This is Living Waters of Grace, the teaching ministry of Lewis
Harold, assistant pastor of Calvary Chapel of Westmoreland
County in Greensburg, PA. Now here's Pastor Lewis as he
continues teaching through God's Word.
Paul says I am a bond slave. In other words, he says I am
willingly submitting my will to God.
I am a slave of God. That should be all of our
testimonies that we are a bond servant to God.
We are giving our will to willingly submitting our will to
God, Not out of, you know, not out of coercion or because we're
being forced to, but because we desire to please God.
So we live for him. Most of the time when we think
of slavery, we think of those who were forced into servitude.
But that's not the only form of slavery that has existed in the
world. For some, slavery meant to
chance at a better life. No one forced them to become
slaves, but because of the opportunity to live a better
life and work for their own needs, they would willingly
pledge themselves to their masters.
In Pastor Lewis's message today, he encourages you to willingly
pledge your life to God, knowing he offers you everlasting life
now. Here's Pastor Lewis in Titus
chapter one with today's edition of Living Waters of Grace.
As Paul wrote these books, First and Second Timothy, First
Timothy and Titus was actually the first 2.
They were written after his first imprisonment.
And then, of course, Second Timothy was written while he was
in his second imprisonment waiting to be executed.
But we understand that as he wrote these epistles or these
letters, they are for the purpose of pastoral direction,
but not as they're not just for pastoral direction.
I mean, we could look at that and we can say, OK, what's OK
for us who are not pastors do not have to obey.
We don't have to deal with this. That's for you, man.
You need to pay attention to it. You guys.
You want us up there talking? But no, he don't let us all off
the hook. We are all committed to the Word
of God, and the things that he teach us in these epistles
actually give us very, very good direction for living the
Christian life. And that's one of the reasons
why I do enjoy so much reading First Timothy and Second Timothy
and Titus, because it's clear direction on what it is that God
intends for us as the church, how we should look and how we
are separate from the world and how we should treat each other
while we are here because we're going to be spending eternity
together. So we may as well learn now
while we're here, how to get along with each other, how to
love each other, how to deal with each other, how to pray for
each other, how to serve each other, and how to just be with
each other. We got our eternity.
Look forward to us. We may well deal with it here,
right? Amen.
But as we get into the book, I tell you some very interesting
things that we have to first look at.
First of all, we, we look at the fact that with Paul, it was Paul
who gave Titus this assignment as he left him in Crete.
Now Paul, Paul initially had gone into the Macedonia, into
Macedonia, into the, into the Asia region.
And he did set up some churches there.
He set up churches in, in Ephesus and of course in
Corinth. And he set up a church and the,
it's actually one of the largest islands on the Mediterranean
Sea. They're in Crete and as Paul
began to set up these churches, now some of these churches, he
was able to stay for a while. Like with the church, the when
he was working with the 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, the
Thessalonian church, he was able to stay there for a while.
Ephesus, he was able to stay there for a time.
And then of course he had to leave Timothy there so that
Timothy could be the pastoring to put things in order there
that Paul wasn't able to do. But he spent a small amount of
time in Crete, and when he spent the time in Crete, he had to
leave early for whatever reason, probably because he was on his
way traveling toward the Troas, where eventually he would be
arrested and taken to Rome and executed.
But while he was in Crete, there was other churches that were
there and he sent Titus, a trusted worker in the faith.
In fact, Titus is described a couple different ways and I just
want to go through with that because this was a very faithful
worker and very useful for Paul. In fact, it Titus is described
in the 1st chapter right here in verse 4.
He's described as being a son, a son of the common faith.
And we'll get into what that means a little later on.
But he's also described in second Corinthians chapter 2 and
verse 13 describes him as Paul's spiritual brother.
And then in in second Corinthians chapter 8 verse 23,
he describes him as Paul's partner and helper.
And even in even also in second Corinthians chapter 8, he also
talks about him or describes him as being sort of a a positive
spiritual role model for those who were that were Paul sent
him. Now Crete wasn't the 1st place
that Paul ever used Titus. He had actually sent him to
Corinth. And we know that Titus was a man
of integrity because while he was in Corinth, Paul not only
used used him to help put some things in order while he was in
Corinth or to help deal with some issues that they were
dealing with in Corinth, but he also used him to bring back the
money, the offering that the people of Corinth had put
together that they were going to take to Jerusalem.
Titus was one of the trustworthy people that he used to bring
forth that money. And you know that whoever people
select to work with the money are people who are trustworthy.
They are the trustees, so to speak.
But just to give you a little bit of information about this
place, Crete, it's an island on the Mediterranean Sea.
