Tim's Sermon Notes

God’s grace is the greatest teacher. It is the existence of this grace that drove all of the initial instructions that Paul urged Titus to pass on.

The grace of God brings salvation for all people, but it also instructs us. Any time we learn a skill, we must learn both to unlearn our bad habits or incorrect instincts, and to learn the proper truths and techniques.

And so we are called to renounce our own ungodliness and turn aside from our desires that do not line up with the mind of God. There is a strain of Christianity that skips this part, depending entirely on grace to cover sin and this not worrying about changing behavior. Paul here clearly speaks against that.

On the positive side, the grace of God also teaches virtues – Paul cites three here that would have been understood culturally as virtues. First, sensible-minded self control. Second, an uprightness and righteousness. Third, a godly life pointed towards God.

This training by grace never ends. Some circumstances change, some stay the same, but there is never a point where we outgrow the instructions of grace nor where we enter a setting where they do not apply, either in time of life or the surrounding culture.

Not only does grace instruct, but like any great teacher, it inspires. Paul specifically calls out the Second Coming as the ultimate hope, subsuming all the cares and trials of the culture and world and even our physical existence. Jesus Christ himself is our blessed hope, for both our current moment and for the future.

Then Paul moves from the future to the current moment, and from the personal to the corporate, speaking to the full people of God, set apart together for his glory. It is not an individual process, but rather a team effort to carry out the good works that God calls us to, and calls us to live out zealously.

– Sermon Notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, November 24, 2019

Paul here addresses slaves. This sort of discussion is fraught today, both because of our country’s shameful history with slavery and because of the 40 million people still enslaved around the world today.

But it was fraught in Paul’s day as well. Jesus made it clear that he was here to bring freedom, and Paul’s other letters make it clear that there is no distinction between slaves and masters. But in the social order of the ancient world, slavery was assumed as a part of life, and if Christians had been openly supporting a slave revolt, the empire would have crushed it. As in previous verses, Paul is instructing about how to live out the truth of Christ and His kingdom without scaring the pagans around them that they were out to destroy civilization. Ultimately, the goal of Christianity was to sow the seeds that would overturn the whole rotten edifice.

So there is a huge difference between what the people Paul was writing to were dealing with and what we deal with in our own, voluntary situations, but there are lessons we can take.

Elsewhere, Paul had other messages for slaves. In Philemon, Paul commends an escaped slave to his master as a brother in Christ – someone who could have been executed under the law. In 1 Corinthians, he encourages them to gain their freedom if possible.

Here, though, he encourages submission – doing what they are instructed, and doing it with a good heart. Elsewhere, he tells slaves to work as if for Christ. He specifically instructs slaves not to steal, suggesting that, not surprisingly, this was a real temptation.

The Old Testament has a couple prominent stories of slaves who refrained from taking advantage of their masters and who worked for their true Master, in the stories of Joseph and Daniel. Both of them were faithful both in their secular and spiritual responsibilities, and both were used to demonstrate the glory of God.

Paul calls the slaves of Crete to do much the same, so that they too can “adorn the doctrine of God.”

What does this all mean for us today? It certainly does not mean we should be passive in the face of injustice. Like Christ, we are here to bring freedom to the captives and liberty to those in bondage.

But we are all slaves to one extent – in Romans, we are reminded that we are all slaves to either sin or Christ. Even if we rebel, ultimately we are submitting to one master or another.

The early Christian preacher John Chrysostom had this to say about this passage:

If they see their slave, who has been taught the philosophy of Christ, displaying more self-command than their own philosophers, and serving with all meekness and good will, he will in every way admire the power of the Gospel. For the Greeks judge not of doctrines by the doctrine itself, but they make the life and conduct the test of the doctrines.

This remains true today, so let our life and conduct prove out the truth of the doctrines we hold to.

