Let's look at it again, Titus
1-9. Every phrase of this verse is
a sermon. Holding fast the faithful word
as he hath been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine
both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers. Holding fast
that Phrase means to cleave to and hold firmly. But the best way to understand
the use of this word here in our text is to see how our Lord
used it in Matthew 6, chapter 24. Listen to this. Matthew 6,
24. No man can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one
and love the other or else he will hold, there's our word,
to hold, to cleave to, to hold firmly to the one and despise the other.
You cannot serve God and mammon. It's synonymous here with love.
You see that no man can serve two masters. He'll hate the one
and love the other, or he'll hold fast. It's synonymous with
love. You hold on to the word like
you would your wife or husband or children. How do you hold them? Well, the truth of the matter
is you never really let go of them, do you? You never really
do. And that's how you hold fast
the word. Even when I'm not holding those
that I love, I'm holding them. And that's how it is with the
gospel. This is how we are with God's word. It's not just a document
or some people count it as a good luck charm. You know, I've got
my Bible with me. But understand that I compare
this to family just purely in the general sense of love, but
there are different kinds of love, aren't there? Christ, in
the verse we read there, is using the word to describe how a person
loves God, to hold fast unto him who is your master, to whom
you've bowed willingly to, to whom you are a bond slave. You remember what the bond slave
was all about? They could go free in the seventh
year, but if they said, I love my wife and my children, and
I love my master, I love my master. I'll stay. I respect the word of God because
it's God's book. It's God's word. It's holy. God
is holy and reverend. And so his word is to be revered.
I trust this book because God is almighty and faithful and
true. He can't lie. I bow to the truth
of this book because God is sovereign. And when he speaks, it's the
voice of the king. This book is my hope because
God is gracious. This book is my comfort because
Christ is a refuge like no other. I love this book because he who
wrote it And he whom it concerns is altogether lovely. So we hold fast. We hold fast
to the word of God. We can't live without it. Can't
live by bread alone, but by every word that comes out of God's
mouth. And all of God's promises in
this word are yea and amen in his son, Jesus Christ. promises
of God We hold has fast the faithful word it's called the faithful
word here that word faithful I believe the first word in the
definition the first thing it says in the definition of this
and in the Greek dictionary is trustee trustee the trustee word
able to be relied upon A compass that is faulty is a deadly thing. It's a deadly thing. There are
other things that can have problems with them that it's not that
big of a deal, but if your life is depending on it, it needs
to be trusty. Especially now with regard to
the things dealt with in God's book, spiritual things, the things
of God. We have to be able to rely upon
what is said. You can't rely upon what somebody,
anybody that calls himself a preacher says. You can't rely on what
anybody who calls himself a preacher says, unless, as the prophet
said, if it's according to this book, if it's not according to
the word of this prophecy, if they speak not according to God's
word, it's because there's no light in them. To be able to be trusty as a
preacher is to have the light of God in you. Or otherwise,
we're just another opinion that's wrong. All opinions are wrong,
did you know that? All of them. Because that which
is right is not an opinion, it's a fact. Matters of eternal life and death.
Especially here, we need that which can be relied upon, and
there's only one source. We don't realize how precious
it is. If there was someone in this world that only always told
the truth, you'd want to find them and ask a bunch of questions,
wouldn't you? How foolish we are. How we take
for granted that which is most precious in this world. Only God's word can be relied
upon. How can you trust something that's contradictory? Religion
is in a perpetual state of contradiction. They'll say God is sovereign.
You say, oh, well, we believe God's sovereign. Oh, we believe
that too. And then they'll also say, well, I have a free will
though. Really? How does that work? Somebody
calling the shots. It's either you or God. It can't be both. One or the
other of necessity has got to be a lie. They'll say that salvation
is all of grace. Oh yeah, it's all grace, and
then proceed to tell you what you need to do to be saved. Wait
a minute. Hold on. But this book, God's book made
up of 66 books written by 40 men over a period of 1500 years
and very different types of men. Isaiah was a prophet. Simon was
a fisherman. David was a shepherd and king.
Paul was a great scholar and a high official, but then a tent
maker. But all proclaimed the same message
and wrote the same thing. Exactly You ever thought about what grace
it would take for Paul to be calling shots now he was Life
and death was in his hand and then he was totally content to
just make tents That's grace now The Bible just has one author. That's why all of these different
earthly authors are saying the same thing and because they were
all inspired by the same God. Its author, God, forbids anyone
to add to or take anything away from the sayings of this book
on punishment of eternal death in Revelation 22, 18 and 19.
