Beacon Sunday Service: January 5, 2025

We're gonna be reading from Titus chapter one, verses 10 to 11. It reads, For there are many rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, who must be silenced because they are upsetting whole families, teaching things they should not teach for the sake of dishonest gain. Would you uh play pray with me? Father, we pray that you would just minister to your people, feed your sheep, cause us to be strengthened, ultimately, Lord God, for your glory and for our usefulness. I pray that you would teach us how to really receive your word and apply it appropriately into our lives, and would you bear much fruit through the proclamation of your truth and grant us truly ears to hear, hearts that are softened, and bless and protect, guard, and lead our time.

We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Go ahead and be seated. Well, a few Mondays back, um, our brothers Howard and Alex and I went up to Santa Barbara for a fishing trip, and we caught 31 rockfish, and most of you already know this as we had a dinner that night of sashimi, ceviche, and fish tacos. For our feast, 31 rockfish donated their lives, and they did not do so willingly, they were tricked into doing so. And we had hooks at the end of all three of our lines baited with little strips of squid. And these 31 rockfish literally took the bait, got hooked, got reeled up, and were barbarically and happily devoured by the many of us in this room. Now, none of the three of us are expert fishermen, nor are rockfish particularly difficult to catch.

In fact, avid fishermen do not even regard catching rockfish as even fishing. They're too easy to catch. The bait does all the work. And rockfish are undiscerning and they're not picky, and they will always take the bait. But even for these undiscerning rockfish, bait needs to be presentable for even the dumbest of them to bite. So we caught rockfish with real uh authentic pieces of squid, but the strips of squid were cut up and they were lifeless. Uh, though they were presentable, though they almost perfectly resemble food that rockfish would normally eat, the squid was not life-providing, life-sustaining food. It actually was life-taking bait. Now you can catch rockfish with squid, most fish like squid, but some fish, like perch and croakers, will never take bait that has squid.

If you're gonna go after perch and croakers, we would have had to use minnows, bugs, and worms. Now, you and I, as followers of Christ, we're made fishers of men. But we also have an adversary who passionately is after the destruction of all of God's image bearers, and he baits and lures people to their destruction. And some he lures with temptations and pleasures, some he lures with success, some he lures with pain and hardship. He lures and baits everybody with lies and with doctrine that is based on mostly truths that are just a little bit distorted or incomplete. And just as different fish prefer different kinds of bait, there are different kinds of people who are drawn to different kinds of doctrinal errors, but the desired end is the same.

It's destruction. There are many different kinds of doctrinal or theological baits that have been used over the years to lure snare and destroy those that are in the church. And most heresies all contain a whole lot of believable truth. After all, bait has to look presentable and real if it's to be effective. Bait has to appeal to instinct and reason. And there are many different kinds of doctrinal errors and heresies, and most of them are either variations of what we call legalism or antinomianism. And then the pendulum swings either to legalism or antinomianism. Legalism, it's also called gnomism. It's basically a belief that salvation or merit is earned by obeying religious law or by doing good works.

It says that man can and must obey enough to curry enough favor with God. And in the event man succeeds in obeying God well enough, God deems him justified and rewards him with blessing. And in legalism, there is punishment for disobedience. So a lot of people use a threat of hell, condemnation, judgment, failed marriage, failed business, as a legalistic tactic to get you to obey. In Jesus' day, the Pharisees, the scribes, the Sadducees in one way or the other, they were severely called out for this. And in the early days of the church, Judaizers, people referred to as those of the circumcision, they exemplified this. And this was extremely difficult for the church to combat. And this was not a small matter in the early church, as you're going to see through a big chunk of the New Testament and in our epistle to Titus.

Acts 15, 1 to 2, it reads some men came down from Judea and began teaching the brothers, unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved. And when Paul and Barnabas had not a little dissension and debate with them, meaning they fought with them a lot. The brothers determined that Paul and Barnabas and some others of them should go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and elders concerning this issue. And this was a big old council. They actually had to make a statement. Okay. So this was such a difficult thing for the early church to combat because there was so much that sounded like legitimate truth. The Judaizers referred to circumcision, which pointed to Abraham.

