Titus lesson 7
Titus · Mike Doyle · Oct 1, 2023
Titus, No. 20
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261932493956

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

What we've been working on, we're going through the book of Titus and we've arrived at chapter 2 and we're working on the first five verses and kind of interesting verses in that they start to give directions about how the Christian life is lived in certain age categories. I marvel that he starts with older men. Some people will read this and say, well, he's talking about elders. No, he's not. He's talking about old guys. What age do we think that is, biblically? Well, biblically, it's probably 40 years old.

I just talked to Phil this morning and he said, after church this morning, he's going to shut down the swamp cooler. And I said, well, I can't shut mine down because my kids told me I can't go on the roof anymore. He said, well, I remember. When I told Jack he couldn't go on his roof anymore once he was 70, he said, I'm one year away from that. I said, you're going to have to find somebody. Call my son. He's only 32. He can get up there.

But these characteristics are kind of interesting. The verse says, older men are to be temperate, dignified, sensible, sound in faith and love and perseverance. So let's go through those because they're kind of interesting. Temper or sober really can mean he doesn't drink too much. that he either abstains totally or pretty much just an occasional use of alcohol. I find it interesting that Paul very seldom says you can't do certain things. It depends on how they affect you. If they control you, you don't do them.

So it has a wider meaning though of being clear-headed and well balanced. Okay? So, I mean, it's interesting in the probably early church, if the age limit was in the 40s going into 50s, those are considered to be older men. So, it means dignified or vulnerable or venerable, which is interesting to be dignified does not mean to be stuffy. but notes one's possessions possesses qualities that deserve respect. It refers to one who manifests the seriousness of purpose.

You know what they're about, you know where they're headed, and they don't, very often don't veer away from what God has called them to do, whatever it is. With an older man, he may not be a father anymore, although there are plenty of older guys in the Old Testament that were fathers, you know.

Hence, you can always talk about Abraham. He's 100 years old and he's a father. But the point is that he is the kind of a man that has, I like the term seriousness of purpose. You know what he's about. You know, when it comes to the Lord. Sensible or self-controlled. He doesn't have trouble curbing his appetites or impulses. This is given greater importance than the others because it's expected of all believers.

So I have a personal story to tell you yesterday. We were invited to a birthday party, so it was down near Castle Rock, so we went down there and we thought, well, we'll go a little early, and we'll stop in at the Nike store and try on shoes. So we did, and we bought some, right?

Walk out of the shoe store, and I get about four feet from the car, and it dawns on me I've locked the keys in the car. And it's a good thing somebody wasn't watching. because self-control went right out the window. I was so angry at myself, right? Plus, that was going to make us late for the birthday party.

So I called AAA, and they got there in pretty good time, 45 minutes, which wasn't bad. But I've been thinking about that ever since. Low temptation you can probably deal with. Fast temptation's a little harder. I was so angry. And Donna's standing there looking at me like, who is this crazy man? Anyway. I was just glad I had luck. Anyway.

The next quality is he's sound in the faith. Here it doesn't mean faith in general. It means the faith, which is specific. He understands what we would call the birth truths. He understands how a person is saved. He understands about sins and forgiveness. And also, he's probably moving towards understanding about Roma 6 truths, growth truths. But he's just a man who is sound in the faith. He's not loose in the corners. And another is that he's a lover. He's got a heart that is subject to the Spirit of God and it manifests in whatever situation he's in in his life. And this next one is perseverance. I love perseverance because we just talked about it.

You know, Romans 5.3 says that trials produce perseverance, patience. This is that word that I think is Chester McAuley's favorite word. He calls it hupomona. Greek is hupomona. It means load carrying ability. You can carry your load and somebody else's load and you do it.

You can stay under that trial or affliction as long as it honors God. That you're not complaining about it and you recognize what's happening in your life. And so you continue, you continue. So if you have trials, you know that they honor God. Patience is a sense of meekness which Trench defines as the temper of spirit in which we accept God's dealings with us as good, therefore without disputing or resisting. Let's talk about that for a little bit.

Do you think I was accepting God's purpose for my life when I recognized I locked the keys in the car? It's okay to answer. Doesn't sound like it. No. No, I wasn't. You know, and so does it mean that God looks at me and says, Oh, well, I'm going to have to give that guy more suffering. And here I am thinking I'm suffering enough. Oh. I'm thinking about Courtney this morning. I had my volume all the way up. I'm thinking about Courtney this morning.

This is a trial, you know. And in those circumstances, boy, it's so easy to get to push back and not make it gracious, you know. And so for an older man, all these kinds of things really matter. And I've told people all my life, these older guys, they don't exhibit some of the things that younger men do just because they're old. Do you think that it's related to the number of trials that you've been through?

Yeah. I, you know, like, like I, I look at the Ralph and he's got, you know, or a trial going on. I look at the Russ and he's got a trial going on and it's, it doesn't seem like there's any, you know, end date in the future. And, uh, I think one of these men understands that God is in charge of that trial and he will. my dependence on the Spirit of God endure. And he'll learn great endurance through that trial and later on will look back and say, you know, without that trial, I wouldn't have, and I wouldn't today, I wouldn't look at things the way I look at it today. Does that answer your question? I was just thinking, you know, marriage trials, financial trials, children trials. Now we're in the physical trial.

