Titus 3:12-15
Please make your way in your
copy of the scriptures to the New Testament book of Titus.
We will be reading from Titus chapter 3, verses 12 through
15, the very last of the verses of this little book we’ve been
studying since January. You can’t believe it. I know
you’re so overjoyed. This is the last sermon in Titus.
It’s a little bittersweet, though. It’s been, I think, a wonderful
study. And in our study of Titus, we understand that Paul, the
great missionary apostle, is teaching young Titus, a faithful
companion, how to put the church, the churches on Crete in order
so that they might better reflect of the order of the realities
of heaven and be a great witness in the midst of a rotten and
dying culture. And so the challenge for us has
been to do the same. Let’s make sure we’re a church
of order. Let’s make sure we’re a people of holiness. So that
as the world looks in on our church and as the world looks
in on each of our lives and all the places we go during the week,
they will catch a glimpse of the reality of heaven. And maybe
just maybe they’ll ask, who are you people? And where have you
come from? And how do I get what you’ve
got? And we can then tell them all
about Christ and his wondrous gospel of salvation. So let us
hear together now the last few words of Paul’s letter to Titus,
beginning in chapter three, verse 12. Paul says to Titus, when
I send Artemis or Tychicus to you, do your best to come to
me at Nicopolis, for I have decided to spend the winter there. Do your best to speed Zenos,
the lawyer, and Apollos on their way. See that they lack nothing. And let our people learn to devote
themselves to good work so as to help cases of urgent need
and not be unfruitful. All who are with me send greetings
to you. Greet those who love us in the
faith. Grace be with you all. Pray with
me. Our Lord and God, we give you
thanks for your holy word. And we pray now that in these
next few moments that your word would be a lamp to our feet.
It would be a light to our path. We pray that the foolishness
of the world would be rooted out of us and that the wisdom
of God would be deeply implanted into our minds and hearts so
that we might be found faithful and fruitful. This we ask in
the name of our God and Savior, Jesus. Amen. What is your favorite
brand? Some of you may be Ford people,
or Chevrolet people, or Toyota people, or Honda people. Or maybe
you’re a Belks person. Others of you are Dillards or
Pennies people. Maybe you’re a Walmart person,
a Target person, a Big Lots person. You prefer McDonald’s or you
like Biscuitville or Chick-fil-A. And maybe even you have said,
I’m a fill in the blank person. I’m a Chevrolet man. I’m a Biscuitville
girl. We become devoted to a brand. We become devoted to a product. And we love to tell others about
it. We love to be loyal. Just yesterday, I was in Big
Lots. They sell their potting soil
about half the price of the place up the road. So I was in there
getting our summer supply. And as I was standing in line,
the lady working at the checkout was telling everybody, she could
tell, how much she loved Big Lots. I’m a Big Lots gal, is
what she was saying. I’ve been working here for months
and I love Big Lots. She was pretty happy about it.
Some of you, Maybe loyalty or have loyalties to a certain brand.
And someone in your family hears that when you’re a Walmart person,
you went over to Target and they say something like, how dare
you? You’ve broken your loyalties. We’re like that. And now we bump
into our passage today and we see that Paul. is a brand man. He’s a gospel man. He’s a man
of the gospel enterprise, and he will show us his gospel devotion. And there will be a challenge
to us. How about your devotion? How
about our devotion to the gospel enterprise? What is the gospel
enterprise? It is simply this. It is proclaiming
to the lost and dying world that Jesus Christ is the savior. and
that through him and in him and by him and because of him, we
can find salvation from the wrath of almighty God and the forgiveness
of sins and everlasting life. Paul was devoted to the gospel. Paul was a gospel man. He was an apostle. He was a sent
one by Jesus Christ, sent into the world to proclaim this salvation
through faith in Jesus. But he was also an eyewitness
to the resurrected Jesus. He met him on the road to Damascus.