Circumcision was mandated by God, right? In Genesis 17. These guys referenced to the law of Moses. And Moses was a man of God. And in the Old Testament, if you read it, adherence to the laws of God always promised blessing. So legalism, it seems at a superficial glance, has the Old Testament as proof. So the debates were extremely fierce, and much of Paul's letters went into much depth as to why the bait of legalism lures hooks, then damns and condemns. No one can be saved by zeal, hard work, or religiosity. You guys know this, right? You can't be saved by effort. Churches that push for conformity to church culture or only behavior modification need to be very careful that they're not implicitly pushing a works-based salvation.

Legalism cannot bring about the righteousness required by God. Legalism never results in salvation. And any effort to be made righteous by adhering to the law brings only condemnation and judgment. Okay? So you can't land on any conclusion outside of that if you're reading through the whole of the Bible. Antinomianism is the pendulum swing completely to the other side. Antinomianism also results in condemnation. It's just as erroneous and just as destructive. Antinomianism comes from the combination of two words, anti, meaning against, and namos, meaning law. So the antinomian in Paul's day, they believed that Christians, especially, they were freed from the need to obey God's law because of God's grace.

They believed that good works were now unnecessary for salvation, with the result that now man has a license and a freedom to sin because now it's all about grace. So basically, antinomianism or antinomians, though they will never voice this, they believe that they are no longer any under any moral laws that God expects Christians to obey. Once saved, always saved. So antinomians don't preach obedience. Antinomians preach the gospel that Jesus paid for all our sins. In legalism, there is a threat of punishment for disobedience. In antinomianism, disobedience is of very little consequence. In fact, disobeying helps you to understand God's grace more. Christ is exalted more. On the surface, that also sounds right.

Remember, bait needs to be presentable. But antinomianism takes a biblical teaching and makes a horribly unbiblical application. And the apostle Paul had to fight this as well. And he made it abundantly clearer that antinomianism also was a condemnable conclusion. Romans chapter 6, verses 1 to 2. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? No one would ever articulate this, but that's how they live. May it never be. Mega noita. Heck no. How shall we who died to sin still live in it? It makes no sense, according to Paul. So most all destructive doctrines and heresies will either swing one way or the other. Legalism places man's righteousness and his effort and his merit at the very center.

Antinomianism places man's pleasure and freedom at the center. Antinomianism, legalism are two sides of the same rotten, ruined and corrupted coin. Both place man at the center. And the traces of both are on the island of Crete. People on the island of Crete were being baited by these teachings, and many, it turns out, were taking the bait and shipwrecking their faith. So we're in Titus 110 to 11 today, and let me read the passage again for us. For there are many rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, who must be silenced because they are upsetting whole families, teaching things that they should not teach for the sake of dishonest gain. So this is our passage for today.

And here's an outline. We're gonna have to tackle this passage from bottom up, okay, because of the flow of the argument, works better that way for our understanding. So we're gonna start with verse 11 and move backward, and then I'm gonna hit verse 9, okay? Because it's the continuation of the thought of why we need godly elders, okay, who hold on to the word of God. So first, we're gonna be looking at the spirit behind false religion and false teachers. Second, we're looking at the fruits of false religion, the chaos that ensues when false teaching spreads in a church. And then thirdly, we'll be looking at briefly who these guys were and the contents of what they taught. And then we're gonna touch upon verse 9 in the previous exhortations made to the church and especially for the elders on how to combat false teachers and their teachings.

So we're gonna have to revisit verse 9 for this. So first, and if you're taking notes of slides are on the website for you, so you can refer to them if you uh can't write everything down. So, first, these false teachers are teaching things they should not teach for the sake of dishonest gain. So, who are they? So it appears that these are men who have varying degrees of position either inside the church or they're like church adjacent, okay? They're bloggers, they're influencers in one way or another. Okay, and they're teaching in our context, asceticism and Jewish myths and guidelines for like ritual cleansing and other things like that. And we see that the primary motivation for teaching errant things, it says, was dishonest gain.

