Faith and Knowledge

Three years ago we had this service to celebrate how God had provided us with our building in Osborne Road. And that taught us that it would be good every year to take stock of what God is doing, and celebrate. After all, buildings are just like the set for a play; what matters is the action. And as the presentation earlier reminded us, the action has been wonderful. For yet another year, God has been bringing his people to faith, growing his people in faith and keeping his people through circumstances that could hardly have been more faith-testing. And those individual stories could have been multiplied: we could have made a feature film.

But it’s also been another remarkable year for us corporately, because just as the Lord put 3 Osborne Road on our plate, so this year he’s put the Gateshead church-plant on it. The progress that’s made is cause for celebration. And it ties in with our new evening sermon series. Because over five Sundays, starting tonight, we’re preaching through a book written to someone in the middle of planting a church. That someone was Titus, so would you turn in the Bibles to Titus 1.


BACKGROUND TO TITUS

Who is writing to whom, and why? Well, look at v1:

1 Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ… (v1)

That’s who it’s from – the apostle Paul. Then look down to v4:

4 To Titus, my true son in our common faith:Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Saviour.5 The reason I left you in Crete was that you might straighten out what was left unfinished and appoint elders in every town, as I directed you. (vv4-5)

So Paul and Titus had gone to the island of Crete, they’d preached the gospel, people had come to faith in Christ and a church was born. Paul had then moved on and left Titus to sort out the leadership of the church. And it faced two challenges that any church faces.

One challenge was the ‘internal challenge’ of not losing the gospel. Have a look down to v10:

10For there are many rebellious people, mere talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision group. 11They must be silenced, because they are ruining whole households by teaching things they ought not to teach… (v10-11)

These were Jewish people who said that in addition to faith in Jesus it was essential to keep certain parts of the OT law which in fact are no longer binding on believers. So they were basically adding to the gospel, making something essential for salvation that isn’t. It would be like a group today saying, You must be baptised by full immersion or you’re not really saved.’ That’s the internal challenge: not losing the gospel - not adding to it; not subtracting from it.

But then there’s the ‘external challenge’ of not conforming to the culture. Have a look down to v12. Paul is describing typical Cretan culture by quoting a Cretan writer. He says, v12:

12Even one of their own prophets has said, "Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons." 13This testimony is true. (vv12-13)

The point is: Cretan culture was very, very pagan. And one of Paul’s concerns for the Christians just converted was whether they’d stand out from it and be effective witnesses for Christ (see, eg, 2.9-10) or whether they’d conform and be useless.

And those two challenges beg two questions for any church. One question is: ‘Who has the final say in this church?’ Who resolves the arguments over what is and isn’t essential; what is right and wrong teaching? That’s the issue of authority. And the other question is: ‘Will this church succeed?’ Will it actually see lives changed? Will it still be here in 10, 20, 50 years’ time? And that’s the issue of effectiveness. And those two issues – authority and effectiveness - are what the opening verses of Titus are all about.


So firstly, THE AUTHORITY OF THE APOSTLE’S WORD (or… Who has the final say?’)

So imagine you’re Titus. You’re on your own leading this new church. There’s already a group disagreeing with you, adding to the gospel and causing division (see 3.10). And with people getting converted from such a pagan background, you’re having to say some very hard things about leaving that pagan lifestyle behind. And the question is: what authority do you have to do that?

And the answer is: Titus has the authority of the apostle Paul’s word. Look at v1:

1 Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ [ie, given authority by the Lord Jesus Christ himself. Read on:] for the faith of God's elect and the knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness— 2 a faith and knowledge resting on the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time, 3 and at his appointed season he brought his word to light through the preaching entrusted to me by the command of God our Saviour…4 To Titus my true son in our common faith... (vv1-4)

So Paul’s saying he has authority from the Lord Jesus himself. And he’s writing things for Titus to say on his behalf. That’s basically what chapters 2 and 3 are. And if you look at 2.15, you’ll see that, having written a whole lot of things the church needs to hear, he tells Titus:

15These, then, are the things you should teach. Encourage and rebuke with all authority. Do not let anyone despise you. [Because you’re not standing on your own authority but on mine.] (v15)