It is a Greek island. And and of course, Titus was a
Greek convert. You know, Paul had ministered to
that island and Titus was one of the people that he administered
to. So Titus was a son who came into
the faith through Paul's ministry.
Now the island of Crete is located like southeast of the
island of Greece. In fact, if you look at Cyprus,
and now since my son had gone to Cyprus to play ball there, I
look at everything around the Greek or the Mediterranean and,
and kind of look at it around Cyprus to see where things are
located. And Crete is actually located
West of Cyprus. It's a larger island than what
Cyprus is. Very beautiful area there.
Now, Crete is about 150 miles long and it's about 35 miles
wide. And like I said, it is the
largest of the Mediterranean islands.
It has over over 100 villages that are located right there in
the island of Crete. But there's six main cities that
they have there, and that's where the churches are located
in, in those six main cities. So when he sent Titus back to
Crete to put things in order, it was to those churches that he
was going to be working with. Now Crete had a very bad
reputation, industry wise, business wise, Crete was a very
good place, very nice place to be very prosperous.
But in terms of its morality, Crete was a very immoral, just
like Ephesus was, and just like Corinth, it was a very immoral
area. So he sent him back to a very
difficult place to be able to try to put things in order.
In this particular church, Titus was used almost like a little
point guard. That's because a point guard is
that guy on the team that the coach can give instruction to.
And he goes and puts everybody in place.
He goes and make sure everybody's in the right
position, Everybody is doing what they need to be doing.
Everybody is functioning together.
That's what a point guard does. And he can look and see he's
actually the coach on the floor. And that's kind of what Titus
was there in Crete. He was, he was Paul's point man.
He was his point guard. He made sure that the leaders
are put in place, as we're going to see later.
He made sure that there were things in order there so that
the church could function properly.
So anyway, we go on and we see here as we go to chapter 1 here
with Titus, we see here that Paul, when he starts off his
letter, he describes himself as a bondservant.
Paul was a bondservant. Paul says that I am a
bondservant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ.
So Paul says I'm a slave, but he's not just a slave because
there's a couple types of slaves and he and he did that because
in the Roman culture, they are big on slaves.
I mean, Romans used slaves for a lot of different purposes, but
Paul described himself as a slave of God and he was a bond
servant of God. So what Paul is basically
saying, like I said, there's a couple different types of
slaves. There's a slaves that that that
people use that forced, they're forced into labor.
OK, There are those kind of slaves forced into labor.
Those people don't want to be there, but they're there.
They're not there willingly, but they are there because they were
overpowered. They were conquered and they
were forced into labor. But Paul was a willing slave,
like the bond servants. And these are people who
sometimes give themselves to be slave.
These are the downloads, the people who give themselves to be
slaves so that they can either pay off debt or that they can
just live. I mean, they're just poor and
they don't have any income. They don't have a way of making
enough income for them and their families to live.
So they sell themselves into slavery and they work for a
owner for so many years. And then they get their freedom.
They get their freedom again, and some of them choose when
it's time. God bless you.
And some of them, when they
choose to get back, when they have the opportunity to get
their freedom back, they choose not to.
They choose not to. They choose to stay a slave
because maybe they love the family or they have themselves
made a family while they were there and they want to stay with
their family. So they choose to remain a
slave. And if they do that, then they
would have to go into a doorway. The slave owner, OK, would take
an animal and he would put it into the ear, OK, put a like a
big plug into the ear of the slave and that indicated that
this slave was with us for the remainder of his life.
So anyway, Paul says I am a bond slave.
In other words, he says I am willingly submitting my will to
God. I am a slave of God.
That should be all of our testimonies that we are a bond
servant to God. We are giving our will to
willingly submitting our will to God, not out of, you know, not
out of coercion or because we're being forced to, but because we
desire to please God. So we live for him, we are his
bond servants and he says, and this is he's an apostle of Jesus
Christ, which means that he is a messenger of Jesus Christ.
Please don't always just separate the two like there's
two different people. It is not.
And that's why Paul, it had put God and Jesus Christ together
because they are equal. They are equal.
So he is a bondservant of God and he is a messenger of Jesus
Christ. And now Paul goes into talking
about it's really loaded everything he has here in these
first 3 verses. Now he goes in and talk about
the purpose of the ministry that God has called him into.
And he says according to the faith of God's elect, according
to the faith of God's elect. And what Paul is saying to us is
that he is a messenger of God or messenger of Jesus Christ to
bring the gospel to God's elect. That is the Gentiles and it is
the people of, of Israel who is God's elect, those who trust in
Jesus Christ for their salvation, that God before the
foundation of the world had chosen in Christ Jesus.
And what that is saying now, you know, and we, we know that
there's a whole issue that comes up about will versus will versus
election and all those things. I can't begin to tell you that I
understand everything about how all that connects.
