Morning Church, the Lord desires for you to hear His word at this
time, so let's hear the word of the Lord from the book of Titus
1st 9 verses. Paul, a servant of God and an
apostle of Jesus Christ, 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 that 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, my true
child in the common faith, grace and peace from God our Father
and Christ Jesus our Savior. This is why I left you in Crete,
so that you might put what remained into order and appoint
elders in every town as I directed you.
If anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife, his
children are believers and not open to the charge of debauchery
or insubordination. For an overseer, as God steward
must be above reproach. He must not be arrogant or quick
tempered, or a drunkard, or violent or greedy for gain, but
hospitable. A lover of good, self
controlled, upright, holy and disciplined.
He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught so
that he may be able to give instruction and sound doctrine
and also to rebuke those who contradict it.
And this is the word of the Lord.
Let's be to God. Let's pray together.
Lord Jesus, we do ask for your blessing here upon this word
once again, so that we would understand this word, so that we
would be changed by it, and ultimately that we would serve
you faithfully and honor you fully through all that we do.
We pray through Christ our Lord. We ask, Amen.
Please be seated. If you grab your Bibles.
If you don't have a Bible, we are happy to get you one.
If you want to borrow a Bible, we can grab you one in the back.
If you have your Bibles with you, please open it up to Titus.
Titus will be a bit of a challenge to find.
You'll be able to look for it. I'm sure you'll be able to find
it if you go all the way. It's only a couple pages long.
If you go all the way to the back, if you hit the book of
Hebrews and go forward just a little bit, you'll find Titus.
Titus chapter 1 verses one through 9.
To have that in front of you, there's football, there's
hockey, and then there's soccer. There's football, there's hockey
and then there's soccer. I grew up with football.
I grew up playing it, I grew up watching it.
I enjoyed football to pieces. I as a major experience in my
life to enjoy the game of football.
There's an easy identification for me.
Every time I see football being played, I associate myself.
I track with that liking football is easy to do.
I had to learn to like hockey. I had to learn to like hockey.
I only went to my first game when I was in my 20s and all I
saw were 10 people chasing around a puck.
I didn't understand it. It didn't make any sense to me.
I was bored. I was at a game and yet
everybody all was excited because I didn't know what was
going on. I was basically bored.
I was just sitting there. It was just a hockey game.
But over time I came to learn. I understand what the blue lines
were, what the red lines were, what the positions of the
players were, what they were trying to accomplish.
I learned about the game and as I learned about the game, I came
to love the game and really enjoyed every bit of hockey as
much as I enjoy football. Then there's soccer.
I still don't like that. Sorry Jeff.
You know, 10 people chasing around the ball, whatever,
that's that's soccer. I hope for us today to have a
hockey like experience. I want us to have a hockey like
experience. I want to take something that my
guess is all of you or most of you are going to find to be very
boring and hopefully engage it in such a way that at the end of
the time you have appreciated a little bit more than what you
did beforehand. So I want you to have a hockey
like experience here where although it might be boring out
of the gate, hopefully by the end of the time you'll see a
little bit more about why it is that this is an important issue
for us. And then you will have an
appreciation for it, a growing appreciation like I have a
growing appreciation for hockey. So if you have your scriptures
open before you, this is Titus chapter one.
This is Paul speaking to a young devotee, a young friend of his,
a mentor, and he writes in verse one Paul, a servant of God, an
apostle of Jesus Christ for the sake of the faith of God's elect
and their knowledge and truth which accords with godliness in
the hope of eternal life. So what Paul does here is he
introduces himself. That's the way you would
standardly write a letter at that period of time.
And just like for us today, when you get a letter starts out
dear, dear Joe, my guess is that most of you pay very little
attention to the deer part. You know, you're not.
You don't really think, oh, look, wow, this person thinks
I'm dear to them. You know, most of us don't do
that. Deer is simply just the way in
which you introduce a letter. And it would be easy to assume
that that's what's happening here in this passage as well.
Paul, a servant of God and the impostle of Jesus Christ who
did. Yeah.
OK, Paul, get get through the
deer part, the welcome part, and get to the meat of the what you
want to tell us. But what he wants to tell us
here is his ultimate goal right off the bat.
This is Paul's ultimate goal for writing this letter.
It's his ultimate goal for being a servant of God, an apostle of
Jesus Christ. Paul says, look, this is who I
am, a servant of God, an apostle of Jesus Christ.
