It's good to see you guys. If you've got a book or if
you've got a Bible in front of you, go ahead and get that open
to the book of Titus. If you don't know where that's
at, it's like the last fourth of of your Bible.
If you don't have a Bible, that's OK.
There should be one in front of you.
If there's not, it's OK. We'll have all of the words on
the screen for you this morning. I've got a lot to say about a
little amount of text this morning.
So I'm just going to, I'm a, I'm a jump into it.
One of my one of my buddies a while ago, I think I've said
this before. He, he told me like, dude, when
you preach God's word, you have two different types of sermons.
You have your locker room sermons that are like rah, rah,
rah, rah rah. And then you've got your
classroom sermons that are a little bit more luxury or as he
said, even more lovingly, you have your dorky sermons and your
fun sermons. And today is not a fun one.
Well, it might. It's fun for me, but it's just
going to be more on the dorky and nerdy side.
It's going to feel a little bit more like a lecture.
In fact, the way it's going to feel from as we dig into this
first verse of this little book is it's actually going to feel
like a biography of the author of the book of Titus.
We're going to do a deep dive or as deep as we can over the
course of 40 minutes into the life.
And thinking of Paul, it's, I feel a little bit like we're
chasing him around documentary style with a camera.
And I'm just going to give you my goal right up front.
My goal in all of this isn't to fill your brain with, Oh my
gosh, I know more about Paul than I ever did.
I think that'd be wonderful. That's just not my ultimate
goal. My ultimate goal in preaching A
sermon that revolves around the life of the author of Titus.
Paul, my ultimate goal is to deepen your trust in what Paul
writes, and more than that, to deepen your trust in the gospel
of Jesus that Paul preaches. If we could get there, that'd be
awesome. Amen.
Heavenly Father, bless the preaching of your Word this
morning. I heard that you would just just
make it. I just want this to come to
life, Lord, I, I want all of the words on the page to to just not
be ink anymore, but to become 3D and to jump out and to come to
life and to grab us and to pull us in.
And I think so often, Lord, so often when I read your word, all
I see is ink on a page and and that's that's not reality.
If we could see the the topography of your word
underneath every single word of your Scripture, it would go
deep, deep, deep, deep down with an entire universe of things to
explore underneath that singular word.
And so, Lord, as we just unpack who Paul is and the way you use
them and the way that you raise them, and what Paul thinks he's
accomplishing in this letter to Titus, I think we will be
struck, struck dumb by the glory of God and how trustworthy His
word is for us as an authoritative guide.
And so, Lord, would you do that? Would you, Would you take us?
Would you take us deeper this morning, deeper in our faith,
deeper in our trust, deeper in our relationship with you?
It's in the precious name of Jesus that all God's people
prayed. Amen.
If you're able, go ahead and stand the letter of Paul to
Titus. And here is where we're going to
stay fixated and focused on this entire morning.
Verse one, Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus
Christ. All 3540 minutes of the sermon
is going to be right there on those words.
However, let me read the rest of the introduction to you for the
sake of the faith of God's elect.
That'll be next week. Today is by Paul.
Next week is for the elect. 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.
And then week 3 is going to be to Titus by Paul for the elect
to Titus, my true child and a common faith, grace and peace
from God the Father and Jesus Christ our Savior.
Let's have fun. You can have a seat by Paul
Every usually when when my mom and dad are here, I try to pick
a story that embarrasses my dad. If you were here last time, you
know that was an epic fail on my behalf.
I brought up a a story that I thought would embarrass my dad,
but instead what ended up happening is he in the middle of
it, stood up, took a bow and all of you applauded him.
So if we could please refrain from that this morning, that
would be great. But I think I got one that he's
got no comeback with. Actually, every every summer,
one of my favorite things is I go trout fishing with my dad and
one of his best buddies of like 30 or 4, you know, 3 or 4
decades of friendship and then his buddy brings his kids and we
just have a blast. And my favorite part every time,
every time it's actually not catching the fish, though I
catch a lot of them. It's not catching the fish.
My, my favorite part every time we do that trip are the late
nights when when the cigar smoke begins to roll and the fire is
lit and it goes deep into the night.
Because one of my favorite things to always ask is, Oh my
goodness, I'm sitting in the presence of like 3 or 4 decades
of unbroken friendship. Like all of the riches in there
is fantastic. And So what I like to ask
usually is, hey Haberman, Hey Pop, What are some of your
favorite stories of your friendship?
And they always have a lot and they're always great.
My favorite 1, though, that's come up every year is, is the
story of the ice house. It's a story about ice fishing.
