“THE FLOUNDERING FATHERS”

Titus 1:1-4

John Adams, second President, Founding Father, architect of the American republic.  Hero of the American Revolution.

Thomas Jefferson, writer of the Declaration of Independence, third President of the US of A., and the champion of small and limited government, a federal government which would strictly adhere to the Constitution. 

Conservative authors are crying for a return to the ideas of the framers of our Constitution—limited government, limited power, all according to the powers granted it by the Constitution, those powers and no more.

They may be right in wanting a return to the ideas of the Founders, but what about the practices of the Founders?  

President John Adams used the Alien and Sedition acts to fine and jail newspaper editors and congressmen who wrote “false, scandalous, or malicious” things “about the president, Congress, or the nation.”  So much for the Constitution.

President Thomas Jefferson knew he had a problem on his hands: he had no constitutional authority to consummate the Louisiana Purchase, and instead of amending the Constitution to give the federal government the authority to purchase land, he bought the land from France .  He said, “[I] stretched the Constitution until it cracked.” 

Getting away from the Founders, as historians examine the policies of Abraham Lincoln, they find that he shut down newspapers, closed the mail to publications that opposed his war policies; arrested newspaper publishers, deported one opposing congressman, and physically attacked and eliminated the peace movement.  He nationalized railroads, used Union troops to intimidate voters of the opposing party, and threw northern civilians into military prison camps for opposing his policies.*

The Constitution is to be the president’s “Bible.”  What happened, even early-on, when even the builders of the nation violated it? 

Under the pressures, of war or of politics, they caved in and violated the document they wrote, approved, and swore to uphold.  Pressure created a disconnect. 

The disciple of Jesus has his own “constitution,” the Book he’s to live by, the Book that’s to govern his life.  Discipleship isn’t a spectator sport.  It’s a contact sport.  If a person is a disciple, he’s not a spectator; he’s in the game.  Whereas Jefferson, Adams, and Lincoln were admirers of the Constitution, they became mere spectators of it, admiring it, but not living by it, even violating it.

There’s an expression in the business world; we say about someone influential and important, “He’s a player.”  We mean that he’s in the game and figures into the results.  There’s this one book in the Bible that deals with get-in-the-game-Christianity more than any other, with the possible exception of Romans.  Paul wrote Titus to specify the “connect” between Christ and the Christ-life. 

When we think of the Pauline team, we think, “Silas, Barnabas, Timothy,” but we don’t think of his trouble-shooter, Titus, a believer more seasoned and mature than Timothy.  Titus is the player you want standing at the plate in the bottom of the ninth and the game is on the line.  He’s Paul’s go-to guy. 

If the churches in Corinth are in a mess, send Titus.  Paul did. 

There’s this island on which pagans have become Christians.  They’re a mess like the Corinthians.  Put the ball in Titus’s hands.  The go-to guy, just the one to send to Crete . 

In Titus 1:1, Paul begins the epistle with an introduction: “Paul, a slave of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ . . .”

But wait a minute—why does Paul have to introduce himself to Titus?  Titus is on the team, a “player” in the fullest sense of the word.  The introduction is needed because Titus is going to move into various churches on the island, assume authority to teach and get things going in the right direction.  He’ll need to be able to show Paul’s stamp of approval on his ministry to do so. 

But he’s moving into the churches to do what?  His function will be as Paul’s: “for the faith of God’s elect and the knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness.”  (vs. 1b)  He’s a man on a mission—1. to grow their faith, 2. to grow their knowledge of the truth and this is what “will lead to their growth in godliness.”

The order is crucial.  First, there are the growth in faith and knowledge and then comes the growth in a godly life.  Tucked away here in this little and neglected epistle is something 21^st century Christianity is leaving behind—the importance of theology (“knowledge of the truth”). 

There’s been a growing movement—the disregard of knowledge, theology, and therefore we have a lack of godliness.  There is a suspicion of knowledge of doctrine.  For one reason or another, people think that theology will mix them up and they shy away from it.  But Jesus stated it very clearly early on—“they that worship Him, must worship Him in spirit and in TRUTH.”  Jesus also said, “Man cannot live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”  Without correct theology, without sound doctrine, we’ll have wrong ideas about God.  The Christ life isn’t built on faulty theology. 

