Preached Sunday, July 25, 2010
from
Titus 3:8-9

Theme: Maintaining good works outside the church is the product of affirming good doctrine within the church.

[podcast]http://www.bethanybible.org/audio/072510.mp3[/podcast]

(Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture references are taken from The Holy Bible, New King James Version; copyright 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc.)

I like to pay attention to church reader-boards. I’m always interested in what other churches want to communicate to people as they drive by. But there’s a message I saw recently on a particular church reader-board that I’ve been thinking about ever since I saw it.

I’ve driven past this church many times; and I’ve read many of its reader-board messages. To be honest; most of the messages this particular church puts on its sign bother me a little. But of all the messages I’ve ever seen, the one I saw the other day was the most disturbing. It said:

WHAT YOU DO
IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN
WHAT YOU BELIEVE.

When I read that, I was so shocked that I almost had to pull over! “What a terrible thing for a church to say to people!”, I thought. “It sounds so ‘nice’ and ‘acceptable’ on the surface; but it’s really very deceptive!”

When I saw those words, the thought that immediately came to my mind was the story Jesus told in the Sermon on the Mount—the one where He said many would stand before Him on the Day of Judgment and say, “Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?” There was certainly a lot of “doing” being expressed in those words—doing of “good things” too, by the way. But Jesus said that He would declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!” (7:22-23).

It’s true that Jesus began that story by saying, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven” (v. 21; emphasis added). But the story He went on to tell shows that ‘doing the will of His Father’ means—above all else—entering into a relationship with Him by faith. It’s like how, on another occasion, people asked Him, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?” He told them in response, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent” (John 6:28-29).

Now; please understand—I certainly believe that what we do is important. But it’s not at all true to say that what we do is more important than what we believe! In fact, what we do is—ultimately—a product of what we believe. We do what we do because we believe what we believe.

That church conveyed a dangerously deceptive message on its reader-board by minimizing the importance we must place on the content of our faith. And I thought much about the words on that reader-board as I came to our passage this morning from the third chapter of Titus.

* * * * * * * * * *

Paul had been writing to Pastor Titus—urging him to teach the people of God to live the kind of life before the watching world that “adorns the doctrine of God our Savior in all things” (2:10). He affirmed that Jesus “gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works” (2:14). In chapter three, Paul writes; “Remind them to be subject to rulers and authorities, to obey, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to be peaceable, gentle, showing all humility to all men” (3:1-2).

Clearly, what we ‘do’ as professing Christians is important. But notice, in verses 3-7, the reason Paul then gives for why we are to do what we do:

For we ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that having been justified by His grace we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life (Titus 3:3-7).

In verses 3-7, Paul was careful to describe the gospel of our salvation. He speaks of how we were once lost sinners; but that God—on the basis of His mercy, and completely apart from our own works of righteousness—saved us. He washed us clean from our sins by causing us to be born again, and placed the Holy Spirit in us to enable us to live a life of holiness before Him; and all so that, having been declared righteous in His sight, we should behave like people who are destined to live forever in heavenly glory with Him!

Do you see how the truth of what He has done for us through Christ stands as the basis for what it is that we’re to then rise up and do? What we do is truly important; but it’s definitely not ‘more important’ than what we believe, because what we do is to be a product of what we believe. If we believe rightly, we will do rightly. But—as Jesus Himself has said—if we believe wrongly, then it won’t matter on the Day of Judgment whatever else it may be that we have done.

And this brings us to our passage this morning. Paul, for this reason, urged Titus to make sure he kept on the right track in his own ministry-priorities. Titus needed to make sure he faithfully and persistently taught the right things to the people of God. And he needed to consistently call upon them to fix their faith on those crucial truths. And so, in verses 8-9, he goes on to tell Titus;

This is a faithful saying, and these things I want you to affirm constantly, that those who have believed in God should be careful to maintain good works. These things are good and profitable to men. But avoid foolish disputes, genealogies, contentions, and strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and useless (Titus 3:8-9).

What an important message this passage proclaims to a world such as ours—one in which so many people minimize the importance of a faithful adherence to Scriptural truth! This passage teaches us that, contrary to what that reader-board said, maintaining good works outside the church is the product of affirming good doctrine within the church.

