Titus 2:1-10 A Visible Theology

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Don Filcek; Titus 2:1-10 A Visible Theology

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You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsek preaches from his series,
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To the Next Generation, learning from Paul's words to Titus. Let's listen in. As Brittany said,
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I'm Pastor Don. I'm the lead pastor here. And God has been really kind to us as a church to be able to grant us, particularly here in America, the freedom to gather and to express our faith together.
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I am glad for all of you. I hope you're glad for all of us. In this gathering, I'm reminded every week when we get together, this is helpful for me, and it doesn't become routine for me, but I think every time we get together on Sunday morning, it reminds me that I'm not alone in my faith.
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Amen? You're not alone. I mean, you can look around the room and there's other people that are fighting the fight of the faith with you.
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My family isn't the only one out here trying to honor Christ in a fallen and broken world, and sometimes the weeks seem long, and sometimes the weeks feel isolating, and they feel alone.
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You guys know what I'm talking about? You feel that? And then to gather together and go, oh, breath of fresh air.
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There are others out here digging in, seeking to honor Christ, taking new ground for Him, seeking to honor
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Him with their lives. I hope you find strength for your faith as we praise Him this morning in this gathering, as we hear together from Him in His Word in this gathering.
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We're a church that's seeking to grow in faith, grow in community, and grow in service, and our passage this morning is going to revolve all around how the church is made up of relationships.
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There's all kinds of relationships in the church, and the Apostle Paul told his young protege, Titus—we're looking at the book of Titus, a letter written from Paul to him—and he told him all about church leadership and the significance of right teaching.
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We saw last week that he warned about false teaching, and we saw that warning last week. But what comes next might seem a bit disconnected in our minds.
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He turns to character, the character of godliness that makes for a healthy church, and he addresses this by specific instructions to various demographic groups within the church.
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He speaks first to older men, then he speaks to older women, he speaks to younger women, he speaks to younger men, and then he speaks to something that we don't relate to and really understand it might cause our skin to crawl a little bit, he speaks to slaves or bond servants as the
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English Standard Version talks about it. This is addressing the structure of the Roman family as it appeared in those ancient
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Roman times, and I've entitled this sermon Visible Theology because it becomes increasingly clear in this passage that the way we relate to one another is tied to what we believe about God.
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You see, the direction in the Christian life is faith that then is informed more trusting
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God because of what he's done for us on the cross, then growing in the knowledge of what he desires of us that leads us to godly living.
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And so if you don't get that order right, this message is going to sound like a pull yourself up by the bootstraps and just do good things kind of message, but I hope that I'm talking to a room full of people who already have faith in God.
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Faith is the given in this passage, and so what we believe about God is meant to influence the way that we live and the things that we do.
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We're supposed to live in a way that is a net gain for our society, a net gain for others in the church.
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We are to live in a way that is winsome to the world around us, and our interactions with others should decorate.
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By the end of the text, we're going to see the word adorn or decorate the gospel. That's the way our behavior and our action should function in the
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Christian life. So, our lifestyle doesn't equal the gospel in this passage, but it serves to adorn the doctrine of salvation.
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In other words, being a good person is not equal to sharing the gospel. How many of you know you can be a really good person, and people go, you're just a goody two -shoes, right?
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And they can actually get upset with you and angry at you just for being kind at your workplace. Oh, they're just trying to get ahead, right?
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But instead of the good works being the gospel, instead good works are meant to make the gospel look like a beautiful thing to those who are supposed to be hearing us declare it, speaking it, declaring the gospel openly with words.
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Teaching sound doctrine and believing right things is foundational to the Christian life, the Christian faith rather, but it is just the beginning.
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Having the right belief and having the right knowledge is meant to propel us. Paul sets the stage in the first four verses of this letter, and you can go back and read those first four verses by identifying that a healthy church leadership and a healthy church has the goal of growing us all in faith and growing us all in the knowledge of truth, which leads us then to line up with godly living.
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And here in our text, Paul's going to set out to describe the godly life that faith in Christ and the knowledge of the truth should be producing with each and every one of us.
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And so, let's open our Bibles or your devices or your Scripture journals to Titus chapter 2 verses 1 through 10.
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So again, this is Titus 2, and we're going to take the first 10 verses there. So, recasters,
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I'd love to remind you this is God's holy word, and we have the privilege of hearing from Him through the pages of Scripture this morning.
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Titus 2 1 through 10 says this, But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine.
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Older men are to be sober -minded, dignified, self -controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness.
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Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine.
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They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self -controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.
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Likewise, urge the younger men to be self -controlled. Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us.
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Bond servants are to be submissive to their own masters and everything. They are to be well -pleasing, not argumentative, not pilfering, but showing all good faith, so that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our
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Savior. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for your concern for relationships.
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I thank you for your concern for character. The way we live our lives matters, and we can be a church that gets so focused on the entry of the faith through the gospel and trust in you and your grace that we can miss some key components of sanctification of the walk that you desire for us to have after this.
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You desire for us to walk in a certain way. You desire for us to have self -restraint in ourselves.
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You desire for us to adorn the gospel with the way that we live our lives in this society and in the church.
