Energetic in Goodness (Part 1 of 2)

Welcome to Truth for Life where today we begin a series called For Goodness Sake. We find out what it means to be good and we discover the purpose of our good works. Alistair Begg begins by focusing on the public duty we have as Christians and the inseparable link between our beliefs and our behavior. Titus 3 and verse 1, remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good, to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and to show true humility towards all men. At one time, we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived, and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us not because of righteous things we had done but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life. This is a trustworthy saying, and I want you to stress these things so that those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good.

These things are excellent and profitable for everyone. But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law, because these are unprofitable and useless. Warn a divisive person once, and then warn him a second time. After that, have nothing to do with him.

You may be sure that such a man is warped and sinful, he is self-condemned. As soon as I send Artemus or Tychicus to you, do your best to come to me at Nicopolis, because I have decided to winter there. Do everything you can to help Zenas the Lawyer and Apollos on their way and see that they have everything they need.

Our people must learn to devote themselves to doing what is good in order that they may provide for daily necessities and not live unproductive lives. Everyone with me sends you greetings. Greet those who love us in the faith. Grace be with you all. Amen. Well, let's pause once again and ask for God's help. O gracious God, we thank you that you have preserved us and brought us safely to this evening hour. We thank you that we are able to bow down before you a good God who has made himself known in the pages of the Word of God. And we pray that as we turn to it now that the Spirit of God will be our teacher and that we might both understand and believe, that we might obey and trust, indeed, that we might be conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen. Here's a quote that I keep in my preaching book from The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis.

It reads as follows. Those like myself, whose imagination far exceeds their obedience, are subject to a just penalty. We easily imagine conditions far higher than we have actually reached.

If we describe what we have imagined, we may make others and make ourselves believe that we have really been there and so fool both them and ourselves. I keep that in the flyleaf of this little booklet that is an inseparable friend to me. I keep it as a constant and necessary reminder of the inseparable link between faith and practice, between belief and behavior—a link which is inseparable for all who teach the Bible and for each of us who listen to the Bible being taught. And this inseparable link between profession and practice is the very theme of this little book of Titus, this letter that Paul has written to Titus, charging him, as you will see when you do your homework in chapter 1, charging him with the responsibility of getting things in order. Now, the church in Crete was presumably established on a fourth missionary journey that we don't have record of in the Acts.

Titus himself was apparently a convert from paganism, and he had been charged with the responsibility of giving leadership to the believing people on the island of Crete, which just sits out there in the Mediterranean, in a place that some of you may well have visited. The focus for our time is inevitably limited, and we may not even get as far as I have planned to get as I look at my time this evening. But what I want us to recognize—and this I'm going to have to give to you again to follow up on—I want you to recognize that at the heart of this instruction is a solid and unequivocal commitment to goodness. To goodness. You will notice that the word goodness or good comes again and again in these three chapters.

It comes in both of its forms in Greek, both as kalos and also as agathos. And on both occasions, it is at the very heart of what Paul is saying. And in chapter 2, he reminds the readers that Jesus Christ gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness, to purify for himself a people that are his very own. And what are those people to be like? They are to be eager to do what is good. Eager to do what is good.

And if we were giving a title to our study this evening, it would simply be energetic in goodness. Ready, verse 1 of chapter 3, ready to do whatever is good. Ready to do whatever is good.

And this in direct contrast to the influential false teachers who are identified for us in chapter 1 and, sadly, are described in verse 16 of chapter 1 as those who claim to know God but by their actions they deny him, they are detestable, disobedient, and unfit for doing anything good. So here you have a fledgling situation. You have a church that is being established.

The leadership needs to be put in place. Many of the bits and pieces have to be set in motion, and this is the charge given to Titus. He is to exercise this responsibility in an environment which mitigates against it—and, not least of all, on account of those who are high-sounding, who are big talkers, who like arguments, who engage in discussions, but in actual fact their theology does not jibe with their practice. And so they are, according to his designation, unfit for doing anything good. And in contrast, these to whom he writes are to be those ready to do whatever is good.

So in other words, profession and practice are found to be in conflict with each other. And Paul doesn't mince his words. These folks are not high on his list of people that he really wants to spend time with at all. That becomes apparent. These folks are ruining households, he says in verse 11 of chapter 1.

The reason they're ruining households is because they're teaching things they ought not to teach. And you will notice there is a mercenary element involved in this, because their engaging in this kind of proclamation is tied with dishonest gain or with shameful desires for money. And so, at the end of chapter 1, he finishes up by pointing out that these characters with whom Titus has to deal are marked by three Ds—they are detestable, they are disobedient, and they're derelict. Detestable, disobedient, and derelict. I'm not sure what Paul would have made of our great concerns for being politically correct in our day.

