Energetic in Goodness

Now, let’s turn in our Bibles to Titus, in the Pastoral Epistles. Titus. And we’re going to read chapter 3, but you will be well served if you, sometime between now and tomorrow morning or throughout the weekend, that you just read the remaining two chapters. I was going to read them all, but I don’t think I will. I’ll just read from chapter 3. And incidentally, there are Bibles around you in the pews, if you happen not to have a Bible, and they’re there for your use. And I won’t embarrass you by giving you the page number.

Titus 3:1:

“Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good,to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and to show true humility toward[s] all men.

“At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another.But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared,he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit,whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior,so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.This is a trustworthy saying. And I want you to stress these things, so that those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good. These things are excellent and profitable for everyone.

“But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law, because these are unprofitable and useless.Warn a divisive person once, and then warn him a second time. After that, have nothing to do with him.You may be sure that such a man is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned.

“As soon as I send Artemas or Tychicus to you, do your best to come to me at Nicopolis, because I have decided to winter there.Do everything you can to help Zenas the lawyer and Apollos on their way and see that they have everything they need.Our people must learn to devote themselves to doing what is good, in order that they may provide for daily necessities and not live unproductive lives.

“Everyone with me sends you greetings. Greet those who love us in the faith. Grace be with you all.”

Amen.

Well, let’s pause once again and ask for God’s help:

Our gracious God, we thank you that you have preserved us and brought us safely to this evening hour. We thank you that we are able to bow down before you, a good God, who has made himself known in the pages of the Word of God, and we pray that as we turn to it now, that the Spirit of God will be our teacher and that we might both understand and believe; that we might obey and trust; indeed, that we might be conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.

Here’s a quote that I keep in my preaching book, from The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis. It reads as follows:

“Those like myself whose imagination far exceeds their obedience are subject to a just penalty; we easily imagine conditions far higher than … we have [actually] reached. If we describe what we have imagined we may make others, and make ourselves, believe that we have really been there,” and so fool both them and ourselves.[1]

I keep that in the flyleaf of this little booklet that is an inseparable friend to me. I keep it as a constant and necessary reminder of the inseparable link between faith and practice, between belief and behavior—a link which is inseparable for all who teach the Bible and for each of us who listen to the Bible being taught.

And this inseparable link between profession and practice is the very theme of this little book of Titus, this letter that Paul has written to Titus, charging him—as you will see when you do your homework, in chapter 1—charging him with the responsibility of getting things in order. The church in Crete was presumably established on a fourth missionary journey that we don’t have record of in the Acts. Titus himself was apparently a convert from paganism, and he had been charged with the responsibility of giving leadership to the believing people on the island of Crete, which just sits out there in the Mediterranean in a place that some of you may well have visited.

The focus for our time is inevitably limited, and we may not even get as far as I have planned to get, as I look at my time this evening. But what I want us to recognize—and this I’m going to have to give to you again to follow up on—I want you to recognize that at the heart of this instruction is a solid, an unequivocal, commitment to goodness. To goodness. You will notice that the word “goodness” or “good” comes again and again in these three chapters. It comes in both of its forms in Greek, both as kalos and also as agathos. And on both occasions, it is at the very heart of what Paul is saying. And in 2:14, he reminds the readers that Jesus Christ “gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness … to purify for himself a people that are his very own.” And what are those people to be like? They are to be “eager to do what is good.” “Eager to do what is good.”

And if we were giving a title to our study this evening, it would simply be “Energetic in Goodness.” “Energetic in Goodness.” “Ready”— 3:1—“ready to do whatever is good.” “Ready to do whatever is good.” And this in direct contrast to the influential false teachers, who are identified for us in chapter 1 and, sadly, are described in 1:16 as those who “claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good.”

So here you have a fledgling situation, you have a church that is being established, the leadership needs to be put in place, many of the bits and pieces have to be set in motion, and this is the charge given to Titus. He is to exercise this responsibility in an environment which mitigates against it—and, not least of all, on account of those who are high-sounding, who are big talkers, who like arguments, who engage in discussions, but in actual fact, their theology does not jibe with their practice. And so they are, according to his designation, “unfit for doing anything good.” And in contrast, these to whom he writes are to be those “ready to do whatever is good.” So in other words, profession and practice are found to be in conflict with each other.

