Hear the Word of God. But as for you, speak the things which are proper for sound doctrine, that the older men be sober, reverent, temperate, sound in faith, in love, in patience. The older women, likewise, that they be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things. That they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed. Likewise, exhort the young men to be sober-minded, in all things showing yourself to be a pattern of good works, in doctrine showing integrity, reverence, incorruptibility, sound speech that cannot be condemned, that one who is an opponent may be ashamed, having nothing evil to say of you. exhort bondservants to be obedient to their own masters, to be well-pleasing in all things, not answering back, not pilfering, but showing all good fidelity that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things. For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for himself his own special people, zealous for good works. Speak these things, exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one despise you. Amen. Father, we come to your word. It is our food. It is our light. It is, Father, the sword with which you do surgery in our lives. It is the hammer that breaks into pieces all that which stands in your way. Father, it is our weapons by which the strongholds and every high thing that is exalted against you is torn down. Father, we come to your word and we cherish it and we are glad in it. It is our desire that you would quicken that word by your Holy Spirit to our hearts and enable it to sanctify us, because you have said that we are sanctified by your truth. Thank you in Christ's name. Amen. You may be seated. Well, we have finally arrived at what I consider to be the heart of church ministry. You might think that the heart of church ministry is with the officers, but I think Rush Dooney is right, that the heart of church ministry is the church out there doing its thing in the world. In Ephesians, Paul says that the officers were given to equip the saints for the work of the ministry. And so there are ministries that the officers need to back off from, and they need to enable the people to be involved in. And next week I want to describe the nature of the work or ministry that the older men, in verse 2, engage in, and that the older women, in verse 3, engage in, and that all mothers and all wives are to engage in, in verses 4 through 5. And yes, indeed, that is ministry to the Lord. And then we'll look at, Lord willing, The ministry that Titus is supposed to be modeling to the younger men, and the reason he's to be modeling it to them is they're supposed to be involved in ministry. And I hope you get the impression that ministry for God's people is not just to be involved in church programs, because that's exactly the impression I want you to get. Ministry is as broad as life, and by the time we're done with this sermon, I think you'll get a strong, strong sense of that from Titus chapter 2. When Paul addresses the bondservants and the masters in verses 6 through 10, he's not changing the subject. He's still talking about ministry. In fact, I want to read for you a description of this ministry of bondservants, of slaves in Ephesians 6, 5 through 9. Bond service, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh with fear and trembling and sincerity of heart as to Christ. Not with eye service as men's pleasers, but as bond servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart with goodwill, doing service as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that whatever good anyone does, he will receive the same from the Lord, whether he is a slave or free. And you masters do the same things to them. giving up threatening, knowing that your own master also is in heaven and there is no partiality with him. He's saying those menial chores that they engaged in Monday through Saturday was ministry to the Lord. And so when I speak of the home itself being involved in discipleship and being involved in In ministry, I'm referring to everything that the person does because everything about our lives either shows forth the aroma of Christ or it shows forth the aroma of the flesh. And discipleship is unavoidable. You're going to be discipled one way or another. It'll either be into ungodly patterns of living, like we looked at in chapter 1, or it'll be into godly patterns of living, but it is unavoidable. Now, before we go phrase by phrase through this passage, which, Lord willing, I hope to get to next week, what I thought would be helpful is if you saw the the safeguards that Paul was putting into place on discipleship, and you can think of these as bookends. There is the bookend on the first half of the chapter that is saying that our discipleship needs to be framed by, defined by the truths of the scripture, the doctrines of the scripture. And then the other bookend is it needs to be framed by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. And if you have those two bookends in place, it's going to keep all of the books of your life from falling off of the shelf. Very important, those two be in place. And so the first safeguard or the first bookend that needs to be in place is a biblical standard for our teaching. Another way of saying it is that godliness cannot be achieved apart from biblical doctrine. Last week we saw that doctrine must be practical if we're teaching it the way Paul wanted it to be taught. This week we're saying our practice needs to be biblical. What is the content? of what the mature men are supposed to be discipling the younger men into? What is the content of what Titus is supposed to be discipling others into? If you don't answer that question properly, the informal ministries of the