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October 23, 2022
The Purpose Of Truth
Titus 1:10-16

• Title: The Purpose Of Truth
• Satan had false teachers ready to go for the early Church as today. The wheat and the weeds are in the same fields continually. The damage the false teachers have inflicted on the Church is incalculable ¶ There were many Christians too who were the sources of false teaching in the first century. People come out of all types of belief systems and they bring with them the twisted and often outlandish views of God, grace, and righteousness. ¶ Jewish legalism was an ongoing issue in the early Church and still is to a degree. Some of the first century legalism was due to the carry-over of their ingrained traditions that were culturally a part of their society for 1500 years. ¶ Worse, there were some Jews who continued to see the Christian faith as blasphemous and saw it as their duty to destroy the Church with its Apostles. They, as Paul had mistakenly done before, persecuted and harassed the early Church. ¶ As we look at our passage this morning, we should remind ourselves that we are still reading what Paul instructed Titus to do in Crete and what should be done and taught in the churches. In our passage today, we will see one of the highest of all prioritizes of the Church. If we fail to apply the words from today we too become useless to God. Powerful statement.

In verse 10, Paul gave three descriptive facts about the false teachers in Crete: 10 For there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party.

• Titus receives three labels for some of the teachers for the church:
  • They were not following the Boss’—the Master’s—instructions.
  • Insubordinate = not submitting to Jesus’ teaching and/or apostolic authority.
  • What we are teaching this morning was taught to the Church almost 2000 years ago.
  • We are teaching the things our Lord taught—unapologetically. COMMENT
  • It hasn’t changed nor will it ever. COMMENT
  • To not teach accurately from the Bible is to be insubordinate to God.
  • Empty talkers = what they say is devoid of God’s truth.
  • This speaks to the valuelessness of what they were teaching.
  • This is contrasted to the highest degree to what God has said.
  • Man lives by the words of the Book.
  • Worse of all: deceivers = actively misleading people away from truth.
• There was mostly a specific group of teaching labeled these unflattering things. Who were they?
  • v.10 “especially those of the circumcision party.”
  • Judaism verse the religions of Roman and Greek worlds.
    • The Roman and Greek religions of the day would back us sick as believers.
    • But Judaism = same God | same morality | same Scriptures initially
  • So it was natural that some of the Jews saw Jesus in the right way but took him as the last layer of the their preexisting covenant.
    • 1500 years of tradition as they looked for Messiah.
    • Synchronism >> adding Jesus to Judaism which in many ways had become corrupted and was in dire need of reform.
• But Paul knew Jeremiah 31:31-32, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. COMMENT

Paul demanded, verse 11 They must be silenced, since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach.

• One of the primary responsibilities of an elder is to silence false teaching. Look at 11a again:
  • “They must be silenced” = “to put on the mouth” (i.e. to [bridal (LSJ, et al.)] muzzle, to gag).
  • Morgan said, [quote] “There are forms of evil which demand the surgeon’s knife.” [end quote] False teaching is one of them. [52] (In Constable)
• Why? “upsetting whole families”
  • House churches were the norm in the first century.
  • These teachers were diligent. They went from house to house undermining truth.
  • Faith is shaken easily at times.
  • It can take just one point of false teaching to derail much discipleship.
  • Paul knew of the damaged lives; he had seen it many times.
• Although some were honestly consuded teachers, some were outright charlatans. Look at verse 11, “shameful gain.”
  • Those messages “paid those bills.”
  • How much Christian ministry has been initiated solely for the American dollar today?

12 One of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said, “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.”¹ COMMENT

• Paul quoted other secular writers too (Acts 17:28 and 1 Corinthians 15:33).
• But “What an indictment!” (Wiersbe, 2:790)
• “These men were not just “beasts,” but “evil beasts”; they were not just “gluttons,” but “lazy gluttons.” … They “lived it up” at the expense of their followers, and (true to human nature), their followers loved it!” (Wiersbe, 2:790)
• Barclay took note that, “So notorious were the Cretans that the Greeks actually formed a verb kretizein, to Cretize, which meant to lie and to cheat …”[60] (Barclay in Constable)
• Here we see the power of culture to influence an entire society for generations.
• The church at Crete was fighting an uphill battle, and they were loosing.

13 This testimony is true. Therefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith,

• When Paul wrote to Timothy he instructed him to counsel in Ephesus with meekness. But here he instructed Titus to rebuke sharply. [61] (Henry in Constable)
  • Rebuke them sharply (good) = severely and also abruptly (Thayer). This false teaching was to be interrupted! Don’t let it go on Titus! Go to work.
  • Purpose = “that they may be sound in the faith”
    • At least some of the false teachers were believers! In fact the focus is on those believers who should have not been teaching but should have been sat down.
    • We get this from the phrase at the end of 13, “may be sound in the faith.”
    • They were to be silenced for their own good as much as for the listeners of their teaching.
    • All Christian correction is to maintain right relationships or facilitate restoration of the same; to restore right thinking and the right living that goes with it.









Note

¹ “The Cretan poet that Paul quoted was Epimenides, who lived in the sixth century B.C., and was regarded by his contemporaries as a prophet, a great religious reformer, and a predicter, as well as a poet.”[57] (Lock, p. 134 in Constable)

Bibliography and Works Cited

• NOTE: Please click here to access the web-page for all of the works cited—save those above in “Note(s)” (if any) and those below under the “Other Works Cited” (if any). Most of the works cited on the web-page correspond to the verses they are outlined with. In the case of background information and other general reference citations, one will find cited material with the Bible books the citations are associated with.
• Scripture quotations [unless otherwise noted] are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.