There was a day, I think 20-30 years ago, right?
20-30 years ago, they went ice fishing.
And so Haberman, my dad's buddy and him, they're, they're
dragging their ice house out onto the ice looking for the
spot where they want to drill the hole to go fishing.
My dad is hauling the portable ice house with them and they
finally find the spot. They're ready to kind of drill
it in and it's a windy day, which is important for the sake
of our story. And so my dad jumps into the ice
house to keep it from blowing away in the wind while my dad's
friend is supposed to anchor it down.
Think think like ice screws to anchor it down, but think like
tent pegs but for for ice. And so my dad jumps in.
My buddy is kind of, you know, on pack full on fold the
portable ice house up. And then suddenly there is a
gigantic roosh of a wind blows through and it's a massive wind
and it fills the entire ice house, right.
And in a way that you can, you can feel the bottom start to
lift. And so my dad is he's in the ice
house. The wind comes along, whoosh
fills up the ice house. Suddenly my dad's eyes go wide,
right. He looks at it.
He looks at his buddy who's holding on to the ice house.
And suddenly, a smile spreads across his face, and a light
bulb goes off above his head. My dad sees this, and he says,
Haberman, don't you dare let go. What do you think his friend
did? I'll give.
Yeah. I'll give you a hint.
To be a friend of Steve Dyke for
any amount of time is to be a victim of countless pranks, and
so his friend had suffered countless pranks at the hands of
hands of my dad. That means that he's experienced
a 11:00 in the middle of card games getting taken down with a
double leg takedown in a living room type of thing.
I think one time they told the story that my dad brought a
goldfish with him to school and snuck it into his friends water
bottle while he wasn't watching. I too have suffered many pranks
at the hands of my dad. An ordinary moment in the summer
waking up included pots and pans above my head.
Donk donk donk donk donk. Sometimes just ice cold water
being thrown on me. So if you have been the victim
of countless pranks like that, what do you think my dad's buddy
did? The wind comes rushing through,
it fills up the ice house. My dad's eyes go wide.
My buddy smiles, holding on to the ice house.
My dad says don't you dare let go.
What do you think he did, Joseph?
He let go. And I wish you could see the joy
and the Glee every year with which my dad's buddy tells that
story. Watching my dad trapped in an
ice house get blown across the entire pond while trying to claw
his way out of it unsuccessfully until eventually it slowed down.
Or they, I don't even know. Maybe they just, maybe they hit
the edge of the pond and it broke.
But it it poses a question, which is why wouldn't you want
to spend your life being blown around in whatever direction the
winds of the world are blowing? And suppose you didn't want to
be blown by the winds of culture every time there's a new gust.
What would even be a dependable, trustworthy anchor to keep you
in place? If you've got a Bible, look down
at verse one right now. We're going to circle three
things in our text this morning. The first thing is maybe you
just want to do it in your imagination.
Maybe you really have a pen with you.
The first thing I want you to circle is simply the word Paul.
Paul, who is this guy? Paul, who is this guy who is
writing this letter? I remember having a conversation
with a young guy during my first year of pastoral ministry.
We were preaching through the book of Philippians, which Paul
also authored, and we had a fun conversation together.
But his question, I think, is a valid question, which was gold,
bro. I keep hearing you call this the
word of God. You're telling us that it's been
written by God and authored by God.
But look at Philippians. That's not the claim of the
text. The text says clearly cult.
It says that it's written by Paul.
It's not written by God. It's written by Paul.
Which puts you in an interesting predicament if you're reading
it, if you want to do X in your life.
But Paul, a 1st century Jew who lived about 2000 years ago, says
don't do X. Why would you give any weight or
authority to what he said if it's just Paul's word?
And why should you submit to Paul's writing as though it
might be the word of God? Who wrote?
Who wrote the book of Titus? Was it Paul or was it God?
Obviously, we're going to take the long road to answering that
question. Was it Paul?
The answer to that question is yes.
Paul was actually born with the name Saul.
The book of Acts, a New Testament book, tells us that
Saul was actually born the son of a tent maker, which is
interesting on several different accounts.
What this tells us, being born the son of a tent maker, is that
most modern Christians tend to view Paul as a brainiac,
armchair philosopher. He is the doctor of doctrine.
He's the defender of the faith. He's a brainiac.
But what this tells us is that Paul actually probably grew up
closer to what a hardened 19 century man would call a man's
man. Saul spent his childhood days
with his dad, following his dad around, making and selling tents
in the hot, unforgiving, scorching Middle Eastern sun.