Which begs the question: do Paul’s words really have God’s authority? Well, whether or not you believe they do depends on whether or not you believe the two Bible passages I’m about to read out. The first is Paul’s testimony in Acts 26. He’s talking about before he was a believer, when he was an arch-enemy of Christianity and was making journeys to arrest and imprison Christians for their faith:

12 "On one of these journeys I was going to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests. 13 About noon, O king [King Agrippa – see v19 – by whom he’d been given an audience], as I was on the road, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, blazing around me and my companions. 14 We all fell to the ground, and I heard a voice saying to me in Aramaic, 'Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.' 15 "Then I asked, 'Who are you, Lord?' 'I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,' the Lord replied. 16 'Now get up and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen of me and what I will show you. 17 I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them 18 to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.' 19 "So then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven. 20 First to those in Damascus, then to those in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and to the Gentiles also, I preached that they should repent and turn to God and prove their repentance by their deeds. (Acts 26.12-20)

Then here’s a similar testimony in his letter to the Galatians:

11 I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up. 12 I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ. [Ie, through that Damascus Road encounter.]13 For [ie, this is the evidence in Paul’s life that that encounter really did happen. For…] you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it. 14 I was advancing in Judaism beyond many Jews of my own age and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers. 15 But when God, who set me apart from birth and called me by his grace, was pleased 16 to reveal his Son in me [ie, on the Damascus Road] so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not consult any man, 17 nor did I go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went immediately into Arabia and later returned to Damascus. (Galatians 1.11-17)

So in that Damascus Road encounter, the Risen Lord Jesus not only brought Paul to faith – made him a Christian – but also made him an apostle. ‘Apostle’ simply means one sent with the authority of the sender, and Paul’s authority rests on the fact of that encounter.

So the picture below answers that question: who had the final say in the church in Crete? The ultimate answer is: the Lord Jesus himself – represented by the crown. But he’d given Paul (and the other apostles) the authority to teach the church what was and wasn’t the gospel and what was and wasn’t a lifestyle consistent with the gospel. So Paul then wrote with authority to Titus so that Titus could pass it on to the church in Crete. The application for us now, (on the right hand side of the picture below), is that apostolic authority hasn’t passed to people., but it’s found in their writings in the New Testament (NT), which complete the Bible. So that’s where authority lies in any church:

So what’s the application of this first point, in case that all sounds a bit theoretical? The application is that we’re to submit to the Bible as God’s Word to us. Now clearly the Bible needs first to be rightly understood: you don’t want to act on a misinterpretation. But once we’re confident we’ve understood it, we’re to say to ourselves, ‘This is God’s Word to me. It’s not take-it-or-leave-it advice.’

So how do we know if we’re really treating the Bible properly like that? Well, let me ask you some questions: Do you come to the Bible with the attitude that you’re wrong and it’s right; with the attitude that you always need correcting, but the Bible never does? Because that’s the right attitude. One useful test is to ask ourselves: is there any hard evidence of that attitude over, say, the past 3 months? Can you think of an issue where you’ve changed your mind because of the Bible? Or an area of behaviour? Or have you struggled with something in the Bible but ultimately given way to the Bible? It may be you’re struggling with something the Bible says at the moment. Maybe with a moral issue that’s close to the bone for you or family or friends – like what the Bible says on divorce and remarriage. Or you may be struggling with a belief issue, like someone who was asking me the other day why God chooses to bring some people to faith and not others – and said she found it hard to believe in a God like that. In those moments – which are not easy - we need to keep trusting that God is wise and good, even when at a certain point we’re tempted to think he’s not. And in those moments we also need to be wary of avoiding the parts of the Bible we’re finding difficult. And we need to be wary of only talking them over with people who’ll say what we want to hear. And that can be a real struggle.

So we’re to submit to the Bible as we’re on the receiving end of it. But we’re also to stand on the authority of the Bible whenever we’re on the ministering-it-to-others end of it – whether that’s giving talks, leading groups, in 1-to-1’s, etc.

So, whenever you’re ministering the Bible to others, do stand unapologetically on its authority. Eg, if in your small group someone’s unwilling to accept something that the Bible does clearly say, then stand unapologetically on its authority. You might want to say, ‘I don’t find this easy to understand and accept, myself,’ but surely you’ll also want to say, ‘But it’s clearly what the Bible is saying, and so I accept it.’ Pass the buck of authority to the Bible. And never undermine its authority. Someone said to me that a while ago the leader of their small group said, ‘I disagree with Paul on this point. I think he’s too black and white.’ But that’s not the right attitude or the right model of attitude to others. Does the Bible need correcting by you, or do you need correcting by the Bible? Where does authority lie?

