Author: pastortravislv

Titus 3:1-2 – 1 Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, 2 to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people.
.

Paul’s letters to Timothy and Titus are his letters offering advice for young pastors. Paul, as an older apostle of the Lord Jesus, has wisdom to pass along to his protégés. The glorious thing for us is that God has chosen to preserve this advice, as it is what he calls all pastors to think, to do, and to be.

Here in Titus 3, Paul lists a set of character qualities that young pastors are to put before the people of God. Clearly these are all attributes that the people of God should already know to have. But it is wise for a godly pastor to remind his flock to have these qualities, because, in our humanity, we often forget the obvious things we ought to do or be.

While there are seven qualities listed here, I want to focus our attention on two major categories of qualities: obedience and speech. Looking at obedience, we see that verse 1 has a running theme. The people of God are to obey their authorities to be able to do good. There are likely two categories in view here. On the one hand, Christians are to be obedient to all the laws of the land in which they live. We are to obey any law of government unless that law somehow contradicts the commands of God. So, if a law is passed forbidding evangelism, we must humbly disobey. However, we obey laws such as copyright laws and speed limits because God’s word has no specific commands telling us not to. We must be a people who know how to honor authority.

In a second category of obedience, it is right for the people of God to respect and follow the leaders that God has put in place over them. God designed the local church to be led by at least one elder or pastor (I think a plurality of elders is most biblical). These men are charged with the task of praying for and feeding the people of God with the word of God. They are called by God to offer spiritual leadership and guidance to the church. And, since these men are charged with the task to lead, the congregation is charged with the task to follow. Again, this is to take place in the church unless the leadership, for some reason, attempts to lead the people in a direction that is clearly contrary to the word of God

Between the two categories is the call to be ready to do good work. This is both part of our obedience and part of the second category of our words. We need to be eager, anxious, and ready to do what is good and right. We should be eager to obey our authorities. We should be eager to speak and act in a way that is godly.

The second category is what I will simply summarize as being godly in our speech. Look at the reminders: “to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people.” Simply put, our speech is to be kind, loving, and positive when at all possible. We are not to speak evil of one another or of those outside our community. This is a hard one for me, as I am easily tempted to join in such conversation; but there is no excuse for sinfully speaking evil of another person. Yes, there is a difference in being honest and being evil, and that difference will be heard in the tone of speech and understood in the heart’s motivation. The fact is, if you have something negative to say about another person, you had better be very careful that your heart is focused on God’s glory and the other’s good, that your attitude is not arrogant and selfish, and that you have been careful to do everything in your power to believe the best about the person first.

Paul goes on to call us to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to be courteous. This is all in our attitude and in our speech. We avoid harsh words in order to show gentleness, kindness, and love. We ought always be eager to avoid a quarrel so long as essential doctrine is not at stake. We ought be gentle, not willing to do any person any unnecessary harm with our words. We ought be courteous, even if our interlocutor is not. Why? We want to show Christ’s kind of love and gentleness to everyone.

You might say, “This all sounds nice, but it’s impossible in the real world.” My flesh wants to agree with you. But let me draw on one picture before we close the topic. Jesus was bloodied, beaten, and abused by evil men. During the entire event, Jesus spoke no evil against those men, and prayed that God might have mercy upon them. Can you, for even a second, picture Jesus speaking to or about these men without kindness, gentleness, or perfect courtesy? Of course you can’t, not if you really have a picture of the Lord Jesus. We want to show the world what Jesus is like, and our speech must be as full of grace and love as his was, even when we are abused.

By the way, do you think that Paul put obedience and speech side-by-side for a reason? Whom do you find easiest to criticize? About whom is it most common for you to let out a nasty judgment? Is it not the ones over you? Is it not easy to speak out against the supposedly inept establishment in Washington? Is it not easy to spout off at how poorly things are being run at a denominational level (regardless your denomination or its efficiency)? Is it not tempting to listen to a sermon and then sit down with your family to a lunch of “roast preacher”? Let’s be careful, as our most natural ways of criticizing may be our most fleshly.

Folks, I do not pretend that I have this one all worked out yet, but I look at this text, and I see that God wants me to be reminded of his standards for my speech. Perhaps you have the same feeling as you read this. Perhaps you feel like you are a long way from getting this part of your life right. If so, you are at least in my company if not good company. So, let us work together to tame our tongues for the glory of God. Let us remember to follow our leaders and use our words in such a way that we might glorify God in what we say and do.

Proverbs 14:4

Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean,
but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox.
.

While it may not be true of every person you know, many people have lives that treasure being orderly. Many people love for their houses to be clean, their schedules to be kept, and their lives to be just so. For such people, when things are thrown off track, the consequences are quite difficult to handle.