Why? Because this is the faithful
word. It's eternal life and death.
To whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal
life. If anybody presumes to expound
this book and they add their own opinions or thoughts or deductions,
any interpretation that's not included and clearly revealed
in this book, then don't trust it. This is the trustee word,
and there's no other trust in this world. If anyone takes away from the
clear truth of this book, for example, if God said, Jacob,
have I love, And Esau, have I hated? Then God loves and hates. He
doesn't love everybody. Someone says, well, I don't mean
that. Don't trust him. It's kind of plain, isn't it?
It's not complicated. If God says I'll have mercy on
whom I will have mercy and whom I will, I'll harden. And he says,
I raised up Pharaoh for this same purpose, that my power,
my authority might be shown in him. And somebody says, well,
that don't mean that now. That doesn't mean he actually
harms people. Don't trust him. Religion will ignore these truths
entirely until somebody happens to actually read the word of
God and say, what about this? And then they'll say, well, that
don't mean that. And effectively, that's erasing
the clear declaration of scripture from the record of God. That's
taking away from the word of God. Don't trust him. How can you trust something also
that you don't understand? This is the faithful word. And Paul said, seeing we have
such hope, we use great plainness of speech. Plainness. This is sinner's only hope, and
therefore we want to be just as clear as we can be about it.
I've told you this before, a guy told me one time, our preacher's
so smart, he's so smart, I can't even hardly understand him a
lot of times, he's so smart. I said, wait a minute, are you
bragging on him? What are you saying? You should be glad I'm not that
smart. And you can be plain when you're
declaring the word of God because it's plain. There is simplicity,
all inclusiveness in Christ and those who hate him, they understand
very well. You can't hate somebody that
you don't understand. You can't hate truth that you
don't understand. If you didn't understand it,
you might be confused, but you can't hate it. But the word is trustee. because
it's plain and clear and it's God's word. So we embrace and we hold fast
the word and ask God to reveal to us because just because it's
plain doesn't mean we have any ability at all to understand
it. We're dumber than it is plain, aren't we? I didn't get a lot
of amens out of that. You know it's the truth. The
word of God, these holy scriptures are able to make a sinner wise
unto salvation through faith which is in Christ
Jesus. Look at Romans chapter 10 with me for a minute. Verse
13, Romans 10, 13. For whosoever shall call upon
the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call
on him in whom they've not believed? And how shall they believe in
him of whom they've not heard? How is somebody gonna hear the
gospel and be saved in a place where the gospel's not preached? How shall they hear without a
preacher? And I like this next part, how shall they preach except
they're smart? No, they don't say that, does
it? How are they going to preach unless God sends them? As it is written, how beautiful
are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring
glad tidings of good things. They bring gospel. They've not
all obeyed the gospel for Isaiah saith Lord who hath believed
our report so then faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the
trusty word of God So the faithful word of God That means Means of saving sinners in this
world God's means It's the faithful word And we have to be faithful
in order to preach it don't we? By God's grace, he's got to make
us faithful. That was verses six through eight
of our text there. Got to honor the Lord. Faithful in the preaching of
the faithful gospel. It's trustee because it reveals
him who is alone trustworthy. Think about that for a minute.
I know that sounds obvious. Salvation is trusting Christ.
How are you gonna trust Christ unless you can trust his word?
You're not gonna even know who he is. You've got to trust that
when he gave himself on Calvary, that was enough to pay for your
sin. He said it was. You've got to
trust that he actually got it done, that it's not up to you. If it's up to you, then you need
to be able to trust yourself, which you can't. You've got to be able to trust
that when he said, you come unto me, I'll give you rest. He's got to be righteous, doesn't
he? You can't lie or you can't trust him. He can't do it wrong
or you couldn't trust him. He's got to be sovereign or he
might have the best wishes in the world. That's what religion
teaches. Oh, he just wants to do this and wants to do that.
How are you gonna trust him unless he can do it? Romans 3.24, being justified
freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ
Jesus, whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation, a sin offering
through faith in his blood. You ever think about that phrase?
