Titus 1:10-16

Terry Wilbank, a missionary from England, speaks about his work with university students in Oxford. He encourages the church to pray for their ministry and emphasizes that prayer can make a difference. He also mentions the importance of sharing one's faith and being obedient to God's leading. The pastor then discusses the issue of false teachers and the need to rebuke them sharply. All right, I'm going to let Terry Wilbank say a word. Those of us who speak often, often misspeak because we don't realize that people don't always know everything we know. I was just thinking, I was talking about Terry and some of y'all saying, who on earth is he? Well, he grew up in our church. He and his wife are missionaries to England. And Terry, come on up here and just say a word because they made a change that you don't know about. Tell them about what's going on. Thanks, Brother Jimmy. For those that remember, I did grow up in the church as far as we became members back in the mid-70s. Glen Kinney and his kids, well not his kids, but he was my high school teacher back in high school. And Brother Jimmy was the pastor here. So, I am a local guy. We are here, I'm visiting my mom. My dad passed away at Easter last year. And so, we are here. I'm here with my youngest, Kaylin. I'm the oldest, because you have to have the oldest if you have the youngest. And she's in Portland, Oregon. So, she is studying her master's in trauma counseling. We have just moved to Oxford, England from Birmingham, England. We have been in Europe for over 20-something years. And so, I just want to say, first of all, thank you very much. Now, you may not feel like you are a part of our ministry, but you're part of the kingdom ministry. And even though you may not have been to England or outside the United States, your prayers make an incredible difference. Now, we need to know that prayer changes things. So, even though that you are here and you're not physically there, that you are changing things on a spiritual level. So, we work with university students. Oxford is considered one. That's the top university in the world. Cambridge would say it's second. Oxford may say it's second. Harvard may say it's second. But Oxford is actually listed number one university in the world. We moved there because the idea is if we can influence the leaders of the world, the brightest, that they will actually affect the world. Twenty-eight British prime ministers went to Oxford. A variety of world leaders went to Oxford. So, let me just tell you this briefly. We've only been there for five months. So, we got there. We didn't know what was happening. But the thing is that God is always working around us. And God doesn't ask for us to come up with ideas for him. He asks for us to join in the work with him. So, Jesus said he can only do what the Father is doing. So, Jesus says that how much more should we do that as well. So, I want to encourage you, wherever you are, whatever your oikos or your networks are, God's working there. And he wants to use you as an introvert, as someone who feels like, you know what, I don't have a lot to say. What you're sharing is what God has done in the past. Even though it may be difficult for you right now, how God's been there in the past, how he's there with you, and how he'll continue to be with you. So, there in Oxford, we're praying, saying, God, we want to join where you are. So, we start praying. And we just happened to meet some students who invite me to come be part of it. It's called Christian Union. It's kind of like a student union or navigators or crusades. And the biggest group over there is the Christian Union. So, they said, hey, come and help us out. And they said, do you know anything about sharing your faith? And I said, well, actually, as a matter of fact, I do. And they said, would you come and lead a couple of seminars on a weekend away so that we can actually, as university students, share with other university students about who Jesus is. And I said, no way. No, actually, I didn't say no way. I said, you bet. Because what happens? God's working. We join in with that. Now, they don't want to hear from this young 55-year-old man as far as other students, but they'll hear from their fellow people. And so, they were able to share. The odd thing, Brother Jimmy, I went and shared with them a how-to share, and they actually started doing it. So, once again, wherever you are, share Christ there. Be the light there. One last question that I'll let Brother Jimmy go ahead and teach us is that on Monday nights, I work with Oxford students. So, we have coffee. We drink a lot of coffee at Oxford, and it's called The Search. So, we have about a seven-minute talk. It's a general talk to get the mind going there over Matthew, and then the Oxford students can ask any questions they want to at our table. We have a wide variety of questions, but it doesn't matter how smart you are, they still have the basic questions. Why am I here? Can I be loved? Who am I? Is there a God? Does this God, can I know him, her, it? And who can I talk to about this God? What's the Bible like? So, on Monday nights, you can pray for us as well. So, we can pray. I do have, we just have a new prayer card. They took her outside the coffee shop in the little atrium thing. We'll be in the back with my daughter, my mom, and I will be in the back. There's an e-mail on here that says willlinksfamilyatgmail.com. We'll send out a prayer request so that you can be involved in the ministry that's happening there. Once again, it's not about the Will Links. It's not about, but numbers are important in that numbers represent people, and we want people to know Christ. But we want you to be involved in the ministry, that you don't come over there, that you are praying that God will change, that we'll have new brothers and sisters, that eyes will be opened as well, and that people, students, university students at Oxford will come to know Christ. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. I wanted to have a word since I had moved just in the last few months. And this church has always had somebody on the mission field since I came here in 75. And I'm proud of you guys. And let them know how to communicate with you. And we always look forward to the e-mails and read about the family. And leaving your kids here going back by themselves, that's not an easy thing to do either. So we appreciate y'all being here. I always show up, and I want to make sure the people know you. Well, we're going to finish up the first chapter. Now, how are we going to do that? Well, when it gets 10 minutes to 11, I'm going to quit. And then we'll just, it will be all we'll do with the first chapter. But from the very beginning of Christianity, following the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the church has always suffered from persecution. And that was true then. It was true in the early centuries of the Christian faith. In fact, the Christianity was illegal in the Roman Empire. They declared it was a cult and illegal for people to worship. They went through various stages of persecution, some very brutal, very vicious, actually feeding the Christians to the lions and all kinds of physical persecution. But the church exploded in growth. Because Jesus told the disciples when they wanted to go share, but he was alive in Acts 1. He said, no, you just stay put. Wait till the promise of the Father comes. What was the promise of the Father? The Holy Spirit. And so verse 8, that's verse 4 of Acts 1. In Acts 1, verse 8, he said, now, when the Spirit comes, now you can be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, and in the ends of the earth. Sounds like the Great Commission, doesn't it? Matthew waited to the very end to give the Great Commission. Acts does it right up front. And there he touched on something very important. God does not need us to strategize how to fulfill the Great Commission. He's already done that. When we were saved, the Holy Spirit came to live in us. And here's what God told us to do. Have a relationship with me. By the way, the Holy Spirit is God. I wish I had time to talk more about that. Maybe we can do that later. But the Holy Spirit and Jesus and God the Father, three persons, one God. But the Holy Spirit lives in us, and God wants us to pay attention and be obedient. And he'll lead us to be where we ought to be and do what we ought to do. We're waiting for some great light to flash or some great theory. I get e-mails all the time from think tanks all over the world about how we're going to fulfill the Great Commission. It's too complicated. Keep it simple. The Holy Spirit lives in us. He wants us to share. Just like you said, you talk to them about sharing, and sure enough, they did it. That's God's plan. And so we all get to be a part of that. And it's great. If everything happens good for you guys over there, we are a part of it. We thank you. All right. Titus chapter 1, verses 10 to 16. Now let me just, well, let me read this. There are many rebellious people full of empty talk and deception, especially those from the circumcision party. It is necessary to silence them, for they are ruining entire households by teaching what they shouldn't in order to get money dishonestly. One of their own prophets, the Cretans, always said that the Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, and lazy gluttons. And then Paul's statement is, that's probably true. I have to laugh to see how he phrased that. For this reason, he says, now we're talking about false teachers. This is the real issue in the book of Titus. And so the criticism is going toward those false teachers. He says, rebuke them sharply so that they may be sound in the faith, may not pay attention to Jewish myths, the commands of people who reject the truth. To the pure, everything is pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure. In fact, both their mind and conscience are defiled. They claim to know God, but they deny Him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, and unfit for any good work. That's a pretty tough passage of Scripture. Paul doesn't pull any punches. He's very specific, very honest, and he's very sharp in the way he deals with it. He doesn't offer much in the way of encouragement to these false teachers, because they've got to be dealt with. They must be silenced, and they must be rebuked. And let me just say, persecution has never killed the church. In fact, though it was an outlaw worship group, an outlaw cult in the eyes of Rome, they were forbidden to