Titus and Today Part 2 (with communion)

Jeff Miller

Titus and Today, Part 2

Titus 2:11-15

Intro: Good morning. If you remember, last week I started a new three-part series on Titus. I’m calling it “Titus and Today” because we’re going to look at a document that was written 2,000 years ago and apply it to our world, today. 

Next week is Valentine’s Day (for you men out there, if you haven’t put a reminder in your phones, better do it now) and I’ll be taking a break from the series to focus on a Valentine’s Day sermon. So we’ll end our three-week series on the following Sunday.

Today, we’ll pick up where we left off last week by talking about the ‘therefore’ that Chapter 2 begins with this week, and Chapter 1 abruptly left off with last week. Like I said, chapters and verses were not how the Biblical texts were originally written, this was written as a letter to someone and the chapter and verse breaks were added hundreds of years later to make it easier to teach from. So the oddity of how Chapter 1 ends is due to that.

Scripture: So let’s pick up where we left off. For brevity, I’m not going to read the entire chapter, but I am going to still teach most of it and focus mainly on the last few verses. So let’s look at Titus, Chapter 2, verses 11-15.

And as you’re turning there, you may remember that the theme of Titus is preaching, teaching and listening to sound doctrine. And as you know, Mark Twain spent his summers not too far from here in Elmira. That’s because his wife, Olivia, was from Elmira and she still had family there whom they visited. 

With all of his successes, the story of Mark Twain is rather sad in some ways, especially when it comes to his views on Christianity.

He once referred to Christianity as a “slaughterhouse religion” because of the doctrine of the blood atonement, and he often turned his ridicule on those who believed the Bible. 

When he met and fell in love with Olivia Langdon, who was from a good Christian family, he downplayed his lack of faith. But after their marriage, Twain began to openly mock Christianity once again, and before too much time passed, Olivia stopped attending church.  

We don’t know whether or not it was because of their turning away, but their family began to suffer, including a complete financial collapse and the death of a beloved daughter. At one point Twain attempting to comfort his grieving wife said, “Livy, if it comforts you to lean on your faith, do so.” She replied sadly, “I cannot. I do not have any faith left.”

This goes to illustrate that the people we spend most of our time with and cultural influences such as people, education, books, music, social media, and television that we allow into our hearts and minds have a dramatic influence on us. This is why Solomon warned of the dangers of wanting to spend time with those who are evil.

“Do not envy the wicked, do not desire their company; for their hearts plot violence, and their lips talk about making trouble.” Proverbs 24:1-2

That goes along with our sermon today, so let’s go to our scripture verse and look at what advice Paul has to give to Titus.

11 For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. 12 It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, 13 while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, 14 who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.

15 These, then, are the things you should teach. Encourage and rebuke with all authority. Do not let anyone despise you.

Central Truth: So, in this chapter––and we’ll get to the other things he says previously in a minute––Paul gives Titus instruction on what to teach. In the previous chapter, Paul focuses on what Elders or people who are in church leadership should be like, and that it is part of his duty to rebuke or correct those who are believing and spreading a false gospel. 

Here, Paul goes on to tell Titus some of the things he should be teaching the church body, and Paul gets specific in the first 14 verses. But overall, and what I want to stress today, is that we are to live godly lives in this present age. We have a present age that is ungodly and doesn’t even know it. And if they do know it, they don’t seem to care.

Some have deliberately twisted the Bible so that they can justify their lifestyle and the lifestyle of others. And they spread that lie to try and change the Church so that the Church can go along with them because they don’t want the Church to rebuke them. 

We, The Church of God, cannot go along with lies. I don’t want to rebuke anyone any more than anyone else does. But if the time comes, I may have to do so. My sermons do that sometimes. But, I’m preaching to the choir. What happens when I have to rebuke or correct someone in person, face to face? I try to do it with love and kindness and respect.

But I cannot allow love and kindness and respect to get blurred into acceptance. Because if we accept the lie or excuse how a person lives because we want to be nice, then we’ve lost the truth, and if we’ve lost the truth, we are no longer God’s Church. We become The World’s Church apart from God. And it isn’t just our teaching that’s important, but also how we are to live. We are to live apart from The World and as people of God––heart, soul, mind and deed.

Point 1: Before we look at that, I skipped over the first 14 verses simply because I wanted to get right to the point, and the first 14 verses are specific examples that Paul gives Titus on some of the things he should teach his churches. And he gives these specific examples because these were apparently specific issues at the time. They were things that people needed to keep in mind and practice because they were apparently not practicing them.

