met someone whose main concern was about drawing charts about, you know, Christ’s second coming? And they got the year and the month etched in stone. Of course, they’re spiritually minded people. They wouldn’t dare put the date down, but they got the month and year all figured out for you. This, despite the fact that God has not revealed these matters. You know, God, hasn’t told us some things. Such people are the kind of people that come to you and asked you with the thinking that they know, do you understand the meaning of the seven thunders in Revelation chapter 10? They seem to know more than the Apostle John knows. At least he heard them. I mean, you and I haven’t heard them, and he was told not to write them down. So we don’t have the information about those thunders. But somehow or other they end up being the papal bulls denouncing Luther in the Reformation or something of that nature. Now, their children may be unruly monsters, but they can dumbfound you with these types of questions. Professing themselves to be wise, they’re really showing themselves to be fools. Of course, there’s also the worldling who inquires how many angels can fit on the head of a pin, or if God can make a boulder so big that he can’t lift it. These kind of foolish questions are often raised. A life of godliness is better in understanding any kind of these mysteries. Unprofitable questions concerning pin-hands and angels should be ignored. So you should realize the elders are to avoid foolish questions. You should realize elders are to avoid the extolling of genealism. He talks here about genealogies in this text. Now, again, I have to preface this by saying the scriptural genealogies are important. If they weren’t important, they wouldn’t be in the Word of God. Care has to be taken that there’s no misunderstanding here. Paul is not speaking about a careful study of an inquiry into the various genealogies found in scripture. The Holy Spirit has seen fit to provide numerous, detailed family trees in the Word of God. If you ever read First Chronicles, the first like 12 chapters, are all names. Genologies. All scripture is profitable. All scripture, therefore, is for use to the edifying of one another as believers. and so we should look at it from that point of view. Questions about how the genealogies of Christ in Matthew and Luke are to be coincided. That’s another important question. We should consider that’s proper and useful to reconcile those things. It should be noted that the Jews were required by God to keep track both public and private records. if you would, of their tribes and their families, according to the commandment of God. You find Paul himself talking about his family line, he could trace it to the tribe of Benjamin. Certainly, Philippians 3 indicates that. It was vital that Christ line be traced to the tribe of Judah because he is supposed to be of the royal line of David and that it’s traced to Abraham because he is the seed of Abraham. So when you read Matthew chapter 1 and you have the list of all those names, that’s what that’s what it’s about. It’s about Christ. So the biblical genealogies testify to the truthfulness of God’s word. For example, Rebecca was promised that there were two nations in her womb and that the elder would serve the younger. So the genealogy of both the children, Jacob and Esau, are provided. You might say, well, who cares about the Dukes of Edom? Yes, but it shows you that God did make a great nation out of Esau. And they had these dukes and kings and so forth that ruled. The Davidic covenant promised that the Messiah would come through King David. And so we have to have that proof. Now, it’s interesting, Matthew’s Gospel, provides the genealogy that shows truly that he came through David’s line. Interestingly enough, as we shall see in Luke’s Gospel, it’s traced all way back to Adam. You say, wow, that’s pretty amazing. Yes, but what was promised in Adam in Genesis 315, that the seat of the woman would come. So that goes back to the promise showing God keeping his word. In short, these genealogies may be profitably studied and evaluated because they’re part of the Word of God. So scriptural genealogies are fine. They’re important. Pride of family lineage, however, is condemned. God doesn’t forbid the tracing your family tree. Alex Haley, his book, Roots. I remember when it came out, there was a craze over genealogy. And even today, you’ll find that there are Internet sites that cater to tracing your family trees and so forth. It may be necessary to keep a family record for legal purposes to preserve the rights of property or land or something of this nature. Royalty, no doubt, has to do so. We know it was on the kingly line in England or something of that nature. However, what is condemned, I think, is the recounting of value. your pedigree for the purpose of pride and worldly prestige. This was a great sin among the Jews. Yet we should recognize that since the coming of Christ, all distinctions among the families of the earth and religion have come to an end. They’ve been abrogated. The Jews out of pride, you can imagine them going around and extolling their family tree. Well, I’m from the line of David. Or I am from the line of David. one of the high priests of Israel. John the Baptist, you recall, rebuke the scribes and the Pharisees and the Sadducees and Sadducees for relying upon their lineage. In Matthew 3.9, think not to say within yourselves, we have Abraham to our father, where I say unto you that God is able of these stones that raise up children unto Abraham. Don’t be relying on your physical descent from Abraham. Paul. after declaring all he could boast about, including his descent from the stock of Israel and the tribe of Benjamin, said, what he once took pride in, he now counts as done. I think that in Philippians 3, I think that’s important. That he’s saying, you know, I once thought this was really vital and important, but now I look back on it, and I see what is important as Christ, not my lineage. so