Titus Lesson 5 cont.
Titus · Courtney Hemenway · Sep 10, 2023
Titus, No. 17
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261932364132

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

We are in Titus Lesson 5. We have motored, I think, if I'm correct, we have gone through questions 1 through 3, and I think we're on question 4. So again, I think Mike and I agree, it's good to go through the verses that we're discussing before we get into the questions. So I'll read Lesson 5 is on verses 13 through 16 of Titus 1. And those verses that, oh, and I think I've, let me do something. I think I, do I have that up here? Titus, yes. Oops. 13 through 16. I'm going to read it because I think on my lesson, I omitted one chunk in there. So 13, I'll go through. starting at 10 and going to 16.

For there are many rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, who must be silenced, because they are upsetting whole families, teaching things that they should not teach for the sake of sordid gain. One of themselves, a prophet of their own, said, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons. This Tesson, beginning with verse 13.

This testimony is true. For this reason, reprove them severely so that they may be sound in the faith, not paying attention to Jewish myths and commandments of men who turn away from the truth. To the pure, all things are pure. But to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure. but both their mind and their conscience are defiled. They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient and worthless for any good deed. quite a condemning section of scripture as far as identifying the Cretans. But then, you know, again, by extension to others who mimic or follow that same pathway, it would apply to them, the ones who are unsound in the doctrine, the evil beasts, liars, all those different things, and I think we can find a lot of those in contemporary situations right now. So let's get to question four.

So what were the Jewish myths and commandments of man all about? So Paul gives the same instruction, well, Well, I'll read this, I think because it gives context. Paul gives the same instruction to Timothy as given in verse 14 from Titus in 1 Timothy 1, 3 and 4, and that says, As I urged you upon my departure from Macedonia, remain on at Ephesus. So this is Paul to Timothy. so that you may instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrines, nor to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to mere speculation, rather than furthering the administration of God, which is by faith." And then if you look at 2 Timothy 1-4, the same warning is given from Paul to Timothy. I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom, preach the words, be ready in season and out of season, and remember this now, what we've already gone through, reprove and rebuke. exhort with great patience and instruction, for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths."

So, what are these Jewish myths and commandments of man all about? He gives the same warning for Timothy, teaching at Ephesus in Macedonia, and now he's giving it to Titus, the same warning about these Jewish myths and commandments.

What are they? Hit your mic, is your mic on? Yes it is. Okay, okay, go ahead if you want to. The things that the Jewish people did as believing as believers they should not be doing, you know. And also I was reading that probably there was some Gnostic teaching too. Yeah, about, yeah. Gnostic is about your, you can do anything in your body, it's spiritual, I think in that kind of there's different types of Gnostic where that gave them liberty to do whatever they wanted because the body was a separate thing and so I think there's some of that.

So what about the Jewish myths? What would Jewish myths be? Nobody? One of the footnotes that I found to this is, and I don't know, stories based on Old Testament incidences, and I think there's a lot of that that goes on that they build into what an Old Testament story is all about, what contemporary thinking about it is.

I'll give you an example. In 2023, we have a set of Jews in our neighborhood and they dress a certain way, eat certain foods, have all these rules and regulations about how they behave, that they, you know, not to be friend to go in very much, and they study, and it's amazing what they do, but they have to wear clothes that can't be blends, certain kind of underwear, have to wear hats and yarmulkes and and the wire that's around our neighborhood, you know, we can't go outside the two-mile wire on the Sabbath, can't drive a car in a cell. All of that is, I mean, there weren't any Chevys in the Old Testament.

Well, you know, contemporary else is Mormon. Mormon has various, you know, I think they have, you know, certain things they have to do, like, and why there's Mormon or whatever they call it, right next to schools. I think maybe our kids know more about it because they have to wear a certain underwear, I think, too. I may just get a little TMI or something, but it's a similar type thing. contemporary there, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, you know, this mix, this mix of, you know, a little Christianity thrown in there, but all these other things that Joseph Smith and all of them came up with. And so, you know, it's, it's, it's exactly this.

They're mixing up myths, Jewish myths and different things with, uh, Old Testament stories, but they they turn them a little bit and they you know, it's always just a little crank Who is the one who deceives? Satan is the one who just loved and you know, they all peers, you know angels of light, but it's just twisted enough to lead us off Yeah, yeah, that's the Mormon Mormon one.