He's very skillful, you will notice, because when he points out just how bad a place Crete is proving to be, he quotes one of their own prophets. I mean, if you're going to run England down, choose an Englishman who's run it down. Don't run it down as a Scotsman.

If you have something derogatory to say about America, choose an American who said something bad about it, but don't come in as a resident alien and try and do that. It's not wise. I know, because I've done it in the past. I've stopped doing it a long time ago.

I stopped at five o'clock this evening. But what he recognizes and what Titus obviously knew was that Crete was proverbial for its moral decadence. It was just a pretty bad place. In fact, Crete gave a verb to the Greek language, the verb kretizo, which means to tell lies. And that came directly out of Crete, because people were so untruthful that they became a byword for telling lies. And contemporary historians recorded how it was, quote, "...almost impossible to find personal conduct more treacherous or public policy more unjust than in Crete."

Let me just give that to you again. The historians of the day recording the context in which Titus is to give this instruction to these people under his care, they found it almost impossible to find personal conduct more treacherous or public policy more unjust than in Crete. Now, this should be helpful to us, because some of us live with the notion that if somehow or another we could just rewind the video and go back to the first century—my, what a wonderful time it would be back there, when we didn't have all of these dreadful twenty-first-century problems to contend with.

If we could just zip right back in time, we could go back to the time when it was so wonderful and things were far more organized and so on. Well, of course, that just belies the fact that we don't understand things at all. We neither understand our Bibles, nor do we understand church history. Because the context for Titus is one that put huge demands upon him. He has, if you like, moral decadence that is pressing him from the outside, and then he has religious dogmatists that are causing confusion on the inside, and he's on the receiving end of the instruction to encourage these people. Furthermore—and if that wasn't bad enough—Paul wants him to be an example in doing what is good. In fact, the literal translation of the Greek—I'm now in chapter 2 and in verse 7, where he says, In everything set them an example by doing what is good—the Greek actually reads, In all respects a model of good works. In all respects a model of good works. And then you'll put the verb to be at the end of it if you wish. So here he is, charged with this responsibility, not only of exhorting and encouraging the people under his care but being charged by the apostle Paul himself with becoming the very model of goodness, which he is then to challenge and encourage his listeners to. And in the framework, there is no time for debate, and there is no place for diffidence.

That's how verse 15 reads, really, of the end of chapter 2. These are the things you should teach, encourage, rebuke with all authority, and don't let anyone despise you. Now, why is that? Because of his personality? No, because of his position. Now, Paul recognizes that entrusted with this leadership position, Titus has a job to do, and in much the same way that Paul writes to Timothy, and he says, Let no one despise your youth, but be an example to the believers in life and in speech and conduct and so on. So high and holy calling is a dreadful position, especially in recognition of the fact that the person who fulfills this role will answer to God for every word out of their mouth, for every example set, and not only for every sermon preached, but for the motivation which underlies the preaching—that on the day when the records are established, whether it is wood, hay, and stubble, or gold, and civil, and precious stones, is not going to be determined by the extent of the influence of the proclaimer but will be determined on the strength of the motivation of the proclaimer's heart in doing what God has told them to do.

That's what makes it such a tremendous thing for Titus to find himself in this circumstance. And so it is, then, his charge to make sure that he exercises a ministry of reminder, to remind the people. One of the things that's good to notice is how many times the Bible tells us to remember. It's saying again and again, I want you to remember. The ministry of the pulpit is not so much the ministry of innovation as it is the ministry of reminder.

Indeed, chasing after innovation will probably lead people up all kinds of dead-end streets. And so it is that Titus, as Peter, as Paul, as the others of the apostles, are to remind people of certain things. Now, what we have here in verses 1 and 2 is a lesson in civics. A lesson in civics. Can I just ask, did anybody here take a class in civics?

Yes. So it is an American use of the terminology, civics. So we understand what it was. Those of you who took the class at least understand what it was. Namely, the rights and duties of citizenship as a subject of study. The rights and duties of citizenship as a subject of study. Now, it is quite fascinating and not surprising that in the context in which Titus finds himself, that Paul should be so concerned about the civic duty of the believers that they should, by their lips and by their lives, stand out from the surrounding community. That they should be distinguishable from the false teachers whose practice does not match their profession, and they should be immediately observable in a community that is marked by immorality and by decadence. In other words, his first emphasis is on the public deportment of the believer—that the gospel that has transformed their lives must also be seen to transform their living. That they have not been sequestered, they have not been removed from the surrounding culture, they are placed in the mainstream of the culture, and in that culture they must live their lives.