You got to realize this, Saul. He knew what it felt like to
have sweat drip down his nose because the manual labor was so
challenging. Saul knew the feeling of laying
in bed sore and thanking God for a well deserved rest.
But here's where it gets more interesting.
What? What kind of people in the
ancient world buy tents? Well, the type of people who buy
tents in the ancient world are visitors.
People passing through, people on the move.
What kind of people were visitors in the ancient world?
Usually non Jews. So even though young Saul grew
up a faithful Torah observant Jew, he did.
Saul grew up going to synagogue every week.
He memorized his Torah. He had the first five books of
the Old Testament memorized by heart.
He prayed multiple times a day. But because Saul was with his
father in the public square selling tents to visitors, what
Saul probably grew up seeing was his father dialoguing with a lot
of non Jews about different worldwide religions.
But it seems to suggest to me that Saul grew up with God
already at work and young Saul's life shaping and transforming
Saul as he watched his father argue with visitors about who
the true God of the world was. Without even knowing it, Saul
was probably becoming fluent. He was probably becoming fluent
on other religions. He was probably becoming fluent
on other philosophies. He was probably becoming fluent
on theology. And he was probably already
slowly becoming the type of young man who could spot and
recognize false teaching from true teaching and nourish people
with deep biblical doctrine. God's hand was already at work
and shaping the trajectory of Saul's life.
But then, of course, young Saul had had a major challenge in
front of him, and it is a challenge that every young boy
has in front of him. What was that challenge for
Saul? Well, suddenly Saul's voice
started deepening. His shoulders got a little bit
broader and young man, young soul, is that a beard I see
coming out of your face? The challenge that Saul would
have faced like every other young boy is all of a sudden God
began pumping excessive amounts of testosterone into young Saul.
Homie hit puberty. It happens.
And when this happens, a healthy society will always thank God
for the excessive testosterone and then seek to put that to
good use in order to build a healthy and protective society.
That's what a healthy society will do.
And unhealthy society, however, will make one of two errors.
They will either demonize a boy's masculinity or they will
try to radicalize it. The era of modern society, of
course, is to demonize it. An unhealthy society who
demonizes masculinity. What they end up doing is they
will end up treating the young boy as what?
PhD Warren Pharrell. He wrote a fantastic book on
this called The Boy Crisis and he says that the main error of
the modern world is that they treat boys as deficient females
and they demonize their ambitions and energies.
That's modern societies error. That is not the error that
ancient Israel would have made with young Saul.
What's the other error? The other error is to take that
and to radicalize it. And this is what happened for
young Saul. His surrounding society saw the
testosterone problem as an opportunity to seek to
radicalize young Saul into a violent, extremist version of
religion. And that is the direction that
young Saul went. I don't use those words with
hyperbole. Young Saul grew up to be a
radical, violent Jewish zealot. So the word zealot here is just
not a generic term for zeal. It's a technical term.
What a Jewish zealot was in the ancient world is something
specific. And there are wonderful things
about Jewish zealots from 2000 years ago.
Namely their passion for God is admirable.
However, and this is where the terms radicalized and extremists
come into play, Jewish zealots opted to use physical violence
in order to try to keep is real pure.
You want to know why they would have done this?
Here's this is the story they would have had playing in their
head a long time ago. And you can read about this in
the Old Testament. The glory of God was with the
people of God. And after idolatry, the glory of
God sadly departs from Israel's temple and they're left alone
without the glory of God in their presence.
And of course, things go from bad to worse eventually.
Hundreds of years go by and they find themselves at the turn of
the century in subjugation to the evil empire of Rome.
And so the Jewish people, and you can't overstate how
important this story was to their imaginations, the Jewish
people were waiting eagerly around the time of Jesus for the
glory of God to come back to return to them and set them free
from Rome. And young Saul, as a Jewish
zealot, believed there was a very, very, very, very, very
specific reason why the glory of God was not coming back to
Israel. It was because of the idolatry
of Israel. And so young Saul believed that
it was his God-given mission to purify Israel by putting to
death the idolaters so that Israel become pure enough for
the glory of God to return to Israel.
Are you guys with me? Good.
Because here's where it becomes very important.
Think about the way that young Saul would have thought about
that. And now what do you think,
Frontier Church? What do you think went through
young Saul's mind when he first heard of this small faction of
Jews who were worshipping, of all things, a human being?
What do you think you would have thought?
Idolatry. They got to go.
Not just a human being. They, this small sect of Jewish
people, were worshipping a human being who was publicly crucified
as a criminal by Rome. Rome, Rome already is the evil
empire. They don't have a moral
backbone. And even the bad guys, even the
people without any morals thought that this Jesus guy was
a criminal. So of course young Saul would
have thought I need to go put these people to death.