– Sermon Notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, November 17, 2019

What we are changed by is more “caught than taught” – usually what we learn that truly impacts us is not what is purposefully spoken but rather what is picked up almost incidentally from those around us.

Today’s question is, who are you influencing?

Paul in this passage is specifically addressing women, and specifically in the context of the first century household. There is, however, much to learn from this despite the fact that we live in a much more egalitarian and much more dispersed and fragmented society.

The older women, Paul writes, have a special opportunity to minister to the younger women. They are called to be “reverent in their behavior” – this sentence both calls back to the behavior expected of the older men (“sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness“) but also uses this religious term that calls back to the idea of a sacrifice being fit for the altar of God.

Paul specifically warns against the stereotypical behavior that older women were known for in society, both slander and alcohol dependence. These stereotypes continue to bedevil us today, and the temptation to both of them are very real.

They are called to train the younger women – but the term translated “train” comes from the same root word translated as “self-controlled” and “sober-minded” earlier. Older women are to encourage, guide and support younger women in the path towards self-control and clear thinking.

In context, this means helping them become “husband-lovers” (philandros) and “children-lovers” (philoteknos), both of which can be difficult at different times.

Then in verse 5, it goes into the specifics of how this plays out, with self-control, purity, diligence, kindness, and keeping harmony within the home.

That harmony in particular is called out so that the “word of God may not be reviled.” In a world where any disruption anywhere within the system was seen as a threat to civilization itself, special emphasis was put on ensuring that the health of the household and importance that God puts on family was visible from the outside in.

– Sermon Notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, November 10, 2019

How should a church run in a place like Crete? Paul here gives instruction to Titus about how to help these intergenerational congregations scattered across the island live for Christ. He hits on men and women, both older and younger, and eventually goes into other life situations as well. Regardless of our situation, how does the gospel shape our lives?

For Titus, as a teacher, he has the responsibility to teach healthy doctrine, countering the false teaching that was upsetting households. The fruit of that healthy gospel doctrine is the behavior that Paul goes on to encourage Titus to commend his congregation to.

For men, there are instructions regardless of their age. Older men are to live up to many of the same things as the more formally installed elders. They are to be sober-minded – and quite literally temperate in matters of alcohol. They are to be dignified – not a stuffed shirt with no sense of humor, but someone who behaves in a way that encourages others to treat them with honor. And they are to be self-controlled. All this, as implied in the later verses about women, is in part to set proper examples for the younger men of the Church.

The young men, then, are to be self controlled. This word references the same term applied to both older men and younger women, and has the implications of both guarding & safekeeping, and of wisdom.

And circling back to Titus, as one of those young men, he is to show integrity and dignity, living to both show the gospel to outsiders and to defend the overall honor of the church.

This understanding of honor and shame is important in understanding the context of the New Testament. The culture in that time and place was very focused on honor and shame, and there were times when Christians were called to gain honor in the culture – but also times when victory was won in shame, following the model of the cross. This is one of the reasons the gospel itself was (and is!) so scandalous.

So, the older men are to be examples to the younger, and everyone is to be an example for the world around. No one is irrelevant in God’s kingdom, and everyone has a role in the community of faith, ultimately to bring glory to God.

Next week, we’ll continue to dig into these instructions, looking into the instructions directed at women.

– Sermon Notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, November 3, 2019

Churches all need leadership. Paul has been setting out the requirements for that leadership to enable Titus to make good decisions. In the lay section, he walked through the “opium ground” of the household vs the negative qualities to be avoided. In these passages, Paul walks through the positive qualities.

Each of those qualities are those that start from the inside and work their way out.

First, they are to be hospitable. This specifically means loving strangers, “philoxenos.” This was vital to the early church, because traveling pastors and missionaries were often moving from town to town and needed a place to stay. Likewise, an elder’s home needed to be open for hosting services and other needs within the church.

Second, they must love what is good. This is a companion to the term hospitable, “philagathos” – balancing a love of those we do not know with a love of what we know is good.