Remember what Christ said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your strength, and all your mind.”  Living the Christ life has to do with doctrine in the mind.  You don’t check your mind at the door when you come to CLC.

There is an emphasis on things other than teaching doctrine and the biggest substitute emphasis of them all is an emphasis on feeling.  This is what the church has borrowed from the world (as usual). 

.  I recently went to the doctor with a pain in my right leg.  It wouldn’t stop, night or day.  The doctor takes X-rays and concludes that the source of the pain is coming from a problem in the spinal area, lower back.  Wait a minute: the spinal area?  “The pain is in the right leg, not the lower back.  I don’t feel pain at all in my lower back,” I explained.

The doctor didn’t seem to care what my “feeling” was about the matter; my feelings didn’t give the true diagnosis.   To ground authority on feeling, as “I feel led,” is the bane of the Christ life.  It puts my feelings on the throne and not Christ and His Word.  

The key to understanding Titus begins in 1:1—“the knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness.”  Paul repeats it: 1:9; 2:1; 2:10—Sound doctrine is the basis of good works.  Correct doctrine generates good works.  The go-to guy is to get in there and start teaching the correct doctrine Paul began to teach.

Don’t misunderstand.  This isn’t knowledge for knowledge sake.  That’s not a good thing.  This is correct theology, not an end in itself, but it generates good works in the Christ life. 

This growing faith and growing knowledge rests on the certainty the believer has, the certainty of eternal life.  This eternal life is the life God promised before the creation of man and the world.  (vs. 2)

Wait one more minute.  We read that God made the promise, but we don’t read to whom He made the promise.  Our first answer would be “man.”  But it was a promise made before time began, before there were any human beings, so it can’t be a promise to the human race. 

It can only be a promise made to the members of the Trinity.  In eternity past, God promised God the Son and God the Holy Spirit that He would give eternal life to all those who believed in Jesus as their Savior. 

It is this promise that God has chosen to make known through preaching and that preaching of His promise is still being done right up to the present moment.  (v. 3)

In the last part of the introduction, Paul names the receiver of the letter: Titus, his “son” in the faith.  The great thing about Titus is that Paul used him earlier as an illustration of sound doctrine. 

In Galatia, there was this group of false teachers who’d moved into the area who were dealing out false theology by teaching that if someone wanted to be saved, they had to become Jews first, keep the Law, then receive Christ.  Paul jumped all over this as false theology because false theology regarding the gospel cannot save anyone (Gal. 1:6-9). 

To show them an illustration of the correct doctrine of the gospel, he took Titus with him to the churches.  Titus was a gentile, one who was saved and he hadn’t become a Jew, never did and wasn’t keeping the law. 

In an epistle which will emphasize correct doctrine, then correct living, Titus himself is an example.

On March 4, 1913, in the opinion of some historians, the worst President in American history promised “to the best of my ability, [to] preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States ."  After breaking his promise to “keep us out of war,” he ordered the censorship of American telephone and telegraph traffic.  Because of Wilson ’s policies, a man in Lansing , Michigan was fined 10,000$ and sentenced to 20 years in prison because he criticized the war. 

Lip service to the Constitution, but when he had the power, Wilson , in the opinion of one historian “spit on the Bill of Rights, and reduced the U. S. government to the status a second rate police state.”**  He gave a lip service oath to do one thing, then did the opposite.

The book of Titus is for the believer who wants to become a player. For those who are sick to death of giving the Bible lip service and not life service.  Titus isn’t a book for spectators; as we’ll see, it’s a book for disciples.   

*From “Recarving Rushmore,” by Ivan Eland, pgs. 28, 31-32, 128-129.  This author advocates the destruction of the Lincoln Memorial because of Lincoln ’s brutal record in prosecuting the war and the removal of the constitutional rights of American citizens.

**Farquhar, “A Treasury of Great American Scandals,” pgs. 196-202.

* = Free Grace Teacher or Ministry