Sermon 58
Sermon by John Metcalfe at Wonersh 7th
January 2007
Titus 1 –
Authority and Effectiveness
As we sit, let’s pray…
"Lord, we ask you to open our hearts to your
Word, so that we might each know what you want of us. Amen"
Good evening. Let’s start by getting one thing straight
from our reading, Ian assures me that he has only one wife, and Jane confirms
this! We’re starting a new series of 3
sermons on Paul’s letter to Titus. Titus
was one of Paul’s protégés, and we can read a lot about him in Paul’s 2nd
letter to the Corinthians. But if you
turn to page 1198, you’ll see that verse 1 tells us who this letter is from,
verse 4 tells us who it’s written to, and verse 5 tells us that Titus is in
Paul and Titus had gone to
the
One was the ‘internal
challenge’ of staying faithful to the gospel. Have a look at v10: “For there are many rebellious people, mere
talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision group. They must be silenced, because they are
ruining whole households by teaching things they ought not to teach …”
These were Jewish people
who said that in addition to faith in Jesus, it was essential to retain parts
of the Old Testament law which were no longer binding on believers. What they were doing was adding to the gospel
– saying that something was essential for salvation that really wasn’t. It would be like a group today saying, “You
must be baptised by full immersion or you’re not really saved.” Thankfully we don’t have anyone here
insisting on circumcision, but now and again even we face situations where
individuals try to bring in their own extreme views – and that has to be
addressed. That’s the internal challenge
– staying close to Jesus’ gospel -
not adding to it; and not subtracting from it.
And then there’s the
‘external challenge’ of not conforming to the
local culture. Look at v12 – Paul
is describing typical Cretan culture by quoting a local writer. He says: “Even
one of their own prophets has said, ‘Cretans are always liars, evil brutes,
lazy gluttons.’ This testimony is true.” Hopefully Wonersh isn’t described in those
terms! The point is that Cretan culture
was very, very pagan, and we’ll see next week in the 2nd chapter
that one of Paul’s concerns for the new Christians was whether they’d be able
to change and be effective witnesses for Christ, or whether they’d conform and
be useless. Isn’t that concern just as
valid for us today when the pressures of the world are as great?
And I believe those two
challenges prompt two additional questions for any church. One question is: ‘Who has the final say in
this church?’ Who resolves any arguments
over what is and isn’t essential; what is right and wrong teaching? That’s the issue of authority. And the other question is:
‘Will this church succeed?’ Will it
actually see lives changed? Will it
still be here in 10, 20, 50 years’ time?
That’s the issue of effectiveness. And in setting up this new church, those two
issues – authority and effectiveness - are what Paul is concerned with in the
opening verses of his letter to Titus.
So, Authority – Who has the final say?
Imagine that you’re Titus. You’re on your own leading this new
church. There’s already a group
disagreeing with you, adding to the gospel and causing division – we get to
them in chapter 3 – and with people getting converted from such a pagan
background, you’re having to say some very hard things about leaving that pagan
lifestyle behind. And the question is:
“what authority do you have to do that?”
We have to go back to verse
1 for the answer – Titus gets his authority from the apostle Paul: “Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of
Jesus Christ (i.e. he was given his authority by Jesus Christ himself) for the faith of God's elect and the
knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness—a faith and knowledge resting on
the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the
beginning of time, and at his appointed season he brought his word to light
through the preaching entrusted to me by the command of God our Saviour, To
Titus my true son in our common faith...”
Paul is saying that his
authority comes from Jesus himself … and he’s telling Titus what to say on his
behalf in chapters 2 and 3. After
writing a whole lot of things the church needs to hear, Paul tells Titus – in
chapter 2, verse 15: “These, then, are
the things you should teach. Encourage and rebuke with all authority. Do not let anyone despise you”.
So how is Paul able to
claim that he really does have God’s authority?
The answer comes from Acts
26. Paul was talking about the time
before he was a believer, when he was an arch-enemy of Christianity and was arresting
and imprisoning Christians for their faith: “… as I was on the road, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the
sun, blazing around me and my companions.