* * * * * * * * * *

I see two main divisions to all this. First, in verses eight, we’re told the things that we need to affirm; and in verses nine, we’re told the things we need to stay-away from. Or, to put it another way, verse eight tells us what’s “good and profitable”; and verse nine tells us what’s “unprofitable and useless”.

So; let’s begin by considering the “good and profitable things”; that is . . .

1. THINGS WE NEED TO CONSTANTLY AFFIRM (v. 8).

Paul begins by saying “This is a faithful saying . . .” In the original language, Paul places emphasis on the word “faithful” and says, “Faithful the word . . .”. And the ‘word’ that he’s speaking of is those things he had just so carefully described in verses 3-7 concerning the gospel of our salvation.

Did you know that if you read your way through what are often called ‘the pastoral epistles’—that is, Paul’s words of instruction to pastors in 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus—you’ll find five separate occasions in which he uses the phrase “this is a faithful saying”? All of them stress something that is true for all time—something that you and I can absolutely trust.

In 1 Timothy 1:15, Paul speaks of how Christ came into the world to save sinners—of which he himself was chief; and he says, “This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance . . .” In 1 Timothy 3:1, Paul affirms that he who desires the position of ‘bishop’ in God’s church desires “a good work”; and he says, “This is a faithful saying . . .” In 1 Timothy 4:9, he said that godliness is something that is profitable for all things, “having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come”; and concluded it with the words, “This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance”. In 2 Timothy 2:11, Paul quotes what many believe to be an ancient church hymn—”For if we died with Him, we shall also live with Him. If we endure, we shall also reign with Him. If we deny Him, He also will deny us. If we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself”; and prefaces it with the words, “This is a faithful saying. . .”

Here, in Titus 3:3-7, he has given us yet another “faithful saying”. And like the other ‘faithful sayings’, the message of the gospel that he described there is “a faithful saying” that is utterly trustworthy and that will always be true.. Even if everyone else in the whole world chose to disbelieve it and ignore it, and rendered all the arguments they can think of against it, and threw all the power they possess into opposing it, it would still remain “a faithful saying”. It is absolute truth from God, for all people, that will never change!

And that fact—that is, that the message of the gospel is such a “faithful saying”—should empower our confidence in declaring it. Paul once wrote that he was ready—with all that was in him—to preach that gospel. He said,

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith” (Romans 1:16-17).

And so, by the authority of the Holy Spirit, Paul urged Pastor Titus to make sure he preaches this faithful saying too. As a pastor, Paul—if he were here today—would tell me to preach it faithfully to this church family. And as a church family, he would tell all of us to proclaim it faithfully to the people around us.

There truly is no better and more worthy thing for us to proclaim to this world than that which is “a faithful saying”—and that’s what the gospel of Jesus Christ is declared by Paul to be! How good it is! How useful!

* * * * * * * * * *

Now; look at how Paul wanted Titus to proclaim it. He said, “This is a faithful saying, and these things I want you to affirm constantly . . .” As the New International Version has it, Titus was to “stress” these things; and as the English Standard Version has it, he was to “insist” on them.

The idea here is that Titus was to make it his ongoing habit, in his pastoral ministry, to assert these basic points of the gospel to the church—and to stress them confidently. It was interesting to find out that the same word Paul uses here is the one that he also used with reference to false teachers in 1 Timothy 1:7; where he said that they have strayed from the truth and turned aside to idle talk; “desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor the things which they affirm“—or, as it is in the English Standard Version, “about which they make confident assertions“.

Paul told Titus to affirm these things constantly because there was a very real problem going on among the churches to which Titus ministered. Paul tells us, in 1:10, that “there are many insubordinate, both idle talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole households, teaching things which they ought not, for the sake of dishonest gain.” The false teachers who were spreading their toxic teachings needed to be silenced. And what’s amazing is that Titus was being urged to silence those false teachers—who were making confident assertions of falsehood—by, himself, making assertions of the truth of the gospel with the same sort of confidence and consistent boldness.

I believe we should always do this in as humble and courteous manner as possible. As the Bible teaches us, “a servant of God must not quarrel but be gentle to all . . .” (2 Timothy 2:24). But what this is telling us is that the way we’re to fight false teaching is by, ourselves, affirming the truth of the gospel—matching confident assertion of falsehood with confident assertion of the truth from Scripture. False teaching always spreads when the truth sits silently by; but the one thing that falsehood cannot stand up against is the constant, faithful affirmation of the truth of the gospel from God’s own word. That’s why Paul says, in 1:9, that a godly pastor must be in place in each of the churches—one who will be “holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught, that he may be able, by sound doctrine, both to exhort and convict those who contradict.”

