The Faithful Church Dr. Steve Walker

Transcription

1 Series: Titus February 21, 2016 The Faithful Church Dr. Steve Walker Let's get our Bibles in our hands and let's get them open to the book of Titus, the New Testament letter of Titus. We are getting ready now to finish up our study in this letter written by the apostle Paul. He's writing to his fellow missionary and trusted friend, Titus; hence the name of this New Testament letter, named after the person who received it. Just a little bit of background for those of you who may be newer to our Sunday mornings Paul, we know, had at least three major missionary journeys in his ministry life, some of them taking many months, others taking a couple of years. On one of his missionary journeys, he planted some churches on the island of Crete. Eventually, after the church got established and settled in, Paul moved on and kept going in his journey, but in time, the churches had come under the pressures of some false teachers and some serious heresy and false teaching. With the survival of the churches in serious jeopardy, Paul sends Titus back to Crete. That is kind of the background of this letter. He sends him back to provide some much-needed leadership and shepherding of this handful of churches. He had a lot of confidence in Titus, and he considered Titus just a faithful friend and a faithful pastor and leader. The letter we hold that has been preserved for us in our Bibles is exactly what Paul sent to Titus to guide him and to guide the churches back into living out their faith in a way that would make the gospel, the message of Christianity, attractive to unbelievers. You might recall that in chapter 1, it was all about the necessity of spiritually mature leaders who have a genuine love for God and his Word and a willingness to step up and guard the church from false teachers and their teaching. That was what chapter 1 was basically about, calling Titus to be that kind of leader and to call the leaders of the churches to be godly and be willing to protect the churches from false teaching. Chapter 2 was about our relationships that we have with each other inside the church. The Christian gospel of God's love and God's grace is validated by how we love one another. The effectiveness of our message and of our good news gospel about what Jesus has done for us on Canyon Hills Community Church 1

2 the cross is intimately, closely, and inseparably tied to how we relate to each other inside the walls of this church as family of God. The two cannot be separated. At the end of chapter 2, Paul wanted us to be sure that our work ethic and our attitudes in our workplaces, our places of employment, are also a huge billboard for the grace and the goodness of God. The way we live in our places of employment is critical to the Christian message being desirable and attractive. Then we get to chapter 3. Chapter 3 included some, I think, much-needed encouragement for us in our day as well on how we're to live out our faith in a pagan culture that's run by pagan leaders. Our country is no different than the many other countries in the sense that the majority of our country and our country's government are not Christians. They are not Bible-believing Christians. Some of them are; most of them aren't. Paul's instruction in chapter 3 was basically how we are to relate to that, how we are to live out our faith in the midst of that. Last week, in the middle of chapter 3, Paul just kind of slams on the brakes of his teaching and he just wants to make sure you and I understand what God has accomplished for us through the work of Jesus Christ on the cross for those who believe. I've said, the last two Sundays, those 71 words right in the middle of chapter 3 may be the most amazing, crystal-clear description and definition of what our salvation is all about. Paul does not want to end this letter without once again reminding us of what our message is and the glory of God's goodness to us in Christ. Today, he wraps it all up, and his final call, above all, is a call for the church to be faithful. He writes to Titus as the pastor-leader, the shepherd of the churches, and he's calling them to be faithful. He doesn't call us to be a popular church. He doesn't call us to be a big church. He doesn't call us to be a successful church. He calls you and me to be, corporately, a faithful church. We have here in these final words both a summary of everything he has said so far in Titus as well as a reminder of how important it is that we remain faithful to God and his Word. With your Bibles open, let's stand for the reading of his Word. We're going to pick it up in verse 9 because we left off in verse 8 last Sunday. Let's finish it up. Verse 9 of Titus, chapter 3. Paul writes "But avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless. As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned. When I send Artemas or Tychicus to you, do your best to come to me at Nicopolis, for I have decided to spend the winter there. Do your best to speed Zenas the lawyer and Apollos on their way; see that they lack nothing. And let our people learn to devote themselves to good works, so as to help cases of urgent need, and not be unfruitful. All who are with me send greetings to you. Greet those who love us in the faith. Grace be with you all." Canyon Hills Community Church 2

