Attractive? | Message on Titus – the Deleted Scenes

Directors commentary:

I finished a transcript recently for an upcoming message series that we are starting in August called ‘Attractive?’ from the the book of Titus. The title of the series comes from the the second chapter where Paul is talking about demonstrating the way we live in our faith as a way of making it attractive to those who don’t believe. Kinda cool, huh?!

When I do write there is so much research (think: borrowing | creative cut and paste) that I do that it would easy to write about 15-25 pages of material that could run into about an hours worth of speaking…which is what we are trying not to do. So what happens is when I write, I start…I go this direction…then back up…go that direction…stop…re-evaluate…go this way…stop….leave it for a couple of days….review…shampoo…rinse…repeat.

What happens is kind of like in film editing…there is stuff that is left on the floor in the editing room…what is left is the meat or the core of the teaching that needs to be communicated. I know that there are other people/pastors/teachers that have a defined method or process that they have…which is good; I have my own messed up, chaotic method which kinda works for me.

So what I want to do with the left over material is basically give the ‘bonus features’ of the message that didn’t make the final cut. Its not that this is insignificant content – its not that at all. Rather, this is material that had to be cut in order to make it under the 2500 word limit (which equals to about 25-30 minutes worth of speaking.) Whats unique about the ‘Northern Hills‘ model is that usually the message is taught in two venues and the teaching pastors have their own style, delivery and presentation that they bring to the message as well. So how its written is usually how I will say it once I am in the venue, but the other teaching guys will usually add their own ‘wit and charm’ to the message – making it uniquely their own. I love it!

Enough with the preamble get on with the it!

Deleted Scenes:

Greek Culture | Hellenism

The culture that Titus lived on in Crete was a tradition that was known as Hellenism. Very Greek and very humanistic in its outlook. There were several schools of thought that made up this philosophy of life: there were the Platonists, the Aristotelians, the Stoics and the Epicureans…some of these you may have heard of and some you may know. They each had a different interpretation of the world around them.

Hellenism, as a worldview, is based on the belief that human beings are the center of it all and the ultimate source of truth and authority. Here is a quote from one of the Greek philosophers, Protagoras, of that time: “Man is a measure of all things of what is and what is not.”

This worldview provided the foundation for a culture devoted to putting humans and human accomplishments on a pedestal. Alexander the Great conquered the Mediterranean not just to build his empire, but to convert the known world over to his worldview of Hellenism – because he considered it to be superior to all others. His successors had the same agenda, as did the Romans whose empires took over the Greeks.

In this Hellenistic world, Greek language became the language of the educated. Schools were organized according to the Greek model. People would go to libraries to collect and pour over Hellenistic writings. The Greek educational system instilled Greek ideals into entire cultures. Statues of Greek gods and heroes celebrated the ultimate ideal: the human form. Everyone absorbed these man centered values.

For many people in Bible times, this type of learning and human accomplishment was very attractive. Where have I heard that term before…?! Hellenism became so widespread that it touched almost every aspect of human life: culture, art & music, architecture, medicine, etc. Since the human being was the ‘measure of all things’ – people believed that human wisdom is the greatest wisdom.

When looking at the lifestyle of people back then, accumulation of the greatest material things to provide luxury and comfort for oneself was considered the normal pursuit of ones life. Since humans are the greatest of all – to be the best, I mean better than all the rest, was life’s greatest goal. What could be more natural than to get the most out of life for yourself?

The Greeks tried to build their society on their gods. Their gods had some power, but were not so different than the people that worshipped them. After all – they were glorified human beings – gods created in their own image. If you were to take a close look – the foundation they attempted to build, which were their gods, came right from their own imagination. Their gods were not an objective basis for truth or what is right. Their value system had no basis outside of their own desires. With the many gods that any one person could have – they really worshipped themselves as ‘god creators.’ They had nothing but themselves to base society on. Do you want to know what happened to the Greeks back then? Their culture, their society completely collapsed under the weight of its own decay and moral filth.

Artemis
Artemis was, in the Greco-Roman org chart of deities, a minor but important figure. It’s important to take note of the Artemis worship – specifically for those features that apply to the role of women in society. While the culture was male-dominated, their religion was rather maternal. (All life supposedly came from the mother-earth goddess Gaea.)

