Unmasked Part 2

The Gospel message is that your salvation and security is rooted in what Jesus Christ has done for you. And because of Christ's work, we are clothed in his righteousness not one day but already and nothing, not one day but now, will ever separate us from the loving favor of God through Christ Jesus our Lord.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are accepted in the Beloved not because we have kept a list but because we have come to Christ. Salvation is not about what you do for God. Salvation is about what God has done for you through Jesus Christ. As you respond to the Gospel message in faith, God gives you the gift of eternal life. As believers, we know that message to be true. But one of the things we need to be consistently aware of is the fact that there are false teachers who present false Gospels and lead astray thousands and even millions of people with their lies. Today Stephen returns to the book of Titus where Paul addresses this very topic with a young pastor named Titus.

Don't miss this important message. The Paul adds that they are not only fascinated by Jewish myths but he says a second thing. He says they are also given over to the commandments of men.

Did you notice that in the text? See by the time Titus is appointing elders in the churches on the island of Crete, Jewish teachers have been promoting in fact for centuries their view that God had actually given the nation Israel two different codes of law, two different sets of laws at Mount Sinai. One was the written law, the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, and the oral law. And that's where you open the barn door because now you've got an opening for all kinds of ever growing interpretations, ever expanding regulations, ongoing developments of discussion relating to tradition, opinions, rulings. So now what you've got is you've got the written word and you have with equal authority the oral word. You have what God has given that men have written under inspiration and you have the opinions of scholars over centuries. You've got the Bible plus.

Can you think about it for just a moment? How many religions and cults have the Bible plus something else? The Bible plus another book? The Bible plus another prophet not mentioned in the Bible? The Bible plus creeds and councils of the church? These teachers are coming along and they're saying, look, we've got something in addition to what you can read out of the Torah.

Wait till you hear this one. We've got an interpretation from a myth and we've also got commands that have been handed down by the rabbis and that's why when Jesus Christ came along people said, this man's teaching so differently than anybody else with authority. Why? Because all the rabbis did was quote other rabbis. It's been said.

It's been said. So Jesus would often come along and say, you've heard that it's been said but I say unto you. Now we have the benefit of the New Testament but these false teachers were coming along and with this they were not relieving the spiritual burden of their followers.

They're only adding to it. Let me give you an illustration. For instance, the Jews had in their Torah the law to keep the Sabbath day holy. That was a sign unto Israel. That sign would not be repeated to the New Testament church and to this day we worship him on the Lord's day Sunday. By the time they got to Acts 20 they'd shifted to the Lord's day. This was a sign to Israel and you keep this Sabbath day holy. Don't make it a day of work. That's pretty simple isn't it?

But for centuries they added interpretation upon interpretation and opinion upon opinion. So by the time Paul is writing to Titus they've decided that eating your soup is a violation of the Sabbath law if that spoon you're lifting to your lips weighs more than one fig. Otherwise you're lifting a burden. Now I don't know how much one fig weighs but I'm sure I put pieces of chocolate cake into my mouth that weighed more than one fig and I'm going to do it today and I'm not going to violate the Lord's law at all.

In fact I'm going to work hard at it, Lord willing. They're debating whether you can take a chair from one room to the next. They're adding commandments relative to lifting a baby. They struggled over the wearing of dentures on the Sabbath carrying a burden. You're not supposed to work on the Sabbath. Well that must mean even though we don't have anything from the Lord that must mean you can't take a journey. So they worked that over for a few centuries and decided that you could walk 200 feet past your front door on the Sabbath. But that was kind of inconvenient because a lot of stuff is 250 feet past your front door.

So what they did is they came up with a system where you could take a rope 200 feet long, tie it to your doorknob, stretch it out, walk 200 feet and then you could walk 200 more feet. So they are damaging the purity of the gospel of faith and Christ's work alone with their myths and their commandments. Listen ladies and gentlemen, damage doctrine damages people. Teaching people that the only way you can find acceptance with God is to keep the commandments of men.