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Father, I pray that this message might strike all of us right where we need to hear from you this morning.
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I thank you for the establishment of the gospel. I thank you for the solid foundation on which we have to launch out into a life of living for you and honoring you and loving others well and loving our neighbors as ourselves and loving even our enemies.
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Father, I thank you for the way that you have given us a stable footing of your love expressed to us through your
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Son, Jesus Christ. The very foundation of our worship, the very foundation of a life lived for you.
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Father, I pray that even now as we have an opportunity to sing songs to you, that the foundation of these songs, the foundation of our worship and praise and exalting you would come from that place of knowing that we're okay with you because of what you have done for us.
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That nothing that is said in this message, I pray that none of it would be allowed to settle in anyone's hearts as just rules and regulations but rather love for you because of what you have done for us.
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Father, I pray that that would echo and be clear and loud in this message and this morning that you have done it for us and now in love we respond.
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So, Father, I pray that our praise would be a response to you now and it would be all for the glory of Jesus Christ and it's in his name that I pray.
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Amen. Thanks to the band for leading us in worship this morning.
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Grateful for what you guys do, so thank you. I appreciate it. Encourage you all to make yourself at home. Get comfortable.
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Keep your Bibles open to Titus starting in chapter 2, those first 10 verses of chapter 2. And if at any time you want to get more coffee or juice or donut holes or need to use the restrooms, you're not going to distract me if you need to get up, but our focus, our goal is to make sense of and understand this text for the remainder of our time together.
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And I want to start off with a simple statement that I think all of us know, but what we believe is how we live. What we believe is how we live.
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And so, faith is foundational to us as Christians, that we believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins, that he rose again three days later victorious and gives us a promise of eternal life, that this life is not all that there is, that comes with all kinds of ramifications for the way that we live our lives day in and day out, with the way we relate to one another, the way we relate to parents, the way that parents relate to kids, the way that we relate to spouses, the way we relate to professors and teachers, and all of the ways that we relate to even the world, all of it informed by what we believe.
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So if you believe that Jesus died for your sins, then you will live a life of loving gratitude for a sacrifice, and your entire life will be lived in thankfulness for that one main thing, right?
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But if you believe that you need to pay for your own sins in any way, shape, or form, then you will live a life of fearful anxiety and rules and laws, wondering if you've done enough.
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If you believe that God grades on a curve, you will live a life of religious competition with others, making sure that you're the best person in the room at all times, or at least look like the best person in the room.
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If you don't believe in God at all, of course, then you will live your life fundamentally for yourself.
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What you believe impacts and defines the way that you live. And so Paul, having described leadership and warning against false teachers in chapter one, now turns his attention toward lives that accord with sound doctrine.
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If you believe the truth and the gospel has grasped your life and you belong to Jesus Christ, now he's going to talk about how we live.
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And again, I don't want to confuse that because we don't live in a way that makes God save us, right?
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It's the other way around. He saves us and calls us to live for Him. And so it's very important that we get that out of the way.
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But verse one sets the stage for this extended section explaining a life of godliness that flows from faith in Jesus and the knowledge of the truth.
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Faith first, then knowledge of God's ways, then godly living is the order in those first four verses.
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So while there are many who are teaching false religion in Crete, Paul tells Titus, who he's left there in Crete to help bolster the churches and provide leadership for them and stuff,
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Paul tells Titus to teach what produces health. I keep using the word health because the word sound there, you'll even notice that in English Standard Version there's a little note that says, or health, healthy.
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So what produces, as for you, teach what accords with sound or healthy doctrine.
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That's the way that that word is translated. So there's a teaching that leads to healthy doctrine and healthy living.
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And this means that there's a type of teaching that leads to, of course, unhealthy living and unhealthy doctrine.
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But we don't want to talk about that. We want to mine the depths of this passage. The gospel tells a person, or rather the gospel sets a person free to live a life of joyful love and hope.
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My life would not be characterized by joy, love, and hope without the forgiveness I received through Christ, through His cross.
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And so, and I think that's true of you. Our outline this morning describes godliness for five categories of people.
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Just this structure alone informs us that we ought not to be shy about seeing people as different.
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It's okay. He speaks to older and younger. How many of you know that that's a legitimate distinction?
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There's a legitimate distinction between older and younger. That's okay. He speaks to male and female.
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And how many of you know that that's a legitimate distinction? Yes. How many of you know that's a legitimate distinction?
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Okay. Amen. All right. Who am I talking to again? And He's going to speak to slaves, and we're going to cover that in the end.
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And that's going to make us uncomfortable until hopefully we understand it a little bit better, but still ought to make us somewhat uncomfortable.
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So our outline is this. Five points. Older men, verse two.
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Older women, verses three and four. Younger women, verses four and five. Younger men, six through eight.
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And slaves, verses nine through ten. Or bond servants, the English Standard Version translates it that way for intentional reasons.
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But I want to remind you that we are so used to, and I think that setting this caveat is really important in our culture, really important in the church.
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We are very used to receiving advice about our families. We're used to receiving advice about our lives, right?