May God help me as a pastor—and all of us as a church family—to be bold and courageous and consistent in confronting false teaching with the faithful word of the gospel!

* * * * * * * * * *

And please notice very carefully why this needs to be done. Paul goes on to say that it’s “that those who have believed in God should be careful to maintain good works.” The word “maintain” basically means to put something into practice with resolute devotion and commitment. It speaks of putting something into action, and keeping it going, with a sense of purpose. And the word “careful” speaks of an attitude of continual alertness and confident readiness to do so. Thus, Paul is wanting for the people in the churches, who have believed on God through faith in His Son Jesus Christ in response to the gospel, to be continually on the alert and constantly ready to put good works into practice before a watching world.

And I hope we can all see the reason Paul gives for why such good works would occur. It would be because of the constant, continual, faithful assertion of the truths of the faithful word of the gospel in the church! It would be because the church leadership was faithfully declaring to the people of God the truths of the gospel from the Scriptures, calling them to believe those truths confidently, and urging them to rise up and live lives that “adorn the gospel of God our Savior”.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ: Don’t you ever believe what that reader-board said—that “what you do is more important than what you believe”. Nothing could be further from the truth. Good works should never be separated from good doctrine. What you and I do is crucial, to be sure; but it’s not more crucial than what we believe. According to God’s word—what we do is to be the product of what we believe.

Let’s make sure, then, that the “faithful saying” of the gospel is always what is asserted and affirmed in this church. Let’s make sure we, as God’s people, faithfully believe it. And let’s make sure we then rise up and faithfully put it into action through our lives out in the world—because it’s genuine faith in that faithful word that leads to works pleasing to God.

* * * * * * * * * *

Now; at the end of verse eight, Paul says “These things are good and profitable to men”. What a remarkable statement! He’s not just saying that these things are good and profitable to Christians—even though that’s certainly true. Rather, he’s saying that these things—that is, the truths that we affirm in the gospel, and the good works that result—are good and profitable to all people.

The message of the gospel of Jesus Christ—those truths that Paul, under the leading of the Holy Spirit, so wonderfully summarized for us in verses 3-7—is something that blesses the whole world. It declares Jesus Christ—the offspring of Abraham, because of whom God told Abraham that in him, “all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3). Jesus is the one whose birth the angel announced as “good tidings of great joy which will be to all people” (Luke 2:10).

And so, it’s those truths of that gospel—that “faithful saying”—that are the things we need to constantly affirm and flesh-out in our daily lives. They are “good and profitable”.

But it’s then that Paul warns us of some things that are “unprofitable and useless”. In verse nine, he tells us about . . .

2. THINGS WE NEED TO CAREFULLY AVOID (v. 9).

He says, “But avoid foolish disputes, genealogies, contentions, and strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and useless” (v. 9). And if I may say so; I believe that a failure to avoid these “unprofitable and useless” things has often distracted churches from declaring the faithful word of the gospel—and thus, rendered them ineffective in equipping God’s people to do the sort of good works that truly please Him.

What an important warning verse nine is to those of us who want this to be the kind of church family described in verse eight!

* * * * * * * * * *

Paul speaks of four things that he wanted Pastor Titus to avoid—and by extension, that he means for all of us to avoid. First, we are to avoid “foolish disputes” or “controversies”.

Now; we’ve got to be careful here. As someone pointed out to me the other day; if we’re not careful, we can get into foolish disputes over what constitutes “a foolish dispute”. After all; no one who gets into a dispute about something actually thinks that the thing for which he is contending is “foolish”. But I’d like to suggest that a good rule of thumb to follow in determining objectively whether or not something has the potential of becoming such a dispute. It’s when it’s something about which the Bible doesn’t clearly speak. When we don’t have a word from God in the Scriptures concerning something, then it’s really a matter of human speculation. And we should always be careful about fighting over such things; because we would then be defending a position on something about which God has told us nothing. Disputes over things about which God has told us nothing are—by definition—foolish and ignorant.

Can a Christian use tobacco? Should Christians pass out candy on Halloween? Is it okay for a Christian get a tattoo? What kind of music is okay to have in church? These are disputes over the kinds of things that the Bible doesn’t address clearly—and of course, we can name many other issues like them. And while it’s probably not wrong to discuss them, it’s definitely foolish to get into divisive disputes and controversies about them.

