Titus 2:1-5 • Spiritual Fathering
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
Let's stand as we honor God's Word and read Titus 2 verses 1 through 6 and think of this radiating power of the grace of the gospel.
Paul writing to Titus says, "But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine. Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children to be self-controlled, pure, working-at-home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the Word of God may not be reviled. Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled." Let's pray together.
Heavenly Father, we believe Jesus came, lived sinlessly, died selflessly, rose victoriously, and now by His Spirit indwells us. If that is real, it changes us.
Would you help us to perceive not only the change that is internal, but what you intend to accomplish by it, the radiating power of the gospel in God's people and through them? Help us to see it that we might be those who in loving Jesus teach others of a transforming love as well. Do this, we pray, through Your Word and Spirit, for we ask in Jesus' name, amen. Please be seated.
I have a couple of young businessmen friends in St. Louis who have recently been asked to assume church office in their church. They are from family backgrounds where the things of the gospel, the nature of Scripture, are not very common. And so they feel like they've got some catching up to do. If we're going to be leaders in the church, we need to know the Scriptures. We need to be well-trained. And so they challenge one another with memorizing Scripture. Right now, neither of them would be a well-versed kid. And so they are going to a coffee shop, and early in the morning they not only recite Scripture, they kind of test one another. They listen to each other's recitations of Scripture. That goes pretty well because the hour is early. There aren't many people, not many distractions. But one of them confessed that sometime recently there were some new people that came into the shop, not very disciplined, fairly boisterous, calling and causing a lot of noise and making it hard to recite and hear the recitations.
And the one just confessed to me, I was really getting ticked at those people, which wasn't the best attitude for memorizing Scripture.
And so what he said he did in order to be able to memorize Scripture is he shut his eyes and he covered his ears and he said, "Go forth into all the world and preach the gospel, making disciples and teaching."
And somehow he recognized that was a little inconsistent to talk about sharing the gospel by shutting people out.
Well, you know, there's another kind of inconsistency the Apostle Paul is dealing with in this letter to Titus. It is people who are saying, "You know this Jesus really good guy, great prophet, but to really be okay with God, you need to do good stuff. In fact, you need to return to Jewish rituals like worshiping in the temple, like practicing circumcision, like doing all those things that make you okay with God. If you get okay with God, then Jesus will be okay with you."
Now, the modern version of that I experienced in an airport recently. I was sitting just in a crowd of people waiting for the flight and an international person just kind of leaned over toward a young man who was kind of talkative and said, "You're talking about things here in America. I hear it's Good Friday. What is Good Friday about?" And the young man who was very talkative just kind of stopped for a moment and he said, "Well, I don't get it all, but listen, on Good Friday, just don't eat meat and you'll be safe."
And I thought, "No."
That's the explanation that says you get everything straight and then you'll be okay with Jesus.
The gospel is the reverse message. The gospel says, "Because Jesus has loved you and you have received his love, then you live for him. Living for him doesn't get you Jesus. Jesus getting you makes you want to live for him." If you just kind of take it in the most basic terms, it is saying our life does not change Jesus' heart.
Jesus' heart changes our life. Now how do you say that in Apostle's Speak?
Well, it's what the Apostle Paul is actually saying in this opening verse of chapter 2 of Titus. He says, "As for you, Titus, teach what accords with sound doctrine." Now there are very few verses in the Bible that will actually make Presbyterians say "Amen," but this is one.
"Teach what is an accord with sound doctrine, amen?"
See even the frozen chosen will say "Amen" to that, you know. Because we embrace doctrine, you know, it's what we're in some matter proud of.
But what is sound doctrine that we're to be teaching things in accord with? You have to understand that doctrine itself is not a dirty word. I mean the Apostle Paul is talking about teaching sound doctrine. Often in the modern church where we know there are divisions in the church, doctrine becomes a bad word. Like our church doesn't teach doctrine, we just teach the Bible, which by the way is the doctrine of the sufficiency of the Scriptures.
But why do we get concerned about doctrine? That's because there is sound doctrine, and if there's sound doctrine, there has to be unsound doctrine.
Doctrine in the Bible is just a word that means teaching.
Teach what is sound teaching. And the word sound in our English Bibles is from the Greek word, from which we also get the word hygiene.
