>> All right. I'm going to give you guys 30 more seconds to wrap it up. All right. Let's -- let me pray and then we'll get into a short time of teaching and interacting together, okay? Let me pray. Father, we are very thankful that you've given us just the opportunity to share and glean.

And we pray that as we focus on this meaty passage, I pray that you would teach us how to see things the way you see things, not to jump to conclusions, not to base our interpretation on our experience or our opinions or preferences, but that we really would learn how to do church the way you would see fit.

So teach us. Would you use the next 15, 20 minutes just to encourage and feed your people? In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. So when I look at a passage, I usually -- first thing I do to prepare to teach is to kind of organize it in a way that visually I can kind of see where the thought is going, okay?

And if you look at the farther -- I mean the introduction is the introduction, okay? I'm going to start with verse 5. So for this reason, okay, and it's important to understand what that reason was. And I've shared last week and in the sermon a couple weeks before that the for this reason really is the premise of eternal -- the promise of eternal life.

And that's what's being pushed forward here. That's the premise. So for that reason, Titus is left in Crete, okay? And then there are two things that he needs to do. Set in order, appoint elders, okay? And here are the qualifications of church leaders. I'll just call it that, okay?

Church leaders kind of broken up into little two snippets of what that means. We only looked at the first part. Next week we're looking at -- or next week we're looking at the second part. And I'm going to read from verse 5 down, okay? For this reason I left you in Crete that you would set in order what remains and appoint elders in every city as I directed you.

Namely, if any man is above approach, the husband of one wife, having children who believe, not accused of dissipation or rebellion. And that's the part you guys studied today. For the overseer must be above approach as God's steward. Not self-willed, not quick-tempered, not addicted to wine, not pugnacious, not fond of sordid gain.

But -- and when I put that but in the middle there, it switches like my brain a little bit to kind of go, okay, now these are more positive things. Hospitable, loving what is good, sensible, just, devout, self-controlled. Holding fast the faithful word which is in accordance with the teaching so that he will be able both to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict.

And if you notice, I pulled -- and this is my preference, my opinion, my educated assumption is that that so that it's not just holding fast the faithful word. It's all of these things that make this man. So that all of these things will help him, one, be offensive in teaching what is right, and then also like to be defensive when there are accusations made that he can stand up to them.

So he could lead the way God would have him lead, all right? So this whole list of stuff is to enable this -- these men to lead well, okay? So I visually put that together like that so my mind kind of remembers not to get lost in the woods and just kind of see what the thought flow is.

And then I look at it like this, okay? What we looked at today is more private life, all right? And then what we're going to look at in a couple weeks is public life. Now, the thing is, Titus has a very important task here. He has to go into Crete where he's not from, presumably, and he's got the job of appointing a bunch of elders and a bunch of churches in a limited period of time.

But how is he supposed to know who's men of character? That's actually a pretty hard task, right? Because character is observed over time. And so what he's called to do is appoint people based on reputation, presumably, whose private lives match their public presentation. So public presentation is easy in the sense of like, I can perform in front of you and make myself, to the best of my ability, a good pastor.

But my wife and my kids actually, they know what's really in my heart. They really know my character. So it's really difficult to judge someone's private life. One way that you can judge someone's private life is their wife and their kids, okay? So again, the purpose of this is the hope of eternal life has come.

You need to get the message out. You need to set up people who won't get in the way, who can teach and defend, and these are the kinds of men that you need. All right? So their private and their public life has to be consistent, and that's something that it's important for you guys to kind of remember so that when we get into like a verse six, you're like, oh, but children.

What if he has like five kids? Four of them are believers. What if he's divorced 40 years ago and now he's remarried? Like, how many of you guys had those kinds of questions? Probably everybody, okay? Ooh, celebrity pastor, that guy, I heard his kid walked away from the faith.

Maybe he needs to step down. Like, there's all of these thoughts that run through your mind, and I'm assuming it's across the board, okay? In order not to get lost in the woods, it's also helpful to remember that private and public life need to be consistent is the main thrust, okay?

And so that -- oh, this is weird. Why is this one -- they're presenting different things. All right, anyway. My animations are -- oh, the animations, okay? So remember, the backdrop is there are presumably tribal city leaders already in these areas because he's got to basically do a pioneering mission work in some sense.

