Counter-Culture Living

Welcome back to our women's Bible study on the book of Titus, which is called While We Wait. And last week we celebrated the importance of the church and the blessing of order that is brought by the appointment of pastors and elders. And their task was and their task is to teach sound doctrine and to rebuke those who contradict it. And they were appointed based in part on their personal sanctification. Okay, that was their qualifications. Men who had chosen to yield to the Holy Spirit to make changes in their lives. And we remember that this letter was written by the Apostle Paul to inspire Titus to equip the Christians to evangelize their neighbors. Okay, now we turn the page to chapter two and we realize as it turns out it's not just elders that need personal sanctification. It's you and me. It's men and women. It's older men, younger men, older women, younger women. This is what equips us to evangelize while we wait for the return of Christ. And so that's just, I just want to show you, that's our bullseye for this chapter is a lot of personal sanctification. On Crete, if a Christian lived a holy life on Crete, they would look different than what we saw was the character of the Cretans. In America, if you live a holy life, you probably will also. Or in whatever country you're doing this Bible study, you will look different than those around you. This is what we should expect. So I titled this lesson Counter Culture Living. Living counter to the culture that we are engaged in. And the chapter even begins with a word that's sort of a counter word. It's a contrast. It begins with the word but. Titus 2 verse 1.

That contrast is throwing us back to verse 16 in the last chapter where Paul is pointing out what other people that have different motives were coming in and influencing with. Let's look at that. 1.16 They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. So their claim is, we know all about God, we want to tell you, but the actions don't sync with God's character. Okay? And this happens to us today. Many people will say things like, with regard to actions, it doesn't matter how you live. It's all about how you love. Or with regard to sanctification, looking at some of the things we're going to be talking about and saying, don't you think that's a little legalistic? Or then let's narrow it down and when we get to the section on young women love their husbands busy at home, don't you think that's kind of a throwback to the 50s? Shouldn't we modernize that a little bit? See, there's always going to be voices that want to make excuses to please the flesh. There's a little voice in here that wants to make excuses to please the flesh, but what we're studying in this chapter is living to please the Spirit, living to yield to the Spirit. So while we wait, God has given us his Spirit so that we can shine our light in our culture most brightly, not through activism, but through actions. And we can draw people to the gospel, not through raising awareness, but through raising personal holiness. This is what we're looking at. So Paul's going to go on to talk about the three groups, the men, the women, and then we'll end with servants. So verse two,

For right now, let's just skip over verses three to five so we finish the male section. Verse six says,

I just have to say, I'm not, I just found it a little bit comical that with the older men we have a long list of six and we get to the younger men, it's just like, just self-control. If you can do, I raised two boys that have turned into fine young men, just one thing. So what does this say about counter-culture living for men? In order to stand apart from those who claim to know God, the Christians would need to demonstrate their knowledge of God by their actions. And these aren't abstract, philosophical ideals that we're talking about in this chapter. These are common, practical, ethical examples of yielding to the Holy Spirit in all these groups, okay? So that, let's break the men's group into two parts. The first set, sober-minded, dignified, and self-controlled. This is directed to older men. Young people have their own challenges in yielding to the Spirit, for sure. But there is a, age can bring its own complications. Entitlement, self-focus, irritability, this just naturally, these complications naturally come upon us with age. And so the Apostle Paul says to Titus, so the older men should live a temperate lifestyle, not given to wild, unpredictable swings. Some of your, when I think of the word temperate, I think of that phrase, temperate rainforest, where the highs and lows are just a few degrees apart. You know, it's very moderate. That's what we're looking for in a temperate lifestyle. A dignity or a worthiness of respect that's both admired and appreciated with one that has some age. It makes everything calm around us, calm in the home, calm in the church. And self-control, which is that sought-after and sometimes elusive fruit of the Holy Spirit. We're going to end with that today in our lesson, so I'm just going to leave it right here. And then the second trilogy here, it says, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. I really, really love that really brief example, that brief group there. Faith is the practice of trusting God, and love is the practice of serving people, and steadfastness is endurance or patience, the practice of waiting with quiet endurance. That is steadfastness. Isn't that a great perspective of a godly life? And these are all counter-culture attributes that we see here. So in verse 3, now we go on to the older women.

