Pastor Aaron Prelock preaches on Titus 1:10-16.
Bloomington Bible Church Sermons
Titus 1:10-16
Turn in your Bibles to Titus chapter 1. Titus chapter 1 verses 10 to 19, we're going to get right to it. Titus chapter 1 verses 10 to 19, do you want to know what makes a bad church member? What makes a bad church member? Well, listen up this week and you'll find out. Titus chapter 1 verses 10 to 19. For there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party. They must be silenced since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain with a ought not to teach. One of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said, "Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons. This testimony is true. Therefore rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in the faith, not devoting themselves to Jewish myths and the commands of people who turn away from the truth. To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but both their minds and their consciences are defiled. They profess to know God, but they deny Him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work." Let's pray. If Father help us to submit ourselves to Your Word this day, Father, help us to believe that You are not just speaking to the ancient people of Crete, but help us to believe You're speaking to us. If Father, You know our hearts, we've already prayed and confessed You know our secret sins. You know the desires that we cherish that just please You, Father, forgive us for these things. And help us today to see what Christian godliness looks like. To see the warnings and to assume they apply to us, to live for the encouragement that You give us. Father, help us to love Your Word today as we see it, split aside our hearts and lay bare the sins in our souls. Father, may we love Your Word and may we submit to it and may we be transformed by it. We pray this in Jesus' name, Amen. Two warnings and one encouragement from this passage. Two warnings, one encouragement. The first warning, what marks a bad church member? First warning, division. And look at verses 10 and 11. Paul here explains in verses 10 to 11 verses really the whole 10 to 16. Why verses 5 to 9 are so important. Why do we need elders? Why do we need certain sorts of elders? What needs to be put in order? Well, here in verses 10 to 16, we get just a little bit of what needs to be put in order. We'll see more in a couple weeks, but the beginning of verse 10 for, in other words, this is why verses 5 to 9 are necessary. We need godly leadership, biblically qualified men to lead the church. We need godly leadership because, well, there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party. There are those who would seek to divide us. Now verses 10 and 11 refers to people outside the church. It's clear that Paul is talking about not those who are members of this church, not good Christians, but those who at best misunderstand the gospel message and apply things to it that don't need to be applied to it, who add things onto it, that don't need it to be added onto it, and at worst, those who are false teachers, those who are teaching unless you become Jewish, you cannot become a Christian, unless you're willing to undergo circumcision, unless you're willing to follow the Mosaic law, you cannot be a Christian. You can read about this in Acts and in Galatians. This is a constant problem for the New Testament church. Because 10 and 11, Paul is talking about outside influences, not the church on Crete itself, but those who are of the circumcision party, Judaizers, they may not be ethnically Jewish. They may just be people who have submitted to circumcision and to the Mosaic law and who are now zealous to bring others along with them. What does Paul say about them, verse 11, "They must be silenced." Not something we mess about with. Division is not something we take lightly. There is a sense in which good elders should have a godly impatience with division, because division is absolutely poisonous to local church order. Division ruins churches, brothers and sisters, those of you who've been a part of this church for a long time, will know that you've lived through a number of different types of division, division from above, division from within, and you've seen this. How many of us can say we have lost friendships over division in the church? It can be encouraging that Paul is writing to this some 2,000 years ago, because we remember there are always people trying to influence the church. This is not a new problem. This is not just a today problem. This is not a social media problem. This is not a modern problem. This is a human problem. This is a local church problem. There are always influences outside the church, trying to speak into the church, trying to draw people away from the true church, or trying to transform the true church into something that it should not be. Sometimes these people do so because they're insubordinate, they're rebellious. They don't submit to any authority themselves, and they constantly try to help those who do reject the authority over them. Sometimes, it's just because they like to talk. My word. There's so many voices in the church, people who just like to talk. They're those who are deceitful, and who seek to deceive others. They want to draw away others after themselves, and they don't care how they do it. They're willing to lie or shade the truth. They're always voices trying to pull us away from true Christianity. How many videos or podcasts or reels have we seen where someone says, "You know this Bible verse that you've always heard this way?" Well, let me tell you how it actually is