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The God Who Cannot Lie Delivers on His Promise – Titus 1:3-5

Posted on by Pastor Ricky Kurth

Summary:

God promised to give Gentiles eternal life before the world began (Titus 1:1,2), but didn’t make that promise “manifest” until Paul (v.3). But what made it the “due time…”?

That phrase is used when God sees that our power is gone (Deut. 32:35,26; Romans 5:6). When God gave the Law to Israel, they claimed they could keep it (Ex.24:3-7), so God gave them 1500 years to try! When they proved they were “without strength” to keep it (Rom. 5:6), He had Christ die for them “in due time.”

But as far as anyone knew He only died for Jews (Isa. 53:8). And that didn’t change in the New Testament, where the Lord claimed He only died for the “many” in Israel (Mt. 20:28). It isn’t until Paul that we learn He gave His life a ransom “for all” (I Tim. 2:5,6). Christ died for the ungodly in due time, but the fact He died for ungodly Gentiles wasn’t something that was testified until the “due time” given to Paul.

What made it the due time? The Gentiles knew they couldn’t save themselves. In time past they had to become Jews to be saved—true Jews, believing Jews, by believing on Israel’s God.The Lord sent the 12 to get them to do that (Luke 24:47) but they couldn’t get past Jerusalem till the children of Israel in that city were “filled” with the salvation of God (Mark 7:27). It looked like they were without strength to save themselves. But that’s when Paul testified they didn’t have to become Jews to get eternal life, because God had promised them eternal life too, knowing Christ would die for them too.

“Manifested” (v.3) means to make something known that had been secret or hid (cf. Lu. 8:17). That’s what Paul’s message was (Col. 1:25,26). It involved more than just the fact that Christ died for Gentiles, it involved “the fellowship of the mystery (Eph. 3:9), “that the Gentiles should be fellowheirs and of the same body” as Jews in the Body of Christ. “Fellow” means equal (cf. Zech. 13:7), and for God to make Jews and Gentiles equal He had to create a whole new program called “the dispensation of the grace of God” (Eph. 3:2) featuring a new creation called the Body of Christ.

God “committed” (v.3) it to Paul (I Cor. 9:17) “as” the kingdom gospel was committed to Peter (Gal. 2:7). That is, he was the dispenser of it, it was committed to his trust (I Tim. 1:11), then to Timothy’s (II Tim. 1:14) then to ours (II Tim. 2:2).

When Paul said God committed the message to Paul’s trust “according to the promise of God our Saviour” (v.3), he was talking to a Gentile (Gal. 2:3). That’s new with Paul too! God was Israel’s Savior in the Old Testament (Isa. 43:3), but Paul talked to a Jew about “God our Saviour… who will have all men to be saved (I Tim. 2:3,4). That explains how he could talk to Titus about the “common faith” (v.4 cf. Rom. 1:11-13). Jews and Gentiles didn’t have anything in common before that, especially not their faith! And when Paul talked about “Christ our Saviour” (v.4), that was new with Paul too! Before Paul, Christ was Israel’s Saviour (Acts 13:23), but now He’s the Saviour of the Jews and Gentiles in the Body of Christ (Eph. 5:23).

Titus was saved by “grace” (Tit. 1:4), but grace is a way of life, as we reflect God’s grace to others. “Mercy” (v. 4) is what Paul offered Titus and Timothy so they could remain single in the distress of persecution they were enduring (I Cor. 7:25,26). “Peace” (v. 4) was also something Titus had (Rom. 5:1), but peace is also a way of life (Rom. 12:18).

There’s no record of Paul visiting Crete in Acts, and Paul was imprisoned at the end of Acts and later died in prison. So we know he was released briefly and re-imprisoned. The “cause” (v. 5) or reason Paul left Titus in Crete was to “set in order the things that are wanting.” God loves order (Col. 2:5). When the Corinthians were selfishly out of order in church (I Cor. 11:20,21), Paul vowed to set “the rest” in order later (v. 34), indicating such selfishness was out of order. They were speaking in tongues in a disorderly way so Paul said to “let all things be done… in order” (I Cor. 14:40)

He was talking about order in the church service. Things were out of order in the church services in Crete too. Paul didn’t mean for Titus to be the permanent leader there (cf. Tit. 3:12), but setting things in order was his strength, and God believes in capitalizing on our strengths. What’s yours?

