Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - The Biggest Lie You Believe | New Testament | Titus 1

Episode Date: September 12, 2023

What takes your attention away from God? What lie do you find yourself believing again and again? What's at the root of those lies? In today's episode, Tanya discusses Titus 1 and how to live like Jesus is enough. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in one year. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Titus 1

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmoth. So Eric and I were sitting in our kitchen and we were both scrolling our phones and Instagram told me there's one thing Kate Middleton eats every day to stay healthy. And Twitter was telling Eric about a top football recruit that was going to commit to the Missouri football team. And I picked on him because he gets his hopes up and then people decommit. I can't believe decommit is an actual word. And he picked on me because Kate Middleton obviously has a private chef and no one eats the same thing every day anyway. But you see the stuff we were looking at, true or not, well, it was curated for us.

The lies we believe are curated for us like never before in our evolving digital world. Eat this and you'll be thin. Buy this and you won't get older. Do this and you'll have better friends. It's not just that we live in a world of empty promises, but we actually seek them out. we chase them down, never sing the pot at the end of the rainbow. I wonder if our culture is different. I wonder if we're unique, or if we've just evolved new ways to do this. See, the book of Titus is written to a culture that was known for lies. Tidus was Paul's trusted friend and traveling

companion, and he was staying on the island of Crete to lead the churches there through a pretty necessary and rigorous cleanup process. It was an interesting place to plan churches. I mean, geographically, it made sense because the coastline and the port locations meant easy access for travel and for the gospel message to spread. But culturally, it was kind of a crazy endeavor. The Greek noun for Creighton is Chrysimos or liar. It's literal translation synonymous with Creighton behavior. They were proverbially known in ancient times as liars. Lying was considered a skill and a virtue. Now, Paul clearly understood the culture because the very first thing he wrote to Titus and the Cretans was that God never lies. Of all their attributes he could have chosen and

all the things he could have said about God in the greeting of his letter. he honed in on the truth-telling nature of God. Listen in. Titus, 1 verses 1 and 2. Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began. Now, God who never lies is an important message for the Cretans,

because the believers were trying to assimilate their knowledge and worship of God, with their knowledge and worship of Zeus, and with their personal experience. But the aim was to draw their attention away from those things and upward to God and his character. And that's one of the reasons we study the Bible today, to draw our focus away from smaller stories that aren't really true and toward God and his true big story. The Bible tells us and reminds us about God's plan for us. Now, Numbers 2319 says it in another way. It says God is not a man that he should lie or a son of man that he should change his mind. Has he said and will not he do it? Or has he spoken

and will he not fulfill it? Now, the new Christians in Crete had not experienced this kind of nature before, this kind of truth-telling nature. But as people who had put their faith in God, Titus was there to show them what God was like and how to live out their new identity in him. Now, on one hand, the hearers of this letter lived in a world of lies. Lies from bosses and managers. Lies from people who made marriage commitments. Lies from idols who made empty promises. And on the other hand, the heroes of this letter were being made new from the inside out

by an unchanging God who always keeps his promises and never lies. Now, there's a story in Acts 3, where John and Peter are walking next to a pool, where a man who can't walk is begging for coins. And when Peter and John see this man, they tell him, hey, we don't have any coins, but we have something better. Now, when Peter tells the man to rise up and walk, this man who's been lame for a very long time is able to leap and bound and he's overjoyed, that his legs and his feet are working, and then all the people who see him are worshipping and praising God. How did this happen? How? Was this man completely changed? Well, Luke tells us in Acts 316 that it's the author of life. It's faith in his name that made the man strong. And faith through Jesus gave the man this

perfect health in the presence of all of these people. Now this matters to the Creighton believers, because they had received believing faith, and they had been restored to perfect spiritual health through Jesus. But they needed to live like it. Imagine that that man who could now walk went back to being carried and begging by the pool, instead of using his feet and going to find work and new purpose with his body. Now when the people of Crete are living like their old selves and believing in their old lies, while also believing in the bodily resurrection of Jesus and the hope of eternal life he gives, they're doing just that. They're not walking on their new legs. The impetus is to live differently, to be set apart, not to assimilate. Base your truth on the truth of Jesus Christ.

What about us? What do you think is the biggest lie we believe? Is it that someone, something will make us happy if we can finally get it? Is it that one day we'll have enough success to prove that we actually do have what it takes? Is it that when we get to the next line on the track, we'll stop trying so hard and we'll rest? I actually don't think those are our biggest lies. I think the biggest lie that gets its hold on us is that God is not enough. That what he has done for us is not enough. That what he has done in us is not enough.

And so all of those other smaller lies have their day in the spotlight. because we are striving and running and wearing ourselves out trying to be enough and have enough. And we feel tired and we feel burnt out and we feel shame. And this is where the gospel heals us from the inside out. Because when we truly believe that God has done every single thing he said he would do for us and in us, we operate from a place of enough. Enough love, enough grace, enough time, enough strength, enough security, enough forgiveness. enough acceptance enough what does god promise to do in you do you believe it is enough how does your life

show you believe it where do you need to repent because you are believing god is not enough if you'd like to meditate on those questions and pray over those things also look at hebrews chapter six versus 18 and 19 and i'm also going to pray those verses for us today lord when we are tempted to believe that we are not good enough or smart enough or strong enough or when we don't think we have enough of the things it takes to be popular or respected, let your word be the guiding truth in our lives. Let us believe what you say, those unchangeable things in which it is impossible for you to lie, for us who have fled for refuge in you that we might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. Let your truth be the sure and steadfast anchor for our souls.

Amen.