participate. In the year 380, Christianity, which was persecuted viciously in those first four centuries, became the official religion of the Roman Empire. Against all odds, against all kinds of persecution, brutal opposition. Imagine sharing Christ and saying, okay, by the way, if you accept Christ, you're probably going to be beaten. You might even be killed, and you're going to lose your respect with your family, and you'll probably lose your job. It wouldn't be a very attractive way to share the Lord, would it? But that's exactly what the church did. And the early church went from being a fledgling, illegal cult in the eyes of the Roman Empire, to being adopted as the official religion of the Roman Empire in less than 400 years. And they did it because the church, against all opposition and against every odd that you could possibly imagine, moved forward on the power of the Holy Spirit. There will be another sermon, too. We have the Holy Spirit planted in us, and we need to pay attention and need to be obedient. And believers were often isolated, rejected by families and friends. They might have lost their livelihood or their property, their lives. They were hunted and hounded. They were shunned by the culture. Every believer faced the loss of their very most prized possessions, including their own lives, in the beginning of the Christian faith. Now, just put a little star by that and think of us. Who of us has ever faced anything like that? Who of us has ever had to give our lives for our faith? Who of us have ever had to face such opposition? We got fired at our job because of it. Who of us have ever faced the threats of death and many having faced death itself? Very few. Christianity has become very comfortable. The church in Crete was facing false teachers that would destroy the heart of the gospel. And Paul is incensed about it. These words are strong words, sharp words, rebuke, silence. It is amazing. But we need to realize what happened when Jesus died on the cross and when the Holy Spirit came was the beginning of an entirely different way to have a relationship with God. In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit basically moved upon or used individuals or even nations. In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit lives in us. Outward empowerment, mostly in the Old Testament. Inward dwelling in the New Testament. And that was a different way to realize our relationship with God because God now lives in us. And Jesus has returned to the Father. And God himself through the Holy Spirit now lives in the hearts of believers. He planted himself in us and in the person of the Holy Spirit. And whatever he calls us to do, whether it's to preach in Oxford or to preach in Texas or wherever, to share the gospel, he will lead us by the power of the Holy Spirit in us. Now, let me pause just long enough to say there... Well, let's go back to the first century. The first century heresy began with a heresy called Gnosticism. Now, that's a big long word and it comes from the Greek word gnosis. But it just means knowledge. They claimed to be superior intellects. They believed that they knew more than anybody else. And they were teaching things that weren't true and passing them off as truth. But they were lying and deceiving the people. And the Holy Spirit, though, came into the lives of believers and transformed those believers. We go back to verse 5 here and be just reminded the reason Paul said that, I left you in Crete, Titus, was to set right what was left undone. And as I directed you to appoint elders in every town. Because of the heresy, it's absolutely necessary to have leaders that could deal with it. They could confront the heretic. They could respond to them. They could present the truth in spite of the opposition that they were having. It's impossible for us to overstate the change that took place in the lives of those disciples. These disciples, fearing, cowardly, deserted Jesus when Jesus was crucified and hid in their own shadows in an obscure room near the old city, fearing that the same people that crucified Jesus would come get them. And they were scared to death. Locked the doors. And they were startled and terrified. Luke 24 says, when Christ appeared in their midst, for several reasons. The doors were locked. How did he get in? But suddenly there he is. It scared them to death. I mean, these were a bunch of men that had walked with Jesus for three years. He knew them intimately. He poured his heart and life into them. And they all deserted him. Even though John showed up at the cross, all the disciples deserted him and fled. Now, these weak and frightened men began to march to the end of the earth with the global command that Christ had given to them. The incredible advance of Christianity in those first five centuries was moved in the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit. If you want to trace the growth of the early church, you'll see that it was a growth that was involved with the energy of the Holy Spirit. Christianity, it was opposed and outlawed for many years. In 313, Constantine, 12 or 13 Constantine, who was the emperor of Rome, was converted. And so some people would place the beginning of this movement back to that. But in 325, he removed the illegal tag upon