Unmasked Part 1

From the early days of the church until now, false teachers have used religion as a means of personal profit. The congregations on this island and especially the elder shepherds need to face the fact this is the truth and the game of religion had begun and these false teachers who were nothing more than greedy hucksters were selling their message for the sake of sorted gain. They didn't care how they got it.

They just wanted to get it. Religion, by the way, was their way to scam the people. And to this day, it's a great scam. Have you ever encountered a teacher or pastor and suspected that he was only in it to make a name for himself?

Or maybe he was in it to get rich? That's one of the problems with false teaching. When there's no truth behind the message, and there's no commitment to being a blessing to your audience, the only motivation becomes personal and selfish. As the Apostle Paul wrote a letter to a young pastor named Titus, he warned him that false teachers would arise. And he also advised him on how to deal with them. Today on Wisdom for the Heart, Stephen explains this section of God's Word. In his commentary on the letter of Paul to Titus, Warren Wiersbe writes, it did not take long for false teachers to arise in the early church because wherever God sows the truth, Satan shows up to sow lies. False teaching is like cancer. It enters secretly. It grows quickly and it permeates completely unless it is attacked before it has a chance to spread. There was a problem on the island of Crete, as you know, and the problem has been in existence now for about 2,000 years.

In fact, it's reached the town of Cary. False teaching, false religion, false teachers, deceived flocks, twisted scripture, distorted scripture, additions to scripture, all taught by seemingly religious men or religiously minded men whose motives are actually self-serving. In fact, if you look at verse 14, you notice immediately that the content of their teaching was not the apostles teaching, but the inclusion of myths and fables along with these extra commandments of men made up by men. It's all man-made.

It's all make-believe. It might sound biblical, but it is not the Bible. And the religious mythologies and all the extra commandments were literally ripping the church apart and whole families within the church family as they're taught by men who really want to seduce the flock for their own gain rather than shepherd the flock for their own good. Now Paul knew what the solution was. He knew the church needed to be well-led and well-fed, so he left Titus on the island to appoint elders in every city as he directed him, teachers, elders who would literally stand up to these false teachers, those who had gained ground inside the church and effectively unmask them. They were supposedly revealing deeper truth as we'll see in a minute. They're exposing new insight, new wisdom on how to approach God, how to live for God.

They were uncovering new secrets about the way to heaven. And Paul will say to Titus and then basically to the elders that for the sake of the gospel and for the protection of the flock, reveal these false teachers for who they are. Unmask their motives. Unmask their teaching. Unmask even their future unless they repent.

Let's take a look at that first one. Unmask their motives. I'll tell you ahead of time it's all about money and fame. Let's go back to verse 10 and get a running start. For there are many rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision that is their Jewish believers or false teachers, not believers, but within the Jewish community. And they've got to be silenced, verse 11, because they are upsetting whole families, teaching things they should not teach, note this, for the sake of sordid gain.

Let's go ahead and tell it like it is. Let's unmask their true motive. They're after money. Actually the word gain can be understood to be either money or fame, power. In this case it's more than likely both, money and fame. It's interesting that before Titus ever got this letter the ancient world spoke of the three most evil seeds, the Ciliceans, the Cappadocians and the Cretans.

In fact a man by the name of Polybius who lived before the time of Paul, a Greek historian, had already written that the Cretans, and I quote, lived in a perpetual state of private quarrel and public feud and civil strife. They are tricky and deceptive, he writes, money is so highly valued among them, greed is so native to the soil in Crete that they are the only people in the world among whom no stigma is attached to any sort of gain whatever. In other words, it doesn't matter how you got what you had, so long as you had it.

Sorted gain. In our modern vernacular we might talk about drug money. It doesn't matter that you're doing something illegal. It doesn't matter that you're hurting people. You got money and that's all that matters. Money speaks.