Now, you don't have to be a genius to say, well, there is an immediate point of application to us in every generation, isn't there? And not least of all, now, at this point in the twenty-first century, we exercise the responsibilities of Christian citizenship in an environment that in some ways is not dissimilar to the context that is described here in Crete. And in the public square, the Christian is supposed to stand out in contrast to the general populace. The Cretans were notoriously troublesome, they were known to be agitators, they were known to be insurrectionists. So in the context of agitation, insurrection, and downright troublesomeness, the application of Romans 12 2 is pretty clear—namely, don't allow the world around you to squeeze you into its own mold. We tend to immediately read that and think it has something to do with playing cards or gin rummy or going to bingo or whatever it might be.

That's just because of where we come from. But in this context, the temptation to be squeezed by the surrounding culture would be the temptation to take on the guise of those who were the mainstream of the culture by championing the troublesome, agitational, insurrectionist elements that were part and parcel of this particular environment. Instead, says Paul to Titus, you'd better remind the people that the public duty of the Christian is to be marked by these things. Now, I've sought to summarize them, and in doing so I may have missed something—in which case I trust your judgment to fill in the gaps—but I have chosen to try and summarize verses 1 and 2 under four words.

They're fairly straightforward, and I think that there is basis for using them as I do. Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities to be obedient. Number one, the Christian citizen is to be marked by loyalty. By loyalty. Loyalty, if you look it up in the Oxford English Dictionary, is descriptive of, quotes, faithful allegiance to the legitimate monarch or government of one's country.

Loyalty. Not a loyalty that shifts in relationship to whoever the prevailing political party is, but loyalty that recognizes that one of the marks of Christian civic deportment is going to be seen, if you like, essentially in patriotism. And that this involves respect for authority, recognizing that the ultimate source of authority, as Paul says both in Romans 13 and in 1 Timothy 2, that the ultimate source of authority within the political structure is none other than God himself. Therefore, he says, the Christian in Crete is not to be engaged in civil disobedience, but rather should be exemplary in upholding the rule of law.

Not involved in insurrection and disobedience, but exemplary in upholding the rule of law. Now, depending on where you're coming from, your mind may immediately start to ring little bells for you, and they say, Oh, yes, but… Yes, but… What about the exception that is mentioned in Acts chapter 5, where they're told they're no longer to preach in the name of Jesus, and Peter says, You judge for yourselves whether it's right for us to obey God or to man, but we will do this, and so on? Yes, that is an exception.

That is an exception. And it is one of the salutary observations of our day and generation that evangelical Christianity moves, in my humble estimation, far too quickly to the exception clause and far too slowly to the New Testament demand for the Christian to live an exemplary life—an exemplary life—so that the rule of law and the establishment of civic duty in the structures are those which are not undermined by Christian conviction but which are reinforced as a result of a proper sense of loyalty. The second word is community. This isn't simply the suggestion by Paul that the Christians under Titus' care should engage in acts of charity. But the recurring emphasis on goodness is not goodness that happens in a wardrobe, not goodness that happens in isolation, not goodness that happens in the privacy of a church community, but goodness that is expressed in community living, so that the eagerness to do good is an eagerness which becomes a characteristic of the Christian in the population. Within the framework of community, one of the calling cards of the Christian is to be seen in their willingness to engage in shared goodness. In other words, it assumes involvement and engagement rather than isolation and estrangement.

What is Paul saying here to Titus? He's saying that if you're going to engage in acts of goodness, that is going to have an impact on the community. You cannot isolate yourself. You cannot be estranged from the community.

You have to be involved, and you have to be engaged. You're listening to Truth for Life. That is Alistair Begg urging us to resist being squeezed into the world's mold.

We'll hear more on this subject tomorrow. Now, if you listen regularly to Truth for Life, you know our pattern is to teach directly from God's Word. It's our prayer that this daily program helps you grow in your understanding of Scripture and deepens your relationship with the Lord Jesus. You're able to listen to Truth for Life each day because of the generous giving that comes from other listeners, those who listen right alongside you, who have reached out to us financially to make this program possible. If you are someone who benefits from the daily teaching you hear on Truth for Life, would you take a minute, go online, or give us a call and make a year-end donation. Any amount you choose to give supports the global outreach of the gospel through Truth for Life.

You can donate securely at truthforlife.org slash donate or call us at 888-588-7884. And when you do, we want to express our gratitude by sending you a copy of the book Cloud of Witnesses. This is a collection of more than 100 prayers. It compiles petitions and praises and reflections of believers from four different periods of church history starting with the early church. Each prayer offers a glimpse into the faith and struggles of those who have walked the path of faith before us. Once again, the book is called Cloud of Witnesses. It's yours when you donate to Truth for Life at truthforlife.org slash donate. Thanks for listening. Tomorrow we will learn how we can make our faith visible through radical goodness. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.