Christians as well as other cults that they had considered other movements they considered cults. In 325, and then in 380 AD, two joint rulers declared Christianity was the official religion of the Roman Empire. That happened without any of the success tools we think are necessary for growth. It was just the opposite. It was a hard time. They were being oppressed and killed. One historian said concerning the rapid growth of Christianity, they outlived and outdied all of their opponents. They died well. They lived well. They were filled with the Holy Spirit. They outlived and outdied the followers of the other faith. They simply couldn't be stopped. And that's the story of Christianity. Now, he comes to say, what are you going to do with those who are trying to distort the faith, trying to change the gospel? The real issue with the Gnostics was they wanted to add something to the gospel. Now, we shouldn't be surprised, because every one of us have in us a nature that wants to help God out. I mean, surely we can do something. I mean, this idea of repenting and depending solely upon God, that rubs us the wrong way. Our human nature wants us to do something. Well, he won't let us do anything about salvation, though we still struggle with that. Surely we can do something to guarantee our salvation. But we can't help God out. The Christian life is not difficult. It's impossible. And the only way we can live it is through the power of the Holy Spirit in us. But the Holy Spirit can do more in five minutes than we can do in 50 years. And as we think back, as I think back over my life, I can think of times that things happen that just can't happen. I mean, you see it all the time, Gerald, in England. How in the world did that happen? I mean, you're talking about the intellectual capital of the Western world, basically atheistic in attitude and doctrine, and yet there is a hunger for God that the Holy Spirit honors when the Word is declared. I remember preaching at Harvard. Now, I have a Harvard T-shirt, so I can wear a Harvard T-shirt. Paul Kim. Some of you might know the name of Paul Kim. He and his wife started the Birkeland Baptist Church in California, at the University of California. Then they moved over to Cambridge and started the Birkeland Baptist Church. It serves MIT, Cambridge, Harvard. His wife has been a chaplain at Harvard for 40 years, 42 years. So Paul's been a good friend. I heard from him this week. He wanted me to come preach one wintery February day at the church, and about 300 students from all those colleges and universities were there. Great fellowship. Even had a PhD student from MIT got saved that morning. The point that Terry made is true. Even folks that know it all or think they do need the Lord, and down deep there's a hunger. There's an itch you can't scratch that seeks for God. So we really pray for you guys over there. You're doing a great thing. The movement of Christianity was opposed by these Gnostics who claimed that they had superior knowledge, and so Paul is dealing with that. It's in the churches. That's why we can see why Paul was so specific to Titus about why he left him there. The churches are in a mess. They were having confusion and doubt and opposition and heresy and false teachers, and Paul said, I want you to go over there and straighten everything out. Now, we don't have time to talk about it, but, you know, the logical question is, why did he want them to appoint elders? Now, I am a Congregationalist. By that I mean I believe Congregations ought to make decisions. They follow leadership, and they are well communicated with. But Paul said, I want you to go appoint elders. Well, why would he tell them to appoint elders? Because the new churches had to have preachers, and they were all new converts. And so he had to go over there and make sure that the ones who became the elders or the pastors were sound in the faith and could confront the heresy and correct the heresy. And in this passage, he's telling them they need to be silenced, and that word just means cut off. They need to be silenced, and they need to be sharply rebuked. These are very, very strong words. And the heresy, he said there, they must be silenced. The great persecution was the daily experience of believers. But in spite of that, in spite of that and the fact that they've been tagged as an illegal cult, the fledgling faith grew rapidly. And the greatest danger, now listen, this is very important, the greatest danger to the church was not outside persecution, but the inward, subtle poison of heresy. Over the centuries, the strongest enemy of the church has come from within the church. Heretical teaching always brought dissension, discomfort, confusion, divisions within the churches. Those are not any spiritual gifts, by the way. That always comes with the heresy, with false doctrine. And so Paul says that he is speaking that these false leaders are rebellious people. By the way, that indicates, and we'll see a little more as we go through the passage, that indicates they were part of the church. I could rebel against the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, but I'm not part of them. I can't say I rebelled against them because I've never been with them. Well, the idea that he's talking about rebellious