Book of Titus - Ch. 2, vv. 5-6

All righty, good morning everybody. Good to see everyone. Hope everyone's having a good morning. We'll go ahead and jump right into it. If you want to turn to Titus chapter 2 with me, we will cover some new terrain this morning as we slowly make our way through this very brief but very dense epistle.

Paul had a way of doing that. He could be very succinct and yet at the same time pack so much into a single phrase that it can take a while to really cover everything that he had in store for us. That has certainly been the case and chapter 2 has been no different.

And just to remind everyone of a little bit of the context as we get into some new verses this morning. We're in chapter 2, like I said. Chapter 2 shifts from focusing on the elders, the leaders of the church, to talking about the members of the church and the very important role that they all play.

Everyone, I mean as Paul in his analogy talks about, there's no member of a physical body that's going to boast over the other because without the legs, the head isn't going anywhere. Without the arms, the head can't grab what it needs to grab or do the work that it needs to do.

And so just like a physical human body, you know, the head can't boast over the other members because it can't do anything without the other members, the same is true in a church body. That's the analogy that Paul uses.

Everybody is important. Everybody has a unique role to play that God ordained for them to play. And so Paul is laying all of this out for us to see firsthand and also telling us in such a way that we can experience peace while each and every individual plays out their unique role.

So we can experience peace as a unit, as a family, as a body, if you will, but at the same time we experience that peace while each and every member is playing out their unique role. So that's the overall context.

Of course, you get to chapter 2. It begins with talking about the older men and the way in which they need to behave themselves in the congregation in order to be a successful minister themselves to the younger generations.

Paul talks about all of the positive character traits they must have in order to be godly. And then he shifts his focus to the older women, and he says in the same manner that the older men need to act like this, the older women need to act like this, and then when the older women act like this, they can actually step into a ministry role themselves, and that is teaching the younger women how to behave in the same manner that they are.

And remember, what is that behavior? It is behavior that becomes holiness. Greek term literally means to be priest-like. So these are very important character traits and things that Paul is wanting these women to shoot for.

And so then when you get to verses 4 and 5, which we covered over the past couple of weeks, and it is Paul is showing us in detail the things that the older women are teaching the younger women. And if you guys, some of you weren't here, we read some quotes last week that we honed in on the phrase in verse 5 to be keepers at home.

And so we really honed in on that and the beauty in God's ordained role there and the wonderful things that are accomplished in the home. We looked at a lot there. It would take us the whole lesson just to rehash, of course, what we did last week, even in brief, because that would no doubt open up some rabbit trails that would be worthy of taking.

But I do want to make some progress today. And so that's what we talked about. And what's funny is at the end of last week, I thought, okay, we finished up verses 4 and 5. We'll hit verse 6. But there actually are a couple other important phrases at the end of verse 5 we didn't get to last week.

Dad, you might have to turn that heat down for me here in a second. I am roasting up here. And I actually noticed it this time. Last time I didn't notice it by the end of the Sunday school lesson. I was like, why am I drenched in sweat?

And thankfully, I caught it early enough this time. I think I'll avoid the sauna up here. Okay, so verse 5, look at it with me really quick. Let's start at verse 4 for context. So the older women are teaching the younger women.

What are they teaching them? That they may teach the young women to be sober, have self-control over themselves, to be able to curb their passions, to be able to have self-control, to love their husbands, to love their children.

We talked about that a bit as well. That is a very, it's a sacrificial love. It's not just emotional. It's not just romantic with regard to the wife and husband or emotional with the wife to the mother to the kids.

This is a sacrificial love that transcends even the rough times, the rough goings they may go through. They're to teach them to be discreet, to be sensible. They're to teach them to be chaste or moral or virtuous.

They're to teach them to be keepers at home. And that's kind of where we left off last week. In the home, raising the next generation of servants of God. And as we talked about last week and week before that, God works through generations.

You don't have King David without Ruth. And that's how God ordained it. So let's look a little bit further here in verse 5 because there's a couple more things we didn't cover last week. The next word that Paul says, the next character trait that Paul says these older women are to teach the younger women is to be good.

Perhaps another good translation of that would be kind because the Greek term there really is talking about a person that just has a pleasant nature about them. Now when you remember the context here of you have older godly women teaching the younger women this, teaching them how to have a pleasant nature about them, how to be kind, that's a really beautiful exhortation there.

