Our Need for Discernment

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Well, I am a fan of something called a kolache. And if you’ve never had one of those, I feel very sorry for you. But if you’re not familiar with them, they are a pastry that was invented, I guess, in Czechoslovakia.

And I think they’re shaped kind of like an inflatable raft. And then they’re filled with fruit or cream cheese or something like that and dusted usually with some powdered sugar. and I’m not hinting for some to show up because now I’m being very careful about how much sugar I eat and when and so if a dozen of those show up and I’m not expecting them, I’ll just be sad.

But they’re one of my favorite things and where we were in Seminole, we were 15 miles from Prague, which is where they had the kolache festival. And so if I could time it just right when I’d come back from the doctor’s office, I could swing through and get a dozen kolaches and bring home. But I love these things. Now, they’re hard to find unless you’re near Prague or one of the towns in Texas where they have a large Czech population.

Right after Charla and I got married, one of the donut shops down the street from us in Moore started advertising that they sold kolaches. And I went into like a sugar-induced frenzy when I saw that sign. I said, I’ve got to go get some kolaches.

And so the next day I had an opportunity. I went in there. I got up early one morning.

and went down there before the kids got up because I was going to bring some kolaches home for breakfast. And I walked in there and I said, where are your kolaches? And they said, they’re right there. I said, those aren’t kolaches.

Yes, they are. No, those are not. I’ve been to Prague.

Those are not kolaches. All right. They’re these little sausage rolls.

They look like pigs in a blanket on steroids. and I’ve had them before they’re all right but they’re not kolaches they’re they’re called klobosnicks but I discovered that for some reason outside of Prague here in Oklahoma people think it’s perfectly acceptable to label these things as kolaches again they’re they’re not bad they’re just not kolaches but they label these things as kolaches and market them you know accordingly and, you know, nobody at the State Department of Commerce wants to do anything about the false advertising that gets me in their one kolaches. And I learned really quickly that not everything that calls itself a kolache is a kolache.

Most of them are klobosnicks. Some of you are going to go home from church. Somebody’s going to say, what did you learn at church this weekend?

I learned those sausage rolls are not kolaches, they’re klobosnicks. It’s a big issue for me. If I ever run for governor or something, that’s going to be part of my platform.

that you have to label those correctly. Anyway, not everything that calls itself a kolache is a kolache. And by the same token, not everybody that calls themselves a teacher of God’s word is in fact a teacher of God’s word.

Just like there are sausage rolls marketing themselves as pastries, there are false teachers out there who market themselves as teachers of God’s word. Nobody told me this when I was a kid. And when I was a kid, I think I told you all at the Q&A when I came and gave you a call that I was sort of an odd kid.

Y’all are probably surprised by that. But when God called me to preach, I was the only one surprised because people could see it from the time I was four or five. But I would come home with, you know, my parents would bring me home from church after Sunday.

And I want to listen to some more preaching. So I turn on the preaching station on TV. And one day I went screaming out to my parents room.

It had to be five or six. Went screaming out to their room. He’s killing them.

He’s killing them. My parents were thinking, what kind of violent thing am I watching on television? What’s happened?

They come in there and it was a faith healer. Nobody had told me that there were these guys that would hit you or smack you with their jacket or something like that. And I learned over the years that on this station, this station in particular that was on in Oklahoma City, Not everybody who was on there claiming to be a teacher of God’s word was on the up and up.

And things haven’t changed in the 25 years or so, 30 years since that happened. Things haven’t really changed in the 2,000 years since Paul addressed the problem when talking to Titus. On Sunday nights, I’ve been taking you through this series of the first part of the book of Titus about building a strong church.

And one of the things that Paul pointed out to Titus and to the believers on Crete that was going to be necessary as part of a strong church was the ability to recognize that there are false teachers out there, to be able to recognize them when you see them and to call them out, to recognize that not everybody who says, hey, I’m a teacher of God’s word, really is a teacher of God’s word as they claim. So if you would, turn with me this evening to Titus chapter 1. And we’re going to look at seven verses tonight in Titus chapter 1, starting in verse 10.

and if you would, if you’re able to, would you stand with me as we read from God’s word together? Titus chapter 1 starting in verse 10. It says, for there are many insubordinate, both idle talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole households, teaching things which they ought not for the sake of dishonest gain.

One of them, a prophet of their own, said, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons. This testimony is true. Therefore, rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in the faith, not giving heed to Jewish fables and commandments of men who turn from the truth.

To the pure, all things are pure. But to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure. But even their mind and conscience are defiled.

They profess to know God, but in works they deny him, being abominable, disobedient, and disqualified for every good work. Thank you. You may be seated.