Jewish people worshipping a human criminal.
Absurd. And so the book of Acts tells us
that he set off maybe by foot, maybe by donkey, I think by
horse, because it was a long road to Damascus.
And so Saul set off, I think on horse to put to death those very
first Christians in order to purify the people of God.
And yet look at your Bible verse one in Titus.
He calls himself an apostle of Jesus Christ.
That's the second thing I want you guys to circle.
If you got a pen, if you got a pencil, circle an apostle of
Jesus Christ. How the heck did that happen?
There's Saul. He's going off to murder people
who are worshiping Jesus. And here in Titus, he's calling
himself an apostle of Jesus Christ.
Well, a funny thing happened on the way to Damascus.
He was on his way to put to death these disorderly
Christians, disrupting Israel. And then something strange
happened. You can read about this in Acts
Chapter 9. Suddenly, young Saul gets kicked
off of his horse. Literally, he's on the road,
going to Damascus. Suddenly there's bright light
all around him, blinding light all around him.
Saul crunches onto the ground as the horse box.
He curls into a ball to prevent himself from being stepped on.
And suddenly, in the midst of all of the blinding light.
So here's a voice. And what does the voice say?
In the book of Acts, there's a voice saying his name, Saul.
Saul, why are you persecuting me?
And Saul looks up into the blinding light.
And what he sees looking back at him will forever change the
trajectory of of his life. On his way to go put to death
those who worship Jesus Christ, young Saul suddenly finds
himself looking at the face of Jesus Christ.
He would have known what Jesus's face looks like.
He would have known the timber of Jesus voice.
He would have known how many or if there were even wrinkles on
the forehead of the resurrected and enthroned Jesus's face.
He encounters Jesus. And certainly, certainly Saul is
expecting death, right? He's expecting to be smitten in
that moment. He's curled up in a ball, it's
over. He's persecuting Jesus.
He's he's not looking for Jesus. He's throwing a middle finger to
Jesus. He's toast.
And rather than wrath, rather than putting to death, Saul
receives the last thing on earth he ever would have imagined.
Jesus Christ saves him, forgives him, transforms him, and gives
him a new heart. It's extraordinary.
And then Jesus commissions him to apostleship for the sake of
Jesus for the rest of his life. And this is where we're going to
get a little bit technical. You circled the phrase in
apostle of Jesus Christ. Can I hear that word?
Everybody say apostle. Now the word apostle here, it's
a technical term. It doesn't just when you read
through it, you just kind of you just think, oh, generically, oh,
that's a term for leadership and certainly it is.
But it's not just generically a leader.
And this is significant to the discussion of what Paul thought
he was doing when he was writing the letter of Titus.
Was it written by Paul or was it written by God?
What? What does Paul think?
Would Paul be surprised to discover that we found his
private letter inside us, made a bunch of copies of it, and still
obeyed it like it was from the voice of God 2000 years later?
What did Paul think he was doing?
Well, this title helps us see what Paul thought he was doing.
The term Apostolos or Apostle literally means 1 cent with
authority and so to call himself an apostle of Jesus Christ.
What he is telegraphing to you is that he has been sent with
the authority of Jesus Christ. So this is not a self given
label to be recognized as an apostle in the ancient world, 4
strict qualifications need to be met.
Somebody out there could not call themselves, hey, I'm an
apostle and get away with it. There were four very strict
qualifications for a person to call themselves an apostle #1.
An apostle needed to see with their very own eyes the risen
Christ. Paul did that on the road to
Damascus #2 an apostle had to be personally commissioned by Jesus
Christ. Paul was shortly after the road
to Damascus, commissioned by Jesus #3 the person had to
perform public signs and wonders that vindicated his authority.
This happens all over the book of Acts.
Paul, like Paul, is doing miracles all over.
But there's a moment where somebody doesn't even touch
Paul. They just touch the shadow of
Paul and they're healed. That's vindicating his
apostleship. And #4 and this is where it gets
really interesting. An apostle must be recognized by
the other apostles as such. So watch this.
There's many, many places that we can go to prove this.
This is so helpful though. Like did the disciples who
walked with Jesus think that Paul was legit?
Here's the my favorite is second Peter.
So this is Peter. This is the dude who walked with
Jesus. Peter says in second Peter
chapter 3 quote, count the patience of our Lord as
salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you
according to the wisdom given to him as he does in all of his
letters which he speaks in them of these matters.
So he's talking about Paul's letter.
