Men Who Must Be Silenced, Pt. 2
Titus 1:12-16
Let's open our Bibles to the Word of our faithful God, Titus chapter 1. And we are returning to verses 10 to 16, the second half of this first chapter in Paul's wonderful letter. The subject of these verses, "Men who must be silenced." Frankly, I have the feeling the way the world is going, the way our nation is going, the way the church is going that there's going to be an effort to silence the wrong people and give voice to people who should be silenced.
Paul is very clear in instructing Titus about this duty. Down in verse 10 we read, "For there are many rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, who must be silenced because they are upsetting whole families, teaching things they should not teach for the sake of sordid gain."
God hates a lying and perverted tongue. Particularly a lying and perverted tongue that says it speaks for Him, but does not. In fact, the psalmist speaks of God's judgment, silencing such perversion in Psalm 120 verses 3 and 4, he says that kind of person who has a lying tongue, a deceitful tongue, misrepresenting God will feel the sharp arrows of the warrior and the burning coals of the broom tree. Very vivid imagery. God will silence that liar by the plunging of sharp arrows slamming into his body. God will silence that liar by the use of fire. That imagery of the burning coals of a broom tree follows a custom that really was a frightening thing. If you wanted to destroy your enemy, you would get the dried branches of such a tree and you would ignite them. And then in the night when he was asleep in his tent you would set them about his tent and set it on fire and rapidly incinerate him before he even knew what happened. Serious and final judgment God holds for those whose tongues misrepresent His truth. The day will come when God will silence them. In the meantime it is the church's responsibility, Paul tells Titus, to silence them.
James reminds us as we noted last time in chapter 3 that the tongue is a torch that can set a whole circle of life on fire with the very flames of hell. Certainly we know that riots and revolutions and wars and murders and massacres and heresies and false religions have all been set in motion by the tongue. It is a devastating instrument of destruction not only in the world but in the church.
So Paul is instructing Titus that in setting things right in the church, as he says in verse 5, and in appointing or ordaining elders in the church, he must also be ready to silence some damaging voices. There are men who must be silenced. We have the same need today. The church is certainly irresponsible in many cases in silencing them. They threaten the very truth of God. They threaten the purposes of God. They threaten the people of God.
I suggested to you last time that there are three ways to silence them. One is by taking away their opportunity, taking away their platform to speak. Two is by overpowering them with truth, that is to say making the arguments against what they say so profound that no one listens to them. And thirdly, discrediting them by virtue, by holiness. In other words, being so holy and so virtuous that it becomes apparent who holds the truth because of the virtue of their lives. It's a very crucial aspect of church life. Those who preach and teach error must be silenced. They are not to be given platforms for their deception. They are not to be put on television or radio or books. They are not to be given places to distribute their tapes, to hold seminars, conferences. They're not to be given professorships, teaching positions. They are to be silenced. They harm the Kingdom. They disturb the King's authority to rule by His truth. They deny His Word. They create chaos among His people.
Anybody like the Apostle Paul who has a passion for truth will have a passion for silencing those who speak error. His letters, frankly, are full of this, dealing with error, dealing with deception, dealing with false prophets, false teachers. In fact, I was telling someone this week...they asked me, "What are you preaching on Sunday?" And I said, "Well, I'm...I'm preaching on false teachers." And they said, "Oh, you're into that again?" And my response was, "I'm into that because I'm into the New Testament and the New Testament is into that." It's all over the place. We certainly need to be continually warned about it and the New Testament is not negligent to do that.
Paul really stands in a partnership with a great Old Testament character. If Paul is the pattern of our Lord in the New Testament as one who stood against false teaching, in the Old Testament the pattern would be Jeremiah. The champion of silencing the mouths of false teachers in the New Testament is Paul. The champion of silencing the mouth of false teachers in the Old Testament is Jeremiah.
