Hey, my name's Cole. I like preaching and I get to
preach quite a bit here. I'm Lee, Pastor Frontier.
If you've got a Bible, go ahead and get that open to the book of
Titus. If you don't know where the book
of Titus is at, there should be instructions on the inside your
Bible, on what page that is. But don't worry, I'll have all
of the pertinent text on the screen in front of you.
It's a, it's a short letter that's in the New Testament.
So it's probably 3/4 of of the way back.
And like Jaron said, this is week 3 of our time in Titus.
And this morning what I'm doing is I'm completing my nerdy
trilogy of the main characters of the Letter of Titus.
Two weeks ago, we looked at the guy who was writing it, Paul.
How did that guy come to know Jesus?
What does he think he's accomplishing?
Last week we talked about these odd, odd and strange churches
that popped up on the island of Crete that Paul is writing for.
And what we're going to talk about this morning is the guy
who is going to receive and read aloud the letter in those
churches in Crete. His name is Titus.
Here's how it's going to work. I'm just going to be honest with
you. This is not going to be like a a
normal coal sermon for Frontier Church.
It's going to air on the side of nerdy and scholastic, and what
I'm going to do is I'm going to create a biographical sketch of
this guy Titus. And what you're going to do is
you're going to wonder how in the world does this have any
relevance with my life, right? It's going to feel irrelevant
for probably 2025 thirty minutes.
What in the world do relationships with the Greeks
and the Jews in the 1st century have to do with my struggles to
make friends and to know God? If you can stick with me on the
tail end of it. Once we've done that heavy
lifting, hopefully you'll receive a little bit of a master
class on leadership by looking at how Paul develops Titus, and
maybe even a little bit of a master class on how to develop,
cultivate and build gospel centered relationships.
Does that sound good? Good.
One of my favorite quotes from a poet comes from, I think it was
Annie Dillard. Somebody asked her how do you
write your poems? And I just love her response.
She said writing a poem is is kind of like building a barn in
the middle of a tornado or a thunderstorm with all of these
boards flying around. All you can do, reach out, try
to grab a board and then nail it down before it blows away.
That's what my sermon is going to be like.
OK, I'm going to throw a lot of stuff at you, a lot of
information at you. I'm going to have you circle a
word. We're going to talk about Greeks
and Jews, and we might even talk about circumcision if I feel
like having fun. Take what you can, nail it down.
Oh, you just wait. And who knows, maybe the Lord
will bless this strange little sermon.
Heavenly Father, I pray that, you know, sometimes, God, I feel
the pressure to try to prove your existence to people.
And you are. You're among us right now.
You're walking among us. You're with us, You're speaking
to us. You're demonstrating your
presence to us. I don't have to prove anything.
You're here, Lord. And so I think most of us on
Sunday mornings, we walk in not even really knowing what we
believe about God or if we believe in God.
And so I think that's most of us this morning.
And so if for those who don't know who you are or what you're
like or those who don't know what an experience of your love
feels like, God, would you just like, I don't care if it's
through the whole sermon, were like a weird thing that I say or
an off the hand comment. Would you just take something I
say this morning and just nail that board down just before it
flies away and people forget about it with their lunch plans?
Would you just take that board and nail it down onto somebody's
heart and build yourself a little barn or a little house to
live in? In our hearts, yeah.
Yeah. What could what could possibly
be learned about examining an ancient friendship between a
Greek and a Jew from 2000 years ago?
The world would say nothing. But I don't.
I don't care what the world would say.
I want to know what you would say.
God, what can we learn as we examine this relationship where
Paul calls Titus his true child in a common faith?
Maybe, maybe, maybe we'll walk out of here with a deepened
relationship with you and a deepened relationship with
others. And that would be a miracle.
So perform the miracle for us this morning.
Lord, in Jesus precious name, all God's people prayed.
Amen. If you have the capacity, go
ahead and stand for the reading of God's Word.
Just a simple introductory note to the letter, but there's a
strange amount of warmth in in Paul's writing and letter that
sometimes we miss if we don't read through it slowly.
So here's how it begins. Paul, we met him two weeks ago,
a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ.
For the sake of the faith of God's elects.
Or these Christians that are on this island called Crete.
For the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge
of the truth which accords with godliness in hope of eternal
life, which God who never lies promised before the ages began
and at the proper time manifested in His Word through
the preaching with which I have been entrusted by the command of
God our Savior to Titus. This is not a private letter
that Paul's writing and tucking away in his.
This is going to end up in somebody's hands.
And Paul's expectation is that Titus is going to take it.
He's going to stand in front of these ancient churches.