There's Christians everywhere. Nothing's organized. And there are people probably already in the churches who are saying stuff. They profess to know God, but by their deeds deny him. Titus, you set up men who are not like this, who not only teach right, they live right, both at home and in public.

So this is not just an act. It's an outflow of Christian character. So that's the -- when I look at the whole of this, these are the things that, like, kind of make the framework for me as I go into each nitty-gritty detail of the verses. And I'm not going to go over verse four and five.

I'm going to focus mostly on verse six because I'm assuming that's where the interest is, okay? And so what I do is I just come up with five different translations. And I'll look at it in the English first. And then I'll come up with as many questions as I can.

All right? And those are -- these are all my questions. And I put extra because this was what's being presented. All right? Here, I'll read it. Is this the beginning of a new sentence in the Greek or a continuation built on a previous thought? And I'm assuming you guys probably got most of these.

Okay? Is man specific to male or is this general? So like a complementarianism, egalitarianism kind of debate. Could this talk about that at all? How much sin or imperfections or character flaw would still qualify as above approach? Is husband of one wife referring simply to monogamy or more to marital fidelity, as NIV would suggest?

If someone divorces or remarries, would that permanently disqualify him from ministry? How old should an elder's children be before we can gauge whether or not they are believers? What if the elder is either young or without children? What is the length of time elders are to be held accountable for the behavior of their children?

Does having an adult unbelieving child disqualify a person from eldership? Is the accused of dissipation or rebellion more for the elder's children or only the elder? Because NASB, if you're reading the NASB, it just seems like another couple words on the list. How many of you guys notice that?

Okay. Is it okay if the child is unbelieving as long as he is not morally behaviorally out of control? At least he just behaved. Is that okay? Is this based more on fact or reputation? Because it's an accusation, right? Is there a deeper meaning in the word dissipation as the translations all differ some?

Okay. So these are just some questions. If you had to -- if you told me to give 10 more, I probably could. But these are generally the questions that you guys all probably got. Now, I'm going to be talking about three things today, okay? So namely, if any man is above reproach.

So the above reproach, what is that? Does it mean perfect? Okay. Then all of the pastors and the elders here would be disqualified. But just anyway, above reproach. The second thing we're going to look at together is what does it mean to be a husband of one wife? Okay.

And then the third one is about the children. All right. And I'm assuming this is where you guys had the most lively discussions. And on this note, I wanted to share with you -- can you guys click the slides? Okay. So what we want is exegesis, okay? So when we're looking at these passages, we're trying to have exegesis, which is the process of drawing out the meaning from scripture in accordance with the context and discoveral meaning of its author.

We want to apply what Paul meant. Make sense? Paul's dead. This was written many years ago. So we want to get as close to the application that Paul wanted us to make. And through that, the process is we dive in and we try to take out whatever is in there, okay?

Exegesis, on the other hand, which is not good, it's the process by which the reader imposes or injects his or her interpretation into the text. We don't want to do that, okay? And it's very easy to do. That's the default setting. I'm going to read the passage through my eyes and the lens -- I want to take my cultural goggles and interpret it and scrutinize it the way I want to, and that's incorrect.

So what we want to do through inductive study is land on neither legalism or liberalism. Neither like Bible thumping, this is what the Bible says to the letter, so we need to carefully follow it all the way to the T, okay? You can go wrong in that way. Or you could be like, well, the Bible is just ideals and standards.

It's not reality, so we can't really put it into practice. If we really tried to put it into practice, we would have zero pastors. Like that kind of mentality is also erroneous. So legalism and liberalism are two sides of the same coin. It's biblical illiteracy on steroids. Does that make sense to you?

Okay? Legalism is biblical illiteracy. Liberalism is also biblical illiteracy, and they're the same -- they're like the same. It's just the opposite application. What we want to do is understand what Paul's intent was and to apply it to the best of our ability, and that's going to be messy.

That's going to be all kinds of exceptions are going to come up into our heads, all kinds of examples are going to come up, all kinds of just what ifs, but we want to apply it as if Paul was here instructing us with this text, this is how you're supposed to set up leaders.