Before we look further into Titus, go back to Jeremiah 23 and I think...I think you'll benefit by understanding what the Lord said through Jeremiah because you will see that there is continuity in Paul's attitude. It has always been such that the Lord has concerned Himself with the silencing of those who teach error. The people of Israel had been under the leadership, the tutelage and the shepherding of some very, very false shepherds. They misrepresented God. They misrepresented God's truth. They gave wrong messages. They spoke whatever they wanted out of their own dreams and visions, self-made rules and regulations. And they are indicted in chapter 23 and God promises to silence them. Just to start any way. Verse 1, "Woe to the shepherds who are destroying and scattering the sheep of My pasture." The word "woe" means damnation, cursing, judgment. And God is pronouncing here sentence. This is not the trial, this is the sentencing. Woe, judgment, damnation to the shepherds destroying and scattering the sheep of My pasture. They're sending them out from the green pastures. They're sending them away from the still waters. They're sending them out where they're unprotected. Verse 2, "Therefore thus says the Lord God of Israel concerning the shepherds who are tending My people, you have scattered My flock and driven them away and have not attended to them. Behold, I'm about to attend to you for the evil of your deeds, declares the Lord."
So there is in verse 1 and 2 a straight-forward sentencing of these false shepherds who led the people astray. Now drop down to verse 9 and in verse 9 you have running all the way to the end of the chapter in verse 40 the specifics of indictment that led to the sentencing. The indictment is very specific and very straightforward. The first note in the indictment is their wickedness. God is going to punish them for their wickedness. Verse 9, "As for the prophets, my heart is broken...writes Jeremiah...within me. All my bones tremble. I have become like a drunken man, even like a man overcome with wine because of the Lord and because of His holy words." This is an amazing statement by Jeremiah. He is saying, I'm like a drunk. I'm staggering around like a man completely out of control. Why? Because my heart is broken within me. I've lost my ability to control my feelings and my emotions. I have been crushed and terrified by the judgment of God coming upon the people because of the false teachers and the false shepherds...breaks the prophet's heart to see his people deceived, to see his people led into ruin by wicked men who promise them peace, prosperity, success and well-being. He is so distressed that he loses control of himself and he acts like a drunken man. In verse 10 he says, "For the land is full of adulterers, for the land mourns because of the curse. The pastures of the wilderness have dried up. Their course also is evil and their strength, or might, is not right."
He says these false shepherds and false teachers are spiritual leaders supposedly suppose to lead the people but instead they have led them into their own life style...immorality and adultery. And the land is mourning over the curse that has fallen and the place is dry spiritually. Their course, that is what they pursue, is evil and their might, their strength is dissipated in iniquity, in adulteries, idolatries and doing what is not right. This is their wickedness.
Verse 11 shows you the extent of it. "Both prophet and priest are polluted, even in My house I have found their wickedness." Their adultery and their idolatry has found its way into the house of God, they desecrate the house of God, they deceitfully feign devotion to God. They live for self, sexual indulgence and sin. Verse 12, "Therefore their way will be like slippery paths to them, they will be driven away into the gloom or the blackness and fall down in it, for I shall bring calamity upon them the year of their punishment, declares the Lord." They're walking on a slippery path that leads into the blackness. They're going to fall without the light of God. God will reject them and will silence them.
Then in verse 13, most interesting, he says, "Moreover, among the prophets of Samaria I saw an offensive thing." They offended Me too. They prophesied by Baal. They led My people Israel astray. "But...look at verse 14...among the prophets of Jerusalem I have seen an horrible thing." That's a worse statement than an offensive thing. This is the most extreme thing. Something more horrible than what they prophesied in Samaria from Baal, a horrible thing, "The committing of adultery and walking in falsehood and they strengthened the hands of evil doers so that no one has turned back from his wickedness, all of them have become to Me like Sodom and their inhabitants like Gomorrah."