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And so we might be tempted to see this as advice. We could run the risk of seeing this passage as just that.
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Catalog it with advice about the way to live your life. We might be tempted to take this text under advisement and sift through it for any nuggets of wisdom that might apply to our situation.
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A passage that comes up against cultural commentary regarding roles in society is at risk of easy dismissal by us.
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Do you know what I'm talking about? Because we are flooded with advice. We are flooded with people telling us how we ought to live our lives, how we ought to respond to our families, how we ought to respond to our kids.
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There's no lack of people that will tell you about your family, right? And some of them are family members who will tell you about your family.
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So there's all of that going on. And so let me encourage all of us to keep engaged with this passage as Scripture revealed by the
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Holy Spirit. Amen? This is God's Word. This passage is meant to describe and define the practical godliness to which the gospel calls all of us in our various roles.
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So listen, church, this morning. Listen with a heart attentive to Truth, capital
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T, Truth about relationships, even where it's going to rub us the wrong way, because it will.
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God's Word is always faithful to knock off the rough edges and to challenge us at the very point where we think we've got the answer, and Scripture comes in with a left hook, right?
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How many of you know what I'm talking about? Are we going to take God's Word or are we going to go with our cultural assumptions?
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So let's start with the older men because that's where Paul starts. Paul's instruction to older men, this first point, he starts there and he begins with a call to sober -mindedness, a word that right off the bat can be a bit confusing.
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And it's only confusing because it's a tricky word in Greek, and actually sober -minded is a bit tricky in English as well.
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It has at its root the idea of sobriety, and in Greek it was used in ancient documents in a way that's well -attested in two different ways.
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In a very literal way, it means not drunken, not given to intoxication. So an older man is not to be given to intoxication is one way to read this passage.
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But it can also be used figuratively, like we would talk about sober -mindedness. It might have nothing to do with alcohol in our mind when we use the word.
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It might just simply be level -headed, right? Sensible. Are you getting what I'm saying by that? If you define and describe to me a man who is sober -minded,
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I'm probably thinking, well, he's a pretty even -keeled guy. He's not given to a lot of sway. He's not given a lot of, like, too emotional, like, blown with the winds and all that stuff.
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No. And so it can mean different things. And while I think Paul had one or the other more in mind when he penned this,
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I think that for the practical purposes of understanding what he's calling older men to hear, it matters very little which way we go with it.
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An older man is, of course, never to get drunk because no Christian is ever to get drunk or to be controlled by intoxicating substances.
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That is a standard in the New Testament. But also, the older man is called here to be level -headed, not given to wild swings in his leadership, not given to wild swings in the way that he lives an exemplary life.
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And this is refined, by the way. This first word, not self -control, but sober -minded is refined by the second word that's translated dignified in the
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English Standard Version. He is to be noble or respectable. This doesn't mean, by the way, that he always has to be stern and severe, no sense of humor, you know, always just a dour look on his face and very serious.
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But it does mean that he should not be known as the town clown or, as we would say around our household, the pantaloon.
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That's a word that we use for kind of the foolish old man. I don't want to be a pantaloon.
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Look it up if you don't know the word. Well, the definition is up there. But it also comes from a song that I really like by Twenty -One
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Pilots, so that's another thing altogether. And many of you don't even know what I'm talking about right there. Maybe you know, and I guess to put this in perspective, maybe you know an older man who just seems to be less serious and less respectable as he ages.
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Don't name him. Don't lean over and whisper a name. But some of us know that person.
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And the expression of godliness in an older man includes an aging, sage -like quality.
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The man expressing this dignity is the kind of man you want to go to for advice. Now you can think of one of those in your mind, right?
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Can you think of an older man that you respect and you would go to for advice if you had need? If you're lacking wisdom, you would go to him.
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That's the goal for the older man is to be that guy. To be a guy like that.
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Sage -like quality, dignified, level -headed. The Greek word, the third one is self -control.
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Self -control is, as a root word in Greek, features prominently in all of these instructions for godliness.
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As a matter of fact, most scholars would call it the theme of godliness as expressed in this list.
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It shows up everywhere. And in Greek culture, it was considered to be the chief of virtues to the
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Greeks. They loved the concept of self -control. An older man, here in the text, an older man, younger men, younger women, and older women, all are in relationship to the
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Greek word that is mentioned here, self -control. It's a quality by which a person has restraint within themselves.
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To be self -controlled is to be held in check internally. There are impulses and desires and passions that rage within us, the urges that can be checked by a person who exhibits self -control.
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And despite the word self, I've never liked this translation. It just happens to be the English way that we say it.
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But self is right there in the middle of the English translation of this quality, and so it needs to be stated for us
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English speakers. The restraint we have within us as Christians is clearly, and hopefully you understand, not limited to yourself.
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Amen? It is not primarily self -control that we are driving for when we talk about internal restraint.
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We have, church, I got chills thinking about it, we have the very spirit of the living
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God in us. Alive in us, convicting us, guiding us, restraining us, and checking us into the sideboards, right?
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How many of you ever been like, just checked by the spirit? And your mouth guard goes flying, right?
