Titus chapter number two. And I was kind of thinking about this this afternoon. Of course, I have for many years to work ahead on sermon preparation for a variety of reasons. And then a day like today is a day in which I kind of questioned it because we're experiencing a considerable bout of illness. And many of the people who are the direct recipients of these instructions are home with sick children. And so I thought, how should I think about that? And of course, Part of me goes, you know, maybe you should on the fly change the message, and I'd really hate to do that. That's just terrible. And then I thought, well, the Lord knew. And then I thought the fact that most of these moms are home with six children is probably a testimony to the fact that they're not terribly far out of sync with the gist of the message this evening. Let's go ahead and stand please. Titus chapter 2 verses 1 through 5 are our passage this evening. But speak thou the things which become sound doctrine, that the aged men be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith, in charity, in patience. The aged women likewise, that they be in behavior, as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things, that they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed. And let's pray. Lord God, again, I pray for us that we would take your words so very seriously that we would have a appetite to orient ourselves to your instruction in all things and I pray, Father, for myself and for these, your people, that we would be wise, that we would be of the right mind in thinking about these things. And I pray this for us in Jesus' name. Amen. And you may, of course, be seated. Well, if I understand verse number one correctly, Titus's job is not only to teach sound doctrine, which of course is the task of the pastor, but he is also to talk about things which are appropriate to sound doctrine. I don't think that this is his own invented list, but I think that what Paul wants is for Titus to speak in such a way that what God instructs us is played out in our lives. And I think that we've seen already, and we will return to this because it is a major theme of the book of Titus, that our works are in line with God's instruction. This should not really come as any shock or surprise to us, folks. We probably all have experience with people who have given Christianity a black eye by the lives they live. By people whose life seems to be completely inconsistent with the teaching of scripture. So that this is not some radical agenda on God's part, but simply a reminder to us that the lives that we live really do matter. And while I'm not entirely sure that my life can be the instrument that would bring someone to Christ, I am absolutely positive that my life can be one that drives someone away from him. So speak the things that become sound doctrine, and Titus then addresses what are sometimes thought of as the more tedious, routine, normal elements of living, how our homes operate, how we think about things like working and children and marriage. He began then in verses 2 and 3 by talking about the aged men and women. And for the sake of Paul's context, we identified the elderly as those whose children are no longer at home. Their children are grown. And of course, there's no discussion in the book of Titus about those who perhaps, under God's providence, never did marry. or those who married but the Lord never gave them children. He is talking very generally to those things that happen to the vast majority of people that they get married and that they have families. And once our children have grown and gone, we have not been freed from our obligation to be good servants and God recognizes that we can be influential even in our elderliness. And he specifically is directing that effectiveness towards the next group of people, which are the younger. One of the reasons that Paul is concerned about the way the aged women live is because of the possibility of their influence upon the younger women. That is clearly the connection, folks, in verses three and four, that the aged women likewise, all right, just as the aged men should be certain things, aged women should be certain things, verse number three, so that, verse number four, they may teach the young women, so that they may wield their influence on the young women. Now that raises then really a variety of questions. What does Paul mean by that? How does God want those of you who are aged women to teach those who are younger women? Should every church have a class that is directed at that? That's not necessarily a terrible idea, but I don't think that Paul is thinking in those kinds of terms. He's certainly not prohibiting it. But I guess the point that I'm making, if we did that, if I said, look, right, like I did with 1 Timothy 2, right? God wants men to pray. He wants men to pray publicly. He gave them specific things to pray for. And I said, well, here's what the text says. And we're not really doing that. So we need to address that. And so now we have a couple of men pray, we're making an effort to line ourselves up with what the scriptures teach. And so if the scripture said, now, here's what I want. I want a class taught by aged ladies, specifically to younger ladies, instructing them in these