Followers of Artemis believed that when it came to spiritual things, Artemis gave special blessing and insight to women, by way of the…various natural processes that the female bodies go through that we men simply don’t or will not ever go through. One thing to note to about Artemis: she was not a big fan of men – so much so that according to her legend she specifically requested Zeus to make her an eternal virgin – …didn’t want to mess with the dudes.

The major religion of Paul’s audience was one that attributed special spiritual insight to women, as well as encouraging them to treat their husbands in a way that was anything but respectful – or even cooperative.

So you have Paul and Titus on Crete…and who is the patron deity of the island? None other than Artemis. So when we look at Titus 2 and the instructions given to women – we have a passage that is similar to those found in Colossians 3 and Ephesians 5. Wives are encouraged to love their husbands and their children, be kind and to be workers at home; to be subject to their husbands and to be sensible.

In reading this, it kind of struck me that in every other passage in scripture that talks about a husband and wife relationship, the husband is told to love his wife. Here, we see the opposite? Why?

Maybe in the Cretan culture, the women needed this special encouragement because the male populations of the first century Crete were not so lovable. For most of the culture, specifically the men, they had given themselves over to all sorts of excesses and created for themselves a reputation as the scum of the earth.

Crete

During the time that Paul had written to Titus, things were not much different on the Island of Crete than anywhere else in the Greek Empire, soon to become the Greco-Roman Empire.

The people of Crete had really lost their moral compass and were just lost. Lost is a really good way to describe society in Crete back then. The law and the courts were no longer concerned with justice and righteousness. Rather than seeking justice – things were settled in terms of money. For instance, a crime as serious as rape did not incur a punishment, but a fine.

People were consumed with wealth and they used every means, legal and illegal, to get more of it. Greed or stealing – both worked the same way. Ethics and morals were no longer based on right and wrong, rather, they were defined in terms of a financial gain or loss. If it makes me a profit and brings me greater gain is of more value than what is true.

“Cretans are devoted to riches as bees are to a honeycomb.” – Plutarch
“The Cretans do everything in hope for cash” – Livy

Families were falling apart because relationships had little meaning. Adultery and infidelity is as common as breathing. Marriages were collapsing for any number of reasons – more often than not, people just accepted that marriage was an irrelevant institution and decided against marriage to being with. Children were not considered a blessing, but more of a financial liability or asset. Children were born to parents who neither loved each other nor were committed to each other. Here is the saddest thing: the law even supported a woman’s choice to destroy her unwanted child as long as she followed the rules. On Crete, mothers could choose to leave their children to die, but only if the father did not want the child. When a mother killed an infant without the father’s consent, she was charged a large fine.

In general, honesty was a rare thing and even if someone were honest – they were mocked or laughed at. At that time, military leaders and politicians used their own people for nothing more than financial profit. Greed and dishonesty were just as necessary to business men back then as Blackberry’s are to us today.

“Cretans even consider highway robbery to be an honorable profession” – Cicero

Crete’s major industry was piracy. The northern shore of Crete was a haven for pirate bands that terrorized the Mediterranean.

“The Cretans both by land and sea are irresistible in ambushes, tricks played on the enemy, night attacks, and all petty operations which require fraud” – Polybius

That was life in Crete. That was the society that Paul left Titus in. You can see why Paul wrote that, ‘Cretans are always liars, vicious brutes and lazy gluttons.’ Here is actually quoting one of their own. Paul was not alone in this view – in fact, this was a view held by most first century writers about the society and people of Crete.

Older Women
In Titus 2:3 Paul instructs Titus, the pastor of Crete: “Likewise, tell the older women to be reverent in behavior, not to be slanderers or slaves to drink; they are to teach what is good.” The Greek word that is normally translated “older women” is presbutidas, which is the feminine form of the word normally translated as “elder” when it is describing a man. They would have been older since the Jews would not consider someone to be an elder until the age of 60. Older people were looked to for their wisdom in the pagan world as well. Post-menopausal women had much more freedom in the ancient world as well. In Judaism women were considered unclean during their periods, which disqualified them from religious service during that time of the month. After menopause a women had more freedom in the religious and public spheres—she was no longer unclean, and she was considered wise because of the many years she had lived.