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Sometimes the spirit does that to us, right? The internal restraint that's like, I'm heading this way, and it's like, takes a yank on that chain.
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Amen? I want that. How many of you want that? You want the spirit guiding you and checking you when you're going off, and you're going to destroy your life by this next decision, and the spirit goes, not today, buddy.
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Thank you. Doesn't always feel like a thank you at the time, right? But the spirit checking us internally, and us responding to that, that's self -control.
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Godly living is so connected to this internal restraint. This self -control is commanded to the older men.
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It is the very training, it's the root of the word training offered by older women.
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The word train, look at it if you're looking at the English Standard Version, the word train in verse 4, that which the older women are supposed to be doing for the younger women, is a word that has self -control at its root.
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It means that the older women are to be restraining the younger women through their exemplary teaching.
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That's that same root word of self -control. The young women are commanded to this internal restraint directly.
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And I think it's funny, the only command to younger men is this kind of restraint, this kind of checking.
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How many of you can understand that our society would be improved significantly by young men exhibiting internal godly restraint?
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Would that be good? Would that be a help and a blessing to our society? You better believe it. I've majored on self -control here in this section because it's apparent from this passage that it is a central virtue to all within the church.
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It is to be central in our hearts. A very serious and important facet of godliness forms throughout this passage, and it should be stated directly to all of us.
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It's very important. Check yourself before you wreck yourself. There you go. Okay.
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That's not it. I thought it would be funnier than it was. You guys are like, wait, is he serious?
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Am I supposed to write this down? Okay. You're like, that's so old anyways. He's like, yeah, that's too old.
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Thank you, Paul. I appreciate that. Old men, that's the next word. Old men are also called to be sound in the faith, sound in love, and sound in steadfastness, healthy in their faith, healthy in their love, healthy in steadfastness or endurance.
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This implies that there will be temptations with age. Think about this, men in the room.
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Think about it. It's not different for the women. It's just what Paul decides to communicate, what the
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Spirit decides to communicate to men, indicating to me that there might be some specific temptations for us dudes on this front.
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But you will be tempted to give up faith. You will be tempted to grow cold in your love, men.
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You will be tempted to give up on patient endurance and just throw in the towel.
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You'll be tempted toward that. So, be sound in your faith, sound and healthy in your love for others, sound in your steadfastness.
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Well, I don't think that's unique to men. I still take the end of verse 2 as a warning to dudes who find the years whipping past as we accumulate stories which old dudes love to tell, right?
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An old dude isn't an old dude without a desire to tell a couple stories, long stories, detailed stories.
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It's tempting for us men to grow cynical, to become hard -hearted, to grow cold in our love for others.
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An older man who is walking in godliness is a man of faith, a man of love, a man of hope expressed in steadfast endurance.
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And I would suggest that the best chance for an outcome in your life, to have a life like that, if you want to be a man who seeks to lead to love and to work on this planet and to do so for decades, you need to take your thoughts from the
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Word instead of the world. Take your thoughts and take your teaching and take your understanding from the
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Word rather than the world. How can a man live 70, 80, 90 years on this sinful clot of dirt spinning through space without growing cold and calloused?
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Oh, you're going to see things. Young men, you're going to see things. Young men, you're going to experience things that are going to war against your faith, are going to war against your steadfastness, are going to war against your love.
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Right? How many of you older men? Older men in the room, can you raise your hand and say, there have been some things in my life that have made me go, hmm, huh?
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Yeah? Raise your hand. There have been some things? You've seen them? You've experienced them?
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How are you not going to grow callous to the old men in the room? How are you going to avoid, not the old men, to the men in the room?
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How are you going to avoid waking up one day as the cynical, unloving, angry old man?
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Get off my lawn! Right? How is that not going to be you? How is that not going to be you?
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By staying close to God through what He says is true of us in the Word. Amen?
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Keep trusting God and sow your ears, mining the treasures of this glorious truth.
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That's the hope. That's the hope for older men. Older women?
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Likewise. I like how it starts here. Likewise, older women, verse 3.
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The word likewise reminds us that all of these instructions are not of a different kind. While women and men differ in many ways, they also have a lot of similarities.
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The instructions to older women are not unlike the instructions to older men.
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The older women are to be reverent. A different word than what was applied to men, but the word means holy or godly.
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It's a word related to the worship of God in the temple, and it's calling older women to a spiritual dignity.
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A reverent woman is one who brings a calming godliness and stabilizing respect for God into her everyday relationships.
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She is a woman who others would seek out for advice, much like we said the older men. She is sage in her devotion to God.
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I think many of us know an older woman who we respect and would say, well, she's taught me some things.
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She's given me some wisdom. But further, there are a couple of things that an older woman is not to be.
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She's not to be a slanderer. She's not to be enslaved by wine. Now, nobody should slander, and nobody should be slaves to wine, but Paul here calls out older women specifically on these.
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Dudes are not off the hook here with their beer and bourbon and slander, okay? Don't go getting drunk.
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I'm not an older woman, so it's okay for me to be addicted to wine, right? It's okay for me to slander because it's not in my instruction list.
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No, of course not. But God knows what we need to hear, and women being designed to be generally more attuned to relational vibes tend to be much more in the know about local happenings.