So at face value, Paul is talking about monetary gain. They got paid. Okay, so false teachers are greedy, and they would say whatever they needed to to help themselves monetarily. Uh, this is not a shock, 2 Peter 2 to 3. In their greed, they will exploit you with words, but false words, and their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep. So they're gonna get that, is what Peter is saying. But these guys, the motivation is greed. The greed throughout the New Testament, though it's not just restricted to money, it can be a greed for success. Okay, the dishonest gain can be also for success, cutting corners. It could be for legacy, it could be for women. There's weak-willed women that respect charismatic leaders.

So it could be for women or for Instagram followers, okay, or for some kind of a following. And all of those things can be interconnected. And there was and there is, and there will always be some kind of a market for these guys to exploit. The health and wealth gospel preachers in a previous generation taught that God is a generous rewarder of faith. Have you ever heard that before? God is a generous rewarder of faith. They taught that believers could expect to receive material blessings like good health and financial prosperity in this life. And God is always testing your faith, like he tests Abraham. Abraham offered up his own son, like we learned last week, and God rewarded him. So he's testing your faith.

If you steward your money and give to God, he will give it back. 30, 60, 100fold. And that is what they preyed upon. P-E-R-E, prayed. Okay? So people like Kenneth Copeland and Benny Hinn, they pedaled the gospel of prosperity and they became very rich. So the estimated net worth of Kenneth Copeland in 2024 was 300 million dollars. And Benny Hinn had a net worth of a lot more modest, only uh 60 million dollars. So they took advantage of the market. Now the problem is not in the dollar amount. Okay, material wealth is not in and of itself displeasing to God. It is not the money that it is evil, it's the love of it that plunges men into ruin and destruction. And oftentimes the love of it causes a departure from the faith.

So God may equip churches and saints and even pastors with wealth, but there's a big difference between money that follows a man and the man that follows the money. You guys, do you guys can you guys understand the difference? Okay, a true gospel points people to Jesus and to the kingdom of heaven, not comfort, not pleasure, and not success in this world. But there are many church people who desire to be lied to in the present age. And there's a market for workers of false religion to exploit. Okay? 2 Timothy 3, 1 to 4. This is talking about the end times. And this is today, okay. Uh but know this this is this that in the last days, difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, without gentleness, without love for good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.

And when you just read a list like this, it doesn't kind of hit. So I'm gonna expand it a little bit. But this is the description of churched people or church adjacent people in the last days. Okay, this is not the talking about people in the world. How do we know that Paul is referring to churched people? Verse five says that there is a form of godliness, but they have no power. Verse 7 says that they're always learning, but they're never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Okay? So, first on this list, let's tackle that one. Lovers of self. What kind of sermons appeal to people who love self? Can you make a church grow by appealing to lovers of self? Of course. You can tell them that their sins are not their fault.

You can tell them that they're the victim of their circumstances, that life is unfair. You can tell them that God loves them and has a wonderful plan for their earthly lives. And like a rose trampled on the ground, he took the fall and thought of you. Thought of me above all. For lovers of self, in the preaching of the church from the pulpit, you leave out verses like Luke 9 23. If anyone wants to come after me, he must what? Deny himself. So you have to leave stuff out. Can you build a church to please lovers of self? Oh, absolutely. Can you build a church? Let's pendulum swing the other way. Right? There's different baits for different kinds of fish. Look at the list. Can you grow a church of boastful, arrogant, self-righteous people who have no gentleness?

Oh, for sure. You can tell those people that they are spiritually superior to biblically illiterate, cheap grace people at other churches. So this is the conservative church problem, right? You can pat congregation members on the back for not being compromisers like those Christians that drink, like the worldly Christians that take jobs that work on Sundays, like unwise parents that send their kids to public schools, that employ women pastors, or churches that are sympathetic to the LGBTQ agenda, etc.

