This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

We're continuing today on our look through Titus chapter 1 and drive-time
devotions. Day 4, we're going to focus on verses 8 to 9 and then drop down to
verses 10 to 14. In verses 8 to 9, Paul continues to talk about the life of the
leader, and as we talked about yesterday, yes, this is about the leader of the
church, but it's also about every one of our lives.

This is the character that we all need to exhibit. Yesterday, we talked about
family life, and it's so vital that he started with family life, and personal
life, and financial life, and social life, and now the spiritual life. Breaking
into the middle of verse 8, Paul says he needs to be one who loves what's good,
who is self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined.

He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it's been taught so that he
can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it. Spiritual
life of the leader. First, somebody who loves what's good.

If you want a healthy spiritual life, then one of the ways to make that life
more healthy, one of the ways to cultivate a healthy spiritual life, is you love
what's good. There's a lot that's evil in this world, and it's easy to fall in
love with evil. I know it's maybe heretical for you to hear me say that, but I
tell you, it's easy to fall in love with what is evil, because evil is what
you're tempted towards.

Now, I'm not talking about the other person's evil that is so evil and
horrendous to you, you'd never do that. I'm talking about your evil, the evil of
getting your way through anger, or the evil of following after that temptation
to satisfy yourself through some lust. The evil of allowing food and the eating
of food, your appetites, to replace your desire for God.

The evil of becoming so insecure that you live your life just to make others say
something good about you. There's all kinds of evil, and I see that kind of evil
in my life all the time, and I can fall in love with that kind of evil, because
it seems to meet my need in the moment. You want to cultivate a healthy
spiritual life?

Instead of that, love what's good. And what's good? God is good.

Everything that he has made is good. All the people that he has made is good. So
you fall in love with that.

You chase after that. You love what's good. That's how you cultivate a healthy
spiritual life.

You be self-controlled, he says. Self-control is not willpower. It can be
confusing because of the way the phrase is used.

Self-control is not me controlling my life. It's not willpower. It is Christ's
power at work in your life in such a way that he changes your choices.

You don't just do what you want. You do what he wants. That's self-control.

You don't just do what you want. You do what he wants. As you look through the
New Testament, there are really different ways to handle yourself.

Let me talk to you about six of them, as you see in the New Testament and the
Old Testament even. Let me start in Jeremiah. Jeremiah 48 says you could exalt
yourself.

Matthew 23 says you could indulge yourself. James 3 says you can promote
yourself. Titus chapter 1 says you can impose yourself.

We just looked at that by being overbearing. Colossians 2 says you can reject
yourself. But here we've talked about the fact in Titus chapter 1 verse 8 that
you can control yourself.

But you don't do that by yourself. You do that through Christ's power in your
life. That's the spiritual life of a leader.

That's the spiritual life of every one of us as a believer. He goes on and he
says this is somebody who is upright, somebody who is holy. Those have to do
with the character that I live out towards others, the way that I handle this
world that's around me.

I'm upright and I'm holy. Holy, that word has the idea of being set apart,
recognizing that I'm not of this world. I'm a citizen of a different world.

I'm looking forward to heaven and I live that way in my life now. What does it
mean to live a healthy spiritual life? He says you're disciplined.

Healthy spirituality has discipline to it. Truth of the matter is I am the sum
total of the disciplines of my life. The things that I do habitually, my
habitual disciplines, that's who I am.

That's who I am. And if my habit is to focus on entertainments in my life, the
movies that I watch, the TV that I see, the sports that I go to, if that's all
my habit is really built around, then I'm just an entertained person. I'm not
saying you can never go to any entertainment or never go to some sports game.

I'm saying if my habits are all built around just that, if that's what I always
go to, then that's who I am habitually and that's what my life is being lived
for. If my habits revolve around my business, then I'm pretty much just a
businessman or a businesswoman. That's what I'm living my life for.

Habitually, I go to look at the stocks. Habitually, I go to look at how can I do
this? How can I change this?

Now, should you look at your stocks if you have them? Of course. Should you make
sure you manage your company well if you're in a company?

Of course. When I'm talking about the habits of your life, what does your life
revolve around every day? If you're going to live life as a believer in Jesus
Christ, you've got to build habits into your life that have to do with your
faith in Jesus Christ.

If you've been to class 201, that's a part of what we do at purpose-driven
churches and Saddleback and other churches, you know that we talk about the
habits in your relationships and your time and your money. Build a habit in your
relationship of a small group of other believers that you meet with. Meet with
them weekly.

It's got to be a habit or it won't get into your life. That's a discipline.
Yeah, sometimes I don't want to go to a small group.

A lot of times I don't want to go. It is a discipline, but that discipline helps
me to grow. You build a habit into your life of spending time in God's Word.

I do that on a daily basis. I hope you do too. Read a couple verses from God's
Word on a daily basis.

You build that habit in. You build a habit in your life, the money that God put
into your life, the resources I habitually give. Whenever God has given to me, I
give 10% back to him.

That's a habit. If you don't build habits into your life, disciplines into your
life, then you can't grow. It can't be just disciplines.

It also has to be loving what's good. It also has to be being upright, being
holy. But without disciplines, it's not going to happen in your life.

Now Paul talks about the spiritual life. He talks about discipline. He talks
about holiness.

He talks about self-control. And then he also talks about God's Word. He says
this is someone who holds firmly to God's Word so that you can encourage others
and so that you can refute others.

You can encourage those who are living the truth and you can refute those who
are saying false teaching about the truth. Now as we read this, remember this
truth that he's talking about here, the trustworthy message, it is the
trustworthy message. This is not any trustworthy message.

The idea uses the definite article here in other places and the idea is that
there is a trustworthy message. And he's talking about the Scripture here. We
learned that from Timothy in other places.