So this passage that we’re looking at tonight, as we continue on with this idea of building a strong church and what it was going to take for the people in Crete to be able to do that, we need to recognize that there seemed to have been two serious dangers to the health of the churches in Crete, two big dangers, two twin dangers that they faced. One was the cultural influence of the pagan Greeks, and we talked about that a little bit two weeks ago on Sunday night, or I talked about it, when he was talking about the need for the church leadership to differentiate itself, to separate itself away from that pagan culture, and to be driven by the word of God, not by what culture says was normal or okay.

The other danger to the church was the religious influence of these these Jewish mystics, these people who came from a Jewish background and were sort of taking Old Testament things and putting their own spin on it and setting up systems of rules that if you just live by my system of rules, you’ll be all right. God will love you more. We looked at the pagan aspect of it two weeks ago.

Tonight, we’re going to see how the churches were called to oppose these false teachers on the other side, because what they were doing was calling the Christians to pursue their own godliness through religious exercises and religious philosophies and religious rituals rather than through Christ, which is the only place we’re going to find any spiritual goodness in ourself is through what Christ does in us. And so Paul alerted them to the presence of these false teachers and bad influences that he said we’re going to be a danger to the church. He says in verse 10, there are many insubordinate, both idle talkers and deceivers.

He says, not only are there these bad influences out there, we can’t keep our heads buried in the sand and pretend that everybody who says they’re a teacher of God’s word really is. We have to acknowledge that there are out there wolves in sheep’s clothing, but he also says there are many. It’s not just one or two.

He doesn’t say it’s a majority. He doesn’t name a number, but he just says there are many. In other words, we’ve got to be on guard.

We’ve got to recognize that this is a very real threat to the truth and to those who believe the truth. Not everyone who claims to be a Christian is someone you should listen to. I remember years ago, the first church I pastored, it’s a very small church, but we had occasionally people from the neighborhood would come in and we loved that.

But we would try to lead them to Christ, try to disciple them as we could. But I remember this one couple coming in and we were very excited because she was involved in music and he was a preacher and we thought, well, this is great. You know, they’ll be a great addition to our church until we started talking to them a little more.

And he believed in Jesus all right, but then he also had some interesting theories about aliens in the Bible and all sorts of bizarre things. Okay, not everybody who claims to be a teacher of the gospel really is. Maybe not everybody who claims to be a teacher of the gospel is even sane.

I think he might have had some other issues going on. But not everybody who claims to be a Christian is somebody you should listen to. And that was true then.

It’s true today. Be careful when you turn on so-called Christian television or so-called Christian radio. I’m not saying those things are bad across the board.

I’m just saying listen to it with your Bible open and your mind engaged and listening to the leadership of the Holy Spirit. And I’ll say that with me too. When you hear me teach, compare it to the Word of God.

If what I’m saying doesn’t line up with what the Word of God says, don’t listen to me, all right? We should be tested according to the Word of God. There are preachers, there are musicians, there are writers who claim the name of Jesus, but they’re totally opposed to the gospel.

And we need to recognize this as the threat it is. Sometimes we want to keep our heads buried in the sand and pretend it’s not happening. That’s the way in some churches.

I have never had anybody storm out visibly and vocally from a church service except for one time when I happened to be mentioning some false teachings that came out of a popular TV preacher. And I’ve told you before, I think God has designed me to be diplomatic. It’s not really my nature to go after somebody viciously or unfairly.

So rather than attacking this man, I was quoting what he had said on national television. I had the transcript. I said, here’s what he said.

Somebody got up and stormed out and said things loudly on the way out and then wanted to meet with me about it later. They were so upset that I was attacking somebody else because they wanted to pretend that we all just, you know, as long as we all love Jesus, that’s all that matters. Doctrine’s got to come into play somewhere because which Jesus you love is a matter of theology.

We’re not all talking about the same Jesus. So we can’t just pretend, oh, he didn’t say that, he didn’t believe that, he didn’t mean that. We’ve got to acknowledge, as the Bible says, that there are those out there who teach and don’t teach correctly.

Paul identified false teachers. Sometimes he named them by name. Sometimes he turned them over to the devil and said they’re going to get what’s coming to them.

Paul identified false teachers sometimes by name and he warned people to watch out for them. And I think it’s a mistake for us just out of niceness to say, but we’re going to pretend that doesn’t go on. Now the reason for the warning here, as he points out here in Titus chapter 1, the reason why he warns against false teachers is because they are so dangerous.

