Titus 2 (Part 2)- A Transformed Home — A ‘Christian Growth’ Message

Subscribe to Christian Growth Podcast

There’ll be some people who will come to you or in the feedback forms, they’ll say, uh, you know, the talks were interesting, but we, we would really like more Bible. We just want to get into the meat. We don’t want all his silly stories. And then you’ve got another group of people who say, we just want to get practical help. You know, come down from your ivory tower, stop giving us all your complicated thoughts. Titus chapter 2 I think is the perfect blend of um meat and also of practicality.

Titus 2 – The perfect blend of biblical teaching and practical wisdom

So I reminded you last week that this letter came from the apostle Paul, and it was written to Titus, who had the difficult job of being a minister on the island of Crete, which is a fairly wild place. We saw last week that God was going to provide not only the truth which would be needed, but also the people. And I wish I had said at the end of last Sunday’s sermon, that the the same God who has provided for your salvation.

And provides for the church, will provide for your specific needs. So I don’t know exactly what you’re going through at the moment, but you can be pretty sure that if God has provided His Son for your salvation. And if he has provided the needs of the church in terms of truth and people, you can be pretty sure that what you’re going through, he will provide for as well. So we’re gonna look at chapter 2 under two quick headings, and the, actually the first one is the long one, so don’t despair. The first is the faith of God’s family. Titus chapter 2, verses 1 to 10, the faith of God’s family. You’ll see if you look at chapter 2, verse 1.

That Paul tells Titus that he is to teach sound doctrine, literally he is to teach healthy doctrine, good food. I don’t know if you know this friends, but the preacher is not really a performer. I mean, the preacher, if he was a performer, would be a hopeless performer. But the preacher is not getting up the front to sing or to play a musical instrument or to be an actor. The preacher is getting up like a cook. To give the healthy food of God’s word. And it is important that we open up the scriptures because you do not need the thoughts of the tiny brain of the preacher. You need the thoughts of the great brain of God. And also because of course there’s lies all around us. And there are lies that come into the church. We need the truth of God.

You may have doubts about teaching and preaching and whether it’s all that important, but I can assure you that it’s the word of God that drives away the doubts, and the errors and the mistakes, and the dangers that many of us face. Now Paul, having told Titus teach the word, says I’ve got 5 groups of people for you to teach. And uh you can see them in chapter 2. And probably one of them will apply to you.

The first in verse 2 is there’s a word for the older men. And there are 6 things in chapter 2, verse 2 for the older man to think about. Now, who are the older men? I always think of the older men as men who are older than me. But actually I suspect that the older men in Paul’s Day were probably men over 40. Might have even been younger, but in Paul’s day, people didn’t live very long lives and so if you got to 40, you were pretty old.

And I want to say to any of you who are, let’s say 40 or over, this is a word for us. And um why is it that he begins by addressing the old men in the church, and this is what he says to the older men in the church, teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith, love, and endurance, because older men in the church are such a blessing to the church.

Hope 103.2 is proudly supported by

We don’t want men in the church or silly old men. We don’t certainly want dirty old men, but we do want godly older men. And old men in the church bring a lot of wisdom. They bring a lot of experience and they bring a very fine example. You can see therefore that God is not the slightest bit interested in what the world says about old men. I mean, the world might say of old men, they’re pretty well finished, you know, they don’t work anymore, they’re no good for anything. Well, the Lord is not the slightest bit interested in the secular view of the old man.

The Lord’s view is that the older man is often the man who has got so much wisdom and experience behind him that he is extremely important in the local church. And so if you are 40 and above, or let’s say you’re 60 and above, or let’s say you’re 80 and above, you must never fall into the trap of thinking as far as God is concerned, I’m all washed up because God’s word says the older men are needed in the local church. And Paul says to the older men, be steady.

Be sensible In some ways you’re like oak trees among the tiny trees. Stay with the faith and stay with the love. I say again it’s important for God’s people to have God’s view of the older man, and it’s important for the older men to have God’s view of themselves. Not only that, there’ll be many people who come to church who have had poor father figures, and it’s actually a very wonderful thing for people who come to church, who have had poor father figures, to discover older men in the church who really are a model of grace and truth. So I’m putting chapter 22 into practise, as Paul tells Titus to do, and saying to the older men, when you turn up on a Sunday.