What's the point here? The point is this. He says the prophets of Baal in the northern kingdom were guilty of lies and deception, foolish speculations, superstitions, sinful and offensive blasphemous teaching but at least they were honest enough to say it came from Baal. What's happened here in Israel is they're giving the same lies and the same deceptions and the same speculations and superstitions and the same blasphemous teaching only they're telling you it came from Me. This is a more horrible thing.
"Therefore...verse 15...the Lord of hosts says concerning the prophets, I'm going to feed them wormwood...that's bitter...and I'm going to poison them with poisonous water because from the prophets of Jerusalem pollution has gone forth into all the land." They're convicted and sentenced because of their wickedness. Secondly, their hypocrisy, verses 16 to 22 discusses their hypocrisy. "Thus says the Lord of hosts, Do not listen to the words of the prophets who are prophesying to you. They're leading you into futility. They speak of vision of their own imagination, not from the mouth of the Lord. They claim to speak from Me, they're fakes. They're phonies and they're hypocrites. They do not speak from Me. All they're doing is filling you up with wind, hot air, and lies. They're fogging your minds." Verse 17, "They keep saying to those who despise Me, The Lord has said you will have peace. As for everyone who walks in the imagination or stubbornness of his own heart, they say calamity won't come upon you. They preach prosperity. They preach happiness. They preach everything is going to be fine. And they say it came from Me. They preach positive thinking, peace, prosperity." Verse 17 tells us that they're lying, in effect. Verse 18, "But who has stood in the counsel of the Lord that he should see and hear His Word. Who has given heed to His Word and listened?" Nobody really listens to me. Nobody checks with me. They just listen to the false prophets." "Therefore," judgment will come," in verse 19, "the storm of the Lord has gone forth in wrath, a whirling tempest. It will swirl down on the heads of the wicked. The anger of the Lord will not turn back until He has performed and carried out the purposes of His heart. In the last days you will clearly understand it."
And then He says in verse 21, "I didn't send these prophets but they ran. I didn't speak to them but they prophesied. But if they had stood in My counsel then they would have announced My Words to My people and would have turned them back from their evil way and from the evil of their deeds." These hypocrites said they spoke for God, they didn't. If they had they would have made a difference. They ran in a big hurry into the assumption of the prophetic office and they spoke but they weren't true, they were hypocrites.
Thirdly, they were sentenced for their presumption. Not only their wickedness and hypocrisy, verse 23, their presumption, their amazing foolish and ignorant audacity is shocking. Can you imagine speaking for God when you don't? How audacious is that? To say you speak for the Almighty God when you don't is the ultimate audacity. "Am I a God," verse 23, "who is near?" Am I like your idol?, he's saying. Am I like that little graven image in your temple? Am I like that little graven image in your house? That little thing you made out of wood or stone? Am I like that little thing that you can touch and hold and handle and move and relocate and polish? Am I so near you can fool with Me? Am I so much in your control? Am I subject to your hands? Am I earthy? Can you touch Me?
Oh no. "Am I not a God far off? Can a man hide himself in hiding places so I do not see him, declares the Lord? Do I not fill the heavens and the earth?" You know who you're dealing with? You think you're dealing with one of your little stone idols? You think you can say you speak for Me as if I was some little wooden thing that you made with your own hands? Am I not a God far off? I am a transcendent God. I'm not one of your local deities. I'm not one of your household gods. I dwell where no man approaches and no one touches. You're dealing with the transcendent eternal God of the universe. It is audacity to say you speak for Me when you do not.
Verse 25, "I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy falsely in My name saying, `I had a dream, I had a dream.'" I hear that. They're giving you their own stuff, their own concoctions. They dreamed up their own lies. As I've often said, they make up their theology if not out of a dream they make it up even as they speak. Their purpose is selfish and God knows it. Verse 26, "How long? Is there anything in the hearts of the prophets who prophesy falsely? Even these prophets of the deception of their own heart who intend to make My people forget My name by their dreams which they relate to one another just as their fathers forgot My name because of Baal?" They're peddling their dreams. They're peddling their own visions, their own fantasies, their own delusions. They peddle their lives from house to house, door to door. They lead people astray. They are the agents of Satan, brazen, shameful, bold, presumptuous. And all the while saying they speak for God.
