This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

This is day three together, our look through Titus chapter one. We're going to
focus together on verses five to eight. Remember we talked about the beginning
of the book and Paul and how he set it up that Titus had been his partner in
ministry.

And now we find out in verse five that there is a new partnership, a new role
that Titus has in ministry with Paul. Here's what he says in verse five, "The
reason I left you in Crete was that you might straighten out what was left
unfinished and appoint elders in every town as I directed you. " That's what
Titus was left to do.

He had a two-fold ministry, the ministry of straightening out and the ministry
of appointing leaders. That's an incredible ministry. And some of you, God has
given you that exact ministry.

I'm thinking of Glenn Crewan right now, the executive pastor at Saddleback who
just retired after being with us, great, great friend for 28 years. I'm thinking
about the fact that although he never preached a sermon, God gave him this
ministry, the ministry of straightening things out that were left unfinished.
He'd look for what was undone and get it done.

And the ministry of appointing leaders, the right kind of leaders for the
church. That's most of what he did for 28 years of ministry here at Saddleback
Church. And did God use that?

Yes, God used that. It's the ministry of Titus. And God has given some of you
that particular ministry.

You may feel like I'm not a teacher. Some of you are a teacher, but you may feel
like I'm not a teacher. So what could I do for God?

You could straighten out what's left unfinished and you can appoint the right
kind of leaders that make a difference for God's sake. It's the ministry of
straightening out and the ministry of appointing leaders. That word "straighten
out," it's a medical term.

It's for the setting of a broken limb. You straightened it out so that it would
heal and grow in the right way. That's the importance of this.

If you don't straighten it out at the beginning and the right time, then it's
going to be crooked for the rest of your life or have to be rebroken and reset.
So you straighten it out so that it grows in the right way. If you're the kind
of person who can see what's unfinished, ask God for the grace and the strength
to straighten it out.

If you have that gift in your life, it's easy to be a critic. Critics can see
what needs to be straightened out. "Oh, that's crooked.

I don't like that. " Critics don't change anything. No, you have the ministry of
straightening out.

You find a way to get involved, to set the limb, to care for it in such a way so
that healing occurs. I love Titus. He's a reminder to me that there are three
kinds of people in this world.

There are people who make a bad situation worse. You've met those kind of
people. They walk into a bad situation and the things that they say, the things
that they do, the spirit that they have, you feel worse even though it was bad.

That's an easy thing to do, make a bad situation worse. You just point out how
bad it is and then you walk away. There are people who make a bad situation
worse.

There are other people, they can make a good situation better. They walk into a
good situation and they encourage some more, they strengthen some more, they
lend a hand. They make a good situation better.

It's a good kind of person. Titus is a third kind of person. He was the kind of
person who could make a bad situation better.

He could go into a situation where some straightening out was needed, where the
wrong leaders, where there was false teaching going on and he could make that
better. If God's gifted you to do that, that is a great gift. Don't misuse it in
empty criticism.

Use it in healing God's church, healing God's people. Now you want to straighten
things out? You start with the leadership.

That's where you start in a church. That's where you start in your life. You
want to straighten things out in your life?

Things are going the wrong direction? Make sure you got the right kind of
leadership in your life, leadership that points you to God's Word. You want to
straighten things out in the church.

It's going in the wrong direction. You make sure the church has the right kind
of leadership in it's body. You start with the leadership and where do you start
with leadership?

You start with character. Everything rises and falls on leadership and
leadership as a leader, everything rises and falls on character. And so Paul
talks about character in verses 6 to 8 as he talks about appointing leaders in
this church in Crete that was struggling.

He says this, verses 6 to 8, "An elder must be blameless, the husband of but one
wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild
and disobedient. Since an overseer is entrusted with God's work, he must be
blameless, not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not
violent, not pursuing dishonest gain. Rather, he must be hospitable, one who
loves what's good, one who is self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined.

" Now as Paul talks about the character of a leader here, he's really talking
about the character of a believer. Every one of us, there is somebody that we
lead, whether it's one person or somebody in our family or the guy who's
watching us or the woman who's watching us at work, we are leading one person.
This is directed specifically towards the leaders of the church, but these
characteristics are for every one of us as believers.