We see this in Anna at the temple in Luke 2—she lived at the temple and prayed everyday. She was probably also a teacher there. The older women are instructed “to teach what is good.” Teach is from didaskolos which is the word Paul uses to describe teaching the Gospel. The young women who were now part of the church had no teaching in morality or how to be wives and mothers. So Paul encouraged the ‘older women‘ to focus their teaching on helping these younger women learn how to cope with all the responsibilities of being a wife and mother in Crete. This teaching probably included how to fend off the false teachers that preyed on them and their families. Paul wanted these young women to know the truth of the Gospel, so they would know when they were being ripped-off for money, and could protect their families from these greedy hucksters.

Note: having lunch with a friend of mine some time ago, we were talking about this particular piece of scripture. The question came up – when you think of false teachers, what is the gender that is usually typecast? We both answered, male. But can the false teachers be female? Good question. Then looking around the landscape of various media stream that are offered on tv, radio, internet…one name that came up that kinda nailed it: Oprah. I won’t go into a long discussion about her, but I will give the highlights. Oprah has been kinda going off the deep end these days with her new age crap that she is pushing. Denying that Jesus is the only way to God “there has got to other ways other than Jesus…” (my paraphrase | see the video here.) I know many women who think Oprah is great and her show is helping other people. But I can’t help but the think of the influence that she has over people who under estimate the underlying message within her spiritual messages. Eighteen to twenty million viewers a day watch her show; 1 to 2 million people listen to her internet classes on ‘course on miracles.’ The path is broad that leads to destruction, its pretty too.

More about this later…

Younger Women
In Crete young, married women tended to be left on their own after marriage. A woman would leave her father’s home and move into her husband and his family’s home. There she was never quite trusted because she was brought into the family, and could still have more loyalty to her birth family. These women were separated from the women they grew up with, and thrown into houses with women who never trusted them, let alone helped them learn how to be wives and mothers. Alcoholism was rampant among young women in Crete who could not handle the pressures and stress of married life. These women were also easy victims for false religious teachers. Secret sects along with the priests of Cybele would insinuate themselves into the domestic sphere through these women, and several made a good living ripping these women off.

There is more…I will let you digest that and bring more after the message series starts. Keep checking back…

…for theirs is the kingdom of heaven

At my church recently, they have been doing a sermon series on the “Kingdom of Heaven” which has been interesting…it got me thinking; if it’s hard to think about the name of God (whose name we can’t even pronounce) and to try to understand that…its going to be really hard to understand the Kingdom of Heaven as to how God wants to implement it. Let me explain. Take a look at the Genesis account where He began creation with a man and a woman. They are in the garden, beautiful, serene and there is nothing more they could ever need or want. Before the fall, it seems that God wanted to walk with Adam and Eve and be close to them. For now, there is a harmony between man and God. In His creation, God created man originally good – God was pleased to not only have formed man, but to be in relationship with him.

Now continuing on into Exodus, you see where God wants to still be with His people. Chapter 25 talks about how God gives the construction plans to Moses about how to build the tabernacle (in modern construction, this would be a ranch home…I crack myself up.) This wasn’t for God to live in, but rather to dwell among His people. Amazingly strange isn’t it? As we know of God, or at least what we can know, He is infinite, almighty and beyond what is there…yet He wants to dwell among His people. He just wants to hang with us! It’s amazing to think about that you and I and the person who lives next door to us – God wants to be with each one of us – to dwell in our midst. This may have been a reminder that God didn’t need a place to rest his head, but rather the Israelites needed a place for God to dwell among them to remind them that He is still there…a God who is there, with them!

Then what happens is amazing as well. You take a look in John 1 and it says this: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” Not only did God want to become closer – He did it in a way that no one expected, a baby who grew to be a man, but then made his dwelling among us. Throughout eternity, God had this longing to be with us…down here. On earth. In the Flesh. Now, here is the rub (as Shakespeare would say): When the Bible says, “…and they shall call him Immanuel, – which means, ‘God with us.’” – I don’t believe what the author was trying to say is that “God is with our particular brand of religion.” God is not proclaiming membership within any of the religions that were created here on earth. It cannot mean that he has devolved into church membership with any one church, belief system or theology…make sense? If we limit him like that then we are choosing for ourselves a god who is too small and not the God of the bible. (btw: when you create god in your own image, you are already breaking commandment #1 – you have been warned.)