Yeah, you know when when John was in the Boy Scouts and The Mormons were big in the Boy Scouts. They're not anymore. They had their own thing. But in order for an adult to get the training you need to be a Scoutmaster or whatever, usually it was at a Mormon stake you went to. And they were interesting because they taught, well here's the way the Boy Scouts teach it and here's the Mormon Boy Scout. And they talk both of them at the same time. Yeah, but it's trying to get a hook into and rhyme. So, I didn't want to note you had it here.

It was apparently Jewish myths and unbiblical commandments that it was made up by people. That's really the key, which were laid down by those who rejected God's truth, fascinated these false teachers, this, you know, modifying of Jewish history, Jewish laws, they would modify it, and they would twist it, and they just loved to be the guys who would, you know, tell these stories or something like that. At least when I was looking up some of these things, It says the Jewish myths were fanciful speculative stories built on Old Testament. They were found in the pseudo-graphia or whatever, such books as Bell and Dragon, the rest of Esther. So these were offshoot books that they would pick up and take a little bit from, and the people knew about them, so they would kind of get sucked into there.

So a sample of some of the man's commandments may be found in the 1 Timothy 3 and 4. 1 Timothy 4, 3 and 4 verses where we said that it's kind of where they take them and they tickle your ears with them. They're just enough to get you interested and, you know, bring you over and just misdirect you is what their purpose was. And remember what this beginning of these verses, that's why I read it. What was this also causing? Unsettling in families. because now they're getting this, well, you know, I'm getting this from Titus, but I get these guys who are, you know, it sounds good and it's tickling my ears and I want to go over here. So Titus is giving a warning about these that, you know, don't listen to these, these men who are bringing these stories to you, these unsubstantiated stories, not biblically founded. So these are the warnings he gives.

So, um, Apparently Jewish myths and unbiblical commandments that were made up by people which were laid down by those who rejected God's truth You know fascinated these ones and there are several references. You can look up in Matthew 15 9 mark 7 7 the first Timothy ones Colossians 2 21 and 22 there are there are several I'll just read a couple of those Matthew 15 7 through 9 you hypocrites Rightly did Isaiah prophesize of you.

This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of man. So again, they're taking from man and not following what God had said to them. If you look at 1 Timothy 6, 2 through 5, teach and preach these principles. If anyone advocates a doctrine that does not agree with sound words, those are Lord Jesus Christ, and with a doctrine conforming to godliness, he is conceited and understands nothing.

But he has a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words, out of which arise envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, and constant friction between men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain. Remember what in the beginning of this it said they're doing it for sordid gain All of this is consistent with what he's given to Timothy and to Titus again These guys love to get into arguments love to you know dispute you love to try and draw you away Whatever game maybe it's pride if I can get you and you follow me you know, whatever there's a there's a non-Christ focused reason why they're doing this. It's not to bring people to Christ, it's to bring them away from Christ into themselves for their own gain. We also see this in Colossians 2, 20 through 23.

If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees such as do not handle, do not taste, do not touch, which all refer to things destined to perish with use? In accordance with these commandments and teachings of men, why do you listen to them?

These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence. Again, the warning is still there. Don't be led astray by these men who are teaching from their own selfish or fleshly position. The question I had was, do we have to worry about this today? Jewish commandments or other commandments of men who turn away from the truth? Do we have to worry about that today? Like every day? I mean, it's astounding to me, you know, Mike, you made the reference, they didn't have Chevys in it.

Can you imagine, I mean, the differences in our worlds that Titus was in and the world we're in today and yet this still applies? man hasn't changed. The fleshly man has not changed over the millennia. We're still fighting the same thing because it's the flesh, it's the human sinful nature that is still the same as it was in Titus' time. The flesh is still trying to do the same stupid thing. Go us away. Get us away. I like the one from 2nd Timothy that I read, 3 and 4.

For the time will come when they will not understand sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires, and will turn away their ears from truth, and will turn aside to myths.