So that’s the first thing – the authority of the apostle’s word. That answers the question, ‘Who has the final say?’ But then there’s that second question for any church – old or new: ‘Will it succeed?’ Ie, will it effectively live out God’s purpose for his church? So,


Second, THE EFFECT OF THE APOSTLE’S WORD (or… ‘Will this church succeed?’)

Paul had already left Crete. Titus was due to leave soon (see 3.12). Which might have left some people wondering, ‘Will this new church succeed?’ Will it grow? Will it survive? Will it still be there in 10, 20, 50 years?

I’ve recently been reading a book called Nine Marks of a Healthy Church. And the appendix gives a list of books about what people see as essential for church growth. Let me read you some of the titles of those books: 12 Keys to an Effective Church. 7 Steps to Transform Your Church. 8 Characteristics of Highly Effective Churches. And the list includes Rick Warren’s book, The Purpose Driven Church, which encourages people to plan their church life around what he sees as God’s 5 purposes for the local church.

And when you compare all the ingredients those books come up with for church growth - the 12, the 7, the 8, the 5, the 9 – they all agree on the one absolute essential. And that is: of church life. And it’s just as well they agree on that, because otherwise they’d be out of step with what Paul says in these opening verses. Let me read out vv1-3 again:
1 Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ [that’s his source of authority; now, what effect is he working for in the churches? Read on...] for the faith of God's elect and the knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness— 2 a faith and knowledge resting on the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time, 3 and at his appointed season he brought his word to light through the preaching entrusted to me by the command of God our Saviour… (vv1-3)
So as well as telling us about his authority, these verses tell us about Paul’s two aims and the one absolute essential for achieving them. The aims are in v1, where he says he’s working:

for the faith of God's elect and the knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness... (v1)

So on the one hand, he’s aiming for the faith of God’s elect. That includes people coming to faith. And it includes people growing in faith – and being protected in faith from wrong teaching like what this circumcision group were saying. Which is why a church can never ‘just preach the gospel.’ There’s always wrong thinking in the world and in the church that we need to be taught to spot and not swallow.

And then on the other hand, in v1, Paul’s aiming for ‘the knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness’. And ‘godliness’ is his word for living a life worthy of God in the eyes of the non-Christian world – lives that will be good adverts for the gospel (see, eg, 2.9-10)

So faith and godliness were Paul’s two fundamental aims, and I take it they should be ours. And in vv2-3, he tells us the one absolute essential for achieving them. And that one thing is the gospel. V2:

2 a faith and knowledge resting on [ie depending on, resulting from] the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time, 3 and at his appointed season he brought his word to light through the preaching entrusted to me by the command of God our Saviour… (vv2-3)

So have a look at the picture below.

Imagine building up the church is like building a wall – that’s what that picture tries to illustrate. And Paul’s aims are faith – the top left-hand brick in that wall – and godliness – the top right-hand brick. But they rest on the bottom brick of ‘the hope of eternal life’ – ie, the certain future of being with God in a new creation beyond this life. And in v2 Paul says that future is what God ‘promised before the beginning of time’ (so that must mean a promise he made to himself, since no-one else was around to hear it), but then, v3, at his appointed time he ‘brought’ that promise ‘to light’. And I take it he did that by sending the Lord Jesus to die for our forgiveness and to rise from the dead, to open the door of heaven to us, where he is now reigning and from where he’ll return to wrap up history at the end of time. And I’ve tried to picture all that in that bottom ‘brick’ in my picture. And that is the gospel in a nutshell, which Paul says is the absolute essential if we want to see people coming to faith, growing in faith, protected in faith, and being godly.