All I can tell you is that I believe that what the Word of
God says is that both of those things are true.
And how that happens, I'm not exactly sure.
But we do know that Jesus Christ is able to through His
foreknowledge. God, through their
foreknowledge, will know who will receive His salvation and
who won't. Jesus Christ already said that,
that He already knows those who will receive His salvation.
He knows those are going to follow Him and He knows those
who won't. So he he's called to the gospel
according to the faith of the elect.
That means he's the one that will speak the gospel to them,
to bring them to faith, to share the faith with them so that they
will receive salvation. And then the second thing is
that and the acknowledgement of the truth.
Now this acknowledgement of the truth just simply means that
they understand what this true doctrine is.
And it's this true doctrine by them hearing true doctrine, just
like us when we hear true doctrine coming across the
pulpit, it's the doctrine that we can trust in that causes us
to live godly. It produces good fruit in us.
It's that truth that we hear that causes us to live godly.
And that's why it says which accords with godliness or that
leads us to godliness. And that godliness we're going
to see also is being demonstrated or described as
good works as we go through the rest of the books here in Titus.
And then in verse 2, it says in hope of eternal life, which God
who cannot lie promised before time begin.
So that is the end point of our salvation and us walking with
the Lord and godliness, the reward that we receive from that
or the glory that we receive from that is eternal life in
Christ Jesus. That's what it's all about.
That's what we're living for. That's that's that hope that we
all have that we can share with other people that we will have
eternal life because we are those who have trusted and
believed in Jesus Christ. So and he said, and that's
eternal life that we have was promised to us.
Now, it would be one thing if your uncle or your aunt, people
that you think that are really popular in your life, that you
trusted and that you know, they, you hang on every one of their
words and they promise you eternal life.
OK, that's one thing. But even beyond their own
control, they can lie to you. They can put you down.
I mean, they can let you down. They can disappoint you, might
not be intentionally, but they can disappoint you.
And not only that, but people can lie.
God cannot lie. So we're promised this from
someone who cannot lie. And the reason why I want to
emphasize that because in some versions it has God who will not
lie. OK, I like the fact that it says
God who cannot lie. Because if you know, there are
people that we have in our lives and we say, you know what?
I know this person and this guy just will not lie.
He will not tell a lie. Well, somewhere along the line,
he will tell a lie. Somewhere along the line, he or
she will tell a lie. They are capable of telling a
lie. Even if you've not heard them
tell a lie, they are capable of it because we're all born in
sin. We don't have to teach a kid how
to lie because he's born in and sin.
He has the character or he has that the nature that will allow
him to lie. God's nature says he cannot lie
because he's God. If God ever lied, he would cease
to be God. He would no longer be God.
He cannot lie. And I like that because I can
grab onto that, say wow, he gave me a promise and he cannot lie.
It has to be true. So I mean, so that's something
that we as believers, we can always grab onto that and say,
you know what? Every promise that God has given
me in this word, it's going to come to be because he cannot
lie. Now that's good news for us as
believers, but it's bad news for those who are unbelievers
because all the promises that he gives to us are true or yeah and
Amen. But so are the promises that go
against the unbelievers. He who believes the Son has
everlasting life. He who does not believe the Son
has will not see life, but the what wrath of God abides on him.
That's true as well. So that's something that non
believers are going to have to deal with this God that we
serve. He cannot lie.
He doesn't lie in our favor as believers, but he doesn't lie
also what he promises to unbelievers as well.
So he goes on in verse 3 and he says and but has in due time
manifested his word through preaching, which he has
committed to me, right? He says, according to the
commandment of God, our Savior, Paul has been committed the
ministry of sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ in this ministry
that he has. It has come about in due time
because the ministry, you know, God talked about this this
promise that he has. You know, he had talked about
this before time even began. You know, this promise which was
true, and he talked about it in the Old Testament.
And then when the time was right, right when the time was
perfect for his plan, you know, then he manifested.
That means he made visible, He caused it to be.
He brought this thing forth through preaching.
And that's how men know about this eternal life.
That's how men know about salvation.
That's how men know about godliness and the true doctrine
that leads to godliness. That's how men know about it.
It's through the preaching of the gospel.
And it's amazing to me that God uses mere men to preach the
gospel. This is a very, very powerful
thing. The gospel was very powerful.
The gospel is a truth that has been through ages.
And he uses men, and not perfect men either.
We're talking about men who were flawed, men who were imperfect.
He uses men like us to preach the gospel.
He uses people like you to share the gospel.
That's how the gospel gets out there.
First Corinthians. What is it 121 that says, you
know that it's it's, you know, it's through the foolishness of
preaching the gospel that men would be saved.