Paul or Saul the persecutor became Paul the apostle, the one who
took the gospel to the far reaches and to the corners of the earth. And do you remember some months
back when we first began our study of Titus, we looked at
the first few verses of Titus where the apostle Paul says,
my ministry is for the sake of God’s elect. This is why he preaches. This is why he teaches. This
is why he exhorts. This is why he was willing to
be shipwrecked, to be stoned to death, to be stoned and left
for dead. This is why he was willing to
be misunderstood. This is why he was willing to
suffer all manner of persecution. It was so that the gospel could
reach the ears. of those who God had chosen before
the foundation of the world to come to faith in him. Remember
that in our evangelism, in our worship, in our gospel ministry,
faith comes by hearing and hearing comes from the word of God. The
apostle Paul in Romans chapter 10 says, how shall the people
hear if there is not a preacher? Behold, Here comes the feet of
him who brings good news. And so in our final few verses
of Titus, we have a message from the Apostle Paul. And this message,
if you will, comes from the Gospel Enterprise Command Center. It’s a letter written by Paul
as he is surrounded by his associates somewhere in Macedonia, Philippi,
or even Ephesus. And he writes this letter and
he sends it by Zenos the lawyer and Apollos the preacher. This
letter will be delivered to the churches in Crete. It will be
read aloud at the instructions God willing followed. And the
message of the gospel continued. We call Titus one of the pastoral
letters. Paul wrote three final letters.
He wrote two to Timothy and one to Titus. And then we believe
somewhere after second Timothy, he was arrested. He was tried
and he was put to death by the hands of the Romans. But the
apostle Paul here at the end of Titus is calling Titus and
others to this winter conference, this winter ministers retreat,
you might call it. He’s called them to the Gospel
Enterprise Command Center, and it’s moving from somewhere in
Macedonia or Ephesus or Philippi. It’s moving to this city of Nicopolis. And Paul says to Titus, you come
there. Some of you may have wintered
in Florida and you winter in Florida for certain reasons.
It’s warm there in the winter. It’s pleasant there in the winter
and you can enjoy life. And think of that as you consider
what the Apostle Paul is planning to do in the Kapolis. There’s
a couple of ways. There’s four ways to look at
this passage. The first way we find in verse 12 and we see the
change of the guard. When I send Artemis or Tychicus
to you, do your best to come to me at Nicopolis, for I have
decided to spend the winter there. As you well know, Titus has been
ministering on the island of Crete. He’s been putting the
disordered churches into order. He’s been dealing with divisions
in the church with false teachers. He’s been told to administrate
or order the church and to teach the church to order it spiritually.
So that they might be a faithful witness, living a life that adorns
the gospel of our Savior before a dark and dying world and a
crooked and depraved generation. How long does it take a guy like
Titus to accomplish that mission? How long does it take to put
a church like the ones on the island of Crete? How long does
it take to put them in order? I mean, you think on the glorious
side of preaching the gospel, teaching the word, laboring house
to house, prayer time, fellowship with others, wonderful responses. And you can imagine that there
was some of that, the spirit of God, the word were at work.
But as you can imagine, there were attitudes, there were turnover,
there were losses, there were control issues, there were heartaches,
there were burnout with the gospel. With the gospel and ministry,
there comes growth, there comes change, but there also comes
turmoil. And so Titus no doubt needs a
break. Titus no doubt needs to come to this winter missionary
pastors conference with the Apostle Paul and other assorted men who
would gather. And he needs to have his skills
sharpened. He needs to have his energy renewed. He needs to have his spirit lifted. We ought to remember from time
to time that those who serve in pastoral ministry, those who
serve in gospel missionary work, those who serve in spiritual
labors get spiritually and physically and emotionally tired. Their
ministry, their life is very public. They’re always on, they’re
never off. And that’s just their public
life. Understand too that ministers and missionaries and laborers
in the gospel, they have a personal life. They have family considerations. They have financial considerations.
They have health concerns. They have extended family. And
so what we see here when the apostle Paul says to Titus, hurry,
come to me quickly. As soon as as soon as those other
men have arrived to take your place, come to me at Nicopolis,
for I have decided to spend the winter there. We know from other
places in the Bible. We know from other church historians.
that Titus made it there. Titus also made it to serve in
ministry in what are modern day countries of Serbia and Croatia.
