Book of Titus - Ch. 2, v. 3b

Okay, let's take a look at Titus chapter 2. We will pick up right where we left off last week. Which is a brief recap, mainly because we ended right in the middle of discussing verse 3. But where we're at right now is we are taking a look at Paul's instruction on peaceful living in the church would be one good way to put it.

Another aspect of looking at this particular chapter is we just finished chapter 1, which is Paul telling Titus how to teach elders. Well, number one, how to look for elders, how to look for qualified men in the first place.

And then how to pass on what they need to be equipped with in order to be solid elders. We just finished all that. And so now you get to chapter 2. And one way of looking at chapter 2 is these are the effects of what sound doctrine looked like.

These are the effects of what having a solid elder leading a local congregation, or elders in the plural, leading a local congregation, what it looks like in effect. What sound doctrine looks like when it is lived out.

So it starts with finding the qualified guys. It starts with finding the men that have the positive character traits that are required of them in order to be an elder in the first place. God's standards for an elder, that's where it starts.

But it doesn't end there. It doesn't end with a really solid preacher behind the pulpit with great oratory skills, great sermons that he's able to put together. That is certainly a foundational piece, but that's not where it's meant to end.

It's preached. It's proclaimed. There's exhortations given to the local congregation. And then that sound doctrine is intended to be lived out by each and every individual in the local congregation. They are all held to very high standards by God himself.

And chapter 2 is what fleshes that out for us. So we looked at the first couple of verses already. And number 1, Paul is telling Titus that you need to speak that which becomes sound doctrine. So that's the key.

That is what sets the stage for chapter 2. Remember, it's not a matter of speaking sound doctrine, but that which becomes sound doctrine, that which is lived out by the people in his church and in the churches of these elders that will fill up Crete, the island of Crete.

And then in verse 2, he puts his crosshairs on the older men of the congregation first. He says that the aged men be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith, in love, and in patience. Of course, we spend a good deal of time on that.

And then last week, we looked at verse 3, and it says,. And the aged women likewise, so in the same manner that the older men need to live according to these principles, according to these character traits, in that same manner the older women need to live according to these character traits.

And then he goes on. He says that they be in behavior that becomes holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things. Now, last week, we looked at a couple of really interesting Greek terms that Paul uses here.

The first one, again, this is just a brief recap, but the Greek term that is underneath that little phrase, that behavior that becomes holiness, behavior that becomes holiness. It's the only time in the entire New Testament that Paul uses this Greek word.

It's a compound word. And what it means is that these women are to be priest-like before God. They are to be consecrated like priests are consecrated. They are, looking at the term literally, to be priestesses before the Lord.

Now, what does that mean exactly? Well, we looked at just one example last week, briefly, Anna in Luke chapter 2, of what it looks like to be consecrated in that manner. She was at the temple day and night, fasting and in prayer.

And, of course, she had the honor and privilege of seeing her Lord as an infant before she went on to paradise herself. But practically speaking, we have examples of what that looks like, to be consecrated in that manner.

And what Paul is telling Titus is these are the kind of women that you want in your local congregation. And if they aren't this way, this is how they should be. They should be in behavior that becomes holiness.

They should be consecrated. They should be priest-like in their behavior, the way they act, the way they live out their lives. And then he gives us some very stark contrast immediately after. Right after saying they need to be priest-like in their behavior, he says, not false accusers.

In our modern vernacular, we would say not malicious gossips. In other words, they're not going around gossiping, talking about others behind their back, sharing information through the grapevine. And it could be in a more malicious form, or it could also be in the old-fashioned sharing prayer requests kind of gossip.

I really feel like so-and-so needs to be in our prayers for this reason. And then they air out their dirty laundry for everyone on their behalf and behind their back. And so that is the kind of thing they can't be.

Now, what is the Greek term exactly underneath this phrase? We looked at this last week. And it's the Greek word diabolos, which is the name that is given to Satan 35 times in the New Testament. So 35 different times throughout the New Testament, we find the same Greek word that is used here for not false accusers, not malicious gossips.