Verse 28, "The prophet who has a dream may relate his dream." If he has a dream, let him tell you he had a dream and it was a dream. "But let him who has a word from Me, My Word, speak My Word." If you had a dream, tell people you had a dream, don't call it the Word of God. God's Word is God's Word, your dream is your dream. And I love what He says at the end of verse 8, "What does straw have in common with grain?" Your dream is straw. My Word is grain. Your dream is chaff. My Word is pure wheat. Don't you ever mix My Word with your dream. That's what He's saying.
We have so much of that today. A little bit of God's Word and a whole lot of imagination, fantasy, visions, revelations, dreams. Don't you add anything chaff to the pure wheat of God's Word.
Verse 29, "Is not My Word like fire, declares the Lord? And like a hammer that shatters a rock?" Anybody who dares to mix the chaff with the Word will be burned and broken, incinerated and crushed. Verse 30, "Therefore behold, I am against the prophets, declares the Lord, who steal My words from each other. Behold, I'm against the prophets, declares the Lord, who use their tongues and declare the Lord declares. It's their tongue, not Mine, even though they say the Lord declares." Verse 30 says, "They steal My words from each other." You know what the false prophets always do? They've got their visions and their dreams and their revelations and they steal some truth and mix it. And they put the pure grain with the chaff. And He said I'm against them. They use their tongues but they say it's Me speaking.
Verse 32, "I'm against those who prophesy false dreams, declares the Lord, and related them and led My people astray by their falsehoods and reckless boasting. Yet I didn't send them or command them, nor do they furnish this people the slightest benefit." They're good for nothing. Not the slightest benefit.
Finally, they are indicted for their blasphemy. Their wickedness, their hypocrisy, their insolent presumption, their blasphemy. Verse 33 to 40, I won't read it all but it just says they basically mock the idea...what is an oracle? Where is the oracle of the Lord? They say, Well where is the Word of God? Where is the voice of God? If it isn't us, where is the voice of God? Where is the oracle? And God says, "You tell them they're the oracle?" And what He meant by that is your judgment is the oracle. They're mocking the truth of God. Their mocking souls are going to be crushed. In verse 40 it says, "I'll put an everlasting reproach on you and an everlasting humiliation which will not be forgotten."
Jeremiah says God's going to silence the mouths of those who say they speak for God when they don't. It's in that same spirit that we come back to our text. Let's go back to Titus chapter 1. God is very serious about false teachers. And obviously on the island of Crete in the many, many cities that were there and the churches that had been planted around that island, false teachers had made significant inroads. That's why it was so important back in verse 9 that those chosen elders be able to hold fast the faithful Word in accordance with the teaching so that they could exhort with sound doctrine and refute those who contradict. Elders had to be able to keep the church pure and protected from error. And here the Apostle Paul gets very direct and say, "Now look, there are some people that you must silence. Take away their platform, overpower them with truth and virtue."
And we started to look at this text last time. I remind you that we started with the description of these men...the description of these men. First, their proliferation, verse 10 says there were many of them, their behavior is described. They are rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers. Their effect, verse 11, they must be silenced because they are upsetting whole families, teaching things they shouldn't teach. And their motive? They do it for the sake of sordid gain. And that leads us to the fifth sub-point there, their character...their character.
Now we already know at the end of verse 10 that they are of the circumcision. That is they're Jews. These false teachers come from among the Jews. And we'll see more about that in verse 14. But look at their character in verses 12 and 13, and look how he approaches the description of their character, fascinating. "One of themselves, that is a Cretan, a prophet of their own...who, by the way, was named Epimenides we know where this quote comes from...said, `Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.'" I don't think that showed up in the chamber of commerce brochure or in the "take your vacation in Crete" brochure either for that matter. But the Cretans had developed a bad reputation. For Paul to have acknowledged how bad they were might not have been acceptable to them so he quotes one of their own. He quotes one of their own prophets, a man by the name of Epimenides.
