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Guten Morgen. Herzlich willkommen zur Bethlehem Bibelgemeinde in Berlin. No, we are not in Berlin. I'm sorry. I lost my translator. I usually teach in German and so I could have, you know, that's always good for the preacher.
He can teach half of the time and sing twice as slow. Anyway, I'm very grateful to be here. I'm connected to the church for many years and I'm very thankful. I bring obviously greetings from the Eckstein Gemeinde in Berlin, central Berlin, and also from the EBTC, European Bible Training Center.
And it has different locations in Zurich and Vienna and near Cologne and Berlin. And so we are very grateful for that. Something that was on my heart for quite a time is I wanted to talk about something out of Titus 2, very familiar verses to most of us.
Titus 2, we preached in our church through it and they never asked me to preach on that particular passage because they thought maybe it's not the best thing, about the wealth of the older generation of our church.
And I just heard the morning this quote that the 50 years are really 30 years old because the new 50 is the other 30 years, whatever. Anyway, we are the young ones. And so I'm not talking about myself here, even so that doesn't address myself.
The wealth of the older generation for the church, for the church, God's will for the healthy, effective, and powerful church has to do with that. Why am I addressing this passage with the emphasis on the older generation?
Well, for once the passage talks about the older man and woman in the local church. That's one thing. That's very important. Now that doesn't mean that the rest of the congregation doesn't need to listen.
That's not what I'm saying here. You will understand that in a second. Second, I have seen the dangers of recognizing the wealth of, or the degeneration really, of the recognizing things of wealth, of maturity and wisdom in the local church.
Not only in the local church, but also in the society overall in the last years. For example, to give some evidence to it, a lot of people and younger people maybe look to the older ones, usually look down on them because they don't listen so well.
They can't see as good. They are not walking straight anymore. I mean, there's all the physical things which make them, hey, are they really totally there? So the party parts slowly start to ache. That's just normal.
I mean, we sat on the bus for five hours and three hours, and when we came out, we were stiff. We were looking for the button to turn on. It's just you have to get everything going again, and the young people just hop out of the bus and enjoy it.
That's the difference. So the older generation, yes, they don't. Like, for instance, if I'm in a noisy room, it's, for me, difficult. It's hard for me to keep a single conversation because the noise is so much around me that after a while, I need to go out of the room to have this conversation, and it's very bad when you have a school of many students, and the rooms are full of conversations to have this kind of noise.
The rock and the pop of the past is not appealing to us anymore. We like classical music now. It's just we like to listen to soft music, melodious music. That's nice. I'm sorry to say that, but it's not critic about the good music, the loud music, and the pop music or whatever.
That's not critic against it. It's just that happens to you sometimes. The reality is most parts of the older generation is that really the wealth of the church is in the older generation. Why is that?
This passage will explain it to us. They know God not only from theory but from reality. They are the ones who lived by faith, Hebrews 13, 7, because they know Christ. They have lived with him for decades.
They learned to depend on Christ and his word. Do you hear me well? I hope. The word and our bodies are fading away. The reality of Christ and heaven becomes much more real to us. It's strange, but it is kind of when you come closer to Christ, it's usually in your older life.
I don't say that you're not in the younger life, know Christ. But the intimate relationship to Christ is growing as you grow in the Lord. And that is when the reality of heaven becomes much more real because you know that life on this earth has an end.
The young people don't think that way. They do those crazy things. They go surfing in rivers and they do the craziest things, bungee cord jumping and hang gliding and whatever they do in order just to get the adrenaline moving.
But our adrenaline is basically moving all the time if you want to be alive. I'm not quite as old, but it is getting there. The world and our bodies are fading, but Christ becomes much more alive. We understand what it means to put your treasures in heaven and not on earth.
We know what physical pain is. We live with it every day, some of us. We know what loss is. Some of us have buried their loved ones, even their own children. We know what it means to live with little and to live and trust God for his provision.