We find it given to Satan. And the point being is that there are very few things, if any, that are more devilish, more Satan-like, than to slander somebody, than to gossip. And, of course, that's ultimately what gossip is.

It is whether it is based on facts or not. The point is you are either creating or sharing a particular narrative that you are eager to share behind the back of the person that it's involved with, and usually with the purpose being slander.

So this is the kind of thing that is in direct contrast to being priest-like. You're either priest-like or you're devilish is kind of the idea here. And so that's kind of where we left off last week, about halfway through verse 3.

But there's a couple more things to look at here. So let's keep taking a look. Again, this is Titus chapter 2, verse 3. Now what's funny about this passage is that there are some modern-day, we could even say, quote-unquote, secular stereotypes in this passage.

Now by secular, all I mean is that these are stereotypes that everyone recognizes. It's not unique to this passage. This isn't Paul just projecting a particular sin habit onto women here and a particular sin habit onto men over here.

Of course, he's generalizing on purpose, but the generalization is valid. And my point being is that not that we need this to validate what Paul said, but it's just an interesting way to recognize the validity of what Paul is saying, is that we see these stereotypes all around us in media and in entertainment and in our daily lives as well.

We see that throughout this passage, whether it's in books, movies, shows, it could be in theater, whatever it may be. It could be within our own group of friends, in our own circle, or whatever it may be.

Women taking part in gossip is kind of a common stereotype. And of course it's laughed at in the sitcoms and the shows and the movies and things like that. And it just kind of happens because it's the normal thing.

It's a stereotype. And it doesn't have to be, and it doesn't necessarily need to be a laughing matter, even though it often is. But the point is it's not anything new. This is something that goes back at least 2 ,000 years, the time Paul was writing, and of course we know that it would go back even beyond that.

And so all Paul is recognizing here is he's generalizing on purpose because he's talking to a broad audience. He is writing to Titus who will then share this letter with all of the local churches in every city on the island of Crete.

This is the island of 100 cities. So there's a lot of local churches. There's a lot of people that will be reading this letter. And so Paul is saying, just like he generalized in chapter 1 and talked about particular sin habits that you need to be aware of that men have that they need to be avoiding in order to be qualified to be an elder, he's saying, look, your older women in your local congregations, in order to be priest-like, in order to be pleasing in the sight of God, they don't need to be gossiping.

They don't need to be gossips. And so he wouldn't use that as a generalization if it wasn't already kind of a stereotype. And of course no one wants to fall into any stereotypical categories, but that's what Paul is talking about.

Stereotypically, men tend to sin in more violent physical ways. No control over their anger, no control over their passions, no control over their emotions. And of course that can come out in very physical ways, and it can be painful, it can be bad, and bad things can happen.

That can be kind of a stereotypical situation for a lot of men, whereas women have a tendency to be violent in their words more so than in physical terms. And so that's what Paul is addressing here. And so in light of this ancient reality, Paul is giving his contrast.

He's saying older women, be priest-like, don't be devilish. You can't be both. You can't be priest-like and be gossiping at the same time. You can't be priest-like and give in to much wine at the same time.

It's one or the other, and this is the one that's pleasing to God, and this is the one that isn't. That's the idea that Paul is sharing in this particular verse. Now, Paul brings up another hot topic as if addressing gossip right on the nose wasn't a hot topic enough.

He says, and he points out, that older women in the context of Crete certainly had a tendency to be lorded over by their dependence on wine, by their dependence on alcohol. And the term, what's really interesting here is there are times when Paul is talking about the need to be sober.

There are times where he uses words that make it clear that he's talking about alcoholism in the sense that they're just drunks all the time. There are different passages he uses different connotations depending on the context, but here it doesn't necessarily mean that they're getting drunk because the Greek word that he uses when he says give in to much wine, it's the Greek term doulaos.

Doulaos is the root word, which means slave. It's where we get our word servant from throughout the KJV and in modern translations, I believe, more accurately translated slave, although at the time the KJV translators were translating, servant would have been the more appropriate term at that time because that was just what was used more often.

But it's a very expressive Greek term, doulaos, slave, to be a slave of something or somebody. And that's what he's saying here. He's saying that these women don't need to be reduced to the bondage of wine.