A Killer Who Found Hope – Titus 1:1-2

Posted on by Pastor Ricky Kurth

Summary:

The Book of Titus was written by a killer named Saul of Tarsus. Saul was named after the first king of Israel, but after he got saved he preferred to be called by his Gentile name (Acts 13:9 cf. Tit. 1:1) to reflect the fact that the Lord sent him to the Gentiles (Acts 22:21).

Paul always has a reason for introducing himself as a “servant” (1:1). Rome was the capital of the Roman empire, so the Romans were used to owning slaves, not being one. So in calling himself a servant to the Romans, the apostle who was a free citizen of Rome (Acts 22:25-28) reminded them that a free believer “is Christ’s servant” (Rom. 1:1 cf. I Cor. 7:22). The Philippians were feuding (Phil. 4:2) so Paul introduced himself as a servant (Phil. 1:1) and reminded them that being like him and Christ (2:2-7) would solve their feud.

But Paul introduced himself as a servant to Titus because he was an intimidating man (II Cor. 7:12-15), and he needed to be reminded that he was not fit to lead because he was a tough man, but because he was willing to be like Paul and be a servant and lead God’s people by example (I Pet. 5:2,3).

In calling himself a “servant of God,” Paul was saying he served God on a level with Moses (I Chron. 6:49; II Chron. 24:9; Neh. 10:29; Dan. 9:11). Those who dispute Paul is the servant of God for this dispensation should be thankful we live under grace (cf. Num. 12:2-10).

But wasn’t James also a “servant of God” (Ja. 1:1)? Yes, but just like Moses, he was the servant of God to the Jews (Ja. 1:1). Paul was sent to the Gentiles (Acts 22:21). When Paul introduced himself as “an apostle” (1:1), the Lord already had 12 apostles, but they too were to the Jews, while he was “the apostle of the Gentiles” (Rom. 11:13; Gal. 2:8).

Even the Lord’s enemies knew that God’s “elect” (1:1) was Christ (Lu. 23:35). When you believed and were made one with Christ (I Cor. 1:30) you became part of God’s chosen. That’s how it worked for Israel too (Isa. 42:1 cf. 65:9,17). “The faith of God’s elect” was the body of truth given to Paul (Acts 14:22; 16:5).

When Paul says he was made an apostle “according to the faith of God’s elect” (1:1), he was saying the body of truth given to him existed in the mind of God before he was saved and he was made an apostle according to it.

The Law used to be the truth that was “after godliness” (1:1), but Paul was made an apostle to get men to “acknowledge” that there’d been a dispensational change, and now the body of truth given to him was after godliness, the grace message.

Paul was also made an apostle “in hope of eternal life” (1:2). We Gentiles had no hope of eternal life (Eph. 2:11,12), but Paul was made a apostle to give us that hope. Hope is always conditioned on something (Phil. 2:23), but our hope of eternal life is conditioned on the promise of the God who “cannot lie” (1:2). Why would Paul have to say that?

It was because Titus was pastor in Crete (1:5), an island off the coast of Greece. And the Greeks worshipped gods who were always lying and living in debauchery. Zeus was born on Crete (allegedly! LOL) and a book called Promethus Bound (written in 460 BC) claimed he never lied. But the rest of mythology said he was always lying to his wife Hera to cover up the affairs he had with gods and nymphs and women. No wonder the Cretians needed assurance that the God of the Bible wasn’t like that!

There were also unsaved Jews on Crete (Tit. 1:10) who had been at Pentecost (Acts 2:11) and heard Peter say they were in the last days before the kingdom (Acts 2:16,17). That was 30 years earlier, so they too would need assurance that the God of this new “sect of the Nazarenes” wasn’t lying in promising them eternal life.

God promised the Gentiles eternal life “before the world began” because after Satan and his host fell before the world began, God planned to replace them in the “high places” of government in heaven (Eph. 6:12) with us. But God planned Israel’s salvation after the world began (Mt. 25:34) because God planned to replace Adam as the ruler who had dominion over the world with Israel, and Adam didn’t fall until after the world began. See the difference?