They're taught to be kind from the older women who have been kind themselves, who have had that pleasant nature. Now similarly to the very unpopular phrase that we spent time on last week, and I say unpopular talking about more of the church at large, the church in the West as well as kind of the feminist movements and egalitarianism in church and things like that, not necessarily here, but one of the, you know, we looked at that unpopular phrase last week regarding to being a keeper at home, and we find another one here in verse 5.

So quite a bit in verse 5 here where Paul then moves on to say they need to be, they're to be taught to be obedient to their own husbands. The Greek word there, hupotazo, I think is how you pronounce it, means to obey or to subject or to submit.

So they are to submit to their own husbands would be another good translation there. They're to obey their husbands, they're to submit to their own husbands. Now first and foremost, when we look at that, we don't want to skim over it too quickly because there's a very important thing here.

There's a very common straw man that is derived from passages like this by the egalitarians when they want to attack us and say that Christians are just beating women over the head with their Bibles. You don't want to go too quickly because if you look closely enough, you'll see that Paul is being very specific in the way he phrases this.

Who is she supposed to submit to? Look really closely. Her own husband. Not just any man, not someone else's husband. She is to submit or to obey her own husband. And that's incredibly important because once again it shows that Paul is building these exhortations not out of thin air, not based on any just cultural thing that's happening on the island of Crete at his time.

What he's doing is he's building these exhortations from the creation order going all the way back to Genesis, first three chapters of Genesis. That is where he's building this from. He's not just throwing out again some straw man that the egalitarians can burn up such as, you know, women are just to obey or to submit to all men.

That's the straw man that is often thrown out there. And it's not true. That's not what Paul said. That's not what true biblical Christians believe. And so again, very important to really pay attention to the way that Paul structures his arguments.

And when we get to first Timothy, it's going to be important there as well because Paul rehashes some of this stuff in even greater detail. We'll see that when we get to that epistle eventually. And so who is she supposed to admit to, submit to?

Her own husband, not someone else's, not another man to her own husband. Now another important note is that submission, we're talking about submission, submitting, obeying. Submission doesn't equal servitude necessarily.

And I'll explain what I mean by necessarily here in just a second. But submission doesn't equal servitude. In other words, what Paul is saying here is, let me rephrase that. What Paul is not saying here is that this dynamic is like a slave master dynamic.

That's not what he means when he says that women are to obey or to submit to their husbands. To be a helpmeet, which again, going back to the creation order, that's what Eve was created to be, was to be a helpmeet for Adam.

She wasn't created to be Adam. She wasn't created to subvert Adam. She was created to be a helpmeet to Adam. And the Hebrew word for helpmeet is really interesting. I mean, just surface level, it means exactly what it sounds, to be a helper.

When you look at it a little bit closer, what it means, and to be an etzer is the Hebrew word, is to be similar but distinct. That's what it means to be a helpmeet, to be similar but distinct. And that's not the same as saying that you're a slave to someone else.

You get what I'm saying? So what Paul is simply talking about here is the fact that she should submit as God has designed the order to be. This isn't like a slave master dynamic. Now, a second ago when I said that submission doesn't equal servitude per se, the reason I say that is because we as believers, under the lordship of Christ, we do submit to him but also serve him.

So yes, there could be a form of submission that equals servitude as well. That would be like the dynamic between us and our creator. But those are more just two distinct things that are part of the whole package when it comes to our relationship with God.

It's not necessarily the same thing in this particular dynamic. And I mean, you can see that just in the words that Paul is using as well. So again, what is he talking about? He is talking about the designed order.

And there's another passage that Paul gives us that helps figure this out a little bit, figure out what he's talking about, figure out that he's talking about a particular hierarchy because of the way that God designed it, not because of inferiority or anything like that.

And it's in 1 Corinthians 11, 3. If you want to just jot it down, you can. I'm just going to read it. It's a single verse. And Paul expands it and he has a whole argument with regard to just orderly worship that follows this.

That'll be, you know, that's its own, that's its own thing. But the basis for the argument plays very well into what we're talking about here, what Paul is talking about here in Titus. Because in 1 Corinthians 11, verse 3, this is what he says.