Then there are a series of characteristics that boil down to “balance.” First, self control. Do they remain sane in the face of adversity, or do they lose control of their own mind and emotions when faced with adversity?

Next, they are to be upright – both in their own behavior and the judgements they offer. This refers to the horizontal relationships between brothers. They are to be holy in their vertical relationship with God. And they must be, again, disciplined and self-controlled – the internal relationship must be right as well.

They are not only to believe the word of God, but cling to it tightly, in order that he can both teach and correct.

Note that none of these descriptions have anything up do with the elder’s position in society, class or wealth or background or ethnicity.

The reason for these high – though not unattainable – qualifications is that the congregation needs to have trust in its leaders. Constant second-guessing of a church’s leadership is self-defeating and unhealthy. Where there is frustration and friction, leaders must be open to conversation and even correction as they seek that right horizontal relationship with their fellow believers.

On the side of the laypeople, we must keep the balance between submission to authority and discernment.

– Sermon Notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, October 20, 2019

Church leadership is different than any other kind of leadership. Paul here describes some important aspects of those differences.

The specific situation here was on the island of Crete, the ancient seat of the Minoan civilization, the original home of the sea people who became the Philistines. There were probably 25-50 villages where Titus would be seeking to appoint elders.

Three words are used to describe the leaders in this passage. “Elders”, or presbuteros, originally just meaning “old person,” was the term used to describe the members of the Jewish Sanhedrin. Then “overseers”, or episkopos, any curator, guardian, or superintendent. And finally, “steward” or oikonomos, a reminder that the leaders are taking care of the church for God, and it is not their own.

The leadership of any of these people begins at home. Home is a key proving ground (Though not necessarily required – single people like Paul himself are clearly not disqualified). Are they faithful to their spouse? Are their children faithful (a better translation than “believers”)? Are they the same person at home that they are at church?

But not only within the home, but also without. They must be morally upright in a way that means any accusations will find no purchase. Paul cites “above reproach” twice, once in relationship to family life and once in regards to arrogance, temper, etc.

That list of negative qualities includes many that are typical of earthly leaders. Powerful people are often arrogant, frequently have bad tempers, often greedy for gain (which is often how and why they became leaders in the first place). Alcohol is also a clear temptation, both in those days and ours, to those in power. Violence in a direct way is less common these days (usually!) but consider the indirect methods of violence available to us.

These qualities are certainly necessary for pastors within the church. But any leaders in the church – and, in fact, all believers – are called to the same standard. We are all overseers of something, whether or children, our work responsibilities, or anything along those lines.

– Sermon Notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, October 13, 2019

From mistexts to typos to churches – it’s easy to mess things up, and generally harder to put them right again. This passage, and verse 5 in particular, addresses Paul and Titus’ work to put things right in the church on Crete.

First, this passage is a reminder of the importance and centrality of the local church to the Christian life. When Jesus sent out the apostles, they planted churches, because Christians need each other. This is contrary to the American outlook of independence and self-reliance. Our spiritual progress is tied to our church body.

And every church needs constant attention – a healthy church is always under construction. This was a relatively young church, and Paul hadn’t had time to do everything he wanted to do. and so Titus was specifically left behind to finish that work.

We often idealize the First Century church, with the scriptures in their own language and the apostles in their midst. But in reality there were issues throughout, and required constant attention from within and without.

Titus was doing this, essentially as an intentional interim pastor, relocated to deal with corrective action in the church, addressing unfinished issues and leadership development (appointing elders). His challenge, and ours, was to determine what to start with – you cannot do everything at once!

The New Testament does not spell out specifically how churches are to be organized, but it is clear that healthy churches need healthly leaders. Leaders can arise from unexpected places, and not all leaders in secular life are appropriate or healthy leaders in the church. But it is fairly clear that Titus was a healthy leader.

