Titus 2:1-10
Praise him, all creatures, give
him glory. Praise him, all men, give him
glory. Praise him, all creatures, give
him glory. Praise him, all men, give him
glory. Pray with me. Our Lord, we thank
you for every good and perfect gift that comes from you. We
realize that every moment of every day, every breath we take,
every penny that we have, every morsel we eat, every stitch upon
our back, every shingle over our heads is from you. Lord,
we’re a self-sufficient people. We think we’ve earned it. We
think it’s ours. We’re entitled to it. Break us
of that this day and remind us that it is in you that we live,
move and have our being. We offer ourselves and these
offerings to you today. Use us and use these dollars
to make the name of Jesus famous to the ends of the earth so that
the church is full and heaven rejoices. We ask it all in Jesus
name. Amen. You may be seated. Please
turn in your copy of God’s word to Titus chapter two. Our reading
today is verses one through 10. But we’re going to break chapter
two apart over the next three, four, five weeks, and look at
what the apostle Paul commands Titus to teach to various people. Today, it will be to older men
in the coming weeks, to older women, then younger women and
younger men. And then he gives a category of slaves under the
Roman form of slavery during the time this letter was written.
So let us give our attention to God’s holy word, his inspired
word, his word that does not err. But as for you, speaking
to Timothy or to Titus, as for you, teach what accords with
sound doctrine. Older men are to be sober minded,
dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, sound in love and sound
in right or steadfastness. Older women, likewise, are to
be reverent in behavior. not slanderers or slaves to much
wine. 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.
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. Slaves 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 Savior. Let’s pray now and ask for God’s
help and blessing and grace. Lord, we thank you for being
a God who speaks. We thank you for your word and
how by your Holy Spirit, by your providential care, these words,
which we have just read in our own language, have been preserved
through the ages, translated faithfully into our own tongue.
We bless you and thank you for the many copies of your word.
We recognize that generations before us did not have such,
but we had to recall and remember what was said. We are blessed
with an abundance of Bibles. We pray that this moment, these
minutes, would not be commonplace, but that we would see them as
they really are, that when your word is read and proclaimed faithfully,
it is not just a word about God, but it is a word from God. And
so let us recognize it and treasure it, trust it, believe it, and
put it into practice in our lives. With your help, with your grace,
and with your blessing, we ask in Jesus’ name, amen. What is
a young pastor, a young minister to say to the older men of the
church? What right has a young minister,
a young man to say anything to the old men of the church? You
know, the saying could be, Oh, he’s just a young whooper snapper.
He’s a young buck. When I was his age, that was,
you know, this many years ago and such and such. What does
a young preacher say to older men? Well, here’s what Paul tells
Titus that he, a young man, ought to say to the older men. And
it’s this, live in a way that adorns the gospel of Jesus Christ. Live in a way that represents
or reflects godliness. Here in our passage today, Paul
is telling Titus, a young minister on the island of Crete. Remember,
he’s also writing young Timothy two letters at the same time.
Here’s the thrust. Here’s the emphasis. Here is
the push of your ministry. It’s to preach and teach to all
the people of God, but here to four or five classes of people
with special instruction. It’s to teach them the word of
God and how they are to live in the covenant community together
as a church body in a sound and orderly way that also when they
are living life out in the world, reflects heaven to those who
will watch and see. What does he teach? He teaches
them to live in a way that is a good witness. He teaches them
to live in a way that reflects the gospel, to live in a way
that reflects the realities of heaven. So what is a young preacher
to teach to the older men of the congregation? Now I’m speaking
here of Titus to his congregation in Crete, but you see the application
today, me being a younger man, preaching to a congregation that
does have older people in it. as well as young and in between.
Our job as ministers is to teach what accords with sound doctrine. We want to be healthy Christian
people, old and young and men and women and slaves and people
in the workplace and whatever we are to live in such a way
that adorns the gospel of Jesus. Now we’ll notice in the coming
weeks that when Paul speaks to the older men and the older women,
there’s a word used that’s you’re to urge them. It’s a strong word,
urge, encourage. But when he speaks to the younger
generation, he uses the word admonish. And it reminds us of
social graces, doesn’t it? We’re to remember who we are.
