Titus 2:1-10
reading today will be Titus chapter
2 verses 1 through 10. Today we are in part 3 of our
study of Titus chapter 2, 1 through 10. We’ve looked in the first
week at what Titus is to teach the older men. Last week we considered
what Titus was to teach the older women. Now today there’s a shift
in the passage and the shift in the passage comes this way.
The topic is what the older women are to teach the younger women
in the church. These particular young women
are not just young in age. By virtue of the statements made,
the content of the teaching, it is the young women who are
married and also have children. And so as we give our attention
to God’s Word, we remember that in Titus, What Paul is teaching
Titus, the young pastor on the island of Crete, what he’s teaching
him is this, that if the people of the church, if the people
of God as new creations in Jesus, live in such a way that they
prove that their doctrine, their belief, their faith about God
is heavenly, if they live in such a way that adorns the gospel,
it will do two things. One, it will prove adversaries
wrong. But two, it will be a great witness
to the power and the glory of the gospel of Jesus as he takes
men and women and boys and girls who were dead in their sins and
trespasses and makes them alive in Christ and then gives them
the task of fulfilling their callings and duties as Christians
living life in this world. So hear God’s word from Titus
chapter two, beginning at verse one. But as for you, he’s speaking
to Titus. As for you, Titus, teach what
accords with sound doctrine. Older men are to be sober-minded,
dignified, self-controlled, sound in the faith and love and in
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. Amen. This is God’s word. Pray
with me. Lord, we come to a passage today that the world does not
like, but we come as people Who are committed to the scriptures.
We believe that they are true. We believe that they are our
only rule of faith and practice. We believe that what you teach
shows us how is new creations in Christ, how we ought to live
to have a well ordered and peaceful life, but also to witness to
the world the greatness. and the goodness of Jesus. Help
us this day to hear, to receive, to understand, and to put into
practice in our lives these very things. We ask for your help
and blessings, and we ask for it in the name of Jesus, and
we pray it in his name. Amen. If you read the news, if
you are aware of what is going on around us, What takes place
in Florida, what takes place across the ocean and other countries
as we see men and women and boys and girls, people of all ages
and religions rebelling against authority, rebelling against
God given institutions, rebelling against the sanctity of life.
As you see these things, we notice them and we watch the pundits
on television. We hear the debates. We see the
solutions written in newspaper editorials and we hear everyone
say how to fix the problem. Let’s make a new law. Let’s control
this or that. Let’s legislate. But I remind
you as brothers and sisters in the faith, as Christians, as
people of the book, we believe that the problem we are experiencing
in our culture It’s no different than the last century, or the
one before, or the one before that, or go back several millennia
into the beginning with creation. We believe that we are in an
age-old battle between right and wrong, an age-old battle
between good and evil, an age-old battle between God, the sovereign,
and Satan, the rebel. We believe, we understand from
the Bible that God made this world and everything in it very
good. We believe that when God made
this world and everything in it, and he made it very good,
it was supposed to be a peaceful place of love, worship, fellowship,
of work, of service, and of glory and joy. And we understand that
just two chapters into Genesis, all that was ruined. Because
Satan came into the world, he came and entered the garden and
he cast doubt in the minds of Adam and Eve. And he basically
said, God is not worthy of your worship. You are. God’s word
is not to be trusted. You trust in yourself and your
own judgment. And so Satan tempted Adam and
Eve. And from Adam and Eve’s sin,
from their falling short of God’s glory, from their transgression
of God’s law, we might say, as we do in the South, all hell
broke loose. And you read the chapters that
follow Genesis 3, where God curses Satan. God curses the ground. God curses the creation. God
curses the woman. God curses the man. And God says
to Adam and Eve, there will be difficulty in your life. Oh,
yes, he did give gospel hope. But he said there will be difficult
in your life by the sweat of your brow. You will toil by your
frustration, by the by the smack of the hammer on your thumb,
by the difficulty in raising little ones, by the struggle
to make ends meet. You will live life. And so we understand, do we not,
brothers and sisters, that God made the world and everything
in it very good, but Satan meant to destroy it. And so as we live
life in this fallen world, as we live under the crooked and
depraved generation that we see all around us, we have to remember
that God’s grand design was marred, it was ruined, it was broken,
it was cursed by sin. But we also have to remember
the gospel, that Jesus comes to make all things new. Jesus
comes to make all things new, and the way he does that is one
by one, family by family. He enters into our hearts and
our minds. And as he regenerates us, as
he makes us into new creations, he then calls us by the gospel,
by the scriptures, through the ministry of the church to live
in such a way. that order begins to be restored
to this world that is so messed up and marred and cursed by creation. And so as we live life in this
world, as we live before a crooked and depraved generation, before
a dark and dying people, we who have been made new in Christ
Jesus, individuals and families and congregations are able to
show the world what Jesus is able to do by the power of his
gospel as he turns back the darkness of sin. And so this passage,
just as we have seen in weeks past, speaks to us, the New Covenant