church could very easily degenerate into the bad kinds of things that happened in chapter one. It could be the legalistic Phariseeism that you see in verse 14, or it could end up being licentious immorality in verse 60. The point is, as a pastor, I have no authority except for the authority of God's word. I can't bind your conscience, only God's Word can. And the informal ministries, people who are discipling others, have to have the same attitude. You need to realize that when you're discipling your children, you're discipling others. You have to do it through the authority of God's Word. Last week we saw that everything in verses 2 through 10 flows from the sound doctrine of verse 1. If faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God, then the sound faith in verse two can only be achieved by a sound understanding of the scripture. Verse three says, women are to be teachers of good things. And it describes some of those good things, but who defines what is good? Only the scripture can define ethics. And so the scriptures must say an awful lot about the next verses there, where it says, discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands. And of course, the last phrase of verse five shows that our logical deduction is exactly correct because it says that the word of God may not be blasphemed. God's word has an enormous amount to say about each one of those subjects. Now here's what frequently happens in conservative circles. You have people who. want to be involved in discipleship, but they do not distinguish between things that maybe are helpful advice, but are their opinion, and the things which are biblical mandates. They don't distinguish between areas of liberty and and areas that are mandated in the scripture. I think this was the problem with the shepherding movement in the 80s. There were people who were trying to take discipleship seriously, godly men and women, but they did not have this bookend in place. And so very quickly, the movement began to disintegrate and fall apart. And it's no wonder because they were mandating things like when a person that they were discipling could, they had to get their permission when they could start courting another person, when they got up, when they went to bed, whether they took vitamins or not. And they have no authority or warrant to do that. And so it was very rightly perceived to be cult-like. Now, again, many of those people were very godly men and women, but they did not have the safeguard in place. Now, let me clarify that I don't think there's anything wrong with sharing your views on vitamins and herbs and when to go to bed and get up and different schedules for children, but you need to keep Clearly in your mind the difference between okay. This is a helpful pattern that has helped me and it's helped other people Here's another helpful pattern that could work as well. There can be more than one way of applying God's Word in Various situations and not everybody's a clone, you know the way that we do it So we have to keep that clearly in mind and this is one of the reasons why I have some difficulties with growing kids God's way the the movement there they have some very very helpful materials and But they have many times not clearly distinguished between what is their advice, and it may be perfectly good advice, advice that we will follow, but between what's their advice and what is God's way, what is a biblical mandate. In fact, sometimes the things that they say is God's way actually completely is contrary to the explicitly given liberties that scripture gives on how long you can breastfeed and whether you can have a child in bed. Now, we happen to follow their way a lot more closely, but when we have taught that, we have said, okay, these are areas of liberty. Don't take it as necessarily being God's way. Here's some areas where he's not given the scriptures, but here are the scriptures to show that this is biblical. And so don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. There's a lot of great material in there. But it's so easy to fall into this trap of imposing your opinions as if they were biblical mandates. And that's what we're trying to talk about here. So when parents start meddling in their married children's lives and saying, you guys, that's not the way we did it. You need to do it this way or you need to cook this way. They are going beyond their mandate as mature men and as mature women. Now they can give their advice, especially if their advice is asked for, but it's different than mandating that it be done that way. And so if you teach children, slaves, the women, the men, from a psychology book or from a collection of the opinions of the experts or from just your own experience, and that's imposed, then you're undermining the whole purpose of Titus chapter two. It's the Word of God alone that carries the necessary authority to transform lives. And I think a lot of conflicts between in-laws could be solved if the in-laws would keep this clearly in mind, you know, that there's a difference between my opinion and what is a biblical mandate. Because Christians are much less likely to argue with God than they are with you. And they're much more likely to take your advice if you can have scripture and verse to back it up with. And so that's the first bookend. The Bible gives definition to every aspect of the discipleship that we're to engage in. And if you need help with that bookend, I've got all kinds of books that deal with biblical mandates for every area of life. Now, I feel real badly we still don't have the certificate reading program or reading certificate program, but eventually we'll get this list of things that say, here's some of the beginning principles for this