Now where are we going? To keep a list. I mean you've got to have something about you that finds favor with God. God would not smile upon you unless you kept whatever the list is.

You've got to keep your Ps and Qs and wash behind your ears or whatever. All that leads people to…all that leads the church into is one of two errors. One is total despair. Why? Because I can't keep my list. I'm always failing at my list. And what's more, my list…I met somebody whose list was longer.

Oh no, now what do I do? Do I add their two to my 12? Maybe my list isn't right. It leads to despair that I can gain favor from God by keeping the list and the commandments of men.

Or it leads to pride. Look at my list. I've kept it six weeks in a row.

I've checked every box off. Now God will smile upon me. Pride or despair. We live, ladies and gentlemen, as believers in Christ and his atoning work for us. We literally live under his cleansing flow on our behalf.

He continuously, the tense of the verb, he continuously cleanses us from every sin. 1 John 1.7. And because of Christ's work, we are clothed in his righteousness not one day but already and nothing, not one day but now, will ever separate us from the loving favor of God through Christ Jesus our Lord. Ladies and gentlemen, we are accepted in the beloved not because we have kept a list but because we have come to Christ.

We have his favor. And guess what we're going to do today and tomorrow and the next day? Until we die, we're going to sin.

We're going to fail. If our righteousness depends upon ourselves when the prophet even said our righteousnesses are as filthy rags, we're accepted. We live the way we live out of gratitude. We want to act like our father and it troubles us when we don't. We confess our sin daily.

Why? Not to become a Christian all over again because I guess we didn't keep the list but because we want to fellowship with God. We confess our sin daily not for sonship but fellowship. Titus, you and the other elders need to make sure you're on the alert for this kind of distortion of the gospel. Don't have any patience with myths and fads and trends and false teachings in your generation or the legalistic commandments that kidnap a believer from the truth that he is safely within the favor of God through Christ alone.

Be alert to that. And Paul adds this perspective in verse 15. He says, look there to the pure, all things are pure. But to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure.

Why? Their mind and their conscience are defiled. That is, it's never been purified or cleansed. The word for pure here means clean.

It's the Greek word katharos which gives us our word katharsis. Taken in the context of this paragraph, Paul is saying that if you have been made clean by the truth of the gospel, nothing can ever make you unclean or take you outside what you have been brought into. You never have to worry about tomorrow doing something where God would say, well, I didn't know you'd do that.

Sorry. I'm going to have to kick you out of the family. There is safety and security in that person who has been purified, cleansed by means of the truth, which is the gospel of Christ alone. Now by contrast, you notice in that text, those who have not been cleansed by Christ, that is, who are not within his purity, granted to them by his righteousness, note the contrasting words, you are defiled and unbelieving. And there isn't anything that you can do to make yourself clean. Those outside the purity of Christ can't do anything to make themselves pure.

Everything is dirty. They can never get in by their own effort, just as by your own works you cannot be taken out of the purity of Christ. Now obviously the implication here is that those who are clean look at everything with the purest of intentions.

I mean, there's something about wanting to live a life of gratitude for Christ that makes you look at things differently. You want to have the purest of intentions. You want to purify your relationships. You want to purify your vocabulary. You want to purify your work ethic. You want to purify everything about your life.

Not so you can gain acceptance by God, but because you have been and you want to please him and you want to act like your father, which brings him joy. Those, then the implication here, who are defiled, they only see the dirty side of life. They don't want to purify anything. Their lives are one dirty innuendo after another. One commentator wrote it this way, we change whatever we touch into our own nature. Those who have a new nature in Christ purify.

Those who are defiled outside of Christ defile. Those who are pure attempt to purify everything around them. The man who is defiled soils every thought. His imagination soles every picture which it forms. He can take the loveliest things and cover them over with dirt and smut. It's a matter of nature. One is redeemed that panders toward purity.

The other is unredeemed into which really cares nothing for purity because it's defiled and unredeemed. Like the proverbial little girl. Heard this story when I was growing up several times. She brought in, she lived on the farm, she brought into the house one day her pet pig and her pet little lamb.