You can preach sermons that bash all kinds of things, all kinds of people, all kinds of movements in the name of righteousness. Pendulum swings. Can you grow a church by appealing to lovers of money? Oh, for sure. How about lovers of pleasure? What are they seeking? Seeker sensitive used to mean seeking Christ. It's no, no, seeking like other stuff, right? They're seeking fun and excitement and thrills. So you can make the church a fun place. You can preach fun, entertaining and lighthearted sermons. You can make sure that everybody that leaves a church remembers that Jesus Christ has already paid for their sins. That God listens to the prayer of Jabez, so he'll listen to yours and bless you accordingly.

He wants you to live your best life now. You can make the church feel like a coffee shop or a bar where everybody knows your name. There are many ways a church can grow without Jesus. And it's possible to make a comfortable career out of a growing church without Jesus. There are many in the market who will gladly recruit and pursue pastors and teachers who will peddle errant teaching.

For the time will come when these church people will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, they will turn away their ears from the truth, and they'll turn aside to myths. So itching ears come in many shapes and sizes. Triggers also come in many shapes and sizes. You're either itchy or you're triggered, right? Preferences come in all shapes and sizes. Some people are desperately looking for a church that is woke. Do you guys know this? Some people want to be a church at a church that's ultra-conservative, that votes all things right. As in like political right, not correct, right? Okay.

Some people want a church whose pastors are only from a particular camp, tribe, or seminary. Some people want the pastor to speak very specifically against very specific things. There always was and always is and always will be itchy-eared markets for false teachers to exploit. So in the early church, many itinerant preachers who taught all kinds of things in the name of either godliness or in the name of like the gospel, they peddled it for gain. And the scriptures say that Satan, the God of this age, the ruler of the power of the air, is behind all false religion. So the need of the church has always been for preachers whose hearts are set first and foremost to pleasing God, to representing God correctly and speaking accurately on behalf of God.

Amen. So when the preacher says, thus says the Lord, the church needs to know what that message is, whether that message really is from the Lord or not. That's important, right? So Galatians 1 10, Paul writes, and this is Galatians is the letter where he's fighting against Jude, the Judaizers, not Judaism, Judaizers. For am I now seeking the favor of men or God? Am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a slave of Christ. You can't do both. You can serve God and love men. You can serve God and shepherd men. You can't please man and God in that order. Okay? So our truth comes from the Bible. The Bible is a word of God. No Christians will disagree with that.

Okay. We must be God-centered in our teaching because the Bible is God-centered. You guys following that? We have to have a Bible-centered church because the Bible, or we need to have a God-centered church because the Bible is God-centered. Okay? A man-centered church invites all kinds of danger. We want to build a church that is God-centered and not man-centered. We want a biblical church, not just a church only loosely based on biblical principle. And again, a church just loosely based on biblical principle can swing either to legalism or antinomianism. Okay, Satan is crafty. And we can't and must not be motivated by what makes us happy, what makes the people around us happy. We must prioritize pleasing God first.

Why? We've been created by God and for God to love God and to serve God, not the other way around. Okay? So the apostle Paul writes that false teachers must be silenced. Why? What happens when people take the bait of the false teachers? What happens? Verse 11 reads, who must be silenced because they are upsetting whole families, teaching things that they should not teach for the sake of dishonest gain. So the text says, whole families are being upset by errant teaching. And I believe that Paul is referring to clusters of church members more than groups of nuclear families. Okay? This is not, oh, the Chang family is upset. Okay, or the Diaz is or upset, or like the Huangs. No, this is like little house churches are getting ruined.

Alright? So upset also does not mean that people are angered by the teaching. In our language, in our language, in modern day English, upset just means like I'm not, I'm very unhappy, right? But the word, okay, anna trepusing, repeat after me, anna trepusing. Okay, is translated upset here, but in other Greek literature, it's translated as ruined, divided, made null and void, or overturned. Basically, it's to be thrown off course toward ruin and destruction. Both Aristotle and Plutarch, who are uh Greek writers and philosophers, use the word anna trepusing in describing a ship that's been capsized or shipwrecked. Have you ever heard of the term shipwreck their faith? That's what upset means.

