To Put in Order

Australians are weird about power.

Have you noticed that?

Australians are weird about power.

And I think it goes back to our origin story.

When you think about the origin story of Australia, and I mean colonial Australia, not the Australia that's been here for a long time, we were colonized by Britain as a penal colony, meaning the criminals of Britain, the convicts, were sent down here to Australia.

Australia was settled by convicts.

And I think that shapes the way that we view power, because Australian culture has always been under the thumb of colonial power.

And so it grew to shape the culture where we value mateship and brotherhood under these oppressive colonial rulers.

Think of Anzac Day and the story that that means for Australia.

And even now, today, I think Australians are weird about power.

We have that thing they call tall poppy syndrome, which is where when someone, an Australian, asserts themselves above others and pretends like they're better, we all collectively chop them down because we must be the same.

We're all Australians, all on the same level.

Think about those in power, the politicians.

We want them to be just like us.

We want them to be the type of person who would have a sausage sizzle at Bunnings, just like a regular Australian, or bite into a raw onion, the way all Australians do.

We don't like our politicians to be buying too much property in the middle of a housing crisis.

Or to be going on holiday in Hawaii when Australia is burning.

In fact, when it comes to our politicians, the best compliment I think you could give a politician is, they're the type of person you feel like you could have a beer with.

That's Australian culture on power, and it goes back to our origin story.

Now, a very different origin story that leads to a very different understanding of power is the American story.

America is, like Australia, colonized by Britain and other European powers, but unlike Australia, America banded together the 13 colonies and fought in a war to overthrow those powers.

Last week, on July 4, they celebrated Independence Day, the moment when they threw off the shackles of colonial power.

That's a very different origin story when it comes to power than the Australian story.

And, I think it shapes the way that Americans think about power.

Now, I'm not American, but I've never been to America, but American culture is everywhere, so you see it.

And we were traveling in Europe, and you could see the Americans by the way they acted.

Americans are, I think, loud about power.

Australians are weird about power.

Americans are loud about power.

Do you know what the best-selling car in the States is?

A Ford F-150 Raptor, or the Ford F-Series.

That's a beastly big truck.

This is not like a functional tradie's uit.

It's one of those big, massive trucks that has a tray that's this big, barely useful for hauling stuff, and a cabin that is enormous.

No disrespect to Americans.

I don't know if we have many Americans in the room.

Really no disrespect.

Australians are weird too.

But Americans seem to wear their power a bit more loudly than Australians do.

Now, at this stage, it's probably helpful to define power.

Andy Crouch defines power, and I get a lot of my definitions from Andy Crouch.

He says, power is the ability to make something of the world.

Power is the ability to make something of the world.

And he means that in two ways.

Firstly, the obvious way of making something, controlling things, building things, but then also in the meaning that we make of those things.

Like when you ask someone, what do you make of this situation?

What meaning do you give this situation?

That's what power is.

And built into that definition, I think, is the idea that power is contextual.

Because we have different capacity to make something of the world in different places.

So let's take right now, this moment, for instance.

There's like maybe 160 people in this room, but we can't all make something of this room to the same extent.

And I'll give you a hint that if we would all stand up and start talking, my voice is the loudest.

I'm 40 centimeters taller above you guys.

You're looking this way, I'm looking that way.

I have power here.

And just saying that, you feel the room get four degrees cooler.

We don't like to talk about power.

Maybe when it comes to thinking about our own power, we would prefer a term like influence or authority or responsibility.

But the whole point of my message this morning is that if we are not conscious of power and understand what it is and what it's for, we will not be weird about power or loud about power, we will be blind to power.

And that's not a good thing.

So at this stage, you're probably wondering, what on earth does this have to do with Titus?

Everything.

Our passage is about power.

And specifically, in the passage that Stuart read for us, we have two very different understandings of what power is and what it's for.

So we're going to dive into that, in order that we might not be weird about power, like Australians are, or loud about power, like Americans are, or blind to power.