This is why I am writing you. I am writing you this letter.
Why? For the sake of the faith of
God's elect. He is writing this letter
specifically for our faith. Now, what does that mean?
Our faith for the increase, the maturation, the development of
our faith. Now, when we're talking about
our faith here, we're not talking about a list of
regulations or roles or anything.
What we're talking about very clearly is the reliance and
trust. This is how Paul uses this term,
and it certainly is appropriate here.
It's our dependence upon the Lord.
Paul is writing this letter. His main motive, his ultimate
goal for writing and the same ultimate goal for him being on a
servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, is so that our
faith, so that your faith might mature and develop, so that you
will what? What does a mature faith look
like? So that you will rely more and
more completely upon Jesus Christ, that you will trust in
Him more fully that you are experiencing life, That when you
run into the rainy days, when you run into the difficulties of
life, that your immediate association is to trust and to
rely upon God. That's what the faith is in an
increase of faith. Now I spend all my days talking
with people about their faith. It's a great blessing of my job.
I get to talk about people's faith all the time.
I have never and I mean never run across somebody that says,
you know what, I'm happy with the level of faith that I have
right now. I don't need to mature in my
faith. I don't need to grow in my
faith. I'm happy with with how much I
trust and rely upon God. I've never run into that.
Everybody I talk to, no matter how old they are in the Lord or
how young they are in the Lord, everybody says, boy, I wish I
trusted the Lord more. Boy, I wish I had a growing
faith, a deepening faith, a more developed faith.
Here is Paul saying, the reason why I'm writing this letter is
so that you can have a deeper faith.
But that's not all. Secondly, that their knowledge
of the truth, an increase in our knowledge of truth.
Now most of us know that there's a huge distinction between what
we know and what and the strength of our faith.
There's knowing a whole lot about the faith, knowing a whole
lot about church, knowing a whole lot about God is not the
same thing as knowing God. It's not the same thing as
trusting and relying upon him, but consistently through the
Scriptures, although we make that distinction and we say,
look, you can be as ignorant about the truth faith as you
need to be, but have faith, trust in the Lord and that's
what will save you. That that is the way the Lord
will work in your life to bring his grace and mercy into your
life. All that's true, but you can't
deny that in the Scriptures there's this constant push from
the Scriptures to know our God, come to know him more, come to
understand him greater. This is it's a great passion of
the faith, not so that our faith increases, but so our faith
increasing will drive us to understand and know and seek to
know the Lord more. There's this passion to know him
in truth. And So what Paul is saying here
is, look, I'm a servant of the Lord.
I'm an apostle of Jesus Christ. I'm writing this letter so that
your faith may increase, but not just your faith, but also so
that your knowledge will increase.
Once again, I spend a lot of time talking with people about
their faith and about what they know about God and I almost have
never run across somebody that says I know everything I need to
know about God. Everybody I know says something
along the lines of boy, I want to know him more.
I want to understand the scriptures more.
I want to deep dive into who the Lord is.
What Paul is saying here is I'm writing this letter specifically
so that your faith will increase, so that your knowledge
may abound, and then also it is a knowledge of truth that
accords with godliness. One of the great fears that we
have and that we should have is that charge of hypocrisy that
oh, why do we that, that we know everything is true, we know all
things about truth and stuff like that.
But it doesn't show itself in our lives that we continue to
live lives of an ungodly character of moral, moral
depravity, etcetera, etcetera. And what Paul is saying here is,
hey, I'm writing this letter so that your faith will increase,
so that your knowledge will increase and so that your
godliness will increase. And then finally, he says, and
in the hope of eternal life once again, I have never run into
anybody that doesn't want to, doesn't yearn to understand more
what it means that we are citizens of the world to come,
that we are prepared for an eternal life, that what we do
today sets us up for what God intends for us into all
eternity. I've never met anybody that
takes that takes that desire seriously, that doesn't yearn
for a greater understanding of it.
What Paul writes here in this passage is his ultimate goal.
His ultimate goal in writing is and is being an apostle and a
servant is so that you may have a greater understanding of
faith, a greater understanding of your knowledge of the Lord, a
greater passion for godliness and a greater understanding of
what the Lord has in head for us into the future.
What a great goal, what an awesome goal that Lord has
prepared for us. And so then down in verse 5, we
get the immediate purpose. This is Paul's immediate goal.
OK, if that's a big goal, that's the main, main point.
You know, score goals in hockey. That's the main point.