You have a role to play just by being yourself. Seek to be sensible, seek to be steady, hold the faith, seek to be loving. Now the older women, chapter 2 verses 2 to 5. And again, I would be very brave to get into the subject of age, because I mean women never get beyond 21 really, do they? So here is a word to the women. Who are often the real servants of the church anyway, and in chapter 2, verse 2, he says to the women, be reverent. And interestingly, the word means think of yourself on sacred duty. That is, think of yourself as having been saved by God.

And therefore you have a role for God. You don’t need an official position, says Paul. Because you have a position. You don’t need a theological degree because you know Christ. And when the older woman gathers with God’s people, and you may come to church and think, I hope somebody loves me and I hope somebody welcomes me. The apostle Paul says, you are loved and welcomed, and you have an opportunity to love and welcome other people. So there are two things to avoid in chapter 2, verse 2 for the women, one is slander. Being crabby. Speaking foolish things and the other one is dependence on drink.

This is a very practical couple of comments by the apostle Paul, because you can understand that um sometimes when a person gets old and perhaps their children have moved on, maybe even their husband has moved on, everything has kind of left them behind and so they begin to get unhappy, and they begin to speak unhappy, and they begin to look to the wrong places to get happy. And the apostle Paul says, don’t take your cue from the world. You’re on sacred duty. You’ve got a role to play for God. We’re very grateful, aren’t we, for the women in every church and in this church who serve so wonderfully. But I just want to say to you, if you serve here on a roster.

That’s only a subset of the value you are to the church. It’s you who’s a value to the church. Whatever you do on the roster is just an extra. Now when he says that the older women can help the younger women, it does sound a little bit in our text like Victorian morality, teaching younger women to love their husbands and their children and to look after their home, but given the fact that there are so many crazy ideas in the world, about marriage and children, and home and work, and given the fact that um, an older woman in church will often have a lot more wisdom, perhaps even than 1000 paperbacks that are around today. It is a great thing for an older woman to be an encouragement to a younger woman in the church, and sometimes the older woman.

We’ll be able to say something in one sentence which will help the younger woman persevere with a difficult husband or difficult children. And, um, if you can contribute to the younger woman in the church in a way like that, you have made a very great contribution indeed. So I’m putting chapter 2, verse 1 again into practise, and I’m saying to the older women, you’ve got a role to play when you came. It’s got nothing to do with being on the rosters. It’s got to do with being yourself. And I speak for my own wife when I say that if you have a conversation with my wife, I’m pretty sure you’ll be encouraged at the end of it.

And there are so many women in the church who can do that as well. Please notice that the phrase of the older woman helping the younger woman to be busy at home does not mean that she is not allowed outside the home. It does not mean that she is not able to work outside the home. It simply means that she will not neglect the home, that she won’t give up on the home. The apostle Paul is not saying you cannot leave home and work. He’s simply saying don’t let your home suffer, and the older woman may help the younger woman to do well.

The the younger men are then spoken to in chapter 2, verse 6, and there’s only one verse for the younger men, and the, there’s only one word to the younger men, and the word to the younger men is, Be sensible. And you might think to yourself, well that’s just a waste of breath. What’s the point of telling a younger man to be sensible, I mean, when I was a young man, I was not sensible. If anybody told me to be sensible, I wouldn’t have been sensible. But you have to remember that these young men who Paul is talking about are believers in the church.

It’s possible that they have got a new life in their heart, and they’ve got older men to be examples to help them to be sensible. This word sensible is used in fact for the older men and for the older women, and now for the younger men, and so the younger men may be looking to the older men and saying that’s what a sensible man looks like. Not only that, of course, they’ve got a pastor who will keep helping them to think about the big picture and the plan of God. And so it’s perfectly possible that a younger man could inside the church become beyond his years in wisdom and usefulness.

You probably know this, I hope you know this, but across the city of Sydney for the last 50 years, there has been a kind of a mentoring process going on, uh, especially at the universities, but in the churches. And there have been literally thousands and thousands and thousands of young men and women who have been looked after 1 to 1 by a mature Christian, and helped to grow and deal with challenges and battles and doubts and difficulties and temptations and frustrations. And this has been a tremendous ministry, behind the scenes, 1 to 1, young people being looked after by older people. So there’s the word from the apostle Paul to the younger men, be sensible.

