Rusty Stevens, a Navigator Director, tells this story. He was
pushing the lawn mower around his yard trying to get done before
supper was on the table. His 6 year old son Mikey came out and
stepped in front of him, grabbed the handle of the mower and
started to push. The father quit pushing and the mower slowed to a
stop, for Mikey did not have the strength to push it, but he wanted
to help. Dad had the impulse to say "get out of here. You are in my
way", but instead he said, "Son, I'll help you." So he began to push
with his legs spread apart to avoid hitting his son. He was now
moving slower and less efficiently with Mikey's help.
It suddenly dawned on him that this is the way God works with
us. As our heavenly Father he could get the work done of building
his kingdom so fast and efficient alone, but he wants us to help. Out
help is often a handicap, for we only slow things down and are less
efficient. But God's plan is to let us help. We see this so clearly in
Paul's letter to Titus. Paul does not say, "Just choose who you will,
or call for volunteers to be leaders and pastors of the churches. Paul
does not teach that it makes no difference who is leading because
God in his sovereignty will make it all work out no matter what you
do. Instead, Paul says it makes a world of difference who you
choose, for God does not build his kingdom, and Christ does not
build his church without the help of men and women who are
channels of his will in the world. If excellence only depended on God,
then their is nothing to worry about, for God is always excellent.
But if excellence depends on men, then the qualifications of those men
makes a lot of difference in the outcome. the quality of a church depends
upon the quality of its leaders. The pastor and lay leaders form the character
of the church. We have looked at all the things they should not be,
and most of what they should be. This message brings us to the 9th
verse of chapter one where the issue is doctrine. The leaders of the
church of Christ must be people of sound doctrine. they must hold
firmly to Biblical truth, and be able to teach it to others, and be able
to refute those who oppose it.
The stability of the church depends on the leaderships
commitment to the Word of God. The orthodox doctrines, or
teachings that come from Christ and his Apostles is the foundation
that can never change. It has to be passed on from generation to
generation. When their is a shift from this foundation to some other
source for guidance you get a corrupted Christianity. The big
corruption that Paul is ever fighting in his day is legalism. the
Jewish Christians keep going back to the Old Testament law and
they try to impose it on the Christians who have been set free in
Christ from that bondage. He urges Titus to fight this perversion of
the faith by sound doctrine.
This battle is never ending and that is why Christian leaders need
to be educated in doctrine. The cults are deceiving untaught
Christians by the thousands in every generation. Many cults
specialize in enticing Christians who do not know their own
doctrines well enough to know the difference between true
Christianity and clever imitations. This letter of Paul is focus on the
intellectual battles of the church. In his letter to the Corinthians he
deals with the emotional issues. But we need to recognize that the
Holy Spirit works in both the mind and the emotions. Sometimes
what the Christian needs is a great lift and an emotional high. But at
other times they need a solid rock of truth that can weather any
intellectual storm that comes.
Craig Larson says that power can be used in two ways. It can be
unleashed, or it can be harnessed. If you throw a match into a ten
gallon container of gas, you will unleash its power in a great
explosion. but if you take that same ten gallons of gas and put it into
your car, it will by controlled explosions propel you a couple
hundred miles. At Pentecost the Holy Spirit came like tongues of
fire, and the church of Christ exploded on the stage of history with
3000 Jews being saved in one day. But not every day in the life of the
church is a day of explosion. Most days are days like Paul deals with
here. They are days of a need for the power of the Holy Spirit to be
harnessed and enabling leaders to proclaim the truth and defend it,
and also prevent opponents from perverting it and hurting the body
of Christ.
You will notice that Paul gives some of the characteristics of this
New Testament church. In verse 10 he said it is full of rebellious
people who are all talk, and who are deceivers. He says the Jewish
Christians are especially so. They come into the church with all
their legalistic baggage. They are teaching things to the new
Christians that are ruining their lives. In verse 11 he says that
whole households are being ruined by their heresies. They are
wrapped up in Jewish myths, and they are corruption the Christian
faith by their nonsense. Paul ends the chapter by saying they are
just detestable, disobedient, and unfit for doing anything good.
When people say they want a New Testament church I hope they
mean the kind Paul is trying to get them to be, and not the kind they
were. This New Testament church was a mess, and by false teaching
they were actually making people worse instead of better. They
were taking perfectly good pagans, who may have been decent
people, and turning them into corrupted Christians who believed
lies and myths. They made Christianity a mockery of true godliness.
Can a church do people more harm than good? Paul says that they
can, and it was happening in this church of Crete.
How do you prevent a church from being a curse to the world
rather than a blessing? Paul says you do it by strong teaching of
sound doctrine. Let a church depart from the Bible as the sole and
supreme authority for all it believes and practices, and you are
heading for a church that will be agent for evil rather than for
Christ. Without sound doctrine the church becomes a channel for
all the religious nonsense that man is capable of conceiving. The
religious scams that people fall for are pathetic, and the cults that
thrive off people is one of Satan's greatest joys.