Matthew 6 to 33, we understand that God provides for us. We know what it means to be hurt by the ones we love most many times. But we also understand that our focus needs to be on Christ, what we really desire is Christ and not the things of this earth.
But also the Bible, why I want to teach this passage is the Bible clearly teaches a general respect for the older generation. This is taught in the Bible, but it also expects the older generation to be an example, especially when it comes to living in a Christ-like manner.
The older generation should be the model. When we see the older generation, we should see little Christs everywhere. They should be models, little Christ, as I say. Now, how does it look like? How do they live their lives?
They should be serving, they should be loving, they should be self-sacrificing in a way that the church will be able to follow them. This is what Paul talks about. This is what Paul writes about in this passage when he talks to Titus, when he writes this passage to Titus.
If you open up Titus 2, and I will just really address the first three verses, but it will apply obviously to the build-up on the whole book. But as for you, he's speaking to Titus, Paul's speaking to Titus, as for you speak the things which are fitting for sound doctrine.
Older men are to be temperate, dignified, sensible, sound in faith, in love and perseverance. Older women, likewise, are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips, nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good so that they may encourage a younger woman to love their husbands, to love their children.
Paul is really talking about a generation of people, of older Christians who are the models for the church. And I want to predominantly focus on that. They reflect the specific roles of responsibility that God has designed for his children, the older generation, to live out in this world and in their background and their setting in the church.
So when we talk about that, when we talk about the older generation, it is they should be a model. And he starts out, Paul starts out by telling Titus, you should be somebody who teaches sound. And he thinks that teaching that the older generations are models is sound teaching.
It belongs to the sound teaching. But as for you, speak the things which are proper and sound doctrine. And he emphatically says that, emphatically he says, but as for you, you need to teach something different than what we read in the first chapter of Titus, where he talks basically, when you open up the first chapter and read verse 12 and following, Paul talks to Titus and says the following, One of themselves, the prophet of their own, said credence are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.
This testimony is true for the reason we prove them severely so that they may be sound in face, not paying attention to Jewish myths and commandments of men who turn away from the truth. So the pure are all things are pure, but to those who are defied and unbelieving, nothing is pure.
But both their minds and their conscience are defied. They profess to know God, but their deeds, they deny him being detestable and disobedient and worthless for any good deeds. So what Paul is saying to Titus, don't be that way.
But you should be sound in teaching. Paul emphatically commands Titus what the focus of his task is, that false teachers and teaching is wrong and he should be dignified and deliberate in the teaching what is right.
And that's the basis for all what the older generation should also look at. So they should be part of sound teaching. And it's something where Paul here mentions, he says, speak the things which are fitting.
So it's not just teaching. It's not like just coming on Sunday to sermon. It's just every day's teaching should be sound from Titus in this case. Everything what he says should be sound in doctrine, not only some, everything.
His conversation, his vocabulary, everything. So it's a constant thing what he's doing. He's known by the right teaching. And that's what should be the older generation of the church too. They should be known for the word of God living in them and out of them and coming out of them.
The concept is that which is based upon the appropriate sound doctrine that has already been taught. So he's talking about something. Paul says, Titus, you should teach that what I already taught you, but that should be your constant practice.
It implies that Titus was not, he didn't teach something new. He taught something solid, what everybody should know. So when he's talking about sound doctrine, I want to go a little bit in detail. Sound doctrine, he doesn't mean just some part of the Bible, but the whole Bible, the whole Old Testament is implied with that.
And it is, again, in contrast to what he said in the first chapter, this rebellious, empty, deceptive talks from the false teachers. So the basis is for all that, for sound living, is sound doctrine. Healthy doctrine produces healthy spiritual leadership.
Healthy doctrine produces healthy spiritual leadership, which produces healthy Christ-like living, which produces healthy, effective, and evangelical, powerful churches. So what I'm saying is Titus, Paul said to Titus, if you teach sound doctrine, and you should, and you should do it all the time, even when you speak, it will affect your congregation in such a way that you develop healthy leadership, meaning also healthy older people, mature people, which produces healthy Christ-like living.