community. And here we have singled out
how the new humanity under the ministry of Titus on the Island
of Crete to the older women are to have a ministry to the younger
women. So that, as we like to say, the
church is an outpost of heaven. It’s a sampling to the watching
world of what heaven must be like. So too, the home, ought
to be, but what one wonderful book title we have on our shelf
at home, it says a home ought to be a place of grace. And so think in these terms this
day, the church is an outpost of heaven. And even the home
in some way is a subset of that. And so how will people know what
heaven will be like? Well, they come to church. But
also there’s a sense where they may come to your home and the
only inkling they will ever get in this life, either by coming
to your church or to your home, is to know what heaven is like
through what they experience there. Now we may say for just
a few moments, we may say that Titus is preaching on the island
of Crete 2000 years ago, certainly things were different. Nope,
their culture was just as wacky, their worship, their desires,
their culture, their beliefs, the challenges to the Christian
church, it was just as difficult. They just didn’t have the internet
or television or other modern technologies to propagate these
things. What is Paul’s marching orders to Titus? What are our
marching orders today? It’s simply this, teach what
accords with sound doctrine. Notice how he says that in verse
one to Titus, teach what accords with sound doctrine. And then
at the end of our passage, it says, so that the word of God
may not be blasphemed or reviled. or maligned. So one of the things
we have to think about as we understand how tight us is to
teach the older women to teach the younger women is the whole
purpose is this so that our lives are in accord with sound doctrine
and so that the word of God is not maligned or reviled or blasphemed
by our behavior. Now, I want to say a handful
of things at the outset before we dig into this passage. The
first thing is this. We believe the scripture to be
true. Every word of it. We believe
that God wrote it. He used holy men of old who were
carried along by the Holy Spirit. And we believe the word of God
to be absolute, to be true, and it to be our only rule of faith
and practice. The second thing I want to say
to us at the outset is this. Satan continues to hiss in the
ears of God’s people. Just as he did with Eve, and
just as he did with Adam, and just as he has done throughout
the entirety of human history, he continues to hiss in the ears
of people saying this, did God really say? God wants us to question,
or Satan wants us to question God and his word. Third thing
I want us to understand at the outset is this, the world continues
to put down Christian values and practices. I don’t have to
tell you that, but it’s good for us to be reminded of that.
Fourth is this, our own sin nature. Our own sin nature says to us,
we preach to ourselves every day, dear self, have it all. Dear self, believe in yourself.
Dear self, serve you. Dear self, get what you want. even if it’s contrary to what
God wants for you. There’s a fifth thing that we
ought to consider at the outset of this passage. We probably
endured a generation or two now where these things that Paul
is teaching to the church at Crete have not been taught in
the church in America. We’ve wholesale as an evangelical
church in America bought into evangelical feminism and other
sorts of bags of tricks that Satan has up his sleeve. The
sixth thing I want to tell you is Where I have come from personally,
I’ve been married 19 years. My wife and I have both worked
outside the home, but when kids came, it’s just been me. She
stayed home with the children, and it’s been a blessing. We’ve
been able to do that. We may not have two pensions.
We may not have a 529 plan. Our kids may struggle to find
college money. We may not have trips to Disney. We may not have
all those things, but we’ve chosen this path, and it’s been a great
blessing to us. I grew up in a home where mom
stayed, dad worked. When we were in high school and
the first child went off to college, mom went to teach English. That’s
how we got through school. I grew up with one grandmother
who stayed at home, another who was a nurse all her career. And
probably if it wasn’t for her career, my mom’s family would
not have made it financially. And so I’ve come from a background
that’s a little mixed and varied. We all have different perspectives
on a passage like this. The last thing I want to say
at the outset of this passage is this. We are living in a two
income world. We are living in a world where
it really takes two incomes to make ends meet in most homes.
Now, why that is true, we could argue about that and discuss
it. But we’re living in a two income world where everyone wants
the American dream. And we’re living in a day where
the earning power of women is outpacing men. And so now on
to the message. of this passage from Titus chapter
two. What should the older women teach
the younger women of the church? What does Paul encourage Titus
in his ministry to teach. Well, last week we saw that he
encouraged Titus to teach the older women to teach what is
good and so train or so encouraged the young women to do X, Y, and
Z. Well, the X, Y, and Z is in our
passage today. And I’ve broken this up into
two main headings. First, a young woman and her
home. And then second, a young woman
and her holiness. So a young woman and her home,
and then a young woman and her holiness. First, let’s think
together about a young woman and her home. This passage is
speaking to young women, it surely says, but it’s young women who
have a husband and have children. Now we have to think for just
a moment about how in the last 150 years, feminism in America
has really jaded the church. Probably about 15 years ago when
we were on our annual beach trip, we were sitting in the Presbyterian
church where about 10 generations of my family worshiped. This
is down in the low country of South Carolina. This church is
now in the mainline denomination. They don’t believe the Bible.