Now he says here in verse 10, they’re insubordinate. This means that instead of being good examples to us, instead of being people that we want to follow as they’re following God, as they’re following Christ, they are rebellious against God. You know, I listened to some of the sermons that were preached by Jim Jones before he even left for Guyana.

Some of the things that he was preaching in Indiana and in California. And I think, how did people not see it? Some of the things that this man said about God, Some of the blasphemous things this man preached just boggled the mind.

And I think, why would anybody who professes to be a Bible-believing Christian go and sit there for this and stand for this? But that, to me, is an example. When he’s putting himself up on equal par with God, that’s rebellion.

That’s insubordination. And that’s what Paul warned against. There are going to be people who, in their private lives and in their teaching, they are rebels against God. They’re not serving him.

They’re expecting him to serve them. and he said they’re dangerous because in verse 10 he says they’re both idle talkers and deceiving deceivers that in many cases they’re the things they teach are they’re empty they’re devoid of any spiritual truth or substance and they are deceptive they will actively lead you astray some sometimes you can listen to a sermon that’s not quite right but it’s just marshmallow fluff it’s not going to do you any spiritual good but it may not necessarily lead you astray either but there are some that are actively deceptive and will point you the opposite direction of the truth. And he says in verse 10, especially those of the circumcision.

Now what he’s saying here is that many, but not all of those in his day, but many of them on the island of Crete were those coming from a Jewish background and they were focused on rules that they said we’re going to bring somebody closer to God. They had reduced the gospel to a checklist of activities and said, if you just do all these things and you don’t do all these things and you get all the boxes checked, then you’ll be close to God. That’s how you have a relationship with God.

And he said that this was all for the sake of dishonest gain in verse 11. They’re teaching these things for their benefit, not for others’ benefit. One of the best ways to pick out a false teacher is whether he’s doing it for the financial gain.

Makes me nervous when I see guys raising money for their third airplane. You know, at some point you think, maybe you’re not in this for the right reasons. But he said some of these false teachers, they were doing this for the sake of dishonest gain.

So not only are you being lied to, but the flock is being fleeced at the same time. And so he’s warning against all these things. He’s saying these are dangerous.

Please understand, this is not me picking on anybody in particular. This is the Apostle Paul warning about these things because they’re dangerous. They were dangerous then, they’re dangerous now.

Because he says in verse 11, they subvert whole households teaching things which they ought not. So they’re teaching wrong things. And we need to understand, just our society as a whole needs to understand, ideas have consequences.

I think we’ve forgotten that somewhere along the line. Ideas have consequences. It’s like my generation, as numerous people in my generation are wanting to embrace Marxism, I’m thinking that’s a little idea that killed like 150 million people in the last century.

Ideas have consequences, okay? It’s not just an intellectual exercise. These things have implications in the real world.

So he says they’re teaching things that they ought not. These teachings have real world implications because he says they subverted entire households. There were large groups of people within the churches who were being led astray, whose faith was being destroyed, absolutely destroyed as a result of the ideas that these men were teaching.

So we have to be careful. We can’t think, oh, it’s just theology. Theology always has real world implications.

What we believe and teach and accept about God has real implications for the way that we live our lives. And it was destroying these people’s faith. And that’s why he comes to verse 11 and he says, whose mouths must be stopped.

So his point was that the church cannot let this plague of false teaching continue unopposed. As I’m writing out my notes, that word unopposed is very important. So I don’t want to say the church can’t let this teaching go on.

Nowhere in Scripture do we have a mandate to go out and stop people by force. All right, to go and force people to stop talking. They can say what they want, but we can and should vocally make the truth known.

Don’t just give them the ability to speak unopposed. when they begin to spread the lies, we say what the truth is as well. And he says that the danger should have been evident because he quotes one of their own Cretan writers, a man named Epimenides, who had previously said, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.

Now philosophers like to play with this and say, well, if Cretans are liars and Epimenides was from Crete, How can you believe what he said? They’re missing the point. Paul was quoting this man just to make a point that this is what the culture on the island of Crete was known for.

People who would say anything to get what they wanted. That were willing to lie, were willing to deceive, were willing to twist the truth in order for financial gain. That was sort of what Crete was known for.

You know, certain countries and certain groups of people are known for different things. As Americans, we’re known for some things. We’re known for large portions of food.

We’re known for talking loud. I’ve read where people say, you can tell an American walking through an airport anywhere because you can hear them talking. We’re also known as a very generous and giving people.