So Jesus as God – comes among us and dwells with us…what is one of the first things he starts to do with the people? He touches them. He heals them. Can God not get close enough? And its not like he goes to the spiritual elite of the day and gives them blessing and healing – no…he goes to the ones who haven’t got it together, who have been dismissed, judged and deemed as sinners. These are the ones who Jesus tells ‘…you are blessed…theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ He didn’t say on the way up to the clouds or when you become not-sinners, but rather ‘this kingdom of heaven thing is yours…now!…take it!’ The Pharisees thought that it was much different and a much more difficult road than that to travel.

They were the ones teaching that purity and righteousness were given to them from others who had already attained it and it was passed on because you met some criteria or some ‘work’ may have been achieved. For most of the people, it was way out of reach. The Torah teachers and the rabbi’s of their time had placed righteousness and basically the kingdom of heaven out of reach for anyone to go through. They were basically saying, “repent and cleanup your act – until then, you are an outcast.” You can imagine the despair and discouragement of the people who tried to come close but were stopped short because of their income level, intelligence, clothes, …well, externalities as well as family backgrounds, people you hung around with or maybe it was just that you weren’t friends with the right people.

Maybe its that reason why Jesus said to them, “…You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.” I love Jesus. Most of the pharisees as you will read in the gospel accounts take sin as something that travels from the impure to the pure. And if you caught this impurity, you must cleanse yourself to the nth degree. Jesus, however, reverses this. For him, he wasn’t made unclean by being with and touching the people who were the ‘left-out and sinners’ – but as they experienced, they were made righteous, pure, healed and restored because of their relationship with him. Pretty cool, huh?

So not only did He come among us – but he would say things like, “…may your kingdom come, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” What can we make of this? Jesus tells us that things are done a certain way in heaven…God’s way. Who else would know this except Jesus, right? So, to our understanding, there is an way of doing things in heaven and when we do God’s will here on earth as he desires us to do in complete obedience…what are we doing? We are doing things as they are done in heaven. Let that sink in for a second…

If I am doing what God wants me to do, here on earth, that are in line with his will, in complete obedience to him – then I am bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth. Sound strange? Of course…since we have this belief that there will come a day when all will be burned away and what is left is us floating in the clouds somewhere with God somewhere….out there…right? We have been taught somewhere that kingdom of heaven is an ‘out there’ thing and that we only get to experience the kingdom of heaven we have left…earth? Have we not even said this ourselves? We ask people who don’t believe the question like this: you want to know how to get to heaven?

…but wait, what is it that we just read above – God wants to dwell with His people – God with us – on earth as it is in Heaven? If we believe that God wants to dwell among us – that means there is some responsibility on my part. Woah! Which makes me think – am I creating a place…am I part of something, church for instance, where I am preparing a place for God to come down. We see it Genesis, He wants to walk with us. In Exodus, we wants to dwell among His people. Again, in the New Testament – He becomes flesh and blood to walk among us – so that his will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Has anything changed since that time? God is still determined to come down and live among us.

So shouldn’t the question, the Jesus question, be: want to know how to get heaven, here?

So, …how do I get heaven, here? More to come…

…deeper than endless seas

There is a moment in this one song, “Highest” by Hillsong towards the end where the music is just building to a nice crescendo and it seems that the peak is somewhere close…then Darlene Z. speaks up and says “Church lift up a shou of praise…to the King!” And the audience explodes in this massive roar…I get chills everytime I hear it. The song is attributed to the Psalms where the writer speaks of God’s attributes:

Psalm 36 …Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your justice like the great deep. O LORD, you preserve both man and beast. How priceless is your unfailing love! 

I have been doing alot of thinking about this. Its been coming around for awhile, especially since my wife has been meeting a particular group of ladies who have a different belief system – but nevertheless claim their way is the way to God. In a way it makes sense and then in the end it makes no sense it all. Let me explain. Since humans have inhabited earth and God has always wanted to be in relationship with us – it makes sense that we have this finite sensibility about us that wants to define or outline the Thing we don’t understand. We try to personalize it, humanize it, define it, confine it and ultimately control it. 

