Little Books with a Big Message Leaders and Liars Titus 1 Pastor Pat Damiani August 19, 2018 Some of you may have heard the story about the Baptist who was stranded on a desert island. When rescuers finally found him, they saw three buildings on the island. They asked, What s that building? That s my house, he answered. Well, what s that second building? That s my church, he said. But, then what s that third building? Oh, that s where I used to go to church. Baptists have always been well known for their autonomy, both as individuals and as congregations. And in the self-centered culture that we live in that tendency seems to have spread to a lot of other churches as well. So when someone is made to feel uncomfortable or the church does something they don t like, instead of submitting to the leadership of that church, they just go find another church that is more to their liking or even start their own church. And usually that process ends up repeating itself over and over. But, as we ll see this morning, that is not a good thing, either for the individual or the church This morning we re going to be dealing with the Biblical model for church leadership. This is a topic that can be uncomfortable for some people because of the fact that Jesus plan for the leadership of His church is so much different than the models that are common in our culture today. However, we must not shy away from this topic because, as we are going to discover together today, Jesus model for leadership within His body, the church, is one of the most important protections all of us have against being drawn away from the truth by false teaching. For the next three weeks, we will be wrapping up our current sermon series. Little Books with a Big Message, by studying the book of Titus. Before I read the first chapter, let me give you a little background. Crete was an island situated off the southern tip of Greece. Much like the United States today, it was quite inhospitable to the gospel. But we know from Acts 2 that there were some Cretans present on the day of Pentecost who put their faith in Jesus and they had likely gone home to plant churches there. But as the Gentiles there began to be converted, they brought a lot of baggage with them. Sometime after his first imprisonment in Rome but before his second and final imprisonment, Paul traveled to Crete with Titus and left him there to help them develop their faith in the midst of that pagan culture and to help resolve some of the problems in the church. Some time after that, either from Macedonia or Nicopolos, Paul wrote this letter to his young co-laborer Titus to encourage him and give him some direction in his ministry there. Paul s letter begins with this salutation that is similar to many of his other letters: [Read Titus 1:1-4] We could easily spend our whole time this morning on just these 4 verses because they are so rich. But since I want to concentrate on what I ve identified as the main idea in the letter, let me just note a few things: First, we see that Paul is writing here for the benefit of believers, whom he calls God s elect. He is writing to encourage them to grow in their faith and in their knowledge of the truth, so that they might have hope. Second, Paul reminds Titus of God s faithfulness in providing the hope of eternal life through the gospel that has been entrusted to Paul Third, we see that Titus is Paul s spiritual son and that both of them share a common faith. [Read Titus 1:5] Paul reminds Titus that he left him in Crete so that he would put what remained into order. And at least one of the most important ways he was going to do that was to appoint elders in each town. I m going to come back to that idea in a moment. But before I do that, I m going to skip ahead to the last part of the chapter, where Paul reveals why that task is so important.
[Read Titus 1:10-16] The situation in Crete wasn t a whole lot different than the one John addressed in 2 John, which we studied a couple weeks ago. There were itinerant teachers, who were trying to make a living by peddling their false teaching to the churches there in Crete. In particular, a group called the Judaizers were teaching that one first had to become a Jew and follow all the Jewish ceremonial laws, including circumcision, before they could become a Christian. Others were promoting Jewish myths and preaching messages that altered or suppressed the truth so that people would feel good about themselves and so no one would be offended. In other words, the culture there was not all that different than what we find in the United States in the year 2018. Unfortunately, even within the church, we have teachers who are doing the same thing. They refuse to talk about sin and its consequences or God s justice and wrath because they don t want to offend anyone. They proclaim that God is love, which is true, but they leave out the fact that He is also holy and just and will by no means acquit the guilty. In the middle of this section, we find that Paul has a really sharp sense of humor. He quotes one of the Cretans own prophets probably a guy named Epimenides: Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons This is what is known as a liar s paradox. Since Epimenides is a Cretan, if Cretans are always liars, then the statement that Epimenides made must also be a lie, so that means that Cretans are actually truthful. But if Cretans are truthful, that means that what Epimenides says is true and the Cretans are liars. Paul just avoids the whole paradox altogether by bluntly saying What Epimenides says is true. All Cretans are liars and lazy gluttons. And then Paul closes this chapter by pointing out that these people profess to know God, but their works prove they do not. So that is the problem that Titus needs to address there in Crete. There are false teachers who are trying to infiltrate the local churches and draw people away from the truth. And the primary way for Titus to prevent that from happening is found back in verse 5: he is to appoint elders in each town. So here is the main idea that we find in this chapter: Godly leaders thwart good liars Although I m not going to spend a lot of time with the details found in verses 6-9, we need to at least read those verses so we have the entire context. [Read Titus 1:6-9] Since Paul is so focused here on the importance of godly church leaders, I m going to take this opportunity to talk about the Biblical model for church leadership. I understand that for some of you this is going to be a review, but because this is such an important idea, it s important that we do review these principles from time to time. There is a lot of misunderstanding about Jesus model for the leadership of His church. And much of that arises because it is so much different than what we experience in the world. So let me begin by explaining what church leadership is not to look like: It is not a democracy in which every person in the congregation has an equal say in how the church is to operate. That being said, because of some legal requirements, our church s Constitution and Bylaws does provide for a few major decisions that do have to be approved by the entire congregation. But for most decisions that need to be made here at TFC that is not the case. I m going to spare you the details, but I have been in churches where the congregation was involved in every decision everything from deciding on what color to paint the walls to what the pastor should preach about. And let me just say, that structure is very conducive to conflict but not conducive at all to unity or spiritual growth.