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Women will particularly need to be cautious in regard to gossip and slander, guarding their tongue.
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Men don't get a pass, but it will require more self -control on the part of older women to combat slander because they likely know more of what's going on in the community and they have more words, and they just have more words.
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So, they're talking a little bit more out there with other ladies. And then the call to not be slaves to much wine.
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My wife shared an article with me way before I was seeing this passage coming, and it's a recent article, and basically the title of it was,
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The Secret Sin of Mommy Juice. Any of you ever heard the phrase mommy juice? Do you know what mommy juice is?
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That's what mommy keeps in her sippy cup. Paul identified a trend here in Crete among older women, and this article that I read identified an increasing trend among evangelical women.
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And I want to point out that wine, emphatically state this, wine is not a solution to a long, tough week.
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Ladies, it's not. Men, it's not. Wine is not meant to solve pain.
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It's not given to us to solve frustration or emotional burden. When most women refer to their wine as mommy juice,
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I understand that it's kind of a bit of a cultural joke, but if you're hearing this and it pricks your conscience and you know, you know, you know in your heart that you need some help with this, the church is a great place to start for help.
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This would be a great time for the spirit to grab a hold of your life. If you're giving yourself over to this, it might be time for you to come clean and get some help.
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And we would be glad, glad, glad to help anybody who would come and bring their sin into the light and say,
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I need help. This is more than just a joke. Mommy juice is owning me. And despite the fact that it's a funny way to say it, it could be a significant problem.
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And the article seemed to indicate that it probably is, at least for somebody here.
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At least somebody here is struggling with this that is not clean about it. It's very easy to hide. Come to the light.
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Come and get help. Confess this if you think you might need some help in regard to your relationship with alcohol.
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Because here's the truth and we know it. Notice that it says slaves to wine. How many of you know that alcohol is a brutal master?
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It's a brutal, terrifying master. And a life given to alcohol is not a life in accord with faith.
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It is not a life in accord with the knowledge of the truth, nor is it an expression of any form of godliness.
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He saved us for faith, growing in knowledge, and increasing in godliness.
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Older women are to teach and train younger women. They are to teach them what is good. We are meant to grow through relationships with each other.
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Older women here listening in this room, you're going, am I? I'm not going to give you a number.
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So you're like, which category am I in, Don? Am I the older woman or am I the younger woman?
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You decide. I'll let you figure that out. And no, husbands, don't answer that question.
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It's a trick question. Don't answer it. If she whispers in your ear, which one am I? She is definitely the younger one.
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But I want to focus your attention on this, older ladies, for just a minute. Younger women are mentioned in the context of ministry to older, rather the ministry of older women.
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Young women mentioned in that context in this passage. This creates an intentional and vital tie in mentoring and training relationships in the church between older women and younger women.
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This doesn't, by the way, require a formal program of mentorship or anything like that, but it does tie these two demographics together in Scripture.
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This is part of your God -given role in the church, older women. You might think you have nothing to offer, and there is a younger lady here who would gain so much from an hour, an hour a month of your investment over a cup of coffee and a discussion.
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She would love that. It would be life -giving to her. And you're going, I don't have anything to offer. And there are women who are desperate for that kind of input.
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So it brings us to the third section, third demographic is younger women versus four and five. We have to start the discussion of younger women in connection to older women, because that's where Paul does.
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Younger women, let me encourage you to pursue a relationship with an older woman in the church. Older women pursue a relationship with younger women in the church.
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This is vital, and I believe in part due to the reality that God has ordained a male leadership within the home and within the church.
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And male leaders will never be able to fully relate to the nuances of practicing the
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Christian faith as a woman. So I'm grateful for godly women in our church who intentionally are investing in other women.
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A healthy church needs that. A healthy God -honoring church needs older women investing in younger women.
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And I love the reality that isn't directly stated in the text, but I'll just throw this in there because I think we know it to be true.
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Older women gain from their connection with younger women too. It's not just an opportunity for you to teach someone.
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You grow and you understand and there's a vitality that comes with connection with youth that is healthy for us.
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And it makes me chuckle a bit that older women are to train, a word that implies, again, training and restraint.
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Here's the first thing they're supposed to teach younger women. How to love their husbands and how to love their children.
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Older married women have learned to live with a sinful man for longer. They've been there.
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They've learned what it's like to live with a sinful man and they have some insights on how to keep loving a husband and children through all the twists and turns of life.
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They have experience. They've experienced things and they can share that experience.
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And here's the thing, training them to love their husband and their children indicates that love isn't something we fall into.
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It's something trainable, rather a skill we can grow in. Love for each other can be trained.
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Think that one through and it just might help your marriage now. Like just that reality might help your marriage.
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If love can be trained, then it's not something I can ever reasonably say, I just lost it. I just just fell out of love.
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And if you fell out of love, it's because you're not doing it. It's something you quit doing if you don't have it.
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If you've lost that loving feeling, get trained and get good.
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Young ladies are called to the same internal restraints of self -control that we saw for the older men in the same training that the older ladies are giving.