people here indicates they were in the church. They were rebelling against the teaching of the gospel. And so these false teachers, Paul has no sympathy for them at all in their actions, and we see that as we go through this. He identifies the opposition coming from the Circumcision Party, and that would be just a reminder of what we now know as Judaizers, Jewish people who felt like that, yes, they accept Jesus, but you also need to follow Jewish traditions and rituals, circumcision, eating certain foods, and all the things that the Jews taught. But these Jewish myths and traditions, they wanted to add as being part of salvation, and they wanted to add human works to the gospel of salvation, and it was necessary to silence them. The Greek word for silence is not found anywhere else in the New Testament but here. I mean, this is the only time it is used, and it is a word which means to check, to curb, to restrain, to bridle the heresy. And it says they were ruining entire households by teaching heresy in order to get money dishonestly. Now I can only assume that they were getting paid for some of the things they were teaching, and they said they were doing it just so they could make a profit out of it. He even quoted a Greek, a Cretan philosopher, Eponinatus, who lived 600 years before Paul wrote this letter. And this is what that Cretan philosopher said, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, and lazy gluttons. Now that's funny to us. Let me tell you what these words mean. They are words that are strongly active, aggressive, evil words. He called them deliberate liars, the things they taught they shouldn't teach. The lies that they taught contained Jewish myths and fables and human commandments. And the false myths and fables Paul mentioned were frivolous, unfounded stories that had reached kind of amazing acceptance and high esteem and significance that the false teachers were trying to add them to the gospel. And it brings a truth to us that the truth of God cannot be mixed with legalism and religious tradition. We can't add anything to it. It's not faith in Jesus plus something. It's faith in Jesus, period. And that's what they're dealing with. And the warning is very clear. He's not obscure about it. We are to avoid heresy and excesses in any form. Now, we see both extremes today. The distortion of the Holy Spirit focuses on the Holy Spirit and creates emotionalism and things that focus on the Holy Spirit. Now, Paul, just a moment. The Holy Spirit never did come to make himself known. He came to magnify Jesus. Anytime you hear someone always wrapped up in talking about the Holy Spirit they already miss the point. The Holy Spirit doesn't talk about itself. He talks about Jesus. And we serve one God, three persons. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. They're one God, yet they're three persons. Our mind can't wrap itself around that. But the Holy Spirit was God himself planted in their hearts. And God has told us everything we need to know about truth in the Bible. Does that mean that there's no truth outside the Bible? No. There certainly is truth that's not included in the Bible. But the Bible deals with the theological truths that are important. And we're now going to discover something about God theologically that's not in the Bible. And any time we get away from that, we are in danger. Now, I won't dwell on this, but in our Southern Baptist Convention we had what we call a conservative resurgence. It started back in the 1970s and went for 30 years. We actually had professors in colleges and seminaries whose salary we paid who did not believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus or the substitutionary atonement. They just did not believe it. Well, that's heresy. And, of course, the heretics always lie. Everybody was told that this is just a preacher's fight. This is not anything important. No, no. And if we identified the heresy we were talking about, they accused us of character assassination. If we didn't identify it, they accused us of dealing with generalities. There wasn't any way we could get around it. But heresy has to be dealt with. And in this case, Paul sent Titus in to new churches. He had the authority to say, you take care of this and straighten everything out. And that's what the whole epistle of Titus is all about. The false teachers, according to Eponitis, were lazy gluttons. That's a word which means rude, cruel, and brutal. They were arrogant, condescending toward others, living only to satisfy their own appetites and sabotage the gospel, greedy for money, to false teachings that they had. They had no self-control, no self-restraint, and Paul had no patience with them. I'll just make a simple statement and I'll talk about it. Many people want the benefits the church provides but will not submit to the demands that God makes on believers. You cannot be saved and live like the devil. There are a lot of people that want to keep living their lives but they want the respect that comes from being part of a church family. Now, everybody's welcome in church, but if you believe in Christ, you need to live a Christ-like life. You need to be obedient to what God requires of us. And the Bible is very clear, Peter dwells on it a great deal in his epistles, that we