area of life. But if you want just one book that covers quite a lot of ground, you can order this through Curt. It's a Puritan's book called Richard, Richard Baxter is his name. It's called the Christian Directory. This is a massive book. It's almost a thousand pages of print that's so small almost makes you go blind. But boy, is it good. It's a great compendium of practical biblical wisdom for you know, a wide ranging area of subjects. The second safeguard or bookend that Paul puts in place is that godliness cannot be achieved apart from grace. Now, this is the second form of legalism. The first form is that you replace the authority of God's word with the authority of man. And that's a kind of legalism. But the second kind of legalism is even if you have biblical mandates to think that you can achieve those in your own strength. That is a form of legalism. And those are actually the only definitions. A lot of people accuse you of legalism if you follow biblical law. That's not legalism. Legalism is either adding to the law or thinking you can keep the law in your own strength. You know, when Jesus talked to his disciples, he said, without me, you can do nothing. He didn't say, without me, you can't do the big things. Without me, there are some things you can't do. No, he said, without me, you can do nothing. Now, you might think to yourself, no, there's lots of things I can do in my own strength. You know, I even see unbelievers doing them, but you're not doing it by the empowering of the Holy Spirit. You're not doing it by grace, and it's not going to count for eternity. In fact, it's going to have different fruit than what Christians who are living by God's grace will achieve. And so the grin and bear it type of Christianity that's trying to pull itself up by its bootstraps, is trying to, as hard as it can, to live their Christian life, is a substandard Christianity because it lacks the joy of the Lord, which is their strength. The purpose of discipleship is the power of God's Holy Spirit transforming us from the inside out and enabling us to be involved in the transformation of other people's lives as well. Only he can give us a heartfelt love for God's law. Only he can give us the power to conquer sin fully. And so I want you to notice the word for at the beginning of verse 11. Here, he's giving the reason why Christians should be able to keep these standards that he has just set forth from God's law. It's not because they're easy and, you know, anybody can pull themselves up by their bootsteps. Instead, he says for or because the grace of God that brings salvation. Okay, so the doctrine is the standard for our living and grace is the power for living. Verse 11 speaks of God's grace being accomplished in the past. For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. There is something that is finished that we can rest in. That grace, that salvation that appeared in Jesus Christ, and it's he alone who can deal with the penalty of our sins. It's he alone. and what he has accomplished that can justify us, but that can empower us as well. And when we have lack in the things that we are trying to do, we need to go to the bank account that was set up for us in 30 AD in the person of Jesus Christ, because in Ephesians it says, he has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. And it's cool, you know, now we're not signing our own name, you know, Phil Kaiser, because Our life is hidden in Christ. In ourselves, we cannot get anything. We always pray in the name of Christ. We always sign our checks in the name of Christ. Say, Lord, you've purchased that for me. And in the name of Christ, I receive what you have for me. Okay, now that grace is not just in the past, it's at work in the present. God presently, he says, brings salvation, verse 11. He teaches us presently that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age. We don't have to wait to heaven. in order to be leading holy lives. He says, in this present age, we can do that. God's spirit so effectively works in us. He says, he is purifying for himself his own special people, zealous for good works, verse 14. Now that's called sanctification. And it gives us confidence that even the toughest cases of discipleship victory can happen. Paul says, this is the will of God for you, even your sanctification. So if we're to pray according to God's will, we can say, Lord, I know it's your will that I be sanctified, that I get the victory over this besetting sin. And I lay claim to your methods. I lay claim to it. We're going to be looking at the methods. I lay claim to your empowering your resources. And by faith, I am bound and determined to get the victory on this. In Matthew 121, the angel told Joseph and she shall bring forth a son. You shall call his name Jesus. Jesus means Jehovah saves for. He will save His people from their sins. He didn't come to make us comfortable in our sins. He came to save us from our sins. And then there is future grace. Sanctification does not occur overnight, and that's why chapter 2 speaks of the need for us to be gentle and patient with those. One of the qualifications for the mature men and mature women is that they have love, that they have patience. Why do we need that? Because we're going to be dealing with ungodly Christians, people whose lives are messed up, and they're not going to become godly overnight. We're going to have to have patience as we work with them. A mature person needs to realize he did not become mature overnight, and we should not expect the people we're working with. to become mature overnight. We all have a long ways to go. And so verse 13 gives the last stage of grace, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Now it's a blessed