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But they are also called to be pure. This word has strong overtones of being sexually chaste and they are called to be kind, showing that maybe there is an increasing temptation for young ladies to be unkind.
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I don't want to stereotype too much, but many of us might have an acquaintance that is a younger lady who is sharp with their words.
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And the kindness to which a young woman is called to is the opposite of that.
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It's the opposite of that harshness or that biting with words. But the two instructions in our text to young women that get the most heat are the two that stand out to us that I've already skipped over.
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Can we just move on to... Now, busy at home, which is the direct translation from the
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Greek. The English Standard Version has working at home and submissive to their own husbands. And how many of you just could recognize right away, wow, the temperature goes up in the room when
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I say those. Busy at home, submissive to their own husbands, instructions to a younger lady.
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Both of those are literal translations from the Greek language. The idea of busy at home demonstrates what we all know to be true.
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We know it. In a household, there's enough work and management needed within that household to be worthy of at least a full -time position, right?
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Is there a lot of work at home? Tons. Of course there is. And especially if there are kids involved.
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But here's the reality, church, and I want you to hear this emphatically. There is a dignity and honor in homemaking that our culture has forsaken to our detriment.
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It's to our detriment that we've forsaken that. Let me say that again. There is a dignity and honor in homemaking that our culture has forsaken to our detriment.
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We fear making moms who work outside the home feel guilty, so we refuse to say what Scripture makes clear here.
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A wife who works at home is valuable and has chosen a very good and biblical thing.
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But that doesn't answer all your questions, does it? There's still a question in the back of your mind. Some of you are still asking, but is this a command?
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To what extent? How do we flesh this out? Is a woman sinning if she works outside the home?
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That's the question we want answered. Is a woman sinning if she works outside the home? Proverbs 31 describes for us biblically a godly woman, and that description also includes work outside the home, selling things in the marketplace.
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I believe that this busy at home is a direct attack against what was happening in creed at the time, against a lazy lifestyle that involved too much leisure that allowed a young woman to get herself into trouble.
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Can you imagine that? Just enough free time to get into trouble. Busy at home, here's what
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I want you to hear. Busy at home is the opposite of too much time on her hands. That's what's being warred against here.
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There's not anything about employment law here. There's nothing about all of that. That's not even on Paul's mind here.
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What's on his mind is women running around and getting themselves into trouble because they have too much time on their hands.
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Get busy at home, he says. Be busy with your family, not with someone else's family.
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The other controversial instruction is that young women are to be submissive to their own husbands, and this comes with a reason.
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It says, so that the Word of God may not be reviled. Ironically, the
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Word of God is often reviled in our culture at this very point, but it isn't reviled because of the beautiful practice of complementarity, which
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I believe is truly revealed in Scripture. It's reviled at the conceptual level. Let me explain.
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You show me a biblically healthy functioning family where everybody is following what
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Scripture has to say to them, and I believe it would be considered beautiful by almost all people.
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Almost all people would rise up and say, that family is glorious if they are following what
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Scripture says is the role of the wife, is the role of the husband, is the role of the children, is the responsibility of a father towards his kids.
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If all of those instructions were followed, now raise your hand if you think that would be pretty beautiful. It'd be glorious.
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So, it's not at the level of like it's conceptually broken, but our culture and society despises concepts at their theoretical level.
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So, we feel bad for the women here who are called to submit to their husbands while not acknowledging that's a beautiful thing when the husband is also following Christ and loving her as Christ loved the church and laid
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His life down for her. Well, that's a beautiful thing when both components are there.
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You see, the biblical concept and theory of family isn't broken. That's not what's broken.
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People are broken. People are broken. All systems and theories in a fallen world are subject to abuse.
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Our system of economics works until it's abused. Our system of governance works until it's abused.
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Grace itself from God is beautiful and glorious until it's abused. Love for each other is beautiful until we become abusive or become a walking mat for others, the flip side.
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And God's complementary design of man and woman and husband and wife works great right up until the point that it's abused.
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And I would point out to you that the greater the potential for glory in any system, the more terrible it becomes when it's abused.
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Marriage is so glorious when it works well, but when it is broken, it is a terrible thing to behold.
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Do you know what I'm talking about? Many of us have seen it within our own families, extended families.
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Maybe mom and dad aren't together anymore, and we've watched those who walked in aisle and said, I love you to the end, and it's just torn.
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Young women are called here in this text to a vital relational connection within their household that involves kindness and purity, a healthy amount of busyness, and self -control.
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Young men, verses 6 through 8, young men are strongly urged to live a life of restraint.
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I mentioned earlier that this in itself would result in a much more stable society. Young men in this room, let me encourage you.
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Let me speak to you. Expend a lot of energy and self -restraint, and you can do so through two things.
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First and fundamentally, the very first thing that you must deal with and be sure of is that your life is connected to God through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ by faith and trust in what
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He has done on the cross. If not, then make that your pursuit. Pursue that.
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Study it. Talk to people about it. Come to understand it and keep at it.
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Keep pursuing the knowledge and the understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's fundamental, but if you belong to Jesus Christ, then second, dedicate your life to the pursuit of knowledge of the truth through the study of the
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Word. You got time. You got time to level up in your games and to play all the tournaments and do all the things.