Epimenides was a very revered Cretan. One of the most famous Cretans of all history. He was a poet. He was a teacher. He was a writer. He was obviously a pagan. He was in the sixth century and born in the city of Cnossus on the island of Crete. He was ranked as one of the seven wise men of Greece, a profound intellect, apparently, a very gifted orator and poet. He was a hero. And the poet originally characterized his people in a familiar hexameter, it's a form of poetry and it goes like this, "Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons." The Cretans, he said, are basically chronic liars. They had given testimony to the world about their ability to lie in a lot of ways. One of the most famous ones was that they prided themselves on having on the island of Crete the tomb of Zeus.
You say, "What's wrong with that?" Well Zeus was a deity who couldn't die. So it would be a little difficult to have the tomb.
They also claimed that Zeus was in it. Of course, the greatest of gods, according to their mythology, couldn't die and so he couldn't be buried in a tomb, so it was a classic example of the brashness of their lying.
They lived up to their bad reputation. They became notorious liars, cheaters, gluttons and traitors. And the false teachers, he's saying, really are not too surprising because that's kind of how it is in Crete. And they are perfect examples of the worst of Cretans. Cretans are always liars, was his statement. By the way, in verse 13 Paul says in affirmation, "This testimony is true." Epimenides was dead on. He was exactly right.
In fact, they were such liars that there's a Greek verb, there's a verb in the Greek language that means to lie. There's a verb that means to lie. You know what it is? It's the verb kritizo(?). They were so associated with lying that the verb is the name of Crete. It's very much like the verb...the verb that we associate with the city of Corinth. You remember Corinth was engaged in all kinds of prostitution. And to Corinthianize was to go to bed with a prostitute. To kritize(?) was to lie. They were liars. So we're not surprised that they're propagating false teaching. This is kind of characteristic of the people there. This is not characteristic, of course, of everybody there, but this is typical of the worst of the Cretans. So we're not shocked. I mean, even their own...their own pagan philosopher says they're always liars, they are literally chronic liars. So we shouldn't be surprised that they're lying about what God says.
Secondly, if that's not enough, he adds, does their own prophet, "They are evil beasts." They are base animals. They function on the sensual level. They are ruled by passion and instinct. They are savage, vicious, rapacious, malicious. And if that's not enough, to top it off they're lazy gluttons. Literally in the Greek, two words, slow bellies. They're big bellies that go slow. It pictures somebody who has overindulged, oversatiated, fat, doesn't work, uncontrolled lust, uncontrolled greed, self-indulgence. Nice characterization. Fat bellied, lazy gluttons who function on sensual passions and are chronic liars. So you shouldn't be surprised that some of them are hanging around the church propagating lies from their own minds.
You know, the Bible is never very nice when it identifies false teachers. Have you noticed that? It doesn't say, "Oh, we certainly want to accept them, they do have another view but we want to be..." It doesn't accept them that way.
The next time you see a false teacher, you might say, "You rebellious, empty talking, deceitful, lying, evil beast, slow-bellied glutton." And you would certainly be within the framework of Scripture. You might have to cope a little bit with 2 Timothy 2 verse 25 which says, "We are to rebuke them with gentleness." So say it kindly.
Paul with respect to this reputation affirms the assessment of Cretan character in verse 13, he says, "This testimony is true." He says, "It may have been said in the sixth century, it's sixth century B.C. It's still true 500 to 600 years later." The evidence of this is the present of lying, vicious, consuming gluttons who feed their desires at the expense of unwitting souls in and around the church.