You know, last weekend we were in Chicago at a wedding and they had a really incredible reception and dinner and you know, I'm glad I wasn't paying that bill, put it that way. But I was looking at the couple that got married and You know, they're great kids. They both have great jobs. You know, they're healthy. I think they really love each other. But I also thought, they have no idea what's coming. You know, I had a friend who used to say, you know that whirring sound you hear? That's that torpedo heading right for your ego. Bless their hearts.

And so an older man's job is to demonstrate the life of the Lord Jesus so that a younger guy, like we just got married last weekend, there's somebody around who demonstrates that there is a life of peace and rest and faith to be lived. And it's demonstratable. I can see it. But I think it has to be manifested by the work of the spirit in you. You can't do this on your own. It's impossible. Question, why is the older man subject to exhibiting a higher standard?

Is it a standard? Yeah. Well, if I look at the verses, he sort of spelled out a standard, didn't he? Yeah. What do we do with standards, Mike? You mean yesterday? What did we learn yesterday, Mike? What did I learn? I learned I've got to come up with a plan that I never lose those keys again. Right. Don't repeat. Don't do that again, Mike. I've done it before. Don't do it again.

Yeah, I'm getting to know that triple A guy on a first name basis. Yeah, there really isn't. You're not a little bit in the flesh and a little bit in the spirit. You're one or the other. I wrote down that the general correspondence between what we believe and how we live. Well, the qualities listed for older men are by no means confined to them. They should certainly be more refined in them. And I think your personal health may decline with age, but spiritual health is to abound more and more as one grows older. That's cool. Nice. Pretty cool advice.

Those four qualities mentioned are because older men are to be leaders and these particular qualities must be present in a leader. When did you hear that in a leadership course recently? Well, I shouldn't have told you the story. You're not going to let me forget it.

No, I'm just saying, no, I totally understand where you're coming from. I'm just thinking like this comes out of, you know, there's a tenderness and another level of what you're perceiving happening around you, even if it's to yourself or it's to others in the body.

As you grow older, you're growing in these qualities of Christ in such a way that it is a spiritual maturity. Your body is going the other direction, but spiritually speaking, you're observing and seeing and loving in ways that you've grown into with the Lord Jesus over that, that time in trial, like Donna was talking about, I think. Yeah. I, you know, I trust, I trust, uh, the spirit of God to do what he says he's going to do. I really do.

Not that every man that's, uh, older, uh, you know, some of us are, you know, emotional teenagers at 80. But what's cool about this is that, you know, Paul is the one guy that can sit down and say, well, here's the positional truth. And then he'll say, well, here's what it looks like in shoe leather. This is really what it looks like.

So you can look at those and say, wow, you know, at least I can make a correlation between What I've lived through in my life, and I don't mean negatively, positively, and what the spirit of God is trying to accomplish. You know, it's like, oh, 10, 15 years ago, I came to the realization that first it wasn't the word retirement in the Bible. So I'm here, I'm not here to play golf or live for myself. I'm here to serve the Lord as long as he keeps me here. And so therefore, the purpose and the goal of your life changes. You think, well, can I serve the Lord at 65 when the government says you're done? Or can I serve him at 70? Can I serve him at 80? Yeah, you can serve him to the last second.

And that's the cool thing about it, that you can do that even though your body is going down the river. You know, you can do that. And I've known men like that, you know, and there's a specialness about those guys. Like Miles Stanford was a special man because he never He was pretty sick the last six months of his life, but he never got off course in the tasks that God had called him to do. He was working and writing and helping people and responding to correspondence every single day.

The day before he died, he called me up and said, I'm coming to Denver tomorrow. We've got to have lunch. And I said, Miles, you don't have the strength to come to Denver. Yeah, I'm coming. And he died that night. You know, the Lord just took him home. With, you know, he was, he was in bed and asleep, but he just finished writing something and then he went to bed. You know, so. All right, now it's time to pick on the older women. Older women.

Likewise, are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips, nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible and pure workers at home, kind being subject to their own husbands so that the word of God will not be dishonored. Wow, women get two whole verses. A woman should what? Better translated, have a good demeanor, which is a wide reference to conduct in all respects and in all occasions.

So I think God builds a woman that way. They're much more tolerant than men and they have a usually a much calmer demeanor than men do sometimes. The word malicious gossips is really diabolos. This word is usually translated devil. but is found in feminine gender and literally as she-devils. The word means to be a slanderer.

And then he talks about women and alcohol. But he does it a little different because what he does is he takes two negatives And he pays them side by side. He says, a connection between wine and the loose tongue indicate cause and effect. So if you drink too much, your mouth runs. And so, again, he's not prohibiting a man or a woman from drinking wine. What he's saying is, It's got to be controlled, you know. And trust me, if you're dependent on the Spirit of God, your drinking is controlled. It just is, you know.

Teaching what is good or a single word in Greek, here's the word we translated to school or to train. The women in the audience, do you view yourself as that's what you're involved in, schooling and training? And then he'll spell out what you're supposed to demonstrate to younger women that they should be encouraged. Isn't that interesting? Be encouraged about what is good. So then he goes and he talks about what he thinks the good is.