Even though there are specific things to the time, there are also some timeless truths in here that I want to focus on. And I also want to briefly address some of the specific problem passages so we can have a proper understanding of it.

So first, Paul starts with “You, however, must teach what is appropriate to sound doctrine.” That’s the ‘therefore’ that I mentioned that segues the previous chapter to this one. The previous chapter left off with unsound doctrines permeating the Church.

Then Paul goes on, “2 Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith, in love and in endurance.” Have you ever met older men who were not self-controlled or temperate? I have. 

I think I’ve told this story before, but when I worked for the newspaper, I would be at a town board meeting, and down the hall was the village board meeting. And the yelling would start. And someone would shut the door to the village board room and we could still hear the yelling down the hall. And so we had to shut the door to the town board meeting.

Temperate. Self-controlled. I think that’s what happens in many cases after life beats people down to the point where they become grumpy old men. I don’t think they started out in life that way, it happened after a lot of life’s circumstances hitting them hard. And it’s one pelt after another. It’s like the rain that hits the concrete. After a while, there’s nicks in the sidewalk and a pothole on the street.

Godly men need to relearn through the power of The Holy Spirit how to be gentle yet strong, and worthy of respect. I have to tell you, I couldn’t respect those men at the other end of the hall, and they were supposed to be respected pillars of our community. They should have been aware that they were in a position to earn respect, but instead, they weren’t worthy of it.

 Verses 3-5 say, “Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. 4 Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, 5 to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.”

The reason why I wanted to touch on this is because it’s one of those verses that gets us into trouble. This is one of those verses where people say, “The Bible is old fashioned and hates women.” Well, you have to realize that 2,000 years ago, there was no such thing as a career in the sense that we have it today. That’s a relatively modern concept. Sure, there were jobs and trades and in a sense ‘careers’ but they didn’t emphasize it the way our culture does today. They stressed work versus laziness. Men traditionally worked outside the home, women traditionally worked inside the home. There was value in work, not in a career. I’ve said this before, but there’s so much emphasis on career now, that our careers become our identity.

And so in much the same way as Paul was telling Titus to teach the men to be worthy of respect, he wanted Titus to teach that same thing to women too, only in a manner that was more specific to the women of the time. “To be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home (that just means to work and not be lazy), to be kind and to be subject to their husbands.”

Uh-oh. That’s even worse. Why do women need to be subject to their husbands? Well, if we go way back to Genesis 3, when God doles out the curses, he says this to Eve: Women will have a hatred for snakes and “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” So, the Hebrew word for desire means to desire to rule over, or desire to control. I think some Bibles may translate it that way, but most just use the word ‘desire’ because we don’t have a single word for that definition as the Hebrew language did.

And then, God says that men will rule over them. So God is not saying that it is right for men to rule over them, he’s saying that it’s part of the curse too. So there’s friction in marriage––in case you didn’t know. That friction is actually part of the curse that goes back to Genesis. So what Paul is saying here, is ‘women are going to naturally want to be controlling over their husbands, so teach them not to be. Teach them to squelch that desire.’ That’s basically what he’s saying. 

There’s another troubling piece of scripture here that I want to address before we go on, and that’s what Paul had to say about slaves. Starting in verse 9, Paul said, “9 Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them, 10 and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted, so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.”

This was the excuse for slavery hundreds of years ago, at least one of them. It does not speak for or against slavery, but instead said that slaves should obey their masters and try to please them. Another thing I’ve mentioned before was that slavery in the New Testament era was a lot different than what it was in the United States 160 years ago when The Civil War broke out. Slavery in the New Testament era was contractual. The slave or servant had to agree to the terms and conditions. In many cases the servant might have been the one to initiate the servitude. They might have done this to pay back a debt to someone they couldn’t pay back, so they were in their service and worked it off for so many months or years. In exchange, the master gave the servant room and board. 

But a lot of slaves didn’t want to stay. Many might have still been treated unfairly and their masters might not have lived up to the terms. Or slaves decided they’ve had enough and wanted to quit. The Book of Philemon is about a runaway slave. But Paul’s emphasis was not that slavery was right or wrong; it was part of the culture and it was to teach slaves to be of Godly character and therefore a witness to their masters. Paul knew he couldn’t change society through free speech, boycotting and marches. It wasn’t the job of the church at that time to try to change culture through encouraging new legislation because they lived under The Roman Empire. The Emperor made the rules and that was that. Instead, Paul’s emphasis was to change society through the gospel. 