Follow me? Okay? So exegesis is the interpreter makes the scripture say what God has to say. Eisegesis is the interpreter makes the scripture say what he wants it to say, and we have so much of that going on. Every false doctrine comes from eisegesis. Okay? The Bible can't mean that.

Like I had a really godly pastor, but he ended up getting a divorce from his wife, but he did so much to bring me to faith. He's God's servant. Now that's subjective experience. That's eisegesis. You guys following that logic? Okay? We want to be careful. So when we look at verse 6, we're going to kind of go inside and then we're going to just go broad.

All right? What does verse 6 have to say about elders, and then what does verse 1, 4 through 9 have to say about elders, and then what does the whole of the epistle of Titus have to say indirectly, directly about leaders, and then what do 1 and 2, Timothy have to say, and then we're going to go even broader.

What does the whole Bible have to say about the kinds of men God would delight to have lead his people? So before we look at, say, hey, Titus 1, 6 says, having children who believe. I know that guy. He's a pastor. I know him. He teaches well, but his son's not a believer.

He needs to get out of the pulpit. Ooh, that's biblical illiteracy. If that's all you're going off of. Okay? So we've got to be very careful and precise. So I'm going to look at above approach first. This is an easy one. It literally is a combination of ah, which is not, and the enkaleo, which means call into account.

There's no reason to put this man on trial. Okay? That's what it kind of means. Without blame, absence of accusation, unimpeachable, irreproachable character. So John Stott says, they should offer no loophole for criticism is what he says. And then I added the words in any of the character traits to follow.

Okay? You're not going to get a perfect person outside of Christ, right? But what you want in a person who's standing up to lead a church is someone who is a flawed man, of course. But someone where you really can't accuse him of much outside of just being a sinner.

Not just you understand that. Okay? So above approach does not mean perfect. The word perfect is actually a different word, unblemished, a momos. Okay? And that's not the word that Paul uses here. It's basically you can't tell him to, there's nothing really to disqualify the guy. And I just have to make something up then.

Okay? So that's the kind of person who is above approach. There's really nothing that you can say that says that this man is not Christ-like. So this man is Christ-like. And with each passing season of his life, he grows more Christ-like. And that's a man above approach. And then the husband of one wife.

I'm sure you guys have had some, maybe some colorful questions and just curiosity here. It literally means one woman husband. Okay? G'nai is actually, it could be translated woman. Jesus calls his mom G'nai. Okay? He doesn't, like, he's like, G'nai. He doesn't mean wife. That's his mama. Okay? So one woman husband.

What the conclusion is this, okay? An unsullied reputation in the whole area of sex and marriage. Simple enough? Okay? So you're going to probably have all these different exceptions in your head that can come up as possible, huh, what about this? What about this? What about that? The big picture is when you look at this man, he is devoted fiercely to his wife.

It doesn't mean that they never fight. It doesn't mean, like, they have a perfect marriage. But it means he is devoted to his wife in both attitude, thought, and action, and reputation. There is zero doubt that he loves his wife and family and is committed to her and is not going to cheat on her.

So that's pretty much one woman husband. Okay? What it doesn't mean is a widower who is remarried. It doesn't mean an elder. So it's like an elder is an unmarried person, or if a person's unmarried, oh, he needs a wife. He can't be an elder. So that's not what it means.

Okay? Because if you want to try to apply it overly strictly, then you end up with some faulty application. So that's the -- those are the easy ones. Okay? Can we -- yeah. Oops. No, no. Can you -- can you -- ah. All right. Never mind. The animation didn't work.

It's this TV stuff. It's like all this technical stuff that -- all right. So next slide. Okay? The bottom part wasn't supposed to show up for you. It was supposed to be like this. All right? But don't cheat. Okay? So verse six is a little bit tricky when it comes to children.

So there is an interpretive problem here that we must pause to consider, says one commentator, Philip Towner. Okay? The word pista, it means believing, reliable, or faithful. Okay? It's translated believing, or reliable, or faithful. Even in the book of Titus, it's used two other times, and it's not translated believing.

