Book of Titus - Ch. 2, vv. 6-7

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All righty, good morning everybody. Good to see everyone. If y 'all would like to turn to Titus chapter two with me, we will pick it up pretty much right where we left off last week, while y 'all are turning there.

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Just for some brief review, because again, the overarching context of this chapter is very important to keep in mind as we kind of dive into the meticulous word by word view of some of these verses.

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So Paul begins the chapter by reminding

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Titus what he is supposed to do. What is he supposed to do? He needs to speak or to preach the things which become sound doctrine, that which his congregation and all of the congregations on the island of Crete will live out as they actually go day by day in their

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Christian walk. Not just a matter of hearing preaching once a week and then being done with it, but rather hearing the preaching, hearing the exhortations, living it out every moment of every day from that point forward.

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So from verses two through four, Paul first addresses the elderly of the congregation.

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I say elderly, I use the term somewhat loose because really it's a reference to those that are beyond childbearing, child rearing years.

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So it could be anyone from their early to mid fifties on. So it's not really elderly, but the seniors of the congregation, those that can pass on the wisdom, the experience and things like that to the next generation.

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So we talked about that at length, the older men, then the older women and the behavior that they are to live out themselves in the church.

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And so then Paul, what's interesting about it, he starts with old men, then he moves on to the older women and transitions seamlessly into what the older women are to teach the younger women.

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So he transitions from older women to younger women. Now he's going to younger men.

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So it's like he started with older men and then in the middle, older women, younger women, and now younger men.

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And that's where we left off last week. And so verse six,

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I'll just read the three main verses we're in right now. We probably won't get too far beyond verse seven today, but Paul says, young men likewise exhort to be sober minded.

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We, just a reminder, that term likewise simply means that in the same manner that all of these things are to occur that precede this, that's how this is supposed to play out as well.

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So likewise, exhort the younger men to be sober minded, to have self -control.

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In all things, showing yourself a pattern of good works and doctrine showing uncorruptedness, gravity, sincerity, sound speech that cannot be condemned, that he that is of the contrary part may be ashamed having no evil thing to say of you.

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We're not going to be getting too far into verse eight, if at all today, but again, that is the main portion of scripture we're in right now.

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So let's back up to verse six and just go through this a little bit. We introduced it last week, but didn't get into a whole lot of detail just yet.

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As a quick reminder, sober minded here simply means to be of sound mind. In other words, to have self -control, to have control over your senses, to have control over everything.

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You basically, you're the entire person, you have control over yourself, to exercise self -control.

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We touched briefly last week on the fact that just like the younger women and just like the older women that we talked about that have their own, that can have their own sin habits, their own proclivities to particular sins, obviously that's no different for the young men as well.

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They're certainly tempted by a number of things, like we discussed, some of them can be different from what the younger women can be tempted with, but they have their temptations all the same.

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Now, what Paul wants Titus to remember as he's about to get into some of this, is he wants

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Titus to remember that the whole of successful manhood, because that's what we're talking about in these verses, is what

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Paul is talking about, is successful manhood from the younger years as, not even necessarily the formative years, but as a young man is becoming a man or has become a man, 17, 18, 19, 20, early 20s, all the way through the childbearing and childrearing years.

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So guys could be into their mid 40s and they could still be in view of what Paul is about to talk about. Paul wants

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Titus to remember that the whole of successful manhood, especially for men in their prime years, so that would be roughly within that timeframe

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I was just talking about, men in their prime years, that the foundation of successful manhood is to be under self -control, being able to control themselves.

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And that's why he sets the tone in verse six by saying to exhort these men to be sober -minded or to have self -control, to be sensible.

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Every possible pitfall that the man could fall into, it's covered in this one exhortation, because when a man has self -control, when he's sensible, then he can rise above all of the traps that the flesh brings his way, of course, that the devil brings his way, that the world around him brings his way.

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And so self -control, if you can start there, as far as having control over your person and that spilling over into your character and the way you live out your life, it can be an antidote to many of the sins that can befall a young man.

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And when I say young, I'm talking about anywhere from 20s through 40s through possibly mid 40s.

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And it's interesting here because Paul is given a number of instructions throughout

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Titus up to this point. This is the first time where he is telling

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Titus to exhort the young men to do this particular thing. It's the first time that Paul says this in the imperative mood, which means that he's not giving this as a suggestion for Titus.

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And it's not that the previous things were suggestions either. What it means is that he is kind of upping the seriousness, the gravity of these instructions.

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Rather than being in the accusative, like so many of the previous exhortations and instructions were, this isn't the imperative.

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This is Paul saying, exhort these guys, do this Titus. I command you to exhort young men to be under self -control.

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So Paul is really strengthening the language here. He's being very strong in the way he is delivering this message to Titus because he wants

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Titus to understand how important this is. These young men are in the imperative mood to exhort the guys that will be leading all of the households of all of the

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Christian families of this entire island. And of course, I'm not isolating it to the island of Crete.

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These instructions, of course, come into the lives of every Christian man, every

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Christian person, going back to the preceding verses as well, throughout all of the church history.

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But when he gets to talking about these men, he makes the language as serious and as grave as he possibly can because he wants

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Titus to understand it. So it's in the imperative. He says to exhort.