And history tells us that Titus made it back to the island of
Crete and that he ministered and died there, an old man, the
bishop of those churches. And so we can’t help but wonder
and even think with joy in our hearts that the ministry efforts
of Paul and Titus and others had fruit, long lasting fruit
on the island of Crete. But notice how in verse 12, he
says to Titus, don’t come until you’re replaced. Don’t come until
you’re replaced because if we leave a leadership gap, there
will be trouble. There will be a vacuum. And in that vacuum
of lack of leadership, bad things will happen. Otherwise he would
have said, Titus, you come on to Crete or come on to Nicopolis
quickly. the leadership of the church
can handle things just fine. We have to imagine that things
were still well out of order. And so there’s a change of the
guard. There’s a change of the guard.
The second thing we see, we find in verse 13, there’s a mission
trip. Verse 13 says, do your best to
speed Zenos the lawyer and Apollos on their way, see that they lack
nothing. A couple of weeks ago, I was
chatting with one of our visitors and they were asking me a bunch
of questions about the church. And one of the questions they
asked is a good one. Do you ever preach on tithing? And I said, well, I do. I do
it topically on occasion, but I also do it when it comes up
in the passage. Well, guess what? It’s come up
in the passage. And so you’re going to get a
little meddling on tithing. It’s come up. Do your best, Paul
says. to speed Zenos the lawyer and
Apollos on their way, see that they lack nothing. Dear brothers
and sisters, the gospel enterprise, it requires funding, it requires
energy, it requires effort, it requires the gifts of the people. And so Paul here is speaking
about Zenos the lawyer, probably a man skilled in Roman law, not
the Mosaic or the Old Testament law. And then there’s Apollos,
you know Apollos. Some planted, Apollos watered,
God gave the increase. Or some of you are of Apollos,
some of you are of so and so. Remember the factions in the
church at Corinth. You know who Apollos is. He was
an eloquent man. He was a great preacher. He heard
the gospel and God had used his skills throughout the churches.
And no doubt he and Zenos were on their way to preach the gospel
elsewhere. And Paul says to the church.
to the churches at Crete, make sure they lack nothing as you
send them along. You know, the church ought to
be the greatest place of generosity. The church ought to be the greatest
place where we say to those who are set apart and sent to say
to them, we want to make sure you have every need met for when
you go there, We want you to go there with the resources from
here. And we want the least of your worries to be about what
you will eat and where you will stay and other basic necessities
of life. For we know that your gospel
ministry, your gospel efforts will be difficult, difficult
enough. You know, the scripture teaches
us in the Proverbs, we haven’t gotten to those chapters yet
in our Old Testament reading, but it teaches us that when it’s
in our power to do good, we should do it. It also teaches us that he who
waters will himself be watered. And so, dear brothers and sisters,
we should be generous to those who labor in the gospel enterprise. We pray every Sunday. We pray
every Sunday. Thy kingdom come. And we pray to God that his kingdom
would come on this earth, that his kingdom will be extended
to the far reaches of the earth. We also pray that Satan’s kingdom
will be destroyed and that the name of Jesus will be lifted
higher. And God does not need us in his kingdom expansion,
but he does choose to use us. And so there’s an implication
here when we pray thy kingdom come. Part of our faithfulness
in making that prayer is that we will fund the efforts of the
kingdom. You know, statistics around our
country say that about 4% of the church tithes. And that when others do give,
it’s given with reluctance. And I think that televangelist
and all of these jet setting ministers we see all over the
world, that hasn’t helped a whole lot. Many of you have lived during
the scandals of the 80s. We could name names and you would
have a smile on your face for you would remember those stories. But in the providence of God,
he has asked us to be a living sacrifice. In the providence
of God, he has asked that we return to him a portion of that
which we have earned. And he uses us, though he doesn’t
need us, to make his kingdom known. And so we support the
church. We support the Presbytery. We
plant churches in North America. We support our denomination.
We support World Witness and Outreach North America. We support
these gospel efforts so that the name of Jesus may be known
to the ends of the earth. I looked up some statistics this
morning, some statistics about our little church. And we may
think sometimes this little place has no reach. A couple of years
ago, we signed up for a subscription to sermonaudio.com. It’s a place
where we can post the audio recordings of our sermon, and they go all
over the world. And in order to post on Sermon
Audio, you have to be a biblical church, a faithful church, and
you have to be somewhere in the brand of Reformed theology. And
do you know that in the last two and a half years, we have
posted 193 messages and those messages around the world have
been visited 15,008 times from this little room. And over 6,400
of those have been downloaded to someone’s computer or to their
telephone. And so friends, we ought not
to think little of our efforts in the gospel enterprise. You know, sometimes in the church
we can be stingy. We can be cheap. We can, we can
even be controlling. We can say that those who serve
in the gospel don’t need worldly things. We’ll keep them poor.