This fact can be mirrored in churches. Many churches and their members love to have things very tidy, very neat, very clean. We come to the pristine sanctuary in our Sunday best. We love bulletins without spelling errors and sermons without flawed grammar. We look for well-played music, organized orders of worship, and timely beginnings and endings to everything. We all are willing to confess ourselves as sinners saved by grace, but very few of us indeed would ever dare to upset the apple cart by actually talking to another person in the church about our own faults, sins, and struggles. We love seeing the people we know, the people who are safe; and we cringe just a little when someone walks in who is not quite up to our standards of being shipshape.

The problem is, as we keep ourselves orderly, clean, and without mess, we find that our community dwindles, becomes sick, or perhaps even falls apart. We might develop one of the best-looking church services you could find in our town, but nothing looks different. None of our own show their brokenness. None of our own confess their sin. None of our own show their weakness in humility. And we certainly do not look upon it favorably when someone who is an outsider comes to us and airs his or her own dirty laundry.

The Ox and the Manger

Send into the scenario Proverbs 14:4, “Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean, but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox.” This may be an obscure proverb to you, but it will make sense rather quickly. Imagine that you are a farmer who loves a clean barn. You like your barn to be in order, tidy, without mess. How can you keep a truly clean barn. The best way to keep your barn spic and span is to not let any animals into it. So you sell off your oxen. You certainly do not need some smelly animal coming into your barn, messing on the floor and slobbering in the watering trough.

What’s the problem with the clean barn picture? When it comes time to work the fields, the farmer has no animal to pull his plow. Though oxen are messy, oxen are also the creatures necessary for accomplishing the work of farming for the farmer of yesterday. With a working team of oxen, the farmer can accomplish leaps and bounds more than he ever could have accomplished without them.

So, the farmer has a dilemma. On the one hand, he loves a clean barn. On the other, he wants to have a productive harvest. He must count the cost. And, if he is going to be a farmer who is worth anything, he is going to have to conclude that having a successful farm requires that he let his barn get a little messy. He must have oxen, or the farming business is simply not for him.

Tools for God’s Glory or Museums for Our Glory

Now, return to our own lives. I’m not suggesting that we turn the church into a smelly barn. I’m not suggesting that our homes ought to be messy. But what I am suggesting is that the church building and our homes ought to be places that are more designed for the work of God to be accomplished than they ought to be museums of our own glory. Let’s think of how this might apply in each area.

Your Home

First, let’s think of your home. You live there. You want it to be nice and presentable. Indeed you should want these things. But if your desire to make your home beautiful keeps you from using your home as a tool for ministry or as a place for family joy, you are missing the point. Wouldn’t you rather have the harvest of well-developed relationships and friendships and a loving family than you would have a “Better Homes and Gardens” worthy picture. Sure, you can strive to have a nice home, an inviting home, but do not let that consume you.

On the other hand, if you want your home to be a place where people will come and be ministered to, you need to have a home that is clean and inviting enough that people will feel comfortable in it. If when someone comes to your door, you have to clean a path for them to reach the sofa, you need to change that practice. If you are regularly too embarrassed to allow anyone into your home, you ought to do the work to make your home a vehicle for potential ministry. Remember, everything we have is to be a tool that we use to bring honor and glory to God; so make your home such a tool.

The Church

The church building is another place where we must take stock. Just as I ended the discussion on the home I will continue with the church building. A messy, ugly, or unsafe church building will not be inviting to outsiders. Studies show that people are still drawn to clean and even beautiful church structures as places of worship. Therefore, it is foolish to have an unkempt building and grounds. How we care for the building and the grounds is an outward sign, at some level, of how much we believe that what we are doing is important, sacred, and worth our energy.

On the other hand, we must never make the cleanliness or perfection of the building be a concern that keeps us from ministry. A church building is a place of worship, but it is by no means the temple of the living God. The people are the church. The building is a facility in which the church often meets to take part in corporate worship. As such, the building is not the highest priority. Let us not protect the building so much that we refuse to use it for ministry. Like a good home, the building ought to have a clean, nice, and yet lived-in feel.

Finally, what about the church as a community. Just as we can become too protective of the building, not allowing potential dirtiness to enter it, so also can we become too closed as a community. As a church community, we must learn to be welcoming of the less fortunate, the down-trodden, the needy. We must not turn up our noses at sinners—for goodness’ sake, we are sinners—who express their need for help or grace; instead, let us become a place of healing. It has often been said that the church should be a hospital for wounded sinners and not a museum for perfect saints; such a statement is true, and we must learn to live it.

2 Timothy 4:1-4 – 1 I 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: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. 3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.
.

What does your church want for a pastor? Ministry-minded men, what kind of pastor do you want to be? If the answers to these two questions does not flow fairly quickly through 2 Timothy 4:1-4, there is something very wrong with your answer.