The first one is is that they love their husband. That's pretty cool. And I think that's visible. You know, it isn't puppy love. It isn't emotional. But it is a settled attitude about I love my husband. And it's because I love the Lord and the Lord loves me. That's why. Donna. On that verse, how does that work?

It says that the older women may teach the young women to be sober. Is that also to teach the young women to love their husbands? Or it's a personal, that the older women should love their husbands? You said that to teach them to be sober? My verse says that they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children.

Oh, interesting. The New American Standard doesn't translate it that way, but it kind of puts, it says, not malicious gossips, nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good. That's how they put it, but either way. And after that? Right after that is so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands. But your version says, your version says what? Mine does not, is not very specific that the older women should teach the younger women to love their husbands and to teach the younger women to love their children. It's kind of looks like it could, it could be applied to them, to the older women.

Oh, I see. You know, what I find interesting is in life, in society, we were noticing the other day, and we've been making a joke around our house about it, that in every television program, at the end of the program, there's always alcohol involved. And problem solving. and problem solving. So they sit down with a glass of bourbon or a glass of wine and the two of them or the four of them and they solved all the problems of the world. But what's the message? That sitting down with alcohol solves problems. No, it doesn't.

So how do you and and I know the other thing I noticed is at that wedding last week, Christian marriage is a special sacred thing where God joins a man and a woman together and there's a love between them that he generates that you, how do you explain it? But when you see it, you know what you're looking at as a believer. And I, you know, I was interacting with, there were 200 plus people at this wedding. You could tell, no matter what age group the couple was, it's almost within the first couple of minutes. Do they love each other? And it's either there or it's not there. Do you notice that? And, uh, yeah, yeah, there's a couple to my left. I was sat down next to at the dinner, a couple of, uh, ladies who were married to each other.

And the first thing this one woman said to me was, I don't watch Fox news. Okay. You know, like watching Fox news is worse than reading the Bible. He told you exactly what she believed. That is hilarious. So. She, what does she see in you? I have no idea. I love Donna. Donna loves me. Right. You look like a Fox news lover. You look like a former Marine. I even had a haircut. Yeah.

But I noticed with, and maybe it's just my quirky temperament, Courtney's kind of like that. He looks, he sizes people up really quick, you know? And I look at people and say, I wonder if they really love each other. And you can tell when they're gutting it out to the end. Or yeah, they really do. or they're somewhere in the middle. And because this was a denominational base, there was a lot of, I gotta, you know, I have to be this and I have to be that, you know, a lot of legalism involved. But then you could tell that the couples have really genuinely loved each other. And that woman and that husband-wife relationship If you went and talked to their kids, their kids were lovers too. That's how they learn. How do you learn? How do you learn to be a lover?

Well, you hang around somebody who is. How do you find out these characteristics of a man and a woman? You're around somebody who's like that. It might surprise you that there actually is somebody like that, but they're there. They're there, and it's not noisy, it's quiet. It's like in the first set of Thessalonians, how do you demonstrate love to your neighbors? Remember that? The three things, what were they? That you live a quiet life, you mind your own business, and you work. That doesn't make any sense to me.

From a world standpoint, if I'm going to demonstrate that I love the brethren, I've got to do something that shows them. Well, Paul says, well, it's real simple. You live a quiet life, you mind your own business, and you work. And you do those things, especially work, so that you can be able to give others what they need.

And I thought, boy, that is almost too simple, too easy to understand. And we read things like these verses here, and we think, well, that's the way it's supposed to be, isn't it? This is not, oh, I've got to change the way I'm going. He doesn't say, stop doing this and start doing this. He's saying, this is how it works. This is the way it goes.

This is the way men, older men and older women behave, and here's what they do. I'm not saying that there are older men that aren't totally self-absorbed and self-centered and don't manifest any of this, especially if they're not believers. No, there are non-believers that love their families, you know. It's the same with women, you know. Some older women, you can tell it's all about themselves because of how they what their demeanor is, you know. Well, we know one woman that's so self-absorbed at 60 that she wants to do her own thing now, you know. So, whatever that is. Do you think these kinds of behaviors in a person are fulfilling? What do you think? No, they're not. What's that? Well, not the example of being self-involved at 60. No, no. I qualify the things spelled out in these verses.

This is where fulfillment in how God created you to be and engender a way. And that way is a joy. It's not a burden. It is a standard, but there is joy in that. And that's where I think that's why Paul spells it out right here is like, this is what it looks like. Like you said, this is the, you know, rubber meets the road type of thing. And this isn't a burden. This is, this is where we're at home and who God created us to be.

Yeah. I just noticed the time we're a couple of minutes over. Yeah. The singers have to go practice. So I want to spend some time on verse five and that's where we'll start next week. So let's close. Father, how we thank you for your word. You're so careful. to show us what a life in your son is all about and how there is rest and peace in a life like that and how wonderful it is to love and be loved by you and through those around that belong to you. So we thank you for your son, the Lord Jesus, and we pray in his name. Amen.