What about all these TV preachers or the people who are, you know, having these massive ministries that just bring in massive amounts of people and money? You know, Sunday night, I think after the Sunday sports program, I guess I should, Joel Osteen comes on. And it's like, I just sit here and it's like, I cringe. I listen for a little while and it's like, there is nothing that he points to Christ. It's always this just twisted enough, you know, that you're not really drawn to Christ. to all of this other peripheral stuff, and there are so many that are like that, all these Mormon, all these other offshoot religions, even the believers, but think of the covenant theology, I think they're believers, immense amount of believers, but they're just misled by teachers who and will turn away their ears from the truth and turn aside to miss. They're turning them aside. They're putting the law back on them. Clearly, we're not under law and yet they put them under law.

The other thing I think of is tickling the ears. How much today, and I think of that even somewhat here at Holly Hills, when we get a meaty message, most people just want to be tickled today. is my kind of overall, you know, they want to go to listen to this beautiful music and lights and this and that and hear this very charismatic creature who is, you know, just, oh, man, his hair is good, everything, his voice is good, his cadence is good, everything, oh, man, but his message is devoid of truth. But they want that. It's that tickling of the ears.

I think one, in my opinion, I know the worst thing today is that program The Chosen and people are getting such a distorted view of Christ. I was talking to a lady yesterday and we were talking about how few programs there were on TV and she said, Have you heard about The Chosen?" And I said, yes. She said, well, I've been looking at that on Sunday evenings. And I said, well, I won't watch it.

And so then I did respectfully tell her why I didn't watch it and how they add to it and make Jesus look more human or something. Well, that's not what we were... So anyway, she's Catholic and she did agree that it wasn't good and that when you add to scripture that is strictly forbidden or if you take away from scripture and when they make that program they have to add in order to have a program of the length that you have to have for a TV program. I think that's a destructive thing because people don't read the Bible and they get this view of Jesus and Christianity that is just so off Well, that's what I was going to go back to.

Remember at the beginning of all this with Titus, what the elders and by extension to us, what is the basis of an elder or of a believer? What is the basis of it? Sound doctrine. If you don't have that, you're led quickly away. Your ears are tickled and you don't know. All of these about the elders and everything is based on sound doctrine. If you don't know that, you're drawn away quickly. And the people who do this know that, you know? They can get you away quickly with, you know, again, you know, just the pig hand that Joel Osteen, you know, when you look at that, it comes on and it's like he's got this globe or whatever moving behind him, this world that's, you know, twisted behind him and all these, you know, just Hollywood, you know, and he's got a stadium filled and there are 30,000 people there, whatever. And yet, and he's just got them enamored. They're like, you know, lemmings looking at deer in the headlight. Ooh, lapping it up, lapping it up.

But they don't have the sound doctrine to go, Hey, wait a minute. He's not pointing us to Christ. He's not telling us about anything, you know, that's true about us in Christ. He's not saying anything like that, but they don't know. And unless you have the sound doctrine, you can't refute that. And that's the whole position where Satan and the flesh wants you to be.

Don, I've had a couple of chats this last few days about this, but sound doctrine requires reading or understanding God's Word. and believing it has nothing to do with emotion. It only has to God said it that's good enough for me and carry that as opposed to how do you feel about what God's word says. That becomes more important than what it does say. How I feel about it is way more important than what it really says. Yeah, I agree and disagree in some respects. I agree totally with that, that it's not based on emotion. It has to be on sound doctrine.

But I also see in that, you know, just reading in John 15, 16, may my joy be in you. Joy is an emotion. So if we are focused on Him, we have joy. I give you peace as the world can't give you peace. Peace is a feeling. So there are those, but it's all got to be based on sound doctrine. There's two ways to look at it. You have that truth which gives you the peace and the joy.

If you're trying to impart joy and peace based on your knowledge and fit that scripture, it's wrong. We talked about it coming down this morning. If my focus is to take God's joy and peace and bring it into my environment so that I can have it, I've got it backwards.

That's what I'm saying. It's a result. And I think one of the hungry hearts just today, was it? Yeah. It was today. It was in today's. Yeah. And also, it also, there's an, it, It was the direction. It was something about that. Today's or a couple days ago, it was about the direction.

The relationship is not based on my finding. It's based on what it is in me. I'm going to screw it up. You can try and impart it, but it's a result of, not where I go and try and find it or do it. It's a result of that relationship that I get it. So, it's the direction in which you're going is the issue. From Sound Doctrine... I'm always trying to bring Christ into my environment. Right. Wrong way.