hope, because we're gonna be forever free from every vestige of our sin, but it's a blessed hope because we're not there yet, okay? It's going to not be until the second coming of Christ that the church is completely perfected and sin is removed. And so if discipleship is going to be effective, it needs the power of God's word and it needs the power of God's grace. It's his sanctification. It's not our sanctification. If we don't have those bookends in place, the books are going to start falling off the shelf. People are going to get frustrated with us. It's not going to bring health and peace into their lives. It's just going to bring difficulty. Now let's go on to the methodology. There are various methods that can be subsumed under two categories, category of speaking and the category of modeling, and both kinds are essential. When Jesus gave the Great Commission, He said that the nations would only be discipled when they observe all things that I have commanded. So it's both learning about the commands and observing the commands. In Luke 6, 40, it tells us, a disciple who is fully trained will be like his teacher. like his teacher. Okay, so discipleship involves a transfer of character, of lifestyle, of attitudes, as well as a transfer of information. And there's a lot that goes into the speaking side I'm not even going to get into this morning, but it especially emphasizes information exchange. If you've got bad information, well, you're going to get the bad character that they had in chapter one. It always produces something in your lives. And we should never underestimate the power of words. It says in chapter one that those informal ministries that had gone bad were subverting entire households. And he says their mouths need to be stopped. Why? Because this is so dangerous, it will have an impact. Now, godly words also have a powerful impact in people's lives. And I give seven words in your outline that are used by Paul that show various dimensions of this speaking aspect. The first word, didosco, carries connotations of lifestyle change. as well as thought change. And that's why some people translate it that as disciple rather than to teach. And I've already mentioned two examples of the word, the Great Commission and Luke 640. The disciple fully taught will be like his teacher. The second one, Sophronizo, especially deals with the mind. And in chapter two, verse six, it's translated as sober minded or sound minded. That could be done from the pulpit, could be done one on one. Then comes laleo, which means to speak or to converse. It's focusing on information exchange, and that's general as well. But the fourth word, parakaleo, can only be done on a mentorship level. It means to help, encourage, urge, appeal, comfort, or to cheer up. Most of you are familiar with the Holy Spirit being called the paraclete. That's the noun form of this verb, parakaleo. And different versions translate that as advocate, counselor. New King James translates that in John as helper. Now, the idea of this word, parakaleo, is that somebody comes alongside of you to help you. It's not just giving advice. One of the problems when some people want to be disciplers is, you know, they act like know-it-alls that want to tell it all and want people to listen to it all, but they're preaching at people rather than coming alongside and empathizing with them, sympathizing with what they're going through. And so this word carries the idea But you're not only helping them with the information, you're coming alongside and working them through the process. It's kind of a counseling kind of an idea. He's not a busybody who has all the answers, but he does have answers. He's willing to invest time and energy to help the person through. The next one, elenkein, means to convict, to show fault, to convince of error, and to reprove. And that's a one-on-one relationship word as well. I looked up every occurrence of that word in the New Testament. It's always associated with authority. And so here, that may explain why it's connected with the elders. But I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be connected with a parent bringing that kind of reproof discipleship into their child's life. And then finally, there is nutateo. It refers to counseling, admonishing, exhorting. And I didn't put this into your outline, but Romans 15, 14 uses the term, says, now I, myself, am confident concerning you, my brethren. So he's talking to all the believers there, to my brethren, that you also are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish, that's nuthateo, to admonish one another. Another version has able also to counsel one another. And every one of those terms is talking about bringing in various ways God's Word into the lives of people. For example, in Deuteronomy 6, when it tells parents how to disciple their children, and you're the primary disciplers, you parents, he tells us that we need to speak God's Word when they sit, when they eat, when they walk, when they play, when they sleep. He's not saying you have to have a tape recorder going with this playing scripture all night long while they're sleeping. He is saying that you need to bring God's word to bear in their lives so that they are able to sleep in a biblical fashion. What do you do when you have insomnia? What do you do when you have bad dreams? How do you help the child who is afraid of the dark? How do you eat to the glory of God? How do you play? How do you work according to the blueprints of scripture? That's what he's saying. All of life needs to be characterized by having those scriptures apply. That's Colossians 4, six words. It lets your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each other. And it takes maturity to