Word of Salvation – Vol.45 No.15 – April 2000
The Unfinished Task In The Church
Sermon by Rev R. Noppers on Titus 1:5
Scripture Reading: Titus 1
Suggested Hymns: BoW 182; 484; 210; 432; Rej 296; 312; 317
Beloved in the Lord.
In this verse Paul starts to get around to business. What most likely happened was this: Paul and Titus travelled around Crete, evangelising in the towns and planting churches wherever they went. Then Paul went on to Ephesus, leaving Titus behind to follow on later. But when Paul got to Ephesus, he found that error and heresy was rampant in that church! So he kicked out two elders, guilty of false teaching, and left Timothy behind to mop up the mess there.
Moving further on, Paul wrote a letter to Timothy to strengthen his position, at which time Paul may have realised that Titus might be facing similar issues, made worse by the Cretan character and the many Jewish converts in that church. So he also wrote a letter to Titus to confirm his verbal instructions and to put his apostolic authority behind whatever Titus did. For the task ahead of Titus was a formidable one. He was to be the spiritual mentor or ‘buddy’ for the whole of the church on Crete! His task was to bring up these spiritual children!
A previous sermon dealt with the concept of giving birth to spiritual children! As you mums know, giving birth is hard work! Many people, when their first child is born, are surprised at how unprepared they are for the needs that a baby has! Even the most basic things, like food, sleep, and clean nappies, are required at the most inconvenient times!
But most parents also discover quite quickly that those first few weeks are nothing compared to what is to come! As children grow and mature, they need ongoing care and attention, and the demand for unconditional love and affection and acceptance just grows! Especially from their parents!
As children grow and mature, they need ongoing encouragement to build their self-esteem and enable them to meet life’s challenges. As children grow, they need proper correction and discipline to instil and increase an understanding of right and wrong, so that they have a proper understanding of the moral consequences of human behaviour.
It is the task of parents to provide their children’s lives with structure and organisation that they are able to work within and grow within, so that each child may grow up learning about their expected roles and responsibilities within the home, the society, as well as understanding the way authority works and their inter-dependence upon the other human beings that make up their societal structures.
It is in meeting these needs that prepares the child for life as an adult. And all of us know, that if we take such a challenge seriously, being a parent is never easy. And we can transpose the whole concept over to the family of the church!
Paul, who liked to stress the fact that God does not leave His work of grace unfinished, is a true imitator of God in this respect, for Paul also does not like leaving his work unfinished! Paul was diligent in spreading the gospel, but always made sure that there were others to carry it on!
Titus was set in place to water where Paul had planted, to further and finish what Paul had begun, and settle those things that Paul had insufficient time to attend to, the things that were not settled before Paul had left.
Titus was given the task of nurturing a young church through the first stages of growth, a task that fell squarely upon his shoulders!
How many of you would like to be in that position? Well guess what! In some ways you are! For there is always a need for ongoing nurture and care! There will always be spiritual children in a healthy church! And none of us would argue with the fact that follow-up is essential wherever the Word of God is planted!
Like a good vegetable patch, ongoing work is required, the weeds need to be pulled out, and sometimes they grow faster than the plants! This had happened in Crete, as false teachers and liars were putting forward variations of the gospel that hindered the spiritual growth of these young Christians! Variations that ranged from the unhelpful to downright heresy!
They needed a framework, like a lattice for climbing beans, so that these young Christians could be led towards maturity, and also to combat the inherent laziness that Paul describes in these people!
And they also needed to be cut back and pruned, so that they really would be fruitful instead of indulging in gluttony and other such sins!
These young Christians, in a young church, needed ongoing care and direction to help them continue in the right direction with the one and only gospel of grace in Jesus Christ! Things were left unfinished, things that needed to be sorted out.
It hardly needs to be said that the church in Crete was not the perfect church! Obviously organisation was lacking, since they had no leadership like elders or a session! The false teachers where having a field day, unchecked, unchallenged, and leading many astray!