And Paul doesn’t mince his words. These folks are not high on his list of people that he really wants to spend time with at all. That becomes apparent. These folks are “ruining … households,” he says in 1:11. The reason they’re ruining households is because they’re “teaching things they ought not to teach,” and, you will notice, there is a mercenary element involved in this, because their engaging in this kind of proclamation is tied with “dishonest gain,” or with shameful desires for money. And so, at the end of chapter 1, he finishes up by pointing out that these characters with whom Titus has to deal are marked by three d’s: they are “detestable,” they are “disobedient,” and they’re derelict. “Detestable,” “disobedient,” and derelict. I’m not sure what Paul would have made of our great concerns for being politically correct in our day.

He’s very skillful, you will notice, because when he points out just how bad a place Crete is proving to be, he quotes one of their own prophets. I mean, if you’re going to run England down, choose an Englishman who’s run it down. Don’t run it down as a Scotsman. If you have something derogatory to say about America, choose an American who said something bad about it, but don’t come in as a resident alien and try and do that. It’s not wise. I know because I’ve done it in the past. I’ve stopped doing it a long time ago. I stopped at five o’clock this evening.

But what he recognizes and what Titus obviously knew was that Crete was proverbial for its moral decadence. It was just a pretty bad place. In fact, Crete gave a verb to the Greek language, the verb krētízō, which means to tell lies. And that came directly out of Crete, because people were so untruthful that they became a byword for telling lies. And contemporary historians recorded how it was “almost impossible to find … personal conduct more treacherous or public policy more unjust than in Crete.”[2] Let me just give that to you again: the historians of the day, recording the context in which Titus is to give this instruction to these people under his care, they found it “almost impossible to find … personal conduct more treacherous or public policy more unjust than in Crete.”

Now, this should be helpful to us, because some of us live with the notion that if somehow or another we could just rewind the video and go back to the first century, my, what a wonderful time it would be back there, when we didn’t have all of these dreadful twenty-first-century problems to contend with! If we could just zip right back in time, we could go back to the time when it was so wonderful and things were far more organized and so on. Well, of course, that just belies the fact that we don’t understand things at all. We neither understand our Bibles, nor do we understand church history. Because the context for Titus is one that put huge demands upon him. He has, if you like, moral decadence that is pressing him from the outside, and then he has religious dogmatists that are causing confusion on the inside, and he’s on the receiving end of the instruction to encourage these people.

The ministry of the pulpit is not so much the ministry of innovation as it is the ministry of reminder.

Furthermore, and if that wasn’t bad enough, Paul wants him to be an example in doing what is good. In fact, the literal translation of the Greek—I’m now in 2:7 where he says, “In everything set them an example by doing what is good”—the Greek actually reads, “In all respects a model of good works.” “In all respects a model of good works.” And then you can put the verb to be at the end of it if you wish. So here he is, charged with this responsibility not only of exhorting and encouraging the people under his care but being charged by the apostle Paul himself with becoming the very model of goodness which he is then to challenge and encourage his listeners to.

And in the framework, there is no time for debate, and there is no place for diffidence. That’s how verse 15 reads, really, of the end of chapter 2: “These … are the things you should teach. Encourage … rebuke with all authority. [And] do[n’t] let anyone despise you.” Now, why is that? Because of his personality? No, because of his position. Paul recognizes that, entrusted with this leadership position, Titus has a job to do, and in much the same way that Paul writes to Timothy and he says, “Let no one despise your youth, but be an example to the believers in life and in speech, in conduct, and so on,”[3] it’s a high and holy calling. It’s a dreadful position—especially in recognition of the fact that the person who fulfills this role will answer to God for every word out of their mouth, for every example set, and not only for every sermon preached but for the motivation which underlies the preaching; that on the day when the records are established, whether it is wood, hay, and stubble or gold, and silver, and precious stones,[4] it’s not going to be determined by the extent of the influence of the proclaimer but will be determined on the strength of the motivation of the proclaimer’s heart in doing what God has told him to do. That’s what makes it such a tremendous thing for Titus to find himself in this circumstance.

And so, it is, then, his charge to make sure that he exercises a ministry of reminder—to remind the people. One of the things that’s good to notice is how many times the Bible tells us to remember. It’s saying again and again, “I want you to remember.” The ministry of the pulpit is not so much the ministry of innovation as it is the ministry of reminder. Indeed, chasing after innovation will probably lead people up all kinds of dead-end streets. And so it is that Titus, as Peter, as Paul, as the others of the apostles, are to remind people of certain things.

