We return to Paul’s letter to Titus where the young minister is responsible for congregations all across the island of Crete. In verse 2:15, Paul calls on him to teach all the things that he wrote – how young and old, men and women, slave and free are to behave.
To that end, Paul goes on to instruct him to both exhort and rebuke those who are in his care, and to do so with the command of God behind him.
This is a hard teaching for us today, when if we don’t like the exhortation we get at church, we can just go to one of the ten churches we passed on the way. This was explicitly predicted in 2 Timothy 4:
For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.
This is not carte blanche for anyone in authority to be seen as some sort of superior being whose words cannot be questioned. This is about the word of truth from God. It is our responsibility as Christians to separate the wheat from the chaff. Discernment is vital. We can learn truth from people who are, in balance, wrong, and we can hear falsehoods from those who are usually accurate.
We must be open to the exhortation and rebuke from those who teach us, while still being discerning about it.
He is to do this with the authority that comes with speaking the truth of God, and to not let others disregard him. But how does a leader avoid being disregarded? By speaking the truth with boldness and by living a life in line with that teaching of God.
Verse 15 in some ways an outline of what Aristotle wrote the centuries earlier. Persuasive speech, or rhetoric, has three components. First, the logos, the content is the teaching: “declare these things.” Second, the pathos, the emotional of that teaching – the rebuke and exhortation. And finally, the credibility and authority of the speaker, the ethos – “with all authority, let no one disregard you.”
This is true for all of us in one setting or another. If we are parents or instructors or managers, we will need all three of logos, pathos and ethos. And these are things we need to watch for as we long for a new pastor.
We also must consider how we approach the teaching of God we receive on Sundays. First, we should prepare ourselves properly – don’t just stay up late watching garbage on TV Saturday night. We must listen for the truth of God even from a lousy preacher. We must discern where the truth is, and where it isn’t. If we have problems with what we hear, we should discuss it before fleeing to some other church.
– Sermon Notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, February 2, 2020