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What is he to exhort them to do? He's to exhort them to be under self -control so that they can control themselves.

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They can avoid the traps of the flesh, like I mentioned a second ago.

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What are some of these traps that can easily befall a young man and by young, that wide range that I'm talking about?

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Men in the prime of their years. Well, there's lust. We talked about this a little bit last week.

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Jesus talked about lust. He took it very seriously. A lot of young men today will talk about the quote -unquote disparity in the fact that the

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Bible doesn't address a lot of the modern ways to, I'll just put it this way, consume lust.

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And I think you guys know what I'm talking about. Well, the thing is, Jesus set the principle in his day that is applicable to every modern version of lustful consumption that you can possibly imagine.

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To the point where he says to cut your hand off, it offends you. To the point where you pluck your eye out, if it offends you.

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What is he doing? He's talking in hyperbolic terms to let you know that, look, if you are going to fall into the traps of lust, you are going to, at some point, embarrass yourself.

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People are going to see that you are having to take, you're having to go to great lengths to stop yourself from this particular sin.

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Now, think about it. I heard a pastor, and I wish I could give him credit because I can't remember off the top of my head, but one in,

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I can't remember if it was a conference or a sermon or what it was. It's been a long time at this point. But he was talking about the fact of helping young men work through some of these temptations, some of these sin habits they could have, lust being usually at the top, one of the ones at the top.

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And he was pointing out the fact that, you know, you could get to a point, a man could get to a point where he struggles so much with the particular addiction that in order to overcome it, he has to separate himself possibly to pretty great lengths.

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What would those great lengths be? Well, it could be, and these are examples he's given, it could be the removal of tech from his house, it could be the removal of internet, it could be the removal, you know, making sure if he's like a work from home guy that his workstation is like in the center of the house so that he can be amidst his family as he works because he's struggling so much in this hypothetical with these particular sins, he's got to do something about it.

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And then all of a sudden, someone comes over, they're like, why don't you, you know, in an extreme case, why don't you have internet here?

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Why can't I log onto the internet? Well, think about, go back to Jesus's terms for a second, go back to Jesus's words.

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How did he put it? If your hand offends you, cut it off. And if you're walking around with a cut off hand, people are going to notice that.

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And they're going to say, why'd you cut your hand off? Again, Jesus was being hyperbolic, but the principle is what

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I'm talking about. Why'd you cut your hand off? Well, it's kind of embarrassing, but I was really struggling with this particular sin and it's better to go to heaven with one hand than to go to hell with both, so I cut it off.

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Okay, those are the hyperbolic terms, but put it in more practical terms. Why don't you have internet? Well, I struggled with this particular sin and it was the only way

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I could overcome it. You can see that lust can put a man in a very precarious situation where all of the sudden, he has to proverbially cut his hand off or pluck his eye out in these drastic terms.

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So what does Paul do? He doesn't want the men of these young churches to ever be in a situation like this.

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Paul wants them to be discipled to the degree that they can overcome even the temptations, let alone the sin itself, before ever having to put themselves in a situation of cutting their hand off, quote unquote.

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So what does he tell Titus to do? In the imperative, he says, exhort them to be sober -minded, to have self -control.

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When you have self -control, you can overcome even something like lust. What else can you overcome?

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You can overcome being lazy. A problem that men have in so many cases is shirking their responsibilities.

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Maybe that's shirking the responsibility of being the primary breadwinner. That's a common issue in the 21st century

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West. Perhaps it is overcoming being a little bit lazy in the area of being the primary disciplinarian of the family and leading the family in general.

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Perhaps it's overcoming being a little bit lazy in the area of being diligent about your personal

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Bible study. Well, how are you gonna lead your family if you're not in the word yourself as an individual, ensuring that you're in God's word and knowing what you can instruct to the family?

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That's an area where men can be lazy for sure. They could be lazy in the area of leading their family generally in prayer and in study and in worship and things like that.

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Another thing that men can have trouble with is discontentment. We talked about this in the sermon last week.

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In other words, they have ambition, but their ambition isn't anchored by something.

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What is that something? It's contentment. That's what Paul talked about in Philippians 4 and 1 Timothy 6.

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It's talked about in Hebrews 13. Contentment is a very important thing, especially for men,

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Christian men. Well, I'm not gonna say especially there. Contentment is very important for both men and women.

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It could be for different reasons, but I would say it's equally important. But in the area of men, well, think about it.

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They're conquerors. It's built into them. We want to go out. We want to subdue the earth.

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We want to expand God's kingdom on earth as we were instructed to do. That's a good thing. The problem is if ambition becomes, and this is repeating myself from last week, but if ambition becomes the end goal where that is what you're focused on rather than using it as a means to grow the

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Lord's mission, the Lord's mission for you on earth, the Lord's kingdom, et cetera, all of a sudden you can become that consuming fire that Solomon talks about in Proverbs 30, a fire that is never satiated by anything.

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It has to keep consuming more and more and more to the point where there's no contentment. As Solomon put it, you're like the grave that is just waiting for the next dead body to be put in the ground.

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There's never too much. Or like the desert that may get some rain every now and then, but it doesn't matter how much water it's gonna get.

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It's never enough. Or like the barren womb that is yearning to have a child, but it's never going to have one.