He's talking about the letter that you're reading and what's
what's Peter say about the letter?
He says this is great. He says there are some things in
them that are hard to understand, which I love.
It's just great to think of another apostle who's super
smart being like, yeah, sometimes I don't even
understand what Paul's talking about, Right?
But listen to this. He says there are some things in
them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant
and unstable twist to their own destruction, which is what they
do with the other Scriptures, too.
Did you catch that? The other Scriptures.
So what Peter's doing is he's calling Paul's letter Scripture,
putting it on par with what else he would have called scripture,
which would have been the Old Testament, which he refers to as
the other scriptures. And this is really significant
because this blows up the argument that reading Paul's
letters as the word of God, well, that's just a later
development in Christian history.
No, it's not. Even in the time of the other
apostles who walked with Jesus, they were already doing what?
Circulating Paul's letters, reading them out loud in their
churches and referring to them as Scriptures.
So he's an apostle of Jesus Christ.
And of course this begs the question, why does Paul feel the
need to introduce himself to Titus as an apostle of Christ?
That's not how letters usually get written.
If this was just a private letter, he'd be like hey what's
up Titus? Isn't the world crazy right now?
Lol that's not he. That's not how Paul rolls.
He drops 2 significant titles at the very beginning.
Why would he introduce himself as an apostle of Christ?
And of course, we're getting ahead of ourselves here.
Because at this point in the story, Paul's name is still
what? Saul.
Young Saul has been saved and
commissioned by the resurrected Jesus.
But believe it or not, early on, young Saul struggles for
acceptance and legitimacy for the first couple years among the
early Christians because he was notorious as a Jewish zealot who
put to death other Christians. You can imagine people walked on
egg shells around Saul for quite a while, even after he claimed
to be a Christian. So he's been transformed by the
resurrected Jesus. He's got this zeal that's been
transformed. He used to have zeal that
compelled him to kill those in Christ, but that gets
transformed into a zeal that compels him to care for those in
Christ. But in the early days, the
Christians don't yet trust them. They walk on egg shells around
them, and it leaves young Saul with a little bit of insecurity
and something less than a backbone.
And don't get me wrong, what Saul does after his
transformation is pretty gutsy. You can read about it in the
book of Acts. He immediately starts to go to
the Jewish synagogues and proclaim Jesus as Lord,
preaching the gospel of Jesus. But the book of Acts tells us
how his initial sermons were received.
This is Acts Chapter 9 verse 26 quote.
They were all afraid of him, for they did not believe that he was
a disciple. So the early years of Saul,
people were like, I don't know if this guy is legit.
I don't know if he's the, I don't know if he's authentic or
if he's just trying to weasel his way in to destroy us from
the inside out. Paul struggled for acceptance in
those early days of being a Christian until another early
church leader, his name is Barnabas, advocates for young
Saul and takes him underneath his wing on a missionary
journey. And it's on this journey in the
book of Acts that we really see young Saul receive his backbone.
And I would even argue the specificity of this calling in
the early stages of this journey, Saul kind of operates
as a second in command to Barnabas, following him around,
treating Barnabas as the leader, kind of like the assistant.
But then everything changes. And this is actually, this is
interesting because this is actually the this is the exact
moment where we see the name change for young Saul.
It happens in Acts chapter 13. It's this incredible scene that
almost reads like a standoff scene from a western movie.
Young Saul is on a missionary journey and suddenly they bump
into an evil magician. I'm not making this up.
You can read this in Acts chapter 13.
They bump into an evil magician whose name is Bar Jesus.
Or if you're nerdy with the language, Bar Jesus.
I'm just going to go with Bar Jesus because I'm from Iowa.
So he bumps in to bar Jesus this this evil magician and this evil
magician is trying to oppose Saul and trying to keep this
Roman governor from believing in Jesus as the son of God.
The Roman governor actually started it all.
He summoned Saul and Barnabas because hey, these guys are
traveling or my neck of the woods.
I want to hear what their message is.
If they're claiming that Jesus is the Lord, let's let's hear
it. And so this is a big moment and
we don't know what the motive is, but the magician bar Jesus,
all it says in Acts is quote, he he opposes them.
He's standing in the gap between Saul and the gospel moving
forward. He's standing in the gap between
Saul preaching the gospel and this this Roman governor
believing in the gospel, opposing Saul, undermining them,
probably with false teaching. Again, it's like this Western
scene from a showdown. You can you can see the
tumbleweed going down the dirt Rd.
This standoff between an evil magician and young Saul.