forth. Could you imagine a professing early Christian among the Jews saying, I’m from the royal line of Judah, you’re from that lowly line of Asher? I’m better than you. Can you imagine that kind of thinking? Would you imagine Christ would tolerate that kind of thinking? This is not as likely to happen today, but it’s still possible. Suppose I came to church and said, you know, I’m a direct descendant of Jonathan Edwards. I’d probably be told I would, well, should preach like them then. Or you could say, you know, my family, mine, we’ve had elders every, you know, generation for, you know, 10 generations or something. Or maybe, you know, I can trace my genealogy back to Charles Spurgeon or John Owen or Thomas Goodwin or something of this nature. We could end up like the disciples debating among ourselves and arguing about who’s the greatest. based solely on bloodline. This is fruitless. This is non-edifying. This is the puffing up of the spirit of a man. You know, the strangest church built sanctuary in the world is really found in the granite mountains in the record vault there, 18 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. It was built by the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints, whom we would call the Mormons. To provide safe storage, For genealogical records from all parts of the world, this huge building consists of a central corridor that penetrates 650 miles into the mountain. Why is there such an elaborate storage facility for keeping records? Well, the Mormons believe in baptism for the dead, and thus they care for. keep extensive geological records. Genealogical records. Since they believe that baptism is essential for salvation, you can be baptized for an ancestor, therefore guarantee their place in heaven. I’ve read about one woman among the Mormons. I think she was baptized 300 some times because she was busy saving people by these baptisms. Thus, there’s great importance to place. upon the study and preservation of family trees, this kind of thing would certainly be condemned by the Apostle Paul. If you look at John 1, verse 12 and 13, I think this is what we should understand with regard to the bloodlines and genealogies. Here’s what scripture says, but as many has received him, Jesus Christ, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name, which were born, here we’re talking about a spiritual birth, not of blood, nor of the will of flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. What is important is not bloodlines here. It’s not of blood. This is not important in this case. Salvation has nothing to do with your ancestors for all that you, Children of God by what? Faith in Jesus Christ. So don’t think to yourself, well, my father and mother are believers, therefore I will also be accepted by God. You can’t rely on your genealogy. Now, you may have a beneficial line of ancestors who have followed the Lord and they were godly, and that’s a wonderful heritage to have, and a beneficial to your soul to have that. But that in and of itself is not what you’re to be relying upon. And so you should realize elders are to avoid the extolling of genealogies. Third thing here is this. You should realize elders are to avoid contentions and strivings about the law. Now, improper interpretation of the law, I think is very important. Again, the apostle here is not denouncing those. who would contend for what the law is teaching, a proper teaching of the law, rightly dividing the word of truth. Remember how much time Jesus spent in the sermon of the Mount explaining the Ten Commandments, how he explains several of them and gave the meaning of them. He had to do so because of the false interpretation. that was given to them by the Jews. He would say, you have heard it said, this is what you’ve been taught, but I say unto you, this is what that really means. This is what the scripture actually is teaching. Remember, they restricted murder and adultery to just physical acts, ignoring the spirit of God’s law which dealt with the state of the heart. When the Pharisees wrongly interpret, in the Lord’s law or concerning divorce from what they read in Deuteronomy 24, our Lord corrected them in Matthew chapter 19. He declared there must be a proper scriptural reason for divorce, and he said that you cannot divorce just for any reason. A man cannot put away his wife for every cause. Just right or out of bill of divorcement and as if that was the solution to the problem. As Paul told Timothy, we know the law is good if one uses it lawfully in a proper way. If one makes a lawful use of it, a proper explanation of it, is certainly vital. We might say preaching is an excellent thing if one exegetes the word of God properly. Obviously, not all preaching is sound preaching. or even useful and edifying. Thus, not all uses of the law are beneficial to you. The law must be used lawfully. Of course, we see then that good things, as good as the law is, it can be wrongfully used and become problematic in that sense. So proper interpretation of the law is important. But absurd contraverisies, associated with the law are forbidden. Now, here we have to think about the Jews at this time and all the strange uses they had with regard to the law of God. All the things they added making the law supposedly teach this, that, and the other. And often they buried the true meaning of the law under a whole heavy load of their own traditions regarding the law. For instance, they undermine the Fifth Commandment. Honor thy father and thy mother by allowing a person not to provide for his parents when they grew older if they gave the money to the church or in this case to the temple. And then you don’t have to obey that law. Jesus said you’re undoing the law. You are making the word of God of none effect by your traditions. He condemned him for it. in Mark 7. The Jews also permitted a person to swear deceitfully. If you promised by an oath, solemnly swearing by the temple, it wasn’t binding on you as long as you didn’t swear by