Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

We finished the 18th book in our New Testament plan and the 57th book in our whole Bible plan.

Paul wrote this letter today to his friend and co-worker who had been

assigned to do ministry on a Greek island. Tough job. But for real, it wasn't exactly a cakewalk.

The people on the island of Crete have a challenging culture that goes against the grain of Christ

teachings, and all of this is being reinforced by some local leaders who are apparently on a

power trip. So it's not all sunsets and

suvlaki for our friend Titus. Let's see how Paul encourages him to handle things. In chapter one,

Paul reminds Titus that he's positioned him over the church in Crete so that he can get things

running in ship shape. But when you're dropped down at a relatively new church in the middle of a

bunch of bad leaders and false teachers, it's not exactly an easy task. This is a lot like the problems Timothy was facing yesterday,

so we'll see some overlap in Paul's advice. It's interesting to note what advice makes both books,

because that gives us an idea of what things are situational and what things are universal.

First, Paul gives Titus guidelines for how to choose elders,

the people who will be the governing board of leaders over the church and its decisions.

It's vital that they reflect Christ not just in their doctrine, but in their lives as well,

because people are going to be looking to them for guidance and truth. In addition to that,

an elder not only has to know the truth and teach it, but he has to be willing to correct those in the church who teach it wrongly.

This is a big problem in the church at Crete. There are lots of false teachers, especially among the Jews term, are acting like, well, Cretans, they're

debauchous and foolish and vulgar. Their lives prove that they don't actually love God.

So Paul tells Titus to rebuke the people in the church who act like that, because if and when a person

actually receives a rebuke, their faith increases and their doctrine is refined.

...