3 Father in heaven, I praise your holy name that this letter began with grace and ends with grace. I praise you, Father, that if it weren't for your grace, we would not know the mercy of our forgiveness, of our sins being paid for by Jesus. We would not know the hope of eternal life. Thank you for your grace. Thank you for the daily grace, God, that allows us to fail and come back to you over and over again to find help and hope in our time of need. God, I just pray now that as we close this chapter and this book in our study, you would speak to us individually. Speak to us corporately. God, move us to desire and hunger to be the kind of church that makes your gospel and Christ's death on the cross desirable. God, I pray for all of our high school students and all the leaders who are wrapping up their winter retreat today. I pray, God, that their last day would be fruitful and that many students would commit their lives to Christ, that many would recommit, and that you would bring them home safe. We pray in Christ's name, amen. There are about three to five different things in this little section of the end of this letter that directly apply to us as a church and to us as God's people and I just want to give them to you as straightforward as I see them in Scripture. Paul says the church needs 1. Strong, doctrinally sound, practical teachers. The first thing Paul wants for the church to be faithful is that we must be committed to having strong, doctrinally sound, practical teachers. Paul knows, you guys, that the best way for Satan to take down a church is to infiltrate and compromise the teaching. The best way for a church to begin to become ineffective, for the gospel to become unattractive, is to get us focused on all the wrong things, and so Paul exposes the foolish ways of false teachers and he exhorts Titus to avoid these people, to avoid all the nonsense that derails us and that can derail us from our mission of making more and better disciples of Jesus, of making our gospel attractive and desirable to unbelievers. Paul says to Titus, first and foremost, "Hey, Titus, beware of false teachers because they love controversies." Look at verse 9. "But avoid foolish controversies " These are the teachers or the leaders in a church who love focusing on fringe doctrinal issues or positions or fringe interpretations of Scripture. They love to focus on their personal favorite causes, their pet projects, or their hobby horses. Paul says, "You have to see them for what they are, Titus, and avoid this. Don't let it happen." A majority of us in this room probably have been Christians long enough where we have seen these kinds of controversies come in and out of the church over the years. There are way too many of them to get a big list, but one of the ones that just seem to stick around I'm going to apologize ahead of time before I tell you what it is. One of the controversies that still seems to stick around is what we call the King James-only camp. It's real. It has been around for a while. These are people pastors, elders, and leaders in Canyon Hills Community Church 3

4 churches who believe the centuries-old King James translation is the only reliable, accurate Bible that we could have. They will spend their whole lives passionately convincing Christians that they cannot really know God and know his will unless they are reading the King James translation. I just want to say to you that this is the kind of thing that I believe Paul is talking about. Hey, if you love the King James Version, praise God. Read it with all your heart and love it, but don't make that your life mission, first of all, because it's not true. It is a good Bible, and it is a good translation, but 500 years of discovery and translation and study of the original languages have not left us less accurate; they've caused us to be more accurate. Granted, there are some Bible versions out there that are not literal translations. They are paraphrases. They can be possibly fun to read, but they are not to be your tool for study. We get that, but don't let that controversy consume you and think it should consume the church. There are those people who love to argue the controversy that Christmas and Easter are pagan holidays and Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Christmas tree are the Antichrist. No, they're not. It's okay if you want to hold to a position where you don't want to focus on the kind of stuff that clouds the true meaning. We get that, but this is not your life mission and neither should it be the church's. The controversy people, the controversial pastors, priests, and leaders in some churches, are people who typically want to dedicate a whole Sunday morning to what they call pet dedication, to pray for your pets. They invite their people to bring their dogs, cats, rabbits, birds, and snakes so the leadership of the church can lay hands on their pets. This is the kind of nonsense that Paul is writing against, to not let these distractions take us off our message. It's the people who love to cause controversy. They'll say things like, "You know, Jesus turned water into wine." Their next step of application is usually something like, "Therefore, he is the inventor of the happy hour. He loved to party, drink, and hang out at bars; therefore, we should too, following after Jesus." No, that would not be a proper interpretation of the miracle at the wedding. Some people, again, just getting off track, who have personal causes and pet projects Again, I'm speaking primarily to the leadership of churches. This is whom Paul is talking about in this verse. These are people who are leading churches, who are in prominent positions of influence, who expect that the church become experts on things like climate change, public education, sex trafficking, adoption, politics, affordable housing, disease control, and on and on it goes. They want the church to engage in all of these causes and to solve every social ill. All of which followers of Jesus can and should be involved in, individually as God should lead. Absolutely! Christians should have influence on all of these things and have freedom. Paul is not prohibiting that. Canyon Hills Community Church 4