It's not just like, I can't believe you taught that. It's not like a sassy upset, it's the ruined. What happens when a fish takes the bait? It is anatrepoosing. It gets reeled up toward its demise. And the rockfish, they're so weak, sauce. Sometimes you don't even know there's a fish. And you reel it up, and it's like lungs are outside of its mouth. It's dead. Okay? Ruin and demise. And you can't throw it back. It's dead. So we might as well eat it. And happily we did. Okay. What happens when an undiscerning churchgoer holds horribly to an incorrect doctrine or a slightly errant or distorted or almost true doctrine, and a trepusing, shipwreck of the faith. Whole clusters of churches, okay, not just house families, right?

Not the chunks. Like whole families are terribly upset. They've been spiritually capsized. You guys following this? So when false teachers get a foothold into the church, it spreads like an irreversible cancer. So we will do well to hold firmly to and heed the warning of strictions of scripture like Proverbs 7. Keep my commandments and live, and my laws the apple of your eye. And then he's talking about folly with her and adultery, with her abundant persuasions, she entices him, the fool. With her flattering lips, she drives him to herself until an arrow pierces through his liver, and like a bird or a uh back. Jewish people didn't fish in the deep sea, okay? But like a fish hatens to the hook.

He does not know that it will cost him his soul. Verse 27, the ways to Sheol are in her house, descending to the chambers of death. Proverbs 5 actually says, keep away from her door. Don't even knock. Don't go near the door of her house. So bad doctrine, stay away. There are enticements and flattering lips and snares of plenty in this life. And so may the Lord grant us wisdom and knowledge and grace to navigate past all such things. Okay. So let's read verse 10 again. There are many rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision. Errant teachers who teach for the sake of dishonest gain were shipwrecking the faith of many. How many of these people were there?

What's it say? What does the text say? Many. How many? Okay. So there were many in the Old Testament. There were many in the New Testament. There were many on the island of Crete. In Matthew chapter 24, verse 11, Jesus says that there will be many at the end of the age. And this can only mean that there are many today, according to the words of the Lord Jesus himself. Now, how many is many? Like four. How many wolves in sheep's clothing does it do you need to ruin a church? Well, the word many, actually, it's hard to quantify with a specific number, but it's good to simply understand this as all around you. Think about this. There are all around you, rebellious men, empty talkers, and deceivers.

Workers of false religion were all around the churches of Crete. Workers of false religion are all around Los Angeles. Workers of false religion are all around you. There's no shortage of false teachers who are deceiving and being deceived. That should sober us up. Because can you list off five of the many false prophets that you know? We're almost scared to do that. Right? Oh, he's just a weird kind of a pastor. Or his message. Yeah, that kind, but do we know enough to be able to call that out? These men are called rebellious men. You guys see that at the beginning of verse 10? The ESV translates it as insubordinate men. So who are they rebelling against? Who are these men insubordinate to?

The Lord Jesus Christ. Is that simple enough to understand? They're rebelling against Jesus. They come in the name of Jesus, but they are both rebelling against him and insubordinate to him. And the dangerous and scary thing is that they likely don't know. 2 Timothy 3 13. They likely believe themselves to be in the right. Because they're on the narrow and they're on the broad and the wide gate, right? And they're convincing other people to come with them. There is nothing more dangerous than a false prophet who believes himself to be working for righteousness' sake. Let me repeat that. There is nothing more dangerous than a false prophet who is impassioned, thinking that he's doing all of that for righteousness' sake.

Paul goes on to say that these people are what? Empty talkers. If I called you an empty talker, if I was if I was to say, Mary, you're such an empty talker. You'd be like, how dare you, right? If I was to say, dude, Howard is nothing but empty talk when he leads praise. That would be a very whoa. These men are empty talkers. There is no substance to their teaching. There was no meat to their message. There was no content. It was just a spiritual pep talk and an ear tickling. Their messages appealed to feelings. The messages never fed the people. And many in the pews in Crete, it seems they liked it this way. There's nothing new under the sun. Because the people in the pews like it this way, many preachers have always preached this way.