We all fell to the ground, and I heard a voice saying to me in Aramaic,
‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?...’ Then I asked, ‘Who are you,
Lord?’ ‘I am Jesus, whom you are
persecuting,’ the Lord replied. ‘Now get
up and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant
and as a witness of what you have seen of me and what I will show you. I will
rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness
to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive
forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’ So … I was not disobedient to the vision from
heaven. First to those in
There’s a similar
testimony in his letter to the Galatians: “I
want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something that
man made up. I did not receive it from
any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus
Christ. For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely
I persecuted the
So that encounter with the
Risen Lord Jesus on the Damascus Road not only brought Paul to faith and made him
a Christian, but also commissioned him as an apostle – apostle simply means one
sent with the authority of the sender, and Paul’s authority rests on the fact
of that encounter.
So who does have the final
say in the church in
So that’s the first thing
– the authority of the apostle’s word, answering the question, ‘Who has the
final say?’ But then there’s that second
question for any church – old or new: ‘Will it succeed?’ Will it effectively live out God’s purpose
for his church? So now let’s consider …
The
Effect of the Apostle’s Word
Paul had already left
There are lots of books on
Church Growth, and the Ministry Team and PCC here have read many of them over
the years – Nine
Marks of a Healthy Church, 12
Keys to an Effective Church, 7
Steps to Transform Your Church, 8
Characteristics of Highly Effective Churches and Rick Warren’s ‘The
Purpose Driven Church’, which encourages people to plan their church life
around what he sees as God’s 5 purposes for the local church.
When you compare the
ingredients those books come up with for growth, whether it be the 12, the 7,
the 8, the 5, or the 9, they all agree on the one absolute essential. And that is a healthy and vibrant church life
centred on Biblical teaching … which is just what Paul says in these opening
verses. “Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ for the faith of God's elect and the
knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness—a faith and knowledge resting on
the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the
beginning of time, and at his appointed season he brought his word to light
through the preaching entrusted to me by the command of God our Saviour…”
As well as telling us about
his authority, these verses tell us about Paul’s two key aims for the church in
So faith and godliness were
Paul’s two fundamental aims, and they should probably be ours too. In verses 2-3, he tells us what’s absolutely
essential for achieving them – the
gospel of Jesus: “a faith and
knowledge resting on (i.e. depending on, or resulting from) the hope of eternal life, which God, who
does not lie, promised before the beginning of time, and at his appointed
season he brought his word to light through the preaching entrusted to me by
the command of God our Saviour…”
Imagine that building up
the church is like building a wall.
Paul’s aims are faith – the top left-hand brick in the wall – and
godliness – the top right-hand brick.
But they rest on the bottom brick of ‘the hope of eternal life’ – which is the certain future of being
with God in a new creation beyond this life.
In v2 Paul says that future is what God ‘promised before the beginning of time’, and then, v3, at his
appointed time he ‘brought’ that
promise ‘to light’. Presumably this refers to Jesus dying for our
forgiveness and rising from the dead to open the door of heaven to us, where
he’s now reigning and from where he’ll return to wrap up history at the end of
time. That’s the gospel in a nutshell,
and Paul says that’s the absolute essential if we want to see people coming to
faith, growing in faith, protected in faith, and being godly.
It is only the gospel that
makes us look back to the cross and say, ‘There’s the evidence that God loves
me’. Only the gospel makes us look forward
to that hope of eternal life, when all struggles will be over and all present
suffering will be utterly outweighed by the good stuff that we can look forward
to. Only the gospel can stabilise our
faith in the face of life’s difficulties.
And finally, without the gospel we won’t see any godliness.
So that’s the first part
of Titus. It’s about who has the final say in any church – to which the answer
is: the authority of God’s Word, the Bible. And it’s about how the church can
be healthy and grow – to which the answer is that those are the effects of
God’s Word, which must therefore be kept central. Many other things are important – from
crèches to catering, from paperwork to planning, from buildings to baby groups,
from music to management – but unless the Word of God is kept central - which
in turn keeps the gospel central - there may be activity, but there’ll not be
true faith, or real godliness, with no-one being saved for eternal life.
Let’s pray: “Loving Lord, we thank you for Paul and his testimony,
the way that you changed him so that he gave his life for you. We thank you for Titus, and the way that he
devoted himself to building your church.
We pray that we too might be convicted by your Word and may be just as
committed to furthering your work in this place. Amen”