He's going to read this letter out loud and explain it.
So he says to Titus, my true child in a common faith, and
then next week, grace and peace from God the Father in Christ
Jesus our Savior. What's in here?
You can have a seat. If you want to imagine it,
imagine it. If you got a pen, go ahead and
grab that. If you have a pencil, go ahead
and grab that. If you have a highlighter,
highlight this. If you just want to play along,
play along. If I were you, I would circle
that phrase to Titus. I never grow old of reminding us
that the Christian faith is a historical faith.
It didn't happen outside of time.
It's not a myth. It's not a fable.
It happened in space and time, through real people in a
historical setting. Which of course raises the
question, who is this? Who is this Titus guy?
Now, here's an interesting thing to say.
The fact that Paul and Titus even know each other, the fact
that they're homies, the fact that they're friends, whatsoever
is, to be totally honest, from the ancient world perspective,
shocking. I'll give you one reason why,
and then I'll tease it out. Paul is Jewish, Titus is Greek.
Which begs the question, how in the world?
What in the heck happened? How did these two even become
friends? What's the story here?
Well, I have a short answer and a long answer for you.
The short answer is we don't know.
You got me there. The Bible doesn't tell about how
they met. The longer answer is we have
some pretty good idea. Scholars think most likely that
the way that a Greek and a Jew would have connected with each
other, Paul and Titus would have been probably in Antioch.
It's one of the biggest cities in the ancient Roman world and
the most likely place of overlap for a Jew and a Greek.
And Antioch would have been the marketplace.
It was a bustling hustling marketplace of trading things.
It would have been a multi ethnic hub within the city that
was filled with the sweet smells of baked bread and spices from
all over ancient world. But it was also a marketplace of
ideas, right? It was like before they had a
social media Facebook feed. The marketplace was their
Facebook feed, where they got together and they hammered out
their ideas, clarified them, crystallized them and argued.
And so the marketplace would have been alive with the smell
of bread, but also alive with a noisy crowd, where all these
diverse ideas in the ancient world were boom, colliding
together through argumentation, conversation, dialogue, or in
the sake of the apostle Paul, through preaching.
Probably how Titus would have met Paul before, before Titus
even saw Paul's face, he probably would have heard Paul's
booming voice in the middle of the marketplace preaching the
gospel of Jesus. Now, that would have been a
unique experience for Titus because as a great Titus, I'd
grown up with a pantheon of of gods.
He was not irreligious. Nobody in that world was.
It was atheistic. Nobody was agnostic.
It was a matter of monotheistic. Do you worship one God or
pantheon? Like how many gods do you have?
And so he would have, he would have grown up with this entire
pantheon of all of these Greek gods.
And as, as as a Greek, he probably would have found the
monotheism of Jewish people a little bit stifling and a little
bit crusty. But this Titus would have
thought this Jesus thing now that's, that was something new
to him. This, this idea that there was a
God who was for the whole world, not just a territory, right?
Greek gods were territorial. You had a, you had a Greek God
for this and a Greek God for the sea and a Greek God for the sun.
And you know, all these gods over all these territories and
geographies. But this Jesus guy, Paul was
preaching this Jesus guy as though he were the God for the
entire world. That was interesting.
But this was a completely new idea in Titus's world, and so
when he heard Paul's voice booming in the marketplace,
proclaiming the life, death, and resurrection of God in the
flesh. A God coming to earth, how
strange. A God dying for sinners, how
strange. This was something new, This
Jesus guy, I imagine, I suppose I'm hypothesizing that Titus
would have been frozen by the preaching of the gospel.
You can grow up here now. Hearing Paul preach it in the
marketplace would have gripped him suddenly underneath the
spell of the gospel of Jesus. A sudden, strange transformation
in Titus's heart probably occurred as he stood there,
caught in the jaws of the gospel.
A God who loves me, a God who's for me, A God who died for me, a
God who didn't stay out there, a God who came for me.
This would have frozen Titus. And maybe, maybe in that moment,
even in the Apostle Paul's eyes, as the priest swept across the
crowd and landed on Titus, not with suspicion, not with
disappointment, not with anger, but with warmth, maybe even a
warmth that potentially saw something in Titus that Titus
didn't yet see in himself. Have you ever felt that So after
the preaching of the gospel, as the crowds dispersed, maybe
maybe Paul sought out Titus or maybe Titus clamored and found
Paul. But the rest is history through
the preaching of the gospel of Jesus.
The relational bond between Paul and Titus took It's a bit of a
platonic Romeo and Juliet Cathy lesson Montagues right?
The likelihood that a Jew and a Greek would be close?
