If you would, stand up for the reading of the Word. Chapter 2 is where we are this morning. I want to read the entire chapter, though I'm going to be focusing on verse 1 of chapter 2 more than anything. So here's what we read together, and if you'd like to read along with me, I'll read the first verse, you read the second. Here we go. But speak thou the things which become sound doctrine. Age men be sober, brave, temperate, sound in faith, in charity, impatient. The age of 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 Amen. To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the Word of God be not blasphemed. Young men likewise exhort to be sober-minded. in all things showing thyself a pattern of good works, in doctrine showing uncorruptness, gravity, sincerity, sound speech that cannot be condemned, that he that is of the contrary part may be ashamed, having no evil thing to say of you. Exhort servants to be obedient unto their own masters, and to please them well in all things, Not answering again, not purloining, but showing all good fidelity, that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things. For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lust, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, Amen. Amen. Looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. These things speak and exhort and rebuke with all authority, and everybody together, no man despise thee. Father, we thank you for your Word. We ask you now, if you will, to bless it, to the nourishment of our souls. to our minds that we might be able to go forth into highways and hedges and compel men and women, boys and girls, to flee to Jesus for it's everlasting too late. But most of all, Lord, that we might live soberly, righteously and godly in this present world. And while we do, ever be looking for our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, to come again, because doubtless by Your Word, we understand He's coming again. And with him, I must say, will he find faith on the earth? I hope that he'll find it being practiced, not only the Providence Baptist Church, but where all good men preach the word in season, out of season, and rebuke and exhort and reprove with all sound doctrine. Help us now, Lord, this day to be faithful to your word. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen and amen. In the words of Nehemiah in Chapter 8, Verse 8, we read something here that's very important. And what was going on in that day is that they had discovered the Word of God again. And they were reading it, and the people were hearing for the first time, and I say first time for that group anyway, what they were supposed to do and how they were supposed to live. In truth today, that's exactly my job to you. I'm supposed to do the best that I can. to read to you the Word of God, and to make sense of that which we read, that you and I may know Christ, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings be made conformable unto His death." Philippians 3, 10. rightly divine the Word of Truth as we do, 2 Timothy 2, verse 15, so that we will have the Word of God dwelling in us, in us, richly in all wisdom, Colossians 3, 16. Need I go over that again? Let me say it again. In the words of Nehemiah in chapter 8 verse 8, My job in preaching to you is to read to you the Word of God and make sense of that which we read, that we all may know Christ and know Him so well that we know the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death is required of us, Philippians 3.10. Rightly divided the word of truth as we do, 2 Timothy 2.15. so that we will have the Word of Christ dwelling in us all the time, not just Sunday mornings, dwelling us richly in all wisdom, Colossians 3, 16. By these exercises then that we do here on Sunday morning, Wednesday night, whenever, we will be able as we preached to you last Sunday, to hold fast the faithful word that we are taught, that we may be able by sound doctrine," now listen to me, by sound doctrine, not whims, not opinions, but by sound doctrine, both to exhort and to convince, contradict, and possibly even convict the gainsayers. Titus chapter 1 verse 8 and 9. Just cross a page from you there. That's why we hold fast the faithful Word of God because there are many out there today Verse 10, Chapter 1, that do not believe this that we hold so precious today. There are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers in the world today, working hard to diminish, to disparage, and even destroy, if it were possible, the Word of God. And we must stand now, more than ever, seeing that there is a deserting of the truth in post-modern evangelical Christendom even. Churches that once were bastions of truth have gone the way of Cain and no longer preach the truth with any veracity and certainly never mention repentance and the necessity of believing in God. John MacArthur wrote a piece one time that I thought was a good summation, even though it was a tragic summation, if you will, of how things are today. MacArthur wrote, and I quote, weak theology, shallow, superficial knowledge of Scripture, all kinds of uncalled, unqualified people standing in pulpits who were not sent by God, like the false prophets Jeremiah talks about, and don't have the Word of God, and don't understand it, are inventing all kinds of things that the church is buying into, and they are. He goes on to say, a superficial knowledge of scripture, a weak theology, all kinds of error flooding to the church, cripples discernment. In