They don't need to have a dependence on it. Now a lot of people today in Western culture certainly, I say today, it goes back a long time at this point, but they kind of live by the libertarian battle cry of live and let live.

Just do your thing, let them do their thing, and we'll all just progress through time in that manner. And that particular phrase would certainly apply to people like this, people like the kind of women that Paul is saying, your older women in the church, they don't need to be like this.

They don't need to be given to wine. In other words, they don't need to be enslaved to their wine. Well, just out in the pagan culture of Crete, that would have been the kind of thing that's just no big deal.

It's just, again, you do your thing, I'll do my thing. So this would apply to that. In this context, older women enjoying their need for their wine, not feeling like they have even the capacity to unwind without it.

That's the connotation here. It doesn't mean that they're getting drunk left and right. It just means they have a dependence on it, that they feel like they can't unwind or relax, or they can't have peace without finishing the day with it.

Now, what's interesting about it is we know that throughout the New Testament and throughout the Old Testament as well, wine in and of itself is not bad. In fact, it represents a couple of amazing things.

It represents joy. It represents pleasure in the earthly realm and in the good sense, in the way that God would want you to enjoy the gifts that he gives you. It also represents the blood of Christ. And so wine in and of itself is not the bad thing.

The bad thing that Paul is talking about here would be bad across most— would be bad across the full spectrum of anything a person could be enslaved by. The reason he uses wine is because, as we know, that is a pretty common thing that people succumb to, a dependence on this particular substance, on consuming this particular substance.

So what Paul is saying is, look, don't put yourself in a situation— he's talking to the older women specifically, and he says don't put yourself in a situation that you are coming under the bondage of a slave master.

That's what he's talking about. But wine in this case is the slave master. In other words, you can't find peace or fulfillment. You don't feel like your life is sufficient without this particular thing.

And, of course, not all that long ago we did a sermon series on the sufficiency of Christ in our life, the fact that we can't find true fulfillment in anything or any person outside of Christ in this life.

And what happens when we do try to fill the void with anything but Christ is that it will leave us wanting. It will leave us needing more. It will leave us needing to go back to that thing, to that person, to try to finish out the feeling of feeling fulfilled and having the void filled and all this kind of stuff.

And so that obviously can't happen. And it can't happen with any particular person. It can't happen with wine either. And so Paul is saying who would want to be under the lordship of anyone or anything less than the Lord himself?

And that's what these older women were experiencing. They were under the lordship of their wine. They were dependent on it. They needed it in order to feel fulfilled, in order to feel like they could relax, in order to remove the anxieties of their life.

Whereas what Christianity is about to bring and spread throughout all the corners of the earth is that that fulfillment, true fulfillment, can be found in the risen Lord, which was, of course, the crux of everything, the apostles and Titus and the elders that would succeed Titus and Timothy and guys like that is what they would be preaching forever.

And so that's what Paul is bringing to our attention here. These older women in the church should not be enslaved to their wine. That is what he's talking about there. Now, of course, there's another important biblical point in discussing sobriety because Paul does talk about sobriety.

He does talk about the fact that we need to be sober in the sense that we're not given over to alcoholism. We're not given over to dependence on alcohol. And this, by the way, does cross over. He talks about the need for men to be sober as well.

So for any person, when sobriety is talked about in the context of Scripture, yes, it's about, you know, living in a godly manner, living in a God-pleasing way, but it's also a common grace as well. In other words, it's to our benefit as much as it is to be pleasing in the sight of the Lord.

It's rarely, if ever, and it would be an interesting study to do, do you look through the New Testament or even the Old Testament and see any command or imperative or anything that is given to the people of God that is the kind of thing that is just meant to be kind of authoritarian.

In other words, you're going to do this because I say do it. And it's going to be miserable for you, but you've got to do it anyway because I said so. I don't think you'll find any commandment or imperative, certainly in the New Testament, that that would be the case.

In other words, there's always some sort of benefit to the person that is being told do this thing, obey in this area. It's not just about God telling us you've got to do it because I said so. That's a part of it.