5 Paul is saying, "As a church, corporately, these are not our mandates." Our mission is to make more and better disciples of Jesus Christ. They cannot take the place of the church's great commission. That's what Paul is saying. Be aware of those who love to get involved in controversial arguments and causes. He also says they love genealogies. Now he's referring to the pseudo-intellectuals who make their way into church leadership who love to debate over the minutia of spiritual life and doctrine and they miss the spirit of the Scripture altogether. You know, it's the person at Life Group. It's the person teaching the Bible study who is bent on proving that Noah's ark could not have included the yellow-bellied whip-poor-will. "There's no way that one could have been on the ark because " and then they lay out their argument. Okay, we don't care. It doesn't matter. The whole point of the ark is that God's judgment came upon the earth and by his grace he saved a few who didn't deserve to be saved, but because of his love, he would not allow unholiness, unrighteousness, wickedness, and evil to destroy his glory and his creation. That's the point. Then there are those who will argue that the Red Sea had to be at low tide when the Israelites crossed. "It just had to be." They have gone back for thousands of years to trace the moon and the tides and the rotation of the earth, and they've proven that on that day there was a low tide. I don't care, and you shouldn't either. The point of the Red Sea is that God rescued a people from his enemies and he destroyed his enemies and he began a nation through which he would bring Jesus Christ. That's the point. We don't need to have classes about the tides during the day of the Israelites' crossing of the Red Sea. It gets more serious, though. People who want to argue that Jesus couldn't have been crucified on Friday... "It had to be Thursday." People who want to argue that Jesus couldn't have been born on December 25 Okay. So what if he was born on August 15? What if we get to heaven and we find out Jesus was actually born on March 3? Is that the point? The point is we have picked a day, somehow, some way I confess to you, I'm not even sure why or how. I don't care. The point is we spend one day of the year and it's all about Jesus. I don't care what day he was born. I care that he was born. All I'm saying is if you care, that's okay. If some church pastor or leader cares, that's okay, but that's not what we rally around. That's not our message to the world, that we have proven that there was a low tide. That's what Paul is getting at here. He's saying while these issues may be trivial in the big picture, arguing about them is not trivial. Then he says they cause dissensions. Avoid them. Dissension is contentious arguing with no regard for grace or unity. This is the person who loves the debate itself and that is more important than the actual truth. They just love the debate. Paul is calling the leaders of God's church to have a spine and to not allow teaching and arguing of anything and everything that takes us down the road of what he refers to in verse 9 as " unprofitable and worthless." Canyon Hills Community Church 5

6 Instead, he's calling leadership in the church to stick to the teaching of sound doctrine and to back it up with lives of integrity, dignity, and self-control. That's what he's getting at here. That's a faithful church, and we want that so the opponents of God and the gospel would be put to shame and have nothing evil to say about us. The first thing Paul wants to summarize here is he's calling us to be faithful. He's calling you and me to be a faithful church to make sure our teaching is strong and doctrinally sound, and that our teachers are teaching that and not getting us off track. 2. Unity built on truth, not on tolerance. Paul calls on the church to stop all the divisive teaching and the arguing first, but now he calls the church to stop the divisive person and the people. This is a whole other level of faithfulness and leadership, to be honest with you. He says these people are stirring up dissension and division in verse 10. That little phrase, stirring up division They are actively dividing God's people against each other. It's the very opposite of unity. There are some people who have no problem Some church leaders, pastors, elders, small group leaders, people in the church They have no problem splitting their church, their Life Group, or a ministry for the purpose of their own agenda. Unfortunately, instead of doing the right thing and the hard thing, which Paul says is to deal with them, to stick to God's Word and call the divisive person to repent, what's happening in our day all around us is church leadership avoiding the conflict by ignoring the heresy and, worse yet, ignoring the immorality that results from false teaching and heresy. That's what's happening all around us in our day. I would say to you, show me a church that ignores these two things, heretical false teaching or immorality that results from it, and I'll show you a pastor or a church leadership that refuses to talk about sin. They won't talk about judgment, hell, holiness, or church discipline. Look at verse 10. "As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him " This divisive person who's stirring up division That word, division, divisive Some of your Bibles say factious. It's the same idea or word from which we get our word heretical or heresy. That means that is a self-chosen opinion, a selfchosen interpretation of the Bible that is void of any true scriptural basis. That's what that divisiveness is right there. It's the self-chosen opinion of a pastor, leader, or really anybody in the church. They have an interpretation of the Bible that's devoid of 2,000 years of orthodox interpretation of Scripture. By their sheer tenacity to persist in their error and refuse to stop their heresy, they are promoting dissension. They're promoting the heresy and the division we talked about in verse 9. Paul says we're to warn them once, and no more than twice. Look what he says. He says, "Warn them once, and then twice," and if they don't stop, he says he wants us to deliberately shun them, Canyon Hills Community Church 6