need to be holy as God is holy. We can never be holy in our own strength. In fact, one of the... I was asked to speak to the Pastors' Conference a couple of years ago. They signed me that they were going to do the Fruits of the Spirit. So they gave me self-control. And so we were all waxing out. And they gave me ten minutes to do that. So we had about 17 preachers in a short period of time, all going to take ten minutes. You know about how that worked out. But my first statement when I got up was, self-control is an oxymoron. I said, if we had self-control, we wouldn't need God. We don't have self-control. The only way we can have self-control is if the Spirit controls us. If the Holy Spirit in us protects us, guides us, keeps us from sin, forgives us, cleanses us, keeps us going, it's the Holy Spirit. And self-control, that's just an oxymoron. Self-control can only be possible through the relationship we have with God. But we all have that. If we've been saved, the Holy Spirit lives in you. And I've told you this before, but when I was a young pastor and I was dealing a lot with teenagers, I used to ask them, would your day be any different if I was sitting in the back seat? How you conducted your day, would that make any difference? Oh, they always laughed. Hey, God's always there. You don't have to worry about me being in the back seat, but you better know that God's there. God knows what you're doing. And none of us deserve anything God gives to us. We don't need justice. We need mercy. Because we're all guilty of sin. And we all rebel against the Holy Spirit. And Paul's teaching is just an expression of that. And that's why Paul is dealing with it. Even as early as a first-generation church false theresy was being taught and encouraged in these churches on Crete. And by the way, that's still true today. The greatest threat to the church is not a lost world. The greatest threat to the church is the membership of the church. Example. On our very best day as Southern Baptists, 15 now million people we claim to be Southern Baptists. On our best day, on our best day, less than 4 million people are in church. On our best day. The average church member now attends church maybe once every three weeks. Now, thank God we don't. We're here every Sunday. But the point is that it's like America. America is not likely to be destroyed by somebody's atomic bomb. We may well be destroyed by the apathy and indifference and the sinfulness of the nation within. And the same is true of the church. Dr. Christopher used to say Christianity is only one generation away from extinction. And so the heresies that dull our sense of responsibility to be obedient to God are very dangerous. And Paul says you must deal with them quickly. It's necessary to silence them. Don't give them liberty. Spread the heresy. That's why whole families are being destroyed because of the heresy. And it would be easier in that church than in most today because most of the churches met in homes on Crete. They didn't have any church buildings. Not at first. And so you can see how whole families could be impacted by the heresy. So he is very adamant that you must act quickly and sharply. Silence those who are teaching heresy. And it just is an aside. Anything that weakens the home weakens the church. And that's another reason Paul's concerned about this. Because if you could destroy the home, you could destroy the church. And we're seeing that today. The church today is, in general, is apathetic. I've preached in well over 1,000 churches in the last 50 years. Most churches are apathetic. Most churches are fighting over something. It's like coming here is like a breath of fresh air every week. We're not fighting over anything. We're not fussing about anything inconsequential. We do love each other. And we grieve when one another is in pain or hurts. Every one of us is impacted by every other one of us and how we're faring, what we need. The church has to be a healthy, healing body. I said back during our 120th anniversary, I think our church today is healthier than it's ever been. Is it larger than it's ever been? Not necessarily. But it's healthier. And I'm grateful for that. And Paul does not want the churches on Crete to, because of the heresy and the refusal to deal with the heresy in those churches, to fall into chaos and division. And so that's why he's so adamant about it. Most of the unhappiness and dysfunction in our churches is because of heretical half-truths that deify man and minimize God. We sometimes think we know more than God does. Again, we want to help God out. We're not mean. We're not disrespectful. Surely there's something we can do. God says, well, yeah, you can be obedient. You can be obedient. We live in a day of tolerance and open-mindedness. We've become open to so many extreme concepts that many of our churches in the land have become obscure, shallow, meaningless in our message. The great sin of Thyatira that Jesus convicted the church of Thyatira about was that because they tolerated heresy. Heresy is not going to produce anything good. It was not heresy that put you to England. It was the gospel. And Paul is so adamant about this. But let me put it in one sentence. When you're a believer, Jesus is either Lord of all or he's not Lord at all. One