to be understood. Let me tell you what this actually means. And while it's certainly true that there are times we get the Bible wrong. We get Christianity. We get the local church wrong. We're proud to be reformed. We're proud to be Protestant. Well, that's a reminder that sometimes the church, even on mass, can get things wrong. At the same time, when someone says, "You've always thought this, it's actually this." Little warning should go off in our head. That's occasionally true, but most of the time, it's not. There are always people trying to influence the church, and what are they doing this for? Why are they doing this? Paul tells us in verse 11, "At root value, at base value, once you dig beneath the rhetoric, once you get behind the curtain, why are they doing this?" For shameful gain, for money, for influence, for themselves. They're not actually trying to help the church. They're trying to profit off the church. My brothers and sisters, remember this, false teachers are parasites. They can't build anything new. They can't establish anything themselves. All they do is leech off of the true church and suck the life out of godly congregations. This again, is why last week we saw, the last couple of weeks, why we saw the importance of character. Totally character and godly doctrine go together. If you're going to listen to a voice, you need to make sure that you're listening to a voice that's godly, not just in theology, but also in character. Look at lifestyle to validate theology. Look at theology to validate lifestyle. They go together. False teachers, those who divide the church, and Paul's not particularly careful to distinguish the two of them, not all of the circumcision party were full on false teachers. There was a bit of a spectrum, but it went from bad influence to full on false teaching. They divide the church. They upset whole families. Families get caught up in this. Haven't we seen that? A husband gets a bug for some idea, runs after it, and the wife's like, "What's going on? I'm glad you're happy with this idea, but wait for us to catch up, or is this actually helpful? Is this actually biblical?" A wife or a mother gets caught up in a certain fad and woe to the husband who seeks to say, "I actually don't think this is right." We've seen this, haven't we? Whole families are upset because of these divisions. That's the result of division, the ruin of whole households, the upsetting of whole families. It doesn't just stay in a family unit. It spreads. Division and false teaching is like a cancer. It spreads throughout the whole body. The brothers and sisters, we know this, we've seen this, but do we think about this much? Divisions are no less common today, in our day, perhaps even in our church. I wonder what divisions exist here in BBC. Some divisions do not rise to the level of divisiveness. There's just differences of personality, differences of taste. That's okay, but division rises quickly. It gets exaggerated. What divisions exist here in BBC? Well, there's differences in how we look at sport, how we think about athletics. Some are very sporty, some are very athletic. Three gents who are walking a bit gingerly today because of an athletic competition yesterday. Nobody won, who's disappointing, but they ran, they competed better than I did. And some aren't. Some of you are really sporty, you're really athletic. Some of us are not. I am terrible with a baseball. I'm going to throw a football reasonably well, not too far, but I'm going to make it go round and round with the right way. Golf, awful, absolutely terrible. Golf doesn't count as a sport though. Soccer, okay, soccer, I can run, I'm not terribly fast, I run like a tree. I could have played rugby, but we didn't have rugby when I was a kid. There's other sorts of division, food, politics, schooling, personal finances, use of technology or pop culture with your kids. Some of these things we need to grow in and some of them they're conscience issues and some of them there should just be space for disagreement, for disagreeing kindly and graciously. It might be a place for saying, "My family will do this and your family will do that and that's okay." Some of these are just differences in how we're wired, who we are naturally, that's okay. Some of these are just personal choices, personal tastes, but brothers and sisters, when these things rise to the level of division within the church, then we have to be on high alert. Then we have to be much more careful. We all recognize, don't we, that these are the sorts of things that divide churches. How many of us had loads of great fun during COVID, over all things division based, dividing over every aspect of how to respond to COVID. And how we think about sports, medicine, politics, finances, schooling, technology, all of these things, churches divide over these things, families in the churches divide over these things. I wonder if there are divisions here under the surface. Brothers and sisters, let me urge you, avoid bandwagons, avoid the temptation to just go along with the herd. Avoid the temptation to follow people who are like you, who talk the way you talk, who like the same things you like, who spend time the way you do, people that you naturally just click with. I'm not saying it's bad to have friends, but avoid the temptation to isolate yourself around people just like you. In politics, we call this an echo chamber, but isn't this true of life? We like people around us who say the same things we say. We like people who encourage us to feel cool, like we have some sort of special insight because we follow along in this particular trend. Brothers