We’re to put ourselves in our place and to live in accord with
others stations in life, their status in life, their status
in the Christian community. We’re to respect and to play
by those rules of common grace. And so Paul today is not going
to admonish, but he is going to urge older men to live in
a certain way. Now, first of all, we got to
define Who is an older man? Some of you are counting on your
fingers and your toes and you’re wondering, do you fit in that
category? Well, in the New Testament, an older man was probably in
his fifties or sixties. And if an older man made it into
his seventies, it was a miracle upon miracles. We’re living in
a day where the average lifespan is increasing with healthcare
and technology, with our ability to prolong life through various
means. We’re thankful that God, in his wisdom and through the
work of image bearers, we are able to prolong life, to beat
cancer, to mend broken bones. We’re grateful for those things.
But in the Old and New Testament, people did not live as long.
And so maybe the apostle Paul is addressing men in their 50s,
60s, 70s. Who knows? But he’s addressing
old men. He uses the word presbyteros,
or the word for someone who is old. They are aged. They are
wise. You’re to address older men this
way. So we have our definition of
old age. You’ve got to decide whether you fit in it or not.
I’ll be offensive if I say much more. I just recall a few years
ago when I turned 35, the staff at my church brought me a birthday
cake and they said, how old are you? And I said, I’m 35. And
then I made the comment, I’m halfway there. Well, the lady
who was handing me my cake was 70. She didn’t like that very
much. And I’m very lucky that that cake did not end up in my
face. So I know not to say too much. Maybe. Second thing about older men,
we depend upon them. Older men are the rock. They
are the foundation. They are the strength. They are
the steady in our lives. We look up to our fathers. We
look up to our grandfathers. We look up to those who have
strength and leadership and dignity. We can count on them. They’ve
been through it. They’ve done it. And they’ve
got the T-shirt. Now, as we Think about what the
New Testament here, particularly in Titus, says that we ought
to encourage for old men. We must remember the effects
of sin and the curse on this world as you get older. Maybe
a few amens from some of you men, you get decreased energy,
you get decreased zeal, your senses are disappearing, your
desire to do things, your ability to do things is not what it once
was. But God is calling us here to
think about how in our old age we can renew our zeal for serving
the Lord, how we can ramp up our love and devotion to God.
I want you to think about Moses for a minute. Moses was 80 years
old when he stood at that burning bush. Now we got to remember
Moses died at 120. There’s a little difference in
age span, but 80 is not young. Whether you’re Moses at 120,
I don’t know how it works with Methuselah and some of those
that live 969 years. Y’all have to figure that out on Sunday
afternoon, Google it or whatever. But Moses stood at the burning
bush at age 80 and God said, you’re going to go to Pharaoh and you’re going to speak to
him about my people. And you’re going to ask them to let them
go. Moses did all that. We’ve read it. We’ve studied
it. We’ve heard it. We know the story of Moses, the Exodus and
Pharaoh and the Red Sea, the Dead Sea, the, the, the, the
desert, the wilderness, the mountain meeting God face to face. And
you know, when Moses died, you can read this just before the
book of Joshua says Moses died. 120 years of age. His eye was undimmed, his vigor
was unabated, and there has not arisen another like him in history,
who spoke with God face to face, who saw the wonders and the might
of Almighty God, and who saw the power and the deeds of Almighty
God before Pharaoh. And so lest you think this sermon
is pie in the sky, lest you think Paul’s encouraging it to Timothy,
lest you think it’s something for someone else. Remember, God
is never finished with you, not in this life and not in the life
to come. For whatever age or shape or
condition or energy level you are currently experiencing, God
can and does and will and is using you. And so what does the
Apostle Paul tell Titus to preach and to teach to the older men
of the congregation? Well, we find it in chapter two,
verse two. He says, first in verse one,
as for you, Titus, teach what accords with sound doctrine.
Older men are to be sober minded, dignified and self-controlled.
And then there to be sound, sound in three ways, sound in the faith,
sound in love and sound instead fastness. And so, dear older
brothers of the congregation, God is calling you to be sober
minded. He’s calling you to be dignified.
He’s calling you to be self-controlled and to be sound in the faith,
sound in love and sound instead fastness. Now, some of you are
thinking and your wheels are spinning in your mind, those
cogs are turning, they’re connecting with one another. You’re a good
Bible student. And you say, isn’t this for all of us really? Well,
of course it is. Every person who has faith in
Jesus and who is a new creation in Christ, the old is gone. It’s
been crucified, put to death. God has forgiven you of your
sins, and he’s given you a new heart, a new life, a new mind.