They don't only know it, they live it also, they practice it. And that, in effect, produces also powerful churches, because we are all part of a church, Christians should be. And as such, this produces healthy churches, powerful churches.
That is something what he taught, and what was a foundation of everything. So, and then he turns his focus on older men. He said, that the older men be sober, reverent, temperate, sound in faith, and love and patience.
So the older men are basically the ones who model the biblical Christ-centered teaching. Older men, who are the older men? So some people say, you know, everybody who's older than me is an older man.
But that's not what he's really saying here, but he most probably is a man between 50 and 60. And I would really come into the category, that's true. Older men, anyone who's older, but sometimes it's older in the eyes of the younger, but the thing is, it's probably somebody who's 50 to 60, who has a grown family, who has a grown ministry, he knows life, who has lived to a certain extent of life, and he's a person who you would go to to find wisdom and help.
And he said, older men, be sober. He needs to be something. It's not sometimes, he's continuously having this kind of attitude, he should be sober, indicating that these are the present and ongoing characteristics of the life of an older man.
And that's very important, what we want to look at. So he should be a sober man. What does it mean? Holding to no wine. Somebody who's sober. Sober, clearly minded, temperate, concept of self-control, primarily with respect to the passions and desires.
He's somebody who has control over the things. The connotation is that they have a clear mental perspective on God, his grace, and obviously with himself. A biblically God-oriented perspective on life and history and things like this.
That's an older man, somebody who has not, he's not a novice, he understands what it is, what he needs to be like. The concept is very simple. In contrast to something what he says, they are not lazy gluttons.
One who is, he's temperate, he's not extravagant, he's not indulging in wrong things. He's somebody who's the opposite of a lazy glutton. Thus they are clearly headed with respect to those, to the use of their time.
They know how to use their time, their money, their energy, their emotions. They know to order their life for the sake of the gospel and the glory of God. This is the people who are our model. They are the ones who should be the discipler, who disciples the younger generation.
They're not easily captivated by distractions, by what is not new, sensational or spectacular. They don't get out of line because there's something new around the corner, some new teaching, some new event or something like this.
They have their life under control. They understand what's right. They're not very easily gravitated by pain, by failure, disappointments or emotions. Those things don't, they understand that. They understand what's happening.
When they get the news that something happened, that there was somebody lost again, a child. When they hear somebody is diagnosed with cancer, they know what to do. They know how to encourage the people.
They also know themselves how to deal with pain. They don't react to somebody hurting them in a way that is unbiblical. They have somebody who controls themselves. His priorities are in the right order and he's satisfied with the fewer and simpler things of life.
That is the man, what I'm talking about, the older man who is sober. This is so because he is fully satisfied in Christ, in God. He's content to do his will, submissive to God's agenda, not swaying by the allurement of the world, by every wind of doctrine.
It sounds so simple, but the truth is this is the hardest thing I'm dealing with teaching my men and my team to be clear-headed, go straight forward and lead the church and lead the training ministry.
It's very easy to get off chart. That's the main thing what Cheryl and I are doing in counseling men. We are very often counseling women and men who are long in the ministry because they didn't understand, they don't understand what it means to just be sober, just simple, plain, go straight forward, not be affected by everything that's in the world and trust in Christ and in God.
The older man must be reverent. What does that mean? Serious, dignified, in contrast to being frivolous, trivial, superficial. This has to do with having a sense of humble, loftiness, appropriate and seriousness.
It's somebody who understands when you have to be serious and be serious. It's a concept where there's self-respect and conduct. People would see him as a respectable person. He reveals a personal dignity, seriousness of purpose that invites honor and respect.
So that's somebody who you want to honor because he is an honorable person, honorable man. He's somebody who understands, has an attitude and perspective born out of understanding the spiritual and the eternal realities of life, the truth of spiritual warfare.