That's what you're after. This is the culture of Crete. Now what Paul does next is surprising. He's going to appeal to common knowledge from an unbeliever. He only does this a couple of times in his letters to bolster his argument. He's going to quote a man who centuries earlier had made a statement about Cretans. Look at verse 12. One of themselves, a prophet of their own, says, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons. This testimony is true. What makes this so intriguing is that the guy here now pulling the mask off the Cretans is a Cretan, who evidently, I thought Cretans were always liars, but this Cretan is actually telling the truth. This testimony is true. So he's having some moment of honest reflection.

He says here's who we really are. It isn't just any Cretan though. It's one of their revered prophets. Paul is quoting Epimenides. Plato dates him at about 500 years before the birth of Jesus Christ. I want you to notice he's going to say three things about the Cretans and Paul is going to say he's actually telling the truth.

Shock of all shocks. The first thing, that their own beloved prophet – they claimed to be a prophet. He had predicted some wars would take place and they did so they just revered him and honored him and he became one of their most outstanding citizens. The first thing he says is as a general rule they are always, you'll notice, lying. They're always lying. And Paul said this is the truth.

I mean this is the rule of thumb. The culture of Crete is literally given over to graft and deception and lying. Aren't you glad you don't live on the island of Crete? Aren't you glad you live in America?

You don't have to imagine very hard what it would be like. USA ran the results. I came across this of a survey of 7,000 resumes that they carefully investigated. They just took 7,000 resumes and carefully tracked everything down. Forty-eight percent exaggerated on their former compensation. Fifty-two percent changed partial college or graduate school studies into completed degrees – one out of every two. Sixty percent exaggerated on the number of people under their former supervision.

They were leading hundreds. Sixty-four percent exaggerated on their former accomplishments. And 71 percent lied about the number of years they spent at their former job. And the scary thing to me was this survey was taken 11 years ago.

Another survey taken just four years ago found people admitting to calling in sick at work when they weren't, taking office supplies from their company for personal use, shifting blame to a coworker for something they did, receiving too much change from a cashier without telling them, downloading music without paying for it, cheating on their income tax, switching price tags to get a lower price, and lying to friends and family over a multitude of things, some trivial and some major. Ladies and gentlemen, we live in a culture of dishonesty. But we're Christians, right? So we ought to live differently. In fact, as you look at this list of, this is how the Cretans were, don't go, all those Cretans were so bad.

Use it as a mirror. Am I different? Lying is epidemic. In fact, if you're a parent, you've discovered that the problem didn't originate on the island of Crete. It originated in the fallen nature of your little child. You never did have to teach them how to tell a lie. By the age of five, they're really good at it. It's your job to catch them at it.

Not your children, of course, others that I've heard about, not yours. We're like that little guy who got his Bible verse all mixed up but in it said a mouthful when he quoted, lying is an abomination to the Lord and a very present help in time of trouble. Frankly, lying can pay off in the short run. Fifty percent of the resumes and more are banking on it. How many get away with it? But in the end, it tangles you up. It catches up.

In fact, my father used to tell us, four boys when we were growing up, he would say to us, telling the truth is going to be a lot easier on you than telling a lie because when you tell the truth, you never have to remember what you said. Isn't that true? There is a warning then in this text. Don't buy into the culture of your island.

Now Paul gives a second thing. He says in verse 12 further, cretins were evil beasts. Evil beasts.

This word refers to somebody who's untamable, who's uncontrollable. They won't be brought under anyone's authority. We march to the beat of our own drummer.

We're not going to take our cues from you or anybody. Now imagine you're establishing a church and an eldership of authority, and this is the culture and what that challenge would mean. In fact, during the days of Titus, people already had on the island an inside joke. They would say that there were no wild animals on the island of Crete because the people were so wild.

That was their reputation. He also refers to them in verse 12, thirdly, as lazy gluttons. He just really goes after them, doesn't he? The phrase can be translated idle stomachs. It refers to somebody who's given over to self-centered luxurious living. It's all about them, and they refuse to do an honest day's work. Maybe you work with them. They are more creative and dedicated to somehow getting out of work than they are in working.