You've got to trust in his blood to wash your sins away We trust
Him as our Redeemer. We know that His precious blood
is price enough. We weren't redeemed with corruptible
things. That wouldn't get it done, all of them, no matter
how precious to this world. But with the precious blood of
Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, we trust Him
as our righteousness. An old preacher used to say,
we got all our eggs in one basket. If that basket breaks, we got
no eggs. But it's not gonna break. And then the next phrase, as
he hath been taught. A bishop must hold fast the trusty
word as he hath been taught. You can't teach what you haven't
been taught. And so there's a humility to
that in there. The Lord taught me the gospel
by my earthly father. He would talk to me quite a bit
out of the scriptures and teach me things before we ever even
had a place to worship that was a true house of God. And then,
We found out where Brother Jack Shanks was in New Caney, Texas,
and we went every time we possibly earthly could. And the Lord taught
me the gospel by my pastor. But before we can even start
teaching anything ourselves, we've got to learn. I'm still
learning with you now. You don't ever stop learning.
We don't know anything as we ought. the scripture says. But before we can even start,
God has to teach somebody. I may attribute a lot of what
I know of the scriptures to a man, but God's got to teach us, doesn't
he? And that's the way God does it.
Listen to 2 Timothy 2 too. And the things that thou hast
heard of me among many witnesses, The same commit thou to faithful
men who shall be able to teach others also. There's four generations
of gospel right there in that verse in there. The things that
thou has heard of me, Paul, you heard them, commit that to faithful
men and those faithful men will teach others also. That's how
God does it. He uses these means. I wrote
a letter to Henry Mahan when I was maybe 19 years old and
said, do you know of any good schools, any good colleges that
teach the Bible? Are there any good Bible colleges?
He said, find a faithful pastor and sit there and learn the gospel. And that's what I did for the
next 21 years by God's grace. Paul taught Timothy, Timothy
taught others, and those others will be able to teach yet others
also. After I'm dead and gone, I pray. How many times did that have
to happen for you to be taught? Down through the years, God has
been teaching men the hope for sinners in Christ. God uses just
a few men in a person's life to do this. Paul taught Timothy,
others I've mentioned to you taught me. I've heard and learned
some things from others too, some other preachers, a few others,
but very few and very little compared to what I learned from
those two men, my father and brother Jack. But who has God
used to teach you? That's a sacred trust, isn't
it? That's somebody that you'll value for the rest of your life
because I think about Jack all the time and thank God that he
put me in that church and taught me the gospel. Do you see why
the bishop though must be somebody that the Lord has blessed and
equipped and taught? Why he must be true to this faithful
word? It's vital. It's greatly consequential
to many, and this is how God teaches sinners. Philip asked
that Ethiopian eunuch, do you understand Isaiah 53? And that eunuch said this, how
can I except some man should guide me? And that's what happened,
some man. It doesn't have to be me, it
doesn't have to be anybody in particular, just some man that
God raises up. I thank God for those men that
taught me in the providence and grace of God. And listen, this
is how he's able by sound doctrine to preach, to convince, to exhort. So let's look at this next phrase
that he may be able by sound doctrine, not by arguing, not
by debate, not by debate. I've had a couple of different
people ask me if I wanted to have a debate at the church.
One of them was a preacher. I believe he knows the gospel.
Don't start, I shouldn't say stuff like that, you hear me
going. But anyway, I said, Never give
a heretic a microphone. That's a good rule. Don't ever
give somebody you know doesn't know the gospel a microphone.
Why would you do that? It's not by debate, it's not
by enticement or threat. That's what religion does, don't
they? Oh, you'll have a mansion in glory and the angels will
be peeling grapes for you up there. You'll live on glory lane
and God's just going to do everything. It's not about that, or threat.
Oh, you'll go to hell, you'll go to hell. God loves everybody, but you're
going to go to hell if you don't act right. Something wrong with
that, isn't it? The faithful word, and not the
five points either. As true as they are, and I'm
thankful for true, Teaching, wherever it's found or heard.
But it's not that, it's the faithful word. You know, you can't really summarize
this word, can you? Well, here's the gospel
in a nutshell. I don't want the gospel to be
in a nutshell. You can't put it in a nutshell.
You've got to listen to somebody preach it, don't you? And it's
gonna take you a while to get it, isn't it? God's not just
gonna do that overnight. It's taken me 40 years and I'm
still learning. But sound doctrine, the good
news is this, the Bible does say the same thing on every page.
It's not complicated, is it? It's not complicated at all.