7 to move away from them and have nothing to do with them. Like I said, that's a whole other level of faithfulness and leadership in a faithful church. Then if you notice in verse 11, Paul holds nothing back. He says, " knowing that such a person is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned." Warped. If you have a New American Standard translation, you have the word perverted. It's a word that means twisted. It means to be turning something inside out, to put the wrong side out and the right side in. That's what he's talking about there. Paul is a name-caller. Do you see this? If you were Paul's parent, you would say, "Paul, that's not nice. Stop doing that! You shouldn't call people warped and sinful!" He does because there's so much at stake here if the church does not remain faithful. Isaiah talked about this type of warped person who worms their way into God's family and God's people. It's in Isaiah 5. It says, "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight!" That is the same type of person about whom Paul is warning in the New Testament that he refers to as warped and sinful. We certainly live in a day where this type of thing in Isaiah 5 is happening all around us, aren't we? We are seeing it in full HD all around us. We have educators telling us it's good to have boys dress up like girls and it's good to allow them to use girls' bathrooms and girls' locker room. They're telling us that is good, and then they're telling us if a fifth-grade class sings an actual Christmas song in their Christmas musical or choir and they mention the name Jesus, that is evil. They're telling us it's good to legalize drugs but it's evil to kneel after a football game with some kids, coaches, or parents who want to just thank God for the day, the game, or whatever. That's evil. We're seeing this all over around us right now. Yet listen. This is the broken world in which we live. These are people who have exchanged the truth of God for a lie. We should not be surprised. Paul isn't talking about our world when he's talking about warped and sinful people. He's talking about people who are inside the church. These thoughts of our world, making evil things good and good things evil, cannot work their way and weasel their way and worm their way into the body of Christ and become the norm. That's what he's saying here. These people are completely out of touch with the truth, and when Paul calls them sinful in verse 11, that word is actually in the present tense. He is saying they are sinning. They are continually and deliberately falsifying the truth and refusing to be corrected. They know what they are teaching, these controversies, these things they're bring into the church. They know they are contradictory to God's Word and they still refuse to stop. He's not talking about the naïve person who's accidentally, unknowingly, ignorantly teaching something that's a little off-base that can be easily spotted and corrected, getting them back on track. Canyon Hills Community Church 7

8 No, he's talking about people who are bringing stuff into the church that the Bible has said for thousands of years is not godly. They know in their deliberate refusal to abandon their selfchosen views, they're wrong, and because they know it's wrong, their own better judgment condemns them. Look at the end of verse 11. It says, " he is self-condemned." He didn't say, "We should condemn them," or, "God condemns them," although God does condemn what they're teaching. He is saying because they're deliberately doing it and they refuse to listen to the truth, they're condemning themselves. They don't even need a court or a judge to do it. They've done it themselves because they know it's ungodly. Just so you know this isn't just Paul having a bad day, writing his letter to Titus, I want you to turn to 2 John. Second John is only one chapter, so it's verses 8 and following. The apostle John says, "Watch yourselves, so that you may not lose what we have worked for, but may win a full reward. Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching [right teaching, sound doctrine], do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting " There's that shunning. There's that, "Have nothing to do with them." " for whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works." Here is the apostle John, the love apostle, the apostle who writes more about love than any other writer in the New Testament. He calls these people not of God and wicked, and he says, "Don't even welcome them into your house, let alone into the leadership of a church. Go to Romans 16. At the end of that treasure of strong and accurate doctrine. Paul closes it out in Romans 16, verses 17 and 18. Look what he says here. "I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive." Do we not see that happening around us today? Church leaders causing division, contrary to the doctrine of Scripture, who are serving their own appetites and preying on the naïve. In 2 Timothy 3:5, Paul describes these heretics and false teachers as " having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power." He says, "Avoid such people." That's the tough part, because they always appear to be godly. They're usually nice and good people, at least on the surface. They appear that way. Sometimes they will actually present themselves as modern-day prophets, trying to bring to the modern-day church new revelation and new evolution of understanding Scripture, again, that has been rightly interpreted for 2,000 years. If they're not accepted as a prophet, they quickly transition themselves to a martyr, therefore trying to garner more sympathy from the naïve. In 1 Timothy 6, Paul writes, "Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called 'knowledge,' for by professing it some have swerved from the faith." False knowledge, babble, contradictions, swerving from the faith... There are an increasing number of Canyon Hills Community Church 8