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That yearning never goes away. It's never satiated because it never gets what it wants. Those are the terms that Solomon put discontentment in.

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He wanted to give us these striking visual images so that we don't forget it. So for men, we don't wanna be any of those things that he laid out in Proverbs 30.

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We don't wanna be discontent. We want our ambition, which is an inherently good thing, to be anchored by contentment, meaning that we are satisfied with where God has us right now today in this moment, and that we are eagerly waiting to see what doors he opens for us so that we can go through them and that we're ready for it.

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That's what it looks like to have content ambition or to have anchored ambition.

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So men, when they are self -controlled, like it says in verse six, they can be content.

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What's another thing they can have issue with? Well, they can have an issue with lying, and this is not isolated to any particular age either because men want that good self -image.

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They want gain in many cases. Obviously, lying permeates the business world. It permeates business.

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It permeates any kind of industry. I guess that's a pretty good all -encompassing term.

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In order for gain, in order for advancement in a particular field, lying is never off the table, and so men can have an issue with that.

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And when it comes to just self -image, we talked about this just a little bit last week, and young men, like literally young men in their late teens, early 20s, can certainly struggle with this because it's kind of the safe face factor.

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Maybe they're not willing to put in the work and the discipline to go out and create a legitimate positive self -image for them, but they still want the image without the work.

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So what do they do? They construct some lies to get them there, kind of a shortcut.

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So when you have self -control, when you are sober -minded like Paul told Titus to exhort them to be, you can have some control over that particular sin.

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What about rebellion against authority? Well, again, if men were given the creation mandate to subdue the earth and to take dominion over it, every man is gonna want to be, naturally speaking, in a position of leadership.

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What's interesting is that is good, and in a sense, every man is created to eventually be a leader over their own household.

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So in that sense, every man is a leader, but you also have hierarchy in other areas. That could be business, that could be church, that could be government.

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And so men have to humble themselves to higher authorities in some cases, to the point where the writer of Hebrews goes all the way into saying, look, you need to be obedient to those that have been put over you.

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That could be a tough thing to do sometimes. And so it takes the Lord and the Holy Spirit working in a man to both make him feel, have the self -confidence that he should have as a leader of his own house, while at the same time being humble enough to submit to whatever authority

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God put over him. And it's not that the authority is better than him, intrinsically speaking, it's that God put the authority there.

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And so humble yourself and don't rebel, don't be a revolutionary, don't be a rebel.

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Submit to the authority that God puts over you. Now, talking about authority here, another thing that men can struggle with kind of in that category is being dishonoring toward their parents.

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And I'm not just talking about teenagers. I'm talking about men of all ages. We are commanded to honor thy father and thy mother.

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I can't remember which commandment it is. I guess it's one of the 10 commandments. It is reaffirmed in Ephesians chapter six. And so it is something that is never off the table.

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We are to honor our father and our mother until their dying day. And so that looks differently from stage to stage, obviously, it's gonna look differently as a teen, as it will when you're in your 30s, as it will when you're in your 50s, 60s, 70s, perhaps being the caretaker of those parents.

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But honoring them is never off the table. So that can be a sin habit that men can easily have.

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Why? Because there can be a sense of pride. I'm leading my family. This is my life now. I'm in charge.

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And of course, there is the, we're told in Genesis that men are to leave their household, to leave their father, to leave their mother, to cleave to their wife.

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But that doesn't mean that they are to then become dishonorable in this new venture that they have been ordained to have.

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What it means is that they are supposed to go out, take that sacrificial responsibility that all men are supposed to have and to cleave to their wife and to lead her, to lead their children to leave their household, to lead their household.

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But that doesn't mean to then be dishonoring toward the parents in whatever area they need to honor the men.

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We have the preeminent example in Isaac, who was by seemingly all good scholarly accounts, plenty old enough to have resisted his father when his father was going to lay him on the altar to sacrifice him in obedience to God.

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So that was Isaac being obedient to his father in all things. You have

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Jacob when he is blessing his kids at the end of his life, and Joseph brings him

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Manasseh and Ephraim. And one is older than the other, obviously.

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And what does Jacob do? He crosses his arms and he gives the elder blessing to the younger.

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And Joseph comes up and he's like, dad, I don't think you know what you're doing. And we are told that his eyes were dim.

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And so maybe Joseph thought this is just a mistake. He's confused with who is who. And Jacob says,

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I know what I'm doing. And he gave the blessing to Ephraim the younger over Manasseh the older by intention.

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And what did Joseph have to do? I mean, he's the second most powerful human being on the planet. He could have done whatever he wanted in that moment.

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He could have taken his sons away and been like, look old man, you don't know what you're doing. I will give them the blessing when the time is right.

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No, he was honoring his father even in that point in life. So that can be a sin habit that self -control or being sober minded can help all men overcome.

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These are all commonplace in the lives of men, but self -control can curb all of these failures, lust, being lazy, discontentment, lying, rebelling against authority.

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These are all things that could be overcome simply by receiving the exhortation to be sober minded.

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Like I said last week, Paul in the most succinct way imaginable wrapped all of this up into that single phrase when he told

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Titus to do this. Okay, but then what does he do?

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He expands the model of godly living for the man, for man in general.