You know, there’s good things we’re known for, and there’s not so good things. The people in Crete were known for this being part of their culture, that they were willing to say or do anything to get what they wanted. And so Paul’s making that point here.

he said this is the culture you’re in you should expect it there’s this culture of deception and and what’s happening in the churches shows that that that reputation was well deserved and so he tells them in verse 14 that they shouldn’t be giving heed to Jewish fables and commandments of men who turn from the truth now these teachers were telling people again I’ve mentioned this a couple times follow my specific rules and it’ll bring you closer to God if you just listen to me and you follow my step-by-step system. By the way, 1995 a month, I’ll give you the full steps of my system. If you’ll just do everything I tell you, it’ll bring you closer to God.

That’s what he’s talking about with the Jewish fables. There were people coming from this background who were bringing their rules and their commandments of men, man-made commandments. They were teaching them as truth and they were turning people away from the truth.

So follow our specific rules, our specific steps, and you’ll be closer to God. And the way we saw this happen in the ancient world, and it sometimes still happens today, that there are these very specific rules about, well, if you want a relationship with God, you need to not eat meat, for starters, and you can’t get married, and you can’t, you know, you can’t part your hair on the left on Thursdays. And there are groups, though, that still teach this.

in order to be closer to God, you have to follow special dietary rules. And we think of that a lot of times with other religions, but there are even Christian groups or professing Christian groups operating in our own community that say part of being closer to God is follow these dietary rules. Don’t get married.

You can’t drink certain things. All sorts of things that, you know, if you practice this, and we’re not talking about things the Bible says are sin. We’re just talking about the mundane things of life.

they’ve picked out some of them and said, these things defile you. These things are impure. That’s what he’s talking about here when he says in verse 15, to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but even their mind and conscience is defiled.

So when they could look around the world, look around at the world around them and look at these mundane things in life, certain foods, and they see impurity there. Oh, that’s ungodly. Or they could look at certain activity.

You know, you can’t listen to music. And I don’t mean wicked music, just music is banded. I think of the Taliban, how they didn’t allow music in Afghanistan.

It’s ungodly. And you can pick out anything from, you can pick out anything, but these mundane aspects of life, and you see ungodliness in every aspect of it. It’s because their mind and their conscience was already defiled.

They were seeing ungodliness everywhere because the ungodliness wasn’t out there in every mundane aspect of life. the ungodliness was within them. Because he says to the pure, all things are pure.

We can go out, according to what we read this morning in the book of Acts, we can go out and eat bacon and not feel like it’s going to jeopardize our relationship with God. We can listen to music and not feel like it’s going to jeopardize our relationship with God. I remember years and years ago the movie came out, The Passion of the Christ. I don’t remember how many years, 15, 16, something like that.

But the movie came out, The Passion of the Christ, and there was discussion in church about getting a group of people together to go see the movie. And I was sitting on the back row of our auditorium next to one of the older ladies, and she leaned over to me and she said, you know, it’s so funny, when I was a little girl, if you were caught going to the movie house, you’d be brought up in front of the church. I thought, okay, that’s interesting.

Folks, we can watch movies. I’m not saying every movie is something we ought to watch. But we paid whatever it is on Disney Plus a couple weeks ago to get Mulan to watch with the kids.

We can watch Mulan without jeopardizing our relationship with God. I know I have friends in churches and denominations tonight who will tell you, oh no, you can’t. You watched a movie, God’s mad at you.

You know what? To the pure, all things are pure. That’s what he’s saying.

It’s those who are in Christ who recognize that our relationship with God is not dependent on our performance in all these little aspects of life. I’m not saying go out and do anything that the Bible says is sinful. What I’m telling you tonight is not go out and get drunk, go out and sleep around, go out and do whatever you want, because to the pure, all things are pure.

That’s not what I’m saying. But those who are defiled in their mind and conscience, those who are filled with sin in their mind and in their conscience because they are separated from God, see ungodliness everywhere, even in things that God has not called ungodly. Does that make sense?

Because they’re projecting what they see in themselves onto the world. Those who are right with God are pure in God’s sight, and we’re able to go and live godly lives. So he says in verse 16, describing these false teachers and how they’ve been defiled, and so they see defilement everywhere.

He says, they profess to know God, but in works, they deny him being abominable, disobedient, and disqualified for every good work. They claimed that their rituals and their philosophies and following these sets of rules, they claimed that those things were going to bring them closer to God. But the fact that they had to box themselves in in this way in order to feel a little bit righteous, in order to feel a little bit close to God, was only a demonstration of how far apart from God they actually were.

It only proved how distant from God they actually were. They were leading people not to purity in Christ. I want to make sure I’m very clear that I’m not telling anybody, go out and just live however you want, because the Bible says to the pure, all things are pure. Not what I’m talking about.