Very unlikely. It's a bit like the socias and
the greasers from Essie Hinton's book The Outsiders, which I hope
you read in your schooling because it's a fantastic book.
It's a strange one in a million relationship there, right?
You got to realize in the ancient world, there were a
million walls in that world that sought to separate Paul and
Titus from one another. Custom, culture, even
circumcision. We'll get around that.
But after hearing the preaching of the gospel, it seems like
those walls came down and Titus was set.
He would give up everything, leave behind everything.
Paul would take him under his wing, and they would move the
gospel forward in whatever way they could.
Maybe even Paul looked at Titus and said, dude, you might.
I don't know if you've ever thought of yourself this way,
Titus. You might be a church planner.
Who knows? So naturally, Paul, Titus grow
close together. And as they start to move the
gospel forward in the ancient world, the gospel took root at
this strange little island we learned about called Crete,
learned about this last week. That's where this letter is
going to this little island called Crete where all of a
sudden there are these messy little churches popping up that
are, when I say messy, I mean messy.
They're full of literal pirates, right?
They're filled with mercenary soldiers and even false
teachers. And so as these churches started
to pop up and grow, and Paul, of course, being an apostle, had a
million other issues to attend to, he needed to put somebody on
Crete to put things into place. So who do you think Paul brought
with them and left behind on the island of Crete to help these
churches establish a foundation of truth?
Who's the guy? Verse 4, Titus and voila, we
have the historical reason why this is even in your Bible.
But it begs another question. OK, I see that they're boys,
they're homies, they're close. Paul calls them is what's he
called them true child in a common faith.
But why Titus? I think there's two reasons.
One reason why I think Titus was the perfect leader that Paul
picked for the island of Crete is because it seems to me that
Titus was a leader of connection.
Can you guys say connection? When I say connection, I what I
think what I mean is I think Titus was naturally very
relationally intelligent. I think Titus and I'll show you
where I get this. I think Titus was natural, a
very empathetic and caring and nurturing leader.
There's a couple different verses in the Bible that lead me
to believe that. I'll give you one.
This is second Corinthians 8. Paul's writing to the church in
Corinth at this point in time. Titus is over in Corinth helping
out that church. And listen to the way that Paul
describes Titus. He says thanks be to God into
the heart of Titus, the same earnest care that I have for
you. So the word care here has
obviously connotations of gentleness and thoughtfulness
and empathy. And this is helpful to see
because you if you want to be a leader, you need to have
empathy. I'll give you one reason why
People who do not feel like you understand them won't follow
your leadership. They won't.
People who don't feel understood by you will not follow your
leadership. Now consider Crete.
Crete is a flippin mess. It's going to need a leader who
can sit down with a literal pirate, right?
A literal pirate learning to follow the ways of Jesus and
have such a gas tank of empathy and patience that they can sit
down and say, hey, I understand why you would steal from those
merchant ships in order to provide from your family.
I don't think you're I, I don't hate you.
I don't think you're a terrible human being.
I get why you would do it. I think that you honestly love
Jesus. But the way of Jesus forbids you
from stealing anymore. Those were those were the like
the types of conversations Titus was having wasn't like, hey, is
God real? Titus was like, hey, stop
killing people with your sword. OK as a pirate.
Like that's the type of discipleship that needed to take
place and and Crete. And so naturally this place
needed a leader with an enormous gas tank of patients care and
empathy. And that seems to be quite
naturally put in Titus by by God.
But listen to me. I am pro empathy.
OK, I'm on team empathy. I really am.
But however, empathy untethered from conviction and truth is
just a relational drug. As good as necessary as
connection, care, empathy is for a leader, it is a danger if it's
not balanced out by an equally strong dose of conviction,
truthfulness and doctrine. Here's the way my favorite
leadership author, Edward Friedman, A pastoral candidate.
You know what I'm saying? Friedman says it this way.
He says, quote, brave leaders are the immune system for the
entire body. An immune system regulates the
body's functions and processes and ultimately what was the
immune system do? It defends the body by fighting
off infections. So a leader with high degrees of
empathy, which are important, it irreplaceable.
But the Bible says that a pastor needs to be gentle.
So it's this is not like a take it or leave it thing.
OK so empathy is good, but a leader with high degrees of
empathy without equally high degrees of courage cannot be the
immune system of the institutions they lead.
Instead they will function as step up Transformers.
Meaning if the anxiety in the room is 100 watts, if the only
gift the person has is empathy, then the solely empathetic
leader will take on the anxiety in the room, absorb it, and then
amplify it back and increase the anxiety up to 11,000 watts.
