OUT WITH THE BAD

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

For there are many rebellious people, full of meaningless talk and deception, especially those of the circumcision group. They must be silenced, because they are disrupting whole households by teaching things they ought not to teach—and that for the sake of dishonest gain. One of Crete’s own prophets has said it: “Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.” This saying is true. Therefore rebuke them sharply, so that they will be sound in the faith and will pay no attention to Jewish myths or to the merely human commands of those who reject the truth.

Titus 1:10-14

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

In yesterday’s message, we found Paul providing Titus guidance on selecting church leaders who would represent the Gospel well, sharing “the trustworthy message as it was taught” in order to “encourage others by sound doctrine” while “refuting those who oppose it” (Titus 1:9). An influx of faithful, committed Gospel leaders was needed to make sure the Christian church in Crete advanced properly in a way that was pleasing to the Lord.

So who were the “those” that Paul referred to, those who needed refuted?

We find the answers in verses 10 through 14 of this first chapter of Titus. Look again at Paul’s words here:

For there are many rebellious people, full of meaningless talk and deception, especially those of the circumcision group. They must be silenced, because they are disrupting whole households by teaching things they ought not to teach—and that for the sake of dishonest gain. One of Crete’s own prophets has said it: “Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.” This saying is true. Therefore rebuke them sharply, so that they will be sound in the faith and will pay no attention to Jewish myths or to the merely human commands of those who reject the truth.

As in other places where the Christian church was trying to take root, there were people who were willing to accept the message of salvation through Jesus to gain eternal life but only if there were modifications. One group of these believers that seemed to pop up nearly everywhere were Jews who converted to Christianity and yet pushed to preserve requirements of the Mosaic Law found under the Old Covenant.

You will find Paul calling these Jewish Christians who proclaimed a modified Gospel, Judaizers or “the circumcision group” because one of the main tenets of the Judaizer theological beliefs was that circumcision was still required for salvation in addition to belief in Jesus. Or in other words, there were works required of a believer to gain eternal life.

This obviously contradicted the true Gospel that required only belief in Christ to be saved. Salvation was by grace and grace alone, underserved and unearned, a blessed gift from a God who surrendered His only Son to purchase the pardon of anyone who would place their faith in Him as Savior.

And so Paul called for Titus to ensure these “rebellious people” who were “full of meaningless talk and deception” were silenced and rebuked because of the harm they were doing to the Gospel. This harm included the disruption of “whole households” through the teaching of false doctrine, all “for the sake of dishonest gain”. It’s obvious that these false teachers were trying to profit off of their sinful perversion of God’s salvation promise.

Note here that Paul didn’t just wish for the rejection and then excommunication of these “rebellious” Cretans. Rather, he held out hope that they might be changed through rebuke to where they would “be sound in the faith” and turn away from “Jewish myths” and the “human commands of those who reject the truth”.

Through his provision of set qualifications for proper Gospel leaders and call for recruitment and then his command to seek out and eradicate the attempts to distort and alter the purity of the Gospel, we find the Apostle Paul instructing Titus to be out with the bad and in with the good in regard to the Cretan Christian church.

Today, this urging for discriminate screening of church leaders and the warning over false teaching infiltrating the body of Christ and polluting the true Gospel is still in play. We may not have Judaizers today but meaningless talk and deception where proclaimed Christian leaders are leading people astray through teaching inappropriately is still happening, and on a scale larger than we know.

Now, more than ever, we need to raise up leaders and teachers who uphold the sanctity of the Gospel while exposing and rebuking any and all attempts to alter the good news God has given through His Son, and this includes intentionally ignoring the parts of the Word and salvation promise that people might not want to hear, such as the fact that all people who choose to reject Jesus will end up suffering eternal damnation and torment in Hell. Ditto for posing as if they have new revelations from the Lord not found within the scriptures or building their ministry on the foundation of making false promises and proclamations to their followers such as assuring wealth and/or health in life when there’s no certainty it will happen.

As long as this world exists as we know it, Satan will do everything in his power to try and disrupt every good and perfect thing the Lord is trying to do. The scriptures tell us he is the “father of lies” (John 8:44) and has been doing it for the ages. With this, the church and all Christian believers need to be completely and uncompromisingly anchored in the inerrant Word of God and the leading of the Holy Spirit. For when we stay steadfastly secured to the one true foundation in life, we will never find ourselves in a place of vulnerability where our enemy can attack and we will easily find the deceitful attempts of false teachers exposed.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com