Teach hygienic teaching. Teach that which keeps the church from getting diseased. If it's really hygienic teaching, it's an expression of the heart of God. Here's what keeps people safe. Here's what keeps them healthy. Here's what keeps the church of God acting and doing as it should. And one of the great times to say that is always at the beginning of summers where we are right now.
Summertime marks not just the opening of pools, it's the times at which churches begin to gather in their national assemblies, including Presbyterians. And it's not unusual for me about this time of year when there has been a national Presbyterian gathering to receive a phone call from someone to say, "Why are we Presbyterian?"
Particularly when I just saw in the newspaper this report of Presbyterians who are approving same-sex marriage, or a divestiture from Israel, or no longer approving the deity of Christ, or no longer saying you have to believe in Jesus in order to be saved. Why are we part of a church like that?
And when I get those phone calls, I typically respond by referring to a commercial that's now old, but some of you will recognize it. It was from a time in our country in which good, rich tire company and good year tire company were competing for national attention.
And the good, rich tire commercial always had somebody at the end saying these words, "Look up in the sky. See that blimp?
We're the other guys."
We are Presbyterian.
You know what Presbyterian means? Presbyterian is just a Greek word for elders. We are ruled by elders.
But the fact that we are a Presbyterian church that have elders elected by the people to determine what should be taught does not mean that we believe what all other Presbyterians might believe. Real quick history lesson because it's important to know what sound doctrine is, what is hygienic, disease-ridding teaching from the Bible.
You have to know that this church, this denomination, and virtually every other major American denomination early in the 20th century was affected by teaching that was coming from Europe and was saying, "Bible, good book. Jesus, good guy."
But you don't have to believe everything that was written here. I mean, after all, primitive people, ancient times, they were affected by a non-modern understanding. And so in 1924, the Presbyterian church, U.S., said in a document that was called the Auburn Affirmation, which by the way had nothing to do with football, okay?
The Auburn Affirmation said there were five things that Presbyterian ministers no longer had to believe. Didn't say you couldn't believe them, but you didn't have to believe these things anymore. The first thing that you did not have to believe was the virgin birth of Christ.
Who would believe such a thing?
Smart people, modern people, scientific people, they wouldn't believe that. Shouldn't have to believe that. So you don't have to believe in the virgin birth. Now it's clear that the Bible teaches the virgin birth of Christ. So if you don't believe that, that was the second thing you did not have to believe anymore. You did not have to believe that holy men of God wrote the Scriptures as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit, which is what the Bible says. So the Apostle Paul would say, "You believed what I wrote, not as the Word of man, but as it is in truth, the Word of God." That is known as the inerrancy of Scripture. Every word rightly interpreted, not foolishly interpreted, not wrongly interpreted, but every word rightly interpreted is true. That was known as the inerrancy of Scripture, and people were told, "You don't have to believe that anymore."
Well one of the key things the Bible says is that Jesus was born of a virgin in order that He would not be touched by original sin. And living a perfect life would become a perfect sacrifice for my sin, for your sin, for the sin of the world. He died on the cross as a substitute in sacrifice for our sin, our sin on Him, His righteousness to us. That is known as the substitutionary atonement. He substituted to make atonement for us.
That was the third thing you were told, "You don't have to believe that anymore." Good moral example, good prophet believed that, but Jesus dying on the cross for sin, what a kind of cannibalistic ancient notion.
Fourth thing you don't have to believe, the doctrine of the time was called the demythologizing of Scripture. All those miracles in the Bible, demons cast out of children, waters parted, modern science would have better answers than that. You don't have to believe that.
That was known as the demythologizing of Scripture. And the fourth thing you did not have to believe was that the miracles of the Bible are true as described.
Well if Jesus was not born of a virgin, did not die on the cross for our sin, and you don't have to believe in miracles, what do you think was the fifth thing that you might not have to believe anymore? What great miracle might you not have to believe in?
The physical resurrection. Oh yeah, Jesus rose again in the ideals of His disciples. Oh yeah, He...it's as though He lived again.
But the physical resurrection, well you don't have to believe that.
This church and churches that are part of this denomination said, "Yes, you do need to believe that."
And this denomination was formed as a Presbyterian church believing that Jesus was born of a virgin, that the Bible is true, that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, that the miracles are as described, and that the great miracle, the physical resurrection of Jesus is precisely what was needed, or else as the Apostle Paul wrote, "We are of all people most to be pitied because we have banked our eternity on those truths."