God, you keep them humble. And if God forbid someone in
the church, someone in the ministry gets something of value, we say
they’re just too worldly. But God is saying here, supply
their needs. It takes funding to live and to do gospel work. And you have to connect this
back to chapter three, verse six. Remember on Easter Sunday,
remember you, were once foolish, disobedient, led astray. You
were loving evil. You were loving sin. You were
hated by others and hated others. But the goodness and kindness
of God, our Savior, appeared and he saved us, not by work
done by us in our hands, but by the washing and the regeneration
of the Holy Spirit. And catch this little phrase,
whom he poured out on us richly. Friends, we have a generous God
and he calls us in the generosity of his gospel extended to us
to extend that gospel richly to others. And so the kingdom
of God is an opportunity to show through our finances, through
our service, how much we appreciate the gospel of salvation. How
much we love the fact that Jesus through the Holy Spirit has lavishly
poured out his grace upon us. You see, this is gospel motivated
giving. And we read a passage like this,
it says, speed Zenos and Apollos on in their missionary efforts.
See that they lack nothing. Zenos and Apollos would no doubt
deliver this letter from the Apostle Paul. They would read
it aloud in the congregation. They would be on their way somewhere
to proclaim the gospel. And the charges see to it that
they lack nothing. fill up their money bag, make
sure their tunics are not worn out. Take them to the Roman REI
or LL Bean and make sure their Keens or their Tevas or whatever
their first century sandals were replaced so that the feet of
good news could go to the far reaches of the earth. See to
it that they are well cared for. Last year, I remember watching
my father prepare for a trip to China. It’s an expensive trip
to travel there. Many people came forward and
were generous. I remember one particular man who travels around
the world through the industry. He says, I know what it’s like
for a transatlantic flight. And he said, I know when you
have a bad seat on a bad plane and you get over there, you can’t
even go to work. And so he said, Stephen, I want to see that you
have a good seat. One of those beds that folds
down, it lays down so that when you get there, you’ll be rested.
And he cashed in his points. He turned in his rewards from
his own travels and he made it possible for a gospel missionary
to travel in comfort and so that they would be rested and ready
to work. That’s the attitude that the
Apostle Paul is speaking of. A couple of years ago, you remember
the Goodman family came. They came and preached to us
one Sunday morning and we needed to be hospitable to them. And
so we said, tell us where you’ll be coming from and where you’ll
be going next. And we made sure that we had
provided funding for their fuel, for their car. We made sure that
their little baby children had toys to play with and some candy
for their long car rides. And when they stayed here, we
made sure that they had a comfortable place. where the mom and dad
could get rest, where our brother Drew could be ready to preach
to us the next day and not have had a sleepless night because
he was in a room with wiggly, noisy babies. But you see that
kind of hospitality, that kind of provision for God’s servants. We may stop and say, oh, that’s
unnecessary. But when we look at the fruit,
the effort, the labor that they will enter into, we realize sometimes
the bottom line is not the bottom line, but the bottom line is
greater and bigger and more glorious. When I served as a pastor in
Greensboro, we often had these visiting preachers who would
come and we had a well-meaning lady in the church who would
book a room at this certain hotel on this certain part of town
because it was the cheapest room in town. We said to her, do you
want our preacher to wake up dead? I mean, this is the seediest
hotel. This is the one the policemen
don’t even want to go to. And we had to change the way
we thought. I want you to think very seriously,
though, about this for a moment. When you get to heaven someday
and God is in the business of passing out rewards, there’s
not going to be the reward for the stingiest, most frugal person. But God will hand out crowns
and say, you know, you provided for that servant who went here
and he went there and he had just enough to get there safely. He had the resources and he preached
the gospel. And you see this little crowd
over here. These are the ones that came to faith because of
your faithful gift for the gospel enterprise. Think that way when
you think about funding the kingdom. Think that way as you think about
our brother Ed headed to Mexico. Think that way as you come on