9 church leaders who are caving in to cultural pressure and dangerously embracing the pagan idea that tolerance is a virtue. This is how it's happening. Satan is so clever. Under the banner of tolerance, we see hundreds and hundreds of church pastors, leaders, and elderships in our country caving in to the babble and false knowledge while flying the banner of tolerance. The problem is tolerance used to be a virtue. It absolutely used to be a virtue when it was true tolerance. Let me give you a definition of true tolerance. True tolerance meant to be patient and fair toward those whose opinions and practices are different from one's own. That is good tolerance, to be patient and fair, but that is not what tolerance means today, is it? Today, tolerance means you must approve of what they do. You must agree with their opinions and practices. You must allow everyone to have their own way, and you must never offend anyone with your opinion and practices, because all beliefs, all values, all ideas, and all lifestyles are equal, except yours if you disagree. That's modern-day tolerance, and if you deny that kind of tolerance, you become intolerant and you deserve contempt. It's going to be hard to be a faithful church going forward, folks, but we can do this. If our church is going to be faithful to God and his Word, love has to be the greatest virtue to which we cling, not some neo-tolerance version of biblically conflicting truths and ungodliness called tolerance. You see, love says, "I'll love you even when your behavior offends me." Biblical love says, "I'll tell you the truth because I'm convinced the truth will set you free." Biblical love says, "I will plead with you to follow the right way because I believe you're worth the risk." That's biblical love. It does not abandon truth. What grieves me (an d it should grieve you as well) is when we hear and see churches going off the rails under the guise of tolerance and accusing God of being loving of that tolerance. What grieves us is that they will prey on the love of God and they will ignore the holiness of God. They will avoid the truth of God and they will say things like, "Jesus accepted the woman caught in adultery. He loved her. He accepted her." Okay, you're good on that, but finish the second half of his sentence, when he says, "Go, and sin no more." Amen? You know that part of the sentence is in there. This is what Paul is warning us about. Warn them. They are warped, twisted, and knowingly and deliberately sinning. A faithful church will unify around truth, not tolerance, because a faithful church knows there can be no unity if everything is acceptable and true. 3. A faithful team of servant leaders. A faithful church has no celebrities. A faithful church has no glory hogs. We can't. I love verses 12 and 13 of Titus, chapter 3, because he models for all church leadership the principle of the plurality of leaders. The principle of leadership reproducing itself in the church. Canyon Hills Community Church 9

10 In verses 12 and 13, we see Paul wasn't a one-man band. He says, "When I send Artemas or Tychicus to you " He's saying, "Hey, I'm sending some more leaders on the way. When they get there, I want you to come back to me. Paul didn't say, "Hey, if you ever have a problem, if the churches ever need an answer, if they need to know what to do, call me. I'll come. I'll fix it." No. You see him here. He's raising up other leaders. He says in verse 13, "Hey, send me Zenas. Send me Apollos. Get them over here. Send them on their way." It's subtle but it's there in plain sight. It's consistent with what Paul wrote to young Timothy as he was pastoring the church in Ephesus. In 2 Timothy 2:2, he says to Timothy, " what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also." A faithful church, you guys, is founded on the structure of governance that requires a spiritfilled, godly team of men whose highest goal is to glorify God by guarding, guiding, and growing the church. It's a team of men whose unity is built on the biblical truths that the leadership is all equally fallen in sin, but they are also all equally redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ. They are unified because they know they are equally qualified to lead and shepherd according to Scripture (1 Timothy 3, Titus 1, and 1 Peter 5). They are unified as a godl y structure of church governance. Because they all are equal, they have equal authority to lead. There are no superleaders, super-pastors, or super-elders in the church of God. That's what Paul is modeling here. They are all unified around the truth that they are equally accountable to God, to each other, and to you. In the faithful church, the only celebrity is Jesus. The only fame we celebrate is Jesus. His name is higher. His name is greater than every other name. There is no one else's name who needs to be in lights. See, the minute a church leader's popularity starts to rival Jesus in that church, run. Run from that place. The minute people start claiming allegiance to one leader in a church, run. It is one thing to have trust, respect, and proper submission to the leadership of your church, but your number one allegiance is to Jesus, not to me, not to anyone else who leads in this church. My number one allegiance is to Jesus. The faithful church has a plurality of leaders who love and respect each other, but their highest commitment is to glorify God above all else. I'll tell you why it's safe for your allegiance to be to Jesus. When a leader, pastor, or elder falls off the perch on which the culture tends to like to prop us up on When they fall, your allegiance is still in the right place. You don't fall with them. So many times, when a pastor falls, the church falls apart because they are in disbelief that that pastor or elder was actually a sinner like them all along. If you doubt that I'm a sinner like you, you only need to go fishing with me yesterday. You will find out that I am in process and progress as well as you are. 4. People committed to having sacrificial, compassionate, and eager workers of ministry. The faithful church calls people to devote themselves to good works. Look at verse 14. Paul says, Canyon Hills Community Church 10