OK, how do we go about that? What's the immediate purpose?
The immediate purpose is this verse 5, Paul writes, This is
why I left you in Crete. Paul is on his fourth missionary
journey. He is taking a trip around the
Mediterranean basin, sharing the gospel, planting churches as he
is want to do. And he goes through Crete and
Crete is an island in the Mediterranean and he sets up a
bunch of churches there. And he has along with him as
protege Titus. And he says to Titus, hey, I
want you to remain in Crete while I continue on in my
missionary journey. And here's why he wants you to
remain in Crete so that you might put what remained into
order and appoint elders in every town.
OK, Now this should be incongruent there.
There should be a mental collapse here in part of in your
life. What Paul is saying is he sets
up this beautiful picture. What I have intended for you is
so that your faith will increase, so that your knowledge
will increase, so that your godliness will increase.
He writes this wonderful picture and he says, and here's how I
want you to do it. I want you to point elders in
every town. Wait a second, please.
If the goal is to have our faith increased, our godliness
increased, preach us a sermon, write a biblical commentary for
us, model for us a godliness and a righteousness, demonstrate for
us all the things in which we need.
Now, all of those things are important, and Paul will get
around to a lot of those things, but his immediate goal for
Titus, he says, Titus, I want you to do these things so you so
that people's faith will increase, so that their
knowledge will increase, so their godliness will increase,
so their understanding of eternal life will increase.
And here's what I want you to do.
I want you to appoint elders in every town.
But I got to tell you, there is no quicker way to put everybody
asleep than to talk about the structure of a church.
We have committees, we have boards of elders, we have
structures, and we have a book of order in which we follow, and
we've got a constitution in which we do things.
And here's the way in which we accomplish things.
And everybody's dead asleep because you're terribly bored
about something that happens. OK, it happens.
It's like hockey. You see a bunch of people
skating around out there. OK, that's great.
But there's more to it than that.
We have been talking through our self identification as a church.
How do we see ourselves? And this is not navel gazing.
This is not look at who we are. This is rather a striving.
This is who we strive to be. And we use that little catch
phrase that we've been looking at over the past couple weeks.
Hebron is a biblically based, Christ centered community of
disciples, A reformed classically evangelical church
in the Presbyterian tradition, worshipping, growing and serving
Christ in the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh.
Ebren is biblically, but we looked at biblically based,
Christ centered, what it means that we're reformed, what it
means that we're classically evangelical.
We call ourselves that way. Today we're looking at the idea
that we are Presbyterian. Now what does it mean that we
are in a church that is in the Presbyterian tradition?
This talks overwhelmingly of our polity.
That's what Presbyterian is. Presbyterian is a description of
our polity. That is the way in which we
govern ourselves. How is it that we make
decisions? How is it that power is
exercised here in the church? How?
How is it that we decide different things in the ways in
which we are going? We follow what is called a
Presbyterian tradition. That's our polity.
There were the way in which we structure and function
ourselves. OK.
There's probably 3 main ways in which the church through history
has structured themselves trying to follow after the guidance of
our Lord. The 1st is called an Episcopal
model and it's a top down approach.
Imagine somebody's at the top making all the decisions and
everybody else is following along afterwards or exercising
those decisions. There are some of you that think
that that's what we operate under.
And so you come to me and you say, Henry, you have to do this,
You have to do that because I'm at the top of the pyramid.
And of course it appears like that because you see me every
Sunday and those kind of things. So it appears like I'm at the
top of the pyramid and everybody does what I say.
That doesn't work. OK, That doesn't happen.
All right. And so then you have the other
model. The other model is just the
exact opposite. And that's a congregational
model. And the congregational model is
everybody has equal say in everything that we all vote on
everything. It's purely straightly,
completely democratic in all our decisions that we make,
democracy, etcetera, flourishing greatly in the church.
And there's some of you that think that's the way that it is.
You know, my opinion is as important as yours.
And Henry, you got to do my opinion on stuff, OK?
That's not the way it works either.
We are a representative of democracy.
The way the Presbyterianism functions is that we elect
leaders who will then make decisions on our behalf.
Now, if that sounds familiar, it should, because the US
government and most state governments are all set up on
that exact model. Presbyterianism had taken a
great hold of the early colonies when we first got started as a
nation, and that influenced and structured most of the way in
which the US government is set up through a representative
democracy. Democracy.
So the leaders that we elect are called elders, and elders are
the Greek word here. That's in verse 5.