Let's talk about it from the Word of God.

Before we jump in, quick little moment of recap for context.

We are in a series in the Book of Titus, Paul's Letter to Titus.

We have four messages, this is the second.

Last week, the message was titled, To Further the Faith, and this message for the note takers is, To Put in Order.

We're on page nine, if you've got the blue book.

And last week, in the first message, we asked five simple questions of a tricky book.

Who, what, where, when, why?

Who is Titus about?

Well, it's from Paul to Titus in the context of the community of faith.

What is it?

It's an ancient Greek letter, 649 words in Greek.

Where is it based?

In the Mediterranean island of Crete, which is marked by a really depraved morality and deception.

When was it written?

Historically, we don't know, but theologically, sometime between the promise of God before the beginning of time and the new age to come.

And Paul says in verses 1 to 4, at the kairos moment, the moment the God appointed season, that eternal life has been made available.

That's when it was written.

And finally, why?

To further the faith.

Paul writes to Titus to push the ball forward, to further their faith and their knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness.

So last week, we ended with the idea of know truth, grow godly, which helps you know the truth, grow godly.

Know truth, grow godly.

It's a cycle.

So today, as we jump into Titus 1 verse 5 to 16, we are going to come to know the truth about power in order that we might grow godly in our use of power.

So let's jump in.

We began with the introduction of power.

And now we're going to take the second half of the passage first, and then we'll do the first half second.

So we'll do it backwards.

We proceed with the distortion of power.

Paul says in verse 10, There are many rebellious people, just like my dad, full of meaningless talk and deception, especially those of the circumcision group.

They must be silenced because they are disrupting whole households by teaching things they ought not to teach, and that for the sake of dishonest gain.

One of Crete's own prophets has said it, Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.

This saying 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 merely human commands of those who reject the truth.

To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure.

In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted.

They claim to know God, but by their actions, they deny him.

They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good.

Now, that is, I would say, a present picture of the power at play in Crete.

That's a picture of currently what the Cretan Church looks like when it comes to power.

So, we might say Australians are weird about power, Americans are loud about power.

Cretans, it seems, are just bad about power.

They wield power badly.

And as we did before, I think to understand the way that they understand power, we have to go back to the origin story of the church in Crete.

Which, funnily enough, is Pentecost.

So, that was a couple of weeks ago.

I think it was middle of May was Pentecost Sunday, 50 days after Jesus rose again.

It says this in Pentecost.

So, Peter has, the disciples have received the Holy Spirit in tongues of fire, then they've gone out of the upper room and Peter has preached the first sermon.

They're all preaching and doing stuff.

We read this in verse 9.

The crowds say, Parthians, Medes and Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs.

We hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongue.

There were people from Crete at Pentecost.

That would be Jewish pilgrims who made the rather long journey from the island of Crete all the way down to Jerusalem for the Passover.

And they heard that first sermon.

They received the Holy Spirit.

They believed in the gospel and then took it back to Crete.

So that is the origin story of the church in Crete.

Now some dozen years, maybe 20, 30, 40 years, passed between this Pentecost moment and Paul writing the letter.

So that's a lot of time.

And in that space, we learn that there is an even older origin story in Crete.

And we read it in verse 12.

One of Crete's own prophets has said it, Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.

This saying is true.

Now it's thought that the prophet that is being referred to here, the Cretan prophet, is Epimenides, who from around the 7th century BC., so a long time before the events of Titus, he said Cretans are always liars, evil brutes and lazy gluttons.

It is a reflection of the moral ecology of the island of Crete.

It is a wicked place.

In fact, there's this funny little historical anecdote that Crete, the island of Crete, doesn't have any beasts, like big cats or big predators.

And back in the 1st century, they used to joke that the reason there were no beasts on Crete is because the humans are bad enough.

The humans are beastly, beastly people, hurting each other and doing wicked things.

That's why there's no lions, because the people are bad enough.

So Epimenides says Cretans are always liars, evil brutes and lazy gluttons.

