Liars, Brutes, and Gluttons, Oh, My!

Titus 1:9-16

For the last two weeks, we have focused on the introduction to Paul’s letter to Titus, including some background on Crete and on Titus and finishing up last weekend with Paul’s instructions for church leadership. The final sentence regarding church leaders changed course a little, so I decided to wait until this week to handle it. He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it. (Titus 1:9)

More important than the qualities, behaviors, and character of a leader is the truth of the gospel. It doesn’t matter if a leader is of impeccable credentials if he is preaching anything other than the truth of God. In his first letter to the church in Corinth, Paul writes: Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise you have believed in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:1-2)

If your belief is that there is anything other than the life, death, resurrection, and return of Jesus Christ that will save you, then your belief is in vain. There are times when life is tough and it can be easy to reach out to a different savior. People in our culture hope in their health, in their wealth, in their talents and physical abilities and experiences, even in the government. But none of those can save you.

Church leaders and mature Christians have a special responsibility to hold to the truth. Jesus himself said, “Whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to sin! Such things must come, but woe to the man through whom they come!” (Matthew 18:5-7) If our hope is in anything other than the love of God through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ, then not only have we missed the point and believed in vain, but we also end up causing others to sin, and Jesus says you’d be better off dead than to cause others to sin.

This is a serious accusation, and it needs some serious attention. Many of us have done a good job in trying to teach young people to live solid, Christian lives, but if they don’t see us living the Gospel ourselves, we are implicitly teaching them that there is something else worth living for. If you’re living out an ethic that says that Bible reading, prayer, loving one another, and evangelism are things that are only done by “professional Christians” then you’re not only missing the point, but your actions are giving others a skewed view of God, and thus you’re causing people to sin.

On the other hand, when we hold firmly to the Good News of Jesus Christ, we have everything we need for life and eternal life and further, we can encourage others and refute non-Christian myths. After all, who wants to be the person who knows all the truths but doesn’t live it out? The one about whom people say, “You say all the right things, but you obviously don’t care about the things you say, because you don’t live any differently than the world.”

In Crete, we find the exact situation: For there are many rebellious people, mere talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party. They must be silenced, because they are ruining whole households by teaching things they ought not to teach – and that for the sake of dishonest gain.(Titus 1:10-11).

There’s something about me that really, really wants to go on the attack here, especially in the realm of dishonest gain, and I think we might do well to listen to a well-crafted treatise on the circumcision party, the ones who said, “To be God’s people, you have to submit to circumcision.” Today I’d rather look at this phrase: “mere talkers and deceivers.”

Mere talkers and deceivers. The issue is an issue of talk. We all talk a good game. In the Sunday Columbus Dispatch sports section, there is a column of letters to the editor, and almost every letter writer is a better coach than the poor saps hired to coach the Buckeyes, the Reds, the Cavaliers, the Browns, and the Bengals. Or, in another realm, everyone is talking about the weather, but nobody ever does anything about it. In churches, we tend to talk a lot about what we’re supposed to do, but if we don’t do it, we’re mere talkers. Full of hot air. On the way back from vacation, we stopped by my aunt’s house. They are in the process of moving, and everything is in boxes. My cousin was there, and he showed off his box of fishing lures to my boys. Jeff told them all about the lures, what kind of fish they were for, how they worked, and so forth. Then he said, “Guess how many fish I’ve caught with these lures.” Any guesses? One fish. Now, the reason isn’t that he’s a mere talker, but because he’s spent all his “lake” time remodeling the cottage, so it’s not really fair for me to pick on him, but how many people have a plethora of lures but haven’t caught any fish? Over half of the churches in our Conference have not had a baptism or profession of faith in the past year. We, who Jesus called to be “fishers of men” aren’t called to sit around and talk about it!

Now, not only are there mere talkers, but there are also outright deceivers. This is where false doctrines come into play. One of the most destructive false doctrines prevalent in our culture is that all we need is Jesus+. If you believe a gospel that says that your salvation requires anything beyond Jesus Christ, then you’ve been deceived. Your salvation doesn’t require you to be morally upright. Your salvation requires you to trust in Jesus. If we could be saved by our moral behavior, we wouldn’t need Jesus.

There are plenty of Christians who have swallowed, hook, line, and sinker, the deception that we have something to do with our salvation and that moral failures are the enemy of salvation. That leads to people working really hard to get their morals under control. Yes, Jesus tells us to “be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48) But the paradox is perfection doesn’t come by us working harder to be perfect. When we simply work on our imperfections, we’re saying that we can do it on our own, that we don’t need God.