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You got some time. How are you sowing it? Are you sowing it towards the truth, toward the knowledge of the truth?
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Are you going to be stronger as a result of having had some time as a single guy? Paul shifts his language.
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By the way, a comment on my message was that there's just not as much to young men in this passage, in my sermon, and the truth is there's not that much in the passage to young men at all.
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The main thing is they're given an instruction, self -control. That's the fundamental thing that Paul sees fit to say to the young men, be self -controlled.
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That's it. Just show restraint, guys. Like as if, I don't want to badmouth this too much, but I used to be a young man and I probably couldn't take much more than that.
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Just give me one instruction and I'll try to do that. Only talking for myself, but we left because I think all the guys in this room that were once young men know what
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I'm... raise your hand if you know what I'm talking about. You're going to leave me hanging on that one? Okay, just give me something. Okay, I'll take self -control.
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Thank you. Just work on that. But Paul shifts his language. I think he's still talking to young men kind of via Titus in verses 7 and 8.
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The language shifts and it's very clear in the Greek language that he begins to talk to Titus, but Titus serves as an exemplary young man.
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Titus is a young man. And so what instruction he gives to Titus here in the context of talking to young men is meant to filter to them too.
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And so Paul encourages Titus to be a role model to young men in his good works and in his teaching.
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He is to model integrity, to model dignity, and healthy speech that is above reproach.
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The goal of Titus should be that no opponent would be able to speak ill of the church on Titus's account or on the account of young men.
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In a sense, I would suggest to you that any social institution and even to some degree nations and cultures are rightly judged on the basis of the way that its young men act.
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Do you agree with me? That young men have an oversized influence in a culture like it or not.
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Young men are the places that wars and insurrections, abortions, most murders, and the vast majority of social blight begins with young men.
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Do you guys agree? That's a big deal. A lack of self -restraint and abortion is through the roof.
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Right? Is that not a reality? You guys looking at me a little blank. Is there not a self -restraint problem in our culture?
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Do we have an abortion problem or do we have a self -restraint problem? Well, both. Both. But the one comes from the other.
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I just about got angry there for a second. God calls young men up into restraint, into integrity, into dignity, and to healthy speech areas where they will be pressed.
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But men, if you belong to Jesus, he loves you and he's calling you to better. He's calling you to better.
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Those are qualities I would encourage every young man to aspire to. Restraint, integrity, dignity, and healthy speech.
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Slaves, verses 9 through 10. The English Standard Version does this intentionally and it literally has a pre -note to the entire translation of the
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Bible. You could thumb over to an English Standard Version and all the way to the front it's going to give you some keys to why it does certain translations.
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And it emphasizes this one particularly because slaves and bond servants, it's going to take bond servants over slaves not because it's sissy and it's a little scared of using a scary word in our culture.
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It's because that word isn't synonymous with slavery as most Americans and English speakers conceive of it.
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So right now in our modern era, what immediately comes to our mind when we think the word slavery is not what it meant in Roman culture.
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We think immediately racial slavery in the south of America, the whole
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Civil War, all of that starts to roll over us the minute that we hear the word slavery. And so the translators translated bond servants to try to forego that because slavery was not primarily racial in the
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Roman Empire. It was an economic problem, it was an economic thing, but it was not primarily.
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And here's the thing, about one -third of the Roman Empire at its height, at its heyday, about one in every three people were slaves.
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Think about that. You line up a hundred people and you've got 30 slaves. 33 .3
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I guess, but you've got a lot of slaves. So to neglect in the New Testament to talk about them or mention them was to leave out a large segment of society as if to say scripture says nothing to you.
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Now we can both disdain the practice of slavery in any way shape or form, including in the Roman Empire, while learning from the cultural passages addressing it in scripture.
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And I think it's legitimate to apply this, by the way, I'm going to apply this to some degree to our employer -employee relationships, while acknowledging that this passage is clearly addressing slaves in that Roman culture, but also recognizing that there's an application for us in the way that we do our service and responsibilities to those who are over us.
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Paul does not, you see it, it's glaring, Paul does not command slaves to revolt or to throw off their oppressors.
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That's not at all the instructions given here. And while many of us would like that to be the case, we need to understand that it is well within God's plan to remove this terrible blight of human sin gradually.
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God did so and He removed it gradually. Why? Why would God do that?
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Why wouldn't He have sent Jesus down into the Roman Empire and obliterated all masters and all slave owners and just solved it right there on the spot?
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God has always, hear me carefully, church, this is fundamental to your understanding about how God works, God has always given people room to sin.
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He has always been faithful to give us room. From the option in the garden, think about it, right there in the beginning, here's room to sin,
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I've got this tree with some fruit on it, don't eat it. There's room to disagree with Him, there's room to sin against Him.
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We see weird statements in the Old Testament that don't make sense unless He's willing to give room for sin. He says, no,
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Abraham, you're not going to get the promised land yet. We still have 400 more years of Amorite sin, and the
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Amorites and the Canaanites are going to sin against Me for 400 more years before I give you their land.