and sisters, avoid bandwagons. There are so many trends that are just that, they're trends. They're here for a few years and then they're gone. It's good for us to remember. You know, we don't need people just like us around us, but a pastor for some 15 years and I see this constantly, people are like there's no one like me in the church and every time someone says that, I haven't had the courage yet to say it directly, at least on the first encounter, but every time someone says there's no one like me here in the church, I have to fight the urge to say yeah, and that's a good thing, right? Because if there were two of you, well, I don't know if we can handle that. And that's true for most of us, isn't it? It's true for me, you don't want two of me, trust me, one of me is plenty. I think for most of us, that's probably true and even if there are other people around you that are like you, the whole congregation doesn't need to be like you. Have you ever been to a church where everyone looks the same? All the women dress the same? All the men have the same haircuts? Telling you, they're still there, it's weird. We were being in a church a number of years ago, not here, a church where people were there from all over the world, it was a multi-ethnic congregation, but it was monocultural. People were from all different nations around the world, but they all looked and sounded and thought exactly the same. Brothers and sisters, that is so unhealthy. That is so dangerous. We don't need people around us who think just like you and I do. We need people around us who are different. This is what the early church was. Look back at the early chapters of Acts, brothers and sisters from all over the world. The big difference was Jew Gentile. Man, that was such a massive systemic difference of culture. As you look throughout the New Testament, that's the big one. Differences in socioeconomic status, those who are wealthy landowners, who had large enough homes that a congregation this size could meet in their homes and slaves, those who literally did not have autonomy over their own bodies, who belonged to someone else. Differences of ethnicity, differences of culture, differences of class. We don't need people who are just like us around us. So often division comes from people trying to make everyone else think the way I think. We have to fight that. Let me urge you, brothers and sisters, talk to people you disagree with. Spend time with people you disagree with. Don't be afraid of disagreeing. Don't be afraid of people disagreeing with you. In fact, that's probably more of the point. Don't be afraid of people disagreeing with you. Some of us maybe are a little too ready to disagree with one another. But it's good for us to spend time with people who have different views, to listen to different perspectives on the world. This is also true in politics. I'm amazed at how much division there is in politics. It seems like it's gotten nasty. I say I'm amazed. It is amazing how much it is, but I can't think of a time in my lifetime where politics was that much nicer. Back in the '90s, I remember Rush Limbaugh during the Clinton eras, it wasn't like everything was so civil and kind back then either, but man, things are so complicated and so aggressive. We'll come to that in a minute. Let me urge you as well, as far as this point on division, what makes a bad church member while division or divisiveness, let me urge you, fight the inner circle mentality. There's this temptation that if I listen to this voice and this voice says something that's unique to this person or this church or this influence or this theological perspective, that we get drawn into this inner circle like a not as creepy Illuminati. We have some sort of secret insight that everyone else lacks. That mindset, again, is absolutely poisonous for church unity. A variation of this is there's the cool kids. When every church has the cool kids, those who are either in influence or they're the ones that they have to be on board with a church program. As a kid, I was never cool, that is shocking to you, I'm sure. I was never cool as a kid. Some of that was my family more than enough of it was me, but it helped me as a kid to be aware that there is this thing called cool. It seemed kind of arbitrary as a kid, didn't get it, it was based on the shoes you wore and it changed this year to next year, I remember being frustrated. I finally got a pair of shoes that last year were cool and I was so excited and nobody cared this year. Come on, finally, I think it was the light up shoes, LA lights was the cool ones. We didn't get LA lights. We got the shoe carnival version. I thought it was cool and nobody else did. I remember making a conscious decision because I was terrible at basketball and I got made fun of for trying to make layups. I was left-handed. Nobody could show me how to do a left-handed layup. I remember thinking fine, if that's cool, I'm not going to be cool. Man that can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. But it was useful to recognize there is this inner circle. There are people who are cool. And if that's who you are naturally, you just ooze coolness, great. But I think most of us, that's what we want to be. We want to be in the inner circle. We want to be people, other people want to be like. If you're talking godly character, great. If you're talking a loving and gracious Christian that other people naturally gravitate towards because you were a benefit and a blessing to others, great, but so often in the church, whether we're talking lifestyle, theology, or even personality. So often what's cool, it's also