You can hear the iconic whistle from the Western films in the
background music. It's bar Jesus the magician
versus young Saul the apostle. Is the magician going to strike
Saul blind? Is there going to be a spell
cast on him that will bind him? The demons?
Is this the end of the road for the gospel in the Roman world?
It's this extraordinary standoff and I love the way that one
theologian describes this moment.
Who's going to win, Saul or the magician?
NT Wright, a theologian, says, quote.
It is this point, this moment, where we sense something new
happening, something merging within the personal standing and
self-awareness of the young Saul himself.
Up until this point, Saul has been the junior partner of
Barnabas. But now he steps forward in this
moment filled with a new kind of energy, the kind of surge that
early Christians attributed to the Holy Spirit.
And he denounces bar Jesus in fierce and uncompromising terms.
He calls him a son of the devil and a deceitful villain who is
taking God's plan and twisting it out of shape.
It's this epic moment where young Saul steps up and calls
him out on his false doctrine and false teaching and preaches
the gospel instead. And it's one thing to utter and
hurl truthful accusations against an opponent.
That's easy enough. Most people can do that.
What makes this moment spectacular, what makes it
surprising, is the effect of Saul's teaching in this moment.
What, what accompanies Saul's denouncements?
The power that the impact, the authority that comes through it
is staggering. With poetic irony, this
magician, powerful magician who uses spellbinding is himself
spellbound by the teachings of Saul.
Here's the way Acts describes the moment quote Paul says.
And now behold, the hand of the Lord is upon you, and you will
be blind and unable to see the sun for a time.
And immediately mist and darkness wolf fell upon him, and
the magician went about seeking people to lead him by the hand
because he was blind and the Roman governor believed.
It's just an amazing moment, this coming of age moment.
And here's the significant observation.
This is the exact moment where the book of Acts stops referring
to him as Saul and begins to casually refer to him with his
new name, Paul. Why?
Why this moment? Well, clearly it's some type of
coming of age moment for Paul. It's almost like I saw I, I saw
this interview with Robin Williams a long time ago.
And they asked them, did you always know that you wanted to
be a comedian? And I just loved Robin Williams
answer. He said, you know, I, I grew up
with a mom who is constantly depressed.
There was always this fog of sorrow and sadness upon her.
And then one day I did something silly or said something silly,
and I saw her laugh. And it was like, for a moment,
the fog lifted. And when I saw that happen, I
thought to myself, there's something to do with my life.
That must be why I exist. And he became Robin Williams,
right? It's almost like Paul is having
that type of moment right here against barred Jesus.
This is the moment where he discovers, oh, this is what God
has uniquely called me to do in this world, to fight against
false doctrine, to fight against false teaching with the truth.
And this is important because you will see this side of Paul
show up as you read through the letter of Titus.
Is is Paul gentle? Yes, very gentle.
Is is Paul caring? Yes, very caring, very
comforting. But Paul also has other
dimensions to him. Paul's got no bandwidth for
false teaching that pops up in the church and draws people away
from Jesus. False doctrine is a hard pass
for Paul. And when that pops up in the
letter of Titus, Paul is not going to wear Kitty gloves
dealing with false doctrine and false teaching.
Why? Because he's seen the impact it
has in the world through bar Jesus, and he knows that he
uniquely has the power to overcome it.
And this observation brings us to the third and final thing
that I want you to circle. In our text, we've circled
apostle of Jesus Christ. We've talked about Paul.
I want you to circle that phrase a servant of God.
That's the third and final thing to circle in your text Servant
of God. Again, a technical phrase in the
Old Testament, not a generic phrase.
The phrase, the title servant of God is only given to the
prophets, King David and one other person, Moses.
In fact, when Paul defeats bar Jesus the magician, does that
remind you of any other moment in the history of God's people?
It's it's strikingly similar to one other moment with a leader
of God's people. It's the moments in the book of
Exodus where Moses defeats Pharaoh's magicians in order to
prove his authority of it as a servant of God.
So I wonder if you see what Paul's doing by describing
himself as a servant of God. He's using the very credentials
that would have been attributed to Moses.
This is, this is telegraphing something to you.
This is important. Referring to himself as a
servant of God means that he's aware that he's not just writing
a personal letter to his homeboy, Titus.
He wants you to know something. He's an apostle of Jesus.
He's a servant of God. By casting himself with the same
credentials as Moses, Paul is signaling that like Moses, Paul
is delivering tablets of stone with the very words of God
written on them to operate as the authority for the people of
God. So put these two titles
together, you have Paul. He thinks he's a servant of God,
an apostle of Jesus. And here's the point.