know how you ought to answer each other. Now, the second side of discipleship is modeling. And there are a number of verses that show that, but look at chapter two, verse seven. In all things, this is how universal it is. In all things, showing yourself to be a pattern of good works. What's a pattern? Anybody that sews knows that a pattern is something that you are going to be tracing onto the other cloth. You're copying one to the other. And so a person who is modeling his life for the other, they're copying the things that he is doing. That's what a pattern is. It's something that you copy. And modeling can't be done from the pulpit. Modeling can't be done over the radio. It takes a personal presence in people's lives. If communication of information was all that was needed, then Titus could have done all of the discipling by himself. It would have been far more efficient to crowd everybody into the room and say, okay, be discipled. And, you know, he'd preach. But he needed other people involved because discipleship cannot happen in that context. It takes modeling. And I want you to notice in chapter one, verses one through four, that Paul passed on discipleship to Titus in a father-son type of a relationship. He says to Titus, a true son in our common faith. Now, How do you disciple your children? It's an apprenticeship type of a model there. You can disciple your children because you only have a few children, but if you had 200 children, there is no way that you would be able to apprentice them all. There is no way that it would work. And so what happens, Paul uses exactly the same model. He took Titus almost like as a son in the faith. He took a few men, good men, that he could invest his life into. And then Titus invests his life into training the leaders. And those leaders invest their lives in 10 families and especially discipling the men in those families. And the men of those families and the women of those families are going to be discipling those who are younger than them. And those who are younger than them are going to become disciples, disciplers in the future. And so that's the concept. And let me just anticipate next week a little bit. Verse 2 doesn't say that the old men do anything, does it? It gives their qualifications for doing something, doesn't mention them doing anything. Now, it mentions the women having qualifications and what they're qualified to do, but why doesn't it mention it with the men? Well, actually it does. If you're familiar with the Semitic way of writing, It very much does, and there's actually a hint right there in the Greek. The word likewise implies that the men are going to be involved in a similar type of thing that the women are going to be involved in, the word likewise in verse three. But secondly, Hendrickson points out that the text is set up as a chiasm. Now, chiasm was a literary device that was used by the Hebrews where there are parallel thoughts, but they're arranged in an A, B, C, C, B, A pattern, okay? And it gives a compactness to what you're talking about and a certain beauty and order. And so you have the A section in verse one, Titus speaking, corresponds to A in verses nine through 10, where Titus is speaking again. Then the B sections relate to the qualifications of mature disciples in verses 2 through 3. And then there's a mature disciple in verses 7 through 8. He has qualifications as well as one of the older men. And then in the C section, it deals with the work of mature men with immature women, verses 4 through 5, and in the work of mature men, with the immature men, okay? Titus is one of the representatives of the mature men. So you've got ABC and then it backs out of it again, CBA pattern. Well, as soon as you understand that it's a chiasm, you realize, oh, it's not just the older women who are discipling the younger women. The older men, why are they qualified? Because they're going to be engaged in exactly the thing that Titus is going to be engaged in as a representative of one of the older men in discipling, you know, these masters, these slaves, and other people like that. Now, what Paul is doing is simply reiterating the methodology of Jesus. Let me read you a selection from J. Adams' excellent book on Christian education. Pages 95 through 96, he says, the teacher who disciples is himself a model of what he teaches. Like Jesus Christ who gathered 12 men around him as disciples. In Mark's summary statement, he says that Jesus appointed them to be with him. That is a significant statement. He does not stay to study with him, but to be with him. It does not say to learn from him, but to be with him. The simple phrase is broad in scope and encompasses all the rest, but much more as well. The disciples received formal and ad hoc lectures. They learned from casual teaching questions and comments. They saw and heard Jesus in action in real life situations. living and ministering to others according to the principles that he taught. And they were able to ask him questions. This ability to see and hear teaching integrated into action and realize situations by one's teacher is the missing ingredient in almost all Christian education. Yet a physician, a carpenter, and even a plumber are trained this way. So true discipleship can only be invested in a few people. Christ chose 12 people to disciple. And as he trained them and they were ready, he sent them out in Luke chapter nine, and he explicitly told them in verse four, whatever house you enter, stay there. He says, it's gonna take a while to disciple. So I want you to stay there. I don't want you going all over the place. The parallel account in Matthew 10, Christ adds these words. Now, whatever city or town you enter, inquire who in it is worthy and stay