The new age cults are growing by leaps and bounds in our
nation, and Christians are often persuaded to join them because the
church has been enticed away from sound doctrine to focus on the
current issues of the day. The demand for the church to be relevant
as led the church to become irrelevant, for they have focused on
issues rather than sound doctrine. The best way to be relevant is to
make sure the truth of God's Word is the foundation for all you do.
But instead, the modern church has decided to use the Bible only as
a resource with the main focus on the wisdom of men in psychology,
politics, and sociology. The result is, the Bible collects dust as
Christians try to keep up on the latest in contemporary thinking.
We know this is so because every generation of Christians knows
less about the Bible.
This leads the church right back to the New Testament church
which was full of problems because people did not know their Bible.
It was not just in Crete. Paul wrote to Timothy who was pastoring
the church in Ephesus and the same problem was in that church.
Paul writes in I Tim. 1:3, "As I urged you when I went to
Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain
men not to teach false doctrines any longer." He goes on to say that
they have departed from sound doctrine and are just into
meaningless talk that hurts the church.
Out of the 19 times this Greek word didoskalia is translated
doctrine in the New Testament 17 are by Paul, and 15 of them are in
his letters to Timothy and Titus. One of the major tasks of the local
church is to make sure Christians are founded on sound doctrine,
and that false doctrine is weeded out. This is often a thankless job,
for people get bored with the truth, and they get restless as they look
for something that is fresh, flashy and more contemporary. Paul
warns Timothy in II Tim. 4:3-4 of what he can expect: "For the
time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine.
Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a
great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.
They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to
myths."
Christian people can get bored to death with the very truths that
save them and gave them good news to share with the world. It is
hard to believe isn't it? But the fact is that a recent poll revealed
that over half of Americans believe in reincarnation. This is one of
the strong points of the new age cults. They have been able to
persuade even a large number of Christians to believe this false
doctrine. It is also a very popular idea that everybody who dies goes
into a new and wonderful world. I find the movies based on this
theme quite interesting myself, and I need to keep reminding myself
that it is contrary to sound doctrine, and it undermines the Gospel
completely. It is highly unlikely that any of us have escaped being
touched to some degree by the many popular false doctrines that
bombard our culture.
Every Christian needs a course in biblical theology, and leaders
especially need it, for they are responsible to protect the rest of the
body from the cleverness and appeal of false doctrine. Paul says in
II Tim. 3:16 that all Scripture is profitable for doctrine. So
wherever you are in Bible study, remember that your goal is to let
the truth of that part of the Bible establish in you some biblical
doctrine that will give you a basis to evaluate the things you hear.
Walter Martin, author of over 15 books and the world authority on
cults in the United States, says there are nearly 20 million cult
members is this country. And they have an enormous impact on the
things we see and hear.
Our culture provides and ideal environment for the growth of
cults. We are fanatics for what is new and improved, and the cults
work this for all its worth. They all have this characteristic: They
have a new and improved revelation from God. Many of them say
the Bible is okay, but its not the latest thing. If you want to be on the
cutting edge you will follow us, for we have the new and improved
pure truth. This appeals to a people who are interested in what is
up to date and current. The cults portray Christians as being in the
stone age of God's revelation. If you want to be with it, you will be
with us.
Add to this their focus on the self-centeredness of our culture.
Look out for number one. Self is the most important single entity in
the universe. Self-help books by the dozens are the best sellers in the
land. Forget the idea that all have sinned and fall short of the glory
of God. This is not good for self-esteem. You can be all you can be
is the popular message. You can be set free to be successful,
beautiful, healthy, and have the best of everything. You can become
your own god is the subtle message that all the cults capitalize on.
Self-deification is the bottom line which takes us right back to the
origin of evil where Lucifer sought to exalt himself as God. The
cults are not up to date at all, but are as old fashioned as the devil
himself, for their goal is self-deification. Why submit to God when
you can be your own god?
This appeals to the American mind, and so you can find books
galore to help you become your own god in all the best book stores.
Time magazine back in 1988 noted that there were over 25 hundred
new age or occult book stores in the U. S. The point is that false
doctrine is everywhere, and people are reading it by the millions
everyday. The media that bombards us everyday is influence by
these ideas, and so the Christian needs to be evaluating everything
by the Bible. Is it according to sound doctrine, and does it ring true
to the teachings of Jesus and His Apostles? If you don't feel sure
about it, then be very skeptical until you search the Scriptures to
find the evidence you need to support it or reject it.
