Latest / Pastor John Piper's answers / Ruining Households for Money Titus 1:10–14, Part 1

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Ruining Households for Money Titus 1:10–14, Part 1 · Pastor John Piper's answers

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: This is our first session on Titus chapter one, verses
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: ten to fourteen. It begins with four, which means that
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: it's given as a ground or support for what went
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: just before. And you remember what went just before was
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: especially not just the list of qualifications for elders, but
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: the specific qualification that they need to hold firm to
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: the word according to the teaching, and in holding firm,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: be able to exhort and be able to rebuke those
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: who contradict the truth with healthy teaching. And the reason
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: that is so needed is because there are so many
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: who are insubordinate, empty talkers, deceivers, especially those of the circumcision,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: whom it is necessary to silence, since they are ruining
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: whold households by teaching for shameful gain what they ought
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: not to teach. One of the Cretans, a prophet of
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  Speaker 1: their own, said, Cretans are always liars, evil beast, lazy gluttons.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: This testimony is true. We'll talk about that next time. Therefore,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in the faith,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: not devoting themselves to Jewish myths and the commands of
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: people who turn away from the truth. Father, We don't
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: want to be people like this in subordinate gamesmanship, using
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  Speaker 1: words to play games instead of having substance, deceiving people
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: and ruining households, and being in love with money, doing
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: things for shameful gain. We don't want to be like that.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Guard us from this, and when we see such people
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  Speaker 1: in the church, grant us to have the courage to
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  Speaker 1: exhort and rebuke. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Notice the sequence of tragedy. Here, where does it begin?
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: It begins one? Here's the root, insubordinate. What does that mean?
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Think it down to the route insubordinate. They are basically
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  Speaker 1: resistors of stiff arm what anything that would control them,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: anything that would cut stop them to be their own
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  Speaker 1: final authority. So stiff arm truth, stiff arm reality outside themselves.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: They are going to let reality constrict them. They're going
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  Speaker 1: to shape and make reality. They'll define reality authority. This
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: is the deepest problem of the human being. It goes
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: all the way back to the beginning. Human beings without
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: the Holy Spirit are basically haters of authority. We want
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  Speaker 1: to be God. We bristle when we're told what to do.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: When our will is confined by a reality outside ourselves,
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  Speaker 1: that's where it starts, and where does it lead to?
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  Speaker 1: In this case, it leads to the use of words
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  Speaker 1: to just play games, play games with words empty. The
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: words don't carry any substance because you don't have any substance.
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  Speaker 1: You've rejected truth and reality and authority. You're just using
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  Speaker 1: language to emote, to talk about your own desires. It
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: may be very rational sounding, but it doesn't have any substance.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: It's not rooted in anything. They have turned away from
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  Speaker 1: the truth. And then where does that lead? It leads
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: to deception. They're talking, they've got all kinds of things
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  Speaker 1: worked out, Jewish myths, so deception, and then to what
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: ruined families or let's say, households. See if I can
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: write that better, and I'm getting that from right here, ruining.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: So one, two, three, four, ruined households all rooted in
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  Speaker 1: the rejection of truth, the use of words not to
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  Speaker 1: lead to truth or substance, but to just go in circles,
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  Speaker 1: endlessly spinning out myths that you make up to justify
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: your own insubordinate passions, leading to deception, leading to ruined households. These,
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: these ruined households here are ruined doubly probably because they're
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: ruined by teaching. So this these gamesmanship here of misused
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: words actually have the form of false teaching, and that
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  Speaker 1: deception comes into this teaching. But it's teaching for shameful gain.
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  Speaker 1: So these households are probably being ruined both theologically and financially.
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  Speaker 1: Somebody's milking these these families from money for this teaching.
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  Speaker 1: You saw that in one Timothy as well. Let me
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  Speaker 1: ask you this, So here's love of money. Where would that?
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Where would you put that in this sequence? Love of money,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: bondage to money, craving for money? Is it back here
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  Speaker 1: at the beginning? Does it all start with the love
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  Speaker 1: of money? And the love of money causes us to
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  Speaker 1: stiff arm the truth that would keep us from getting rich,
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  Speaker 1: and that leads us to use words just to play
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  Speaker 1: games and justify our own thinking, and that leads to deception, ruin.
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  Speaker 1: I wouldn't put it back here. I think this is
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  Speaker 1: the root problem with humanity. I don't think there's anything
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  Speaker 1: before our proud resistance to God and reality. Our deep,
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  Speaker 1: deep desire to be our own authority, I think is
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  Speaker 1: deep and once that has the whole of a person,
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  Speaker 1: which does as soon as we're born. Then we have
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  Speaker 1: to get cast about for what our new God will be.
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  Speaker 1: And it's different for different people, and money is a
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  Speaker 1: big candidate for a lot of people. I'm not going
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  Speaker 1: to submit myself to truth at all. I'm going to
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  Speaker 1: use words and everything else because I now love money
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  Speaker 1: instead of truth, money instead of reality. I like what
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  Speaker 1: I can do with money, get all the pleasures I want,
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  Speaker 1: and work out my own identity in my own definition
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  Speaker 1: of reality. So the only thing left to see in
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  Speaker 1: Versus ten and eleven, perhaps for our purposes, here is
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  Speaker 1: this comment that this is especially coming from the circumcision.
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  Speaker 1: There is among the Cretans, the Cretan Jewish community, evidently
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  Speaker 1: professing Christians who are in the church, who are causing
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  Speaker 1: real difficulty. We see it here, not devoting themselves to
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  Speaker 1: Jewish myths. There's the Jewish peace, there's the Jewish peace.
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  Speaker 1: Or here it is again over in verse nine of
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: chapter three. Avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, probably coming from the
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  Speaker 1: Old Testament, dissensions, quarrels about the law, that's the Old
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  Speaker 1: Testament law in this context, for their unprofitable and worthless.
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  Speaker 1: So the upshot is these folks should be silenced whom
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  Speaker 1: it is necessary to silence since they are ruining households
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  Speaker 1: and milking them for their own financial gain, teaching what
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  Speaker 1: ought not to be taught, as they go around without
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  Speaker 1: any substance, but only with empty words. And I think
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  Speaker 1: this silencing here, of course, doesn't mean that you silence
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  Speaker 1: the world. The world is always going to be able
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  Speaker 1: to speak evil and falsehood. These are people who are
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  Speaker 1: in the church in all likelihood, and the way we
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  Speaker 1: silence them, according to Chapter three, is as for a
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  Speaker 1: person who stirs up division like these folks are doing,
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  Speaker 1: after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more
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  Speaker 1: to do with him, knowing that such a person is
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  Speaker 1: warped and sinful and is self condemned. So there's a
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  Speaker 1: kind of church discipline that enters in there as you
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  Speaker 1: cut the person off from their influence in the church.
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  Speaker 1: There will always be influences from outside the church, but
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  Speaker 1: the elders are supposed to exhort and rebuke, which would
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  Speaker 1: include this silencing of error. In the church. There are
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  Speaker 1: many in subordinate empty talkers, deceivers from the Jewish party,
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  Speaker 1: whom it is necessary to silence because they're ruining households,
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  Speaker 1: which is what happens when people who have not been
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  Speaker 1: delivered by the Holy Spirit, from their hatred of the truth,
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  Speaker 1: from their love affair with money, and their use of
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  Speaker 1: language to just spin out meaningless, empty talk, deceiving people
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  Speaker 1: and ruining whole families