Such a man understands the responsibility of what is a man, husband, father, and what his responsibility is. You understand that a man in the pulpit is a pastor or an elder, is very often affected by what is happening around him, especially when the enemy tries to get into his family, a child rebels, health issues come up, financial situations come up, and he has to stay the course.
He has to understand that he needs to respond to that with respect. He understands pain, suffering, has counted the cost and continues to count the cost. This is the man we talk about. The older man must be also temperate.
He must be self-controlled, somebody who does not get out of balance. His mind is straight, he is mentally fortitude, he is strong. Again, he has a clear understanding of what grace means for himself.
He understands what Paul writes in Romans 12, verse 3. He understands that grace is given to him, that he lives by grace. He is a man of humility. He understands that he cannot elevate himself. He is a man of commitment to prayer.
He is strengthened with courage because he understands that in times of helping people, you need to have courage and be courageous. You can't be afraid of the difficulties of life. And he is resistant to ungodliness of the world.
He is not allured by those things. He understands when to turn off and to say no to things of the world, that offers the world what the world offers. Sometimes you think it's just easy, but there are so many things, even in the Christian ministry, where the difficulties come to the point where young men are pulled away because they are offered a certain position in the church, or they are up front and they get proud.
And that's something what the older men should have overcome already. They should understand that's not good. We had a young man be offered an eldership in another church, and they left the other church.
And then after a while, we met him again and said, what happened because he was kind of very disappointed or really discouraged. And we realized that it was just an offer to get him to that church to help to serve.
And when the time came to make him an elder, they said he's not qualified. He shouldn't have gone in the first place. We all told him not to go because the thing is, you're not going because of your abilities.
You're going because you've proven yourself over years in the ministry, in the local church, to be called into the ministry. And that's true for every other aspect in ministry. So it's a person who is temperate.
His internal foundation is Christ-like goodness, good godliness. Outwardly godly character is based on sound, healthy spiritual life. So he has a sound spiritual life. And that's one thing of what he says here.
That is a man which is in sound and darkness, all the men are to be temperate, dignified, sensible, sound in faith, in love, and perseverance. So they should have a clear understanding. They understand the gospel.
They understand Christ's power in them and through them. There's true masculinity about an outward loving, dignified strength which is based on a healthy inner spiritual life. So they should be sound in faith.
They have learned that God is a good, wise, holy, and can trust them in every way. They can trust God in every way. They are sound in love. They understand what it means to love unlovable people. They understand that love is a decision.
It's not a feeling. It's not what looks good, smells good, or tastes good. It's something what you do because you're convinced it's the right thing to do. Because the scripture teaches us that. A man must be skilled in the activity of godly love and of a Christ-like attitude.
We see that also what it talks about a husband who should be like Christ, loving his wife like Christ loved the church. That's what an older man must. He has it. He understands it. It's not something foreign to them.
An older man must be also sound in perseverance, have sound perseverance. He's enduring. He's fortified. He's steadfast. It has to do with his ability to endure hardship. You don't need to be sound in perseverance if it's easy.
On a cruise ship in Hawaii or something, it's easy to persevere. It's easy to enjoy. That's not what it talks about. It talks about when there is wind blowing in the other direction against you, when you don't know where to go sometimes, and when you have to hold on and understand God is faithful.
When disappointments come, failure comes. When there are times where you have to endure for a long time something, not just a few weeks. We made a mistake in Germany in our ministry, and the result of it was 10 years' hardship in a sense in relationship to those people.
When you make a mistake and you hurt people, then you have to expect a negative reaction. That reaction was only after 10 years they trusted us again. You saw that there's a possibility of moving together, do something together.
But it took so long. Some people asked me, why don't you reject them? I said, I can't reject them. As Christians, we need to do every effort to be loving and caring and working together. So this man is, when I talk about the older man, he is a man who is spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and morally strong.