So without keeping the gospel central, we won’t see people coming to faith. I know that sounds almost too obvious to say, but it needs saying because in all churches the gospel is easily displaced. There are so many other things rightly on our agenda – so many things that need teaching about, so many Christians who need looking after – that it can be embarrassing for a church to stop and ask, ‘How many people have come into contact with the gospel for the first time through us this year?’ One of the dangers of an older church is that you can carry on without evangelising. But your numbers stay the same, you all gradually get older and die off until the last person is left with no-one to take his or her funeral. Whereas one of the great advantages of a new church is that it can only live by evangelism (which, of course, is how all churches, old and new, are meant to live). And it’s often said that church plants and newer churches are more active in sharing the gospel than older churches. So I guess one of the blessings of watching the church plant unfold (God-willing) will be the challenge it presents to its ‘mother’ church. I guess it’ll make us ask, ‘Why aren’t we doing more evangelistic events like that?’ It’ll be very good for us.

So without keeping the gospel central, we won’t see people coming to faith. And nor will we see people growing in faith. Because it’s not just non-Christians who need the gospel kept central, but Christians, too. It’s easy to think that the gospel is what brings you to faith – that’s ‘phase 1’. And then that something else helps you grow on from there – in ‘phase 2’. Now clearly, once you’ve come to faith you need to know a lot more; you need to work out the implications of Jesus being Lord over every area of your life – over your marriage, your money, your work, your time, your studies, your decisions and so on and so on. So it’s no wonder there’s more in the Bible than the gospel in a nutshell. But you never grow out of the gospel. Grasping the gospel more deeply, more confidently, is absolutely essential to carrying on walking by faith through life’s ups and downs – again, just as we were hearing in the presentation.

Because there are two things which, unless we really keep hold of the gospel, can stop us in our tracks.

One is our ongoing sinfulness, which for most Christians often makes them ask, ‘Can God really still love me?’ – given the way I fail him (which we’ll be doing to our dying day). And only the gospel can answer that for us with a confident ‘Yes’ - as we look back along that time-line in the picture to the cross, where the Lord Jesus anticipated every sin you’d ever commit and paid for them all. So can I encourage us to keep doing the old, old thing of trusting the gospel in the face of our sinfulness?

The other thing which can stop us in our tracks is suffering. Just as sin makes us the ask the question, ‘Can God still love me, given the way I fail him?’, so suffering makes us ask, ‘Does God still love me? Surely what’s happening to me, or to the people I care for, says he doesn’t?’ And again, only the gospel can answer that for us. Because only the gospel makes us look back to the cross and say, ‘There is the evidence that God loves me – I can’t read God’s love for me off my circumstances, because they can be so perplexing and ambiguous. But I can and need to read God’s love for me off the cross.’ And only the gospel makes us look forward to that hope of eternal life, when all struggles will be over and all present suffering will be utterly outweighed by what we’re enjoying then. Ultimately only the gospel can stabilise our faith in the face of life’s downs. So can I encourage us to keep doing the old, old thing of trusting the gospel in the face of our suffering?

And finally, without the gospel we won’t see any godliness. It’s easy to think that godliness comes about simply by being told how we ought to live – told what to do and what to stop doing. But both the Bible and experience teach us that that isn’t true. All of us have sat through sermons (I’ve doubtless preached some) that have simply called on us to repent – to stop doing this, this and this, and to start doing that, that and that. And we’ve been left guilty, convicted, challenged – but unchanged. Not for a moment am I saying we don’t need to be taught God’s will for our lives – what is obedience and what is disobedience. But what Paul is saying here is that that alone is not the knowledge that changes us. The godliness of v1 rests, like faith, on the gospel of vv2-3. The ‘knowledge of the truth’ that leads to godliness is the knowledge of the gospel – of God’s saving grace to us. And we’ll see that later in this series in 2.11:

11 For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. 12 It teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives… (2.11-12)

Of course we need to be told what godliness looks like – what is disobedience and what is obedience, what pleases the Lord and what doesn’t. But only the gospel will motivate us to obey. As someone put it, ‘All godliness is a response to grace.’


So that’s the first part of Titus. It’s about who has the final say in any church – to which the answer is: the authority of God’s Word, the Bible. And it’s about how the church can be healthy and grow – to which the answer is that those are the effects of God’s Word, which must therefore be kept central. Because although many other things are important – from crèches to catering, from paperwork to planning, from buildings to baby groups, from music to management – unless the Word of God is kept central - which in turn keeps the gospel central - there may be activity, but there will be no true faith, no real godliness, and no-one saved for eternal life.