Idle bellies. You need to pay me, but I'm not going to give you an honest day's work. Here is the mission. In fact, Paul responds to this testimony by an ancient Cretan by adding his own emphatic verse 13, this testimony is true. In other words, don't deny it.

Don't sugarcoat it. The congregations on this island, and especially the elder shepherds, need to face the fact this is the truth, and the game of religion had begun, and these false teachers, who were nothing more than greedy hucksters, were selling their message for the sake of sordid gain. They didn't care how they got it.

They just wanted to get it. Religion, by the way, was their way to scam the people, and to this day it's a great scam, and there are many who make their living from it, who are deceiving their followers. The role of the shepherd then is to warn the flock and protect the flock, and while you're at it, by the way, unmask the motives of these false teachers because behind the mask of pious religious language from somebody who even knows how to say Jesus and even help out praying this prayer and about God, and I can give you a prophecy, and I can perform a miracle, and Jesus will one day say, I never knew you.

Behind it all is a man who really only cares about money and fame. So notice what Paul orders the elders to do in the middle of verse 13. Prove them severely so they will be sound in the faith. We've encountered that word sound already. It's the Greek word that is our English word transliterated hygiene, hygiene. These men need to be made healthy. They're spiritually diseased.

The adverb where Paul says reprove them severely, interesting, could be translated abruptly, curtly, sharply. It refers to the skillful cutting away of a surgeon's knife to cut away that which is not healthy so there can be healing. Many of you have your own stories of surgeries like I now as a sitting illustration have my own. In fact, I saw a guy come walking across here in crutches sitting right around where are you, right somewhere in here, crutches and something, where are you? Raise your crutches. You know, we can't heal you, I got to tell you that, but you're in good company.

I'm right with you. You got the same pair. I don't know if you had surgery or not, but I went to the doctor and he said, Stephen, you did it again. I said, I know I did it again.

He said, this time, guess what? You get surgery. There was no way that I could exempt myself from the severity of his blunt diagnosis. I couldn't ask him if we could just settle for ice on the knee.

That'll take the swelling down or maybe one of those SpongeBob Square Pants Band-Aids I saw when I was coming back in here or maybe some really strong drugs. All three are good things, but they will not bring restoration. It had to be dealt with invasively, severely. Paul says, reprove them invasively.

And by the way, the command is in the present tense, which means you don't do it once and assume that did it. It's an ongoing confrontation to that which is not true so that the flock understands it and is protected. Reprove them severely.

It isn't going to be fixed overnight. Titus, you and the elders you appoint need to know, this is for the long haul. This is not a weekend seminar on religious error.

There we did that. This isn't a three-year seminary degree where you learn it all. This is an ongoing call of those who will wear the mantle of a shepherd.

It's ongoing because error never stops. False teachers never let up. They come in cycles to take the church away. Unmask their motives.

It's all about money and fame. Secondly, unmask their teaching. It's all about myths and fables. Look at verse 14. Paul is continuing to talk about these false teachers. He says they're paying attention to Jewish myths and commandments of men who turn away from the truth, that is the gospel, the simplicity of the gospel.

They're invading the church with their myths and all of their commandments. In other words, they are teaching. They are. They've got books. They've got materials. They've got outlines. They've got programs. They've got three points.

People are taking notes. They're teaching. But if you take time to inspect what they are teaching, it's man-made. It's all about man.

They might quote the Bible, but they don't really care about the Bible. And so today across our country, men will fill the pulpits who use the Bible as a resource, but it is not the source of teaching, which then opens the church to all kinds of fads and trends and superstitions and error and spiritual danger. And ultimately the focus is reduced because man-made teaching is all about man. It's all about us. Three ways to fix this and fix that and feel better and live happy and it's all about us. And the focus is no longer a God word as the word introduces us to the character and nature and the gospel and the doctrine of God.