Now, what we have here in verses 1 and 2 is a lesson in civics. A lesson in civics. Can I just ask: Did anybody here take a class in civics? Yes. So it is an American use of the terminology: civics. So we understand what it was. Those of you who took the class, at least, understand what it was—namely, the rights and duties of citizenship as a subject of study. The rights and duties of citizenship as a subject of study.

Now, it is quite fascinating, and not surprising, that in the context in which Titus finds himself that Paul should be so concerned about the civic duty of the believers; that they should, by their lips and by their lives, stand out from the surrounding community; that they should be distinguishable from the false teachers, whose practice does not match their profession, and they should be immediately observable in a community that is marked by immorality and by decadence. In other words, his first emphasis is on the public deportment of the believer; that the gospel that has transformed their lives must also be seen to transform their living; that they have not been sequestered, they have not been removed from the surrounding culture. They are placed in the mainstream of the culture, and in that culture they must live their lives.

Now, you don’t have to be a genius to say, “Well, there is an immediate point of application to us in every generation, isn’t there?”—and not least of all now, at this point in the twenty-first century. We exercise the responsibilities of Christian citizenship in an environment that, in some ways, is not dissimilar to the context that is described here in Crete.

And in the public square, the Christian is supposed to stand out in contrast to the general populace. The Cretans were notoriously troublesome. They were known to be agitators. They were known to be insurrectionists. So in the context of agitation, insurrection, and downright troublesomeness, the application of Romans 12:2 is pretty clear—namely, “Don’t [allow] the world around you [to] squeeze you into its own mould.”[5] We tend to immediately read that and think it has something to do with playing cards or gin rummy or going to bingo or whatever it might be. That’s just because of where we’ve come from. But in this context, the temptation to be squeezed by the surrounding culture would be the temptation to take on the guise of those who were the mainstream of the culture by championing the troublesome, agitational, insurrectionist elements that were part and parcel of this particular environment. “Instead,” says Paul to Titus, “you better remind the people that the public duty of the Christian is to be marked by these things.”

Now, I’ve sought to summarize them, and in doing so, I may have missed something, in which case, I trust your judgment to fill in the gaps. But I have chosen to try and summarize verses 1 and 2 under four words. They’re fairly straightforward, and I think that there is basis for using them as I do. “Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient.”

Loyalty

Number one: the Christian citizen is to be marked by loyalty. By loyalty. Loyalty, if you look it up in the Oxford-English Dictionary, is descriptive of “faithful allegiance to the legitimate monarch or government of one’s country.” “Faithful allegiance to the legitimate monarch or government of one’s country.” Loyalty. Not a loyalty that shifts in relationship to whoever the prevailing political party is but loyalty that recognizes that one of the marks of Christian civic deportment is going to be seen, if you like, essentially in patriotism; and that this involves respect for authority, recognizing that the ultimate source of authority—as Paul says both in Romans 13[6] and in 1 Timothy 2[7]—that the ultimate source of authority within the political structure is none other than God himself. Therefore, he says, the Christian in Crete is not to be engaged in civil disobedience but rather should be exemplary in upholding the rule of law—not involved in insurrection and disobedience but exemplary in upholding the rule of law.

Now, depending on where you’re coming from, your mind may immediately start to ring little bells for you, and they say, “Ah, yes, but what about the exception that is mentioned in Acts chapter [4], where they’re told they’re no longer to preach in the name of Jesus, and Peter says, ‘You judge for yourselves whether it’s right for us to obey God or to man but we will do this’[8] and so on”? Yes, that is an exception. That is an exception. And it is one of the salutary observations of our day and generation that evangelical Christianity moves, in my humble estimation, far too quickly to the exception clause and far too slowly to the New Testament demand for the Christian to live an exemplary life. An exemplary life, so that the rule of law and the establishment of civic duty and its structures are those which are not undermined by Christian conviction but which are reinforced as a result of a proper sense of loyalty.

Community

The second word is community. You say, “Where do you get community from?” Well, I get it from “to be ready to do whatever is good.” And you say, “Well, that doesn’t sound like community to me.” Well, let me explain.

This isn’t simply the suggestion by Paul that the Christians under Titus’s care should engage in acts of charity, but the recurring emphasis on goodness is not goodness that happens in a wardrobe, not goodness that happens in isolation, not goodness that happens in the privacy of a church community, but goodness that is expressed in community living, so that the eagerness to do good is an eagerness which becomes a characteristic of the Christian in the population.