often divisive. Watch that, brothers and sisters, fight the temptation just to follow what's cool, to want to be like what's cool, fight the inner circle, mentality. My way of application, let me urge you, spend time with people in this congregation who are different to you, different life stage, different perspective, different background. There are going to be people we naturally gravitate towards. That's okay. We don't all have to be besties with everyone else in the church. Kind of weird if that was the case anyway. But it's not going to happen. Make sure you spend time with people who are different. Make sure you spend time with people in the church that you don't get along with. Make sure you spend time with people in the church who think different to you. People who rub you the wrong way rather than withdrawing. Go closer. Lean in. I don't say that because I know of any sort of massive difference. I noticed that the men's thing, they're the guys who played spike ball and the guys who sat on the porch. I don't think that's particularly nasty and that's okay in so far as it goes. Let's not let that get too far. Women, I haven't spent a whole lot of time at women's things. I don't know what the divisions are among the women, but know that in time seeing women, women divide over things now and then. Fashion, parenting, style, how you do motherhood, how you do work, anything. Men and women, all of us, let's fight division and fight the temptation to use influences from the outside to divide us from within. Second mark of a bad church member. Second mark of a bad church member. Disruption. Disruption. Now to be honest, division and disruption really aren't that different, but Paul's point in verses 10 to 11 is fight the division that comes from outside versus 12 to 14. Watch out for the division or the disruption that comes from within. Disruption focuses on us. We're not so much worried about big, false teachers out there or worldly influences out there. We are talking about the disruption that comes from within, from within the body. Paul begins by saying, "One of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said, 'Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.'" You know what's funny about this quote? This quote is some 600 years old by the time Paul pulls it out. Another one, this one has had time to age and mellow. It's six centuries old and Paul is still saying, "Yup, this is all of you." Can you imagine reading that by the way? Paul reads this letter or Titus reads this letter to the churches and Cretan says, "Watch you to hear this." Paul says, "You're always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons. This is true. Stop it." This has been true of the Cretans for 600 years. You could imagine that by this point, the Cretans could say, "Hey, this is just who we are." What's the song? I was born this way. Well, 600 years, yeah, I think you can say that. How many of us have aspects of our character that we would say, "Look, this is just how I was raised or this is just who I am. I was born this way." It's true. And yet, and yet, just because it's true does not mean it's an excuse. I wonder, what would Paul say if he visited America? What would he say about us? If he says to those on Cretan's, "Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons," what would he say about us? I think he would notice that despite being unbelievably wealthy, we can tend to be incredibly cynical. Why do we have to be cynical over? We have the greatest prosperity in the history of humanity, and yet we're miserable. I think he would say we are addicted to easy solutions and cheap pleasures. There's a drug for everything, spending 10 years away. We didn't watch a ton of television, but 10 years away from pharmaceutical adverts and then coming back and noticing how many of our advertisements on television or on the newspaper or for pharmaceutical things, oh, my word, that's not healthy. There's a drug for anything and cheap pleasures. Whether it's the use of our phones with things that may be relatively innocent or what we can access that's far from innocent, Americans are addicted to cheap pleasure. We're consumed with anger. Both the right and the left are consumed with anger. Politics is nasty, not just the other side. Both the left and the right are so aggressive, American culture is itself so aggressive. We are consumed with bloodlust. The left is all too willing to riot and set things on fire, and the right is all too willing to talk happily about the prospect of civil war. We are hopeless and helpless in meaningful relationships, and we're literally consuming ourselves to death, killing ourselves by our consumption. In other words, we're not so different from those on Crete. We're lazy. We lie, and we're addicted to our bellies or our pleasures. I think that should encourage us, by the way, not make us complacent. It's not okay. But you hear people talk as if modern Christian society, modern America society, modern Western society is so completely unique. I don't want to make any mistakes about this. There are some things about our society today that are particularly, they're uniquely wicked. They're uniquely depraved. But in one sense, much of our society is just dealing with things that are common to man, lying, evil, animalistic attitudes and actions, laziness and addiction to our pleasures. This is every society. I often find myself rolling my eyes when some people talk about this is such a dark time. Sometimes people who talk about how dark Bloomington is. It's true. There are truths to this. I've seen some of these dark things up close and personal