of the great preachers up in New England, I never can remember whether it was Wilbur Chapman or who it was, said, you can say no, Lord, but you can't say no, Lord. In other words, you may tell him no, but you can't call him Lord and say no. If he's Lord, he's Lord of all. And that's really what Paul is fighting for here because he sees the poison that's infecting the churches, and he knows what will happen. Nothing good will come from it. And in verse 13, he calls for decisive action against these church leaders. He says, rebuke them sharply. That word is a strong command. It means it's severity by cutting them off. They would understand this, but he wouldn't soft-pedal his message. I mean, he was very specific. He knew exactly what to say, and they knew what he was saying. He called their sin by its right name, and he would not compromise that divine judgment was coming to the heretics. He's talking to the false teachers now. They knew what they were doing, and they needed to be rebuked sharply. You know, there are two great sins that can be faced that are very, very extreme. One is called the unpardonable sin. The other is called the sin unto death. Now, let me just say quickly, if you don't know if you've committed either one of those you haven't, you would know it if you'd done that because both of them require a deliberate choice against the truth that you already know. Now, Caroline and I, our first church was near Texas A&M. Gig them. We love the Aggies. When I was in Baylor, Baylor's student body was about 5,000, and A&M's was 5,000. Everybody at A&M was in the Corps, and we fell in love with the Aggies, the most polite campus and students I ever saw. I'm laughing because I can't remember what I was going to say. I hate to get to that place where I can't remember what I was going to say. Anyway, they tell a story down there of the son that came home from A&M and told his daddy, he said, you need to do this and this and this and this out here on our farm. And dad said, oh, I already know to do more than I'm doing. So the sin unto death and the unpardonable sin are sins against knowledge. You know better. You know the truth. But you do it anyway. You defy God. You shake your fist in the face of God. And in case of the unpardonable sin, God will finally reach a place where He says, okay, that's what you want, that's what you get. And He'll leave you alone. And sin unto death, I believe, is a sin that a believer can commit, and if he refuses to repent, God will either kill him or increase the circumstances of tragedy that he has experienced for the rest of his life. I believe David committed the sin unto death. Absalom rebelled against him. And now Absalom came back to town and would be reconciled with David. David refused to see him. And David knew better, but he refused to see him. Would not forgive him. That's the sin unto death. But it's a choice. And these false teachers were making a choice against knowledge. They knew better. And yet they were teaching all of this tragedy, false doctrine. So God has no patience for mixing anything with the gospel. The message of the gospel is that God is always reaching out to us, and together we will build healthy lives and homes and churches and communities, and we need to combat heresy sternly and lovingly to lead the heretics to sound faith. The chapter concludes with verses 15 and 16. That's interesting. To the pure, everything is pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure. Now he's described two people. To the pure, everything is pure. Meaning, if you are a pure person, you look for purity. You see the best in things. If you're not a person who is pure, then he uses two words to describe you. Defiled and unbelieving. Nothing is pure to that person. Nothing is pure to that person. The heresy that was rampaging through Crete needed to be dealt with. They had great stress upon the churches, and various rituals of the Jews were being imposed upon the church, and the people on Crete were meticulous about ceremonial purity in their worship, but they were indifferent to their own personal purity. And Paul insists, this is the essence of this passage, that what you believe in your heart is going to be demonstrated in how you live your life. The word pure there means clean. Purity refers to those persons who are pure by virtue of their faith alone. And we see this because he compares the pure with the defiled and the unbelieving. So you have two pictures here. He's not speaking of a purity that we can attain. We can't do anything to be pure. We have to trust him. We have to receive his purity. That's what getting saved is. He who knew no sin became sin for us, so that we who knew no righteousness could be made the righteousness of God in him. It's only when we're judged righteous that we have purity, and that's because it's God's purity that he has given to us. And the point is that there is a change in character when you get saved, a change in heart. Whenever your life does not measure up to what God requires, the Holy Spirit will bring you conviction and repentance and cleansing is what he seeks to lead you to practice. We move toward purity. That doesn't mean we'll never sin again. But when we do sin, the Holy Spirit will convict us. You can't sin and get away with