He's focusing on the Word of God in the Old and New Testaments. The foundation
is the Bible. That's the trustworthy message as it has been taught.

It's not the trustworthy message that I make up. It's the one that's been
taught. It's God's Word.

Some try to make the foundation, the trustworthy message, history or tradition.
It is the Bible. It's not how things were done before.

It's what God says to us in his Word. Others try to make the foundation of truth
our current culture, just how we're doing things now. It's the Bible.

It's not how things are being done now as it has been taught. That means if I
come up with some new crazy interpretation of the Bible and teach it to you in
drive-time devotions, no one's ever taught it before in 2,000 years of Christian
history, guess what? I'm wrong.

I'm just dead wrong. It's been taught for 2,000 years. Now I understand that
sometimes as it's been taught, some people have misused it and they've relied
more on tradition than on the Bible.

That's why we need to get back to God's Word. And I understand that other times
as it's been taught, others have mistaught it and they've relied on more on
current culture than on the Bible. That's why we have to get back to God's Word.

You hold on to the truth of God's Word. That's part of leadership. You hold on
to it, not just for yourself, but so that you can encourage other people.

When you know it in your life, you can encourage people and also so you can warn
other people. You can refute those who oppose it because they're headed the
wrong direction. And headed the wrong direction, it's a devastating way to go.

Paul begins to talk about those who are going that devastating direction in
verses 10 to 14. He says, "For there are many rebellious people, mere talkers
and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision group. They must be silenced
because they are ruining whole households by teaching things that they ought not
to teach.

And that for the sake of dishonest gain. Even one of their own prophets has
said, 'Cretians are always liars, evil brutes and lazy gluttons. ' This
testimony is true.

Therefore, rebuke them sharply so that they will be sound in the faith and will
pay no attention to Jewish myths or to the commands of those who reject the
truth. " Paul talks in a shocking way about the character of the false teachers
in these verses. He says, "They have a reputation for being liars and brutes and
gluttons and that's what they are.

" Now that is a quote, a direct quote from the poet, one of the poets about
Crete. And he wrote, Epimedes wrote in 600 BC. So here we are in the first
century and they're still struggling with this.

They've struggled with this for a long, long time. And as I read this, I think,
should we stereotype people in this way? But the truth is, this is not a
stereotype.

This is just a statement of the culture that they lived in. You know, in
America, we've been materialistic for a long time. That's not a stereotype.

We just struggle with materialism. Let's be honest about it. We all live in a
culture.

And in that culture, we have to see the negatives that we have to escape to live
a life of faith, whatever it is. If I live in certain parts of the country,
certain communities, I might live in a culture of gang violence. I have to
escape that to live a life of faith.

If I live in another community, I might live in a culture of corporate greed.
I've got to escape that to live a life of faith. To live the life of faith, you
have to escape the culture that you live in.

And Paul says, instead of escaping the culture, these false teachers are just
fitting right in with it. That's what false teachers do. That's why they're
attractive.

They tell you that what you've been doing all along is okay. Just keep doing
more of it and God will give you more and you'll get more. Now who are these
false teachers?

He says they're of the circumcision group. They're probably legalists. But these
legalists, we're going to find out later, love myths.

They were the people who love to come up with new ideas. People always love new
ideas. If you can make it sound new, wow.

You know, I found out something nobody's ever found out before. It's not the new
truth that's going to change your life. Because somebody just made it up and
it's going to last 15 minutes.

The new truth that has its 15 minutes of fame does not change your life. It is
the solid truth of God's Word that's been around for thousands of years. It's
built on how God has worked in human history.

That's what changes your life. These false teachers were ruining whole
households. They were spiritual scam artists and they did it just for the sake
of dishonest gain.

And so Paul says to Titus, you have to silence them. You have to rebuke them so
they'll be sound in faith. Now it's easy to tell someone they're wrong.

That's the easiest thing in the world. But Paul says, I want you to do it in
such a way so that they'll be sound in faith. Tell them they're wrong in such a
way that invites them to faith.

For most of us, when we hear words like rebuke them, that doesn't sound right to
us. We think, oh, no, you should just encourage people. You should go along with
people.

That'll help them. No. When something is wrong, you have to say it's wrong.

But you don't have to say it's wrong in a way that separates you from the other
person. You say it's wrong in a way that invites them to this new life of faith.
False teaching is poison to your soul.

Now if a child was about to eat a poison plant, you would not just understand
them. You wouldn't say to them, you might want to think about not doing that.
No, you'd rebuke them sharply.

You would immediately say, don't do that. But then you'd sit down with them and
say, let me explain to you. This plant, not all the plants are poison, but this
plant is poison.

You don't want to eat this particular plant. You do it in a way that helped them
to grow. You do it in a way that helped them to change.

And that's what Paul encourages us to do. And this whole chapter we've been
looking at is about the spiritual life of a leader, of a believer. As we close,
I want to pray in my life, and I want to pray together for you also, that God
would allow these characteristics through his spirit to shine in our lives
today.

Jesus, let this be. Let me be. Just pray this to him.

Let me be somebody who loves what's good. Let me be someone who is self-control
as I depend on your power. Let me live a life that is upright, holy, and
disciplined.

Let me be a person who holds firmly to your word. And Jesus, when I stumble and
fall, let me not give up. Let me realize you're going to keep working to do this
in my life the rest of my life.

And I can put my faith and trust in you. You're never going to stop working in
this direction in my life. You're never going to stop working to grow me.

So grow me today, Jesus, I pray, through the circumstances of life and the
relationships of life. Grow me today. In your name, I pray.

Amen. Tomorrow, we're going to look together at Paul's powerful statement on
purity.