So leaders also need a backbone that allows them to stay in
touch without getting zapped to remain non anxious.
Love empathy, but it needs to be balanced by equally strong
dosage of truth and conviction. Which brings me to the second
reason why I think Titus was a good fit for Crete.
He was a leader of connection. He was also a leader of
conviction. I personally, I personally, this
is a guess again, OK, I'm hypothesizing I personally not
because I don't love the word of God, but because sometimes we
fail to see the emotional relational depth within the word
of God. So I personally think that
having a backbone was a learned skill for Titus and not a
natural skill for Titus. I think he had to develop and
cultivate that who a sue. He wrote a Pulitzer Prize
winning book called stay true. He has this little quote on
friendship. He says quote.
There are many currencies to friendship.
We may be drawn to someone who makes us feel bright and
hopeful, someone who can always make us laugh.
Perhaps there are friendships that are instrumental, where the
appeal is what they can do for us.
There are friends we talked to only about serious things,
others who only make sense in the blitzed merriment of deep
night. What a wonderful sentence that
is. Wow.
There are friends who only make sense in the blitzed merriment
of deep night. Some friends complete us, while
other friends complicate us. I personally think my hunch is
that Titus was drawn to Paul because he was strong where
Titus was weak. And the reason I say this is
because if you look at the Jewish culture of that day and
the Greek culture of that day, they actually create pretty
predictable types of human beings.
The Jewish atmosphere that Paul grew up in prized faithfulness
to truth, prized doctrine. Breathing that air as a child
would naturally produce a more bold, courageous, brave person
like Paul who stands on the corner of the marketplace and
preaches the gospel and lets all the criticisms bounce off of
them. The Greek atmosphere that Titus
grew up in prized intellectual curiosity more.
There was more openness to different ways of thinking about
this God and that God. And so naturally, the Greek
culture would have produced somebody who's more empathetic
towards others, probably like Titus.
So my hunch is that see Titus seeing Paul so confident in the
gospel, right, that the criticism bouncing off of him on
the marketplace, standing his ground with a backbone.
My hunch is that seeing Paul so convicted made a light bulb go
off above Titus's head, and he thought, I wonder if you've ever
thought this before? Huh.
I should probably be more like that, luckily for Titus.
If you did think that, luckily for Titus, following Paul around
on a daily basis would have been a master class for boldness,
read the book of Acts. Dude has a backbone.
I'll give you my favorite holy crap moment from Paul and
Titus's relationship. Master class on what does it
look like to stand your ground and stay convicted in the truth.
It would have been amazing for Titus to follow Paul around in
the ancient world. Paul mentions this moment in
Galatians 2 verses one through three.
OK, he says Galatians. After 14 years I went again to
Jerusalem with Barnabas taking who?
And he took Titus along with him.
What happened when they went to Jerusalem?
Well, Paul tells us what didn't happen.
He says even Titus, who was with me was not forced to be
circumcised, even though he was a, a Greek.
He what? He didn't have to do what to his
what? What happened?
What what is it? What does that have to do with
anything? Titus wasn't forced to be
circumcised. Well, OK, the moment that Paul
is writing to roll up your sleeves, we're having some fun
here. Grab a towel, bite down on it.
Luckily for you, the moment Paul's writing about is
documented in Acts chapter 16. I'll give you the SparkNotes
cold IKEA version of it. So Jerusalem's churches at that
point in time were still predominantly Jewish, which
meant that there was a lot of Jewish custom in there.
And naturally that created a lot of arguments of like, OK, well,
what? What does a person have to do to
follow Jesus and to be a Christian?
Paul was preaching the gospel of grace.
Paul said faith alone in Jesus alone you're in.
That's everything. The Jewish people were like, not
so fast there, cowboy. The Jewish people were like,
well, we've been doing all of this other stuff for super long.
So we think that you've got to do these other things in
addition to believing in Jesus in order to be saved.
For instance, we think that people should be circumcised,
otherwise God doesn't love them, right?
This was you can criticize them. It would have felt pretty
natural for these Jews in Jerusalem to think that way.
Yeah, Bros got a snip snap there.
You know what's in circumcision? Otherwise they're not
Christians, and otherwise they're not really dedicated.
Now, this was a form of works based salvation.
You got to do something in addition to believing in Jesus
that Paul's entire career was opposed to.
He hated us. It ran contrary to the gospel of
grace. And so, luckily for Paul in
Jerusalem, they decided to have a council on the matter.
Let's get together and let's make an official decision.
Does a person need to be circumcised to be fully included
in the church and to be a full member of the family of God?
Let's have a council on it. So what do you think Paul did?