That's a Cretan saying that about his own people.

And then Paul says, that's true.

Now firstly, it's just funny that that has been immortalized in Holy Scripture for all time.

But when you actually dig into it, it's a paradox.

It's a paradox, because you imagine a postcard.

And on the postcard, it says, the statement on the other side of this card is true.

Then you turn it to the other side, and it says, the statement on the other side of this card is false.

So then you flip it, but it's true, and then it's false, and then it's true.

A Cretan has said, we always lie, and then Paul says, that is true.

It's true that they always lie.

So is he, yeah, there's a paradox, it doesn't work.

You go in circles when you start to think about it.

I think Paul's point is, he's winking at us when he says that.

He's winking at us to say, don't think that this, they're all, like it doesn't, it's a paradox, it doesn't make sense, but it is an accurate reflection of the culture of Crete.

They're always liars, evil brutes, and lazy gluttons.

Now that's the older origin story.

So you imagine the Holy Spirit, the Gospel, the seed of the Gospel from Jerusalem, from Pentecost, is carried across the Mediterranean and lands in the soil of that place.

And then you have, as Jesus said in the parable of the sower, it's like the seed of the Gospel grows, but it's twisted by thorns.

The thorns of Cretan culture are distorting power in the church.

Specifically, in the passage that we've just read, Paul says, the problem is bad leaders.

He calls them the circumcision group, which means they're Jewish, they are people who have received the sign of the covenant with Abraham, which is circumcision.

And Paul gives us not a lot of information about what they're teaching, but it's clear that they're bad leaders that are teaching bad things.

And specifically, what they're teaching is what he calls Jewish myths, and merely human commands.

And that's about all that we really know about what they're teaching.

So we have to go to other places to dig into what specifically is happening there.

And it would seem that this is the same, the issue in Crete is the same issue as what is happening in Galatia and Colosse.

In Galatians, Paul writes, pushing back against the circumcision group, and in Colosse, he's doing the same thing.

People who follow Jewish myths.

So, Paul says this in Colossians 2 verse 8, see to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition.

Remember, merely human commands, human tradition, and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.

You can kind of hear there's similarities in the context between Crete and Colosse.

And then Paul gets more specific, verse 16.

Therefore, do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, because people were.

People were getting really detailed about what you can and can't drink.

Or with regard to a religious festival, a new moon celebration, or a Sabbath day.

These are a shadow of the things that were to come.

The reality, however, is found in Christ.

Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you.

Such a person also goes into great detail about what they've seen.

They are puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind.

They've lost connection with the head, from whom the whole body is supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.

Since you Colossians died with Christ, to those elemental spiritual forces of this world, why, as though you still belong to the world, do you submit to its rules?

And remember, the human rules in Crete.

Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch these rules, which have to do with things that are all destined to perish with use, are based on merely human commands, remember, Titus, and teaching.

Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom with their self-imposed worship, their false humility, and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.

That's a very long reading.

But I read it because even though it's to the church in Colossei, the parallels are clear with the situation in Crete.

So, that gives us a little bit of a glimpse into what is happening within the church in Crete, even though Paul doesn't tell us specifically.

And when you look at that big passage in Colossians, and step back, and look at what is happening, the essence is that bad leaders are teaching that there is niche, specialized knowledge that is required to be saved.

They are saying you can only be saved if you're circumcised, and if you don't eat this food, and this food, and this food, and you do this, and this, and this.

Effectively, they are drawing lines, and lines, and boundaries to tighten the people of God, to accumulate power for themselves.

They make it hard for other people to get in.

And you remember what Paul says in Galatians.

He says, it is by grace through faith alone, not by the works of the law.

So this is opposite to what the gospel is.

These leaders are accumulating power unto themselves by making other people go through all the different hoops.

They are rejecting the gospel of grace alone.

Now, we might say, are they just innocent and ignorant?

Do they just not know any better?

Well, then why does Paul call them liars, evil brutes and lazy glusses?