the gold of the temple. So if you didn’t keep your word, then you weren’t really burdened by that oath. I always liken it to little kids holding their finger behind their backs on the cross. behind your back while they’re telling you something. It doesn’t count because I held my figure. That’s what they’re doing. So they could bear false witness and you can do it all the time as long as you knew how to do it. Make it look sound like you’re telling, you know, taking an oath, but really they were faking it. Now Jesus said that whosoever swears by the temple sweareth by it and by him that dwell if they’re in. In other words, God’s going to hold you accountable, regardless. of how you think it’s going to be. Certainly those striving to bring back the observance of the Jewish ceremonies in Paul’s Day, the Judaizers, the special days, the food restrictions and clothing restrictions and circumcision for all Christians, as though Christ had not come with a worthless contention with regard to the law of God. It should be noted that the Jews often drew strange allegation. orical teachings from the law. They would find hidden messages behind all kinds of things. For example, in Zechari 9-1, you read the word the burden of the word of the Lord in the land of Hadrach. Now, it seems like it’s simple enough. A message of God comes to the prophet in the land of Hadrach, which was a Syrian city. However, the Jewish rabbis drew the conclusion that Hadrach was really a word for the Messiah. And then they broke the word into two parts. Sharp, one went sharp, and the other word meant tender. And so they say, when this Messiah comes, he will be sharp with the Gentiles. He will be tender with the Jews. And they built this whole teaching from this little phrase in the book of Zechariah. This led to the belief that when the Messiah came, it was going to be doom for the Gentiles. Remember how Jesus had to counter this kind of thinking in John 3 when he dealt with Nicodemus. This is why Jesus taught about God so loving the world. He’s specifically referencing the Gentiles there. That he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever, whether they be Jew or Gentile, believeth in him, should not perish, but have everlasting life. That is the teaching. Today there are those who, by their traditions make the word of God of none a fact. We could talk about the Roman Catholic Church. We could talk about the worship of idols. Forbidden by the law, but of course they try to scoot around that. Mary is the mediator. The last rights and so forth. These Catholic teachings were told stand on an equal basis with the scripture. You ever heard of the Bible code? If there are a secret messages contained in the actual words of Scripture, hidden messages that have to be decoded. For example, the number of letters in a word may provide a clue, or they will take a passage of Scripture and read every seventh word and separate that word out and see if it says something. And they, as if there was some type of prophetic meaning in this. So the words of script. scripture are really reduced to a cipher. And the secret message becomes all important. Not what God actually says to us, but, you know, there must be something secret and hidden behind all this. So if my Bible code interpretation on a passage differs from yours, we could enter in a contention about it. We could have a hot dispute about it, and what would Paul say, this is unprofitable? This is foolishness. Let me close tonight by saying this. Friends, you realize that Satan wishes to corrupt the purity of God’s doctrine, and therefore he likes to stir up controversy and trouble about foolish and vain things, so that that occupies your time and attention. Satan is a malicious man who is ever sowing tears in God’s field. If he can’t extinguish the light of the truth, he sows confusion. Does it really matter what God did before he created the world? We’re not told. Is it important to know exactly where Moses is buried? Is Satan can get believers hotly contending like the Pharisees over such mundane things as the washing of pots and beds rather than the actual keeping of the commandments of God, then he wins. If he can keep God’s ministers busy addressing such nonsense, then they will be like Nehemiah tried to build a wall with one hand. The other hand, you have to have the sword fighting. So we end up battling with one and trying to build with the other. It slows down the work. You shouldn’t desire the elders to copy the latest religious fad that’s out there when it comes to interpreting the scriptures like the Bible code. You know, it might sell books. People get all excited about these things, but in a long run it’s all foolish It’s all a waste of time. It is a twisting of the scriptures. We must concern ourselves with what is profitable, what is edifying to the body of Christ. The secret things belong solely to the Lord. If he wanted us to know what the seven thunders were, he would have told us what they were. The Christian must concern himself then with what God has told us. The real danger in the latest religious fad is that people begin to school the simplicity of the gospel of Christ because they think that there’s something deeper and richer and fuller and more revealing prophetic in the word. If I could just get the words, which words, if it’s a fifth word, instead of the seventh, every fifth word, Satan had you searching from some secret message and you miss the plain teaching that he’s already given you. So if you get caught up in the mysteries of numerology and alleged in allegorical interpretations of every aspect to the word of God, even the things that aren’t prophetic, all it does is create pride, contentions, and not godly living. Don’t be like the men in the Ambassador Hotel in New York who trudged up all those steps and got to their bedroom and didn’t have the key. It was useless and a profitable endeavor. Avoid spiritual wild goose chases. I think that’s what Paul would have us do. as his people. Let us close.