He is a man who is spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and morally strong. Somebody like Job. So he has slain me, yet I will trust in him. Paul. I endured all things for the sake of the elect. Hebrews.
Hall of Faith. Run the race with endurance. Remember that. It's huge. I just taught last week on Hebrews 11. Faith that endures. When you read that, you get always tears in your eyes. Those men and women who have loved God so much that they believed in something, the future, the hope of the future, not even having to hold a hand on it, they didn't have the revelation we had yet.
Or in Ephesians 6, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. That's the person. It is when a man's inner life is really strengthened in the face of Christ, hope and love that the flavor of the loving strength and true manhood blooms in his life.
I mean, somebody who we see as an older man, mature man, is somebody who you want to really, you gravitate towards them. You gravitate towards them. That's for the man. And then on the other hand, he goes on, Paul goes on, the older woman likewise, he says, likewise that they be reverent in behavior, no slanders, no giving too much wine, teaching of good things.
So he expects from the older man and the younger man and the older women in the church to be this kind of model, so that the younger men have a model and the older men and the younger women have a model in the older women.
It seems very simple. That's discipleship. That's the model of the church, how church should function. It's older women and older men should lead the younger ones. And not because they are older, but because they have lived their life with Christ and modeled it.
As Paul spoke to the man, so he talks here to the older woman, the connotation is this woman, the older women are beyond childbearing. They have the children. They have raised their family. The kids are going out of the home.
They are the ones who already deal with maybe the grandchildren. And this is what we know. We realize we have six grandchildren, and we realize life is not stopping. It's always modeling, always being an example.
They come to us, and not only the children come to us. They like to listen to the stories of Cheryl, my wife, the grandmother, sitting on the lap and listening to the stories. But my daughters call her nearly daily for advice.
What advice do they need? Loving the husbands. Loving the children. Because the husbands are not always lovable, neither are the children always lovable. It's 724 or whatever. It's all day, every day, every hour issue.
We men are just sometimes really bad. But she is supposed to be a woman who is a model in her conduct of her life, and she has a legacy about her. The younger women would look to her, I want to be like you.
If I'm married one day, I want to do exactly the same. I want to see the patience you have, the love you have for your husband and your wife, your children. The idea is a woman should live and act in a manner corresponding to her faith she possesses and the duty she has been called to.
Her behavior must reflect respect, love, and an awe for God. You want to be with this person because you see God reflected in her. The question is how she moves her body. The expression of her countenance, what she says, and what she does not say.
The whole habit of what she does is right. She carries the implication of concerning, even in how she dresses, what her speech is. She just does the things which are fitting to the Lord. She's not thinking, there's not the question, oh, what is she doing now?
No, you know already, you anticipate that she will say something what is in coherence with the scripture and would glorify the Lord. This characteristic focus on a woman's heart and her overall lifestyle.
She must have a gracious speech. She's not a slanderer. She's not one of the soap operas where you slander about everybody else and try to show yourself above everybody. No, she doesn't use her speech to slander other people.
She's not gossipers. She doesn't criticize. She wants to rather try to use the opportunity to lift others up and make them look good. The key idea is a woman must be careful with her tongue. You all know how dangerous and how much money is made with this kind of thing, with gossip and slander.
Think about all the media which is out there, all the digital media which is used. Oh, did you hear the news? And suddenly 100 million people know about something which is not true. The worst thing is to go back and have to say, that was not right.
So it's something where she is somebody who keeps her tongue really so that she is honoring the Lord with what she says. There are many, many passages in the scripture which warn us to use the tongue in an evil way in Proverbs and James where it really is talking about the evil tongue.
And this is not what she is. She is a person who understands to be not slanderous. She must be a person who is self-controlled, not giving too much wine. Why is that? Why should she be not giving too much wine?
Why are the older women always drinking wine? That's not what it talks about really. It does talk about so many, but what it is, is they have lived for probably 30, 40 years, grown their children, and their bodies are aching.