A Quick Look at the Passage

Paul sets up his call to Timothy with as much weight as he can muster. He charges Timothy to do something by all the greatest of thoughts. He charges Timothy by God the Father and his Son, Jesus—the Jesus who will return and judge. He charges Timothy in the light of Jesus’ appearing and Jesus’ kingdom to do one thing: preach the word.

To preach is to proclaim. Timothy is to proclaim something for all to hear. He is to proclaim the word, the perfect, inspired, God-breathed, useful (see 2 Timothy 3:16-17) word of God as it is found in the holy scriptures. Proclaiming the Bible and its teaching is Timothy’s job, and he must fulfill this task. Timothy is to do this work when it is easy and when it is hard, when it is well-received and when it is opposed.

Paul warns Timothy that a generation of people is on the way who will not willingly endure sound doctrine and solid, biblical preaching. No matter, Timothy is to preach anyway. They will want to hire men to say what makes them feel good, but Timothy is to preach the word. They will run away from God and turn to falsehoods, but Timothy is to keep going, keep preaching the word, whether they like it or not.

A Response for Pastors

If you are training to be a pastor or are simply a ministry-minded person, this text should lay the foundation for what you will do as you pursue the ministry. Perhaps you want to be a preacher. Perhaps you want to do music. Perhaps you are a youth minister. Perhaps you are a missionary in training. Perhaps you want to work with college students. Perhaps you want to simply comfort senior adults. Regardless what is your role, you are to preach the word. You are to bring the perfect, life-changing, all-sufficient word of God into the lives of those around you.

When you bring people the word, some people will love it and others will hate it. It does not matter how they respond, your job is still the same. You certainly do not want to offend a person by your personality, your style, or something not related to the scriptures; but if they are offended by the actual content of the Bible and not your presentation, you must keep preaching the word. Preach the word, not your own opinions. Preach the word, don’t just do little celebrity interviews. Preach the word, don’t give into the temptation to say that our society does not like preaching anymore. Preach the word, not some soft-sided imitation of the word. Preach the word, not psychology. Preach the word, not seven habits of whatever is new on the bookshelves. Preach the word, not simply ten tips for potty-training toddlers. Preach the word, preach it well, and preach it faithfully.

A Response for Church Members

If it is your pastor’s job to preach the word, it is your job to do two different things. First, your job is to hear the word. You are part of the flock to whom the pastor preaches. Listen, and listen well. When the word is opened to you, pay attention. Take notes. Welcome the speaking of God’s word into your life. Do not sit there trying to find someone to whom to apply these insights, fix them on your own life first. Do not seek to simply be entertained with fun stories and cute jokes, long for the pure, non-watered-down word of God.

Second, your job as a church member is to encourage, even demand, the preaching of the word. When your pastor brings the word to you, really the word and not something less, thank him. Don’t just say, “Nice sermon.” Instead, share with the pastor your genuine appreciation that he chose to open to you the word of God. When he brings you something less than the word, with much humility and charity encourage him to not hold back, not pander to the desires of the ungodly, not give into the advice of the world, but to truly preach the word.

Conclusion

Paul charged Timothy with all his might to preach the word. I believe that he would give us the same challenge. Our culture is not word-oriented. Many of our churches and their memberships are not fixed on scripture. But if we are to do what God calls us to do, we must be a people who thrive on and are centered on the word of God. Preach the word. Hear the word. Change as God changes you through the word. Let us become a people who truly love God’s holy word.

Great thoughts from David Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant, page 247.

Letting God be God over his church, seeing him as its center and
glory, its source and its life, is a truly liberating experience. It liberates
us from thinking that we have to do, in ourselves, what we are entirely
incapable of doing. That is, growing the church. We cannot do the work
that only God can do. We can work in the church, preach and teach,
spread the gospel, encourage and urge each other on, but we cannot
impart new life. Nor can we ever sanctify the church. Indeed, we cannot
even feed the church. It is God who supplies the food; we are simply
called upon to serve it (1 Cor. 3:5). This, however, is precisely why Paul
says, a little later, that “we do not lose heart” (2 Cor. 4:1, 16) but are “confident”
(3:4; cf. 5:6).

While all of this is conventional enough, it is not common enough
in evangelical churches. Lip service is paid to these ideas, but when we
get really serious about “doing church” we turn to what we know best.
We turn to structures and programs, appearances and management,
advertising and marketing. Our preoccupation is with what we do
and therefore with what we control.
This is what animates the conversation
among evangelical leaders, what fills the pages of magazines like Leadership,
and what attracts pastors to the really big, important conferences.
This is what they are willing to pay serious money to hear.

Alas! It is missing the point, if I may say so. What is of primary interest
in a technological world is technique, for that, after all, is how we
manage everything else. In the kingdom of God things are different. It
is not that we do not do things, but that our doing is rooted in our being.
Who we are is more fundamental than what we do.
Character is more basic than action. Being mastered by God is infinitely more important
than having the know-how to manage the church.