Paul doesn't attack the teaching, he attacks the people because they are wicked, deceptive leaders that are corrupting the church.

Paul goes straight for them, and he specifically says they use power for the sake of dishonest gain.

So, these bad leaders in Crete are accumulating power unto themselves by saying, you can't be saved unless you do all the things we tell you to do, unless you stay in our little circle.

That's what's happening in Crete.

And when we look at that situation, we see that is a distortion of power.

These leaders have distorted power.

Remember, power is the ability to make something of the world.

It's clear that these leaders have distorted power into the desire to make something of me.

Do you remember the story of the Tower of Babel?

God commissioned humanity to be fruitful and multiply.

But then in Genesis 11, the story of the Tower of Babel, humanity say, no, we want to make a name for ourselves.

Power distorted in on themselves.

Remember the criticism of the kings at the start of 1 Samuel.

The people of Israel say, we really want a king.

And the prophet Samuel says, you know what the king is going to do?

He's going to take your daughters and your sons.

He's going to kill them on the battlefield.

He's going to turn power in on himself.

But they say, no, we want a king.

And then look what King David does.

The man who's supposed to use power for the betterment of his kingdom and for God's glory, turns power in on himself.

He takes another man's wife, Bathsheba, and does awful things to cover up that act.

Distorted power is power turned in on itself, on themselves.

And that's what's happening in Crete.

It is a distortion of power.

So, the distortion of power is the problem.

What's the solution?

And we read in verse five, Paul says, The reason I left you, Titus, in Crete, was that you might put in order what was left unfinished and...

And we pause there.

I love pausing sometimes when we read the Bible, because it invites us to think about what it's about to say.

And then when we read it, the Bible kind of tests our assumptions.

It asks questions of us.

So Paul says, The reason I left you in Crete was that you might put in order what was left unfinished and...

So what's he about to say?

What's the solution?

Power has been distorted.

What's Paul going to do to fix it?

I think when you think about what he could do, there are about four options.

Option one, when power has been distorted, is to reject power.

So that would be to say, power is the problem here.

So let's get rid of all power.

So then Paul would say, the reason I left you in Crete was to remove all power, to silence those people and not let anyone else be a leader.

You might have heard the saying from Lord Acton, power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

That's this idea.

We must reject power, because power is bad.

We can't let anyone have power.

But then you read in the Book of Judges, you know that refrain that appears throughout Judges?

In those days, Israel had no king, everyone did what they saw fit.

And that is not a good thing when you read the story of Judges.

The problem with rejecting power is that we become blind to it, and people who want it will take it from us.

We can't reject power.

You can't not have power when it comes to human beings.

It doesn't make sense to reject power, because you only become blind to it.

And also, the fact that if it's true that absolute power corrupts absolutely, then there's not a human being alive in this room.

Because at some point in our life, we were absolutely powerless.

When you're a child, you're born, you cannot do anything for yourself.

And if it was true that the parents with absolute power were absolutely corrupted, the child wouldn't live.

So that's just evidence enough.

Absolute power does not have to corrupt absolutely.

And we learn this from toddlers.

So, we're having a child in three months tomorrow.

And recently, as I've been thinking a lot about parenting, and I've been throwing to court some parenting hypotheticals.

So like, okay, let's just say our child is, let's say they're three, and let's say they say this to us.

What are we going to do?

So we're doing all these parenting problems.

And I think in one way, parenting is a power thing.

So imagine, imagine there's a beautiful toddler in this room, and the toddler starts running towards the road, toward the car.

Their parents would rightly say, stop, stop, come back, don't move.

The toddler's first instinct is to reject power, to say, no, mom, dad, I don't hear you, I have my power, I'm just going to go straight ahead.

Your power doesn't exist.

That's what it means to reject power.

The second option, we're going to follow the toddler thing.

The second option, when power has been distorted, is to resist power.

That would be to fight power with power, to come back even stronger.