Okay? So does this mean believing, or faithful/trustworthy? That's a big difference. What if my kid is not a Christian, but he's a pretty upright dude? What if my daughter is very moral, pays her taxes, and does all this stuff, but she just can't bring herself to a saving knowledge of Christ?

So there are questions there. Okay? So believing versus faithful/trustworthy. And the kinds of thoughts that probably will come to your mind are these. A leader in the church whose children are clearly nonbelievers might pop up in your head. Famous celebrity pastors whose children have strayed from the faith might pop up in your head.

A leader with young children who have not professed faith in Christ become a what if. Okay? I don't think my kids are believers. Does that disqualify me? They're six. Okay? So my child has made one too many mistakes for me to serve as a leader. So if I'm a 60-year-old person with an adult child, but that child has made a pretty bad mistake in his life, does that disqualify me?

Pastors or elders forcing their children to fake a profession or behave, perform. So if you abuse this verse, and I'm trying to get my kids to fake being Christians so that I'm not disqualified, I may end up with all kinds of bad fruit down the line. You guys can kind of see how that happens, right?

So PKs oftentimes by reputation are either really like holy moly or they stray. Not just if you knew this. Yeah. But I think part of it psychologically may be the fact that they have all this pressure with all the eyes looking on them and maybe even mom or dad saying, "You can't do that.

You're a pastor's kid. You can't buy that. You're a pastor's kid." And so you pile on years of you need to perform a certain way without really affecting areas of the heart. So we can all do damage if we misapply this to my kids, to Pastor Mark's kids, to Pastor Nate's kids, the elders' kids.

Does that make sense? So this is very important to know how to apply this, okay? So I'm going to review a little bit. What does Titus 1, 4 through 9 have to say? What does all of Titus have to say? What do the pastoral epistles have to say? And my arms don't stretch any wider.

But what does the whole Bible have to say about the kinds of men God would have delight to lead his people? I read that wrong. But you guys understand the gist, okay? So I'm going to go back. So the NASB made a little bit of an unclear translation. The not accused of dissipation or rebellion in the grammar, in the Greek, it's connected to the children.

It's not connected to the person. But the NASB is the only one that kind of leaves it like, huh. So some of you guys are thinking like, then why use the NASB? We have our reasons, okay? Don't worry about that. But the NASB makes it look like, that's just another like a couple of words.

But in the Greek construction, teknon, exon, pista, me, it's all connected, okay? So there's this whole thing about the children. But the word that's kind of the hinging word is this word pista. In the New Testament, whenever pista is used in the passive, it's usually in reference to let's say God's faithfulness, God's or Christ's faithfulness or trustworthiness of God's words.

Believability, trustability, okay? Titus 1.6 is in the passive. And Titus 1.9, Titus 3.8, also use the word pista in the passive. Active use of pista in the New Testament, it's used of people who clearly are believers. And I have a list of references there. These slides are going to be made available to you.

So you don't need to like write down everything, okay? The slides I'm going to put up. And unbelievers are never referred to as faithful or pista when you're using an active voice, okay? But this kind of makes you question like in a passive voice, the child has pista. Does that demand that that child is a believer?

It's a little bit inconclusive and hard to fully nail it down just from this verse. All right? So when I'm looking at this, there's a tension. Because I don't want to get this wrong. Does this mean a child is just like not rebellious, not disobedient, but is just upright?

Are there cultural things going on here? Because in this period of time, it was a lot more, think of an Asian culture, like old school Asian, where whatever dad says goes for the family. So for a dad to say, "We are believing in Jesus Christ." For a kid to push against it and say, "No, I'm going to live against this." It's actually a very active like pushing against the father's wishes.

So is this pointing to the fact that a child has to have saving faith? Chapter 1, verse 6, I personally don't conclude that it does. Okay? So I'm going to leave it at that because our inductive Bible study, the goal is not to come to conclusions. The goal is to learn how to feed and to learn how to carefully exegete.

Okay? So I'm going to go to a slightly different passage. So I'm looking at Titus 1, 6. Hmm. Titus 1, 4 through 9. Huh, not convinced. All of Titus. Ooh, pista is used differently. Then I'm going to go to 1 Timothy. All right? The other epistles. An overseer then must be above reproach.