Obedience obviously is a massive part of it, but there's going to be some benefit. There's going to be some grace in the command itself. I said this a couple of weeks ago, I think, or maybe it was even in our Wednesday night Bible study, is we have these rules, regulations, commandments, imperatives given throughout the New Testament where God is saying do it this way.

Live your life this way, and it's not a suggestion. He's saying do it. And what's interesting about it is that, and you think, I don't know if it's unique to our culture. It's probably not. It's probably the way humans have always thought.

But you think freedom and liberty, we have this really weird kind of utopian idea of what freedom and liberty looks like, which actually what it would be is anarchy. In other words, freedom means free from every rule or regulation that could ever be thought of, and quite the opposite is true.

In reality, true freedom is freedom from slave masters that want to kill you and put under the bondage of a loving master, that being God himself. That's why we are called servants of God throughout the New Testament.

Remember, that word doulos really means slave. So we are freed from every lesser slave master, but we are put under the instruction, guidance, and commandments of a greater master, one that actually loves us though and one that isn't going to run us into the ground and try to kill us like our sin.

That's one slave master we once had. We can still have it. We opt to go back to it sometimes. And as Dad always says, Christians are the best definition of what a schizophrenic looks like. We've been freed from that slave master, yet we go back to it by our own volition.

Satan is another slave master. The world system itself is a slave master. We're freed from all of these things. Wine is a slave master. It certainly can be. We're freed from all of these things. And so point, back to the point.

Sobriety, one of the reasons why we're given the commandments and we're told, look, do it this way. This is what's pleasing to God, and we're saying in the imperative, this is how you should live your life.

There's grace in that. And because a common grace, if you will, for all humans is to be sober, is to have control over your senses. When God tells us to be sober, one of the benefits, one of the results of that sobriety is that we have control over our senses.

We have control over our thoughts. We are able to take our thoughts captive. We are able to think. We are able to reason. We are able to use our intellectual capacity all the time, not just sometimes.

And of course, alcohol and other substances as well can remove that from us. And so as a common grace, we're told to stay sober so that we have control of our senses all the time. Now, there are massive spiritual implications if that's not the case.

If we lose control over our senses, there are massive spiritual implications. Brother Rocky wrote an entire book on this aspect of things. Now, there are a number of ways you can lose control of your senses.

It's not just alcohol. Again, there are other substances that can get you there. There are religious practices that can get you there. But when you lose control of your senses, the enemy takes advantage of that, and it can be a frightening thing.

And so there's grace in us being commanded to be sober and to have control over that particular passion. Okay, now let me say one more thing, and then if you all have any thoughts, feel free to share just to finish out this verse really quick.

But Paul does end the verse in the positive. He does end verse 3 with a positive note, giving another specific instruction. And what does he say? He tells these older women, be priest-like in your behavior.

Behave in a way that becomes holy. Not false accusers, not gossips, not given to much wine. You're not enslaved to wine, but teachers of good things. So he gives another instruction but in the positive.

Older women need to be teaching. They need to be doing this great honorable service. They need to be teaching. But the question is, who exactly are they to teach? Because we're talking about old women specifically.

Who are they to teach? Their kids are grown. They've done their job there. So who's left to teach? Now, of course, the following verses answer that for us. Verse 4 will give us the answer. But it's the younger women in their congregation.

We're talking about discipleship. We're talking about them passing on their life's experience to the next generation so that they have the advantage of learning from everything that they've learned, whether it be through hardships or through the great joys of their life, whether it be through the aspects of child-rearing that they had to learn.

Maybe they had to learn certain things the hard way, but they did learn it. They did figure it out, and they're now sharing that to the next generation so that they can benefit from those things, from that instruction.

And, of course, marriage. All of this is going to be fleshed out here in just a minute by Paul himself. But you think of the invaluable, priceless reality of life's experience that these godly women have to offer.

We live in a culture now, as we've been talking about, where the older people want to be kind of pushed aside because they just can't keep up quickly enough. And yet the biblical narrative, whether it be through the Old or the New Testament, tells us the exact opposite is true.

This is something that is to be revered to the ultimate degree. We mentioned last week that part of the Mosaic Law was that if the elderly were mocked in any kind of way, that was a sin and a death. And so God takes this very seriously.