And then there’s a word to Titus himself. The apostle Paul comes to Titus in verses 7 and 8, and he says, I want you to be an example, I want you to be a good example, not a bad example. I want you to be a teacher, a serious teacher, not a silly teacher, and I want you to be a disciple who cannot easily be criticised. That’s a very wise word to the pastor. Be an example Be a teacher and be a disciple. It’s a little bit like what Paul said to Timothy in 1 Timothy chapter 4, which is, um, watch your life, watch your doctrine, watch them closely, because if you watch your life and your doctrine closely, you’ll probably save your people from a lot of dangers.

And friends, given the sad history of uh pastors who fall and fail and have to be removed from office and devastate the local church. This is a very wise and important word. Nobody of course in ministry is going to escape criticism, even Jesus did not escape criticism and he was perfect, but what the apostle Paul is saying here is don’t create the grounds for criticism. In other words, be the best model that you possibly can. Somebody said once that people forget a lot of what preachers say. But they normally remember who the preacher was.

Finally, there is a word remarkably slaves chapter 2 verses 9 to 10. This is a shock, isn’t it, that the apostle Paul would address Christian slaves. It’s a good shock in a sense that there are slaves, believers in the church, the least powerful, we might say the most working class people in the church. That’s good. But we also might um be slightly shocked by this and ask the question, why is the apostle Paul even tolerating slavery? Why isn’t he rejecting the whole idea immediately? And the answer of course is that Paul is totally sensible. He knows that Christianity is not aimed at destroying all institutions immediately.

But what the gospel does do is that it brings to the individual who receives Christ immediate freedom. Freedom from sin, freedom from guilt, freedom from death, freedom from judgement. And therefore the slave could be more free than the master. Just as a person today in prison who’s a believer, will be much freer than the person who walks the street, but is still caught in their sins. And so the gospel does bring a certain immediate freedom. Not only that, the gospel brings an immediate mission because Paul can say to these slaves, you’ve got a job to do now, and he lists things very carefully, doesn’t he? He says, you know, don’t answer back, don’t steal from your master.

Live carefully and you will commend the faith of Christ to your master. So this um gospel brings immediate blessings, freedom and mission, but it also brings ultimate blessings because in the end the gospel was the thing which undermined the whole concept of slavery in so many countries around the world. So many Christian men and women fought for the slaves of the world because they were Christians. But you can imagine the slave who’s become a new Christian and um here he is being told, you know, you’re free, you’re free of sin, you’re free of guilt, you’re free of judgement, and you’ve also got a mission to do.

And so the slave says something like this. I’m incredibly blessed. And I’m going to trust the God who has saved me to preserve me and look after me and help me and use me. And down the track, of course, so many were set free because of the gospel. I want you to notice that in all the verses that we’ve just looked at very quickly, that there are 3 times where the apostle Paul actually says that there’s more to this than the church. 3 times, he says in verse 5 and verse 8 and verse 10, all this is so that the watching world will get the message. It isn’t just so that you will be happy, although you may be happy.

It’s because there is a witness, a signpost to the world. Well, that’s the first, uh, the longer point this morning, the faith of the family, and now very quickly we finish with just these last verses 11 to 15, which deserve a sermon on their own, and these have to do with the grace and the glory of Christ. In these verses, the apostle Paul lifts the lid on how you and I can actually do God’s will. It is too much for us, isn’t it, really, to do what God asks us to do.

But as we’ve often said in this church, the Christian is not a rowboat, having to just row, row, row exhaustedly. We’re not a power boat sitting back with a switch and doing nothing. We’re sailors on a sailing boat with something to do and the wind of God enabling us, carrying us along. And that’s what these verses 11 to 15 tell us. We discover in chapter 2, verse 11, that God’s grace has appeared. God’s grace has appeared in the person of Jesus Christ. Now grace of course was around from the beginning of creation. God was gracious to create. God was gracious to spare Adam and Eve. God was gracious to build an ark. God was gracious to Abraham. The grace of God runs all through the Bible and all through history, but grace appeared in person when Jesus walked into this world.

And we read in chapter 2, verse 11 that grace came in person bringing salvation. So the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world and like a lifesaver in the surf, he reached his hand down to the human race, drowning in the surf, and said, I will rescue you. And when the Christian, or when the person puts up their hand and says I want to be saved, I want to be forgiven, I want to have eternal life, they receive it. But God’s grace we discover in Titus chapter 2, also teaches the Christian. Uh, I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about this before, the grace of God not only saves you, but the grace of God teaches you. How does the grace of God teach you, teach you? It teaches you, says Paul, to say no and yes. No to ungodliness and yes to godliness. Now we might say to ourselves, well, I wish that was true.