over the years. At the same time, let's not go too far into that. Sometimes I think Christians like to talk about how bad things are to make themselves feel better about themselves. This is such a dark place, it's such a dark time and praise God, I'm so different, I'm so clean. Hell, are you? Really? Paul has a lot to say about people who are stuck in their self-righteousness too. The Crete, America, they're not so different. So we have to recognize that if the Creteans had to be aware of their own natural tendencies, they were born as so do we. The temptation for sin that we have inherited from our childhood, a sin that's resonant in our own souls and who we are, that has to be repented of as well, just as the Creteans had to repent of their sin. What's Paul's solution to this true testimony that they're always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons? Well, rebuke them sharply to be sound in the faith. This is how we know that Paul is talking not just about Crete in culture, but he's talking particularly about the Creteans who are in the church, Crete in church members. They need to be rebuked so they may be sound in the faith. Call them away from their sin. Call them back to godliness. Call them to true Christian character so that they may be sound in the faith. Again, this is the same emphasis that Paul has throughout the whole book of Titus, right living, right believing. They go together being sound in the faith. We think have your doctrine right. Paul's saying it goes right with right living. Brothers and sisters, do we make excuses for our own sin? It's just my personality. It's just my struggle. It's my cross to bear. Do we make excuses for our own sin when other people see it? The way we talk to our spouse, the way we interact with our kids, the way we respond to a difficult situation? Do we recognize there is disruption that bubbles up from within our souls, and even that requires repentance? Notice as well, Paul says in verse 14, he urges that the Crete and Christians not to devote themselves to Jewish myths and the commands of people who turn away from the truth. In other words, false religion doesn't only encourage license. False religion doesn't only encourage you given to what you want to do. False religion also includes extra rules that the Bible doesn't tell you to follow. In other words, false religion always sets aside God's law and puts in place of God's law man's law. So many of the things that we already talked about in the first heading, how we think about sports, medicine, politics, food, schooling, personal finances, use of technology or pop culture, these things, it is so easy for Christians to set aside what God has to say and to put in place what we think. And there are people around us who are so willing to do that. We have to fight that temptation. The brothers and sisters, what's the best way to fight against this temptation? To no scripture, to no God's word inside and out. So we can see, is this man's rule or is this God's rule? Is this something that will help me grow godly character and help me be a blessing to the church? Or is this something that's going to encourage me to be a disruptive influence in the congregation? The best way to fight bad character and bad theology is to spend regular time in God's word and to spend lots and lots of time with God's people. To be around one another so that our character both individually and corporately is a part of the church is shaped by scripture. Two characteristics of bad church members, division and disruption, which brings us to the final mark, not mark the final encouragement, it's not a final encouragement because Paul hasn't been very encouraging thus far, but it's an encouragement to us in light of these two marks of bad church members versus 15 and 16 Paul urges us to have discernment. Yes, I know Professor Klodson, division, disruption and discernment are not strictly speaking parallel, but I couldn't find another word that began with D and that was that or go with a word that was completely different. So back on planet earth, verse 15, Paul urges to the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure. Both their minds and their consciousness are defiled. Rather than this being as is easy to make it, I can do whatever I want because I'm a Christian, I'm holy, therefore whatever indulgent is holy, rather Paul is saying there is a categorical difference between those who are godly, those who are seeking to be pure, and to those who are unbelievers. There's a categorical difference between these two and we have to know what's what? In other words, like Jesus says in Mark chapter 7, it's not what's outside of us that comes into us, he's talking about food in that passage that defiles us, it's not what we eat that defiles us. As we're in Bloomington, we can add it's not our medical choices that defile us as well. It's what's in our hearts, it's our hearts that defile us, not our food. We like to divide over the easy things, but Paul urges us, Jesus urges us, all of scripture urges us, look at what's in the heart, and rather than this being something that makes life easier for us, don't we understand that this actually makes life harder for us. It doesn't just open up things that we can do, it means there's a lot of things that maybe we can do, that if our hearts are wrong, we are defiling. There's a contrast in verse 15, purity and defilement. Do you ever talk with someone who makes everything a dirty joke? Doesn't matter what you say, there's always some filthy comment that comes back. You're like, "Good grief, how did you get there from that?" Since the contrast