things, then there would really be no other obligation, alternative folks, but to have that class. But we have to ask the question, is that what Paul has in mind? Well, in verse number three, the word teachers at the end of verse number three is a very specific word for teach. It is the word to instruct. And so it would include what we might consider verbal, formal, curriculum type instruction. But as we'll see in a moment, when Paul says in verse number four, that they may teach the young women He is not using that same word and He's not carrying it in that same way. So what does Paul mean? What does God want to happen? Does He want formalized instruction with a prepared curriculum? And if so, the curriculum is being stated here in verses 3 and 4. And those are the things that should be discussed. Again, I don't think that's the main idea that Paul has, and I will get to why I think that in just a bit. But he can't include that. There may be an opportunity, folks. There may be a necessity for one or two or several of the aged ladies who have lived out the instructions of verse number two. to have occasion to say to one of the younger ladies who is not living out those instructions, this is not the life the Lord has for you. So I don't want to exclude that. I'm just trying to understand what Paul is actually seeking, or more specifically, what the Lord is seeking. So let's just go back, let's just look, take a quick look at verse number five, and it's not really my intention to bop around a little bit, but what is Paul's real concern here? Right, and Paul's real concern for the elderly ladies and the young ladies and the aged men, and as we'll see next week, Lord willing, the younger men, right? There's one overarching thing that God has, and that is verse number five, and that is that the word of God be not blasphemed or spoken evil of. that God doesn't want somebody my age to live in such a way that an unbeliever would criticize God in the Bible. And God doesn't want somebody of my wife's age and station in life to live so that God would be criticized. And God doesn't want younger women, and again, within the context of Titus 2, young wives and mothers whose children are still at home. He doesn't want them to live in such a way that God is criticized through their lifestyle. And he doesn't want that for young men. He doesn't want any of us to live in such a way that our lives make him look bad. I just don't know any other clearer way to put it, folks. I'm never given permission to live in such a way to make God look bad, to bring reproach upon his name. Now here's kind of the overview that I would take of this, and I will admit that I'm reading much into it. In any local assembly, folks, the person who is primarily responsible to do the vast majority of the verbal instruction of the Word of God is the pastor. Pastors are commanded to shepherd the flock, and they shepherd the flock by feeding the flock and the food that God has for his flock is his word. And I could go through all the passages, Old Testament and New Testament, and develop that. In other words, folks, the primary person who is supposed to communicate godly female attributes to the ladies is me at Westwood Heights Baptist Church. It is the pastor's responsibility to say, now ladies, here is what God says. and here's what you're supposed to do. I think if we'll think through that, we will all recognize, folks, that there's not a glaring problem, but there is potentially a problem in that. And the problem of that is this. I don't know anything about being a woman. I have absolutely no ability to bring the female perspective to the equation. I'm not a woman. So I think that what Paul has in mind here primarily is that women who have been submissive to the instruction of the Lord, lending their credibility to the situation so that we perpetuate this, this is something that God doesn't want to go away. God wants this to continue in spite of whatever pressures culture may put. upon women. This is something that God wants to continue. And so what God wants first of all and primarily from young women is for them to remember that their home is their primary focus in life. That the primary thing that occupies her attention and her heart are her home. I don't mean specifically her house, that's going to be a part of it, but her home, specifically her husband and her children. Verse number three, the aged women, likewise, that they in behavior as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things, that they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, so that the word of God be not blasphemed. So the primary recipient of these words are married women who are mothers, and the primary instruction is to married women who are still raising their children. Which again, in any world, but particularly in Paul's world, particularly in the days in which family planning was really pretty much non-existent, This is going to encompass the vast majority of ladies sitting in an assembly. Paul is teaching this. He is explaining to Titus that Titus is to be teaching this because remember folks, Paul is not going over Titus' head to get to the ladies. Paul is talking to Titus about what to say to the ladies. Here's what you need to be telling the women in the churches at