I find myself saying yes to Ungodliness and no godliness. But when God puts a new life inside you, he does begin to work in you a new desire, not perfect yet, but new. And sometimes you find yourself with a new disinterest in sin. Now I don’t know if this is true for you, but it’s certainly true for me that there are one or two sins that just don’t seem to ever go away in my life. I wish they did. I mean, there’s a time where I might say to God, if you just remove these one or two sins, I would be such a great guy, but they just don’t go away. And um that may be true for you as well, but there are certain times aren’t there, where we look at the sin, which is often a plague, and we say to ourselves in that moment, I don’t really want to fall into that.

I’m turning my back on that. What a great moment that is. God gives us a new desire to see the sin and turn our back on it. You remember when Joseph was tempted and uh he was tempted really very strongly. And um he could see through the scene. He said, you know, why would I do this and disobey my god, who’s been so good to me. And sometimes, of course we, we just have a new resolve to be a disciple. We say something like this, we say, I have every inclination of being disobedient.

But I’m going to solidly and as steadily as I can be obedient. And often as you walk down the path of obedience, the Lord lifts a lot of the pressure to be disobedient. And so the grace of God does teach us. It does work in us. It has different ways of helping us. And we must be very thankful the grace of God only saves, but also teaches us. So the grace of God is the engine, enabling the Christian to live, to live the Christian life, and then we discover in chapter 2, verse 13, that there is also the glory to come. So the grace of God has come, saving, teaching, and the glory 2:13 is coming when Christ comes in person. There’ll come a day where the glory of God will come in person. When Jesus came the first time, he came in came in weakness. But when he comes again, he will come in great glory.

We know that the glory of God has been around since the creation. We know that God has glorified himself all through history, but there’s going to come a day where the glory of God will come in person, when the Lord Jesus will come in person. And Paul describes Jesus in chapter 2, verse 13 as our great God and saviour, our great God and saviour. We know that he’s talking about Jesus here because it’s Jesus who will appear. The Bible never talks about the Father appearing, this is Jesus who will appear. And we also know that he’s talking about Jesus because he talks about somebody who gave himself. The father never gave himself, but Jesus gave himself. So there’s no doubt that here is a verse in the New Testament, describing Jesus as our great God and saviour. So my friends, we look back to the grace of God, we’re so thankful the grace of God came when Jesus came, brought salvation. We’re so thankful that the grace in the present helps us to live for Christ, and he will, and it does, and we’re so thankful that the glory is around the corner and one day we’ll see him face to face, and all the words in Titus, you see, all the instructions are enabled by God. They come to us.

As if we are appliances in the kitchen that have been plugged in. They don’t come to us as if we’re appliances that are not plugged in. They come to us as appliances that have been plugged in, because God, you see, can make his people new. I want to finish by telling you a story of a man called Edward Stud. Who was the father of the man called CT Stud, who was the captain of, uh, Cambridge cricket many, many years ago. But, uh, Edward Stud was a very proud and pompous man. And, uh, when the American evangelist DL Moody came to the UK, and DL Moody was a very uneducated, but a very great preacher, um, Edward Studd said he would have nothing to do with going to hear DL Moody, you know, too low for him.

But eventually he decided because everybody was going to hear DL Moody that he would go and sit in the back row. And uh he got impatient, he was kind of fed up with the meeting and uh DL Moody had asked one of the men to get up and pray, and this man was praying on and on and on. So DL Moody leapt up in the middle of the prayer and called out in a loud voice, while our friend finishes his prayer, we will sing hymn number 561, which I often think we should do in church every now and again.

But anyway, they sang the hymn and and Edwardst down the back said to himself, I think I’ll stay, this could be interesting. So he stayed and he was converted. He only lived for 2 more years after he was converted. But he contacted all his friends and told them that they were crazy not to take hold of Christ. He told all his staff, all his servants that they must put their faith in Christ. And when they interviewed him at the end of his life, when they interviewed one of his staff at the end of his life, the staff said, all I know is it was the same coat.

But it was a different man inside. And that’s what Christ does. Titus chapter 2.

Let’s Pray

Heavenly Father, we thank you for your grace and goodness, not only saving but teaching. We ask that you help us to be your people in your place for your glory in Jesus’ name. Amen.