God’s Word Works
St. Titus 1:1-9
January 26, 2025 anno Domini
The congregation was a mess – a District president’s nightmare. It was as if they had forgotten Jesus.
- They were divided over who was their favorite pastor. Pastor Buchop was the best. No, it was Sprengeler. No Kaiser. That’s when things were great at Redeemer.
- Members were suing one another.
- A man in the congregation was committing adultery with his step-mother.
- Some people gathered early for the Divine Service, drinking the communion wine until they were drunk.
- Women were acting like men by not covering their heads and some men were dressing like women.
- The congregation was practicing open communion, leading some who communed to become sick and even die.
Do you know what the District President did? Well, he wasn’t a district president. He was Saint Paul. He wrote a letter to the Corinthians.
When’s the last time you wrote a letter that worked? You told a family member that he was wrong, and he changed. You wrote to your daughter who wasn’t going to church and now she attends every Sunday. You didn’t approve of your son’s girlfriend, but after your email, he dumped her. An employee needed to be corrected and with a simple text she gladly changed her conduct. Right.
We are skeptics of words and changes. Not only do we expect everything to go wrong, but we doubt that it can be corrected by mere words. Why? Because that’s our experience. The cliché is true.
How many alcoholics stop drinking? How many marriages are brought back from the edge of divorce and returned to love and faithfulness? How many adults return to church after abandoning it in their youth? How many members of the average Lutheran church resume the habit of every Sunday attendance after they’ve gotten used to having Sunday mornings for themselves? Why don’t we send them a letter? Yeh. Right. That will never work.
Paul’s letter did. He wrote a letter to that messed-up congregation at Corinth. To be sure Paul’s letter was different than your letters or my emails. Paul’s letter was inspired by the Holy Spirit. Paul’s letter was the Word of God. And God’s Word has power. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Heb 4:12
How do we know Paul’s letter cut to the heart of the Corinthian congregation, excised their sin, and healed them by forgiveness? We know because of Titus. After Paul’s first letter Titus visited the Corinthian congregation to gather an offering for the saints in Jerusalem. Titus was under orders from Paul which meant Titus was ordained. That’s why today is the day of St. Titus, Pastor.
When Titus visited Corinth, he found that the congregation had been grieved by Paul’s letter. That’s good news. You should be grieved when you told you are sinning?
But the more important questions is how do you respond God’s Word says you are sinning? Denial. I did not. Anger. Who are you to judge? Blame the accuser. Everything was fine until you said something. Excuses. Nobody is perfect. The Corinthians were grieved into repenting. They believed Paul’s letter was the Word of God. They were sinful. They turned to God. They received forgiveness. They changed their ways. God’s Word worked.
Today we honor St. Titus, Pastor and Confessor. Pastor and confessor. Both of those titles are also met with derision and skepticism, because like a letter, all a pastor has is words. What good will words do?
When your marriage is about to bust apart, when you’re beaten and battered by the world and feel worthless, when you’ve been knocked down by a sickness or an accident or the third appliance died in a month, when half the congregation is mad at the other half over a pastor, how about a sermon? That’ll never work.
But it will. It’s exactly what you need, what your faith needs. St. Paul says to Titus, “God, who never lies, promised (the hope of eternal life) before the ages began, and at the proper time manifested (it) in his word through … preaching.” Real preaching is based on God’s Word. It expounds God’s Word. It has God’s promise that it will work. Oh, it’s hard to believe. You’ve heard so many promises that have been broken. You tried so many solutions that have failed. You put your hope and trust in someone, and they broke your trust and dashed your hopes.
God’s Word is different. God doesn’t lie. Every promise He made in the Old Testament is fulfilled in the New. He delivered the Son of a Woman to crush Satan’s head. This Savior was born in Bethlehem of a Virgin. He was cursed with your sins on the cross and rose again on the third day exactly as He promised. God tells you the truth – everything goes wrong because of sin, and you sin. His Word will tell you the One answer to sin, to your skepticism, to your despair. His name is Jesus, God’s Word made flesh.
That’s Who Paul instructed Titus to preach. You might remember Paul’s Words to Titus from the catechism, “He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.” There’s the cross of Jesus. There’s God’s love. There’s your baptism and the Holy Spirit. There’s your righteousness before God. There’s your hope of eternal life. You are God’s heir. All that is from Father through His Son, revealed by the Spirit in His Word, and delivered to you when you hear it – preaching works.
The other title given to Titus is confessor. That doesn’t mean Titus confessed his sins, although he did. It means Titus said the same thing God said in His Word. Sometimes you might hear a person say, “I’m a confessional Lutheran.” What does that mean? It means that person believes, speaks, and holds to all of God’s Word as God’s Word. That he or she says what God says about sin, about Jesus of Nazareth, about the future of the world, about the cause of trouble, about the 10 commandments. That there isn’t a part of God’s Word that doesn’t need to be preached, believed, and confessed.
Paul ordained Titus and orders Titus to ordain pastors (called elders and overseers in the text) with this qualification. “He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.” Have you ever heard someone get excited about doctrine? The Doctrine of the Trinity. Oh, I can’t wait. The Doctrine of Man. When’s the next episode? The Doctrine of God’s Eternal Foreknowledge. How much would you pay for that book?
If your pastor is not a confessor of all of God’s Word, of all the doctrines, then what is being preached? what is being taught? Not the trustworthy word of God. Not the Word of the God who never lies. Not the Word of God who promises and always delivers. In this Titus also teaches you, you who are not pastors, to know the Word, study the Word, and check your pastor’s words against God’s Word. Because where do fierce wolves arise? From among the shepherds of the flock.
St. Titus, Pastor and Confessor. We learn from him that God’s Word works, that sermons work. You also learn that you have the great responsibility of guarding the word and making sure your pastor is a confessor. You need a man who says the same thing that God says, so that God’s Word works to change you. In the name of Jesus. Amen.