God takes the reverence and respect for the older generations very seriously. And, of course, Paul does too because of that. And so they are to teach. They are to teach the younger women. They are to enter this phase of life, the final phase of their life perhaps, the last two, three decades.

And they enter this phase by stepping up to teach the next generation from their life's experience and from God's Word. And so they bring these young women into their homes. Perhaps they go into their homes, and they teach by word and by example.

That's what these older women are to do. And this is the primary role of older women in the churches, and it's a massive role. It is a massive job to raise up a godly generation of young women. This is carrying massive ramifications for the future of the church because where that teaching stops and where there is older people being pushed aside and not perhaps given the opportunity, or in some cases the older people just not wanting to give the advice because they feel like they're in their retirement years and they did their part, so you kids go figure it out.

There is some of that too. There is some of that too. Either way, it's terrible because what that does is it removes a massive gift and a massive blessing from the lives of the next generation that God intended to be there.

Again, massive ramifications for the future of the church. Older women teaching younger women the keys to peaceful life in child rearing, in marriage, and in every other aspect of life. It's to give discipleship in the most nurturing form.

And what's the end goal of all this? What is the end goal? What is the purpose? Why is Paul even talking about these things? Why do they matter so much? Well, the end goal of all of it, as we see in verse 5, we'll get to it eventually, is that the Word of God is not blasphemed.

And if you just think about that for a second, it's quite striking because discipleship, passing on life's experience to the next generation, walking side by side with the younger generations and then actually heeding the instructions that's coming from the older people, all of this has been trivialized for a long time, decade after decade.

And so when you hear a phrase like this, that Paul is giving these instructions that the Word of God not be blasphemed, you're thinking, what is going on? What have we been missing? What has our culture been missing all this time?

And of course, Paul goes on to define what the good things are in this context in the following verses. Does anyone have any thoughts or anything they'd like to share before we take a look at verse 4?

Yes, ma 'am.

So whenever we talk about gossip, one thing that I am always wondering is whenever you're talking with your family about a situation, where's the line between you starting to talk about it or the situation is affecting everybody,.

And do you talk about it?

Sure. Well, so we talked about this just a little bit last week, kind of scratched the surface on it. But I would say the dividing line there, as far as I can tell, is intent. Now I will say this, it's intent, but there's another aspect to it as well.

It's great to seek counsel, and perhaps there is wisdom in creating a hierarchy in that counsel that you receive it. In other words, depending on the situation, depending on who you're talking about, perhaps you seek that counsel initially from some of your spiritual leaders.

And by the way, that can be, yes, the pastor, that can be the elders. It could also, depending on the situation, it could also be the pastor's wife. So perhaps you start with a hierarchy of who you seek the counsel from.

So there's nothing wrong, per se, with seeking counsel, but maybe you don't start by seeking counsel at a round table with just anyone from the family. Now it may get to that, depending on the situation.

There is great wisdom in approaching this, and again, Jesus gives all the framework we could need in Matthew 18 for how to handle things going on. But create that hierarchy first and start and go down from there.

So start with your spiritual leaders. Seek that counsel from there. That's not gossip. That is giving them the situation and asking, how do I approach this because I don't even know how. So there's that aspect of it.

The other aspect, again, the dividing line for me is the intent of the counsel. So if your intent is to go to the person and take this head on to confront the issue at hand, then seeking counsel is absolutely biblical.

If your intent is to just get something off your chest because you need to talk about it, but you're too afraid to go to the person himself, and you go seek counsel just to get it off your chest, then I would say that then perhaps could spill over into the realm of gossip.

And if you begin with that hierarchy that I talked about and you're talking to a spiritual leader in your life, they may be able to pick that up and give you the confidence that you need to go beyond just getting it off your chest because what—and we talked about this last week.

It's kind of like a drug. Getting it off your chest feels great in the moment, but it's not going to get you anywhere, and it will leave you wanting more sooner than later. And so your spiritual leader hopefully would be able to catch all that.

He'd be able to see that, okay, they're wanting to get it off their chest. I can see that. Let's give them the confidence and the biblical grounding for taking this head-on and going to the person so that they don't feel scared about it.