If that is not true, pity us.
And what hope then is for the world who's only trying to measure up to a holy God? Now, this sounds like ancient history, right? This was back in the 1920s for Presbyterians. But a lot of you in this church are not from Presbyterian backgrounds, yet you recognize that these same teachings came virtually across every major denomination in the United States. Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, Congregational, a lot of you are here because you came from churches where you begin to say, "Why are we not holding to the Bible anymore when it comes to issues of sexuality and marriage and ordination?"
It's because once you say, "I can pick and choose my way through the Bible," you can form whatever doctrine you choose instead of this hygienic doctrine, this keeping-from-disease doctrine that the Apostle Paul said we are to learn. And that is not only unique, excuse me, not unique to Presbyterians.
It's not ancient either.
Again, a lot of people from different backgrounds in this kind of broad umbrella church. So some of you recognize in the last 25 years there was known as the Southern Baptist resurgence, right? Where a lot of these same compromises had got into Baptist fellowships and there was a great resurgence to say, "We've got to go back to what the Bible teaches." That was 25 years ago, the Southern Baptist resurgence. And one of the few times in American history that churches have returned to Orthodoxy, usually you move away from Orthodoxy, the Southern Baptist returned to what the Bible teaches. More recently, only five years ago, the Episcopal Church in America, some of you may be from Anglican Episcopal backgrounds, divided exactly the same issues. Are we going to say the Bible is true or just contains truth but contains error too? And so the Anglican Church in North America formed in order to say we believe the Bible is true. It's even more current than that, as in this very month. Some of you may have been from Methodist backgrounds. Some of you have wonderful Methodist friends as I do. And you will recognize that one of the interesting things about the United Methodist Church, unlike a lot of other American denominations is, if you're Presbyterian Baptist Lutheran, we typically say there's an American Lutheran Church and an African Lutheran Church. There's an American Presbyterian Church, an African South American Presbyterian Church. But the Methodist kept all churches under one umbrella worldwide.
The consequence is, as now, most of the Christian world is no longer in America. Do you know that? Most of the Christian world is in the global South, in Asia, in Africa, and South America, including most of the United Methodists who are far more conservative outside the United States than inside the United States, which means in the last year, the United Methodist Church reversed its stand on abortion because outside the United States, churches said, "We are pro-life."
And so the United Methodist Church has become pro-life again just in the last year.
And now in this very month is deciding whether or not they will allow to stay in communion North American churches who have ordained homosexuals.
The North American churches have said yes.
The world communion churches have said no.
And in this very month, the votes will be occurring as to whether or not churches that have called themselves United Methodist are going to stay United Methodist. And one of the leaders of the movement to hold to the Scriptures is our own Reverend Bob Phillips from First United Methodist Church downtown.
And I hope you will pray for Bob. He is a friend of mine. He believes the Scriptures, and he is one of the leaders in that movement to say as a United Methodist Church, we should stand for what the Scriptures say. Now why do we do that? Because what the Apostle Paul says is not just this opinion or that opinion. Teach what is in accord with hygienic doctrine, what keeps the church from disease, what keeps the church from erosion, what keeps us sound. Because ultimately what we have to be taught is what endorses the gospel to our own hearts and makes it that which other people receive and are affected by. Remember Paul did not just say here, "Teach doctrine." He didn't even say, "Just teach sound doctrine." He said, "Teach what is in accord with sound doctrine." Which means there are aspects of content and consequence to the doctrines that we teach. What was the teaching that the Apostle Paul wanted to make sure Paul was saying to those who were in his church who were saying, "Jesus, good guy, you just need to do some other stuff to make sure you're okay with God." Paul set the agenda right at the beginning of his letter. If your Bibles are still open, look right at chapter 1, verse 1. Paul says, "Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth which accounts for godliness," which excuse me, "which accords with godliness in hope of eternal life, which God who never lies promised before the ages began and at the proper time manifested in His Word through the preaching which I have been entrusted with by the command of God our Savior."
What is in accord with sound doctrine? Well, what's the content of what Paul is saying? He's first of all saying, "Jesus is the Christ. I'm an apostle of Jesus Christ." "Apostle" just means messenger.