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And he expands by looking directly at Titus. He looks at Titus in this letter and he speaks to him directly and he says, you are going to be the model,

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Titus. You are going to live out this positive godly character in such a way that every man from this point for the rest of church history, so we're going for 2000 years in right now, we'll see how much more time the

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Lord has for us, but for the next two millennia and possibly more, every young Christian man is going to look to you now as the model for godly living.

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You are going to live out this doctrine. So look at verse seven with me and let's take a look at what

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Paul has for Titus here. I just want to point out really quickly because people will be like, wait.

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So all of the instructions for young men is in that one little short verse in verse six. And because then he switches to Titus and it's like, well, what's the big deal?

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He had all this stuff for the younger women, he had all this stuff for the older women and the older men. Well, no, he's still talking to the young men from verses six through eight.

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What he's doing now, and I'll talk about this more in just a second, Paul understands a very important principle and that is for young men having someone to look up to.

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I'll talk about that more in just a second, but Paul knows that principle well. And so what he's about to do is he is about to make

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Titus the manifest version of all of these positive character traits for every other young man to look to, but those younger men are still held responsible for modeling

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Titus or imitating Titus. That's what's going on here. All of this is for all young men, but he does single out

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Titus and he wants him to be this model. Look what he says in verse seven. He says, in all things, showing yourself, that's how we know he's talking to Titus, showing

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Titus as yourself in the singular, showing yourself a pattern of good works and doctrine showing uncorruptness, gravity, sincerity.

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We'll stop there for now. We're probably not gonna get to verse eight at this point, but let's just talk about some of the very important aspects of just this verse and some of what

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Paul just said there. Number one, what's the first phrase that he opens with?

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In all things, in all things. This is all encompassing. The things that Paul is about to start getting into in detail, when he talks about the uncorrupt doctrine, when he talks about the gravity, the serious nature of life, when he talks about the sincerity and the sound speech and that can't be condemned and good works and all of these things so that the man is never ashamed, the

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Christian man is never put to shame. He begins all of it by saying, in all things, you're gonna do these.

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It's all encompassing. We're talking about the totality of the man's pursuits and his conduct in the midst of those pursuits.

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So it's not just church life. We're talking about business. We're talking about parenting. We're talking about being a husband and the head of his household.

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We're talking about being a friend, a son, a coworker, being a churchman, whether you are in leadership or whether you're not, either way, your church life, being a churchman, even in his hobbies.

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In all things, the Christian man is to conduct himself in these ways. It is not limited or isolated to church life.

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These aren't the things that you, these aren't the ways that you act when you go to church on Sunday and Wednesday. These are the ways that you live all the time.

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Now, he starts with this all -encompassing phrase in all things, and then he moves on to this phrase, showing yourself a pattern of good works.

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We've shown many times throughout this study how it can be really easy to kind of tread on by a word here, maybe a phrase there, and kind of give a nod to it, like, yeah, that makes sense, that sounds great, and then just keep rolling on.

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The pastoral epistles, as we'll see when we get into 1 and 2 Timothy later, that can happen frequently because Paul is just wrapping so much, he's truncating so much in these little epistles.

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It's like Brother Bill said one time, he was asked to fill in for Brother Otis, and it may have been the first time ever.

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We have it on tape on our website somewhere. I think it was the first time he ever filled in for Brother Otis. This is like the year 2000, so I would have been like five, and Bill and Clarence and Diane and Georgette, they would have been relatively new, maybe five members for the last five years or something like that.

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For those that are new, Brother Bill Nichols, he was one of our elders. He passed away in 2022, and he taught at this

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Sunday school table for 13 years before he passed away. And one of the things that he said in that tape is, well,

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Otis asked me to fill in, and so I thought, well, maybe I'll do Jonah, or maybe I'll do Jude, or maybe, you know, he listed a couple of the really short books in the

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Bible. And he was like, but I came to realize that in so many cases, the smaller the book, the bigger the message.

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And I don't remember what he ended up teaching. I think he ended up just teaching a passage, just a single passage from somewhere, but I know what he's talking about.

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When you get to these smaller epistles like Titus or Jude, certainly it's a single chapter. Remember, we did that multiple weeks long study in Philemon, single chapter.

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The more truncated the book, the more there is to just, it's, you know, it's like a spring.

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When it opens up, it just really opens up. And so Titus is no different. Because of that, because it's truncated, because there's so much packed into just a few chapters here, sometimes you can miss a few things when you go quickly through it.

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And as we go through it slowly in this study, what we will find is it gives us a really good contrast with the common kind of haphazard approaches to ministry in the 21st century.

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You could go back to the 20th century as well, probably further than that as well. In fact, I would say that there are a lot of haphazard approaches to ministry that you can track going back 2000 years.

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But certainly those which we are more familiar with now, we see that Paul is contrasting them in these brief phrases that he throws into these verses.

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And it's like, wow, okay, so this is how it should be done. And when we see these things happening over here, that is in direct contrast to what

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Paul is saying things should look like. And so here we are with another phrase, showing myself a pattern of good works in verse seven.

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Showing myself a pattern of good works. This is another great example of slowing down and seeing, oh, wait a second, here's some contrast with what we see throughout most of the church today.

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This is Paul's way of essentially telling Titus to practice what he preaches.

