In the book of Titus, the first chapter,
the book of Titus, word by word almost,
we're going over this book, verse 7, the
bishop must be, and so on, verse 9,
holding fast the faithful word, as ye hath
been taught, that ye may be able by
sound doctrine to convince, to exhort, and to
convince the gainsayers.
For there are many unruly and vain talkers
and deceivers, especially they of the circumcision, whose
mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses,
teaching things which they ought not, for filthy
lucre's sake.
One of themselves, even a prophet of their
own said, the Cretans, Cretan it is here,
Cretan it is in almost every other version
and in the dictionary, so our chances are
that I'll be saying Cretan, though Cretian it
is in this particular version.
The Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, slow
bellies.
This witness is true.
Wherefore, rebuke them sharply.
They may be sound in the faith.
Now in about three or four sentences, I
want to relate today's talk to those which
have preceded it.
Paul says by the Spirit that bishops, presbyters,
that means teachers, and I would assume it
includes pastors and others who try to expound
the Scripture, that among other qualifications they must
hold fast to the faithful word.
They must have ability in sound doctrine for
the dual work of teaching the teachable and
silencing the gainsayers.
Now that relates what I'm to say from
here on to what I've said before and
what Paul wrote, for after all that's what
I'm trying to do, make what I'm saying
hug very, very tightly what Paul said before.
Now we have the expression, there are many
unruly, and I honestly am sorry that I
have to deal with this, with these words,
unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, because I
don't like to.
I'd much rather talk over on the happy
side of things, but in a world of
sin and the devil, a world that is
all out of moral focus, where the Church
is like a flock of sheep in the
wilderness surrounded by wolves, even where the wolves
put on the garment of dead sheep and
come and run with the flock, and the
poor sheep don't recognize it.
Well, you've got to deal with things as
they are.
Wouldn't it be comfortable if we never had
to deal with ill health in a world
like this, if nobody ever had to pick
up the newspaper and read so-and-so
is in the hospital?
Wouldn't it be a comfortable world if nobody
ever got sick, if there was no enemy
called sickness?
Wouldn't it be comfortable if there was no
such thing as known as an accident, if
we never picked up a newspaper and read
so-and-so was killed in an accident
on the highway or in the factory or
on the farm?
Wouldn't it be a comfortable world if we
never saw in the newspaper so-and-so
was held up last week and robbed of
$3,000, was beaten over the head by
the gunman?
No crime anywhere.
Just a world without crime, without accidents, without
ill health, without death.
A comfortable world, a nice place to stay.
And wouldn't it be ideal if there were
no unruly persons, no vain talkers and deceivers
anywhere, but the truth just grew without cultivation,
no weeds to cut down, no hard ground
to break up with a hole?
But we just taught the word, everybody smiled,
and received it and began to obey it.
Nobody came rushing in to upset.
What had been done, it would be a
comfortable, beautiful world.
But you know that's not the way it
is, and maturity requires that we deal with
things as they are, not as we wish
they were.
There is a kind of religion, a Christianity,
a form of it, a weakened, watered form
of it, that honestly, and I think well
-meaning, the people try to make Christianity to
be just that.
They look at the world with one eye,
the good eye.
They see the sunset, but they never see
the storm.
They hear the birds sing, but they never
see the vultures.
They see the roses, but their blind eye
will not look at the thorns.
They hear the happy laughter, but they will
not hear the moon.
They see the joyous Christian, but they will
not acknowledge the presence of the unruly, the
deceiver, and the vain talker.
Now that is spiritual immaturity.
If I were in serious trouble and I
were wanting to send, if I actually got
where I had to have prayer help from
somebody, I wouldn't send for a man who
had a reputation of never facing reality.
I couldn't because I would be calling a
spiritual boy into my presence.
I would be calling an immature child into
my presence.
I wouldn't want to send for too happy
a man.
If I were in serious difficulty with my
family or myself, and I wanted somebody to
consult with and to pray with me, I
wouldn't send for a man if he's too
happy.
Because in a world like this, if you're
too happy, you're immature.
Because in the immature man sees with only
one eye.
He sees all the happy things, but he
doesn't see the other side.
He won't face it.
Paul wrote from the prison and said, Rejoice,
and again I will say rejoice.
But in the next breath he said, I
write unto you even weeping.
And he said, sorrowful yet always rejoicing.
He was a mature man.