Paul's like, I'm going, bro, I'm coming.
I'm going. And you, I'm going to do I'm,
I'm not just, I'm not just going to it.
I'm bringing Titus with me. I like, I can't prove this.
I like to imagine that he didn't even tell Titus why he brought
him with him, right. Like you just kind of snuck him
in. Like, hey, Titus, you want to go
to, you want to go to a Christian Passion conference
now? Chandler's preaching, Piper's
preaching. You want to come to the school
conference? Titus was like, yeah, I want to
learn how to be a leader, right? And so they roll.
They roll into Jerusalem. Paul's like, I'm crashing the
party. I'm going to bring an
uncircumcised Greek with me just to make my point.
I'm going to do it. So the two of them arrive in
Jerusalem, only batting 500 in circumcision between the two of
them, one out of two. It's not.
It's great baseball.
They'll get in the Hall of Fame, not great in Judaism, in
Jerusalem. OK.
So they walk in, only one of them circumcised.
And as they walk into the council, the tension in the room
is already thick. They're already arguing, right?
This is heated. Paul.
I don't know. He's probably smiling, right?
Because. Because push back.
And criticism for Paul is like protein.
He loves it. So he walks into the thick
atmosphere. He's like, yeah, baby, let's,
let's do this. And Titus sits down.
They sit down, ready to hear about the subject at hand.
Somebody gets up to announce it. We're talking about whether or
not a person needs to be circumcised in order to be a
Christian. You can imagine Titus.
He goes ghostly, pale white, clutches his pearls, goes, What
do they want to do? Paul's like, relax, bro, I got
you read, read Acts 16. They start pressing him on it.
All right? They don't leave it like a
hypothetical, like, hey, let's draw.
Should a person be certain? Let's draw it out on the
whiteboard. They, they press after Paul and
Titus, right? They, they're like, hey, you're
not circumcised. And it's hard for us as modern
people to understand what the big deal about circumcision was.
Do you like, do you ever hear stories like this?
And you're like, what's the big deal?
Well, I'll give you 3 no brainer facts about the ancient world,
about circumcision that made it a big deal.
I won't be terribly crude. I'll just say the facts and you
can choose what you want to do with your imagination.
Here's #1 here's number one, they didn't have fact number
one, why circumcision was such a big deal.
They didn't have social media, duh.
But because they didn't have social media, they actually had
to choose other ways of boldly declaring their faith rather
than just writing it on their bio.
They couldn't just host what they believed.
They had to actually, I know this is a novel concept.
They had to actually show it with their lives.
And suppose there was a certain part of male anatomy that was
more tender than the other parts of male anatomy.
It would make natural sense that to see whether a person was
really in or out on this whole God thing was their willingness
to embrace pain in that particular area.
Are you guys following me? Do you want me to stop #2 #2
Here's why it was such a big deal in the ancient world.
They didn't have painkillers in the ancient world.
Yeesh #3 they didn't have sharp metal blades or knives or
surgical knives. What they had were stones.
Yikes, give me a towel, I'll bite down on it and let's do
this. All of that forms a culture that
says we all did it. Abraham did it in his 90s.
Bro, are you not really committed?
So you see how this all forms a culture where, like, this is
actually a big deal to them. So as they're arguing about
this, you can imagine a man sharpening stones in the
background while making shady eye contact with Titus.
Step up to the plate, bro. And in a stunning display of
gospel conviction, Paul says no. Not going to do it, bro.
Paul stands his ground. He doesn't capitulate, he
doesn't give any ground, he doesn't cave.
He preaches the gospel. He says no, The gospel of Jesus
is by grace through faith alone, apart from any works of the law.
Amen. Nothing you can do will save
you, only the saving work of Christ.
So you can be circumcised or not, You can eat meat or not.
If a person has faith in Jesus Christ, that's the one and only
thing that makes them a Christian.
And Paul wins the argument. Titus breathes a large sigh of
relief. And I'm assuming a deeper bond
of affection and gratitude between Paul and Titus emerges
as a result of this. Can you imagine what their
friendship felt like after that? You are my dog, OK?
I'll follow you wherever you want to go.
I'll follow you, right? A deep breath and here's here's
the point. Titus learned this was all
training for him as a leader. Paul's not just bringing him
along as an object lesson and put him on the cutting board.
This is all a leadership lesson. Titus learned in this very
nerving situation, what it looked like to be a leader who
didn't let people walk all over him.
He learned and this experience very anxious top room, what it
looks like to stick to gospel doctrine alone and to not let
people bully him into compromise.