Now, let me give you my old New Testament professor. This is what he says: “Where good citizenship demands communal action,” the Christian should be “cooperative, provided no question of conscience is involved.”[9] In other words, within the framework of community, one of the calling cards of the Christian is to be seen in their willingness to engage in shared goodness. In other words, it assumes involvement and engagement rather than isolation and estrangement.

And people will ask all the time, “Well, what is the Christian’s role within the framework of politics or within the structures of government?” and so on. And every so often it comes back to me that “Begg has said, you know, we shouldn’t have any involvement in politics at all.” I’m not sure that people actually listen to what I have to say. And furthermore, who really cares what I have to say? What is Paul saying here to Titus? He’s saying that if you’re going to engage in acts of goodness, that is going to have an impact on the community. You cannot isolate yourself. You cannot be estranged from the community. You have to be involved, and you have to be engaged.

Within the framework of community, one of the calling cards of the Christian is to be seen in their willingness to engage in shared goodness.

Courtesy

Thirdly, the Christian’s duty within that framework is to be marked not only by loyalty and by community but by courtesy. By courtesy. Now there’s an old-fashioned word that we’re able to drag out on a Friday evening! Courtesy. Courtesy. I refuse to follow a rabbit trail that is appearing in my mind’s eye as I speak to you on the whole issue of manners within the Christian community. We’ll leave that for another time, or perhaps for question and answers. But to the extent that manners, deportment, bearing are an expression of courtesy, these things are to be part and parcel of the Christian’s lifestyle.

Now, you might think that the word courtesy is not a big enough word to handle all that’s mentioned here. Notice: “to slander no one.” Not anyone! “No one.” To slander somebody is to say behind their back what you would never say to their face. “To be peaceable and considerate.” In other words, what he’s saying is, “Make sure your folks that are in your church, Titus, are marked by grace, politeness, manners, respect that is displayed in their gestures and is displayed in their demeanor.”

So in other words, if you bump up against a Christian in Crete, if you meet them, as it were, on the bus—which is an anachronism, I understand—if you run into them in the bazaar, one of the ways that you might identify them is not because they have one of those covers that you have for your Bible (’cause frankly, they didn’t even have much of a Bible); it’s not because they’ve got a big cross hanging around their neck; it’s not because they’ve got a bumper sticker that betrays their political affiliation; but it is because after you’ve spent time with them and had a coffee with them, you’ve said to yourself when you walk away, “That was an incredibly nice lady. What a nice person!” You go home, and you tell your wife, “I met a fellow in the town today. He was a good man. He was a good man. Now, we only spoke for twenty minutes, but I could tell he exuded goodness. He was polite. He was courteous. He listened. He engaged. And you know what? When I think about it, he never said a bad thing about anybody. No slander from him at all!”

In other words, courtesy is the opposite of the teenager’s one taboo. What is the teenager’s one taboo? What is it that no teenager likes? I’m going to tell you: people who are mean. Mean. Now, you could have a teenager that sleeps with his girlfriend, and he doesn’t care about that, but he cares if you’re mean. You can have a teenager that has all kind of views on everything, but they don’t like mean people. They don’t like ugly, vicious, mean people. And that is why courtesy is actually one of the calling cards in a community that is increasingly lacking in moral dignity, in a community that is uncooperative, in a community that is marked by unkindness and by unfairness and the absence of justice, a community that is vicious and nasty and difficult to deal with and people who are difficult to handle.

Now, let me just pause here and say parenthetically that… You know what he’s actually saying here? He’s saying that Christians are supposed to be do-gooders. That’s what he’s saying. Now, in my experience in the fifty-seven years of my life, growing up in evangelicalism, a do-gooder was actually a form of disparagement. That was an indication of somebody who didn’t believe the Bible; he was just a do-gooder. How everybody quite got there I’ve never fully understood, but it was a term of disparagement. Well, we’re going to have to recapture it in light of what the Bible says, in light of what Paul says to Titus. The whole three chapters pulsate with a call to radical goodness—that radical goodness being an extension of the radical change wrought by the gospel in the lives of those who are under the care of Titus.

Peaceability

And this courtesy will prevent an individual from taking matters into their own hands. And the word here for “peaceable,” that is translated “peaceable,” amachos, is the word which means “without fighting.” “Without fighting.” Not pugilistic. Not constantly looking for a fight. And in the course of it all, it is the gospel which is then revealed in the conduct.