And he begins with the word that scares all of us as believers. He begins by
saying you got to be blameless. In fact, not only does he say it once, he says
it twice.

He says it in verse 6 and then he says it again in verse 7. What's he talking
about here? All of us know that we've sinned.

In fact, the Bible says all have sinned and fallen short of God's glory. So how
could any of us be blameless? Well this word blameless is not pointing to the
fact that we have sinned and now need to be forgiven, although because we've
been forgiven, we do stand without blame in the sight of Jesus Christ.

But that's not particularly what this is pointing to. This is more pointing to
our relationships with other people. We're blameless in our other relationships,
not that we've never done anything wrong, but if we've done something wrong,
we've made it right.

We're not doing anything wrong right now. As best as we know how, we're living
with a clear conscience before other people. That's what this word is all about,
blameless.

And these words, they are written to elders. A lot of people think, what is
that? And does my church have them?

Do we have elders? What are elders? Well, if you take a close look at the New
Testament, you do a study through the words that are used for the leadership of
the church, you find out that the Bible talks about elders, the Bible talks
about overseers.

In fact, overseers was talked about in verse 7 that we've just read, elder in
verse 6. And then other places, the Bible talks about pastors. Now, are those
three different positions in the church?

No. If you look at the New Testament, they're obviously, you compare these
verses, they are obviously the same role. An elder is a pastor.

A pastor is an overseer. An overseer is an elder. They're all the same thing.

So whether you use the term elder or pastor or overseer, sometimes that word
overseer is also translated bishop. Whether you use any of those words, they're
the same thing. Now, I understand in today's churches, we have made different
forms of hierarchies where we have this guy named a bishop, and this guy is a
better bishop, and this guy is a better, better, better bishop.

We have those kinds of words, and that's okay. We can organize our churches how
we want to today as long as it's not unbiblical. But in the New Testament, you
need to understand that these words all meant the same thing.

So as we talk about elder here and overseer, we're talking about the pastor of a
church, and Paul talks about the character, the leadership of that pastor, the
leadership for all of our lives that we need, the kind of character we need to
be a leader, and all of us need to lead in some way in our lives. So as a
leader, whether it's a church or a family or one person that I'm trying to help
to come to know Christ, Paul says you need to take a look at some different
areas of your life. He says you have to realize you're a leader not just in your
church life, you're a leader in your family life, you're a leader in your
personal life, you're a leader in your financial life, you're a leader in your
social life, you're a leader in your spiritual life, all those areas those five
areas family life, personal life, financial life, social life, spiritual life
and he just lays it out here.

He says in your family life, you're a leader, in fact, he begins there. You want
to find a good leader? You look at what's happening in their own family because
you can't fake it there.

In your family life, Paul Paul says make sure that this person is the husband of
but one wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of
being wild and disobedient. Now what does that mean, the husband of but one
wife? Does that mean if you're single you can't pastor a church?

Does that mean if your wife has died that you can't pastor a church? Is that
what this means? I believe that this phrase, as you take a close look at it, has
the feeling of a one woman man.

This is the guy who has a character of being married to one woman for life. Now
if that wife dies or even if that wife divorces this pastor without his consent
with him trying everything that he can to put the relationship back together,
after a period of time grieving if she's died or trying to restore if a divorce
has happened, I believe that you can still see the character of a one woman man.
Also in that day there were those who married more than one woman.

They had love for more than one woman. Either they would have serial marriages
or they would marry more than one person at once. And Paul says no, that's not
the character of the leader of God's church.

The character of the leader of God's church is the character that God had from
the very beginning. The Bible tells us in the book of Genesis that God decided
from the very beginning to give Eve to Adam and he said, "This cause a man shall
leave his father and mother, shall cleave to his wife and the two shall become
one. " That is the character that you look for in leadership, in family life.

If there are children in this family, they are children who believe. There is
the following of that dad and that mom and that family to a life of faith in
Jesus Christ. They're not wild.

They're not disobedient. Now does that mean, wait, if my kids do something wrong
that means I can't be a leader in God's church? Yeah.