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We're familiar with that phrase. This is Paul's way of saying that, to practice what you preach. And why, why is it so important to practice what you preach?

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Yes, it's kind of a neat little saying. It's the kind of thing that a lot of people can be like, yeah, that sounds great,

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I'll strive for that. And then we fall short and we keep moving on. But there's a real fundamental reason why it is so important to show yourself a pattern of good works, to practice what you preach, to go out and proclaim the gospel, yes, but then to live it out every other moment of every other day.

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And why is that? Well, it's so that people take Titus and take his preaching seriously.

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All of us can think of quote unquote preachers that we've seen or heard absolutely embarrass themselves in their conduct, and what is the result?

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Every time that happens, each and every time, nobody takes them or their word or any of the words they've said in the past seriously anymore.

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Now, we know that God can use the foolishness of preaching to bring those to saving faith, and that is a tremendous grace.

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So I'm not saying that some guy's screwing up his life and through his conduct in it, undoing everything he said in the past, that certainly doesn't undo anyone's salvation.

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But what does it do? It makes them doubtful, doesn't it? It can make people wonder, wait, is this thing the real deal after all?

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Because if preacher over here is gonna mess up and stumble in all of these areas, and he's not going to practice what he's preaching, he's not showing himself a pattern of good works.

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What am I supposed to do with that? What are we supposed to do with that? And we've had so many cases of it recently through a lot of very prominent pastors online that have, in some cases, global followings that have absolutely embarrassed themselves, like I said.

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And it really hurts people. It really hurts people, it confuses people. And even worse than that, it opens up the door for the unbelievers to look and say, look at the hypocrisy, look how unserious this actually is, look how ridiculous

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Christianity is, and they blaspheme the word of God. Which if you recall in verse five is the very thing, what it comes down to is that is the thing that Paul is giving all these instructions for in the first place.

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None of it's arbitrary, like I've said many times. None of it is Paul coming in trying to show off his authority by saying all you guys need to do this kind of stuff.

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No, he's doing it so that the word of God is not blasphemed by the unbelievers, by the heathen. And so, again, he says, show yourself a pattern of good works.

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Why? It's so that everyone around you takes you seriously. What is the proof of regeneration?

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It's something miraculous. It's something immaterial in the sense that it's not like we can see the mechanics of regeneration take place.

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We certainly can't get up and get a marker board and do the math on how all of it transpires.

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It's spiritual. It is immaterial. So what is the proof of it? How do we know that regeneration is even a thing?

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How do we know that regeneration happens to people? What is the way in which

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God has ordained for his miraculous saving grace in the life of a believer, which is a literal spiritual birth?

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How can any of that be seen by the world? Paul gives us the answer in verse seven.

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It's patterns of good works. Good works show the proof.

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Good works are where the proof of regeneration taking place. Why? Because it shows that this person that did feel that very real thing happen in his heart, that in many cases, it seems like, you literally feel the heart transplant take place.

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Like Ezekiel says, the heart of stone is removed. The heart of flesh is replaced by the heart of flesh.

32:16

Depending on when you got saved, I mean, dad's conversion story is certainly something along those lines. Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus was certainly along those lines.

32:27

When you read some of the conversion stories of the church fathers like Augustine, which were later in life, I mean, these were guys that were absolute animals with regard to their conduct and their standards of living.

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And when they were saved, they felt that miraculous thing take place.

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Well, how does the rest of the world know that it happened? It happens in that they can now see that these people take

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God's word seriously and they live out the doctrine. They obey God's word, they obey his commands.

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And when I say that, I'm talking about the things that he says throughout the whole of the

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Bible. It's not a matter of law versus grace. It's a matter of being saved by grace and then obeying

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God's word after the fact. It's showing a pattern of good works and that being a proof of your regeneration, that being a proof of your salvation.

33:20

Now, of course, what are these good works? Who defines that? By what standard is anything good?

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When we're told by Paul that there's no good, no not one, it's like, well, goodness gracious, now what? What am

33:32

I gonna do? How can I live out good works? How can I show a pattern of good works? If there's nothing good within me, save the new man, which was a miracle anyway.

33:42

I didn't do that. God did that. So when you're talking about me, how can I live out a pattern of good works?

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Well, there's two things to that. Number one, it really is you. You gotta be careful not to separate.

33:56

There obviously is a division functionally in the old man and the new man. The old man is that corpse that you're dragging around all the time and that can pull you back into sin sometimes where all of a sudden you start serving that slave master of sin that Jesus told us we were freed from and then we go back to it anyway.

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The old man is what drags you back into that. The new man, as 1 John tells us, is that part that is able to go however long we wanna go without sinning in perfect concert with the

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Spirit, in perfect concert with the will of God. So we have these two things. There is a division there, but we also need to be careful with never convincing ourselves that the new man isn't really us.

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Our identity is the new man. That is truly us. And so when we try to work through some of these things like beating yourself up, perhaps experiencing guilt over past sins, perhaps you are wondering whether or not you were actually forgiven, that's where you gotta be so careful because the real you is in fact that new man.

35:03

Yes, we're still in this incorrupt, excuse me, we're still in this corruptible body. It's not incorruptible yet. And so there are times when those thoughts come into our mind and we're wondering how could it be that I ever actually was forgiven for these egregious sins that I know

35:19

I committed? Well, you have to remember when you convince yourself that that could be a possible reality, you may not mean to do it.