there till you go out. They were to show to these people the full covenant context of the gospel over a period of time, and it took time. They were to produce disciples. Well, one chapter later in Luke, we see the multiplication of disciples from 12 to 70, and he sends out a group of 70 to also disciple, and he gives them the same instructions. In Luke 10, 7, he says, remain in the same house, eating and drinking such things as they give, for the laborer is worthy of his wages. Do not go from house to house. Now, let me hit you up with an application of this now rather than later. If you're a parent and you're not spending good amounts of time with your child, it's going to mar the discipleship that you have. Your words are not going to be enough. They need to see how you live. They need to see how you work, how you play, how you cry, how you laugh. They need to see how you give forgiveness and how you ask for forgiveness, not only of the children, but of your spouse. They need to see how you handle discouragements. They need to have you take them through their discouraging times. You need to be present. And so that needs to be a top priority. The first part of this mentoring is to be present in their lives. Secondly, it implies demonstration. 2 verse 7, in all things showing yourself to be a pattern of good works. You know, a plumber, he didn't just tell the person, he shows the person what to do when he's apprenticing somebody. And in the same way, we as Christians, we need to be showing it to people, not just telling them about it. Otherwise, what's going to happen, if we're all talk and no action, we're going to produce disciples who are all talk and no action, right? Because that's the only thing that they have seen. That's the only thing that they hear. And Paul, in several places, commands church members to imitate those who are sound in the faith. He says, imitate me, even as I imitate Christ. Christianity needs to be fleshed out. When the disciples asked Jesus to pray, yeah, he gave them instructions, but he didn't just leave it there. He prayed for them. He prayed in front of them. He showed them how to do it. Jesus said, follow me and I will make you fishers of men. I'll show you how to do it. Now let's relate this to our day by day life. What's the best way to show your child how to ask for forgiveness from a brother that's really, they've hurt or irritated in some way. Well, you give them instruction. That's the speaking side of it. But there also needs to be a modeling that they have seen. For example, the children will think that you are hypocrites if you as spouses get into fights routinely, But you never ask for forgiveness in front of the children. You always do it in private. Now you've asked for forgiveness. You're not really a hypocrite, but they're going to think you are because here you tell them to get things right and you never get right in the debates and things that have happened between father and mother. And so what needs to happen is you need to humble yourself in front of your spouse if you have sinned in front of the children. You need to humble yourself in front of the children. And when they see that, then they begin to model that. It's so much easier to learn in that way. If you say that you forgive the child, but every time that the child does something bad, you're bringing out of the garbage can all of the old things and throwing at them. You're always doing this. And you recite a whole long litany of things that supposedly they've been forgiven for. What you're doing is you're modeling for them an unbiblical kind of forgiveness, and you will be discipling them to have exactly the same pattern in their lives. And so it really is important that we have this modeling. The next area is delegating responsibility, making sure that they have something concrete to implement. You give them homework. You give them an assignment. A disciple of Christ should not have chapter 1, verse 16 said of them, They profess to know God, but in works, they deny Him, being abominable, disobedient, disqualified for every good work. See, they had the doctrine, they profess, but they don't have the actual works. They have the talk, but not the walk. And it's a transference of character that needs to go into their lives. Karl Marx wrote, philosophers have only interpreted the world differently. The point, however, is to change it. Why were the communists so effective in implementing their ungodly philosophy and culture? It's because they were not satisfied to just teach it academically. They wanted it applied, and they were always doing these assignments, they're always trying to make an impact. And the whole goal of discipleship in Titus is the promotion of godliness. Without godliness, men and women are not disciples. So you give them assignments. The fourth part of modeling that is assumed throughout this chapter is accountability, feedback, and support. And so just as a tennis instructor is going to be giving regular feedback to the person, oh, you need to hold the, What is it? Racket. Thank you. You need to hold the racket a little bit differently. Your backhand is not right. Your serves are not right. Now, he's not going to try to discourage this person with the way in which he's doing it. He's going to point out the good points and he's going to show them. Just turn it like that and you'll get it. But there's constantly this feedback that is being brought into their lives and the word in verse 4 that's Translated admonish. I think it's better translated as train the way you see it in New American Standard Bible And if you just think of what goes into training a position training a plumber training a tennis player Training anybody you get a good feel for