It is not even a representative form of government where the people elect leaders to represent them. Because here in the Untied States we live in a republic in which we do exactly that, there is a tendency to think that we ought to run our churches that way, too. But as we re going to see this morning, electing leaders based on who has the most money, the best campaign ads or who is most popular is not going to accomplish the purpose of protecting the body against false teachers. It is not like a corporation where the owners, the stockholders, elect a board of directors who set policy and hire executives to run the business on a day to day basis. And it is certainly not a dictatorship where the pastor does as he pleases. One problem with all of those models is that they fail to recognize that the church belongs to Jesus. This is not my church or our Elders church or even our church. It belongs to Jesus alone. So obviously the church needs to operate in a way that recognizes that fact. Probably the best summary of Biblical church leadership I ve seen is this one from Pastor Steven Cole: Christ runs His church through a plurality of godly men who shepherd His flock under His headship. In order to understand how that structure is to operate, we need to look at three primary words that are used in the New Testament to describe the role and function of these leaders. Unfortunately, because of a lack of understanding of these terms, some churches and even entire denominations have developed a hierarchical form of church government that the Bible just doesn t support. THREE BIBLICAL WORDS TO DESCRIBE CHURCH LEADERS 1. Greek presbyteros = elder We ve run into this word the last two weeks in the books of 2 John and 3 John, where John referred to himself as the elder. As we mentioned then, the word can simply mean one who is older than another. But undoubtedly when Paul uses this term to describe a church leader, he is thinking back to the Old Testament where the role of elders was to exercise spiritual oversight in Israel. While the use of this word does not impose any age requirement on elders, it certainly conveys the idea that church leaders should be those who are spiritually mature. That is why in 1 Timothy 3, Paul writes that an elder must not be a recent convert. The New Testament writers primarily used this term to emphasize the spiritual maturity of the church leaders, but it also implies that these leaders have been entrusted with authority. 2. Greek episkopos = overseer or bishop This word describes someone who is charged with the duty of seeing that things done by others are done properly. In civil life, the term was applied to government officials, but in the Bible it is not a title, but rather a description of the role of the church leaders, who are to oversee the spiritual development of the church members. 3. Greek poimen = shepherd or pastor This word appears only once in the New Testament as a noun, but as we ll see in a moment, it is often used in the verb form. It literally means a shepherd. Our English word pastor comes from the Latin word for a shepherd. Again, this is not a title, but rather a description of what a church leader is to do to shepherd the church members. I can t emphasize enough that none of these three words are a title they all describe the various functions and roles of the leaders in a New Testament church. In fact, we find that all three terms are used interchangeably in the New Testament. We ve already seen that here in Titus where Paul uses the terms elder and overseer to describe the very same church leaders. But let me give you a couple more examples that will drive home this important point:
Now from Miletus he sent to Ephesus and called the elders of the church to come to him Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for [shepherd] the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. (Acts 20:17, 28 ESV) So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; (1 Peter 5:1 2 ESV) This is important because it means that any manmade leadership structures that try to differentiate between these roles and create some kind of hierarchy are just not Biblical. Before we move on, let me point out two more important aspects of Biblical church leadership. We don t have time to cover them in depth this morning, but they are important enough to call to your attention. TWO IMPORTANT ASPECTS OF BIBLICAL CHURCH LEADERSHIP 1. Leadership is to be by a plurality of leaders You will note that in all the passages we ve looked at so far, the terms elders and overseers are always plural. We see that Jesus modeled this Himself when He chose 12 apostles to carry on His ministry after He returned to the Father. Having multiple elders in the local church has the benefit of bringing together a variety of spiritual gifts, personalities, backgrounds, and training in which the whole becomes much greater than the sum of the parts. It also serves as a system of checks and balances to make sure that no one leader gets off track, either intentionally or unintentionally. So it helps accomplish the goal we mentioned earlier to guard the body against false teaching. As I ve shared with you before, as a church planter I was in a situation where that plurality of leaders was not present and for my good and the good of the church, I would never want to be in that place again. The plurality of elders does not preclude one of those elders emerging as the leader of the leaders, or as one author puts it, the first among equals. We certainly see this in the early church, where all the apostles had equal authority, but where men like Peter and James rose to places of leadership where they were the primary teachers. But, as we see in Acts 15, at the Jerusalem Council, those apostles worked together with the elders to come to a decision on an important doctrinal matter. 2. Leadership is to consist of godly men First let me briefly address the idea of male leadership. Although that is not Paul s main idea here, this passage is consistent with every other New Testament passage on leadership in the church which all teach that elders are to be men. That in no way means that women are inferior or that they can t serve in the church. It merely means that Jesus determined that the best way to protect the flock against false teaching was with godly male leadership. On the other hand, Paul does devote a significant portion of this passage to describing the qualifications for these church leaders. There is also a similar list in 1 Timothy 3. We obviously don t have time to go through those qualifications in detail, but let me make just a couple observations: First, the majority of these qualities are something that every disciple of Jesus should strive for. We should all desire to live lives that are above reproach, and be hospitable, self-controlled, upright and holy. Second, we need to keep in mind that no one meets all these qualifications perfectly. I know I sure don t and I know the rest of our Elders would admit that they don t either. But a man who is recognized as an elder in the church shouldn t have a bunch of glaring weaknesses when it comes to these criteria. His overall character ought to reflect these marks of spiritual maturity.