35:28

But what you're saying is that your sin is stronger than Jesus's forgiveness, which absolutely is not the case.

35:34

His forgiveness far surpasses the most egregious sins that you could possibly imagine. And that is why you can have someone,

35:40

I always use this example, if y 'all ever think of a better one, let me know and I'll start using it. But it's why someone like Dorian Irvine can be saved after all of the evil things that she did.

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She was the queen of the black witches in London and had supernatural power from the devil himself. She has one of the most amazing testimonies you've ever heard.

35:59

If someone like that, and if you heard her testimonies, you would know some of the stuff she did and it's not easy to listen to,

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I'll say that. You need to be spiritually prepared before listening to her testimony. But if you can hear a testimony like that, you can think, how can a person like that come to saving faith?

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Well, it's because God's forgiveness is far greater than any sin that could ever be committed. And so the real us is in fact this new man, we need to remind ourselves of that.

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And it's through the new man that we can now have this desire to obey God's word, to obey everything he tells us throughout the

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Bible, throughout the New Testament. And then this pattern of good works flows from it. So it is

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God that defines the good. When we say, by what standard are our works good?

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It's God that defines that. It's not us just kind of picking and choosing, this is a good work, that one's decent, that one not so much, that's not how it works.

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God defines the good. He doesn't leave us guessing. God doesn't leave us guessing what the good works should be.

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He doesn't leave us guessing on what is good, what might be good, what's not good. And that's why the commandments of the

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New Testament are a grace in themselves. I can't remember when

37:16

I teased this idea or alluded to this idea last, but a lot of people think, well, grace equals freedom.

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Freedom means no rules. Well, no, because no rules is anarchy and God has never in any way, shape or form, even during the time of the judges, there was not ever an intent for anarchy.

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The time of the judges was meant to be a theocracy, which means God was their king and they failed miserably and there was a little bit of anarchy, but it wasn't because that's what

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God told them to do. True liberty, true grace is actually bondage, but it's bondage to a perfect master.

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It's bondage to a master that will never let you down, that will never forsake you, that will never be harsh, that will never be brutal.

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It is freedom from every lesser Lord, every master that you've ever served before, including your own sin, including the devil, including the world.

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It's freedom from all of that and bondage to the God of the universe. That's what liberty is.

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That's what grace is. And so when we hear that God of the universe give us some instruction, some instruction in the imperative mood, which means the strongest possible way he could be saying, this is what you will do.

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When we hear that, it's not a matter of, oh, well now we got rules that's not grace anymore. No, those instructions are a grace in themselves so that we do not have to walk around guessing what on earth we need to be doing all the time.

38:42

So this phrase, it's very important. We already used our time up, shoot. I had some other good stuff

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I was looking forward to getting into and I wasn't watching the clock. Does anyone have any thoughts or anything they'd like to share?

38:54

We'll have to end here and pick it up next week. Any thoughts?

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Go ahead, Matt. Self -control is obviously such an incredible part of all of this.

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Would you say that there is any particular place that you could go to simply study just that aspect of what self -control is?

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To avoid a lot of the corruption that especially young men would all fall into is to study self -work, practice self -control.

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But then in that sense, the good work's kind of become a natural effect of that self -control. So, I don't know.

39:39

I feel like self -control's a big topic. Are there any other scriptures, maybe you don't have them prepared yet, to walk out with them?

39:47

No, there's 100 % lots of scriptures on this and we will be getting into some of them. I have them for today, but it'll have to be next week at this point.

39:55

But you're right, Matt. There's a reason why Paul begins with self -control and then starts saying things like, show a pattern of good works, this, this, that, and the other.

40:06

That is, that's the start. Okay, so first of all, there's an assumption here. The assumption is the man is already saved. So, you know, obviously people say, well, no, it needs to start with salvation.

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Obviously true, but Paul is assuming here that these young men that Titus is talking to in the church are already saved.

40:20

So, the foundation has already been laid. So, after that, the next starting point is for, let's say the newly saved young man, where does he start?

40:30

Well, perhaps, depending on when he got saved, he has a lot of sin habits that he's already developed in his youth. Perhaps there's a lot of things that he now has to work through as the believer versus like five minutes ago, he was the unregenerate heathen that was no better than all the rest of the goats, so to speak.

40:47

So, what does he do? Well, it starts with self -control. Self -mastery is what the

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Greek term is kind of alluding to. Self -control, mastering the self in all areas of life.

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There are a number of scriptures we'll look at next week, Matt, but I'll pinpoint it with this for now.

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And this puts a lot of, I'm gonna say pressure, but not in a bad way.

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It's actually a very good and honorable pressure to receive, but it puts a lot of pressure on the older men and the more mature, those that have been saved longer and more mature.

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Because Matt, one of the ways that you learn, as Paul will teach us, we'll look at this next week, one of the ways in which a young man learns what self -control looks like and what it even is and how it even begins is by looking at his brothers and perhaps his spiritual fathers in the faith and sees how do they live out their life.

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So, if you got a young man in a congregation and all the old men are just blowing it and they're not grave, they're not sober, they don't have self -control, all of the things that Paul told the older men to have first in verse two, if they don't have any of that, then it's gonna be a lot harder for the young man to know what to imitate and what self -control actually looks like.