He’s regenerated you. He’s made you a new creation
in Christ. All of us ought to be sober minded. Every one of
us ought to be dignified, self-controlled, sound in the faith, sound in
love, and sound in steadfastness. But he’s speaking here to specific
categories of men and women, older and younger, and then to
slaves. What does he mean? He wants men
of the church. He wants men of the church who
are not extravagant. They’re sober minded. They see
reality. They’ve lived enough life to
know that what’s gone is gone and what’s come will come and
what’s happened has happened. And there will be nothing new
under the sun. They are sober minded. They are
not extravagant. They’re in touch. with reality. I have a friend who is a pretty
black and white thinker and he says there’s two categories of
people. There are people who have a firm grip on reality and
there are people who do not. And when he describes people
who do not have a firm grip on reality, he says, look at their
lifestyle. They spend money as if it grows on trees. They live
extravagantly as if there is no limit. They don’t stop. They believe that life is to
be filled up with pleasure and with joy everlasting on this
earth. But God calls us to be sober
minded, to be of a mind that is not full of extravagant. God calls us to be dignified,
to be reverent, to be sober, to be serious. He calls us not
to be superficial. We want to bump into men in the
church. who are sober minded, who are
dignified, they reflect the seriousness of life. They reflect, yes, the
joy of life, the laughter of life, the humor in things, but
there’s a seriousness about them that we live for the glory of
God. And we live for the gospel of God and that we are living
in a world that is full of devils. It is full of sin. It is full
of curse. It is full of spiritual realities. And we are living
in a struggle against the present evil darkness. And until Jesus
comes, life is to be lived, sober minded and dignified, but also
self controlled. Oh, don’t we need a dose of self
control this day and age? We’re impulse people. The phone
buzzes and we grab it. We used to not answer the phone
in front of people. But you can be out in public and you hear,
hello? Yeah, good to see you, Ray and
Bob and Billy and Susie and whatever. We carry on conversations because
we’re impulsive. We spend impulsively. We drive
impulsively. We respond to people impulsively
and we’re to be Men and women of the church, older men are
to be sober minded, dignified, self controlled. What does it
mean to live those three ways? We’re going to look at the other
three in just a moment. What does it mean to be sober minded, dignified,
self controlled? I have a dog and he is not sober
minded. He is not dignified and he is
for sure not self-controlled. Now we’ve had him about five
years. He’s gotten more obedient. He’s gotten more pleasant to
be around. We enjoy him. He lays around
and sleeps quite a bit. He bops around the house, touching
noses and wanting to know if you’re there, but he’s impulsive. He wants to eat all the time
and he doesn’t want to eat what he’s been fed. He wants to eat
what we’re eating, but he’s not sober minded, dignified or self
controlled. And we are human beings. We are
made in the image of God. And we are able, more and more,
as we die to sin and live to righteousness, as we set goals
and ask for the work of the spirit, we are able to train ourselves
to live godly lives. Sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled. And you say, oh, this is stoic.
It would be a boring life. No, it’s a godly life. You see,
the world needs consistent people. The world needs self-controlled
people. The world needs people who aren’t loose, who aren’t falling apart
at the seams. And so older men are to be sober
minded, dignified, self-controlled. But notice the next three things.
They’re to be sound in the faith, sound in love and sound in steadfastness. What does it mean, first of all,
to be sound? Well, we’ve talked in recent weeks about sound doctrine
helps put the church in order. Sound means the bone is healthy,
it’s straight. But sound also is a word that
we get our hygiene from. Do you have good hygiene or do
you have bad hygiene? You get around somebody that
has stinky breath and you wonder if they brush their teeth this week.
You get around somebody who hasn’t taken a bath and they are, how
do we put it gently, malodorous. You get around somebody who doesn’t
brush their hair and we say they’re unkempt. And the person, the
Christian, is to look as if they have good hygiene in the things
of the faith. And so they’re to be sound in
faith. And faith can be understood in
two ways. A body of what we believe, but also believing with conviction.
what we find in that body of belief. So does the person believe
the Bible is true and do they live the Bible as true, that
Jesus is their way of salvation and that obedience to him is
what God calls us to be as Christians. We’re sound in the faith. We’ve
got that worked out. We’re feeding it. We’re nurturing
it. We’re growing. We’re in church. We’re with the people of God.
We read the Bible, sing the Bible, pray the Bible. We come to the
sacraments. We’re sound in the faith. What
about love? Here we are on Valentine’s week.
Love, love, love. Say it with a box of chocolates.