He says, but I would not, excuse me, but I would have, you know, that the head of every man is Christ. The head of every man is Christ. And the head of the woman is the man. And the head of Christ is God.

And that final phrase there is particular importance for us understanding this because no one believes that there is any inferiority in the relationship between Christ and the Father in essence, uh, in deity, in who they are.

There is a hierarchy that they designed on purpose, particularly with regard to the Father in Jesus incarnate. And I believe that, I believe that hierarchy is still there even with our ascended Lord as well.

But just, just to keep it simple for now, when Jesus was on earth, he was not inferior to the Father in essence, in deity, in being, in who he was. However, he submitted to the Father. So there was a hierarchy there by design that they wanted for a particular purpose, but it didn't equal inferiority.

And so Paul says in the same manner that that is true, in the same manner that God ordained for the Son to submit to the Father, even though the Son is equally, is equally God as the Father, they are both complete in the divine essence and the divine being in, in who they are.

They are distinct in persons, but the same in being just the same way that God ordained for this hierarchy to play out. He ordained for there to be a hierarchy between the relationship or in the relationship between man and woman.

And so the head of every woman is the man, but the head of every man is Christ and the head of Christ is God. And so there's also a very important ingredient in there that a lot of people conveniently forget those that are, you know, more the authoritarian, they, they, they swing, you know, there, there's the straight and narrow as with everything with ditches on either side.

We'll talk about that in the sermon later today as well in a completely different context. But the straight and narrow is, you know, this, this creation order of the woman's being to the man, but the man submitting to Christ and actually showing her what submission looks like in his obedience to the Lord.

It's a real, that's the part that a lot of people leave out. One side of the ditch is the feminist movement, which is no, you know, there's no distinctions where, well, as it progressed, it kind of got to the point where there's no distinctions.

Anyone can be whoever, whomever they want to be. And on the other ditch though, is the kind of authoritarian side where you had, where you have humans abusing scriptures, they've always done. And in coming up with things such as, you know, well, this means that all women should submit to all men, you know, it just, it goes way too far.

And so Paul clears all of that up if people will just read him and, and take him honestly, what he's saying. And so in the same manner that, that the Lord or that the Godhead ordained for Christ to submit to the father, they ordained for the woman to submit to the husband, because that is how the, that's how it was designed in creation.

And so that's what Paul is talking about here when he's talking about in verse five, teach the younger women to be obedient to their own husbands or to submit to their own husbands. That's something that should be taught because, you know, the human nature, being fallen, being depraved, will want to pull away from every part of God's word, not just this, but certainly this too.

And I mean, we've seen that we've seen rebellion to think, rebellion to things like this throughout the Western church for decades now, perhaps even a century in a little bit more than that. And so Paul is saying, make sure that godly women are stepping in and teaching the younger women to do this because look at the very end of verse five, that the word of God be not blasphemed.

And of course, we've already talked about that very important phrase. Everything Paul has talked about up to this point from verses one through five of chapter two, all comes back to this. Why do these things need to be obeyed?

Why are these things important? Why must they be obeyed? They must be obeyed that the word of God be not blasphemed. The world can easily look around and tell whether Christians take any of this seriously.

The world knows the scriptures too. The devil knows the scriptures better than we do. And he can work through his agents to get to know the scriptures as well as we do as well. And they do that not because they believe they're actually the inspired, breathed words of God, but because they know that we believe that.

And so they know that if they can learn our scriptures and then they can show whether or not we take it seriously, the areas that we may be living in hypocrisy or whatever it may be, they can see that, they can point that out to us.

It's a great argument. They should do it. And when they do it, they point it out. When they point out the hypocrisy, when they point out the areas that we decide not to take seriously because we're a little bit uncomfortable with that, the word of God is blasphemed.

And so Paul points that out because he knows that. He anticipates the spiritual battle that will rage for the millennia after he is gone. And he says, Titus, ensure that your people and your congregations and that the elders in these other churches of these congregations understand these things.

They have to understand them. They have to be taken seriously, lest the word of God be blasphemed. We don't want that ourselves. So the world can look around. They can see whether Christians take any of it seriously.

And if they don't, if the Christians don't, then the Christians themselves certainly won't be taken seriously. It just turns into a gross cycle. And then the church begins to lose its influence like it has.