So Paul gave even slaves a role to play in that. And what was their role? To be kind, obedient and honest workers, willing to do their job without complaining “so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.” It was so that they could stand out among the rest of the slaves who were not Christian, as better people.

 So I wanted to bring those tough issues to the forefront because I know that they have been troubling passages in the past, and we should understand them in context. So the next time somebody says, “what about this, what about that?” You can answer them.

Point 2: Now that leads us directly to our main verses this morning. Paul talks about slaves bringing an attractive gospel to their masters, and then immediately says, “11 For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. 12 It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, 13 while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, 14 who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.” 

This is a culmination of what Paul talked about before. To the men, to the women and children, to the slave and to the master. There is no distinction or preferential treatment in the Kingdom of God. Salvation is offered to all. And that equity of salvation is a witness and example on how to treat each other with the same kind of equality––for men on how to treat women; on women on how to treat men; on adults on how to treat youth and how the youth are to treat each other and adults. And the unity of salvation is a witness to slaves and masters.

God does not discriminate when it comes to salvation. The only ones who are denied salvation are the ones who don’t want it. Everyone is invited to the banquet, but not everyone accepts the invitation.

It is salvation that teaches us, through the power of The Holy Spirit to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions. C.S. Lewis said, “The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.”

It is the salvation of God that gives us the ability to live self controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age. Did you notice, ‘in this present age?’ That’s what I want to focus on. “In this present age.”

Paul said it and emphasized it for the present age in which he was in, and it’s still relevant to the present age in which we live today. We live in a different world––a much different world. Yet, these truths are timeless. They are for every age in which we live. From the first century to the 21st century, this whole “Church age” until the return of Christ. Verse 13, “while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

How does our self-controlled, godly lives look to those in our age? J D Brannon wrote in Our Daily Bread, “When people look at us, do they see a warm smile, hear a genuine word of greeting, experience a kind gesture of selflessness? That’s the something special that could lead them to the Savior.”

Day in, day out, our mundane lives may seem mundane to us, but we can be the bright spot in someone’s life who wishes their day was as good as our mundane day. You should hear what a lot of passengers that I take in my medical shuttle have to say about their lives. There’s the old saying, “well, at least you have your health.” Many of the people I take don’t have anything, including their health.

DC Enger said this in Our Daily Bread, “The considerate spirit and quiet good works of believers in Jesus Christ can make a tremendous impact on those who do not believe in Him. A little kindness speaks louder to some than fiery preaching.”

 Somerset Maugham, the British author, once wrote that the only thing that makes life tolerable in this world is the beauty that men create out of chaos. In “The Painted Veil,” he said that things like painting, music, and literature make it possible to regard the world we live in without disgust. “Of all these,” he declared, “the richest in beauty is a life well lived. That is the perfect work of art.” In Titus 2:7–8, the apostle Paul expresses a similar sentiment. Only in this case, he says that a life well lived is the best defense of the Christian faith.

So how are we to reach and impact the crazy world around us in the present age? By being Christians. By living the faith we proclaim and by living the way in which people expect Christians to live. I remember when we took our trip to South Carolina and Diana’s friend said that she thought Diana was the perfect example of a Christian woman. That’s how we are to live. To receive a compliment like that.

Point 3: But that’s easier said than done when, as we talked about last week, Christianity has gone topsy turvy too. There’s no consistency anymore. We’re getting bombarded by false Christianity all over the place. What the world expects from Christians is changing. They want us to conform to them, not to conform to God.

And this proposes a challenge. This is where verse 15 comes in. “These, then, are the things you should teach. Encourage and rebuke with all authority. Do not let anyone despise you.”

Paul says that Titus is to first encourage. A simple and direct statement and one that may seem rather obvious for a pastor to do. This letter that Paul is writing to Titus has a lot to do with sound doctrine. Biblestudytools.com says that Paul is encouraging Titus to encourage others in:

Sound doctrine, the doctrine of grace, the doctrines of salvation and redemption by Christ, of peace, pardon, and cleansing by his blood; these speak out clearly, plainly, publicly, boldly, and faithfully

Last week, we talked about sound doctrine and how important it is to remain faithful to sound doctrine because of all of the false influences that permeate the church. We need to remain grounded and if necessary, rebuke those who are preaching a false gospel or believing wrongly so that they may come to the light. 

Now it’s better to correct in love than to scold, reprimand or chastise. And here, the temperance and self-control and kindness that Paul is instructing Titus to teach is an example of how we are to correct others, if necessary.

But a good definition of rebuke is correcting with authority. If you need to correct, you have the authority of scripture to back you up. That’s your source of doctrine. Not Oprah Winfrey or anyone with a different Christianity than the whole Bible in context.  