And the preacher got up to preach what was in the lectionary that
week. Well, the lectionary was Ephesians five about husbands
and wives and you know how that can go. And he spent the first
two thirds of his sermon basically saying the Bible is not true.
Then he spent another good portion saying, and Paul was a misogynist. And then he went on saying, blah,
blah, blah. And by the time he got to it, you wonder what was
left. Was there any meat left on the bone? Because he had picked
it all off and thrown it away. But we’re living in a time where
cultural conditions have really been swallowed up in the church.
And as we look around culture, we do see that the God-ordained
institutions, both in the church and in the broad and general
world, have been put away. What did God ordain as the institutions
to make the world a happy and holy place? He ordained the church,
he ordained the home, and he ordained the civil government.
He’s given governors to rule over us. He’s given us moms and
dads to raise us up. And he’s given us the church
to make us into spiritual children. And we now live in a world, and
I think the church has largely adopted it, where we believe
there are two institutions, the state or the government, and
the individual. We’ve thrown the church out the
window on this side of the house, and we’ve thrown the family out
the window on this other side of the house. And so we wonder,
why another school shooting? And so we wonder why is our generation
after generation before our eyes, godless? Why are they reckless? Why are they rebellious? We wonder
why culture is so rotten. We wonder why these things. It’s
not because we don’t have enough laws. Those really don’t do much.
It’s not because the school system needs to get better and better.
It’s because we need to go back to the Bible and we need to understand
that God ordained the home. He ordained the church and he
ordained the civil government to be the institutions that rule
over the world and make a peaceful society. We have turned away
from God and his ordained institutions. And so now we find ourselves
in the fix that we are in and we want to legislate our way
out of it. when the simple way is to repent and believe the
gospel and follow after God in obedience. Now, don’t you think
Titus faced some of the same challenges when he went to minister
in the churches on the island of Crete? and to teach and to
preach and to train the older women in such a way, to train
the younger women in such a way, don’t you think he bumped into
the same things? I mean, they had Gnosticism.
They had strange views of people and the way people were made
up. They had the same gender identity struggles that we have
today. And so what is Titus to teach
the older women, to teach the younger women? Well, if a young
woman and her home is the topic, I want you to think of it in
this way. The job of the older women in the church is to train
the younger women, to encourage them, to teach them, to attend
their gardens of their homes. Now, what does that look like?
What are the nuts and bolts? Does one home look like another?
I think there’s a little room to vary. God in his providence
has given each of us gifts and abilities and incomes and statuses
in life. Some of us have generations to
take care of. Others are here all by ourselves. Some of us
have businesses. Some of us have jobs, different
ways, different things. But there’s four keys that the
older women are to train the younger women in in this passage.
One is there to be husband lovers. That’s the word literally used.
It’s a word that combines love, the philos word, and husband.
The young women are to be husband lovers. Paul likes to take two
words and jam them together, and he does it here. The young
women are to be husband lovers. The second thing is they’re to
be children lovers. He does exactly the same thing
that he did with husbands. He takes the children word and
the love word, the philos, the Philadelphia word, And he jams
them together. So there to be husband lovers,
children lovers. And then as if two unique words
isn’t enough, he uses a third unique word and says they are
to be working at home. And of course, this is where
the rub comes in with our culture and with the teachings of the
world that we live in. But what does that mean? He,
jumbles together two words. The first word is work. The other
one is home. It’s a stewardship word. They
are to make their home work, to make it efficient, to make
it sing, to make it beautiful, to make it a place of grace.