Crete. You need to be telling them these things. You need to be telling the young ladies, if we can reverse the order a little bit, you need to be telling the young ladies that they have an obligation to be paying attention to godly elderly ladies so that they know what to do. And godly elderly ladies have a responsibility to have some involvement in the lives of younger ladies so that they know what to do. So the aged women have a critical role, and that role is in the perpetuation of something that is very precious to God. And that is the promulgation of the home. So the aged women, verse three, be in behavior as becometh holiness. Now Titus, you speak things that are becoming sound doctrine. You ladies that have raised your children and have cared for your husband You live in such a way that becomes sound doctrine, becomes holiness. So that verse number four, you may teach the young women to be sober. To be sober. Now again, if you're looking at, and I'm assuming that most of you are looking at a King James Bible, and I didn't look at the ESV, When you and I read it, the word teach is a verb. That they may teach the young women. But when Paul wrote it, the verb is actually sober. That's the verb in the sentence. Sound mind the women. Sound mind the young ladies. And that's why I say, folks, if we're having a conversation about whether or not this should be some kind of formal instruction, Paul is not using, in verse number four, the normal word that we would find for verbal instruction. He is using a, I don't want to say a different word, but he's using a different kind of word. Get them in their right mind. It's kind of difficult for us to take sober and turn it into a verb, but it is the verb in the sentence. Sober them. Sober them. And this is one of the reasons that I think that it's going to take primarily, right? So you have, I think that we have, we should be looking more at this kind of scenario where from the pulpit, the solid doctrine is being taught that it has been lived by a body of women who have submitted themselves to it and have been married and have raised their children under it, who are then able, now we have, right, kind of two witnesses to this, the proclamation of the word and the example of godly ladies, so that the young ladies know what is expected of them. so that their influence is not primarily Cretan culture, or in our case, American culture, but the primary influence upon younger women is biblical culture, being instructed by the word, having the example of godly women. So these ladies then need to be sober. In 1 Timothy 3.2, pastors need to be sober. In Titus 1.8, pastors need to be sober. In Titus 2.2, the Greek word that is translated here, sober, this gets kind of confusing, is translated temperate. So sometimes the same Greek word is translated temperate, sometimes it's translated sober. And our translators use temperate in 2.2, the adjective, what kind of men should they be? Temperate, sober. And it's also used in verse number five, where it is translated discreet. So this idea of sobriety, pastors should be sober, aged men should be sober, young men should be sober, aged ladies should be sober, young women should be sober, they should be in their right mind. They should be in control, not out of control. And what do they need to be sober-minded about? Verse number four, that they may teach the young women to be sober. In their right mind, how? To love their husbands and to love their children. And one of the things that I find very interesting there, folks, is we all, of course, know the word agape, but that's not the word used here. We all know that agape is the kind of love that God has. It is the love that values the object. That's really what the word means. Jesus said even the Pharisees could do it. Even unbelieving Pharisees can look at their children and love them because they are their children. But this is the word philos, philo. Now to be sure, there are times when the Bible uses them interchangeably, but primarily the word phila has the idea of fondness. And while I couldn't prove it, I couldn't go to the mat on it, I really think that's the idea behind the word here. I think it is being used deliberately. That, if I can put it this way, that what God wants in young women is for their preference to be their husbands and their children. That's where their inclination lies, not their career, not their money, but that their heart is inclined to their husbands and to their children, that that is their fondness. that is their appetite, that is their pleasure. So they need to be sober-minded with reference to their families, their children and their husbands. And they need to be sober-minded in their attitudes. They need to be discreet in their right minds. The young women need to, or the aged women need to model it and instruct it 2-4. The young women need to possess it 2-5. So the elderly ladies, again, those that have raised their children, who have lived life, who have been around the block, however you want to phrase it, they can be examples. They can be examples in this specific area because the young ladies need to learn to live in that way. They need to be sober-minded in their attitude about chastity, the idea as being clean, not carnal, not sensual. You know, folks, Peter