Paul is talking about, to the pure, they're not making everything obscene, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, everything they touch, they soil. Both their minds and their consciences are defiled. Their minds are constantly looking for ways to twist things and their consciences are seared. They feel no guilt about it. The difference that's held up to us is innocence versus perversity. Not naivete, not cluelessness, but discernment. Being able to know the difference between good and evil, and Paul is holding up in contrast to division and disruption, brothers and sisters, we are to be discerning. We have to pause, we recognize that we are all naturally defiled, don't we? All of us, every one of us. We chose to live in a way that defiles us. We were born into a world that defiles us. We were defiled in our hearts from the very beginning. We were defiled by Adam's sin back, the very beginning of humanity. This is true of all of us, no matter how good we think we were. We were all born steeped in sin, enemies of God. Not only was that how we were born, that's what we chose to live in. That's what we wanted. Our minds and consciences have been defiled. This is true of all of us, and what did Christ come to do? Ephesians 5, 25 to 27, what did Christ come to do to love the church, to give himself for the church, to sanctify the church, to cleanse the church by the washing of the water with the Word, and to present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing that she might be holy and without blemish. I hope we read those verses, and that's something that we want. We want to be clean, but wanting to be clean means recognizing from the first, that we are dirty. Our sin has dirtied us, it has soiled us, it has defiled us, and if you're not a Christian, you need to understand this truth. You are a sinner, and your sin has made you disgusting in God's sight. Sin has taken what we are, made in God's image, and it has twisted us, it has marred us. We have no ability to cleanse ourselves, or to bring ourselves back into beauty and order. But Jesus came to wash filthy sinners, like those who are members of this church. Christianity is not about being a good person, Christianity makes us better people, but at its root level, Christianity urges us to recognize we're not good people. If you're not a Christian, you know this about yourself, you know your desires are twisted and wrong. Maybe nobody else does, but you certainly know that. Let me urge you, if you're not a Christian, recognize that what Scripture says of you is true, and seek cleansing not through your own good works, not through trying to do good things, but seek the cleansing that can only come from Christ, and confessing your sin to Him, being washed by His Spirit. Don't you long for cleansing? Don't you long for renewal? Come to Christ, repent of your sins, and find a purity you could never dream of on your own. Brothers and sisters, are we pure in our thoughts, in our desires, in our interactions with one another? We tend to think purity and we think sexual connotations, and that's true, but it's much, much bigger than that. Are our interactions with one another pure, or are they marred and marked by sin, division, interruption, these defile us as well, brothers and sisters, in our homes, in our interactions, at work, in our fellowship with one another, are we pure? Verse 16 is a warning, especially to church members. They profess to know God, but they deny Him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work. This could easily be us. Joel already referenced this morning, Steve Lawson, and what a surprise that was. What a shock. What a disappointment. You know, it's easy when certain sorts of Christian leaders fall away. It's like, yeah, I could have seen that one coming, but when it seems to be respectable, someone who seems to have a godly legacy, it's all the more shocking, I so appreciate what Joel said in his introduction to the prayer of confession. This is why we need to confess. This is why we need one another. This is why we need one another in our lives, why it's dangerous for us to just retreat in our homes, because then it's so easy to live in hypocrisy. Or perhaps it's not hypocrisy, but just to live by ourselves in isolation. And we need one another in our lives, so that when sin begins to grow, when sin flourishes in our lives, others around us can see and help us. Let me urge you one other area that it's important to exercise discernment, the speaking of Steve Lawson, and how we think about public teachers. Our brothers and sisters, we need discernment in how we think about public teachers. Now I hope you read good books. I like to read. I love reading. I love time in my study, reading. I enjoy it. I find it relaxing. I find it recharging. Some of you are like that. Others of you are like, "Yep. Now we see why you weren't cool." Fair enough. Often I will admit that I enjoy books more than people. Books don't smell funky, and even somehow when they smell musty and old, they're still awesome. I know more weirdness. Books don't talk back, and I can skip over stuff when books are mean to me. But good books are useful for us. We need good books. It's good for us to have what C.S. Lewis called "The Breeze of the Centuries." It's good for us to read old books. It's good for us to read new books, to be challenged, to be helped. I hope you read. Or if you don't read, I hope you listen to sermons from godly preachers or listen to podcasts by godly Christians who help you. It is useful for us to have other influences in our lives than just what, 50 or 100 of us here. Some of these