And there are many today who like it this way. You quote only Bible verses that uplift you. So many preachers will preach this way. There are people who want their ears tickled for the right, for the left, for the conservative, for the liberal, and the preachers will preach to please man. Jeremiah 5 31. The prophets prophesy with lying. And the priests, these are the religious leaders. They're having dominion by their own hand. And guess what? And my people love it this way. Scary thing, right? Judaizers, Paul goes on to highlight them here, a very specific group, and he calls them those of the circumcision. And he's going to get to the other side of the pendulum swing later in the letter, but here he starts with the Judaizers, this side of the pendulum swing.

Now, Judaizers and Judaism have to be different. They have to be distinguished. You guys, you guys, you guys follow? Modern-day Judaism, it kind of is rooted in what the Judaizers taught. But that they are different. So Judaizers, many of whom were ethnic Jews, basically taught that for non-Jewish people to be saved and in right standing with Yahweh God, they needed to first become religious Jews. They verbally said, Oh, Jesus is the way.

But that's not enough. You also need to be a Jew before you can accept the Messiah of the Jews. And one of the uh the purposes of Paul's letters to the churches of Galatia was to combat that. And he's very severe in his language. The Judaizers were teaching that there were three things Gentile Christians needed to do in order to be truly saved. They taught that Gentile converts had to be first circumcised. Well, make well, if you look through the Bible, okay, seems to make sense. It's an everlasting covenant. All right. And they taught the Gentiles how to do a ritual bath and water. And that's different from baptism. Baptism signified a personal or person's personal commitment to Jesus and entry into the Christian faith.

Like your union with Christ in his death and union with him in his resurrection. Romans 6:4. But the mikvah was a bath for purification according to Jewish law to become clean. And it was an entrance into the Jewish community. Like a leper. What did he have to do before he got back into the Jewish community? He had to take a bath, right? So that's what they had to do. Thirdly, the Gentile convert had to pledge himself to keep the Mosaic law and the rabbinic oral traditions that have been passed down in the Jewish or the rabbinic halakath. Okay, it sounds like Holocaust, but it's halakhach. Okay? And what that is is it's a 613 like interpretations of the Mosaic law that were handed down traditionally.

And that's what they were holding Jesus to. Sabbath laws, you're only allowed to take this many steps. Okay, dietary restrictions, how to wash your hands before you eat. You see that in the gospel narratives. And Jesus, that's not God's word. That's an interpretation of God's word that they were elevating to the status of God's word. So the Judaizers, they said that you need to do these three things, and guess what? They all cost money. There is a market to be exploited. And if I'm passionate about my soul, I will pay it. If you tell a Catholic of the 13th and 14th and 15th century, you need to get your mom out of hell. You need to get your grandparents out of hell by giving this. Will they give it?

Yes. There's a market to be exploited. So on the island of Crete, these were accursed men teaching a different gospel, and they're ruining, capsizing, and damning and upsetting whole families. They're teaching things that they that went against the doctrines of God. And again, how many false prophets were there? How many false teachers were there? How many rebellious men? There are many. They're all around, and they're motivated by dishonest gain. So I made a little chart. Okay, here's a little summary chart of verses 10 and 11 for you. There are workers of true religion, and there are workers of false religion. And remember if you guys remember from a couple months back, true religion, false religion.

Okay, so first, the harvest is indeed plentiful, but the workers are few. Matthew 9, 37. You guys have heard that person before, right? There are many workers of false religion on this side. Workers of true religion are subordinate to God. They're in submission to the word of God to the Lord Jesus Christ in all ways and always. They're subordinate to God. Okay? Workers of false religion are rebels. They know better. Oh, God's word is outdated. They know better. Workers of false religion have a form of godliness, but they deny it's any real spiritual power. They may be passionate and self-righteous, but they're still rebels. God's workers will always preach God's breathed, inspired word of God.