Teaching the faithful word by sound that word doctrine means
teaching by sound teaching And there are true things that
are not the truth you gotta always remember that always said a lot
of good thing One thing is needful One thing did he say that? Did
he shut you up to Christ? If I set out, for example, to
teach the five points of Calvinism, and I use the word of God in
order to teach those things, am I teaching the word of God? No, I'm teaching the doctrines
of men and just supporting it with the word of God. The word
of God should never take a supporting role. We've got to begin and end with
the word. And if those truths are taught in it, you must teach
them by all means. Well, I feel like there's a few
things maybe left out of some of the doctrines that men come
up with. Have you ever heard of the doctrine of being kind
one toward another? I've never heard that one. Have
you ever heard of the doctrine of forgiving one another, even
as God for Christ's sake has forgiven you? And we don't want to emphasize
what we do, of course. The doctrine of scripture concerns
Christ and what he did. But at the same time, Christ and what he did, he accomplished
a work for us and he accomplished a work in us, didn't he? So we
don't start with the doctrines of men, however true. We're going
to have the wrong perspective if we do that. Just simply expound
the scriptures. That's what we want to do. Verse
by verse, different books of the Bible. We've covered the
whole New Testament in the past 17 years. I've been trying to
figure out where to go next on Sunday mornings. And the reason
it's tough is we've been through every book in the New Testament
in the last 15 years. That doesn't mean we can't turn
right around and do it again. That's what we're going to do.
But thank God, We just go verse by verse, don't we? And how many
times have you said, boy, I needed that today, or that was exactly,
you know, that's exactly what we needed to hear. Yeah, and
we were just going verse by verse. If you ask many what sound doctrine
is, they would say, well, the doctrines of grace. That's not
right. Sound doctrine, sound teaching
is the doctrine of Christ, which includes true doctrine that men
have expounded, but this is what we're expounding, not the works
of men. There's a difference. There's
a difference. Sound doctrine is teaching that
is done by someone who holds fast the faithful word, not the
Not the professions of faith that men have authored. A lot of people have asked me
that. Why don't you have a profession of faith? You know, all churches
have, this is what we believe. We do have one. Why would I change
that? Why would my profession of faith
be what I think this says? This is our profession of faith. There's really no shortcut to
that. People have asked me many times by email and other things,
what do y'all believe there? And I just say the Bible. Because
honestly, if I try to tell them otherwise, and here's what I
always recommend, if you want to know what I preach, listen
to me preach. How about that? This church,
before we bought this building, they had the so-called doctrines
of grace right there on that wall. But I heard him preach
a couple times, and they didn't preach that. You've got to hear
a man, what he says, and how he says it. If you want to know what we believe,
you're going to have to hear me preach. And that's just the
only way. It's not that I'm just being
a hardhead about that. That's the only way. It really
is. If your doctrine is a statement
of biblical facts, then that's not the Bible. Christ himself. You can preach about Christ without
preaching Christ. The doctrinal treatises of men,
even believers, are not able to make you wise unto salvation.
The Holy Scriptures are. So let's just stick to them by
God's grace. By God's grace. I feel like you have to be pretty
smart, you know, to understand some of these doctrines men have
written up. But I'm not that smart. And God has been a lot
clearer. Somebody said one time the scripture
sheds a whole lot of light on those commentaries. Oh boy. May God give us grace. Jesus came and spake unto them
saying, all power is given unto me in heaven and the earth. Go
ye therefore and teach all nations, because all power is his. Teach
all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of
the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all
things whatsoever I have commanded you. What he said, that's what
we teach. And I am with you, lo, I'm with
you always, even unto the end. of the world, amen. Now there are two things that
we're able to do by God's grace, and I say it that way because
of our text, that we may be able, that's what it says, right? That
we may be able. The scriptures are able. God
is able, Christ is able, his word is able to make you wise
unto salvation. And he says we're able, that
we may be able, that's the next phrase. of our text. So if we do hold fast the faithful
word that's able, then we'll be able in no other way. Two things, exhort and convince. Think about this with me for
a little while. The word exhort and convince, exhort We're not
exhorting the gainsayers here. We're convincing the gainsayers.