And then you have to, a new generation has to rise out of the ashes. Of course, that's how the Lord works. We can see that time and time and time again. History has all kinds of peaks and valleys to it.

And I would say church history has predominantly valleys. And I think that's by design. It's to remind us that we live in a fallen world and that we need a Savior and that we need Him to return for the fullness of our redemption to come, to be manifest.

And so those valleys are important too because we learn a lot from them. But we have a lot of valleys. And in those valleys is the church messing up, not taking God's word seriously. We get into a lot of trouble.

And then sometimes we will have a generation that is able to rise out of the ashes like the Reformers, like the Puritans, like the 20th century Reconstructionists. And hopefully we have some more in this century.

We need it badly. But it's a very important point, very important point that we take all of this seriously so that we can be taken seriously ourselves. So now let's move on to verse 6 with what time we have left.

We have now come to discussing the young men. All right, we've now talked about the older men and the older women. Very important part of the pillar of the church and in ensuring that the younger generations have what they need to get by, both physically and spiritually.

Then we talked about the younger women. Now we're talking about the younger men. And this must have meant a lot to Titus being one of them himself. Remember, Titus is a young guy. Timothy is too. I think it's, it is kind of theorized that Timothy would have been somewhere maybe in his early 30s, and Titus could have been anywhere in his younger 20s to maybe mid -20s.

This is a young guy, and he's on this island, pagan island, with the island of 100 cities, and every one of these cities has a church. And he is supposed to appoint the elders to all of these churches.

So first of all, it says a lot about his character. Second of all, it proves the point that when, in the qualifications of elders, when it's talking about maturity and things like that, it's talking about it in the spiritual sense first and foremost, because otherwise Titus wouldn't have been ready.

But he was. He wasn't ready based on his age alone, and that's a lot of the times what the world looks at. But he was ready, obviously, based on his spiritual maturity. Otherwise, there's no way he'd be able to handle any of this.

So you have a guy most likely in his young to mid -20s, and now Paul is giving him instructions on how young men in the church are to behave, and he's a young man himself. And so as he received these words from Paul, he would have understood that in addition to passing these on to the churches, he would have had been held to these same standards himself.

So he's being given these instructions to pass on, but he's also given these instructions to live out himself. He has to live up to these standards. There's no exceptions just because he's in a role of authority.

There's no exception for him just because he's the pastor. Actually, to the contrary, he is held to these standards to an even greater degree, because he will end up being the prime example for these guys.

So it's because of the fact that Titus is young, and that he would be held to these same standards too, that what we're going to see in these verses in just a second is that Paul actually takes the opportunity.

He starts in verse six by just talking to young men in general, and then he pauses for a second, and he's like, you know what, Titus, I'm just going to tell you how to be the ultimate model for all other young men that will ever live.

And so he, if Titus didn't have a big enough burden on his shoulders already, Paul ups the ante one more time for him, because in verse six, Paul is going to give him some instruction generally for the young men, and then in verses eight, seven, and eight, Paul just talks directly to Titus, and he starts telling him things to do.

And Paul, and I believe that the apostles knew they were writing scripture, and so I think Paul knew that this letter would be something that would be read in every church congregation for all of human history from the point he penned it forward.

And so Paul is telling Titus, this is how you're going to live out, because you are going to be the ultimate prime model for how young men should look and live for every young man in every generation for the next 2 ,000 plus years, however many years we have left in human history before Jesus comes back.

And so Paul really thinks highly of Titus. I mean, obviously this is an honor, but it's also a great burden for Titus as well. So look at verse six. He says, young men likewise exhort to be sober-minded.

So he's telling Titus to exhort the young men to be sober-minded. That word likewise, we mentioned this, it's a transitionary word. We've seen it pop up a few times in this chapter. It just means that in the same manner that the older women need to behave like this, and in the same manner that the old men need to behave like this, and in the same manner that the young women need to behave like this, the young men need to behave like this.

So it's like there's the same foundational standard across the board, but with some distinctions for each group that Paul talks to. So in the same manner, go exhort these younger men to be sober-minded.

And we're just going to kind of introduce this a little bit today. We have about 10 minutes left. I'll introduce this, and then next week we will kind of unroll all of these things as they are geared toward the young men a little bit deeper.