And she put them both in the bathtub and she scrubbed them all down and she just, you know, lathered it up and cleaned them all up and troweled them down and brushed the wool and polished the pig and put a pink bow on both of their necks and then she opened the front door to go out and play with them and the little lamb ran for the green pastures and the pig ran back to the mud. It's an issue of nature. Here's the issue. To the defiled and unbelieving they long to sin. I mean they're looking forward to the weekend. And they're going to get together on Monday morning and they're going to say, what did you do? I sinned this way. You did well. I sinned that way. Oh man, what a great weekend. We sinned.

And then they'll look at you. What did you do? I went to church.

Had a great time. The difference is nature. Unmask the motives of these false teachers. It's all about money and fame. Unmask the teaching of these false teachers. It's all about myths and fables. Thirdly, unmask their future. It's all about misery and fruitlessness.

Just tell it like it is. Verse 16. They profess to know God but by their deeds they deny him being detestable and disobedient and worthless for any good deed. They profess to know God.

Lost to the English world. The nuance there. The word know. They profess to know God isn't ginosko which means to have a personal experiential relational knowledge of that person.

I could get to know you better if I spent time with you and learn more about you. That's knowledge by means of relationship and communication. Paul doesn't use that word. They're not claiming to know God that way. They're claiming to know oida, God. That is knowledge based on information.

That's knowledge based on facts. They know some facts about God. They've read some information. They maybe read the Bible. They picked up a few words here and there. That's how they know God.

They look the part. They know some of the biblical language. I've heard them use Jesus and want to even pray right now and then totally distort the gospel and the rest of their message. They know some things about God but they don't know God.

There's a difference between knowing about him and knowing him. I couldn't help but laugh. I've enjoyed listening to the services online. Really glad for that ministry our tech team put together and listening to Doug on Easter.

Great job. Dave Burgett, what a fantastic job he's done. I listened last Sunday as he's preaching I just couldn't help but laugh. He's using the illustration of him as a bowler. He had his own bowling ball.

I can just picture. His glove. Was it one glove or two, Dave? One glove? Maybe that was the problem. Okay, you needed two. I don't know. Then you had your shoes.

Then he said, I can't bowl. I look the part but that's about it. Ladies and gentlemen, do you know there's about eight inches between heaven and hell for you and me? What you know about God up here and what you've come to trust about him down here.

For many people, I fear there is knowledge of God in their mind but there's no believing in complete trust of Christ alone in their heart. There are a lot of people who know the language but they've never met the Savior. During these last few weeks, one of the books I was able to finish is a massive biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 624 pages and I finally finished it. I just had to finish it.

It's excellent. Biography of a pastor in Germany during World War II who ended up turning and becoming a double agent was captured and then right before the end of the war, he was executed by Adolf Hitler's direct command. When I finished that biography, I could say with some certainty I know some things about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I can even quote you a couple of things that Dietrich Bonhoeffer said but I don't know him personally. I've never met him.

I just know about him. Maybe you've read this book written by God about God. Maybe you can even quote a line or two out of it and maybe you've never even denied the truth of what it says about God and you're here and you believe everything that I'm saying. You've never denied it all the way back to when you were a child. You know facts and truth about God.

Have you ever given your heart and life to God? That begins the relationship. If you don't know where you stand in this regard, don't leave this auditorium. We have people to help. Nothing else I'd rather do than talk to you about knowing Christ personally by faith in Jesus' work on your behalf alone. Now before we wrap up chapter 1, let me very quickly give you two purpose statements that Paul has inserted into this paragraph. Titus, you need to appoint elders.

Why? Well, first of all, to save the church family from harm. To save the church family from harm.

Look at verse 11 again. They, he's referring to the false teachers. They've got to be silenced. Muzzled is the word. Muzzle them. Don't let them speak in the church. Don't let them teach a class. Don't give them any ground. Deal with them. Why? Because they're upsetting whole families. Notice that? In other words, they are literally ripping the church apart and families within the church because of their false teaching. So you've got to wear the mantle of a shepherd and protect the flock from harm.