other words, because it's so diluted that the average person on the pew doesn't know truth from error. doesn't know right from wrong anymore. MacArthur says, and what makes it worse is that there is a movement to say that the tolerance of all of this is the purest expression of Christian love, right? Is it? Is it really loving to be tolerant of all this nonsense? No. The greatest love that you can show somebody is yank them back from the beds of hell, for crying out loud. Tell them the truth, no matter how it hurts. Anything that gets you punched in the face, tell them the truth. If you die in your sins, everybody, where are you going to go? Boy, is that weak. If you die in your sins, you're going to go to hell. MacArthur continues on and says, If you call these people into question, and you call what they're saying into question, and say it's not true, that it's error, you are unloving, you are divisive, and you are striking a blow against the unity of the church. And so, you have error flooding the church. The church is, by its theological and biblical ignorance, unable to fight against that error any longer. And tolerance is being elevated as supreme virtue, which aids, and that's the problem, unquote. And that's where we are. We're at a place in evangelical circles, in most churches today, that all we're doing is going along to get along. Chapter 2, Titus, Paul writes, but speak thou the things which become sound doctrine. We really should not be surprised about what we see currently in America. If you look back to Chapter 1 of 1 Timothy, I'm sorry, 1 Timothy Chapter 4, the Apostle Paul warns about these things. 1 Timothy Chapter 4, notice what Paul writes there. Now the Spirit, capital S, the Holy Ghost, speaketh expressly that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils, speaking lies and hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with the hot iron." Can you imagine that? The Spirit speaks expressly, telling us by the Word of God, pointing these things out. alerting us, basically acting as radar in us to see these things. These will that are out there, these gainsayers, these deceivers, these watered down churches, these nasty things that are purporting themselves to be Christian organizations speak lies and hypocrisy. Verse two here, because their consciences are seared with a hot iron. My paraphrase. The hypocrisy is that they present themselves as purveyors and guardians of the truth. They do. They say, we have the truth. But they speak lies and false doctrine as though it is the truth, and they do so with great pretensions of religion and great pompous moves and clothing and act wholly, captivating the unlearned as they do, leading them into destruction, into hell itself. These work under the auspices of the Antichrist system that already doesn't work according to the Apostle Paul, Second Thessalonians, Chapter 2, Verse 7. If you don't believe the Antichrist is at work today, you got to be deaf, dumb, and blind. We may not see the individual, but we see the system. The system's been alive forever. The system got a kickoff right there in the Garden of Eden. This is what we find today with the Catholic priest. Have for a century now. They preach the lying doctrines of merit, the non-existent place called purgatory. They preach transubstantiation, where literally the wafer and the juice, the wine, becomes the actual blood and body of Christ. Oh, that right there is cannibalism at best. It's just a wafer and wine. It does not change into the blood and body of Christ. It's great emblems for it, but it's just false doctrine, and the doctrines of merit. If you be good, you'll get in. Well, obviously, they don't believe that because they got purgatory, and you hope that your loved ones on the top side will pray you out of there. Isn't that sad? I'd hate to know that I'd done all I could, give all my wealth to the church, and had to go through some more torment to get into Heaven. Oh, no, no, no. Jesus paid it all, all to Him. You owe anything. And it's all done a great show of godliness, religion, and holiness. And when Paul says these have their conscience seared with a hot iron, what Paul is saying is that their conscience are cauterized. They're hardened, absolutely past feeling. Let me just stop here and give you a little picture. There have been times on the battlefield when a soldier would get out there and get wounded, maybe shot, and he didn't have anything to treat himself, and the medic had been killed, and there's nobody around him. He's got to do something about that blood. And so what some guys do, and I know you're going to not believe this, They would take their little big lighter and unscrew it and take out that little piece of cotton with the lighter fluid in it and stick it in the wound and set it on fire to cauterize that wound. And they would. He would harden it up and he'd quit bleeding. I don't think I'd ever had the guts to do that. Well, this cauterization of these is that they're so hardened in their minds and their hearts and so cauterized, they have no feeling of remorse, no regard for the lies they speak and the damage they're doing. They just don't care. They don't care that it makes their followers twice the child of the devil, literally banishing their own children to hell. They invent devilish doctrines like these here in verse 3. Look at verse 3, Chapter 4, there in 1 Timothy. They forbid to marry, commanding their adherents to abstain from meats which God hath created, excuse me, God hath