So that would be Paul saying, the reason I left you in Crete is that you might go head to head with these leaders.

You might battle them, you might debate them, you might defeat them and establish yourself as the power.

That would be to resist power.

And that could work.

Titus certainly was well qualified, theologically, to deal with the issue that was happening.

You remember in Galatians, Titus was part of Paul's group in Galatians that wrote the letter dealing with the relationship between Judaism and Christianity.

Titus could have gone to the church in Crete and fought the other powers and resisted and probably won.

The problem is, that would only be a very short term solution, because it would silence this disagreement, but it doesn't fundamentally change power in the church in Crete.

The next person would just come up with the next disagreement and you'd be back to where you started.

Not only so, resisting power, we see that from history, it seems like when oppressed people rise up violently and assert power over their oppressors, they become the oppressors.

Resisting power doesn't work.

So, think of the toddler.

The first thing they do is reject power.

It's like, mom, no, you're not telling me to do this.

And then, if they're getting close to the, get run onto the road, mom or dad comes and forcibly grabs them, and they're wiggling and they're resisting.

They're letting you know that they have power too.

You might have the power of strength, but they have a voice and tears, and they can make really loud sounds.

It's resisting power.

The third option, when power has been distorted, it is to resign to power.

So that is to give up and say, well, yeah, the bad leaders are in.

Frankly, that's kind of Australian power culture.

We're colonial convicts who never beat the British colonial oppressors.

We just resign to it.

And you know, you know, Ned Kelly's last words?

Such is life.

They're in power.

We can't beat them.

All I can do is be hung.

And that's the, such is life.

That's what it means to resign to power.

So that would be Paul saying, the reason I left you in Crete is that you might pat the Cretans on the back and say, it's tough, isn't it, having these bad leaders?

Like, you know, stick it out, like, don't try and fight them.

Just like, resign to power.

It is the way it is.

So with the toddler, there's a point where you come and take them as they're running towards the road, and they realize they can't overpower you and you're not listening to their crying because you have a bigger plan.

And then they resign to power, and then they'll be presumably docile and you can divert them to another thing.

Resigning to power is the third option.

The fourth option, when power has been distorted, is to redeem power.

The word redeem means to turn evil into good, to use power for good.

Now, back to the toddler thing.

That's what the parents are doing.

It's not a bad thing for a child to run and to have a will and to have power, but as parents, you're trying to shape this little person to not channel their power towards running on to the road, but to use their power to play in sight.

You are redeeming that power, turning it good.

And that is how Paul finishes his sentence.

Verse 5.

The reason I left you in Crete was that you might put in order what was left unfinished and appoint elders in every town, just as I directed you.

The point here is for the distortion of power, the solution isn't the rejection of power or the resistance of power or the resignation to power but the redemption of power, the transformation of power.

In more simple language, when the problem is power gone wrong, the solution is not no power, it's not more power, it's not bad power, it's power done right.

And that's what Paul does.

He says, appoint elders in every town.

He's redeeming power.

And then he gives us a big long list of the qualifications for that power.

The type of person who should be given power is, according to verse 6, one who is blameless, faithful to his wife, a man whose children believe in and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient.

Since an overseer manages God's household, 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 is good, who is self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined.

He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it.

That is redemptive power.

That is power turned good.

The kind of power that the elders have is not the power of violence or coercion, but the power of example.

I mean, it's a fascinating kind of observation that Paul talks about elders as the solution.

He could have used any other word.

The president must be this, this, but he uses the word elder, and I think what is happening there is Paul is not inventing a new power structure to compete with the existing power structure.

He is observing the fact that human beings, for all time, have tended to, some cultures more than others, respect people who have lived a long time, to elevate them and listen to them, and we call them elders.

There's been elders in cultures across the world for a very long time.

Paul says those types of people that have influence and model good power, he gives them a name badge and a title.

He says those are the types of people who should have power in your community.

The distortion of power is power turned in on the self to make something of me.