These are kind of similar listings. The husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money. So far it's pretty similar. He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control.

With all dignity. That doesn't quite make me feel like, okay, believer. He has to be a believer. So now this is where it's tricky. Are these lists non-negotiables? When you see a list of qualifications for an elder, are these non-negotiables? Or are these kind of unattainable ideals that elders should try their best to model, but it's okay if they don't?

Or are these things, things that would be nice to have in an elder, but not essential? We would rather have an elder who could preach well, who could teach well, who's good at organization, who's good at management, who's good at taking care of the kids, who's really gifted speaker, is a great communicator, writes books, has a PhD, yeah, character, whatever.

And the reason I pose these questions is depending on how you view, which side you choose is going to end up kind of what you value in a church. Non-church, you kind of understand. Okay? I am absolutely convinced it's the first one. Are these non-negotiables? Non-negotiables, absolutely. Then it gets me spiritually constipated, emotionally confused, logically like disrupted.

Okay? One, six, it's not fully clear. It's not fully conclusive. But I want to take this seriously. So what do I do? So before I make a judgment or a conclusion saying, okay, if an elder, let's say, the child hits 18 and says, you know what? I'm done with Christianity.

I'm no longer going to follow Christ. I'm done with church. See you, dad. Does the pastor have to, or the elder have to come to the church and say, you know what? I don't live up to Titus 1.6. My child has disowned the faith, and I should no longer serve as an elder of this church.

Is that the proper application? And it gets really tricky because a lot of the situations that these play out in real life are not very simple. Would you guys agree that it's not simple at all? Yeah. If I listed the celebrity pastors whose one kid or two kids don't believe, we would lose a lot of our leaders.

But then I'm absolutely convinced that these are non-negotiables. They're not suggestions. Then my dilemma is I have to try to figure out what the spirit of the law is, not necessarily the letter, how Paul would address this situation, and I got to dig deep into all the scriptures to find a conclusion.

If this whole thing hinges on one word and one verse, okay, in 32,000 verses of the scriptures, in 1,190 chapters of the whole Bible, one word, one verse, it hinges upon this, I need extra help. And God says he gives it, John 16, 13, the spirit himself will lead you into all truth.

But that's why we need to dig deep into the source. And I'm not going to give you a conclusion because in some ways, it's still in process. You guys follow me on this? Okay. Then I go back to and then I'm tired of just looking down so that I'm going to pop back up.

And I'm going to look at all of Titus again, okay. And then I'm going to look at these charts and the words that I made last week. And then I think through, all right, how do I get Maddie and Charis, my two kids, not to disqualify me from ministry, okay, because the wife won, that's on me.

Well, the kids won technically, but I can't control my own heart. How am I going to manipulate this boy and this girl? And they're sinful. They're really sinful. Okay. How do I get them to follow Christ? And that causes me, when I look at Titus and realizing no amount of my hard work will get them to follow Christ.

But what will get them to follow Christ is at the end, what leads to godliness? Knowledge of the truth, chapter one, verse one, the grace of God, chapter two, verse 11. And work of the Holy Spirit, chapter three, five. I need to pray. And I will trust that the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective, assuming I'm a righteous man, that God is eager to answer and to save and to bless, and I will throw myself at God and ask him to change my kids.

That's my role. But where pastors and church leaders go wrong is they try to get the kid to like behave and conform. And then the church culture, the church village tries to nitpick at that child. What abuse that is, right? When at the end of the day when you do a proper study of the scriptures, it is not based on me manipulating my kid into faith.

I can't do much to save my child outside of prayer. But I could do a lot to get in the way of everything and mess it up. So my job as a father, as a husband, as a pastor, is to make sure everything I'm preaching is biblical, that my life looks like what I'm preaching, not just in front of you, but in front of my wife and kids.

Yeah, good luck, Peter Chung. That's why this is not all dependent on the pastor or the leader. The pastor and the leaders absolutely need the prayer of the people. Because what's Satan's strategy? Attack the top, divide and conquer, always. That's why the next quality, the first thing you're going to see after above approach is not self-willed.

You can't have pastors and elders with agendas who are trying to jockey for position, who have ambition, because that always leads to strife. But if we're not careful and we're being attacked by spiritual demonic elements to distract or hinder, our church is growing. Oh, great. We're doing a great job.