The Christian faith is based on an objective revelation, and this
is the measure by which we test all things. If any teaching is not
compatible with the New Testament it is to be declared false
doctrine and avoided. Why is there so much false doctrine? Paul
says in verse 11 that it is because there are so many rebellious
people. Other translations say so many insubordinate people, or
people not willing to be submissive. These kinds of people love false
doctrines because they hate the authority of anyone trying to tell
them what to do and believe. They want to be free to do their own
thing, and so they modify the Christian faith to fit their individual
preferences. They are mere talkers always trying to rationalize their
rebellion against authority. Unfortunately, he says they often
succeed in deceiving others into following them.
This battle is fought on a thousand fronts all through history.
One of the first signs that you are dealing with a heresy, or a cult, is
the message that comes through that in some way you save yourself.
This is the bottom line of all false doctrine. It says that Jesus is not
the only way. You can get to heaven by some other route and be
your own savior. This is so appealing to the pride of men, for what
can be a greater ego builder that to believe you can save yourself?
This is the number one heresy of history, and it is often packaged so
cleverly that even Christian people fall for it as they obviously did in
Crete.
This word that Paul uses for ruining whole households he uses
again in II Tim. 3 where he is dealing with the false doctrine that
came into Timothy's church. He writes in verses 17-19, "Their
teaching will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus
and Philetus, who have wandered away from the truth. They say
that the resurrection has already taken place, and they destroy the
faith of some." The word destroy is the same word Paul uses here.
False doctrine can ruin and destroy people's faith. It is a great evil
to allow false doctrine, and so Paul says it must be silenced. It is a
never ending battle to keep Christians focused on the truth of God's
Word, and not get sidetracked by the clever reasoning of men.
You would think mere talkers would be no threat to anybody.
We say that talk is cheap, but the fact is, mere talkers scared Paul
because people listen to talkers and are led astray. They may be like
blind men telling you how to find a black cat in a dark room that
isn't there, but their empty talk can do great damage because all of
us are gullible. All Satan had was mere talk, but he persuaded
Adam and Eve to disobey God with his clever words. Never
underestimate the power of mere talkers. Words are powerful
weapons and they could lead Christians to follow the way of heresy.
We have a problem today that did not exist in Paul's day. If
Titus and Timothy could silence the voices of heresy in their
churches, the Christians were safe from its destructive power.
Today the world is full of books of all kinds, and mass media loaded
with heretical doctrine. I find it even in our own church library as
people donate books that they do not realize are published by the
cults. A reading Christian today will likely be exposed to false
doctrine, and so the challenge is even greater than it was for Titus
and Timothy to get Christians grounded in sound doctrine.
Almost every cult in America was started by clever talkers. They
learn that people are easily persuaded by eloquence and clever talk.
They use this power to deceive, and as they did in Paul's day, they
do it for the sake of dishonest gain. You can get rich quite fast in
America if you have some religious gimmick. Some have sold bottle
of water from the Jordan River, and some have sold healing hankies,
and a host of other things that give people hope of direct contact
with God through manmade products. But the biggest gimmick of
all is to sell words. The greatest conflict in the world is the battle of
the Word against words. God's Word against the words of men.
Clever words can give us false assurance even though they are
empty. A woman worried about her heart called to talk to her
doctor. He said, "You need not worry. Your heart will last as long
as you live." She felt comforted by such meaningless words. A
nervous lady went to a captain of a ship on its way to Europe by the
Northern route. She asked, "What would happen if we struck and
iceberg?" The captain replied, "Calm your fears madam. The
iceberg would continue on its way as if nothing had happened." She
went away assured.
These, of course, are ridiculous illustrations of the power of
words. But then look at Robert Kennedy's assassin, Sirhan. He was
deeply involved with new age thinking. He read The Secret Doctrine
by Madam Blavatsky the founder of Theosophy. She taught that
man is intrinsically divine, and had the right to see truth from his
own perspective independent of all others. He was doing God's will
by killing one that he did not like. It was the judgment of God. He
was being the god whose will he was carrying out. It was all logical
and reasonable within the system he was deceived into by clever
words.
The new age teaches children that they are perfect and sin is not
an issue. If they feel something is right for them, then it is right for
them, even if it is a rejection of everyone else's value system. This is
destroying families today just as heresy was doing in Paul's day.
What is so deceptive about the new age doctrine is they use good
words and so we who love good words can be taken in by them.
Words like Jesus is divine are a sure eye catcher for those of us who
love Jesus as Lord. But what we do not see is that they mean nothing
by the words. They think the same about every religious leader in
history. All of us are divine and so Jesus is just like everyone else
and not the Lord and the most unique man of history because he
was also God. The words Jesus is divine in their meaning is really a
heresy. Things are just he same today as in Paul's day, and so it is
still essential that we all be anchored in sound doctrine.