"I'm a messenger of Jesus Christ." Now we say the word so often, we don't recognize that as the gospel in a nutshell. Jesus is His name. Christ is His title.
Jesus is just the New Testament word for Joshua in the Old Testament. And the name Joshua means deliverer.
Jesus is the deliverer. He is the Savior of His people. That's what His name means. What is His title? He is the Christ. It means anointed one. It's the same New Testament word for the Old Testament word Messiah.
God had said in the Old Testament from ages past, "I will send a Messiah, someone who will redeem His people." How will He do that? By His stripes we will be healed. By His sacrifice we may made right. He will die in our place that we might live. To say that Paul is an apostle of Jesus Christ, to say, "I'm coming to remind you that God is providing a deliverer by His appointment from the ages past." That means we are made right with God by God's work, and faith in that work is the connection. That is exactly what Paul says. He says this is for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth which accords with godliness. I want God's people, those that God has chosen, to have faith in Him, not faith in them, not you went through circumcision, not that you sing the right songs, not that you go to the right church, not that you wear the right clothes, not that you say the right words.
Is your faith in Him, not in you? And that understanding that we are connected by faith, I've hidden myself in the work of Christ. I don't stand before God and say, "Look what I've done." I stand behind Christ and say, "I believe in what He did. He made away for me. He is Jesus, the Savior, the Christ who was sacrificed in my behalf. I put myself behind Him.
And when that happens, I recognize only as faith my connection. God is my connector. He sent the apostle to give that message. He's the one who promised it from the ages past. He's the one who sent Jesus. And so I believe that what God is showing me when He teaches me the doctrine of Jesus Christ, that He's showing me His heart. Because what happens when I see the heart of God is that I have a heart for God.
It's just what Paul said. We would have the faith that accords with godliness. That if there's really transformation, if there's really love, then that relationship will result in a desire to walk with Him. The walk will not earn us God's relationship. But because we believe what He has done, we want to walk with Him.
Last week, while you all were listening to the children's choir, I was walking the rim of Yosemite with my sons and son-in-law.
And as we walked the rim of Yosemite, by the way, we got up on top, not just down here on the bottom.
People would ask us over and over again as they kind of noticed a certain resemblance of at least the short guys in the crowd.
What are you all doing? We said, "Well, you know, this is a father-son and son-in-law outing. We've been planning this for months and months." They'd say, "That is great that you all would plan and love being together and want to walk together." Now listen, walking together did not make us a family.
But being a family, we love to walk together.
It's the very thing that Paul is saying here. If you understand the sound doctrine, what God has done that's so healthy for you, if your faith is in that, it's now going to have a result in you. You want to walk with Him. And the Apostle begins to, as it were, describe a family system.
Now in kind of secular psychology, secular systems theory says that families tend to adjust to ill health. If there's addiction, if there's rage, if there's abuse, the whole family system tends to adjust itself to the ill health. But Paul is saying if health has entered the system, if there's hygienic doctrine, then you'll begin to see the health begin to affect the whole system, and it starts with the spiritual fathers of the church. Look how he explains it. Back in Titus 2 again, verse 2, "Older man," by the way, the word is just presbyter again, not office here, but just older men, "are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled." What does that mean? If Christ has entered you, if transforming power of the gospel is in you because you believe God has made me right, He loves me, He planned for me, He knows the worst about me and still love me, I'm going to walk with Him, then you're sober-minded. The words mean not controlled by ungodly influence. You may remember in Ephesians where the Apostle Paul says, "Don't be drunk on wine, but be filled with the Spirit."
But godly influences control you. Other things can, alcohol, pornography, recreation, sports, rage, other things can control you. But instead, be sober-minded, be controlled by the things of God, of the Spirit. If you are, then you'll also be dignified. The idea means not rattled by unexpected circumstances. If you really believe that from the ages past God was planning for you through the work of His Son, He was undeterred from that plan, then when the job suffers that you're in, when you get a bad report, when the finances are not what you expect, when the medical report is not what you want, you're not rattled by it as God went away. But there's a certain settledness of character because of what you believe about hygienic doctrine, who God is and what He's done and how He's acting. And the consequence is you will be self-controlled.