If we were to run to the Old Testament, we would run to no
other place than Proverbs 31. I like to call that passage,
the bionic woman passage. If you can do what’s in Proverbs
31, which is get up before the crack of dawn, work, provide
for your home, buy land, sell land, trade, put stuff on ships
and send it across the sea, and do everything that’s in Proverbs
31, you can run a small country. And so we find in the scripture
that God wants the home as one of the basic institutions of
his creation. He wants it to thrive. He wants
it to prosper. He wants it to be a place of
grace. Now, who does what, when, and
how, and how it gets funded and financed? That looks different
in every home. But in the providence of God,
he is calling us to see that the older women are to teach
the younger women to love their husbands, to love their children,
to be working at home. And then finally, that wonderful
word we all love to hear, they are to be submissive to their
own husbands. Now there’s a funny little Greek
joke. In the English translation, it
says to your own husbands and own in the Greek is a little
word called idios. And so there’s a funny little
joke. Be submissive to your idiot husband. We like to chuckle at
that. But these are the four things
that the older women are to train the younger women in. In order
to teach their families in order to give their home to be a place
of grace. Now, how do we jive that with
all the world is teaching? Well, it’s just the same as we
have to figure out with evolution. I mean, the world is telling
us that God did not create the world and everything in it, and
he certainly didn’t do it in the space of six days, and nor
was it all very good, as our catechism teaches. Or we bump
into it with other moral and ethical things that we face as
Christians. But do we trust God’s word? Do
we believe that he brings beauty out of obedience? Do we believe
that if we turn our hearts toward home, or if we turn our hearts
toward the church, Or if we even turn our hearts toward the civil
government and pray for these three institutions and bless
these three institutions with our prayer and our obedience,
that the world will not be a sweeter, more beautiful, more well-ordered
place. You see what happens when we
get off the beaten path, when we say to God, yeah, that was
for 2000 years ago. That’s so 1950s. That’s so whatever. We’re basically saying to God
what Adam and Eve did. Yeah, we hear you, God. but I
think I could do it better. And so the first call, the first
call for the people of God, for the pastor of the church of God
is to so teach the older women to encourage, to encourage the
younger women towards their homes. But there’s a second important
feature of this passage, and that is that the older women
are to teach the younger women, to encourage them in their holiness. And there’s three characteristics
of their holiness that we find here. They’re to be self-controlled,
pure and kind. Now, these begin to sound like
the fruit of the spirit. These begin to sound like something
every Christian ought to do. Some of you may have peeked ahead
and you say, how come the young men only get one little command?
Well, it’s because young men have a big problem with self-control,
and that’s a bigger problem than just being kind and pure, isn’t
it? And we’ll come to that one next week. But how come the older
women get this or that? We understand that God, by his
spirit and the providence of God, moved Paul along to write
these words to Titus, to the church at Crete, and to us today
in 2018. So a young woman in her holiness,
she is to be self-controlled. She is to be, in another word,
sober or discreet or sensible. She’s to be pure. She’s to be
modest in another word or chaste. And then third, she’s to be kind.
And really when we bump into the word kind in the Bible, it
is this, she is to be godlike. And so put both of these pictures
together, both of these portraits of a young woman who is fearing
God and has her heart aimed towards home. You come into her place. You come into her front door.
You come into her domain and you see love. You come into her
domain and you see joy. You see purity. You see kindness. You see self-control. And you
leave that wacky world just like you do on Sundays. And don’t
you see how, in a sense, like coming in these sanctuary doors
is different? How going into a Christian home is different. It’s a place of grace. It’s a
place of peace. It’s a place of beauty. Remember
God created heaven on earth. And Adam and Eve said, we won’t
have it. And so what is God doing through the church and the home?
He’s creating little heavens on earth until he comes and he
makes all things new. This is no small calling. This is no small potatoes vocation. This is significant. This is significant in the eyes
of God but also for the watching world. And so what is the challenge
that we have as a congregation? What is the challenge for the
Christian church in America? Oh, we don’t like all the problems
we see on the news. We don’t like bad news and rotten
culture. We can do something about it
one by one, family by family, congregation by congregation. And one of the most important
things that a young woman can do in today’s culture is go and
find a godly older woman. She may be older spiritually
and she may be older numerically. And say to her, take me under
your wing. Show me how to fear God. Show me how to keep his
commandments. Show me how to be a husband lover,
a child lover. Show me how to make a home, a
place of grace, so that when I open wide my arms of hospitality,
people will come in and say, oh man, if this is heaven, what
heaven must be like. I can’t wait to get there. Take
me under my wings. It’ll be counter-cultural. You’ll
be the odd man out for sure, the odd woman out. But remember
this, it is for the sake of the kingdom of God and for the witness
of Jesus in the world that our homes, that our marriages, that
our child rearing, that our worship, that our service in the church,
our behavior in the world adorns the gospel of Jesus and so makes
him famous that people to the ends of the earth bow their knees
to him and say, this is your God, this is now my God, pray
with me. Our Lord and God, we thank you
for your holy word, and we pray this day that it would sink deeply
into our hearts, that we would love it, that we would trust
it, that we would believe it, that we would put it into practice.
Lord, give us wisdom to see how these things apply to our own
lives. Give us courage to do it. And we pray that our church
and that our homes would be little places of grace that reflect
the realities of heaven and what it must be like. Help us. By
giving us your strength and may we do these things for your glory
and we pray it in Jesus name. Amen. We respond to God’s word
now as we sing number 535 a Christian home.