And this is where I've been leading this entire time.
What Paul wants you to know is that what he's about to write in
this letter is not merely his ideas.
It's not merely his thoughts. He's writing to Titus, but not
merely to Titus. What Paul thinks he's doing self
consciously with self-awareness is Paul is writing to you what
he believes to be the word of God with the authority of Jesus
Christ. So that brings us to the huge
question. What did Paul think he was
doing? Did Paul write Titus or did God
write Titus? What do you think the answer to
that question is? Yes, Yes.
And that's why we're going to spend the next 17 weeks with
snorkeling gear on at the very bottom of the letter because
that's where the riches are. And so I just want to ask you a
question as we, as we look at this short letter and as we
think about preaching it and rooting our lives to it, here's
a simple question for you. Why should you anchor your life
down on the book of Titus? Why?
Why not just anytime there's a new ideological trend that your
friends write about on social media, Why not just blow
whatever direction the wind blows?
I love the story that I use at the beginning of the sermon,
right? I love that moment of imagining
my dad on the inside of the ice house and it filling up with
with wind, his eyes widening, my dad's friend smiling, my dad
saying don't you dare let go. And then and in the ice house,
traveling across the entire pond.
I like that story because it's funny.
And I would have done the same thing.
I wouldn't let go. I wouldn't let you travel across
the entire pond first. Sure, and loved it.
I also like that story because it's the human condition.
It's what it means to be human. If you are not anchored down on
something, if you're not anchored down on truth, you will
blow whatever direction the winds of the world blow.
It's all an ice house can do. That's all you're capable of
doing is blowing in whatever direction the wind blows, right?
This is the way people are on Anchored.
All we do is go with the flow on anchored, whatever popular
thought is we end up thinking on anchored, whatever the current
norms are or what we conform to on anchored, we will go whatever
direction the algorithm blows us, whatever direction peer
pressure nudges us, and we'll find ourselves across the pond
from where we wanted to be in life, An empty hollow ice house
shadow entered on the shore on anchored.
And my encouragement this morning is that the book of
Titus in the Scriptures as a whole, but for our purposes over
the next 18 weeks, the book of Titus is a trustworthy anchor.
You can trust it to keep you put, to keep you in place, to
keep you where you want to be as the authoritative word of God.
Knowing this my whole goal in preaching a 40 minute sermon on
Paul, it's not to make you smarter.
It's to give you more confidence that when you read Paul's letter
to Titus, you are hearing the voice of God.
You want to hear God read Titus or any of the other 65 books of
the Bible. But maybe for the next 17 weeks
read Titus. It's, it's legit.
You can trust it. It's, it's authentic.
You know why not? This is just me talking right
now. One of one of the things that I
think is the best test for the authenticity of someone's word.
I wonder if you're the same way for the authenticity of
someone's message or their word is are they willing to believe
for it, right? Like are you willing to lose for
the sake of your message and for the sake of your beliefs?
Because if you are, I think there's authenticity to it or
there's trustworthiness to it, right?
Would you lose for it? It's easy to say something that
you know is going to gain you applause, right?
I guess why it's so hard in our modern world to actually know
what a person believes in, because the average person, they
cannot distinguish in their thinking the difference between
what they believe and what they think will gain them likes and
followers. It feels the same in most
people's minds. And so the average person is
just an empty ice house blowing in the wind, a puppet parroting
the dominant narratives of the world.
And I understand why people want to belong.
I'm the same way, right? People want friends.
They, they want to belong. And so the most natural thing in
the world for a human being to do is to just listen to what
people around them are saying. And you're like, OK, this is
what people here think. I'm going to parrot that back in
my own language so that I gain acceptance.
And it's easy to do that, to say things or to believe things that
will get you a foot up in life. It's a lot harder to preach a
message and believe a message that will cause you to lose in
life. And what do we see with Paul?
Paul, he loses everything for the gospel of Jesus.
Everything. The dude had Roman citizenship
in the ancient world. That was like a fast track VIP
to a rich life. There were not many Jewish
people who had Roman citizenship.
He gave all of that up to become an apostle for Jesus, all of it.
Rome hated Paul for that, right? Paul just ran around with his
big mouth talking about how Jesus was Lord and it made him
an enemy to the state because they're like, whoa, whoa,
Caesar's Lord. Are you?
Are you saying Caesar's not Lord?
But Jesus says, and Paul was like, yes, I am then.
So Rome rejected him. You know what?
He didn't fare that well with his own people either.
The Jewish people rejected him too, because he went around
worshipping and following a man which they thought was idolatry.