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Huh? Is that our God? That is our God. That's the revelation of Scripture. And by the way,
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I can talk about a lot of illustrations from Scripture, but let's talk about us. Has God been quick to judge you, or are you still breathing?
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He's always given us room to sin, hasn't He? He's always been long -suffering and patient with people. Amen? Who are you glad for that one?
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Glad that He's patient. Well, He was patient with slavery. We don't love that, but I'm glad He's patient with me. Oh, how about we apply grace evenly?
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By the way, the glorious thing is that human history ends in a sinless place. But until the
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King comes back, we will always have varying levels of acceptable sins in every generation, in every culture.
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And it was an acceptable sin. Slavery was an acceptable sin in Roman times. But these acceptable sins are best removed from the inside.
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By the way, I'm saying that in air quotes. There's no such thing as acceptable sin in God's eyes. I'm talking about our culture. Things that our culture embraces that are sin.
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But those kinds of sins are best removed from the inside out to get the root out.
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How do sinful trends like the many that we see in our culture starting to establish themselves, how's that going to get fixed?
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How's that going to get corrected? Is it going to be all of a sudden one time we're going to get the right leader, one time we're going to get the right law, and all of a sudden everything's going to be fixed?
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Or is it going to take time? How does it all get fixed?
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By Christians standing true and bringing the gospel into the workplace, bringing the gospel out into the public spaces.
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To remove social blight in any truly Christian way requires Christ. Otherwise, we're just attempting social reform without any truth or power.
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To demand that the world act like us without faith is to ask them to do what we ourselves were unable to do when we were lost in our sin.
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Christian principles ultimately rooted out the terrible cancer of slavery through the application of the gospel principles over time in England first and then in America.
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But Paul calls slaves in his day and age who have come to faith in Christ to submit to their masters.
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And we go, what? Why? Well, that's going to be the best likely outcome for the slave himself or herself.
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To be lazy isn't a really good answer. To revolt, to be argumentative, to pilfer and steal from your master was going to result in harsh treatment.
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Do you guys know what I'm talking about? That's not going to go well. So, he calls them to be trustworthy so that the gospel which
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Paul calls the doctrine of God our Savior, that's the gospel, the doctrine of God our
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Savior might be adorned or decorated. These instructions to the ancient slave do apply to us in the way that we work for those who are over us.
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And while of course we have a choice on where to work and we can bolt anytime, we still retain a choice over the way that we work for our employer.
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We also should follow our leaders, do good work, be trustworthy, don't pilfer, and be easy to work with, not argumentative.
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The way we work is not the gospel, but it adorns and decorates the gospel. So, if you're a jerk, you're a handful, you're argumentative, or even worse yet you're pilfering from your from your employer, don't share the gospel.
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Please don't share the gospel there. That sounds weird coming from a pastor, but instead work on your life.
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Let your life adorn the truth that that faith in Jesus changes lives for the better.
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And if your life isn't changed, what do you believe? What do you believe?
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This is all visible theology. That's the title of the message, visible theology. The gospel is to be seen in the life of all people who claim to believe it.
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We come to another visible demonstration of our theology here at the end of every service.
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If you've asked Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior and you're at peace with others here, then I encourage you to please come to the tables and join together with your brothers and sisters here in remembering
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Jesus Christ. The cracker represents his body broken in our place. The cup of juice reminds us of his blood shed for us.
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But more than merely a ceremony, I hope that your remembrance of communion each week connects you with one another by faith.
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He is calling us together upward into increased godliness and relationship with one another. And my prayer is that you can all find yourself on the list.
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We've gone through this. You can go back through the passage. Find yourself on the list. And more to the point, find the specific instructions that the
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Spirit is pointing out to you today. If you ask him, I'm confident that he will show each and every one of us where we need to walk more closely with him in godliness starting today.
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Let's pray. Father, I do thank you for the way that you guide and direct us, not just leading us by faith and then we've got to figure everything else out, but you give us instructions and guidance into self -control.
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Seems like a really great thing to pray for for our church, a really great thing to pray for older women and younger women and older men and younger men.
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And us as employees and employers, Father, for all of us to demonstrate a self -restraint that comes from your
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Spirit, guiding and directing, convicting, that we'd be sensitive to the things that you desire and that we would be growing and increasing in the knowledge of the truth that demonstrates to us the way that you desire for us to live now as your children.
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And I pray that the gospel would be adorned, made glorious, made beautiful through our lives lived for you.
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I pray that you would give us words because the gospel is always words and so that you would give us boldness and strength and courage to share the gospel with our co -workers and those around us in our neighborhoods and sporting teams and all of the different ways that we move throughout life and the things that occupy us during the week that we'd be looking for and attentive to opportunities to share the glorious truth that we now celebrate at these tables.
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We gather to testify as we get up to stand in line that we are busted and broken people who are being redeemed and saved and rescued and sanctified and set more and more on the pathway of godliness each day because of what you have done for us at the cross of Jesus Christ.
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I pray that we lift our eyes up to see that we're not alone in these lines but we go and we actively participate in this together because you have loved us and brought us together in relationships to encourage one another.