It comes from presbuterus, which was where we get Presbyterian.
Presbuterus is a Greek word for elder.
So we elect elders that help guide and direct us.
All right. That's the way in which we
function as a church. Now, I see that some of you are
still paying attention, which is really amazing because if you
get this far into a sermon that's about church government,
you expect people to nod off. Here's that Kairos moment, that
change of the guard where you go from not understanding hockey
and being bored to death about hockey, to suddenly going, oh,
wait a minute, there's something about hockey that is engaging
and is worthwhile and is exciting.
And that is exactly the case when you begin to look at the
theological underpinnings of Presbyterianism.
Why do we do things the way that we do?
It's not simply because it's a good operating functional
structure. Why is it that we have elders?
Why is it that we operate the way that which you do?
And it is a theological underpinnings that undergird the
reason why we function like we do.
So the theological concerns of Presbyterianism are twofold.
There are many more, but twofold.
The first is, if you remember back a couple weeks, if you were
here a couple weeks ago, we looked at what Reformed theology
is and we talked about a robust view of the sovereignty of God.
That robust view of the sovereignty of God is what
drives and concerns the nature of the Presbyterian order of
government. Why is it that we function
through elders here? Why do we direct ourselves?
Why do we make decisions based on government, based on elders?
Because we're trying to capture. Not that Henry is sovereign, not
that I make decisions, Not that you come to my church.
OK. I visited a church.
I visited a church a couple of weeks ago, Sorry number of times
over the past years and when you walk in the door, I'm not going
to tell you where it is, but when you walk in the door, the
first thing you were confronted with is a 5 foot painting of the
pastor and he's looking there very, you know, which is reason
why we don't have one of those. I don't know why that is.
OK, we don't have one. Heaven forbid.
Now, I know that we use it in shorthand, and it's hard not to
do this kind of shorthand. You know what?
What church do you go to? Oh, I go to Henry Knapp's
church. Oh, and my skin crawls.
OK, I understand that that's shorthand, but that's not the
church you go to. You go to the Church of Jesus
Christ and somehow we have to demonstrate that.
And what better way to demonstrate that than in our
leadership, than in the way in which we make decisions that
it's not the Church of Henry Knapp, it's not the Church of
any particular elder or anything like that.
We don't have the painting of some past.
What we are identifying here is that this church belongs to
Jesus Christ. And how do we emphasize that we
make decisions with a pool of elders, a body of elders.
Now, the imagery there, the point of that is that we hold
passionately to something that Jerry brought up in his prayer
early on. We individually, every Christian
believer is filled with the Spirit of God.
We are filled with God's Spirit and we want to make decisions
based upon not my thinking, not what I think is right, not what
the elders think is right, but what God thinks is right.
How do we discern what God thinks is right?
Of course, everybody, all of us are always trying to figure out
what God's will for our lives how to do.
So we gather together the Spirit of God in a group and we say,
where is the Lord leading us in this?
Now, Of course, the only way to do that is for each of us, the
elders, for all of the leadership to sit there and say,
well, I think this and I think that and those kind of things.
But the hope and prayer is that if you get a 10 or so, 15 godly
men and women together in a room and say, where is the Lord
leading us, that we can discern the Lord's leading and
direction. That is not my church, it's the
Lord's church. And we do that through a
gathering of believers in this regard.
That's the first theological concern.
The second one, though, is just as important, if not more so,
and that is our theological emphasis upon the depravity of
sin. A robust understanding of how
broken we are, my friends. OK, let's let's be clear here.
God has given me some gifts. I'm not the biggest clown out
there in the world, and if I were to run an organization, I
could handle certain things. And God has given me some gifts.
And I know all this stuff, but the last thing you want to do is
be involved in an organization, a church, where I am the sole
person making decisions because there's no break.
There's no protection from my own depravity, from my own
sinfulness, from my own brokenness.
Now, look, if I know something's wrong about me, if I know that
there's a moral flossom where I try to do what all of us try to
do, we all try to tamp it down. We try to fix it, we confess it,
we But the problem of sin is that so much of it is
unrecognized. It blinds us to our own
sinfulness. And so in making decisions for
Heaven Church, well, this is what Heaven Church should do.
If I'm the only one making the decision, there's no guarantee.
There's no way that my sinfulness doesn't leak out into
everything that we do into under the decisions that I make.
And it's not because I'm a terrible human being.