Say it with a bottle of champagne. Say it with, and we probably
got to stop because the list gets a little unmentionable,
but love, love, love. Well, the Christian word for
love that is used here is agape. And it’s a word that is specific
to the Christian church. And it’s a word that is used
in conjunction with the Christian community. When we say love in
the Christian church, it is most often, I love you with everything
I have. I’ll give up, I’ll sacrifice,
I’ll do and I’ll die for you with nothing, nothing in exchange,
nothing in return. And so when we’re to love one
another in the church, we’re to love one another like God
loved us in Christ. He died for you. He paid for
your sins. He didn’t say it. Does he deserve
it? He didn’t say, is she worthy? He died when you were unworthy. And that’s how we’re to love
one another. We’re to love one another. Sacrificially, we’re to love
one another. Like God loves us with a love
that will never let go of the object of our love. And so the
person The man of God, the old man, every Christian ought to
be sound in the faith, what they believe and how they practice
it. But they ought to be sound in love. You ought to know when
you’re in the presence of that older man or that Christian that
you are loved with the love of Christ, that you are loved with
the love that will never let you go. But the old man, the
older men, Every Christian ought to be also sound in steadfastness. What is the number one characteristic
of God we find in the Old Testament? It’s the steadfast love of God. Yahweh, the covenant making and
covenant keeping God is a God of steadfast love. He’s a God
of chesed. He’s a God of mercy. He loves
you with a love that will never ever let you go. It doesn’t matter
if you forget him, if you fail him, or if you fall, he loves
you because he plays for keeps. He plays forever. And so God
is calling old man. He’s calling every one of us
as believers to be sound in steadfastness. Oh, we live in such a fickle
culture. We were talking in Sunday school
about Yelp, that little social media thing where you can go
on a restaurant’s website and you can say the table was dirty.
The service was bad or best barbecue in town, free refills, great
service, whatever, good, bad, or the ugly. We live in a time
where you can critique, you can comment. And one place that is hot today,
full of people, raking in the cash with sales, can be out of
business the next. because we aren’t faithful. Some
of you grew up in the generation where every Friday night you
ate at the same place. You ate at the cafeteria and
you ate at the cafeteria because the cafeteria was the cafeteria
and there’s no other place to eat but the cafeteria. And if
you go somewhere else, you are committing treason against the
cafeteria. Not today. We’re fickle. We change
our minds. We go with the crowd. We’re lemons.
We go this way. We go that way. We’ll go over
the cliff. And God wants us to be people who are steadfast,
who are immovable. who are godlike. And so what
is God asking here of older men and also of every Christian?
Reflect the realities of heaven on earth in the church community. But in your faithful witness
in the world, what’s he asking for? He’s asking for men and
women and boys and girls. And yes, specifically here for
the old men. But it does apply to all of us. Don’t be extravagant. Don’t be superficial. Don’t be
unwise. And be a faithful Christian,
full of love, full of faith and full of steadfastness. Oh, yes,
this ought to be true of every Christian. But older men, he’s
calling you out specifically today in the word. He did it
for Titus on the Isle of Crete to those men he ministered to.
He’s doing it to you today. And so listen with your ears
and think about Moses. Moses at the age of 80, the burning
bush, the presence of God, the call of God. Moses was a little
reluctant. I don’t know if I can do this.
And God said, oh, you’ll be fit because I am will be with you. And so, dear brothers and sisters,
if there’s ever anything in the Christian faith you don’t think
you’re capable of doing, you need to think better and bigger
about your God. Because by the work of the Spirit,
through the ministry of the Word, God can do anything in you. He
can speak and raise from the dead. He can speak and take what
is lifeless and put life into it. He can make them bones. Remember
Ezekiel 37? He can make them dry, dead bones
live. And so this is a call to vitality. This is a call to faithful Christian
living. If your eye is growing dim and
your strength is fading, call on God today and say, God, I
don’t know how many more years you have left for me, but together
let’s make the most of it. Pray with me. Our Lord and God,
you are our strength. You are our song. And until our
last breath leaves us, we want to serve you faithfully. Oh,
it’ll be different. It’ll be different in our old
age. We lose some things, but we never lose you. So be our
help, be our strength, be our energy, our zeal, our vigor.
And may we be like Moses and take our marching orders. May
it be said of us when we are finally laid to rest, Our eyes
were undimmed, our vigor unabated, because we serve the great king
of kings who could give us strength. And we ask for your help and
blessing and strength in the name of Jesus, who has conquered
all for us. Amen.