WHO IS “THEM”?
Titus 3:1-3 (KJV)
Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work,
To speak evil of no man, to be no brawlers, but gentle, shewing all meekness unto all men.
For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.
“They tell us” that there are approximately the same number of people on the earth today as when the Flood happened in Noah’s world.
“They tell us” that the polar ice caps are shrinking at an alarming rate.
“They tell us” that people who lived in the “fertile crescent” ate mostly grains.
“They tell us” that dinosaurs became extinct before the evolution of man.
I just made up a bunch of “they tell us” statements present to you that all-important question, “Who is they?”
Our passage tonight does not have a “they” in it. But it does have a “them.”
The apostle taught Titus
“Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work,…”
I can see someone asking the question, “Who is them?”
It might seem like a trivial question but it has merit because it goes to the preacher’s responsibility and reach.
John Wesley once said, “The world is my parish.”
In Lester Roloff’s famous sermon, “Dr. Law and Dr. Grace”[1]He begins the message by saying,
“If I could use the Empire State Building for my pulpit and somebody would build for me a public address system that would reach around the world so that I could have nearly three billion people for my audience and God would grant me the wisdom or sufficient interpreters to speak every language and dialect and I could only bring one message, it would be this message of “Dr. Law and Dr. Grace,” the greatest doctors that ever lived. Satan has done a good job confusing the people about the plan of salvation. Salvation is not a foot race between man and the devil, but it is the gift of God through the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Every preacher desires to reach an ever-expanding and increasingly large number.
It’s funny to me,
A pastor used to preaching to 300 might say something like, “In a crowd this size, no doubt someone is unsaved.”
Another preacher will look into a congregation of perhaps 30 people and call that number “A crowd.”
I think we preachers like the word “crowd.”
It sounds like a big number without defining how big is big.
So, a group of pastors can get together; one pastors a church of 1000, another pastors a church of 500 and another pastors a church of 100 while still another pastors a church of 50, and each one of them can speak about the crowds that came to church last Sunday.
In some sense, every preacher – every congregation is responsible for not only their membership but their community and indeed, because of the Great Commission, the world.
But when the Holy Spirit told Apostle Paul to tell Titus, “Put them in mind…” did he mean by that Titus was to preach this same message to all the world in his day?
I want to suggest to you that by them, God did not mean.
I. THE CRETIANS
Titus 1:12-13 (KJV)
One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said, The Cretians are alway liars, evil beasts, slow bellies.
This witness is true. Wherefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith;
Titus did have a ministry to the Cretians.
· By establishing churches in every town
· By training and ordaining preachers for those churches
· By faithfully pastoring his congregation and
· By preaching against sin
He would see some of them saved, baptized and added to the church.
It’s nice when a lost man:
· Is honest in his business
· Obeys the laws of his land
· Deals with other fairly and
· Behaves is a good manner
Around 1869 a Baptist preacher by the name of Russell Conwell prepared a message he called “Acres of Diamonds.” It became a huge success for him, he traveled for the next 20 decades and delivered the message over 6,152 around the world.
One paragraph of the message reads, “I say that you ought to get rich, and it is your duty to get rich ... The men who get rich may be the most honest men you find in the community. Let me say here clearly ... ninety-eight out of one hundred of the rich men of America are honest. That is why they are rich. That is why they are trusted with money. That is why they carry on great enterprises and find plenty of people to work with them. It is because they are honest men. ... I sympathize with the poor, but the number of poor who are to be sympathized with is very small. To sympathize with a man whom God has punished for his sins ... is to do wrong. ... Let us remember there is not a poor person in the United States who was not made poor by his own shortcomings…”[2]
The gist of the message was that Christians, especially in America, ought to get rich so they can use that money to change the world for good.
This message, according to some historians,[3]radically changed the focus of Christianity in the United States. The result was the coming of the “social gospel.”[4]
A few years ago I was in an optometrist’s office getting new glasses. The girl who was fitting my glasses saw that I was a pastor and asked if we were a missions-minded church. I said that we were. She excitedly began telling me about all the missions work she had done:
· Feeding the poor at a rescue mission
· Collecting clothing for the homeless
· Building a house with habitat for humanity
The average church, so-called, in America believes that is missions.
I’m telling you, missions is what Paul did and what Paul taught Titus to do or it is not missions at all.
Missions is:
· Winning lost souls
· Planting New Testament Baptist Churches
· Training men to pastor those churches and
· Ordaining them as the pastors of those churches
A church might have a ministry to the homeless and lovingly reach out to the hungry.