Titus was one of the earliest gentile Christian leaders, who we first hear about in Acts 11 where he travels from Antioch to Jerusalem and stands as something of a symbolic rebuke to the Judaizers. Later, Paul sent him to Corinth to check in on that fractious congregation, and he then reported back to and comforted Paul in Macedonia. Paul calls him his partner and fellow worker in 2 Corinthians.

Sometime after Paul’s first imprisonment, after the end of Acts, Paul sent Titus to Crete, then met up with him in Nicopolis before Titus moves on to Dalmatia (2 Tim 4:10).

God wants faithful, available and teachable workers (FAT). Titus was all three. He was faithful to complete all the work he was given. He was available to travel all around the Mediterranean to fulfill that work. And he was teachable, taking the instruction and the direction from this letter (and no doubt others!).

We should seek to be like Titus. There is much to be set in order, and much work to do within our own local church.

– Sermon Notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, October 6, 2019

In Paul’s introduction to Titus, he is saying much more than what is said. In just a few sentences, he communicates three key messages about his ministry.

First, his ministry is entirely in hope of eternal life. This is a confident hope, not a a faint hope or a wish.

Second, Paul is a servant of God. Usually, he introduces himself as a “servant of Christ” but here he calls back to the ministry of Moses, the servant of God. He is sent with a mission from God through Jesus Christ, who transformed Paul from an enemy into the Apostle to the gentiles.

Third, Paul brings a message from God, who never lies. This is in sharp contrast between the behavior of both humans (“all Cretans are liars”) and gods. This means our faith is founded on the most solid thing of could be. This truth transforms us, and Paul’s role is to bring the knowledge of that truth to God’s elect, wherever and whoever they may be.

In Acts 26, Paul is presented to be judged by the Roman official Agrippa. In that interaction, though, Paul recounts how he came up be preaching the gospel, and what that gospel is: “To this day I have had the help that comes from God, and so I stand here testifying both to small and great, saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses said would come to pass: that the Christ must suffer and that, by being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim light both to our people and to the Gentiles.”

How are you growing in the knowledge of the truth? Sometimes we make this pursuit all about knowledge of the Bible, rather than knowledge of the truth – the Bible is vital, but unless we understand how the truth of the Bible intersects with our lives specifically, then we don’t really know “the truth which accords with godliness.”

Many of us would put a period in the middle of verse 1, “for the sake of God’s elect and their knowledge of the truth.” But Paul goes on, because unless the truth accords with godliness, unless it transforms us and our behavior, then either it isn’t the truth to begin with, or it has not been truly received.

Christ offers a true hope of eternal life. It is a greater hope than offered by anything people put their faith in, whether health, or science, or some form of mysticism. It is our role to pass on that hope to those around us, both through our transformed behavior and through our words.

– Sermon Notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, September 29, 2019

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians begins with a discussion of the blessings of the believer, then moves to the responsibilities of the believer, and finally the warfare of the believer. We must keep each of these in mind as we live our lives.

He opens the warfare section with the Armor of God, and then moves on to a prayer in this section. The way he puts it implies that the way that we put on the armor itself is by the exercise of prayer. John Calvin calls prayer “the ongoing exercise of faith.”

Often prayer is the missing component of our lives with Christ. Many of us are more comfortable with the academic or intellectual aspects of faith, but we aren’t instructed to be academics or intellectuals. We are instructed to pray.

We see prayer from the earliest interactions of God with his people – Job prayed he his (awful) friends, Abraham is in constant conversation with God, Moses prayed constantly for the people he led, Hannah prayed fervently and was blessed with a son, David put his heartfelt prayers to music, Hezekiah prayed for deliverance from the Assyrians and was granted it, Daniel prayed constantly, overtly and famously despite threats of death, while Nehemiah prayed ahead of his request to the king of Persia.