In Romans 1, Paul writes that The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness… for although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God, nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. (Romans 1:18, 21-22, 28)

What he’s saying is that all of our moral failures aren’t the problem; they are only the symptoms of the problem. And while we’re diligently working on modifying our behavior, we’re just treating the symptoms. Anyone knows that when your doctor is only treating the symptoms, you’re in trouble. The real problem is a heart problem. We don’t love God enough.

The deception, then, is convincing people that they should just work on their behaviors, while the truth is that our calling is to love God more, and that when we do so, our behaviors will follow. It never works the opposite way.

Think of it this way: I really like to drink Coke. And I like to recycle the cans. Eventually. But my habit has always been to leave the cans sitting around until I get around to recycling them. If you hadn’t guessed, that drives Tara nuts. And why not – what adult really wants their house to look like a fraternity house on social probation? So here’s the thing: me picking up pop cans has never made me love her more. It always works the other way: because I love her, I try to pick up my pop cans. This is how it works with Jesus; loving him doesn’t come from working harder. But our love for God spurs us on to good deeds.

Mere talkers and deceivers must be silenced, because they are ruining whole households by teaching things they ought not to teach. It’s vitally important to hold firmly to sound doctrine.

In Crete it was said that “Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.” Paul even makes sure to add that This testimony is true. Cretan prophets were the ones who said that Cretans are always liars. Aside from the liar’s paradox (a liar saying that what he is saying is a lie), we learn a lot about a people from what their own self-critiques (and sometimes what they brag about themselves). The people of Crete were notoriously brutish, and it was even said about the lack of wild animals on the island that   “Crete had no wild beasts, for its own inhabitants were sufficient.” Ironic was the claim that they were lazy, because Cretans were constantly involved in warfare, mercenary services, and piracy; they were hardly “idle.” But this speaks to the uncontrollable and excessive appetites of Cretans, who had no self-control, gentleness, or uprightness, and would do anything to turn a profit.

We live in a similar culture, where our appetites are excessive and uncontrollable. We don’t know how much is enough. We have to invent words like “designated driver” to describe someone who chauffeurs around people who are too drunk to drive for themselves. We have terms like “house poor” for someone who buys a house they can’t afford to live in. We throw away food while people in our own communities go hungry. And for the most part, we ignore these aspects of our own culture. In fact, we laugh about our own gluttony. I have pastor friends who pat their oversized bellies and joke, “Just putting an addition on the Temple.”

What’s worse is that we allow the seedier aspects of our culture to impact and affect our Christianity. We often focus on peripheral matters as if they were central to the Gospel. Our church buildings, for example. We focus so much attention on the building that in our culture “church” means “the building we meet in” while the church is really the people.

We focus on money, often to the exclusion of God from the decision-making process. If we “don’t have the money” for whatever it is, then we throw out the idea. Far be it from our God to be bigger than the dollar. We print our attendance and offering numbers in the bulletin and throw them up on the wall every week, and every week some of you get all concerned about them. When will our faith grow up? When will we realize we’re worshiping a God who created precious metals, a God who isn’t stumped by a lack of money?

Paul’s critique of the church in Crete is that they didn’t behave any differently from the unfavorable stereotypes of Cretan culture. They were mixing the gospel with sinful cultural values. They had this ridiculous notion that they could live as a part of their culture without being transformed by the Gospel, that aside from calling themselves Christian, there was nothing that differentiated them from their pagan neighbors. How ridiculous is that?

I wonder how different we are from our pagan neighbors these days…

Therefore, rebuke them sharply, so that they will be sound in their faith and will pay no attention to Jewish myths or the commands of those who reject the truth.(Titus 1:13b-14)

For anyone who thinks that a Christian leader’s duty is to get along with everyone, you didn’t get that from the Bible. The Bible tells us to sharply rebuke Christian leaders who are leading others astray. Church discipline isn’t popular, but that’s just a reminder how far from the narrow road our culture is.

Paul finishes this section up by saying:  To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted. They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good.(Titus 1:15-16)

This goes back to what I said earlier. God’s calling on our lives is for us to love him. When we accept Jesus’ sacrifice as completely sufficient for us, then we accept that God has purified us. Therefore all of our striving is pure. In Romans 14, Paul writes about this, saying that although we have a duty to make sure that our freedom does not cause someone else to stumble, no food was unclean in itself. But for those who do not have Jesus, nothing is pure. Even the very attempts at moral uprightness are impure, because these are the means by which they attempt their own salvation, mocking Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Jesus quoted Isaiah 29:13 “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: ‘These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.’” (Mark 7:6-7)

A high majority of Americans claim to be Christians. Does this mean we are?  The people of Crete claimed to know God, but denied him by their actions. Paul is saying if we really love God, our actions will follow. We will look like people who love God. We will act like people who love God. You can tell someone who is in love. They’re always talking about the object of their love. They can’t wait to be with them. Everything revolves around the object of love.

Does that describe you? This week, take the time to love God more.