And these two pieces of his personality coming together
would have made, I think, Titus a very convicted leader and a
very connective leader. And this is the critical blend
of the Christian leader. They must be connected and
convicted and pathetic and truthful.
Not 5050. It's not about picking like, oh,
you know, I'm just 80% conviction, but 20% connection,
right? It's not.
You can't be like, yeah, relationships are my thing.
Truth isn't my thing, right? It's 101.
See, This is why you need friends, because you're going to
hit your notes off the table and you're going to be lost.
And then you've got a will cook in your life, bro.
Dude, I didn't have a sermon analogy to end it with.
I might come back to that, thanks homie.
Didn't need it. It's not 5050, right?
It Christian leaders need to be 100% empathetic, caring,
empathetic, connected, loving, and 100% convicted of the truth.
This is important to recognize because in a lot of times people
just, they naturally have a, they have a propensity towards
one or the other. And to have one at the expense
of the other always results in disaster.
Like if you have a, if you have an empathy fetish, then what
you're going to be able to do is make people feel really
understood. But if you don't care about
truth and doctrine, you, you will.
You'll be the type of leader who empathizes, empathizes people
all the way to hell. You'll see them drowning in the
lake of fire. And rather than leaning down and
trying to pull them out, you'll say, I can see how your family
of origins would make you jump in this lake of fire.
There's a lot of us who have just a doctrinal truth
conviction fetish, and if that's not equally balanced out by care
and nurture, then you'll just end up starting a bunch of
bullying fights with people. And you'll make the truth look
ugly to people. And you'll be the type of people
who goes around wielding truth in such a way without any
relational warmth that people will jump into the lake of fire
just to get away from you. So you don't want to pick one or
the other. You want to say, God, where do I
need to grow? Do I need to grow as a leader in
conviction, or do I need to grow as a leader in connection?
Crete needed both of them. You'll see that as you walk
through this letter. Absolute crapshoot.
There's literal pirates. There's mercenary soldiers.
These people love Jesus, but they were a mess.
Mixed into that group was false teachers eager to leverage the
church for their own agenda, arguing, fighting, stealing on a
daily basis in these churches in Crete.
But do you know what doesn't sound as hard after the
Jerusalem circumcision debacle? Leading and loving pirates.
Titus was well trained to walk into this environment with both
conviction and connection. So of course, who did Paul trust
enough to leave behind and Crete to lead these churches through
establishing doctrine and truth and training up elders to lead
the church and teaching the church how to live out the
Christian faith? You know, Paul left Titus behind
and Crete. And So what this whole letter
is, is it's Paul writing to Titus a manual for how to be a
church. They don't know how to do it,
how to be a church. And as we walk through it, we'll
probably recognize that we don't know how to be a church either.
We have our own struggles. And I love the way that Paul
like, did you see what Paul calls Titus?
He he calls him a true child of the common faith.
Why true child? True child?
I think because Paul didn't have any biological children.
He never knew what that felt like.
But because of the gospel in the church, do you know what?
Paul had a lot of children. Why is that modifier true in
front of the word child? Why true child?
Because Paul wants to let you know that father son
relationships or mother daughter relationships in the church are
not second rate relationships. Family is not a metaphor of the
church wrong. It's a fact of the church.
The church isn't like a family. The church is the family of God.
You're either good or bad at acting like a family.
You're not either a family or not a family.
It it's the reality. And so Titus de Paul is a true
child of the common faith. You feel the depth of this
relationship. You feel the warmth of this
relationship. I'm doing all of this
biographical sketch, trying to get a picture of Titus and Paul
in your imagination. I'm doing all this because I
just want to boil it down to a single question and ask you, do
you want these types of relationships?
You don't have to be best friends with everybody in the
church. You don't have to be tight with
everybody who wants to be tight with you in the church.
It's OK to have boundaries. Also, the quality of your life
will be determined by the quality of your relationships.
It's just a fact. You don't have quality
relationships. Life is not going to feel like a
quality of life. And that's not just pop
psychology crap. That's theology.
The you can't get rid of the feeling in your heart I want
deep relationships. You can't get rid of it.
And the reason it's there, it's because it might be the best
evidence that God exists in the entire cosmos.
It's evidence of the God whose image you're created in.
The Christian God is triune, He's Trinity, He's three persons
and one godfather, Son, Holy Spirit.
They're distinct in personhood. The Father's not the Son, the
Son is not the Spirit, the Spirit's not the Father, and
they're one in essence. The Father is God, the Son is
God, the Spirit is God and they are one.
God is He is literally like the essence of his character.
He is relationship to be created in his image means if I don't
have deep relationship, I'm going to feel dead inside.