Now, you can go back generations and find this in history. Most of us know the name of William Wilberforce. And Wilberforce, who lived in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, is most famous for his impact in the community in the United Kingdom by his constant struggle against slavery. He, a contemporary of Newton and others, labored hard for these things. But in a book that he wrote, entitled A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Higher and Middle Classes in This Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity, published in 1833, he bemoans the fact that within his lifetime, the believers in Britain were beginning to cut the umbilical cord between gospel belief and gospel behavior, so that they began to believe that all they needed was the behavior, forget the belief.

And if you think about the history of the church, it is a history of the pendulum swinging out on both extremes, isn’t it? A period of time where everybody says, “All we need is the belief, and don’t let’s worry about the behavior,” and then another period of time where everybody says, “No, all we really need to concentrate is on the behavior, and we don’t really need to pay much attention to the belief.” And in the course of this—if I can find my quote—he says to the folks of the time… And maybe I can’t find my quote, in which case, I’ll spare you this.

Oh, I would love to find my quote, though. I put a little piece of paper, and then you will notice I just took that little piece of paper out. Yeah. Well… Such a good quote! That’s okay. We got time. Yeah, I mean we can… And I make my marks in pencil, ’cause this book is so precious to me that I can’t be marking it with a pen. No, I’ll get it for you later.

But that’s the point that he makes: that when you disengage gospel truth from gospel living, then it won’t take very long for the whole thing to cave in upon itself. And I say that parenthetically, because it’s so fundamental to what he has laid down in the early chapters and what he’s coming to next.

Humility

The fourth word is the word “humility.” It’s right there, if you have an NIV. What are these believers to look like? What are they to be marked by? Well, they’re to be marked by courtesy, and they’re to be marked by a community, and they’re to be marked by loyalty, and they’re to be marked by humility: “and to show true humility toward[s] all men.” In other words, instead of Christianity making a person proud, it ought to make a person grateful. Christianity is supposed to be marked by meekness (that’s not weakness; that’s strength under control), by a gentleness of demeanor that would have an impact on a place like Crete and would also have an impact on a place like Cleveland.

Paul is not suggesting here the absence of moral outrage, but he is making sure that the temptations and proclivities on the part of people who came from this environment, this agitational environment, need to be tempered by the truth of God’s Word. And any attempt at being proud, any attempt at selfishness, should be countermanded by the call to humility.

Instead of Christianity making a person proud, it ought to make a person grateful.

Some of you watch Prime Minister’s Question Time. I know that’s about three of you. But Prime Minister’s Question Time is aired at some ungodly hour in the morning on a Wednesday and then and also on a Sunday evening at nine o’clock on C-SPAN. And if you ever watch that, you will know that there’s a person there who’s called the Speaker. And the Speaker doesn’t really do very much speaking at all; he’s just responsible for deciding who asks the questions. And every so often, he says, “Order! Order!” and then everyone bays like horses, and it’s really fascinating and a lot more fun than the average Congress that I’ve seen on MSNBC, I must say. Apparently, nobody’s there at all most of the time. So, at least in the House of Commons, there’s somebody there to make a noise.

And my favorite Speaker in my lifetime was a man called Bernard Weatherill. Bernard Weatherill was a Yorkshire man. He seemed to me to be a very nice man. I never met him. But I was not surprised when upon his retirement he gave an interview to the BBC. And in the course of the interview, they went around the Speaker’s essentially palace or palatial home, so that if someone visits from another country, if they’re not taken into a royal residence, they will often be greeted by the Speaker, may have residence in their home, and so on. And it is really a quite remarkable place and full of history and amazing paintings and gilded walls and all kinds of stuff.

And as the man was showing us all around on TV, the interviewer said, “Well, you know, this is a pretty lofty position to find yourself in. How have you navigated your way through these high corridors and echelons of influence and of significance, and you apparently have come out of it largely unscathed?” And he did. He was a man of integrity and kindness. And I was so desperate to hear his answer.

And he put his hand in his jacket pocket, and he brought out a thimble. And it was a silver thimble, and his father had been a tailor. And when his father died, his mother gave Bernard his father’s favorite thimble. And when he became a member of the House of Commons, and then when he became the Speaker of the House, she said to him, “Bernard, keep that thimble in your pocket, and remember where you came from, and remember who you are, and treat everybody with kindness and grace and respect and humility.”