Boom, puffed up. There you go. Satan's had a small victory there. You need to pray so that my prayers are also powerful and effective and you need to join me that my kids' salvation, which is not dependent on me anyway, my kids come to faith in Christ, to God's glory, and to the effectiveness of his kingdom building.

So, verse 6, I have more questions than answers, and I've spent the last 30 something, like 30 something hours in the last couple days, like just trying to figure out how to teach this. And I'm so thankful because I actually probably gleaned more than anybody else did because I'm just in the text.

And I didn't leave with a conclusion. And I think that's okay. You guys okay with that? We're all still in process of trying to know the whole counsel of God. We can't do that on one Wednesday night. Okay? And as we grow in the faith, as the spirit of God guides us into all truth, things will become more and more clear, especially in the areas that are a little bit more complicated and not so simple.

You guys follow me? Legalism, liberalism, two sides of the same coin. Cheap grace and fundamentalist, like abusive tendencies, it's the same thing. It's immaturity. But we need to be a mature people who chew on the meat of the scriptures. Amen? Milk, chug, you're done. Meat, you chug, you're done.

You can't do that. You need to chew. And let's chew this together and then see what next study has to say. And then see what chapter two has to say. And then see what chapter three has to say. And then we'll go to first and second Timothy and 20 years from now maybe we'll have a solid answer.

I'm just kidding. Well maybe. But certain things you want to tread carefully and ask God humbly for wisdom rather than to jump to a conclusion. Because especially, I'm sorry for those of you guys who are not Asians, Asians like answers. We like conclusion. Tell me how I'm supposed to apply this.

It doesn't work that way. We really need to kind of let God's word speak. All right? So this is the application I'm going to leave you with. Just from chapters one verses four through six, pray for the leaders' marriages that God will strengthen and protect each of them. Pastors' wives won't always disclose whatever challenges that they have nor will pastors because it may become a stumbling block.

Pray for the marriages. Okay? Pray for just, not just that they coexist peacefully but that all our pastors and elders really have just a strong relationship with their spouse so that with just a united heart and mind we're ministering together. Pray for that. Second, pray for the salvation of your spiritual leaders' children.

Okay? And third, pray for God to raise up many more godly leaders from and for the church. That's how you can apply this. Not go on a witch hunt and try to find out which pastors you need to get off the pulpit, which elders you need to disqualify. The application appropriately made from this text is that we pray.

Because it doesn't depend on our effort is what the whole of Titus says. It depends on God's grace. And help us cleave to the grace of God especially as the needs of the church grow. Amen? So I'm going to break you back up into your small groups to just spend some time in prayer and then follow up application, discussion and you can do that as long as you want.

But just as a quick announcement there's no Bible study next Wednesday. Okay? So dun dun dun you have to wait till two weeks from now to see what elders, what other elders have to. This is a very difficult passage for leadership because it's like our feet are put out to the fire.

But one through seven through nine and then same thing inductive questions observations how do these verses fit into the context of the rest of section chapter letter and then what are some practical and measurable applications you can draw from these verses. And that's for Wednesday the 22nd because next Friday we have praise and prayer.

So we're not here Wednesday. We're here Friday. All right. Okay. So yeah I'm going to my computer's about to run out of battery but it is absolutely essential for you guys to pray for the leadership because John McCarthy one thing he says is the church can survive anything except a failure in leadership.

A failure or factions in leadership a church can survive anything but that. And so pray for the strength of our leaders. And pray for more leaders to come up. Amen. And let me pray and then I'll let you go back to your small groups. Father we are weak. We are prone to misinterpret.

We are prone to make subjective opinion. Your will for our lives. So I pray that you would help us to dive deep into your word. And to humbly. Trembling before you. Seek wisdom. And we know that you've said you will gladly give it if we ask in faith. So we ask now that you would give us wisdom and insight into your word to know how to apply especially the harder texts in the word of God.

And so we pray for your help as we pray together that you would help us not to pray religious words or repetitive phrases but help us really to pray and intercede. Just with our whole hearts in tune with your spirit. And we ask these things in Jesus name. Amen.