Given the glorious message of the gospel we have to proclaim, we’ve all really got better and far-more certain things to talk about.

* * * * * * * * * *

Second, Paul warns about “genealogies”. Now; of course, the Bible contains many genealogies. And many folks have made an interesting hobby out of gathering information about their personal ancestries. But I don’t believe Paul is talking about such things as that. Those aren’t things that distract us from the truth of the gospel in any way.

Rather, I believe Paul is talking about people who place an emphasis on genealogies in order to find a basis for their spiritual standing before God. Some sects of ancient Gnosticism, for example, taught its followers to study their genealogies in order to see if they can determine which “spiritual parents” they were descended from. Some followers of Mormonism labor hard to find the names of their ancestors who died outside of Mormonism, so that they can be baptized for them and thus strengthen their eternal family unit. These are the sorts of uses of “genealogies” that are contrary to the basic truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Paul warns, in 1 Timothy 1:4, that we’re not to “give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is in faith.” None of us are dependent upon our ancestry for our relationship with God anyway. Each one of us—whoever we are, and wherever we came from—are called to be “born-again” through a personal faith in Jesus Christ that’s all our own; and not as a product of our family lineage. And besides; when He saves us, He makes us completely “new creations” in Himself (2 Corinthians 5:17).

We’re not bound to genealogies in any way for our relationship with God through Christ. And to focus on such things is a distraction from the important work of spreading the truth of the gospel.

* * * * * * * * * *

Third, Paul tells us to avoid “contentions” or “arguments”. This, of course, doesn’t mean that we should avoid all conflicts in life; because elsewhere in the Bible, we’re told to “contend”, or “struggle” earnestly for “the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). And that, of course, is something worth contending for!

Instead, I think a good clue to what is meant in Paul’s warning here is found in 1 Timothy 6:3-5. There Paul warns against the kind of man who “does not consent to the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which accords with godliness”; saying that such a person “is proud, knowing nothing, but is obsessed with disputes and arguments over words, from which come envy, strife, reviling evil suspicions, useless wranglings of men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain.” There are people out there for whom the truth is never really an issue. They’re the kind of folks who focus on trivial details; and for whom the only thing that’s important is that they somehow find an argument and keep it going. Such folks have an unhealthy and obsessive attraction to disputes and arguments.

And as a church, we must not waste our time with arguments for arguments’ sake, or on contentions over non-essential matters. Such contentions only result in divisions and factions within the church family. They distract us from the true essentials of the gospel.

* * * * * * * * * *

And finally, Paul speaks of avoiding “strivings about the law”. This isn’t saying, somehow, that the law of God is to be disregarded. In fact, Paul tells us elsewhere that “the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good” (Romans 7:12).

Rather, Paul uses a word in the original language that means “pertaining to the law”. In Paul’s time, many were creeping into the churches and trying to bring the followers of Christ into bondage to the Judaistic rules and regulations that had been built around the law—such ceremonial demands as being circumcised, or observing Sabbaths and feast days; or following minute regulations about what one eats or what one wears—all designed to make people acceptable in the sight of God on the basis of external obedience to the Jewish law.

Paul warned, in 1 Timothy 1:7, about those who were “desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor the things which they affirm.” In Titus 1:14, he urges Titus to warn the people not to give heed “to Jewish fables and commandments of men who turn from the truth.”

We must not allow ourselves to be distracted from the good news of “justification by faith” by arguments and disputes over the religious rules and regulations of men.

* * * * * * * * * *

These are things to avoid because—as Paul says—they’re “unprofitable and useless”. They don’t help us live the kind of lives that truly “adorn the gospel of God our Savior”. They concern themselves with matters that were already settled long ago by the gospel.

Let’s stay away from them. Instead, let’s make sure that we throw all our energies into affirming that which Paul says is “a faithful word”—that is, the truths of the wonderful gospel of Jesus Christ that Paul calls “good and profitable to men”. Let’s protect our faithfulness to those truths, and not allow ourselves to get distracted from them. Let’s speak and teach those things to one another, and faithfully declare them to the needy people of this world.

And what’s more, let’s allow those very same truths to stand as the basis for good works. Let’s always remember that it’s very important that we believe rightly, because what we do truly is the product of what we believe.

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