Titus 1:1-16
June 23, 2019
preached by Doug Cooper
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Time of Reflection Quotations

“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.”

“Only a group of people who share a body of knowledge and continually learn together can stay vital and viable.”

~ Max De Pree (1924-2017), American businessman and writer

“Every proposal to seek authorization elsewhere than in the gospel itself must lead us astray.”

“Ministerial leadership is, first and finally, discipleship.”

~ Lesslie Newbigin (1909-1998), British theologian, missiologist, missionary and author

“Real leadership is leaders recognizing that they serve the people that they lead.”

~ Pete Hoekstra (1953-present), Dutch-American politician presently serving as the United States Ambassador to the Netherlands

“Humility is throwing oneself away in complete concentration on something or someone else.”

“In a very real sense not one of us is qualified, but it seems that God continually chooses the most unqualified to do his work, to bear his glory. If we are qualified, we tend to think that we have done the job ourselves. If we are forced to accept our evident lack of qualification, then there’s no danger that we will confuse God’s work with our own, or God’s glory with our own.”

~ Madeleine L’Engle (1918-2007), American writer of young adult fiction

“God is absolutely sovereign, but his sovereignty never functions in such a way that human responsibility is minimized or mitigated.”

~ D. A. Carson (1946-present), Canadian-born theologian and Biblical scholar

“The gospel never advances without someone paying a price.”

~ Ray Ortlund, contemporary pastor and author

Sermon Passage

Titus 1:1-16 (NIV)

¹ Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ to further the faith of God’s elect and their knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness— ² in the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time, ³ and which now at his appointed season he has brought to light through the preaching entrusted to me by the command of God our Savior,

⁴ To Titus, my true son in our common faith:

Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.

⁵ The reason I left you in Crete was that you might put in order what was left unfinished and appoint elders in every town, as I directed you. ⁶ An elder must be blameless, faithful to his wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient. ⁷ Since an overseer manages God’s household, he must be blameless—not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain. ⁸ Rather, he must be hospitable, one who loves what is good, who is self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined. ⁹ 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.

¹⁰ For there are many rebellious people, full of meaningless talk and deception, especially those of the circumcision group. ¹¹ They must be silenced, because they are disrupting whole households by teaching things they ought not to teach—and that for the sake of dishonest gain. ¹² One of Crete’s own prophets has said it: “Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.” ¹³ This saying is true. Therefore rebuke them sharply, so that they will be sound in the faith ¹⁴ and will pay no attention to Jewish myths or to the merely human commands of those who reject the truth. ¹⁵ 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. ¹⁶ They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good.