Life-giving substance. Workers of false religion will fill time with empty talk, with anecdotes, with how-tos. God's workers will always tell the truth. They encourage and exhort. Workers of Satan are like their dad, John 8 44. They're like their father. Okay? They deceive and they flatter. Now, pausing here. What's the difference between encouragement and flattery? No one's gonna say, oh, I went to the Bible study and I was so flattered. You wouldn't really, that'd be weird. Right? But what's the difference? They're both good to hear. Encouragement speaks truth and points to the beauty of Christ and celebrates grace. You guys tracking with that? Encouragement points to, it speaks truth, points to Christ's beauty and celebrates grace.

Flattery points to the sinner's ability, points to the sinner's worth, and it abuses grace. Big difference. Okay? If I said, you know, you're doing okay. That's that couldn't, that actually can be either one. Right? Things that are I need to hear and things that my itching ear wants to hear can sometimes look the same. But the motivation is different. Continuing on with the summary list, God's workers must preach the word in season and out of season. Workers of false religion, they must be what? Silence. Okay, don't apply this too quick. Okay? You're gonna go on a witch hut and start slapping pastors around. You don't want to do that. Okay, but they must be silenced. And we're gonna learn through Titus.

How do we go about doing that? When Christ-centered doctrine is preached, the church is built up and edified and strengthened and purified. When preaching is man-centered, it leads to anatrepusing or the shipwrecking of the church. The motivations of the workers of true religion is always God's pleasure first. The motivation behind the teaching of false religion is always dishonest and selfish gain for the pastor. So you guys understand the distinction? This is all coming from Titus 1, 10 to 11. Okay? Especially the on the on the bad side. So here's a very, very, very, very important question. Are you knowledgeable enough and discerning enough to spot the bait of false teaching? Can you discern bait from real life giving food?

Can you discern truth from that which is just almost truth? Do you know the difference between what God calls good and what God calls evil? We live in a time of a lot of confusion. How many of you guys have know people who are confused? All kinds of confusion, right? I identify as a zebra. There are people like that though. Okay? And others are there like, oh yeah, what are you doing? Like what? I don't. Okay. All right. So there is so much confusion and disagreement, even within Christianity. Isaiah chapter 5, verse 20 describes a generation of people who calls evil good and good evil. Cannibalism, good or evil. Okay. Pedophilia, good or evil. Divorce. Evil. Greed.

Evil. Accumulating more wealth than you actually need. Evil. Sex outside of marriage. Evil. Abortion. Evil. Pride. The greatest of evil. Some of those things you're probably excited to call it evil. Right? Some of those things, you're like, when everyone else says, yeah, evil, then you're more likely to chime in. Some of those things you're calling evil with a hypocritical guilty conscience because you're like, but I engage in this. May we never justify any of the things that I just listed, or even dare to celebrate any of those things as good.

And it's happening. You guys know this, right? So how do we build? Why did I choose Titus to start? This is my 14th week at the beginning. Why did I choose Titus? Because I want to build a church that is healthy. And I would love to have a church that is full of just discipled and discerning people. So what is the equipment for combating false teaching? I'm going to go back to Titus 1.9. It reads, holding fast the faithful word, which is in accordance with the teaching, so that the this is the elder, he'll be able to both teach and exhort in sound doctrine and reprove those who contradict. To say you're you're unbiblical, even if it's at a cost. So every single one of us has to hold fast to the word of God.

I am not pushing a form of legalism here. What I'm not saying is that you need to know God's word and obey God's word either to be saved or to be more blessed. I'm not saying that. Okay. You are saved through faith alone, by grace alone, in Christ alone. But the word of God is food for the Christian. Amen? It is absolutely essential for the Christian. You cannot grow without it. You cannot survive without it. You cannot discern good from evil without it. You can be baited and lured and shipwrecked without it.

It's not up here, but Hebrews chapter 5, verse 14 relates the intake, correlates the intake of God's word to the ability to discern good and evil. Solid food is for the mature who, because of training and practice, have trained themselves to discern good and evil. First Peter 2 to 2. Like newborn babies long for the pure miracle of the word. Why? Because you can't grow without it in your salvation. So here's a question. You're gonna agree with this, but are you holding fast to the word of God? Are you holding on to it for dear life? Are you growing? Or are you just trusting me to for your Bible intake? Here's a real question. How do you know I'm not a false prophet? I'm not 100% sure. And I say that it's kind of funny, but I know too much of the Bible to trust me.