He saw both sides.
And I would want a man who had
within him a spiritual buoyancy that came from
the engrossment with the resurrected Christ.
I would want to come to pray with
me if I were in trouble, the man
whose heart was buoyant with the inward lift
of the life of God, but whose heart
was also heavy with the griefs of the
world.
Then I would have a mature Christian.
So I can't skip this.
Unruly and vain talkers, I can't skip this.
It's here, and maturity requires that we deal
with it.
Now, the unruly, Dean Spence of Gloucester, a
famous old Bible expositor, said this.
This unruly person, he said, Nominally is in
the congregation of Christians, but in reality refusing
all obedience, acting for himself factious and insubordinate.
That was the definition that Dean Gloucester put
on this word unruly.
In the congregation of Christians nominally, but in
reality, back of the nominal, which is in
name, the real, had these four counts against
him, refusing all obedience, acting for himself, factious
and insubordinate.
Now, such as this is self-willed, of
course, headstrong and defiant.
You know, it just occurs to me that
I've stopped being defiant.
I think there was a time when I
was pretty defiant.
I know as a boy I always was
defiant, and I didn't care how big the
fellow was.
I defied him, even though I was scared
stiff, I defied him.
And when I got converted, I carried that
spirit of defiance over into the church, and
a lot that used to pass for courage
was just defiance.
But I find that that's gone out of
me.
I don't defy anybody.
I got a letter from a man, a
young man, who said he was an undergraduate
in a certain college.
He said he hesitated to criticize me, but
felt he had to.
Then he wrote me a long letter, taking
me apart, and he said, I defy you.
Well, it struck me.
It had been a long time since I
used that expression, I defy you.
Why, the Scripture says that even Michael the
archangel, when disputing with the devil about the
body of Moses, didn't dare say, I defy
you.
He said, the Lord rebuke thee.
The defiant man imagines he's strong, but he's
not.
He's just carnal.
And he will allow himself to go on
in that way, defiant, headstrong, self-will.
He's hurting only himself.
Then such, of course, scorns the spirit of
the flock.
We are members of the flock, and there
is a spirit in the flock.
And the unruly defies that spirit, scorns it,
and refuses the voice of the shepherd and
of the under-shepherd, and set their personal
opinion against the pastor and all the godly
Christians and the whole church.
Now, this is the state of heart that
brought about the fall of Satan.
Satan defied God Almighty, and he defied rules
and laws and all the rest.
It's also the state of heart that brought
about the fall of Adam.
Adam was obviously defiant.
And it was the state of heart that
brought and kept Israel in constant turmoil, into
and in, kept it in constant turmoil, always
backsliding and getting restored again, and tearfully bruised
and beaten, and then repent and be restored,
and then get defiant and headstrong and go
down again.
The whole history of Israel was like that.
And it's a tragic thing that even when
Messiah came, they defied him and said, We
won't have this man to rule over us.
And what was supposed to be strong manly
courage was satanic defiance.
And their rejection and dispersion throughout the whole
world, the ghastly pogroms and ghettos and gas
chambers and massacres and assassinations that have occurred
all down the years have been the result
of this rejection and this defiance on the
part of Israel, caused them to crucify Christ.
Well, we all measure ourselves and see, that's
all, whether we are in this class or
not.
Certainly there are not many here, if any.
But if there should be any, you measure
it.
I am talking about this unwillingly.
I wish I could skip it.
But as a mature teacher of the word,
I dare not.
For everywhere these are, just as everywhere there's
sickness.
Now, we come to the vain talkers and
deceivers.
They're the restless, uneasy spirits who quote scripture
for their purpose.
But they're empty talkers.
Paul says about them, whose mouths must be
stopped.
Now why not let them alone?
Those who believe in the letting alone process
quote the passage that says, let the weeds
and the wheat grow together until the harvest.
But what they overlook is that the weeds
and the good grain grow together in the
field, and the field is the world.
But he never said, let the weeds grow
in the church.
He said, let the sheep and the wolves
live in the world.
But he didn't say, let the wolves live
in the sheepfold.
There's a difference there.
We've got to watch it.
But he says, if you try to weed
out, by too strict preaching, if you try
to weed out any of the vain unrulers
or unruly persons and vain talkers, you're likely
to root out some of the good plants
along with them.
Let the two grow together until the harvest.