That is, your control will not be by influences that you take in from the world or by pressures of circumstances from the world, but rather something will be welling up within you. Remember how Jesus said that to Nicodemus? To believe in Him would mean they're well up in you, springs of life. And this self-control would mean I'm controlled by convictions, not by my circumstances, not by chemicals, not by other ideas. I'm controlled by my convictions of what God has done in and through me and for His church. And so there is self-control in the way in which I'm responding to others. The consequence of that, the end of verse 2, is that we would be sound in faith, in love and in steadfastness. Now again, just keep thinking, the word sound means hygienic. That for those who are men in God's church, whether by office or by example, who are hygienic in faith, there's a sense by being faithful to God, trusting Him regardless of what comes, that I think even as Afton was saying it earlier today, I watched other people and there was influence about my heart and life. I watched their faith and I wanted that faith. It's saving, healthy faith expressed by fathers of biology as well as fathers of faith. There's hygienicness to their faith and there's hygienicness to their love if we are not controlled by bitterness or vengeance or anger. And you can't be in a church of this size without occasionally having cause for bitterness or anger. How could they be so unfair or so dumb? And there's all kinds of reasons to divide and hurt and say bad things. But if there's soundness, hygienic love, then it's actually saving the church from disease because of how we are responding to one another. And not only is there this hygienic faith and love, there is hygienic steadfastness in the face of threat or temptation, a culture that does not accept, pressure on the church to change. You'll be so more highly thought of if you just don't believe the Bible thing anymore.
You'll do better if you make this compromise at work. You'll do better among your friends if you make this compromise at the party. Say, no, steadfastness in the faith is hygienic.
It's part of saving myself and others from the diseased influences of the world. So much so that the Apostle is actually going to say by the end of this chapter, excuse me, by the end of this section, that the Word of God will not be reviled, that those who are skeptics will look at the fathers in the faith and their influence and they will be unable to reject the truths of the gospel.
Now that's an incredible thought that what the Apostle is describing in this family system theory of the church is that older men who are living in this God-controlled way out of response to the love that God has shown them with sound understanding of what God has done in Christ, hiding themselves in faith behind what He has accomplished, not what they are doing, that it begins to not only affect the fathers of the church, but the mothers of the church and the young women of the church. Happened today in the baptisms, didn't it? And the young men of the church that there is this radiating influence by those who are saying, "I recognize that how I walk touches others. He saved me, so I want to walk with Him. And how I walk now touches others." The church officer not office. That's not really the point if you're a church officer. People are watching. Your family's watching. Your friends are watching. Your neighbors are watching. The church is watching us, and the churches beyond us are watching us. What's the result? I thought of it as I was hiking with my sons in Yosemite again, and you'll see in this particular uphill climb, I'm in the lead. Now let me tell you why that is. With these three young men, one is a marathoner.
One is a semi-pro soccer player.
One is a regular mountaineer, and the last one in the group is me. Who is the weak link in this group?
I said, "Guys, I'm setting the pace. Because if you set the pace, you will kill me."
I get out in front. My reality and understanding is this. The pace that I set is going to affect others.
And for that reason, I love not just being on the lead in a mountain, but believing God has called me as I look to men in this church who I think of as spiritual fathers. I rejoice in the leadership of this church. The elders who I've seen differ with one another and love each other. The ones who have wrestled out of the soundness of doctrine, even as they've tried to figure out right things to do. And I've watched them as they've wrestled say, "Because we want to touch other people." I love it that there are young men who are now in training, committing themselves for months and months to say, "How can we walk in this path?"
I went to the mops group on Tuesday, and her testimony after testimony from all generations of women who are saying, "We recognize our lives will touch others." It's the beauty of being an intergenerational church that we recognize the very family system the Apostle Paul was wanting to establish is what is happening that God is saying to those who have sound doctrine, hygienic commitment to the truths of God, that by their faith
and by their love and by their steadfastness, God is changing us, securing us for another generation and showing the world the goodness and the grace that He provides that changes us as we love to live for Him. We are not expecting our love to change His heart.
We are expecting His heart to change our life. And that's the beauty of the gospel that you are living, and I rejoice to do it with you. Father, keep us mindful of what you are doing, that spiritual fathers and mothers, children, and generations to come in this church might rejoice in the gospel that you have kept sound in this place because the people who are here, having seen all that Jesus has done,
love to live for Him. Grant this we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.