You see that? Exhort is by itself here. It's
not we're exhorting and convincing the gainsayers. Exhorting a gainsayer
would be a waste of time at best. We're to convince them and then
exhort them. The word exhort here is very
instructive. We've seen this in another text
or two. And I think under different words,
different words in the English here. But this Greek word, exhort,
means to call to one side and admonish, exhort, comfort, and
instruct them. That's a beautiful picture to
me. Exhorting is not lambasting. I know some that I believe know
the gospel in their heads. that they just want to argue
with everybody. They just want to prove themselves right and
others wrong. That's not exhorting. Exhorting
is, come on over here, son or daughter, and sit down by me
for a minute. We need to talk. We need to talk
about some things. It's a comforting thing. It's instruction, admonishing,
correcting, but in a comforting way. in a way of fellowship,
in a way of camaraderie, and you're not talking down to them,
you're saying, come here. Come here and let's talk. You can't exhort according to
this word if you are talking down to people and beating them
over the head with the law or Some people turn the gospel almost
into a law, don't they? If you don't believe all of these
things right here the same way I do, you're going to hell. You're
a heretic. It's not just a cold announcement
of facts, is it? It's not just making an announcement
when you call somebody to your side. There's love in this word. This is important, let's stop
everything and you come, come to me and let's talk. It's important what I have to
say and it's important to me to tell you. I'm gonna stop everything
and have you walk with me or sit with me and let's learn this. And this word can't be about
numbers, can it? I'm calling each of you to my
side at the same time, but you can't call numbers to your side.
It's people. It's people. When you're not here, it's not
that the numbers suffer. I miss you. See the difference? Well, we were down last Sunday.
No, what happened was I missed you because I love you and I
wish you'd have been here. And I say this quite a bit too,
God will never send you somebody to preach to you that doesn't
love you. He said, I'll give you a preacher after my own heart. It's the heart of God that says,
the spirit of this word is in what God says to us, come now,
come here right now and let us reason together. Walk by my side
or sit with me here. Let us reason together about
your sins and how they can be made as white as snow. And convince the gainsayers.
Think about this for a minute. We do this. Why do you convince
the gainsayers? It doesn't say prove them wrong.
Your goal is not just to point out that they're wrong, it's
to convince them. You know why we convince the gainsayers? So
that they won't be gainsayers anymore. There's a difference
between that and just wanting to argue with people. And I'm
saying this as preachers primarily, but this is all of us. This is
the Lord teaching all of us this. We don't want them to be gainsayers.
And so we convince them. We want them to come to our side
Eventually, once they're convinced, they will. And then we'll talk,
we'll teach, we'll learn together. It's not just to prove we're
right. Listen to what Paul said to Timothy
here in this passage we're about to read. And tell me, is this
the spirit in which Paul taught sinners the gospel? Listen to this, 2 Timothy 2.23. But foolish and unlearned questions
avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes. For one thing, most
people that want to argue about something, they don't want to
argue about anything that really matters. They want to argue about
whether the earth is flat or round. Why would I argue about
that? I don't really care, do you?
As long as my part is flat. Foolish and unlearned questions
avoid knowing that they do gender strives, and that's not what
we want to do. And the servant of the Lord must
not strive. He must not. Whatever he's talking
about, he must not strive, but be gentle unto all men. apt to
teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves. I'm not instructing to prove
myself right and somebody else wrong. I'm instructing people,
the gainsayers, because they're their own worst enemy and I can't
bear it. I don't want it to be that way. I'm watching people that I love
destroy themselves. And I don't want them to do that
anymore. In meekness, instructing those
that oppose themselves, if God, peradventure, will give them
repentance, maybe God will speak to them. Maybe He'll use me to
get their attention. And maybe He'll speak to their
heart. And they won't be their own enemy anymore. to the acknowledging of the truth
and that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil.
The devil's tearing them up. We're taken captive by him at
his will. They're going around bragging
about their free will and Satan is pulling their strings. They're their own worst enemy,
but they're not my enemy. Not mine. They oppose themselves. Look
at what Satan has done to them. It's their own fault. You can't
blame it on Satan, can you? The devil didn't make them do
it. But how, how, how can we let them go? You ever ask yourself
that? How can we let them go? When we preach the gospel, we
are committing those we love to the Lord Jesus Christ. Just
as that woman did in Matthew 15, 22, who cried unto Him and
said, Have mercy on me, O Lord, Thou Son of David, daughter Have mercy on me My daughter is grievously vexed
for the devil Have mercy on me by doing something
for her It will be a mercy to me if you
have mercy on Her when we care that much When it matters that
much to us, we'll be faithful ministers of the word. May God make it so.