And right here, you know, what we're teaching in Identification Truths, and Roger next week will pick up on 6-11 going through the issue of reckoning. I think a lot of believers summarily reject the identification truths because there's no feeling about them. What do I want to learn about being crucified with Christ? I don't want to go through that. Wrong motive. I guess that's my point.

But as a result of this, I have great joy in the Lord. And that's an emotion. Because of my relationship. It's designed to do that. That's my point. But it's a relationship that creates that, not me going for that. It's because of the relationship I have gives me joy.

It's not that I seek for having joy. I want to find joy and I'm going to force mine. That's all I'm saying is that there is emotion out of it, but it's a result of, not a direction to. It's not the verification of the truth. Right. If I don't have joy, I'm not, you know, this scripture is wrong. No. No. But I like said, I just I think I don't want to make it that our relationship with Christ is so. Academic, academic, that's I guess that's what I fear with those statements is it's so academic that it's. There's no joy in my relationship with the Lord.

There's immense joy in my relationship. How do you warm fuzzy up being crucified with Christ? I'm going to touch on that. The Lord suffered a little bit on some of this. That's almost my full sermon. I had suddenly realized that it's going to be very similar. I just want to get away. You summarized it very well.

Our relationship is not just academic. It's a relationship. It's a personal relationship. And as the object of your love is the focus, then the outpouring is because of that relationship. It's not that I'm Forcing that I guess so it's I just want to get away from the academic nature of our relationship It's a glorious relationship that gives me great joy peace comfort all the things that are of the fruit of the spirit Yeah, because when you look at several of those are Joy, peace You know those are things as a result of our relationship So that's my when I dispute. I think that's my only thing. It's not our relationship is not academic. Yeah, so I Anything else? Verse question 5, maybe? This is a quick one, hopefully, maybe.

In verse 15, Paul is referring to what is morally pure or ceremonially pure. So if you look in 15, to the pure all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but their mind and their conscience are defiled. So, what are your thoughts? Is this referencing morally pure or ceremonially pure? So what is that? Is it ceremonially or morally? What's he pointing out in these?

And there are a couple of different views. So are you ceremonially where you watch the Jews went to the water pot, ceremonially wash themselves or morally in the purity of their motive or direction? Which one do you think? When he says that the pure, all things are pure, but those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure, but both their mind and their conscience are defiled. So, is that morally or ceremonially? Any thoughts before I give you a couple of them that I think Mike gave a couple of these in here that he forwarded on. Any thoughts before I read? The whole Jewish system was about ceremonial purity. Right.

All the stuff you had to go through, which didn't purify, didn't change the person who was actually being hurt, quote unquote. Or if you touched a leper, you had to go through a purification process. But what did it do? It didn't do anything morally. What it did was ceremonially. and maybe kept you from getting the disease, I don't know.

Well, the other, you know, I'm just reading for the Lord's Supper, you know, these guys wanted to have Him crucified because, man, we got to do it today, because if we do it tomorrow on the Passover, we can't do it. We can't, you know, we're out of, do it today, hurry up, make it happen now, because we have to be ceremonially pure, even though we're killing Christ, we have to be more, you know, kind of an oxymoron.

Well, if you grew up in a denomination like I did in Catholicism, I mean, end up, you know, as you go forward, you end up learning about each purification processes they go through. Like, how does holy, how does water become holy? It's a whole kind of... Ask Bob Erkel. There's a whole process that they go through once a year where they pick water and make it holy through purification process. And it isn't a filter, it's stuff they've added into it. Waved their hands over it. You know, in Israel at the Waelach Mall, they had the little spots where you could wash your hands and, you know, ceremonially be pure and all these. So these are all these, you know, ceremonial things. But is he addressing that or is it kind of issues of the heart in his, you know, these thoughts?

And a couple of them are, so, a few of them are like, Wiest has this, Wiest took this statement about purity to refer to ceremonial rather than moral defilement. That is, a person who does not subscribe to the pharisaical regulations is not impure. is not impure or defiled, nor is the food he eats affected in that way. We must be careful in explaining our Titus passage to make clear that the purity here is spoken of, not moral, but ceremonial purity, lest we, by our interpretation, open the floodgates to the license." Interesting. Constable takes the position, however, the impure in heart, the defiled and unbelieving, spread impurity wherever they go through their words and deeds. I take it that Paul meant pure and impure in their broadest sense, both moral and ceremonial.