it. If you can sin and it doesn't make any difference and you don't care, then the Holy Spirit is not living in you. He's not accusing you. I'm just telling you, if the Holy Spirit lived in you, he wouldn't let you get away with it. And that's what Paul is trying to say here. I read again yesterday in Genesis chapter 4 verse 7 when Cain is just about to kill Abel. In Genesis 4-7, God says in talking to Cain that sin crouches outside your door. John R. Rice, some of you remember John R. Rice, the great independent Baptist preacher. He wrote a sermon on that verse I think he called Chased by a Wild Animal. And the point is, what that Genesis means is every time you step outside your door, Satan's right there waiting to get you. We need the Holy Spirit in us or we will succumb to all kinds of evil. And I've told you before, one of the best days and also one of the most painful days was the day God showed me that there's no sin I would not commit. I didn't believe that. I was saved when I was five years old. Never got arrested, never smoked, never had sex, never robbed a bank, never was in jail. I was just a square all my life. But we all are sinners. And when we're saved, we know better. So He doesn't say, I demand perfection out of you, but He puts Himself in us so we'll be convicted and can repent. And through our repentance, God in His grace will forgive us and it's just like we never sinned. Justification is just like you never sinned. Only God could do that. Only God could do that. Well, time is up. Let me just read these last two verses. To the pure, everything is pure. Others, the one who is pure, looks for purity. But to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure. I can't imagine anything worse than that. A person's conscience is so seared that he doesn't see anything but vulgar and repulsive things. And that's what sin does to us. It marks us. It stains our lives. It corrupts our hearts and souls. It destroys everything it touches. And yet thanks be to God, the Holy Spirit living within us, convicts us, brings us again to repentance, and provides God's forgiveness. And we are justified, not by our actions or our deeds, but by the grace of God. Well, I will say, you might ask, how does a person get the place that these false teachers do? Well, he mentions in the last verse that they are disobedient, detestable, disobedient, and unfit for any good work. They lack faith. They disbelieve. They don't believe anymore. And the Holy Spirit will bring them. They're praying. I think Paul is delivering this with a firm but a compassionate heart that they might be brought to faith in God, to a right relationship with God. But heresy is something that we cannot tolerate. But we must treat those who get involved in this with tenderness because God loves them and God wants to save them. And it's more than having an intellectual belief about God, but a heart knowledge of God. And I like what my former Baylor Seminary classmate, Oscar Thompson, said that John quoted today, that we, gosh, what did he say? What did he say, Jack? Relationship. Relationship, yeah. My mind's not there today. I think that the most important word in the world is relationship. And I believe that we need to realize that our faith is not a faith in a system. It's not faith even in the Bible. It's faith in a person. And the Christian walk is not adhering to certain steps, one, two, three, and then you come to four. No, our faith in God is based on our relationship with God. He knows us completely. And he loves us anyway in spite of it. The day God showed me that, I wept for a week. Didn't eat for a week because it had so shattered who I thought I was. I would never do that. I mean, I never smoked a cigarette. I mean, I've been a good guy. But the truth is we can't compare ourselves with anybody else. We compare ourselves with Jesus Christ. That's our pattern. And that's why John, I think 1 John 3 said that we will see him as he is and we will be like him. That's our goal. The heretics were saying, no, you can battle it quickly. Gnosticism taught that the body was all sinful and the spirit was all holy. But they never met. You never, the body and the spirit. So what you believed in your spirit, what your spirit, what your conviction in spirit was, didn't make any difference in how you lived. So there is immorality and all kinds of vice and irreputable things because the Gnostics believed they never come together. So you can't get your spirit and body together. Your body is one thing, your spirit is something else. So live up, eat, drink, and be merry, but tomorrow we die. And let the body go do what it wants to do. Well, that's just pure heresy. And again, if you believe in Christ, if he's in your heart, then you can't live like the devil and get away with it. I'll just stop there. Father, thank you for the truth that you have given to us through your messages that have impacted our lives. Each one of us, in our own way, in our own time, in our own place, met you, and Lord, we love you and we adore you because we have a relationship with you. We know that you want what's best for us, and we thank you that we do not know what's best for ourselves, but you do. So we trust you. Lead us and guide us and be yourself through us. I pray in Jesus' name, amen.