Way back in the time of the ancients – before God made Himself known to Abraham, the people would call upon their god – thunder, rain, fertility, etc. – and perform for their respective god. In a way, controlling their god in order to receive some sort of blessing. Confining their god as they did, they knew who to call on for certain things.

Now, when God called upon Abram, waaaaay back in Genesis, I would believe that Abram thought he was being called on by one of the many gods around and he was doing what everyone else would have been doing as well. Listen, do and assign this god to a particular calling. As things turned out – this God that called upon Abram was above all others. And after time He proved Himself to be above all else as well. God proves Himself to be more than just a mountain top experience, but a God who is beyond the mountain – beyond the sky – the unknowable God whose purposes are hidden from human intelligence and the One who cannot be manipulated.

Augustine of Hippo said this: “We are talking about God. Which wonder do you think you understand? If you understand, it is not God.” 

Take the discourse between Moses and God. Moses see’s the burning bush and encounters God on a scale that he would not have imagined, ever. Moses who is not all that together as a public speaker argues for someone else to do the job of delivering God’s people…and then finally resorts to one other question – “Who should I say is calling?“

YHWH.

(I put the period there for emphasis, laf!) To a normal person, this means nothing. To a scholar, its a guess as to what it may sound like, or mean. To the ancients – it was something so sacred that even when it was known – it was spoken just once…once a year in prayer by only the high priest and only on the Day of Atonement. It wasn’t used as punchline to a joke – it wasn’t used when you missed your shot in golf – it was spoken once, it was that sacred. After the Temple was destroyed in 70 a.d. the name was never uttered again. So our best guess is just that as to how the consonants and the vowels are actually constructed to make a word. 

When the ancients would see the word in their Bible – they would used the name Adonai (“the Lord”) – for the more Orthodox, they would use the word ha-Shem (“the Name”). For so long the the word had not been pronounced that the ancients lost the certain knowledge of how to say YHWH that without a definitive way to say it, you couldn’t be certain of its meaning. Precise meanings in Hebrew are so dependent on how to pronounce the vowels, especially in the case of verbs – YHWH is definitely a verb form. 

God’s description of himself is active not passive. This particular name YHWH is a form of the verb to be. Which can be interpreted or possibly defined in one of several ways: First, I am who am, or better I am who causes to be. Second, I am who I am or put another way You cannot control me by invoking my name like a household god. Third, I will be there with you.

 

How would we attempt to pronounce YHWH then? Some may just refer to saying ‘the Lord‘ when seeing the tetregrammaton. Others go boldly into saying ‘Yahweh‘ (yah-way). Another rendering is ‘Jehovah‘ which I have found, after some research, this is rather a mispronunciation based on the misunderstanding of the conventions of medievil manuscripts. But I digress. 

The sages believed that the vowels were actually given to them as the sound of breathing and would sound something like this:

‘yod – hey – vod – hey’ or ‘yahhhveeey’

These vowels sound like breathing. The name is unpronouncable. We are to understand from God that when the high priest goes into the presence of God on the Day of Atonement – he prepares all year long and goes into the Temple and….breathes? There are other instances that we can look at that make this quite an appealing understanding. For instance: when a baby is born, what is the first thing it has to do or it won’t live? Breathe or say the Name of God? The last thing you do before you pass on to the next life is you take your last breath or when you are no longer able to say the Name of God? Is it possible to be sitting with an atheist and they say, ‘There is no God.” Which by all manner of illustration – just that they are able to breath those words brings conviction to the ignorant.

There is alot more to come in this ‘About God…’ category that I will write. 

I find it quite interesting and disturbing that there are so many religions, belief systems and whatever you want to call them that believe that they have a hold and a monopoly on God and try to persuade you that their way is the best. God gave us the Bible. His revelation about Himself. There is nothing else needed. When there are attempts to bring additional revelation to add to His already mountainous, un-ending diamond mine that cannot be fathomed…it is cruelly laughable. I am not laughing at someone’s despair or an attempt to get closer to God – rather, I laugh at trying to explain the Redwood Forest using toothpicks. 

God doesn’t need help in His thoughtful and loving Word. And rather than try to add to it and arrogantly look to others as if they don’t get ‘it.’ We should thank God for this One way – His revealed Way – the Bible. As well, we should praise God for His guaranteed way to Him – Jesus.