There are times when we may not be liked for our beliefs. Face it, it’s much more socially acceptable to believe an ‘Oprah Winfrey gospel.’ It’s nicer. Everyone goes to Heaven. Everyone is good. There’s good in everyone. 

But if you remember the Paul McCartney/Stevie Wonder song, there’s also bad in everyone, too. And that sin is what separates us from a holy God who will not tolerate sin. It isn’t trying to outweigh the good over the bad, it’s about God cleansing us from all unrighteousness. That belief might get us into some trouble. That’s not a popular thought anymore––even among some Christians.

I liked it much better when it was almost silly to be a Christian, not offensive. But in Paul’s day, it was even more offensive to be a Christian. Paul tells Titus to encourage and rebuke “with all authority.” This was the type of leadership necessary for Titus to do what he had to do as a pastor to pastors and as a leader of churches. There is a time to encourage and make the sheep fat and happy, and there is a time to talk authoritatively about sin and false teaching permeating the church. 

David Guzik said, “God’s messengers are to remember that they are messengers from a King, holding the word that brings life and turns back hell.”

Then Paul tells Titus, “do not let anyone despise you.” That’s a fine thing to say. Paul tells Titus to rebuke, and then to not let anyone despise you. Seems odd. If you are going to stand up for something, if you are going to correct with authority, there’s always going to be someone who will despise you for what you believe in and for correcting them. And the greater the heresy, the greater the person teaching and believing it will probably despise you for it.

So how is Titus to not let anyone despise him? I just got through saying that the heretical ‘Oprah Christianity’ is the ‘nice’ gospel. It’s the one paved with good intentions. But you know the saying, “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions?”

People are offended that you are trying to save them from Hell and get them in the right direction toward Heaven. People are going to despise you for it. But Paul is saying this as an instruction on Titus’ behavior. 

Remember when I said that the pillars in our community were not worthy of respect? That’s what Paul is talking about here. Live, preach and teach in such a way that you earn people’s respect. Some commentaries say, ‘command respect.’ The Easy-to-Read Version (yes, there is an actual Easy-to-Read Version of the Bible) says, “don’t let anyone think they can ignore you.” The Living Bible translates it as, “Don’t let anyone think that what you say is not important.”

Some say that this is an instruction Paul is giving Titus because he may be a young pastor in the same way that Timothy was a young pastor. And as we know, older adults have a tendency to not take young adults seriously. He gave Timothy a similar instruction when he said, “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity.”

So again, this is about setting an example. Practicing what you preach. Our conduct is as important, if not more so, than our words.

Conclusion: So to pull this all together today, last week we emphasized how we need to understand sound doctrine in a world that doesn’t even know the definition of doctrine. Today, our focus was on not only having a sound set of beliefs, but also living by them. We are to be a people of God, not just say we are a people of God or say we believe certain things about who God is. It’s not enough to say you are a Christian and not believe true Christianity or live the Christian lifestyle.

What does it mean to be a people of God? What is real Christianity and what does it look like lived out in this present age? In much the same way it did in Paul’s day: to be living under the grace of God; to be living in salvation under the redemptive work of The Holy Spirit. 

That salvation, that redemptive work of the Holy Spirit, “teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, 13 while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, 14 who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.”

Prayer: Dear Lord, thank you for your Word. We ask that you would imbed your word in us so that we may live it out. I pray that our lifestyle would be seen and heard by the people around us and that it would be a witness to your salvation and redemption. 

I pray that you would increase in us so that we may not only be more Godly on the inside, but also on the outside so that our doctrine would not be a thing in which we just believe, but that it would show people that you are true.

In Jesus name, amen.

Communion:

The Bread: Communion is something that we do quite frequently. And it’s something that over the years can get to be too common. But this is something specific that Jesus asked us to do in remembrance of Him and to reflect on what his sacrifice on the cross meant; on how far of an extreme God loves us. 

Romans 5:8 says, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” 

This was a demonstration of God’s love. That he would send his son to die in such a cruel manner in order to save us. As we take the bread this morning, let us reflect on that for a moment.

Cup: As God sent his only begotten son to be placed in such a horrible situation to demonstrate his love for us, we see it as something beautiful. Too bad, to the best of our knowledge, Mark Twain never saw it that way. 

1 Corinthians 1:18 says, “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

And as we read today, that salvation, that redemptive work of the Holy Spirit, “teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, 13 while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, 14 who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.”

Let us extend our worship this morning by taking the cup and remembering.