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So, believe it or not, Matt, in the New Testament, one of the things that Paul goes to to show what self -control looks like is to the older men in the faith and they are to be imitated.

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They are to be the examples. They are to be models. There's more to it than that, but I'll leave it there for today.

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Dad, did you have a thought? Yeah, that was very important. That's why it's important for a church to go through.

42:28

A hundred percent. The other thing I would say is that the

42:33

Bible, I mean, it's the brain verses, it contains this, I'm sure, but the

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Bible says, the Bible itself washes and cleanses. Right. It's actually in Titus later.

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Being in the Word more than the other guy can make you walk better than the other guy.

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The other man, I've said it a million times before, that a good Christian is always thinking about what he's thinking about.

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So, the new man should always be monitoring the brain, which is part of your old man, what's he thinking?

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You need to remember this prayer for him.

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Lord, give me the mind of Christ. Pray that prayer when your brain malfunctions.

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Right, pray that prayer and say, Lord, if you were here, how would you think about this person?

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What would you think of him? How would you treat him? Let him be like you, and it'll go away.

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So, there's a constant life with that, constant, many times a day, for a man.

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I don't know how old he is, but for a man, many times a day, you're monitoring that brain and you bring it under submission to your new man, who is connected to the

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Holy Spirit. We just covered a beautiful thing that not every young man might have older men to look up to.

44:02

So, if you have the Word, Right, well, you have Christ to model. That's right. And obviously, the apostles and then the

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Bible. A lot of what we'll go through in this study in the coming weeks really comes back to a lot of what we talked about in our

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How to Be a Disciple of Christ study on Wednesday nights. What are we to do as disciples of Jesus?

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We are to know, what is Jesus's philosophy? What are his practices? What are his ways of life?

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And we are to model that in our own lives. We're to imitate that in every way. Well, obviously, doing that.

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If you are a disciple of Jesus, you will have self -control because this esteemed teacher that you are now following and wanting to know everything he teaches, why he teaches it, and the way he lives his life, you're gonna be copying that.

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So, obviously, self -control will follow. Just off of Dad's thoughts really quick, and then

44:56

I'll go to you, Mimi. John 17, 17, when Jesus says, sanctify them and thy truth, thy word is truth.

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So, you have a direct connection between God's word and the sanctification process.

45:12

You hear that one, Matt? So, John 17, 17. That's a really good starting place, not just for self -control, because we're talking about the whole of sanctification.

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So, that covers a lot of things, but if Paul is coming in and he's saying self -control is the basis for sanctification, perhaps,

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I think that is part of his argument. Then, you look at Jesus' words and what does he say?

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He says, you want sanctification? You wanna grow as a Christian? That's what sanctification means. It means becoming more holy, becoming more purified, becoming consecrated, literally.

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As you live out the Christian walk, how do you do that? God's word, or God's truth, and then he says, thy word is truth.

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How do you ascertain what the truth is? God's word. How do you know what good works are? God's word. How do you know how to define what good is?

46:01

God's word. And so, that is ultimately the standard. It's the norming norm, as the reformer said, for everything, and that would absolutely include knowing how to have self -control over oneself.

46:13

Did you have a thought, Mimi? Yeah, kind of brings all of that together, Matt's comments, and staying in God's word, and Pastor's comments on always thinking about what you're thinking about, and good works.

46:32

I think it's helpful to just jump right into the good works, because when you do that, you're filling your mind with doing that good work, and staying in God's word.

46:43

My grandmother used to say, the eye of the mind is the devil's workshop, and there's a lot of truth to that.

46:51

So, I think you constantly fill your mind with God's word, and you're constantly putting your hands to good works, and you're thinking about what you're thinking about.

47:00

Right. Well, what you just said, it actually plays off of an Otis principle.

47:07

Brother Otis used to tell, I don't know if he told dad this at coffee, or literally at Sunday school, probably both, just dad.

47:13

Okay, which was, I can't do the Otis impression, or I would do it. David, I can't do it as good as dad.

47:21

He would tell dad, look, if there's something in your life, a sin that you're wanting to avoid, a bad habit you're wanting to avoid, something that you know you struggle with, but you know that is not

47:31

God honoring, and your conscience doesn't even like it, you don't wanna do it anymore. The last thing you wanna do is sit around thinking about,

47:38

I don't wanna do that, I don't wanna do that, I don't wanna do that. This is the last approach you take. Otis said, what you do is you start thinking about the basically what

47:48

Paul lays out in Philippians 4, 8, I think, when he says, all of those things to think about that which is good, which is lovely, a good report, fill your time thinking about those things, and I think that flows beautifully into what you just said, which is just jumping into the good works.

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What are good works? Being hospitable, serving the brothers and sisters, loving the brethren, ministering to them.

48:06

We talked about this in that Hebrews passage. I guess it was in the sermon, I don't, at this point

48:12

I can't remember which passages I used where. Maybe it was Wednesday night, I can't remember, but what is ministering to the brothers?

48:19

In other words, serving the brethren. It starts by loving them, and then from that love flows all kinds of stuff that you do, so there's kind of the good work that you were talking about that you're now filling your time with.