So does that make sense? So it's intent. Is your intention to go to the person and you are seeking godly counsel so that you are equipped to do that? Or is it a matter of just getting it off my chest because it's been burdening me for so long.

I've got to tell somebody. I'm too afraid to go to the person, but I've got to tell somebody. That would be gossip, I believe. Do you have a thought there, Dad?

Yeah, a couple things I've learned the hard way through life. One is write a letter to the person and read it and then throw it away. Don't ever mail it to them. Throw it away. But it sometimes helps you to line out the points.

There's probably some argument or something there where the two are disagreeing. It helps you to line out your side of that. Or maybe where they abuse you. They're lying about you. So you can write those points out and give your little defense in the letter.

And you're writing that letter to yourself. You're never going to mail it. It can just make you feel better. One thing Brother Otis taught me years ago was if you could just deal with it through prayer and not feel bitterness building up, then do that.

But if you feel bitterness building up, then you need to go through the Matthew process and talk about where you go to the brother. If you won't listen, you take another brother who the two of you go to.

And then if not, you bring him before the church. But I think there's a lot of evidence where you hear the Apostle Paul writing a letter to a church he's about to go to. For example, the Corinthian church.

And he says, I've heard this about you and I'm coming to straighten it out. So that's not gossip if you tell an elder or a pastor or someone like that it's not gossip. You should try to make sure, like you said Ben, if your motive is to help the situation.

That should be why you tell the elder. Or I really believe the motive could be you need help like you're saying. You're afraid. You don't want to go face them. But you're feeling bitterness. Then go talk to an elder or a deacon.

Or an older. You're talking mostly in your lesson about older women. Go talk to an older woman that you know is godly. And not a gossip. Just an older woman that you know is godly. And she might be able to help you.

Don't you think that would be...

That's absolutely right. Well that's why I said a minute ago depending on the situation it may be the pastor's wife. Not necessarily the pastor. And it doesn't even have to be the pastor's wife. It could be a woman.

Any old woman that meets these criteria doesn't mean they're the pastor's wife. They're godly. They are priest-like in their behavior. Oh yes ma 'am.

I wanted to address something that you mentioned a while ago.

Sure.

In my own life is the habit of not reaching out because it's so comfortable to just go online. And how one person, an older person can really make a difference. It made such a difference in my life because I don't want to go to church at all.

Haven't been. And with the online everything and even in my life with trying to help younger women they think they know it all. There's such a divide with the internet and the wifi. We just really need to be careful of not allowing the internet to take over those intimate, personal time with people because we can fool ourselves into thinking we don't need that.

I know I do.

And I know I do.

Because the Lord told me I do. That I do need to be here.

That's right. Well, the ramifications of the way the devil has attacked these principles in this very practical chapter we're talking about. Paul was probably talking about this as just like the fundamentals of life.

The rudiments of Christian living. And so that's where the devil starts in fracturing all of that and breaking it apart. Because yes, through the way our culture works you have the younger generations feeling like they know it all.

Because, and again I believe a lot of it does come back to technology and the fact that they are ahead of the game to a considerable degree than older generations and it does make them, it does give them the sense of a higher knowledge.

And so then that, what it does is it keeps them from feeling like they ever need to come to someone like you to ask questions on how does life work? How does parenting work? How does marriage work? And of course you go on from there.

And just one quick note before I forget it. I don't want to interrupt anyone else who has a thought. But Emily, this might help too. This is a great example of how euphemisms can really destroy our perception of how things work.

Because gossip really is kind of a cutesy word, isn't it? It's one of the reasons why you may have even asked that question. Because we may define gossip as in like true, legitimate, like what Paul is talking about.

Or we may talk about it in just a more, I don't know, like the sitcom version of it. In my opinion both are bad, but there could be degrees. When you change the language and bring euphemisms into it and you start giving particular concepts a kind of a cutesy name, then all of a sudden there's confusion.

And well, wait, how do I know it's actually gossip or is it not? Well, use the true term, which is slander. And if you begin from there, then all of a sudden it can help with your question of who do I mention this to if anybody?