Yes, grow together in the world, but not
grow together in the church.
Paul said, whose mouths must be stopped.
Why?
Because they subvert whole houses.
Now the word subvert means to overthrow by
undermining the morals of and destroying the allegiance
or faith of.
Undermining the morals or destroying the allegiance or
the faith.
He says, the reason these unruly vain talkers
have to be silenced is that they subvert
whole houses.
Now let's talk a little bit about this
subverting whole houses.
You know what Paul means here is whole
churches.
Because you see, in the day of Paul,
they hadn't begun to build church houses yet.
And they only met in synagogues or preached
in synagogues.
And they met in people's houses, in upper
rooms, wherever they could meet.
They hadn't any church buildings yet.
So they met in the houses of the
people.
You remember in Acts 12 that when James
had been slain with a sword and they
took Peter intending to bring him forth and
slay him.
But it says, I remember Dr. Torrey divided
that up for preaching like this.
But prayer was made continually of the church
under God for him.
Isn't that an outline for a sermon?
Prayer was made continually of the church under
God for him.
And the result was God sent an angel
and turned Peter loose, took him out, set
him free.
And Peter lit out immediately.
Where do you suppose he lit out for?
To find the church, of course.
He knew that they were met praying for
him where the church met.
And that particular church met in the house
of Mark, his mother.
Mary, the mother of Mark, whose surname was
John.
So there was a house.
Now that was a church meeting in the
house.
And that's what it meant when Paul says
to the saints in thy house, I send
my greetings.
That's what he meant when he said he
preached the gospel publicly from house to house,
as we might say, on the street and
from church to church.
So the word house is used to mean
the church.
See, we got it backwards now.
We use the word church to mean the
building.
And we use the word that belongs to
the people and attach it to the building.
They used the word that belonged to the
building and attached it to the church.
But nobody got mad.
The Lord didn't send judgment.
There are Christians now who, if we say
this is a church here, why, they fly
white with shock.
They say, don't you realize that the church
is the body of Christ and this building
is just a building?
Why, sure, we realize that.
But, brethren, we have one thing that governs
us.
We make words our servants.
We never let words become our masters.
And when I say the Third Presbyterian Church
or the First Baptist Church, everybody knows I
don't mean the building.
Everybody knows what I mean.
And if I'm referring to the building, everybody
knows I'm referring to the building.
So nobody has ever yet been deceived by
our use of the word church to mean
a building.
It's an extension of a word.
You will say a motion was made from
the floor that such and such be done.
Well, what do they mean by that?
Why, they mean the people standing on the
floor or sitting on chairs from the floor
of the house made a motion.
They don't mean the floor made the motion.
When we say that there will be a
meeting of the board, we don't mean there
will be four pine boards meet in the
pastor's studies.
They used to sit around a board, and
so the word was extended from the board
where they met to the people that met
around the board.
It's the same with a house of representatives.
When it says it has not yet been
passed by the house, we don't mean the
building there in Washington.
We mean the several hundred men who sit
in that house.
So let's not get enslaved to words.
When it says the church which is in
thy house, why, he was explaining when he
says the saints in thy house.
He says he preached the gospel from house
to house.
They met in houses, and they extended the
word to cover the people that met in
that house, and we do the same thing.
Only we've reversed it, and we say church,
meaning the building sometimes.
So the church can mean, according to our
English, either the building or the people, and
nobody's ever deceived.
But there are semantic slaves who insist upon
being accurate in everything, so accurate that it's
a pain to be around them.
Well, now what are you going to do
with the unruly, the vain talkers, and the
deceivers?
How can we deactivate them?
Is that the word they use to take
the trigger out of a bomb so harmless?
I remember when one of the huge atom
or hydrogen bombs didn't go off, they had
to send some fellows up there to pull
the stinger out of it.
And I'll tell you, I shook for those
fellows for a couple of days until I
found they'd got their job done.
Can you imagine going up a high tower
to pull the stinger out of an atom
bomb?
And if you made a little mistake, you'd
be instantly atomized, literally atomized.
I'm not fooling, I mean that.
You'd be literally made into atoms, never notice
happening.
Talk about the cool nerves of a man
like that.
I'd lost 14 pounds in perspiration just walking
from the building to the tower.
But those calm, cool fellows went up there
and did it, pulled the stinger and came
back down smiling and said, it's done.