influences can be profoundly helpful. Good grief. Do you want a big view of God, a delight in God's sovereignty, and God's glory being God? I can't think of anyone else better to listen to than John Piper. I can spend the rest of my life trying to preach like that, and I won't. Man, it just, it loses out of him delight in God's character. Do you want a high view of the local church? Do you want to see why all the nitty gritty of local church theology matters and is for your good, the nine marks gang? Man, they're fantastic at diving into the tiny corners of ecclesiology. Why do all these things matter? Even people who don't agree with their ecclesiology are going to find it helpful that they clearly love the church. If you want practical application, particularly of the Old Testament to Christian character, find an older dispensational preacher, there's so many aspects of Christian life that it's helpful for us to get other input into our lives from. We can admit that these various groups are not great on everything, and so it's good for us to have a balanced diet. I hope you read books. I hope you listen to sermons by other preachers. I hope you use free time or commutes or quiet moments to get good input into your life, but I hope you're discerning about it, because remember what I said earlier, it's easy for Christians to jump on a bandwagon, a popular preacher, a book, a podcast. It's so easy to jump into something as if this is what makes us Christian. This is what will fix our problems, and I've got so many books on my shelves that are now faded that were the in thing when they came out. Nobody talks about now. One example was a good book insofar as it went, but anyone read radical? He talks about radical now. Book after book, pastor after pastor, and if you get sucked into a bandwagon, what are you going to do when that pastor falls? Pastors will fall. Pastors will fail you. Your pastors and elders here, we will fail you. I pray to God we don't fall, but we will fail you. If you're taking in anything without discernment, you're just ripe for disillusionment, you're ripe for division and disruption. Let me urge you, brothers and sisters, consume widely, but consume healthy spiritual input from a wide range of sources, but do so with discernment. One of my favorite questions from a church member is what do you think about such and such, a person? Not because my input is necessarily what matters most, but it's a sign someone's thinking and aware that this could be good for me, and I think this is helpful, but maybe there's more going on. Can I urge you, brothers and sisters, trust your elders, love your elders, follow your elders more than you follow the superstars of Christianity? They're kind of in a leadership vacuum in American Christianity. The old alliances have broken down. The big public figures have either been toppled or they're getting old and dying, not a ton of rising stars at the moment. Let me urge you, use this time, love your church. Look the five of us elders, we do not have all that you need for your spiritual growth. You need God's word and God himself. We're here to help you, but I'm not at all threatened by you listening to other influences, but let me urge you, remember this, those big preachers or writers, they don't know you because they don't know you, they don't love you. And they certainly don't look after your souls, but we do. Your elders know you. Knowing you, we love you and we look after your souls, that should matter to you. Love your elders and trust them and follow them insofar as they follow Christ rather than going after the superstars of American Christianity. One final application, this call to discernment is a reminder to deal gently with one another. If we're talking about discernment, we're going to disagree. We're not going to hold the same perspectives and everything. Deal gently with one another. Yes, Paul says rebuke, there's an importance to rebuke. There is a time when false teachers need to be silenced, but into interactions with one another is a family. Let us be gentle with one another. Let us be patient and tender with one another. Let us be slow to judge harshly. We've all got it wrong in the past, okay? You can all look at our bookshelves and see books or influences or our favorite preacher. We all got it wrong in the past. Look, I used to love Rob Bell, okay? I can admit that. I was nearly going emergent. I was talking to someone yesterday. That photo of me with long hair is not the worst photo that's out there back from my emergent phase. Thank God he protected me from that. We've all got it wrong in the past. We've all discerned poorly. Let's be gracious with one another as we seek to live in unity as a congregation. But if we watch out for division from outside and we fight against the disruption of sin inside and if we grow in our ability to be discerning and to understand the difference between right and wrong, well, then brothers and sisters, we're a good way towards being a church that is biblically in order. Public leadership, right doctrine and right living, isn't this what Paul told Titus to do? Put what remained into order. May God help these things be true in us. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for how your word addresses us in such a timely manner. We see characterizations of ourselves in this passage. Father, thank you for that. Help us to be humble. Help us not to chafe against how we see ourselves portrayed in your word. And Father, help us to grow. May we grow in unity, in repentance and discernment. We pray this in Jesus' name, Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]