Tuesday to Young at Heart and hear about Isaac’s trip to South
Africa. See to it that they like nothing. The third thing this passage
teaches us is that we are to be devoted, devoted to good works. Verse 14 says, let our people
learn. to devote themselves to good
work so as to help cases of urgent need and not be unfruitful. Dear Christians, you probably
in your work go to continuing education. You get your accounting
principles sharpened. You get your computer skills
worked on. You learn how to, a new best practice for your
industry. And this is what Titus is being
told by Paul for the church. We need to learn best practices,
best industry, gospel enterprise practices as Christians for doing
good works. We in some sense as a church
ought to be a school, schooling ourselves, schooling one another,
in good works. Now you can back up and say good
work, support missionary efforts. But it says also cases of urgent
need. One of the systems, part of the
culture that we ought to have as a church is every week we’re
together. What are the needs? What are
the opportunities? And where can God use me? And, you know, in our little
congregation, you know, in our service to the Lord, there are
so many opportunities, ones we miss, ones we overlook. But if
we schooled ourselves, if we continued our education and good
works, the sudden ones, but also the planned ones, we would be
fruitful. And you know, our Lord Jesus
loves for his people to be fruitful. He says a tree that bears good
fruit is of use, but those that bear no fruit are to be cut down
and to be cast off into the fire. There’s one more thing this passage
teaches us in verse 15. It’s a verse about hello and
goodbye. All who are with me, Paul says,
they send greetings to you. That’s to you, plural, the church.
Greet those who love us in the faith. Grace be with you all. One of the things we don’t often
do in the church we need to do more of is we need to give one
another greetings in Christ. When we go to General Synod every
summer at the Associate Reform Presbyterian Church, we have
this whole night. devoted to fraternal greetings.
And so someone from the Orthodox Presbyterian Church will come,
someone from the Presbyterian Church in America will come,
our Dutch brothers, our Reformed brothers in other parts of the
world will come and we give greetings and we tell each other what’s
going on in our part of the church. Sometimes when I go preach at
other churches, I give greetings from the place from where I have
come. You see, we as a Presbyterian
bunch, we’re connected, we’re connectional. We belong to the
sister churches in the Presbyterian, even the synod. We’re part of
a local church, a regional church, even a national church. We even
have a synod in Mexico and also one in the country of Pakistan.
We are a connected people. But that connection is deeper
than our associate reform Presbyterian connections. Our connections
are in Christ. If anyone is in Christ, he is
a new creation. But if anyone is in Christ, he
is connected to others who are in Christ. And so this last verse
gives us a message of brotherly love, of a bond, of a reciprocal
friendship and ministry. This letter would be read aloud
in the churches on Crete. This letter will be read aloud,
its message proclaimed, perspective given and gained by those who
read it, those who heard it. And it ends with this phrase,
grace be with you all. And let me remind you, dear brothers
and sisters, apart from the grace of Christ. Apart from the grace
of the Lord Jesus Christ that has come to us in the person
and work of Jesus, apart from that grace, we cannot live a
life that adorns the gospel. We cannot have a church of order.
We cannot devote ourselves to good works. But because of that
grace. Because of that grace, we can
be a church that loves the gospel, that lives the gospel, that supports
the gospel, and one that proclaims the gospel around the world and
to the ends of the earth because of the grace of Christ. Pray
with me. Our Lord and God, we thank you
so much for the privilege of knowing you, but also serving
you. Lord, we love the knowing you
part. It’s easy. We can read our Bibles. We can
check out our devotionals. We can come to church and we
can sing, but serving you, it gets in our pockets. It takes
up our time. It takes up our energy. It’s
a sacrifice. But Lord, we love you. We love
the gospel. We love the fact that we have
been saved from death and been brought to life. And so help
us motivated by the gospel. to speed the church, the gospel
and your workers ahead. May we be found faithful and
may we be found fruitful. We ask all of this in the name
of Christ, our savior, and we pray it in his name. Amen. Let
us respond to God’s word with number 552 on Jordan’s stormy
banks. I stand