what this word is about accountability feedback support And then the final aspect of modeling that we see in Titus is reproduction. Titus 2 indicates that discipleship is the first thing a believer should experience. At that stage, they're a young woman, a young man. Paul sometimes speaks of them as babes and over a period of time they eventually become disciples themselves. Titus 2, 2 Timothy 2, make it clear. All mature Christians should be involved in discipling. Now your children are going to be your main projects that you're discipling, but there will be others as well. But Christ said, I chose you, appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, that your fruit should remain. Now ideally, Well, let me just make a comment here because some people take the passage, you know, about the mature women teaching the younger women, and they think that this is going to be a permanent situation in the church. The way it was set up, here are pagans that are coming into the church. They don't know how to teach their children. And so what Paul is saying is, I want you to bring along mature men, mature women, show the man and show the woman how to disciple their children. But what happens in the next generation, those children are going to be discipling their own children. It all comes back to the home. It's constantly strengthening the home. But as there are new converts coming in who don't know how to disciple their children, there's always going to be a need for mature men, mature women coming in. But it's the mothers and the fathers who are going to be discipling in the next generation, their own children. Now I'm just going to be very brief on the goals of discipleship. and they are twofold, sound thinking and sound living. Now the church down through the centuries has constantly seemed to have this pendulum swing from one extreme to the other. And one of the extremes is to memorize a bunch of doctrine, but to never apply it. But what has just flabbergasted me in the years that I've been here in Omaha is the number of pastors who say that they don't believe in doctrine. As one pastor worded it, allergic to anything with ology on the end of it, you know, Christology, any kind of theology. Well, they've got a theology. The only question is, is it a biblical one or is it not? And I'm not gonna look at everything here, but let me just give you a few hints of how important academically challenging yourself on your Christianity is. Chapter one, verse one. Notice the phrase in the middle, which says, the acknowledgement of the truth, which accords with godliness. Filling your head with true facts accords with godliness. Having an empty head does not accord with godliness. He is saying academics is part and parcel of Christianity. The outline skips verse 2, but verse 2 has it there too. It talks about assurance, faith, and comfort. Well, how in the world are you going to have assurance, faith, and comfort if you don't know what the promises of God are? It requires study. Verse 3 mentions the importance of preaching. Verse 4, of the common faith. Verse 9, holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and convict those who contradict. Well, you can't do that if you've not committed those things to memory. Verse 10 warns against deceivers. Well, you can't even recognize a deceiver if you've not already memorized and known the truth. And so God wants discipleship to have sound thinking and Paul is grieved when he sees disciples who don't know doctrine. Disciples who don't have, have not memorized a lot. Every paragraph in these two, three chapters indicates that one of the goals of Christian living is to think rightly. And if we do not love God with our minds, we have a substandard Christianity. He says we're to love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind. Okay, the mind needs to be in gear. Second goal is sound living. And we looked at the qualifications of elders. We saw that they were to be models for the whole congregation on living. Now this sound living covers home life, business life, just in this book here. Business life, how we budget our money, food, wine, tempers, communication, having a clean conscience, having a good testimony, how women relate to their families, chapter 2 verse 5. How you handle yourself in court reflects on your Christianity, 2 verse 8. Same is true of how employees and employers work Monday through Saturday. Discipleship has a comprehensive goal that covers all things, chapter 1, verse 15. Every good work, chapter 1, verse 16. All things, chapter 2, verse 7. All things, 2, verse 8. All things, 2, verse 9. All things, 2, verse 10. Now you get the point? His discipleship relates to everything in life. It is not a Sunday go to meet in Christianity. It's a Christianity that has the reality of the Savior of Christ across everything that it does. And so my admonition to you is to be willing to be discipled and to grow mature in Christ so that you can disciple others, so that we can live all of our life before the face of God and the empowering of the Holy Spirit according to the blueprints of his word. May it be so. Amen. Father God, Thank you for your word, and I pray that you would challenge us from this word to be disciples of our children. And should you choose, Father, as we grow older, to be disciples of younger men, younger women who are immature, have not learned the principles of home life and what it means to make a difference out there in the world. And I pray that our congregation more and more would Become strong and be in a position to make a difference. In fact, Father, may it be said of us that we are those who trouble the world, who turn the world upside down. Help us, Father, we pray in Christ's name. Amen.