tells us that God treasures a meek and quiet spirit in a woman. Loud, vulgar women are very much an affront to God. By the way, if I can just pause here for a moment from the sermon and give a word of testimony, my experience in almost 40 years of being the pastor of Westwood Heights Baptist Church is that loud and vulgar women have a very short shelf life at Westwood Heights. And I'm rarely glad to see people leave. I want to qualify that. Sometimes it's been a great relief for some people to leave. But I'm very grateful that the prevailing sentiment of our church is that although we have many competent ladies and able ladies, pushy ladies don't fare very well here. That's good, that's good. Whether God is talking to me as a man Right? And I get it both at two levels. As a pastor, I'm to be sober-minded. And as a man, I'm to be sober-minded. And the ladies get it from the Lord, be sober-minded. What he's really after, folks, is for us to think about things the way that he thinks about them. And specifically in this instance, to think about our roles the way that he thinks about our roles. A sober-minded pastor thinks about his calling the way God does. And a sober-minded man thinks about his masculinity the way God does. And a sober-minded woman thinks about her femininity the way God does. We are in our right minds. We are in the Lord's mind. So they need to be sober-minded about in their realm of, in their families, their wives and their husbands, not their wives, pause, their husbands and their children. Wives don't have wives. We dealt with that in Sunday school. They need to be sober-minded in their attitudes. They need to be clean and pure. They need to be sober-minded about the realm of responsibility that God has given to them. They are keepers at home. They are the guardians of the house. Paul said in 1 Timothy 3.12 that they are to rule their houses well. They are to preside over their homes well. And they are sober-minded in their activities. They are good. They are good. They are just useful and helpful and pleasant. and they are obedient to their own husbands. They're not pushovers for every bossy man. They're obedient to their own husbands. And all of this is done, folks, right? And all of this is done so that we all come out, right? All of these things are kind of put into the funnel. So that out comes the same product. So that the word of God is not evil spoken of. So that the word of God is not evil spoken of. Well, why and how, and I just want to take a couple of minutes and address this. or at least explore it, not address it in its entirety, but explore it. How does this become potentially blasphemous about the Lord? And by the way, I said, and as I'm thinking about it while I'm speaking, I'm not sure that That blasphemy is entirely coming from an outside position. I'm wondering if the very life that is contrary, deliberately by design contrary to what the scriptures teach is its own form of blasphemy. As if the believing woman is declaring that what God said may be good, but it's not good enough for them. You know, folks, we're living in a culture in which the functioning roles between men and women are being greatly homogenized. And this, of course, is being celebrated as a great thing for the culture and the world. And so in our world, a husband and wife are two equal partners. in which their responsibility is to mutually fulfill each other's goals and satisfy each other's needs. Which has lots of nice sounding ornamentation to it until you look at what the text of scripture actually says. Now in the television world, it's not even that much. In the television world, it's two people who are so selfish that in spite of their love for each other, nobody's gonna yield anything and they must go their separate ways. But do we recall, folks, that biblically the orientation of the wife is always to her husband first? Which I realize, right? I realize sounds incredibly self-serving, standing here as a man. But nevertheless, that is what the scripture says, and this is one of the reasons that every church needs good and godly women who have lived that path. to be able to articulate both by their lifestyle and by their words and by their instruction that this is the way that God wants them to live and it is worth doing. The woman was made for the man. This doesn't mean the man gets to be a Neanderthal. But there's never going to be the kind of equality in a marriage, in a biblical marriage, that the world wants to argue for because there just simply cannot be that kind of orientation in the marriage. Our very creation argues against that kind of orientation. Genesis 2, 1 Corinthians 11. Again, folks, this is not about our fundamental human equality. This is about the way we function in God's world as God's church. So that the orientation by design, by your creator's will, is that you as a woman will always be oriented to your husband and your children in a way that your husband simply cannot be because he was not created to be. I was not built to be oriented to my home that way. And that is counterculture, but it is sober-minded thinking. That is the way the Lord thinks. This is not about demeaning women or putting them in their place or the horrendous kind of mentality of barefoot and pregnant, it is