So I'm trying to get to understand the heart of God and realizing how fall, how far I fall short. So I don't fully trust me. So you should not. Amen. Because I can go awry. You should pray for me. How do you know I'm not a wolf in sheep's clothing? How do you know that this, whatever's coming from the pulpit is really God's word and not just my opinion? I'm gonna close with this. I took this picture on December 3rd, 2016. So that's nine years, eight years ago. This is a stone quarry in Kempala, Uganda. Okay, I traveled a lot from my previous job. I was in slums and amongst poor people all the time. But this is Kampala, Uganda. And there, children as young as four years old, they break rocks all day.

Okay, and these little rocks are you they use for like different like pavement, you know, whatever. A pavement is smooth. But you you guys know, right? Like the fancy decoration. So when these little children break enough little rocks and they fill a two-gallon bucket, they can get 90 cents. And so these children, that's what they're doing. They're breaking rocks, and I mean they blow it up with dynamite, they collect the shards and then they break it into smaller pieces, and that's their job. And people exploit them. Okay. Now, one of the little girls that we met here is a little girl named Angela, and she's the one in the green shorts. And we visited her house. I mean, we visited her house after this.

So she was so bright and happy and cute. And I have a video of her like singing. Okay, but then we visited her house, and Angela's mother is right there. I don't, I never heard, I never got her name. Um, she was suffering from AIDS. And when we met her, she was listless, super frail, bone thin. And I guessed at the time that she weighed about 80 pounds. In Uganda, there are many people who have AIDS. And since 2004, the Ugandan government has been supplying those with AIDS with AIDS medicine. Okay, it's called uh anti-retroviral drugs, ARV, medicine, and they've given it to them free of charge. And Angela's mom took ARV medicine every day. But the problem was that she was only eating one small meal every two or three days, like a little piece of bread, a little piece of dough.

She was sick because of AIDS, but she was dying because of malnourishment. So what we did was we enrolled Angela into the compassion child sponsorship program. Um, her sponsor is a celebrity, by the way. She's we sent her $200 worth of groceries the next day, because we really wanted Angela's mom to eat and get better. So I took this picture December 3rd, 2016, 17 days later, on December 20th, I got an email from my friend Lillian, and she informed me that Angela's mother had passed away. And the cause of death was not AIDS, the cause of death was malnourishment. More than AIDS medicine, Angela's mom had needed food. So for AIDS patients, medicine is super important, but food is essential. Medicine is good, and it of course it helps.

But when a person is not eating food, medicine is not effective. That's common sense, right? In some cases, medicine without food can actually be harmful to your body. You guys know this? Okay. So for the Christian community, good praise music, small groups, homeless outreach. They're all good things. Amen. They can be medicinal. But the word of God is the non-negotiable. So may we hold fast to the word as if our lives depended on it. May we hold fast to the word because our lives depend on it. And the churches and Christians around us, their lives depend on it. And there are spiritual fish hooks with appealing bait. Bloop, blub, bloup, bloup, bloup, bloup, bloup, bloup, blop, bloup. Dropped all over the place around us.

Do you guys have a visual in your head? There's spiritual bait on all sides of the pendulum swing surrounding our school of fish. May we grow in discernment. Here's the passage one more time. Oops, I'll just read it for you. There are many rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, who must be silenced because they are upsetting whole families, teaching things they should not teach for the sake of dishonest game. Let's pray together. Father, we pray for your help to be a discerning people, but to discern and to thrive with much joy, with much love and compassion and humility. In every way, shape, and form, may we adorn the gospel of Jesus Christ with our lives, with our community, and with our message, especially, Lord, so that people would know the way to salvation.

So use us, empower us, work in and through us, and we pray all of this in Jesus' name.