So he preaches through he uses the gospel that the men preach.
And that was committed to Paul according to the commandment of
God, not the commandment of men. Man never called Paul.
He was called by God. And it's the Titus, the true Son
in the common faith. This common faith is the common
word of God, this Word of Faith that was delivered once and for
all, once for all to the Saints, OK?
Not a Word of Faith that someone took and changed and, you know,
reduced, watered it down. Not that it's the true Word of
Faith that was delivered, that was first delivered once and for
all to the Saints. It came from Jesus Christ, which
came to the apostles, and it came to the rest of us through
the preaching of the gospel. That word, that same word that
never changed, that was delivered to us even through the
word of God here, through those who were eyewitnesses of Jesus
Christ. We have that truth.
And that's the word that that's the common faith.
And then grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ and Savior. You know, there's not every one
of his epistles that he offers grace, mercy, and peace.
Usually it's grace and peace, which is the Greek and Hebrew
greeting. We talked about that before, but
now we know that he also offers mercy.
And all the epistles that are pastoral epistles, he adds mercy
to mercy to it. And the reason why is because we
as teachers, you who are teachers, are held to a stricter
judgment when it comes to the Word of God.
We're held to a stricter judgment and we need his mercy.
And that's why it's so important that you pray for teachers, you
pray for pastors, you and elders, you pray for them as we
pray for you because we need the mercy of God.
We need the mercy of God. And then verse 5 says, for this
reason, I left you in Crete. So now he's going to go into his
purpose for even having Titus stay in Crete for.
And there's a number of purposes.
There's three we're going to talk about the first one, the
first purpose is that he puts in order, sets in order the things
that are lacking and appoint elders in every city as I
commanded you. OK, So he says, I, I'm setting
you the creep because there's a there's a need, there's some
things lacking there some things that I wasn't able to stay long
enough to put in order. So he says, I'm going to you
first need to set in order the things that are lacking.
Now this whole word to set in order, that whole word really is
a medical term and it's a term that really deals or refers to
setting a bone, setting a bone setting something that is out of
place in your body, some orthopedic problem that you may
have that's out of place, Paul says.
It's it's a setting in order when those things are out of
order. If we have a limb that's out of
order, if we have anything that's not lined up right, which
is why a lot of people will go, you know, to the specialist to
line them up and get their bodies right because things are
out of order. And when they're not in order,
it causes pain, it causes discomfort, it causes
overcompensation of other limbs or other areas of your body,
making just cause of dysfunction in your system when things are
out of order. Sometimes a bone out of order
causes problems. And if the body or limb is out
of order, it will let you know because there is, you know the
body system is is chaotic and it just doesn't function properly.
Well the church is exact same way when things are out of
order. If there is no order in the
church, there is problems. It doesn't function properly.
Then there has to be
overcompensation because somebody is doing too much
because it's not enough. This is lacking.
So somebody feels they got to go over and do that and then that's
lacking. So somebody feel like an
overcompensation. So people are being burned out.
People are being, you know, not used properly or people are
getting upset. I mean, when the church is is
not in order, things happen in the church.
But when it's set in order, when leadership is set in order and
things are in order in the church, things go away a lot
more smoothly. There's not as much affliction,
there's not as much chaos. There's not the vision and the
kind of things that can happen when things are out of order.
This has been Living Waters of Grace, a ministry of Pastor
Lewis Harrell of Calvary Chapel, Westmoreland.
Today's message has been on the book of Titus.
This book is a master class in how Christians should live in
modern culture. Titus was ministering to the
people of Crete, an island off the coast of Greece, but he was
facing many challenges. The Cretans who came to know
Jesus seemed to assimilate Jesus into their existing culture
instead of allowing themselves to be transformed by the Holy
Spirit inside of them. Others were fully devoting
themselves to Jesus but shutting themselves off from the world
around them. And the apostle Paul encourages
Titus to help his audience find a middle ground where they can
live in this world while still following a different way of
life in Jesus. If you would like to learn more
about what it means to faithfully follow the teachings
of Christ in a world full of darkness, we'd love to get
connected with you in person. If you are in Greensburg, PA,
we'd love to invite you to join us at Calvary Chapel
Westmoreland. We need every Sunday at 10:30 AM
at 400 E Pittsburgh St. Ste. 6B.
Also, if you visit us at calvarychapelonline.com, you'll
find links to our mobile app, our giving page, and our contact
form where you can leave a prayer request if you have one.
Before we go off the air for today, we ask you to invite
someone to tune in next time right here on Grace FM 91.7 or
streaming online at Grace Radio dot FM.
Word of mouth is the best way to spread the good news of the
Gospel with those who are hungry to hear.
Until next time, this has been another edition of Living Waters
of Grace.