48:31

You're not, it's not the idle mind anymore. So it's an Otis principle in many ways. Oh, sorry.

48:38

Otis? I'll come back, Ash. I did all of mine. Yeah, you did. Very much in line with what

48:45

Jeannie said. What she said is, he said, and he taught this in his class, and I remember it was a

48:52

Monday night class and I was at his house, and I was a four -night -a -week homebrew.

48:59

Two days, it was. But he said, it's never good to sit around thinking about trying to stop.

49:08

Right. He said, fill your day by doing good things. Yeah. There it is.

49:15

That's what he said. He said, fill your day with doing good things. You won't have time for the bad things.

49:22

You'll be too tired to do the bad things. You know, I think it's funny how he would say it, but yeah, exactly the same.

49:29

I can't find it. You have probably remembered it, but in the other class, a lot of it seemed to be

49:35

Otis. But when he's talking to the... About the widows.

49:41

Widows. Yeah. They need to remarry, and that's how they avoid a lot of the sins that we've already talked about.

49:48

Right. Women seem more prone to, and I'll always think about that, because I think about how busy and tired

49:57

I am. There's not a lot of time to have friends, much less talk about anyone else with those sins.

50:03

And just motherhood is very sanctifying. Self -control, patience.

50:10

The doctrine that comes into, you know, just standing in light of the gospel is a profound thing.

50:17

There's definitely a lot in the realm. And just thinking, the deep doctrines of Christ, forgiveness, grace.

50:26

As a parent. Comes through your fingertips in the home. How you raise children. In your mind.

50:33

I mean, I just think it's the grace of God when I think about how ignorant I was as a young woman, and how

50:39

I didn't have time to make a lot of mistakes that I could've made if I'd been just hanging out with my gal pals, and doing kind of what

50:49

I thought was a good idea at that time in my life. And just, you know.

50:54

That's a great. It's wonderful. It's wonderful, but being busy. It keeps you out of it.

51:01

Well, it's a good application, not only for what Mimi said, but even for what we're talking about, because even though we're talking about young men, if you recall, young women have the same exhortation to have self -control.

51:12

They're to be taught self -control from the older women. And so, yeah, when we get to 1 Timothy, you start talking about the young widows, and like, what are they to do now?

51:19

You actually see a lot of what Mimi was talking about, what dad was talking about, what Ashley was just talking about in practice.

51:25

It's really interesting. Yes, sir. So then, self -control. Yeah. The fruit of the spirit.

51:31

Like, with me, I used to try and do things in my own strength. Yeah. And you always found when you're trying to do it in your own strength.

51:39

So I could use it, and if that's a fruit of the spirit, I could give away that to someone else. Yeah, I'll give it to you.

51:46

That's 100 % true. And this is why it, the fact that it's a fruit of the spirit tells us a couple of things.

51:51

Number one, it tells us that it's God working in us, both to will and to do, is good pleasure.

51:57

And so, what does he want for us? He wants sanctification. He wants us to become more holy. He wants us to eventually become a chaste bride, which is what he deserves.

52:06

And so, that's one aspect of it that we can pull from it being a fruit of the spirit, but there's a second one, too, and that is, as Christians, we have the capacity for things that the rest of the world does not have the capacity for, because the spirit is not in the world.

52:19

The spirit is in the remnant. It's in those that God has saved and is sanctifying in real time.

52:27

And so, yes, to your point, this self -control is nothing that can be accomplished by a man or by a woman in and of him or herself.

52:40

It's, you mean it's not like channeling your - It's not channeling your inner true self.

52:47

It cannot be, it cannot be, it cannot be tracked back to mysticism or anything like that, which so much, yes, the

52:56

New Age self -help, all that kind of stuff comes back to, where eventually, you know, you eventually get back to that inner good, and then everything blossoms from there or whatever.

53:06

The problem is, any goodness that we have is positional. It's positional righteousness.

53:11

It's Christ's righteousness, not our own, and so that entails that it takes Christ's work in our life to overcome things, to have the self -control.

53:20

So it is interesting, because you have two things happening here. You have Paul exhorting in the imperative, or actually,

53:28

I take it back. You have Paul telling Titus to exhort in the imperative young men to have self -control.

53:35

Now, this is why it's good to take the whole Bible and not isolated verses, because if you were to take just that verse by itself, you would think, okay, then young men have it in and of themselves to have self -control.

53:48

That is true in the sense that, as far as just having control over their person, in the sense that they are moral agents.

53:55

They are responsible. We are responsible for having self -control, but it is through what?

54:02

The Holy Spirit, to your point, through reading the Word of God, through prayer, and sometimes it takes a lot of prayer, but it's

54:09

God's work. He gets the glory. If a guy actually showcases self -control, which is kind of a miracle every time it happens, and regardless of what area, every time a guy showcases self -control, the glory goes to God, not the guy.

54:24

That's how it was meant to work, and that is why it works like that. That's a beautiful point that you brought up. Matt, did you have a thought, too?

54:29

Okay, let's end it there, because we used up all our time. Hey, Pop -Pop, would you mind dismissing us in prayer today? We have a lot of work we just thank you for.

54:37

You just let us hear your Word, and how do you play with it?

54:46

You have to say more than two lessons. God bless.