Well, how do you deactivate these unruly people
and vain talkers and deceivers and make them
harmless?
Well, the scripture says you do it by
setting forth the faithful word and by sound
doctrine, convincing and exhorting so that all the
efforts to subvert are harmless.
The only perfect defense against error is truth.
And the only defense against the big lie
is the big truth.
Always remember that.
I got a letter from a man in
Brazil.
I've been reading the Alliance Weekly.
He said, I fled from Germany under Hitler
and from somewhere else under Stalin.
And he said, I don't want you ever
to write anything with politics in it.
I've had enough.
Well, poor fellow, I don't blame you.
The fellow that had to fly from a
devil and a bear and a tiger, I
understand that and think I know what I
mean.
But I will venture to step aside long
enough to say this, that if we plain
Americans were sufficiently convinced of the soundness of
our position, we wouldn't have anything at all
to worry about from the subverters from Moscow.
But because a lot of Americans aren't convinced,
they tremble before the impact of the big
lie.
But do you know how to meet the
big lie with the big truth?
And it's the same in the Church of
Christ.
You meet the big lie with the big
truth.
And the only defense against the deceiver is
the spirit of truth.
For, Paul said, you Christians there in Crete,
you will look out.
And you teachers, you be sound in the
faith and careful.
Hold the faithful word because, remember, Cretans are
always liars.
That's a proverb down the years.
Lie like a Cretan, they said.
Thomas Hardy has that in one of his
books.
Lie like a Cretan.
Well, they said Cretans are always liars.
But somebody says, and then he adds, of
course, the rather awkward expression, always liars, evil
beasts, slow bellies, lazy people.
But somebody says, he said, don't you think
that was a sweeping generalization?
That's what I get criticized for so much.
But he makes sweeping generalizations.
Well, Paul made a sweeping generalization here, poor
man.
He hadn't studied logic, I suppose.
So he said, Cretans are always liars, evil
beasts, slow bellies.
Paul, is it possible that you can indict
a whole nation?
Yes, it is possible.
For don't you know that there have been
great cities that have gone completely rotten?
Look at Sodom and Gomorrah.
They had gotten so completely rotten that only
half a dozen people got out.
Is it possible to corrupt a whole population?
Look at the flood.
They had become so completely corrupt morally that
the only thing God could do with them
was to drown them all, except eight people
that he picked out who had yet a
bit of decency left in them.
And it's possible, if you have read the
history of England under about the time of
the Westleys, you won't believe what you read.
You, you, you won't believe it.
The complete corruption, the utter, the utter tincture
of fact and of moral standards, the rot
that existed.
And at that time, the Westleys came forth
and began to preach.
And the historian said, Saved England from a
revolution.
There would have been a revolution grown up
out of that rot, except they repented, and
they did repent under the Westleys.
When I was a kid, I used to,
along toward the spring, go into apple barrels
or apple boxes.
We didn't have refrigeration.
So we had to do what we could
do to keep our fruit over winter.
And sometimes a box of apples would rot.
And it would rot so completely that we
could just stick your hand into it up
to there.
And boys don't mind that.
So I used to do it, and feel
around, and I'd feel one hard apple, and
take that out, wash it off, and you
can believe this or not, there would be
one apple completely sound, not even smell of
the rot after it was washed, because there
wasn't a single break in the skin anywhere.
It was sound all over.
And in the midst of that rot, there
was one or two maybe, or half a
dozen sound apples.
I've seen that.
So in a city like Sodom, there were
eight people, or a few people, and in
the time of the flood, there were eight.
And in the time Christ came to Israel,
there were a few.
And in England, there was Susanna, Wesley, and
Samuel and their family, and a few others.
So it's possible for a whole population to
rot.
It's possible for us to learn from each
other, accept each other's standards, and rot a
whole population.
That's why I stand and condemn the beer
songs and the cigarette songs.
And that's why I condemn the glorification of
evil men and women who happen to look
good.
They're made the heroes and heroines of our
youth.
The result is we rot a whole generation.
It's possible to do that.
They did it in Crete.
Somebody did it.
And so in Crete, there was a population
morally so, so rotten that the only thing
to do with them was to turn on
them and regroup them soundly.
Now, when Christianity is taken into a country
where there are low moral standards and corruption
abroad, the temptation is, when they get converted,
to bring their moral standards over into the
Church.
And some places, they stand for that and
defend it.