The redemption of power is power turned back out again, back out for the good of others and the good of the world.

That is the redemption of power.

Now we know that the elders back then, elders in churches today, are not perfect in their power.

They don't use their power perfectly, which brings us to the fourth and final point, the perfection of power.

In the introduction, we looked at two origin stories, the Australian origin story and the American origin story, and the way that it shapes their understanding of power.

As we finish this message, there's one more origin story to tell.

And it's the story of a baby, a boy, born to a teenage girl under scandalous circumstances a long time ago in a backwater town in a far-off place.

This boy was a refugee.

He was fleeing from a jealous, murderous king.

He was a member of a long, oppressed, heavily subjugated people.

This man was laughed at, spat on, mocked, flogged, betrayed, and ultimately he was murdered, crucified on a Roman cross outside Jerusalem.

In every way, this man was the victim of imperial power, distorted power.

And yet, through it all, in the story of Jesus of Nazareth, we see the perfection of power.

Because in Jesus, we see the perfection of love.

Power is perfected by love.

That's the end goal of power.

Love turns power away from the self, away from the distortion onto me, and it turns it for the good of the other and of the world.

Love perfects power.

And that's why the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus of Nazareth is the greatest example of power and love in the world.

Power perfected by love.

Because absolute power is transformed by absolute love.

If you have absolute power without absolute love, that's scary and distorted.

But if you have absolute love without absolute power, it can't do anything helpful.

But in Jesus, we see absolute power transformed by absolute love.

And this is the love, this is the power that does not corrupt absolutely, but is transformed absolutely, that turned the world inside out.

Absolute power with absolute love is the power that made the universe, the power that defeated death, the power that cleansed the leper and healed the sick and made the blind person see, the power that turns all evil into good, and the power that is making all things new in this world.

And that power has a name, and it is Jesus, amen?

Power perfected by love is our Lord Jesus.

That is the perfection of power.

So, as we close, the Book of Titus, the pattern is no truth and grow godly, and that is the truth that we need to know.

That power is the ability to make something of the world, but in our fallen nature, we turn that power, we distort that power to make something of me at your expense.

But power is redeemed when it is turned for good, and it's perfected when it's transformed by love.

And that is the image of Jesus.

Absolute power transformed by absolute love.

That's the truth to know.

And then the second half is to grow godly.

And frankly, this is the part that I'm very bad at.

I don't tend to know how to apply it to 170 people at once.

But you can, and the spirit of truth that is in you and goes with you can apply this in your context.

I know it is true that you have more power than you think you have.

In the different spheres, in your home, your workplace, your marriage, your university, in the different spheres that we find ourselves in, we have more power than we think.

And I think the invitation from the Lord, from Titus, is to not reject power or resist it or resign to it, but to, by the Holy Spirit working in us, to redeem power and transform it by love.

That's what God wants.

He wants to give us power transformed by his love, that all might know the love of God, that God's kingdom might come on earth as it is in heaven.

So I can't tell you what specifically that looks like for you.

All I can do is point at the cross and say that's what we need to look at.

Absolute power transformed by absolute love.

Let me read this from Philippians to close.

Paul says, In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, who being in very nature God, that is all-powerful God, did not consider equality with God something to be turned in on himself, to be used to his own advantage.

Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness, and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.

Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth.

And every tongue acknowledged that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

That is power perfected.

And the last thing I promise, the last thing I'll say is to read that first sentence again.

In your relationships with one another, have that mindset.

Let me pray.

Lord Jesus, we thank you that while we were powerless, you died for us.

When we were your enemies, you took our place on the cross, that we might be loved, forgiven and freed.

We thank you that you are the perfection of power, and you invite us to redeem our use of power.

And so I pray for my brothers and sisters, for myself, as we have come to know the truth about power, I pray you'd help us to grow godly in our use of it.

That we wouldn't use our power for ourselves, but we would turn it out for others.

That we would love you and love the world, and love others as you have loved us.

Help us Lord by your spirit that goes with us.

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