created to be seen with a skinning of them which believe and know the truth. And believe, brothers and sisters, they are not ignorant of verse four where God says every creature of God is good and nothing to be refused if it be received with thanksgiving. There you go. There's how you're able to go ahead and eat that pig if you want to. For, verse 5, it is sanctified by the Word of God in prayer, and you're able to. Therefore, verse 6, we put the brethren and sisters, as Steve said this morning, in remembrance of these things, that they all might be good ministers, that is, witnesses of and for Jesus Christ. nourished up in the words of faith and good doctrine, whereunto you will know if you study and learn these things of which we preach and teach from the Word of God. And since there is so much hypocrisy out there, clothed in false godliness and false holiness, we must, we must, we must. How many times can I say this so you get it? We must be continually alert, vigilant even, that we might be able to, verse 7, my words here, recognize, refuse, refute profane and old wives' fables. And that you would be able to do that if you will exercise yourself as well to godliness and study the Word of God so you can. Sadly, that a lot of good churches, good people don't know enough Bible these days to know old wise fables, false doctrines. Fascinating about this here in Chapter 4, seeing that the Greeks and Romans both had a culture of body worship, and that culture permeated the known world of that day, and seemingly must have made some inroads into the church, the churches that Paul had helped establish or established. Paul was forced to include verse 8 to remind young Timothy and the saints that bodily exercise profits little. That's why my recliner is near war out. There is nothing wrong with bodily exercise, nothing at all. However, This body worship culture that permeated the Roman Empire, the Grecian Empire, had become a near religion in those ancient times. And I believe history is repeating itself in our generation. Body worship is the religion of this day. from a pure, eternal perspective, which all should be concerned with and about bodily exercise profits little. In other words, it will not secure Heaven for you. You can do all the sit-ups you want and it won't get you in Heaven. You can show the Lord your exercise charts and how many reps you did of this and this and this and this last Thursday. It won't get you to Heaven. It won't. But as Paul states in verse 8, Godliness is profitable unto all things. Godliness is profitable unto all things, having promised the life that now is, and of that which is to come. And boy, howdy, I'm sure Paul took a lot of heat for speaking out against physical exercise performed for body worship. If they had turned themselves into their own idols, Surely, He would have spoke out. In this day, the body culture that pervades our society is creating a religion of narcissism, of self-love, of worship self. And it's not limited to the secular world out there. It's happening in churches. Can you believe how many churches now have yoga classes? Wake up! That's a religion! Verse nine, he says that what he said was a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation. In other words, it's a true statement and whole truth and nothing but the truth. But he found a little acceptance or toleration for that truth. that he was preaching. He writes in verse 10, For therefore, we both labor and suffer reproach. In other words, persecution, because we trust in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of those that believe. Thus speak thou the things become sound doctrine. Our background text from Titus chapter 2, verse 1, speak the things that are sound doctrine. And these things, verse 11, Paul says, command and teach here in 1 Timothy chapter 4. Verse 12, he says, let no man despise thy youth, he says to Timothy. And probably said to all the young men he had brought to faith. But I say, don't let them despise your old age either. I think all our octogenarians in here, I can't even say, all you senior citizens, I think you look pretty doggone good myself, I being one of you. But don't let them despise your old age either, and be thou an example of the believers. Look at verse 12. In word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, and the last one, in purity. That's how we're supposed to conduct ourselves in the world. You ought to give yourself first thing to, 13 rather, you ought to give yourself to reading, to exhortation, telling the old, old story of Jesus and His love with urgency. And you will be able to if you give yourself to learning the doctrines that we're supposed to believe and telling people what we're supposed to believe. Now, though Paul is speaking of young Timothy here in verse 14, I will say to you that you should not neglect the gift that is in you either. The gift of the Holy Ghost has been given to you. If you're saved today, He dwells inside of you, teaching you the things that God wants you to know. At the same time, he's winnowing out the things you don't need to know. You know what winnowing is? How many knows what winnowing is? Some of you old-timers may have done it. They get, they get, you know, they harvest the grain back in the old days, and they'd take it in onto the harvest floor, if you would, and they'd take it, and they would just beat the dickens out of those stalks to loosen up the grain and also the leaves and any other trash. Then they put in baskets, and they