When they're younger, yeah. Not for doing one wrong thing, but if they're living
a life of wildness and disobedience, you don't want to be a leader in God's
church right now. Your family needs your time.

Your family needs your time right now. Maybe there'll be a season later where
you can be a leader in the church, but right now they need your time and there's
no more important calling that you have in your life than your family. So you
give them your time.

You give them your heart. I believe this is for when the children are in the
home. Obviously when they become adults or outside of the home, they're making
their own choices.

Family life. Husband of one wife. Children who believe.

By the way, when it says husband of one wife, the obvious question is, does this
mean that only men can be pastors? It's just indicated here, but if we were
studying the book of Timothy or other chapters within the scripture, we would
find that very clearly the lead pastor of the church in the New Testament is to
be a man. And this does not mean that women cannot serve and should not serve in
the greatest ways equally in God's church.

It's very clear that there is an equality in service, but there is a difference
in roles in God's church. Now, why God said that the lead pastor was to be a
man, I don't totally understand. I have a suspicion that sometimes it's because
men are less spiritual than women, and God wanted to make sure that men were
also led to faith through example within the church, that it wasn't just women
who were in the church, but that's a cultural thing.

That's my culture that I'm understanding that from. I don't understand it all.
But I do trust God in this.

And I do know that under the leadership of that senior pastor, that a woman
should and could and will do anything and everything within the church and the
body of Christ to lead out within the church. There is the sense in this that
the family life is at the focus of what the man of God and also the leader of
the woman of God is doing. It's family life.

He also in these verses talks about personal life, and he says don't be
overbearing. Overbearing means sad, unpleasing yourself. Don't be quick
tempered.

That means how you deal with people who irritate you. It's so easy to be quick
tempered. Don't be given to drunkenness.

The leader can't be an addicted person. Don't be violent. The leader can't be
somebody who gets their way through anger.

Don't look for that kind of person, but look for the person who leads by the
gentleness, the kind of gentleness that Jesus Christ had. When you're looking
for a leader, look for somebody also in the area of their financial life, not
pursuing dishonest gain. It's interesting that Crete was famous for dishonest
gain.

And so that meant that he would be going against the culture if you did not
pursue dishonest gain. He'd be following Jesus Christ instead. We're going to
find out as we walk through these chapters that the false teachers pursued
dishonest gain.

How did they do that? How did false teachers get paid? It was common in that day
to pay teachers.

So if you gathered a bigger crowd by appealing to their selfishness, you'd get
paid more. You'd put down the other teachers so people wouldn't go and listen to
those other teachers. They would come and listen to you, so you'd get paid more,
so you could pursue dishonest gain even through teaching.

Make sure it's not that kind of person, Paul says. And then he says look at
their social life. Make sure it's somebody who's hospitable, somebody who loves
to have other people in their home.

The church of Jesus Christ is people. If you don't love people, you don't want
to be leading God's church. Now that's the church, but it also applies to my
life and your life.

So as we end the day, I just want to pray through these verses again, thinking
about my life and your life individually as believers. Let's pray together. And
just say Jesus Christ, I want to live the kind of life you want me to live.

I want to be blameless. I know I'm not perfect, but I want to live by your power
in the best way that I can now. I want to live in my family in a way that
pleases you.

Help me to be committed to my spouse, committed to my marriage. Help me to love
my kids, even when I struggle with them. Help me to lead them to life of faith,
even when it's hard.

Lord, in my personal life, I don't want to be somebody who, through my temper or
through my violence, through my anger, gets people to do what I want to do. Make
me the kind of person who is gentle, who is loving. Lord, if there are
addictions in my life, help me to confess them to somebody that I love, that
somebody that I trust, so they can be set aside in my life.

Lord, in my financial life, dishonest gain can become all-consuming. Help me not
to let that into my life or to get that out of my life. And Jesus, help me to be
somebody who loves people.

You know, when I get tired, I can pull into myself. Instead, help me to find
others that I can love, whether it's one or a hundred. Help me to be hospitable,
to love the people that are around me.

Jesus, I want to live the kind of life that you've given me to live, so I can
lead others to know the kind of life that only you can give. I pray this in your
name, amen. Join us tomorrow.

We're going to talk together about the spiritual life of the believer leader.