I'm not I'm OK. We don't need to talk about I'm
a terrible human being or not, but you get the point.
The point is that I am a broken, flawed leader like everyone is a
broke, broken and flawed leader. And so we exercise a
Presbyterian form of government simply so there's no cult of
Henry that's floating around there.
There's no, there's no organization that reflects all
of my brokenness and all of my sin or all the brokenness and
sin of any individual. Once again, you gathered
together 15 godly men and women and we try to sit there and say,
how is it? Are we going to discern God's
will and how do we act in these particular ways?
The the hope is that what's happening is when you have the
presence of the Holy Spirit in the group like that, and we have
each person aware of our brokenness and our sinfulness,
that as we are talking, there's a humility.
There's a humility that has to express itself in everything
that we do. And the Presbyterian Church is
nothing if not a confident organization, confident in the
God's presence, working through the elders, and yet at the same
time, an organization, an institution that is overwhelming
and demonstrating its humility. A recognition that I am broken.
The decisions that I will make on my own will not nearly be as
healthy as the decisions that the group together will make.
Not because the group's mindset is better than you know.
And you know, 10 minds are better than one.
That's true. But mostly because I'm counting
on the fact that that if my sin is blind, if I'm blind to my
sin, if you're blind to your sin, hopefully as we work
together as a group, we get to expose that kind of sinfulness.
We get to override that kind of sinfulness and come to a better
understanding of God's direction and leading in our lives.
This is what it means for us to be Presbyterian, to operate
under a godly system like this. It's not a discussion of, of
the, the, you know, a board of directors is the best way to
operate something or elders are the best way to do these kind of
things or something. It's purely a recognition of how
is it that we model those theological truths that we hold
so passionately to the Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior of
this church. He is the one whom we follow
completely and totally that we are broken, sinful individuals
and that that sin distorts what we do.
And somehow we need a check and a balance on that simpleness
that any individual will come about.
And the best way to do that is to put together godly men and
women who are able to then to help discern exactly the way it
is that we should live our lives.
If this is what it means to be a Presbyterian Church, what does
it mean for you? What does it mean for you to be
part of a Presbyterian Church? Well, given what I've just
outlined for you in terms of leadership responsibilities,
please be praying for us. We say this all the time.
Imagine if there would be, you know, 100 and some people in
this room that would commit themselves to be praying
passionately for the leadership of this church because we're
desperate to have God be the dominant director of all things.
We want Him to be making the decisions and we need your
prayers in order to discern God's will for our lives and to
tamp down the sinfulness of each an individual person.
We need your prayers. But secondly, you should be
following that same thinking in your own life.
There's nothing more devastating, nothing more
unbiblical. There are prides and things that
are more unbiblical. But with the pastoral hyperbole
here, there's nothing more unbiblical than a Lone Ranger
Christian, somebody that is committed to going their own
way. That is precisely against what
we understand is our robust theology about sovereignty of
God and the pravity of man. In your own life, you need to
surround yourself with men and women, godly men and women that
will be able to talk specifically into your life and
be able to say this is a way in which you need to view this
particular issue in your life. Have you considered this?
It's not getting different opinions.
It's seeking God's opinion. It's not trying to figure out
what the crowd thinks. It's trying to discern what the
Lord understands and to have you blinders of your own life, the
sinful blinders in your own heart removed so that you can
see our Lord more clearly and completely.
That's what it means for you to be Presbyterian in your life,
and then what it means for us to be Presbyterian as a church.
We have to have that humility of recognizing our sinfulness,
coupled with that confidence of knowing that we worship a
sovereign God. Let's go to Him in prayer at
this time. Gracious Lord, we want to be
faithful in directing us and guiding us in the decisions that
we make as a corporate body and as individuals.
Help us, Lord, to be more and more faithful at relying upon
you of identifying a faith that continues to grow and
understanding, a knowledge that increases and abundant godliness
in our lives, and then the direction of our lives that is
shaped and molded by the eternal life that is ours in Jesus
Christ our Lord, in whose name we pray.
Amen. My friends, if you would stand
together and let's respond to God's work in our lives from our
essential statement. What do we believe about the
true church? The true Church is composed of
all persons who, through saving faith in Jesus Christ and the
sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, are united together in
the Body of Christ. The Church is imperfectly
expressed in local congregations where the Word of God is
preached, the sacraments are administered, spiritual
discipline is practiced, and loving fellowship is maintained.
For her, protecting the Church awaits the return of her Savior.