11 " let our people learn to devote themselves to good works, so as to help cases of urgent need, and not be unfruitful." If we're going to be a faithful church, your Christianity cannot be a spectator sport. The faithful church has to be eager to help take care of the urgent needs of its people, because it's not possible for a pastor or even a team of godly pastors in a large church to meet all the needs of a congregation. You know that. I'm not telling you something you don't know. Yet if you're sitting here this morning and all along, you've been saying, "How does this relate to me now? What does this sermon have to do with me?" you're right there in verse 14, if you missed it. You're all over this passage, but in verse 14, it's undeniable. Paul is saying, "Leaders of churches, call our people to be devoted to good works, works that help meet the urgent needs of each other." This is the beauty about the church: Spirit-filled believers, gifted by the Holy Spirit to minister with their gifts that the pastor himself may not even have. That's why we have things like a food bank that helps take care of the hungry. Our hungry first, and then the hungry of the community. That's why we have a counseling ministry where we have over 40 of you lay counselors along with the 20 or so professional, pastoral-type counselors, where you are being trained and certified to help talk to people who are hurting and in need. The pastor isn't the only one who has a Bible and knows how to apply it. That's why we have a crisis pregnancy center to help teenagers and women who are pregnant and feel like they have no other choice but abortion. That's why we have a ministry to widows and single moms in our church to help them with the things they desperately need that they're so embarrassed to ask for. We have to be there for them. That's why we have a ministry, an intense, in-house discipleship program helping men whose lives are being destroyed by their lifedominating sins. All those ministries are run and staffed by volunteers in the church. By the way, as a side note, I want you to keep an eye out this week for an all-church that's coming your way. We are now relocating, re-launching, and renaming our ministry, the Mission House, that is our ministry to helping men and young men alike with addictions. We're relocating it. We've just signed a lease on a house over in Lynnwood. We're renaming it. We're getting ready to re-launch it under a new board, and we're getting excited about that. We've had it over in Port Orchard for a while. You're going to get more details on that. You're going to be able to get involved in that, believe it or not. Titus has been a good reminder to all of us. I've enjoyed preaching through this little letter. It's a reminder to all of us on how to be a faithful church in this increasingly anti-church culture. More than that, it has been a great reminder to all of us on how to live out our faith in a way that has a chance to make the gospel undeniably attractive to those God brings into our lives. I'm going to ask you to bow your heads right now with me if you will. Canyon Hills Community Church 11

12 Father in heaven, I praise you that you do not leave us with any doubts. You do not leave us, Father, with any confusion as to what you call us to. I praise you, Father, that you don't put the pressure on us to be a popular church, a successful church, or a big church, but you call us to be faithful. I ask, God, in the name of Jesus, that you would give us much strength, much courage to be faithful. God, I ask that in the name of Jesus, those who are sitting in our presence now who have never stepped over the line to surrender to you, to surrender their hearts, their forgiveness, and salvation to Jesus I pray today they will have seen your love, goodness, and holiness and that today would be the day of their salvation. God, have your way in their hearts now, I pray. In Christ's name, amen. Canyon Hills Community Church 12