But verse 6 is a good start. To be sober-minded. Again, when you're doing this study and you read these verses, they're just so punchy. Chapters 1 and 2, the verses are just like, you know, you're going to be this, you're going to be that, this is the character you need to have, don't be this, be that, this is what good character looks like.

And each word is so meaningful. And so you can just kind of read through it, and you're kind of rolling with the punches, and you can see what Paul is talking about. I'm not saying you have to just stop and do a hours long word study on every word to understand the intent.

It's helpful, but you don't have to do that. You can just read it straight through, and you certainly get the idea of what Paul is getting at here. But because it is so, just the way that all of this has flowed from chapter 1, verse 5, all the way through where we are right now, chapter 2, verse 6, it's so easy to just roll right past something and stop for a second and think, wait, think about how all-encompassing this phrase is.

Exhort the young men to be sober-minded. Exhort the young men to be sober-minded. Well, what does sober-minded mean? Here, it means to be of sound mind or to exercise self-control. And if you guys recall, this is a similar, Paul uses the same Greek root word in chapter 1 when he's talking to the elders, when he tells them, be a lover of hospitality, a lover of good men, sober, just, temperate.

He uses the same term again later on in chapter 1. So, to have control over one's mind, to exercise self-control, has been an important reality for pretty much everyone he's talked to, but just think about it in the context of young men for a second.

Young men, just like the young women that we talked about in previous chapters, they have their own proclivities when it comes to sin habits themselves. You know, they're certainly tempted by a number of things, and some of them can be very different from those that the younger women were tempted by in our previous verses.

And you start to think about those for a second. You can see the way that they play out in our culture, but you can, you know, for all of us in the room, we can remember either having issues with these in our younger years or having them as we speak.

And then all of a sudden, this phrase, to be sober-minded, to have self-control, to exercise self-control, to be of a sound mind, you realize the all-encompassing nature of it. What are some of the habits, what are some of the sin habits that every young man can have, myself included?

Well, they can have a tendency to be lazy. They can have a tendency to indulge in their passions, and of course in the 21st century, it's easier than ever to do that. They have an aversion to assuming the responsibility that God gave them to bear on their shoulders.

And you think about it for a second, going back to the creation order, an awful lot was put on the shoulders of Adam. And why is that? Well, Adam was to be the picture of the bridegroom. He was the first physical manifest picture we had of the bridegroom.

Of course, Jesus came as the last Adam. So you see the connections here. You have the types and the anti-types play out throughout out scripture. But Adam had a lot of burdens put on his shoulders because he was given the responsibility to assume over Eve, over the garden, over the entire earth.

And he messed up being in a perfect sinless state, being in a state in which sin wasn't in him yet. He obviously, being a creature with a will, dad and I were talking about this just a couple of days ago, being a creature with a will, being a moral agent, had the capacity to rebel against God.

And he did so coming out of that perfect state. And so if Adam could do that, certainly every man after Adam, every son of Adam from that point forward will be in a similar position to have an aversion to that responsibility that has been placed on his shoulders to take care of his wife, to take care of his children, to take care of his community, to take care of God's earth.

And so one sin habit that men have, and it is becoming easier and easier and easier to fall into this sin, is to have an aversion to assuming that sacrificial responsibility. What's another one? Well, another problem that a lot of young men can have, and by the way, I need to say this really quick, I should have done a minute ago, what is young men?

Talking about like kids in their teens? Well, no, just like the younger women. The Greek terms that Paul uses to define these age groups are broad enough where we can kind of figure out where he's going with it, especially in light of the culture he was in.

Older women and older men fall into a category of essentially being beyond the child-bearing and child-rearing years. And so that could be anyone from their late 40s and on. So where do young men and young women fall in?

That could be anyone from their late teens, basically when the child-bearing years would begin, potential child-bearing years, all the way up through their 40s. And so we're not just talking about kids here, we're talking about young men that are still within the range of being able to have and rear children that need to look at, to the examples, Titus, yes, but also the older men that have already been there and done that, and to learn how to do all of these things.

And so we're not just talking about kids here, we're talking about a pretty wide age range for men. So laziness, the indulgence of passions, the aversion to assuming that responsibility, being dishonest to their common man around them in order to appear maybe greater than they think they are.