Ignorance of the Law is No Excuse – Haggai 2:10-23

Posted on by Pastor Ricky Kurth

Summary:

God told Haggai to ask the priests some questions about the Law (2:11) because the “lawyers” mentioned in the New Testament were not His idea. They weren’t baptized (Lu. 7:30) so they weren’t saved (Mark 1:4) and so would answer questions wrongly. Their appearance in the Lord’s day show how far Israel had drifted from the Law. The Law said that priests should answer Law questions (Mal. 2:7).

“Holy flesh” (2:12) was the flesh of animal sacrifices (cf. Ex. 29:32-34). Men carried them to the priests in the “skirt” of their garment like an apron. The Law said that if the sacrifice touched something it was holy (Lev. 6:24-27), but not the skirt holding it, so the priests answered right. In times like this, when the Law didn’t address questions like this exactly, it was the priest’s job to settle it (Ezek. 44:15,23,24).

If a man touched a dead body he was unclean (Num. 19:11), and if he in turn touched something, it was unclean (v.22), so the priests answers this question right as well (Hab. 2:13). These laws should teach us not to hang around Christians who engage in unclean things (I Cor. 5:6).

But God’s point for Israel was that their sacrifices, which were usually holy (Ex. 23:32-34), could not make the people holy because the “skirt” of their disobedience was in between them and the holy sacrifices they were offering.

It’s like in the past when they offered their babies as human sacrifices “through the fire” to Molech (Jer. 32:35). God said the blood of those poor innocents was on their skirts (Jer. 2:34). Not literally, for fire doesn’t cause blood, just figuratively. And the skirts of the Jews’ disobedience in Haggai’s day kept their sacrifices from making them holy (cf. Isa. 1:11-13). So instead of their sacrifices making them holy, their sin was making the sacrifice unholy, just as when the man made unclean by a dead body touched something.

When they sinned, God chastened them with things like bad crops (Lev. 26:18-20), and that was happening in Haggai’s day (1:5-9). They looked for much but brought in little (1:9 cf. 2:15,16). “Blasting” and “mildew” (2:17) were also God’s chastening (Deut. 28:15,22). With no seed in the barn to plant that year (2:19), things were looking grim. But God promised to bless them now that they had repented (2:19).

Their ultimate blessing will come when God conquers their enemies at Armageddon (Hag. 2:20-22 cf. Joel 3:16) in “the day of the Lord” (Joel 3:14). The nations will have one “throne” (singular) in that day (Hag. 2:22) because the nations will give their power to Antichrist (Rev. 17:3,13).

The overthrowing of chariots and horses (Hag. 2:22) reminds us of Pharaoh’s overthrow in the Red Sea (Ex. 14:27,28), a picture of the day of the Lord (Isa. 19:2). The “Zerubbabel” of the day of the Lord in Haggai 2:23 can’t be the governor of ancient Israel in Haggai’s day any more than the “Egyptians” of Isaiah 19:2 can be the ancient Egyptians showing up at the day of the Lord. The “Zerubbabel” here is Christ. This Zerubbabel is called God’s chosen servant (2:23), making him a type of Christ was (Mt. 12:18).

Christ is called God’s “signet,” the king’s insignia that he pressed into a seal (cf. Dan. 6:17) to seal something up and serve notice that anyone messing with the seal messed with the king. In the day of the Lord, God will seal His people safely with Christ as their signet seal, and serve notice that anyone messing with them messed with God Himself.

The reason God brings up this business of a “signet” is because God promised David that Messiah would come from his seed (II Sam. 7:12,13). That meant anyone messing with any of Judah’s kings threatened God’s promise, so every king of Judah was one of God’s signets (Jer. 22:24).

But Coniah messed up somehow, so God swore no son of his would sit on Judah’s throne (Jer. 22:24-30), ending the line of David at Coniah. But how then could Christ be a son of David (Mt. 1:1) with Coniah in his ancestry (Mt. 1:12-16)? How could God give Him David’s throne (Lu. 1:32)? Well, by Law if a man has no sons to inherit his possessions, his daughters inherit (Num. 27:1-8), and Mary was a son of David as well (Lu. 3:23-31). The genius of God!