Macaulay takes the position, this axiom was used by Jesus in dealing with Jewish food and food laws. It condemns externalism and asserts that true purity is of the heart. Peter learned this lesson in Acts 10 through 16 when a sheet was lowered and he was commanded to eat foods normally forbidden to a Jew. Due to the bad character and unbelieving nature of the false teachers, nothing good can come from them.

So there's kind of a ceremonial, a ceremonial moral, moral and then moral. So what are your thoughts? Maybe it's too much to take in. What are your thoughts? Do you think it's ceremonial that he's addressing here or moral? From what you said, it seems ceremonial. And I know that's what we said. which you quoted from Lise. You were saying moral, right? Okay, any other morals out there? Ceremonial?

I'll tell you where you see it pretty clearly is in Galatians when Peter, you know, he's eating hot dogs and BLTs and then when the Jewish people show up he withdraws. Well, what did he do that was so bad? It's the food he ate. It's the food, yeah. So, but is that what he's addressing here?

Ceremonial? You're a ceremonial? What do we have? Ceremonial? Moral? Any from the virtual land? See, I look at who Paul is describing. Pure believers should be or can be morally pure. Unpure or unbelievers, they cannot be pure. I think it's more towards the morally pure interpretation. So, Joanne, I'm a little bit different. I'm taking it as morally. Romans 1, 28, and just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to those things which are not proper.

1 Corinthians 2.14, But a natural man, the unbeliever, does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.

So I think this is on the moral side more than a ceremonial side. So any other thoughts after that? I think it's more on the moral side than what we say is ceremonial. But he's just been speaking about rules laid down by mere men, you know, and what were those rules? They were ceremonial, right?

Of course, I'm looking at the amplified here. I don't know. Maybe it's a little bit different. See, I think he's talking about, you know, the pure, because he talks about the pure and then the impure. Yeah. It's about the person. An unpure person is an unbeliever. To me, it's the moral side more than what would be ceremonial because an unpure person can be both. I tended to think more of it is because when he says the pure and then the unpure, that to me is moral because an unpure person can do a ceremonial thing. A pure person can do ceremonial things.

So I thought more it addressed the underlying position of pure and unpure, believer, unbeliever. Yeah. You know, when you read the verse, it says to the pure, all things are pure. But to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is purer, but both their minds and their conscience are defiled. So you can't, what's the contemporary saying? You can't make someone who's in the flesh pure. Right. He won't be purified. Right. The flesh won't. You won't.

And that's what I'm saying. I think it's the basis on the moral side, the internal side, not a ceremony. You know, Catholics who go through all these ceremonial stuff. You know, it's ceremonial. That's not what he's addressing. It's more the base of their pure or impure. So that's why I drifted towards the moral side that he's addressing, because he put it pure and impure were the basis of his direction in this teaching.

Can we get through six? No. All right, so it looks like... Now we'll go. We'll wait. I think I got I got too many questions. Other supplemental questions on here that would probably drag us in. So we will hit the remaining questions next week. We will get through question six and seven and and then Myles will be up. Right. I think I'm going to be a Roger. OK. All right. All right. Well, let's close. Heavenly Father, we thank you. Again, we thank you as we discuss these verses in Titus.

Just the thoughts of so many people want to drag us away from that relationship that we have with your Son, the Lord Jesus. And men of depraved minds want to tickle the ears of believers and unbelievers. and to direct them away from your son and the life that we have in your son and the joy and the peace and the rest and the comfort and all the things we have in your son, they want to drag us away. And yet, Father, you've given us this warning as to just avoid those pitfalls, those people who want to draw us away from your son and the relationship that we have. with your son and ultimately with you. We thank you for these warnings.

The whole basis is sound doctrine, that we know what you tell us is true about us and true about our relationship with you and your son, the Lord Jesus, that we are on that rock, that foundation of your word, your truth, As a basis for all of our direction forward so we just we thank you again for your word in and more importantly the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is really in John just that It was better for Christ to go away So we would have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and we thank you for that that we do have that permanent indwelling of the Holy Spirit which is able to Convince and convict us of the truths of your word to give us that foundation and maintain us in in sound doctrine So we thank you for that Anyway, just pray for Mike to give his message in the next meeting. Just prepare our hearts to receive it. And again, pray that all that we say and do will honor and glorify you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.