So men, of course, they want to, they have a natural built-in desire to conquer and to go out and conquer the world, and to take dominion, and to assume these leadership roles. It's really interesting.

So they have a natural desire to do that. And yet sometimes the laziness will step in and they won't want to actually put in the work to do the conquering, but they still like the idea of being a conqueror.

And again, that's a good thing. That is when we, you know, for those of us raising young boys, you need, we need to cultivate that. We, you know, and of course, what's the word I'm looking for? You need to harness it.

It can be like a fire that you need to have contained. You know, you want the fireplace, you want the fire in the fireplace, not in the living room necessarily. And so when we have young boys, you don't want to put the fire out.

You want them to have an understanding that they were made in a particular, and they, men and women were both made in the image of God, but God gave men the masculine roles to assume for a purpose. And that is to take dominion, to care for their families, to care for their communities and all these types of things.

And young boys start living that out, living out that desire way younger than you would think. I mean, it's one, it's one thing that in my opinion is kind of a proof of just God's hand in everything. The fact that we have a creator, because you see these very distinct sex roles coming out in little kids, the youngest ages, where they, they gravitate toward these natural things that God put in them to live out those certain roles for his purpose to glorify him.

And so it's this odd, odd paradox where we have these young men that are put in a position to conquer, take responsibility, lead, lead the world. And yet, and they, they have that desire because it's put in them.

And yet sometimes they can be too lazy to do the work to get there, but they still like the idea of it. So what do they do? They save face. They're dishonest. They're dishonest with those around them.

They can maybe lie. They can create a facade in order to have the look of a conqueror when actually they haven't put in the work yet. So dishonesty can be something that, that steeps in to the lives of these young men.

It can be a sin habit that can be easily attained by younger men as well. Rebellion in general, well, goes right back to that, that built-in desire to be a conqueror, right? If you have that feeling, well, why am I, but who am I, who are you to tell me what to do?

You know, I, I'm not going to listen to you. I'm not going to listen to what you're going to say. And it can be, it can be especially tricky for moms and boys. And again, you don't want to put the fire out.

You want to control the fire. So I was, uh, was it, Ash was listening to something yesterday where, uh, there is a pastor and his wife, they're doing a conference on child rearing. It was fantastic. And they're doing like a panel.

And at one point their son was having issues obeying his mother. And so the dad takes the son and he's putting him in bed and he had gotten in trouble or something like that for being just disobedient and disrespectful to the mom.

And the dad was like, you know, are you having trouble, you know, obeying your mom just because you don't, you don't like obeying a woman. Is that what it is? And the boy was like, yeah, dad, that's what it is.

And the dad went, well, too bad. And, and then he went on to, to teach the lesson that the mother was the extension of his authority. And that every time you look at your mother, you should, she, you should see my shadow lurking behind her.

That's how he put it. And so, uh, all of a sudden the, you know, the boy started straightening up. Oh yeah. That's another great part of the story. So the mom had given a few spankings. Yes. Yeah. So, so before that part, uh, the way the story started is the, the kid is, is getting spankings from the mother while the dad is at work.

She's like, you have to take a nap. Don't get out of your bed again. You'd get out spanking. He'd do it again. And this happened five times as a kid. It's just like, was just taking it because he'd rather get out of bed.

So the mom gets on the phone and says, you know, I've already given the spankings. I have, I know I have to win this, but I don't know how. And the dad said, I'll be right over. And the mom was like, that startled me as much as it startled our kid.

She didn't expect, she didn't expect that. And so the kid is just bopping around, sitting on the couch, messing around. And all of a sudden in the middle of a work day, the dad pulls into the parking lot and the dad says up through the window, he could see his little blind head kind of turn and then run off to his bedroom.

And he gets in bed and pulls the sheets up to his neck. And that was when he went on to say, are you having trouble, you know, obeying? Cause you don't like, you know, obeying women. He's like, yeah, well too bad.

You know, and then that played out from there. And so again, you don't want to put the fire out. You just have to control the fire. You have to make sure that they understand that they are brought up in the admonishment, in the nurture and how does it go?

Nurture and admonition of God's word. And so then all of a sudden the fire is controlled. They, they raise up to be someone like King Alfred or something. I mean, it's just, it's amazing the way that God did all of this.