But that is not missions.
The “them” of Titus 3:1 is not the lost and wicked Cretians.
Further, by them, God did not mean
II. THEY OF THE CIRCUMCISION
Titus 1:10-14 (KJV)
For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, specially they of the circumcision:
Whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre's sake.
One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said, The Cretians are alway liars, evil beasts, slow bellies.
This witness is true. Wherefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith;
Not giving heed to Jewish fables, and commandments of men, that turn from the truth.
I know that we have covered this in past messages, but it is necessary for the context of the passage we are considering right now.
There were in the Isle of Crete, and for that matter over much of the “known world” of the time, Jews that were called “the diaspora” or dispersed Jews.
They had scattered around the Roman world
· Some in the days of the Babylonian captivity
· Some during the oppression of the Romans in Israel
In many places, they had Jewish synagogues.
In some place,s there weren’t enough of them to have a synagogue, but they would still gather, how many so-ever there were of them.[5]
We know that it was Paul’s custom to approach these groups of Jews with the gospel of Jesus Christ as often as he found them.
We also know that, most of the time when trouble came, it was because of the Jews.
Later, the trouble came from Jews who professed to be Christians but insisted that real Christians had to keep the Jewish traditions in order to be right with God.
Paul told Titus that “their mouths must be stopped.”
I’ve already preached that passage and I do not want to do that again.
But I do want to say this; the “them” of Titus 3:1 is not the “they” of Titus 1:10.
The ministry of the New Testament Baptist preacher is not that of correcting all the false religions around him.
I had a preacher friend many years ago who started a Baptist church in Vermont somewhere.
He said that, while he pastored that church he would go visit the Catholic priest and pester him about being unsaved.
The priest needs to hear the gospel as much as anyone, but the work of the preacher is not to focus on false churches but to focus on winning souls and baptizing them into a Scriptural church.
When Anita and I moved to Denver to go to Bible college, we visited an independent Baptist church in Denver called South Sheridan Baptist.
· Of course they had visitor’s card and we filled them out and
· Of course they had someone come to visit us that next Thursday night.[6]
They guy who came was an older gentleman.
We invited him into our travel trailer that was going to be our home while I went to Bible College and he proceeded to tell me what was wrong with, I think, every other Independent Baptist Church in Denver.
South Sheridan Baptist Church’s slogan was “The difference is Worth the Drive.”
I guess they meant it.
The focus of their visitation program was the difference between them and every other church.
We don’t need to be that way.
We just need to walk holy before the Lord.
He will make sure people can tell the difference between us and the false religions around us.
By them, God
Did not mean the lost Cretians and God
Did not mean the Circumcision
By them, God meant
III. THE CHURCH TITUS PASTORED
The best way to identify them might be
Titus 2:2-6 (KJV)
That the aged men be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith, in charity, in patience.
The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things;
That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children,
To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.
Young men likewise exhort to be sober minded.
What I am saying is that the focus of the ministry, so far as the preaching is concerned, is on the people in the congregation and not on the people outside of it.
· We ought to have outreach
· We ought to have visitation
· We ought to have missions
But preaching ought to be geared to help the people who are here to hear it and not those we wished were here to hear it.
2 Chronicles 7:14 (KJV)
If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.
The people most likely to bring revival into our land
Are sitting right here right now.
The people most likely to see God’s blessings restored to this country
Are sitting right here right now.
The people most likely to bring righteousness back to our neighborhoods
Are sitting right here right now.
Someone once challenged D.L. Moody by saying, “The world has yet to see what God would do with one Christian wholly surrendered to Him.”
You will never know what God might
· Do in your life
· Do in your family
· Do in your occupation
· Do in your neighborhood
· Do in your country
If you surrendered to God, unless you surrender to God.
You see, we have this idea that all of the problems in our world are the fault of all of the people in our world.
God sees it differently.
God says that all of the problems in our world are the fault of our lack of surrender.
· Our lack of holiness
· Our lack of prayer
· Our lack of humility
· Our lack of repentance
The “them” of Titus 3:1
Is you.
[1]At one time I had this sermon memorized.
[4]We change the world by being good. By doing good. And by organizing efforts of good.
[5]This was apparently the case in Philippi where Paul did not find a synagogue but only a few women who met by the riverside on the Sabbath. Acts 16:13 (KJV)
And on the sabbath we went out of the city by a river side, where prayer was wont to be made; and we sat down, and spake unto the women which resorted thither.
[6]We didn’t go to visitation that night so that we could meet with someone from the church at our place.