And if I do have deep relationship, I can deal with
all the other crap. I can do the taxes, I can do the
50 hour work weeks, I can do the sleepless nights.
If I have relationships, I'm good.
You're built that way. You're wired that way because of
what God is like. But here's the rub.
The modern human being has cultivated a view of friendships
that echoes the slogan of Target.
Expect more payless. That's everybody in the room.
Why relationships are hard for us?
It's because we expect more and we payless.
We have expectations for our friends that we don't hold
ourselves to. And so we go on our life as a
crusade of destroying relationships and then leaving
them, destroying them and leaving them not dealing with
problems. And the reason why is because we
have expectations for them that we don't have for ourselves.
If the friendship isn't deep enough, it's because they never
asked me questions about my heart, It's them.
If the friendship isn't strong enough, it's because they never
do anything nice for me. It's them.
If if the friendship doesn't take, if it's not constant
enough, it's because they never pursue me, right?
Marriage counseling is this way, right?
Couples famously get together and he said, she said, your
friendships are like that too, right?
You all whenever your relationship isn't working out,
you always look at it and say it's because of him.
It's because of her and I. I need you to listen to me for
your joy and for your sake. Stop the healthiest thing you
can do if you want to develop deep lifelong Jesus centered
relationships. You take the responsibility for
the quality of your friendships and put them on your own
shoulders. If you do that over the long
haul, your relationships will get deeper and wider and you'll
blame less and enjoy more. But you've got to be willing to
look at the weaknesses in your friendships and say, OK, that's
my responsibility. Too many minor people, they
just, they refuse to get on the field and play and they sit in
the nosebleeds willingly. They sit in the nosebleeds and
then they complain about the view, right?
If you stand at a distance from people, you'll throw rocks at
them. I guarantee you.
If you stand at a distance from our church, you're going to
throw rocks at it. It's always how it works.
But the people who give more are invested more, experience, more
joy in it. And so I know this is hard to
hear, but are you lonely? You go start up a conversation.
Do you wish somebody would pray for you?
You go pray for them. Do you wish somebody would
encourage you? You go encourage them.
You can actually control that. You can't control them.
Do you wish somebody would initiate with you?
You go initiate with them. The ultimate form of hypocrisy
is you expecting something to be in a relationship that you're
unwilling to bring. Yeah.
The ultimate form of hypocrisy is you expecting something to be
in a relationship that you're unwilling to bring in.
The Christian standing in the blood of a God who sees
relationship is so valuable that he shed his own blood for it.
The Christian goes to the cross and says here, my Lord, send me,
send me here, my Lord, send me I it's Some people think the
church is just about truth, and it is absolutely.
If you miss truth and you miss doctrine, you don't have a
church. So I'm a truth guy.
But if all you have is truth without relationship, I don't
even think Satan finds the church a threat.
When did Satan, like have you read Genesis?
Ask yourself the question, when did Satan show up in Genesis?
It's not when God creates Adam. It's not when God creates the
cosmos. It's not when God creates the
sun and the moon and the stars. It's not when God creates the
animals. When does Satan show up?
Satan doesn't. Satan shows up when God creates
relationship between Adam and Eve.
That's when Satan's like, oh, I got to, I got to get in the mix
of this. That's the threat is the way the
gospel comes through relationships.
I mean, you see this even like God calls Genesis is all a
cascade of God saying that's good, that's good, that's good.
He creates something. He says good, good, good, good.
And then the first instance of not good in the Bible, it comes
before sin is even there. Have you ever noticed that
there's no sin? Adam is in, he's walking in
relationship with God, paradise. He's in paradise and God finds
something to look at and say that's not good.
What is it? It's not good for man to be what
alone? Some people say things like all
I need is God, and that's true for your salvation, but that God
that God doesn't actually say that right?
He he says actually you need my people too.
Not not good for man to be like imagine.
OK, this is crazy. Imagine yourself in paradise.
Nobody's there. Nobody's bothering you.
There's no sin, no shame, no anxiety.
You are in a perfect relationship, harmonious with
God. In paradise, God would call that
not good. Why?
Because you need companionship, friendship, relationship with
other image bearers, God. And so that so much of church
and the Christian life is allowing the truth of the gospel
to work itself out in the context of our relationships.
It's massive. I came across a 15 second clip
on Instagram that I just, I get in these moods where I just get
sappy and soft and I find these stupid clips on Instagram and I
just watch them on repeat, you know?
And the one that I found that really I just, I watched on
repeat for like 5 minutes. All it was was a high school
pitcher. He was throwing a strikeout in
the 9th inning. And the strikeout was recorded
by his dad in the stands on his, on his phone.