In the New Testament, Christ himself is constantly in prayer, gives us our model for prayer in the Lord’s prayer, was transfigured during a time of prayer, and kicked over tables in his zeal to see the temple as a house of prayer. When church begins, they are constantly coming together in prayer, both on an ongoing basis and in response to internal and external crises. The apostles themselves, when confronted with the material needs within the church, saw that they needed to bring on helpers to deal with the issue, because they themselves needed to be devoted, but only to teaching, but also to prayer.

On and on it goes on scripture. Earlier in this book, Paul discusses exactly how he prays for the Ephesians, providing us a model for praying for our fellow believers, something he is constantly encouraging the churches to do “without ceasing”.

The one way we are instructed here to put on the Armor of God is a prime way Satan attacks us – “praying at all times.” That does not come as easily to us as simply sitting and learning.

Paul uses the term “all” three times in verse 18. We pray rather naturally when we have needs or crises, but we are also told to pray when things are going well. At all times – and with all perseverance, keeping alert. It is easy to nod off during prayer, especially if we wait to pray until the end of the day!

We battle from the top down, not the bottom up. Sometimes Christians are accused of being “so heavenly minded that they’re no earthly good,” but in reality we are rarely all that heavenly minded at all. You can’t really overdo prayer.

Here are a few things we should be praying for:

• For Christ to be first in our church
• For God’s word to change our lives
• Renewal, love and unity
• God’s wisdom for our leaders
• Our next pastor and his family
• Strength and joy for all who serve
• Our witness, personally and corporately.

– Sermon Notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, September 22, 2019

We have so many things protecting our material assets and physical lives: from the military to police up security systems to cybersecurity to simple things like door locks. But the strength of our nation, of any nation, is not our military strength or economic might, but rather in our character. Whose responsibility is it to defend our morality?

Paul here in Ephesians discusses our spiritual defenses, in the form of the Armor of God. Each piece mentioned is a piece of defective equipment. Even the sword was a short sword, rather than the spear of a Greek hoplite or the longsword of the Celts. Paul was chained to soldier as he wrote this, so he had an up close and personal view of each item.

The first thing a soldier needs to put on is his belt. The belt is what holds everything together. Likewise, for us, the truth is where we must start. The truth of Christ is what holds the rest of our Christian lives together. Not only must we pursue the truth, but we must live the truth and speak the truth. This is harder than it sounds. Why do we have trials to pursue the truth of a crime? Because people lie. Of course they do! But we are called to better and more, and to start with the truth as our foundation.

Next, the soldier would put on the breastplate. We also must put on righteousness – it is not our righteousness, which comes from within, but the righteousness of Christ. But at must still live it out, because the world is watching our character. Our behavior can cast a shadow across the light of Christ. Just as the breastplate protects the main core of our body, so too does righteousness protect our witness.

Then comes the “readiness of the gospel of peace” which is to be put on like shoes or boots or sandals. The gospel is more than just the reconciliation of God with man, but also between each each other.

Next, with all the clothing put on, the soldier picks up the shield. These were not small rounds shields, but about four feet tall and built of leather over thick wood. Soldiers would often soak the shield in water, to extinguish fiery arrows. We are constantly under attack by Satan’s arrows, whether our own thoughts or the words of others, whether doubts about Christ, His word, our salvation or Christ’s love for us – our cynicism or compartmentalizion. The defense to all of these is faith.

Next we receive the helmet of salvation. This not only protects our spiritual lives the way a helmet protects the head, but, like the Roman plumed helmet, serves as identification on the battlefield.

Next and finally, we take up the sword of the spirit. This is the word of God, but the word used here is not logos, which is usually used when discussing the breadth of scripture, but rather rhema, a specific word. Like Jesus when he was tempted in the wilderness, we need specific words from scripture for specific moments of trial or temptation.

Our church has been through a lot lately, and Satan has been working overtime on the whole fiery arrows thing. But we have the answers and defenses close at hand. Most importantly, Christ has already won the ultimate victory.

– Sermon Notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, September 15, 2019