And in that time, in order to when you didn't have medication, you drink a glass of wine. In order that you don't ache. It's not something she wants to be drunk. No, she wants to just don't feel the physical pain, which is understandable.
But he warns, don't do it, because it doesn't only take your pain away, it also makes your mind, gives you a wrong mind, and you might say and do things which are wrong. And that is also warning to not over-medicate.
You have to understand, when you use this kind of medications which are not wrong to take something against pain, but what is more important than pain? It's to be conscientious and be a testimony to the Lord.
So you have to sometimes overcome. My mother lives next to us, she's over 80 years old, and she has pain. They put a wrong hip on her, and every day she walks. We would scream, she walks, because she says, why should I complain about pain?
That's part of my life. And if I complained about pain, nobody would listen anyway, and nobody would want to be close to me. So she bites her tongue, so to speak, and doesn't say anything. And she said, you know, she just focused on the good things, and that's what it talks about.
Somebody who just is not given to these things, to much wine. She must be instructor of a woman, a teacher of good things, and there's a lot entailed in that. She's somebody who teaches good things. What are the good things?
Proverbs 31, for instance, the whole thing. She's a person, she models the thing. And I'm not talking teaching, just being in a classroom. No, I'm teaching by her life. You want to follow her, you learn something.
You know when a younger woman, just before she gets married, I don't know if you are here, you're getting married today, but if you're getting married and you are afraid, what am I cooking my husband the first week after I'm back home?
How do I do this? How do I iron the clothes? How do I make the house? You go to the older woman, and she tells you, she shows you. So often, my wife has done that for all the other, not only for our kids, but for the girls in the church.
How to iron clothes? How to make a meal? How to keep the kids ready when the husband comes back home? And all those kind of things. Issues where you can model something. And then the younger woman understands and will follow her.
So what am I saying here? What is the goal of the older generation? Why is it the wealth of the church? Because they have lived with Christ, and they have a Christ-like life that they model in front of the younger generation.
They are basically the disciples of the young generation. They are the engine of the church, really. It's not the young people. Yes, the young people can be the engine of the church. They have visions, they are energetic and all that stuff, but it has to have content and depth.
And if I want to go to somebody, I'm not going to a 20 or 30-year-old person. When I just had a situation of terminal cancer or terminal things that somebody lost their life, I wouldn't go to that person to help me through that.
I go to a person who has experiences and understands how to navigate me through this. And that's what I'm saying. It's so important for us as a church to understand that the wealth of the church is in the older people.
Not only, but it is in the older people. They are the ones who should model what Christ lived and what Christ is. And just for one illustration that helps you, maybe even from the perspective of the world, how they view it.
A few years ago, my daughter was in class and there was an election in Germany. And all the political parties came to the high school and wanted to give their speech, why they should vote for them. And the interesting part is the high school, usually they are not like the 18 and up are just a few, but they wanted to vote for the age of 16 that you can vote in Germany.
And the argument was this. Do you trust the old generation that they can make decisions for you? That was what the political party said. To my daughter, she was 16. And all the young people came together, nearly all of them, and said, we don't trust you because we can trust our parents.
It's interesting. They understand that the wealth of the age and the mature people is in their wisdom that they have gotten. And that's not even Christian wisdom. The point is, we as Christians should really honor that and help that and encourage that.
And let me pray. Father God, we are indeed grateful for your goodness and your kindness to us. Thank you for giving us, even Paul who admonishes Titus to respect the older generation as a young man. And how he, in a few words, just tells how important that is that we as older people model and exemplify Christ in our life and teach it to the next generation.
Do that, God, with us. Let us be, if we are young, that we are willing to learn, to observe, and to take in teaching of the older generation and if we are the older generation, that we are willing to give our time and life to teaching the next generation who Christ is and how he would want us to live.
In Jesus' name, amen.