And the title of the video was, it was like a 10 second.
It was 10 seconds. And the title of the video was
my dad's reaction to my final strikeout in the game.
So dad's watching his son. Son throws a strikeout and the
dad's responses, he starts screaming into the phone after
the strikeout. He starts screaming with pride
and joy. He's like, he goes, yeah, baby,
that's my boy. He says it like 5 times.
He's like, that's my boy. Yeah, baby, that's my boy.
And I was like, oh man, that's, that is so sweet.
And then what took it to the next level was a pinned comment
underneath the video, the comment that they pinned to the
top. Some random anonymous stranger
on the Internet was watching this father celebrate his son.
Yeah, baby, that's my boy. And typed out the comment, The
stuff I would do to hear this. There are people in this room
never had a father figure, mother figure, coach, authority
figure, teacher, ever. They would do anything to hear
it. They've never had an influential
figure in their life. Look at them and say, yeah,
baby, that's my boy, that's my girl right there.
And that breaks God's heart. It is not good for woman or man
to be alone, and God has a solution for that.
His solution is to die on a cross to redeem people and to
make them into a family called the church.
And so the church, it's supposed to be the play.
It's not just the place you go to hear preaching.
I love that you love that. The church needs to be the place
where people who have never heard.
Yeah, baby, that's my boy. And think the stuff I would do
to hear this. The church needs to be the place
where we don't have to do any stuff to hear that we're friends
or spiritual fathers, Spiritual mothers look at us and say to
it, you're kicking butt as a mother.
That's my girl. Go get it right.
It's so important for us to have that.
Jesus shows us this at the foot of the cross.
Gosh, OK, I'm sorry. Just look, give me this and I'll
be done. When Jesus is, when Jesus is
dying on the cross, he's stretched out in pain.
He's being crucified. He's absorbing the wrath of God
for all of the sin of this people.
He's dry to the bone, man. He's bleeding from every square
inch of his body. And standing in front of him are
a lot of people, but two people in particular.
His mom, right? Mary's watching all of this.
This is mom. He loves her.
There's also John, the only disciple who didn't bail on him.
That's his buddy. OK, Jesus is about to leave.
And it is not good for Mary to be alone and it is not good for
John to be alone. Those two are just
acquaintances, right? I'm, I'm assuming Mary and John
bumped into each other while Jesus was hanging out all
together. They knew each other.
They were acquaintances, but Jesus didn't want them to remain
acquaintances. And so he bleeds for them on the
cross. And do you know what he says to
Mary? He looks at Mary and he says,
mother, behold your son. And he says to John, John,
behold your mother, what's going on in the blood of Christ there?
He's not just saving individuals from their sin.
Yes, he is, but he's establishing in his blood, in
the shadow of the cross, a family.
He's giving his mother to John to have a mom, and he's giving
John to his mother to have a son.
And if you stand in the blood of Jesus long enough and in the
shadow of the cross long enough, you should be knit together with
other believers so that you become a spiritual mother or
father or a spiritual son or daughter.
Jesus died for you to have deep discipleship oriented
friendships that magnify and put the glory of Jesus on display.
That's what's behind this verse. That's why Paul can look at a
Greek but have anything in common with and say, you are my
true child in the faith. It's so moving and touching.
And I think it's the gospel that allowed Paul to look at Titus
and say, hey, you might be a church planter.
You might be a, you might be a a great friend.
I think you can become a great follower of Jesus.
You might become a great worship leader, whatever The thing is,
have you ever seen something in somebody that they haven't seen?
Maybe you want to start doing that by the power of Jesus this
morning, Heavenly Father, I pray that you would make a make us
into a family. Make us people who are the
people behind us in the pews right now.
That's our mother and father in the faith, the people who are in
front of us right now. Those are our true children in
the faith, our true sons and daughters.
And so would you build this church together?
Would you make Paul Titus relationships, mother, daughter
relationships, father son relationships.
May the church be the place where people who look at a
father celebrating his son throwing a strike out and
yelling, that's my boy, where people who say I would do
anything to hear that this is the place where they should hear
it. And if they don't hear it from
other people, that's a shame. If they don't hear it from other
Christians, that's a shame. But if they don't hear from
other people, I pray that they would hear it from you, that you
in this moment, right now, would look at those whom you have
adopted and made your family, and that they would hear
themselves by virtue of the gospel alone, That they would
hear you say, My beloved daughter, my beloved son, in
whom I am well pleased, would the familial affection of a
heavenly Father floor us this morning.
Please do that in and through our hearts.
In the precious name of Jesus, all God's people prayed man.