Let me give you an illustration. In Titus' day, the book of Jubilees was making the rounds. It was a bestseller. It was a book that supposedly contained information of the patriarchs and expanded their biographies, which led to all sorts of interesting stuff that people were trying to apply in their own lives, which was leading to false speculations and superstitions and spiritual mysticisms and all sorts of problems – the book of Jubilees. In addition to that, by the end of the first century, many rabbis had given mystical meanings to numbers and letters. And then they applied that to Old Testament Scriptures, led to all sorts of bizarre interpretations. We're not done because in the second and third and the fourth century, then all of a sudden you have the appearance of all of these Gnostic gospels and these extra biblical writings, books like The History of Susanna, one particular book claiming to be revealed from God called, entitled Bell and the Dragon.

Sounds like a Disney movie, doesn't it? You have the writings of Tobit. You have the writings of Judith. These are writings of pure fiction, filled with error and, in fact, filled with questionable morality, as well as false doctrine. Then you have the Gospel of Thomas.

It's gotten a lot of attention in the last twenty or thirty years. Written in the third century, it came along and it claimed to contain 120 secret words of Jesus. Hey, I've got to have that. Wow. Wouldn't you like to have 120 more words from Jesus? I would.

We got it. It made all sorts of waves and, of course, there were communities that followed these Gnostic gospels that did not resemble the gospel at all. It just was nothing but sheer myth. Then you add to that the Apocrypha and the Talmud and the Kabbalah and the early writings outside of inspired Scripture.

They promote at best some kind of moral lesson. At worst, they redefine the gospel. Then you get a guy like Dan Brown who comes along and writes the Da Vinci Code and he puts together some of these legends and he researches the Gnostic gospels with a bucket load of historical speculations and you end up with an intriguing book of fiction that millions of people have read and believe as fact. Well, what do you know? Jesus, I guess, married, evidently, Mary Magdalene and they had children and they grew up in the south of France. I didn't know that.

What does that do? It changes entirely the gospel. People aren't done treating the Bible in strange ways, by the way. There are currently 16 million pages on the web devoted to the Bible code. The Bible code is the belief that secret messages have been embedded in the text of Scripture and so you lay it out in linear fashion.

No numbers, chapters, verse divisions or anything. You just lay out all the letters and then what you do is you figure out if I skip every second word and I take the first letter of that second word, look at that. It makes a word. Wow. Then maybe if I do it this way and maybe if I go this way and then over this way and then down this way, I can come up with words.

Yes, you can. But it's not a secret message from God. It's a waste of time. 16 million pages, books written. Let me give you one illustration. The Bible code predicted Obama would be assassinated in 2009.

Hillary Clinton would somehow become the leader of the free world who in turn would subsidize the Antichrist and launch global persecution. I knew it. Oh wait, that was 2009. And do they come back and apologize and say, there really wasn't from God because God doesn't make mistakes. No, they just go get another coded message. One author strung together a bunch of them that you would think would discredit the entire system but it doesn't. Well, we just missed that one but there's a lot more that we, you know, got right. The Bible code can be used to prove that the South actually won the Civil War and everybody said and not many of you are from the South.

You're all from New York. You're not going to use that Bible code, are you? It could also prove that Germany won World War II. The one Bible code proved the existence of Darth Vader and that the moon is actually literally made out of Swiss cheese. It's nothing more than a distraction. And there's absolutely no spiritual nourishment in chasing those things down. Evidently these false teachers were praying on the nature of man because that's kind of interesting.

Wow, I didn't know that. That's a secret. You found a secret. Let me know it. Let me read it.

I'll live by it. The nature of man is easily intrigued but there is no genuine spiritual nourishment in any of these secret messages or codes or myths and these false teachers were praying on the fears of people by giving them some secret they needed to know. Whenever you encounter a pastor or teacher who claims to have secret knowledge that nobody has known before and that was only revealed to him, run.

That's false teaching. Even though Stephen Davey has much more to say on this topic, we're going to stop here for today. We'll bring you the conclusion to this message on our next broadcast. In the meantime, we'd love to hear from you. Has our teaching ministry helped you in your spiritual journey?

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