So we've seen the description. Let's move to the second point, the reaction. What is the reaction to the men who must be silenced? There's two things stated, one in verse 13, one in verse 14. Verse 13, first reaction is to reprove them. He says, "For this cause reprove them." For what cause? "Severely reprove them for the reason that they may be sound in the faith." It's remedial. You're not just reproving them to damn them, you're reproving them which means to confront them and rebuke them for their error, showing them the truth in order that they may be sound in the faith. There's a remedial issue here. You want to go after them not for the sake of just damning them but for the sake of rescuing them. Try, first of all, to lead them out of their error. Take them on. Don't ignore them. Keep on reproving them, is the Greek text. Keep on. Remember what Paul said to Timothy, the same thing, he said, there are going to be times...right back one page there, 2 Timothy 4...when people aren't going to endure sound doctrine. They're not going to listen to sound doctrine. Well what do you do? Do you just damn them? No, back in verse 2 you preach the Word, you do it in season and out of season, you reprove and you rebuke and you keep doing with patience and instruction...whether they want to hear it, that's in season, or they don't want to hear it, that's out of season. Whether it's popular or unpopular, tolerated or not tolerated, you keep doing it, you keep reproving, you keep rebuking and use the Word to do it.
Notice the word "severely" in verse 13. Rebuke them severely. Boy, that's a strong word, apotomos. It comes from two words, temno, to cut you know with a knife or an axe, apo, off, cut off. Cut them off severely. It's used for one who cuts off the branch of a tree with one blow of an axe, just severs it. Cut off their opportunity, silence them. Very strong language. Obviously you want to do it with patience, you want to do it with kindness. You want to do it with instruction as 2 Timothy 4:2, I just read. As Paul said in the same epistle, chapter 2, so that God may grant them repentance and lead them away from the error into which they've been made captive by Satan. You want to cut them off. You want to stop them and rebuke them and halt them. And you do that by taking away their platform. You do that by confronting them with truth and demonstrating to them godly virtue because godliness is always associated with truth. And they'll recognize that they don't have that. You cut them off and it's remedial. The true surgeon of the soul, says one writer, only cuts to achieve a cure. And you cut them off that there may be a change and that they may be sound in the faith. They may have healthy doctrine.
What does it mean? What's healthy doctrine? Healthy doctrine produces wholeness, righteousness, growth, not disease and death.
So the first thing is to reprove them. That's part of the mandate. That's why we do what we do. That's why we point out error. That's why we speak on it and write on it and confront it.
I used to write a editorial column for our magazine "Masterpiece," called "Cutting it straight." And every month that that came out I would write an article that was incisively designed to attack some current issue because I feel this is how you protect the church. And it didn't...it didn't attempt to attack the individual like the old ad hominem argument where you just discredit the individual, but to bring the truth to bear on the error. And you literally attack the error from the vantage point of the truth. That's part of it. We have to rebuke and reprove, using the truth to cut off the platform and the opportunity of those who speak error.
Now after reproving them he says a second thing, basically reject them. Verse 14, "Not paying attention to Jewish myths and commandments of men who turn away from the truth." Not paying attention means not devoted to. You don't devote yourself to it. You don't listen to it. You don't heed it. Avoid listening to error at all costs. You've reproved it now turn away from it and reject it.
Paul gave very similar instruction to Timothy. First Timothy 1:4, "Don't pay attention to myths and endless genealogies which give rise to mere speculation rather than furthering the administration of God which is by faith." I watch people who start out somewhat of an evangelical perspective and they listen to error and they listen to error and they listen to error and they never rebuke it and they never reprove it, they just listen and listen. And you watch them leave the basis of the Christian faith and just drift, set loose by the confusion stimulated in their minds because they exposed themselves to endless error. First Timothy 4:7, "Have nothing to do with worldly fables," pay no attention to them. Stay away from them.
Now the particular heresy that he's talking about here and there are myriad of ones in church history and many today, it's hard to even keep up with all of them. But the particular one that he's talking about h