But there’s a purity that comes from a walk. There’s an innocence that comes from a daily walk Christ. They were not leading people to that purity, to that innocence in the world. They were leading people to a false illusion, to a mirage of purity that was not based on Jesus Christ, that was not hope based on Jesus Christ. They were leading people to a false purity and a false hope that was based on their own self-righteousness.

And the book of Isaiah says that our self-righteousness, all of our good works are as filthy rags before a holy God. And so the church is called not to not to fall into these teachers who say, well, you have to give me this amount of money in order to be right with God. You have to eat only certain things.

You have to follow my rules. You have to jump when I say jump. You have to do all these things and check all these boxes to be right with God.

The church is not called to fall in line with those teachers. The church is called to be courageous in opposing those false teachers. It says in verse 13, the only command in this passage says, therefore rebuke them sharply.

That’s a little uncomfortable for me. Rebuke, I’m okay with that. It just means correct.

He says rebuke them sharply. Do it harshly if you have to. I don’t think we’re called on to be offensive just for the sake of being offensive.

But at some point we’ve got to stand up and say what the truth really is, even if it hurts somebody’s feelings. He says rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in the faith. And here the goal is not to Just show how good we are and how wrong they are.

The goal is to correct them and bring them around to the right way of thinking. The church is never going to be strong without the discernment to recognize false teachers. Because if we don’t recognize that it’s a reality, we’ll fall prey to them.

And folks, as I’ve already said, there are still false teachers. Understand when I say that. I’m not saying all other churches are false teachers.

All other denominations are false teachers. There are other denominations, there are other churches here in town that are not Southern Baptist, and it doesn’t mean that they’re false teachers. We may disagree with them about some things, but it doesn’t mean they’re teaching a false gospel necessarily.

There are some that are. But when I’m talking about false teachers, I’m talking about those who change the truth of the gospel. Those who twist it.

And the thing with the gospel is, if you twist it, if you distort it even a little bit, you’ve changed it into something completely different. Those that deviate from the truth of the gospel that says we were created for perfect fellowship with God. It says, but we are sinners by nature and we’re sinners by practice and that sin has separated us eternally from a holy God.

The gospel that says that because of that, God the Father sent God the Son, Jesus Christ, to take on a human nature without giving up being God, to come to earth, to be born of a virgin, to live a perfect sinless life he could be the one and only perfect sacrifice for sin, to demonstrate who he was through his teaching and through his miracles, to be nailed to the cross where he shed his blood and where he died in our place to take our punishment and to pay for our sins in full. On the gospel that says now the father offers forgiveness and salvation is a free gift that we can never earn or deserve if we’ll turn and we’ll trust in him alone. That’s the gospel.

That’s the gospel in a nutshell. False teachers are those who want to change part or all of that to suit their philosophies and include other things you’ve got to be or other things you’ve got to do or subtract the part that says, well, we’re sinners and just say God’s all right with whatever you want to do. They want to change some part of that or all of it and substitute their own rules or philosophies for what Jesus did for us.

That’s what makes a false teacher. And if somebody begins to twist any part of that, even one part of that, we have to recognize it. We’ve got to oppose it.

I’m not talking about being mean. I’m not talking about going around as the heresy police. Those guys are never fun, are they?

But I am talking about understanding, first of all, what the gospel is. Understanding what people mean when they begin to distort words, when they begin to twist things. We need to be sharing the gospel.

Because the more I talk to other people about the gospel, I’ve learned the more I understand it. The more it begins to make sense to me. And yet there are still those times that the more I talk about the gospel, the more I go, wow, that’s incredible.

And beyond my total comprehension that God would do something so amazing. But the more we study what he’s done and the more we talk about what he’s done, the more familiar we’re going to be with it. And the more we’re going to recognize the counterfeits when they come along.

One of my favorite explanations or illustrations, I should say, about counterfeiting comes from my dad. My dad has been in banking longer than I’ve been alive. and dad has told me when they’re training tellers to recognize counterfeit bills they don’t take them to all the counterfeit bills out there and show them what they’re like they make them intimately familiar with the genuine article they show them all the security features they show them what a what a bill’s supposed to feel like what it’s supposed to look like what it’s supposed to smell like I mean they they are supposed to know the currency in and out folks we need to know the gospel in and out.

We need to be working with the gospel, meaning sharing the gospel, thinking about the gospel, reading about the gospel, so that we’ll recognize the counterfeits, so that we’ll be able to correct misconceptions, so that when one of our loved ones, when one of our friends believes something that deviates from the gospel, we can lovingly, now you can be loving and still be firm them sometimes, but we can, motivated by love, point them in the right direction toward the true gospel, toward the message of Jesus Christ that sa