recognizing the wisdom of our creator and the way he has made the world to operate. Which means, folks, if our homes are going to look like this, and I would argue that it is a mutual responsibility, it is not the husband dumping all of this at the wife's feet, and telling her to figure it out, but that this is going to require some deliberate conversations and decisions that are made to orient each marriage partner that way. The home should not be a place where the subject matter of the fight is which one is working harder at work. We do different work. So I would suggest that these need to be conscious recognitions that husbands have a place in the home that women do not, and that women have a place in the home that men do not. And we can either spend our lives fighting about them, or pretending they're not there, or developing the worldliness of trying to level out those distinctions, or we can address them as people who believe the Bible. You know, folks, it's pretty common in our day to look back 50 or 100 years when the world really just did, operated more along the biblical lines and try and blow that off as arguing that people were not fundamentally more happy. But that's not really the subject matter. The subject matter is not I mean, God could take this approach. He could. Men, look how I made you, and I made you to do these things, and if you'll do those things, you'll be a lot happier. Ladies, I made you to do these things, and if you'll just do these things, you'll be a lot happier. Now, I would argue that all those things are true, but you'll notice that that is not the perspective that God takes. The perspective God takes is, I made a man, I want you to do these things. I made a woman, I want you to do these things. And whatever you do, by all means, don't make me look bad in the doing of them. Don't drag my word through the mud in the living of your life. That's the Lord's perspective. Being sober-minded means, right, look folks, it's kind of this, and this is not just true of this area, but it's true of a lot of areas, but it includes this area. It isn't that we really don't believe the Bible. It's just that we believe other things more than we believe the Bible. And so we do those things. And one of the things that is supposed to happen in the church and happen from the pulpit and happen by the example of aged ladies is that we are combating that. It should be, folks, and again, right? Well, what if we don't have children? I don't know what to tell you, Titus 2 isn't really talking to you at this point in time. And is Paul suggesting that it's always wrong for a woman to work outside of the home? Well, Romans 31 celebrates the working wife, but I think we also have to recognize that the working wife in Proverbs 31 is a woman who is working at home. that her children were not set aside and her home is not being set aside so that she can advance her career. And there's plenty of that, folks, and it's very highly celebrated in our world. I think that husbands and wives need to have deliberate conversations about how their distinctive creative aspects are going to work in the home and what that means. And I think husbands and wives should understand that the best possible situation, when there are children in home, to have the mom in home ruling the home. That's the best, that's the ideal. That's the world that God wants to have. And by the way, if I could just make this as an anecdote, right? Now, it usually ends up happening, but I don't hear a lot of Christian young ladies say, what do you wanna do when you get done with high school? I just wanna get married and have kids. You don't hear a lot of that being set out as the ambition of life. This is what I want to do. But if you ask the Lord, what would you like for young ladies? He'd say, I want them to get married and have kids. That's what he would say. And this is because folks, The home is so important. We used to talk about the nuclear family, and now we talk about the decline of the nuclear family, and now we ridicule the nuclear family. And all of that would be great if there wasn't Genesis 2, the formation of the nuclear family, the building block of the world. So this is not unimportant. This is not inconsequential. This cannot be relegated to whatever happens By the way, let me just, gentlemen, I would hope this never happens, but I would hope that no believing husband encourages his wife to go off to the workplace at the expense of the family so he can have more money to buy more stuff. This is a place for men to take the leadership in their home and for husbands and wives to have serious conversations, to do it deliberately, not accidentally. to do it knowingly and willfully, to sit down with a chapter like Titus 2 as a template and go, how are we going to make this work in our home? Let's pray. Father, thank you for our homes and I pray your blessing upon ours and thank you. Thank you for the ladies that have done these things, that have oriented themselves in godliness to their families. And thank you for those who are doing it. May your richest blessings be upon them and bless those who desire to do it. Bless them with husbands and with children, with homes that are testimonies to you and to your word. I pray this for us in Jesus' name, amen.