Finally, these leaders are not to be elected in the normal sense of that word. The idea of a church voting a man into leadership because he is a popular, likeable guy or because he is a successful business man or because it s his time to serve on the board is just not God s way. Rather than voting on who should be church leaders, it is better to say that the church should officially recognize men who meet the qualifications for elders and who agree to serve. When a church operates the way that we ve talked about this morning, it will accomplish the main idea that we began with: Godly leaders thwart good liars If that is true, and I wholeheartedly believe that it is, then the best thing that all of us can do to prevent being influenced by false teaching is to help our church leaders do their job. I know that on the surface that idea might seem a bit self-serving, but when the body gives proper support to their leaders, it not only benefits the leaders, it benefits every member of the body. So let s close by looking at HOW TO HELP MY CHURCH LEADERS HELP ME These are all pretty self- explanatory, so I m just going to share the Scriptures behind these practices and make a few brief comments. 1. Respect and esteem them We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves. (1 Thessalonians 5:12 13 ESV) 2. Obey and submit to them Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. (Hebrews 13:17 ESV) The Greek words for obey and submit mean to obey and submit! The difference, if any, between the two words is that obedience deals more with our actions and submission deals more with our attitudes. This is obviously a conditional command. It certainly does not mean that we are to blindly submit to our church leaders even when they teach or do things that are unbiblical. I ll talk more about that in a moment. But what this does mean is that when the church leaders do something I might not agree with or that doesn t jive with my personal preferences, as long as it is Biblical, I shouldn t be so quick to just bail and go find another church. Some of you here have come to TFC from other churches and in talking to you, it is clear that you had some very valid reasons to leave those churches. So I m certainly not saying that no one should ever leave their church. I m just saying that for the good of the individual and the body, that decision should be made only after much prayer, because it may very well remove the protection that God has provided for you in the form of godly church leaders. 3. Imitate their faith Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. (Hebrews 13:7 ESV)
There is an important distinction here. The writer of Hebrews does not tell his audience to imitate their leaders, but rather to imitate their faith. I would never encourage any of you to try and imitate me or any of our elders. But I would encourage you to do what Paul wrote to the church in Corinth: Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ. (1 Corinthians 11:1 ESV) 4. Support them Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching. For the Scripture says, You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain, and, The laborer deserves his wages. (1 Timothy 5:17 18 ESV) All elders are worthy of honor and support. But Paul seems to recognize here that the elders who have been gifted with the ability to teach God s Word are also worthy of financial support. 5. Hold them accountable Do not admit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses. As for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all, so that the rest may stand in fear. (1 Timothy 5:19 20 ESV) When a leader is guilty of open sin, or serious doctrinal error, God s people are responsible to discipline him. But it s important to note here that Paul included some safety measures to protect church leaders from unwarranted attacks from disgruntled church members. 6. Pray for them Pray for us, for we are sure that we have a clear conscience, desiring to act honorably in all things. (Hebrews 13:18 ESV) The apostle Paul frequently asked for prayer in his letters. So if you want to know what to pray for our leaders here at TFC, spend some time reading those passages. As we close, we are going to put that last principle into practice right now. So I m going to ask our elders to all come and stand at the front and we re going to spend some time praying for them for a few moments. During this time feel free to pray as God leads you. [Prayer time] Godly leaders thwart good liars I am so thankful for the godly men that I serve with here at TFC. I regularly get to see what most of you never will. I see how selflessly and diligently these men work to protect all of us from the false teaching that is so prevalent in the world today and to help all of us to grow in our faith. My only regret is that more of us don t take advantage of the spiritual leadership they provide. I can assure you that these men are available to do whatever they can to help you in your walk with Jesus. All you need to do is to ask.
Discussion questions for Bible Roundtable 1. Some say that it doesn t matter what form of church government you have, as long as it works. How would you respond? 2. Often churches choose leaders like Americans choose political leaders: personal charisma, good looks, the most money, etc. How can we avoid these tendencies so that we have godly leadership? 3. If the church is not a democracy, what keeps the elders from becoming a power unto themselves, accountable to no one? 4. Although the New Testament consistently teaches the idea of male elder leadership, can women have leadership roles in the church? If so, what limitations does the Bible place on that leadership? 5. What are some practical ways that godly church leaders defend against lies and false teaching?