Certain missionaries say, not of our society, they
say they preach the gospel to an old
tribal chief with nine wives.
They say, we don't interfere with his cultural
standards.
That's nine wives.
That's part of his culture.
Concubinage belongs to his culture.
Therefore, we're not going to interfere with his
culture.
We're just preaching Christ to him.
It wasn't Paul's idea.
In Japan, some of them say, we know
that our Japanese Christians bow to the Shinto
shrines, but it's purely their culture.
We can't interfere with their culture.
Paul did.
Paul said, Christianity comes with two things, sound
doctrine and sound morals.
And I don't believe you're sound until you
have both.
Therefore, rebuke them sharply.
There's only one standard for Christianity, whether it's
in the Ballym Valley or in Boston.
There is only one standard, whether it's in
cultured, sophisticated England or over in Russia.
Only one standard.
It's the standard of Christ.
We won't bother customs.
If they wear their hair long, we'll let
them wear it long.
If they wear it short, let them wear
it short.
Whatever kind of clothes they wear, we won't
bother that.
There are various mores, as they call it.
So don't bother those.
It's none of our business.
But when it comes to moral questions, we
do bother them.
Because if we don't, we're not preaching the
word and we're not carrying out the commission
for which we send out our missionaries and
preachers.
Cretans are always liars and slow bellies and
evil beasts, he said.
And when they get converted and come into
the church, they come in carrying a lot
of that with them.
He said, rebuke them soundly and sharply and
teach them and exhort them so they give
up all that.
Well, when Paul said, sound in faith, always
remember this.
Paul meant orthodox in belief and pure in
conduct.
That was orthodoxy in Paul's concept.
Orthodox in belief and pure in conduct.
And the one springs out of the other.
And you can't separate the two.
And if you only hold an orthodox creed
that does not result in a purity of
conduct, then your creed isn't orthodox.
So the ideal is, and with this I
close, the ideal is not to accept arbitrary
moral standards.
You shall eat this.
You shan't eat this.
You shall wear this.
You shan't wear this.
Those are arbitrary.
And they're things that perish with the using.
You shall do this this day.
You shall not do it that day.
Perish with the using.
Paul said, don't accept those.
Read 2nd of Colossians.
Don't let anybody, anybody put down on you
any arbitrary rules at all.
But stay by what the Bible says.
Let no man judge you in meat or
drink or in respect of a holy day
or the new moon or the Sabbath, which
are but a shadow of things to come,
but the body is of Christ.
Let no man beguile you of your reward
and voluntary humility in worshiping of angels, intruding
into those things which they have not seen,
vainly puffed up by their fleshly mind, and
not holding the head, Jesus Christ, from whom
all the body by joints and bands of
nourishment minister, and knit.
Wherefore, if ye be dead with Christ from
the rudiments of the world, why, as though
living in the world, are ye subject to
ordinances?
We don't allow anybody to screw down on
our Christianity any rules of conduct that aren't
in the book.
The ideal is accept no arbitrary moral standards,
but let the truth purify us.
Now ye are clean through the word which
I have spoken unto you.
Christ is the truth and Christ is holiness
incarnate.
And we are under obligation to be a
disciple of his in belief and practice, and
then worship in spirit and in truth.
That's the ideal.
And so Paul said that's the thing to
do.
Rebuke them sharply that they may be sound
in the faith, and sound in the faith
to Paul meant sound in their beliefs and
sound in their conduct.
That's wonderful to me.
Right in the middle of a rotten city
like Chicago, God can feel around and find
some apples that are just as shiny and
red-cheeked and sound.
All by the wonderful, wonderful keeping power of
God.
All by the wonderful keeping power of God.
We drive their streets, we ride their buses,
we work for them, we buy from them,
we sell to them.
We keep their books, we drive their trucks,
we live in the world, and Paul said
you can't escape that.
But all the time we're with them, we're
like a sound apple in the midst of
a rotten barrel.
We're like, we can be kept by the
power of God through faith unto salvation ready
to be revealed in the last time and
never even smell the world around about us.
That's wonderful, isn't it?
And within the Church of Christ there should
be no rot.
The Church of Christ should be a place
where every apple is sound and every Christian
is pure.
And if they're not, Paul said, sharply rebuke
them and tell them they've got to be
sound in their faith and practice.
They're going to be Christians.
Amen.
All right.