And we, like Paul, can never say that our work as a congregation is finished, for we all need to continue to grow in grace, and we all need to continue to encourage one another to grow in grace! The ongoing call to nurture and encourage each other comes back with every baptism, every profession of faith, and every year again as we search for church education teachers and leaders to take Cadets, Calvinettes and the like!
For the task of being parents and leaders in the faith carries with it an ongoing and awesome responsibility! A responsibility that Paul describes in Colossians 1:10-11, “We pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience…!”
The responsibility as God’s people to raise others in the knowledge and understanding of their faith, to be buddies and mentors for those who are younger in age or salvation than we are, to be effective spiritual parents for those within our midst, is a task that is ongoing and changing. It is a task that requires a lot of effort and energy, and not always at the most convenient times in our lives! It is a task that requires our commitment and dedication, both when the fruit of our labours is obvious to see and when it seems like we’re getting nowhere!
After all, it is stating the obvious to say that parenting a church requires many of these same parental skills and responsibilities. As a church grows and matures and changes, in numbers, in spirituality, in outlook and emphasis, its needs change much like those of a growing child do!
And our task never ends once we have got someone in the door, or when we have heard a profession of faith from them. Nor when our own young people do their profession of faith is it alright for us to say, now we’ve done our bit! If that is our solitary aim and goal, then our faith and congregational life is extremely shallow. And our spiritual growth will always be a struggle!
It is the task of those with spiritual maturity to provide those who are new to the faith with structure and organisation, a framework that is built upon the solid foundation of God’s Word! It is the task of spiritual leaders to instruct and lead by example the roles and responsibilities that Jesus Christ portrayed with His sacrifice on the cross!
It is our task as a congregation of the Lord, as people of the faith, to lead and nurture all those who are still spiritually young, whether their age is measured by years or years in the faith, towards fulfilling roles in the home and society! It is our task as a congregation to mirror in our own understanding, in a clear and positive way, the inter-dependence we have upon each other and our Lord, so that we really do show Christ in all our activities and relationships!
For our joy is that the joy of gospel work can be shared with as many people as possible! In fact, our joy is to be found in the fact that all of us have something to contribute and all of us have gifts to offer, that each single person can make some positive impact in the spiritual life of someone else!
Are you prepared to get involved? Involved in the faith life of others in this congregation? Then don’t sit around and wait for others to come to you. Instead, get up, seek out the opportunities that abound, and make yourself ready and willing to serve wherever and whenever you may be called to do so!
In this task of spiritual parenting, what are you doing to make yourself ready for a more direct role of leadership? To what extent are you studying the Word of God so that you will be equipped to tackle those who dispute the Reformed faith even from within us? How forward-looking are you when it comes to preparing yourself for leadership?
Do you dread each time a call comes from a member of session regarding a task that needs to be done, and just hope no one will call you? Or, have you done as much as you can to make sure that when such a time comes you are ready and willing to take up that task because you know by the grace of God you can do it?
This also applies to future elders! Are you young men preparing yourself to take up the responsibilities of leading this family of God or do you just hope that the same guys will serve in session until their nineties? Reality says that won’t happen!
Growth and maturity and proper nurture is linked to a careful choice of leadership. A leadership that is qualified to take up that task! Healthy churches need spiritual parents who are willing to take up their tasks for God’s sake, and our church is no different!
God intended each church to have these people who would lead and guide. After all, the task “to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith, and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” [Eph.4:12,13] goes way beyond our first love for the Lord and needs ongoing guidance and care.
It needs spiritual love that carries us through the first years of learning, that continues to encourage us and provide healthy biblical advice into high school, onto university; that challenges and supports us as we get married and have our own children, and start the cycle all over again!
For the family of God is a never-ending circle of love, tenderness and care for each other that never dies out and never stops giving! Like the eternal love that Jesus showed to us.
Amen.