go outside in the air, and they toss it up. And since the leaves, the trash was lighter than the grain, the grain would fall back into the basket, and the others would blow away. Well, sometimes that's what the Holy Spirit does to us. He widows us. He widows out all the trash, tosses it around us a little bit so we get that junk out of us. And then what does He do? He waters you with the water of the Word when you read it. These are my words. But though the Holy Spirit does this for you, friends, listen to me. You have the responsibility to take what the Spirit makes available to you and use it for the glory of God. And that's the real problem we have. We've got a whole bunch of folks that go to church and go to church religiously. but very rarely take what they hear to heart, study it more keenly, and then go out and fight the good fight of faith. Verse 15 instructs us to meditate upon these things, and give ourselves wholly to them, that thy profiting may appear to all. That is, that both saint and sinner may benefit by what God has given to you. Who do you know in your life has benefited from what God has done for you? Who do you share this wondrous salvation with? Who do you share your faith with? Do you? Do you tell anybody how wonderful Jesus has been to you? In our morning prayer this morning, Deb and I were sitting there praying, and it just kind of rushed over me, and I got convicted about the fact that we have been blessed so incredibly with so great a salvation. How in the world can we keep our mouth shut? Thus, for to speak those things which become sound doctrine, Verse 1, Titus 2, don't flip back there. Verse 16 here in chapter 4 says that we need to take heed unto ourselves. We're to take heed unto the doctrine and we're to continue in them. And if you will, thou shalt both save thyself and them that hear thee." Listen folks, Paul, if you look there, hold your hand there, look back at Titus chapter 2 verse 1. Paul is not saying there in Titus 2, 1 that we make up our own doctrine when he says, become sound doctrine. See that? But speak thou the things which become sound doctrine. Some would say, well, you know, you make up your own doctrine. You speak it and it becomes doctrine. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Become here in the Greek means consistent with doctrine. It also means, in a sense, to propel, to promote, and even adorn, in some instances, the doctrine. I know one way to adorn doctrine is to tell how the Lord saved you by it. In the finite definition, it simply means to preach, teach, and uphold the truth. We are to preach, teach, witness to the world about Christ Jesus and Him coming into the world to save sinners just like you and I. That He came to save sinners by sacrificing Himself for their sins that they might be saved that believe on Him. I like why Charles Haddon Spurgeon had to say about all this. Spurgeon said one time, You don't know who the elect are. You do not know whose heart will be broken by the divine hammer of truth. But it is your responsibility to use the divine hammer on the hard heart. And as the gospel is preached, it will attract to itself by its own power through the Holy Spirit, those whom God has ordained unto eternal life. You just go tell them. God will crush them. He'll crush that hard heart, give them a new one, and oh, He'll make them one of His own. Well, they were already before the world began. We just don't know who they are. He sends us out to preach to them. You know, God was pleased to bruise His darling son that knew no sin. that we might have His Son's righteousness imputed to us, that we might be with them where they are. Jesus says, I go to prepare a place for you that where I am, that you may be also. Well, somebody say, Amen. In my Father's house are many mansions, if we're not sobbed, I told you, and He don't lie. What a wondrous thing. So speak thou those things, then that become sound doctrine." Are you not paying attention of what's being passed off today as true religion? Are you not paying attention today what folks are saying about that that we hold as truth? We've got to stand in the gap and make up the hedge in this world. Now, really and truly, in the sense of God doesn't need us to do any of that, because His Word will stand when the world's on fire. No question about it. But He uses means. Things like Sunday school, and church, and evangelism, and witnessing. The base things, like us, aren't going to, since God reigned hardly, but uses us. to go out there and tell the good news that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. Got news for you. He expects you to. He demands that you do, commands that you do. But he shouldn't have to do that. Because if you're truly his, And you love Him the way you say you do, you'll consider it an honor and a privilege that God would choose you to be His ambassador upon this planet. Father, we thank You for Your Word. Make us, mold us, shape us after Your will. There's a call come ringing over the restless waves to send a light, the gospel light. And I pray that Your people will let it ring from shore to shore. Never miss an opportunity and make opportunities every time. Holy Spirit, invade our hearts and minds with this that we're called to do. Lord Jesus, be in our minds and hearts to the extent that we ache if we don't do. Blessed be your name, Lord Jesus. Thank you for saving our souls. These things we ask of the Father in the hopes of glorifying You and Him. In Your name we pray. Amen and amen.