And so Paul got chewed up and spit out, even by his own
people. He lost everything for the sake
of Jesus, right? And so I look at his, I look at
his letter, I'm like, I'm willing.
I'm willing to read what you have to write because you lost
everything for Jesus. You went from the top to the
bottom in the ancient world. Like sometimes, sometimes I
imagine, sometimes I imagine, like, what would it, what would
it have been like for Paul's friends to greet Paul when he
got back from Damascus? Everything about that stuff,
like how how awkward would that conversation have been?
Like they sent him out to go kill Christians, and he comes
back a Christian. That had to be the most awkward
conversation in the world. Like, imagine seeing Paul riding
back into town. He took a little longer than
expected and his buddies go out to greet him and they're like,
Oh yeah, hey, Paul, we, we get rid of those pesky Christian,
you know what I'm saying? We get rid of those pesky
Christians who worship Jesus as Lord.
Are there is there less scum in the world out there or what?
Bro? What did, did he just say Jesus
is Lord? He's he's messing with us,
right, Paul? You're messing with us, right?
Paul? You worship like it would have
been the most awkward conversation ever.
He gave up everything to be the man who wrote this for you, gave
it up to preach the gospel. And it's so important sometimes
to remember the historical legitimacy in the historical
basis for Paul's apostleship because, because sometimes the
gospel of Jesus sounds too good to be true, right?
I was thinking about this just last night.
I was, I was like, man, it almost sounds too crazy to
believe that Jesus Christ was crucified for me.
So that by faith alone, I can't even earn it.
I don't have to do anything to earn it.
I don't have to be a good boy. I don't I can't buy it with good
behavior. I can't impress Jesus with
fronting. But by faith alone, Jesus
forgives all of my sins and gives me all of his
righteousness. That's the deal.
You're taking my sins. I'm going to get your
righteousness. It sounds too good to be true.
Just by faith and grace alone. It sounds crazy, like a crazy
person dreamed it up. Like, and maybe you, you don't
hear the gospel freshly because you've heard it since you were a
kid. But like, it's so crazy to
believe that God loves me on the basis of what Jesus did and not
on anything I didn't or did do. It cuts against the grain of
human thinking. Like, picture yourself last
night at 3:00 AM. You're in bed, you're doing
nothing, contributing nothing to the world, right?
You're mate, you're snoring, your muscles are completely at
ease. There's nothing impressive about
you. You're not doing anything,
you're not even in church, you're not reading your Bible,
you're not being nice to people. You're just in bed in the middle
of the night snoring. If the gospel is true, then in
that moment, God doesn't love you anymore or any less than
your best moment in your entire life.
That's crazy. Like, no human imagination could
invent that. It's almost too good to be true.
Like on an average day, guys, I probably think a dozen.
I wish I were more like X or Y Thoughts.
Are you the same way? Like on a daily basis?
Right. By by the time lunch has come
around, I've thought, man, I wish I was more patient.
Or, gosh, I wish I would have said something differently
there. Or man, I wish I was more X or
more Y. That's on a daily basis.
OK. If you took all of your wildest
dreams about the woman that you wish you were, the man that you
wish you were, all of your wildest dreams over the course
of not a day, but your entire lifetime, I would have a list of
wishes about myself. That's so long that I could
probably lasso it, wrap it around the world like 10 times
in some crazy alternative universe where all of those
wishes come true and I become the exact man I wish I was.
In all of those millions of wishes I've thought over the
course of my lifetime, if I actually in some crazy world
became exactly that man, all my wildest dreams about what
Kolecki could become true. If the gospel is true, God would
not love that man anymore or any less than he loves this man.
That's insane. It's insane.
So my gut is like that's it just sounds too good to be true.
And when you study the legitimacy and the historical
basis for the apostleship of Paul, you're confronted with a
different fact. And the fact is this.
The fact is the apostle Paul saw the resurrected Jesus's face and
heard the resurrected Jesus's voice and was confirmed by the
people who walked with Jesus. And I need 4 different alarms on
a Saturday morning to wake up. Whose opinion on Jesus is better
to trust? So in those moments, I have to
remember the legitimacy and the historical basis of the Apostle
Paul who preaches this crazy gospel that Jesus loves you
apart from any good work, but by grace through faith alone in
Jesus. When it comes to your ideas
about what you think God is like, in Paul's ideas of what
God is like, I pray that you trust these ones.
I pray that you give these ones their proper authority.
And as you do, you will anchor your life down in a very windy
world. And my prayer for you is that
don't you dare let go. It'll keep you anchored.
Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of the Apostle Paul.