Is it outlandish for me to suggest that the evangelical community might, at this very moment in American history and culture, do well to put a few thimbles in our pockets?

And there is, loved ones, no escape from this. Because you will notice the jarring, challenging final phrase of verse 2: “towards all people.” “Towards all people.” Touto anthropos. In other words, this gentle courtesy, which is so important a trait of Christian character that it must be exhibited to the world in general, must include those who are most hostile to us, must include those whom we like the least, must include those who are not our fellow Christians and our personal friends.

You see, if it simply said at the bottom, “and to show true humility to all those of you who are a part of the fellowship here at, you know, First Evangelical Church of Crete,” everybody could breathe a sigh of relief and get on, couldn’t they? But no, he doesn’t say that. Because after all, what good would that be in a culture that is marked by agitation and by animosity, by disruption, by meanness, by viciousness, by unkindness, by immorality? No, it’s out there, where the salt is on the potatoes, not in the saltcellar, that the impact comes.

Now, just in case you think that somehow or another, I have reached some lofty pinnacle from which I can give you a lecture on this, and, you know, tell you how well I’m doing, first of all… And with this I’m going to close. We were going further, but there’s always tomorrow, and plus I couldn’t find that quote, and now I’m fed up with that.

But remember the quote with which I began, right? Right? “Those like myself whose imagination far exceeds…” Okay? Right. And then… So I read the newspaper the same as you. So now I’m doing Titus 3. I do Titus 3 for the people that come to the thing. All right. Here we’ve got “Hollywood Justice: The rush to support Roman Polanski…”[10] “And to show true humility toward[s] all men.”

Peggy Noonan: “Keeping America Safe from the Ranters.” This is her piece on the demise of American journalism, the absence of the Elders, the loss of Kristol, the loss of the old boys who actually, you know, read books and understood stuff, as opposed to the talking heads that have the airwaves twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. And this, she says, is an example of what passes for interchange in the political realm of our country at the moment. “Two examples from … the past week. A few days ago, I was sent a link to a screed by MSNBC’s left-wing anchorman Ed Schultz, in which he explained opposition to the president’s health-care reform.” This was his quote: “‘The Republicans lie. They want to see you dead. They’d rather make money off your dead corpse. They kind of like it when that woman has cancer and they don’t have anything for us.’ Next, a link to the syndicated show of right-wing radio talker Alex Jones, on the subject of the U.S. military, whose security efforts at the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh show them to be agents and lackeys of the New World Order,” according to this guy. Here’s his quote: “‘They are complete enemies of America. … Our military’s been taken over. … This is the end of our country. … They’d love to kill 10,000 Americans. … The republic is falling apart right now.’”[11]

Now, I want to tell you something, loved ones: if you get up in the morning and go to bed at night listening to drivel like this, you are going to be really, really hard-pressed to make any kind of credible attempt—we are going to be hard-pressed to make any kind of creditable attempt—to pay attention to the clear, unequivocal instruction of the Bible in Titus 3:1–2 in a call to civic deportment that demands honesty, that demands humility, that demands loyalty, that demands courtesy. And the duty is grounded in the dynamic, and the dynamic is the gospel itself.

You are sensible people. Do your homework, and we’ll come back and think about it some more. But for now, we’re going to pause for a moment, and then my brother’s going to come and sing for us, and we will continue.

Just a moment of silent prayer, asking God to help us to work out the wood from the trees and asking him to search our hearts to see if there are wicked ways in us.[12]

[1] C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves, quoted in J. I. Packer, Knowing God (1973; repr., Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2018), 14. The portion of the block quotation outside of the quotation marks belongs to Packer, not Lewis.

[2] Polybius, Histories 6.47.

[3] 1 Timothy 4:12 (paraphrased).

[4] See 1 Corinthians 3:12.

[5] Romans 12:2 (Phillips).

[6] See Romans 13:1.

[7] See 1 Timothy 2:1–2.

[8] Acts 4:19 (paraphrased).

[9] Donald Guthrie, The Pastoral Epistles: An Introduction and Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 214.

[10] Terry Teachout, “Hollywood Justice,” Wall Street Journal, Oct. 3, 2009, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704471504574448033489885784.

[11] Peggy Noonan, “Keeping America Safe from the Ranters,” Wall Street Journal, Oct. 2, 2009, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704471504574447621545728370.

[12] See Psalm 139:23–24.