Now you probably know, if you did your study guide, that in our next lesson, we are going to take verses 3 through 5 and spend an entire week on it. You know that we don't go through the Bible and just find all the pink verses and do Bible studies on them. We do whole chapters, but when we see a pink verse, we should slow down and spend some time and investigate. So next week, we are going to do that so I'm just going to kind of briefly go through a little of this here. The instruction is given to Titus to train the older women in quiet dignity. Okay, the King James Bible says, behavior that becometh holiness. Does anyone feel up to that task? That sounds a little intense. Behavior that becometh holiness. So I'm glad from 1611 we can scoot all the way up to the New Living Translation that simply says, live in a way that honors God. Okay, now that I can get some traction with. Okay, so older women live in a way that honors God. Lots of people are going to quibble about what it is that honors God because, again, we like to try to dilute obedience, but that's why the teaching of the trustworthy word is so important because it reminds us that it teaches us to say no, as we're going to get to a little bit in Titus, to say no to worldly passions and to live a life that honors God. And I think that that trilogy that we had with the older men fits so well here too. Faith, love, and steadfastness. Faith is the habit of trusting God. Love is the habit of serving people. And steadfastness is the habit of waiting with patient endurance. That is a life that honors God. So just to whet our appetite a little bit in our in-depth study about what the Bible speaks to women here, I just want to pick up those two addictions that older women needed to be taught to avoid. Slander and slaves to much wine. Slander becomes a temptation when we try to exalt the perception of our own life by misrepresenting the character of another. So we try to exalt our own perception sometimes of what's going on in our life by misrepresenting the character of someone else to make them appear on a lower level. That is the habit of slander. And then the other habit here, slave to wine, happens when our perception of our own life seems like it needs to be numbed, okay? We want to numb the challenges of our own life, maybe by excessive wine drinking. Because here's what, something is wrong inside. There's something wrong in there. And of course, in our day and age, there are many substances and many indulgences even in normal, ordinary things. You can each grab your cell phone and say, yeah, I could be addicted in this area. There's food, there's all kinds of things that can become an addiction for us to numb what's going on in our life. And rather than slip into either one of these vices, slander or slaves to wine, what the apostle says here is instead of focusing on trying to fix something wrong in here, turn your focus out to the next generation and train, teach and train. That is our resolve as older women. No slander, no slavery to wine. Instead, turn outward and teach and train those that need to hear what the Lord has to say. Teach what is good. Well, we talked about verse six already. Younger men need self-control. We're gonna go to verse seven. To Titus, Paul says,

In other words, live in such a way so that you are above reproach, okay? And even though we joked about only self-control for the young men, here Titus is to be a living example to the young men because he's matching them in all of these areas. Good works, integrity, dignity, sound speech, okay? So he is to be an example in all of those areas. And then we move to bondservants. Now, this is the word doulos in Greek, which often refers to a voluntary situation. It can also refer to more of a forced situation, but it often speaks of someone who voluntarily says, yes, I choose to be your servant. I found out this week, by the way, it's not okay to talk about slaves and masters anymore. I found out in real estate, it's no longer a master bedroom. It's a main bedroom now, so correcting my English here. But the Bible talks about slaves and bondservants, so we're gonna cover this.

All right, certainly in this, because a doulos is often a voluntary, we see an employee in this, don't we? I have voluntarily given my 40 hours of my life this week to you for your service. You are going to repay me. But I always used to tell young adults in my life, I think I can still tell them, I would say, listen, you are their slave for those 40 hours. They purchased you for that time. Your time belongs to them to do what they need to have done. As long as it's not illegal or immoral, you do what they need to have done, you know? And that is that commitment. And so they are to be submissive, to rank under. See, everybody has a rank. And the bondservant, the employee, is to rank under. Listen for the instructions. Follow the instructions. To be well-pleasing, to be agreeable. Don't you love to work with agreeable people? People that come in with a smile on their face. To be not argumentative. Okay, that stabs me in the heart. I always have lots of ideas, and I like to share my ideas. And I suppose you do too. And an idea now and then isn't a bad thing, but someone who has a constant dribble of like why we should do something differently, why we should do it, that is argumentative. And then it says not pilfering, showing respect for people's property, respect for their hard work. And the purpose of this, look at that last phrase, to adorn the doctrine of God our Savior. What does that mean, to adorn? Well, adorn means to adorn. It means to make more beautiful, to make attractive, to decorate. Many of you, here we are in October, you have adorned your front porch in some way to make it attractive for the season. Or when we get to Christmas time, we adorn, we decorate, we make it stand out. I'm not really into accessories, but it's the same thing. You might adorn your outfit, accessorize, make it even more beautiful. And these areas of personal sanctification is how we adorn the doctrine of God our Savior. We're gonna finish with that and come back to it again. But I promised that we would close with the characteristic that is mentioned most often in the 10 verses that you studied, three times, self-control, self-control, self-control. It was given to the, spoken to the older men, the younger men, and to the younger women. So I guess I'm off the hook. Right? No, all of these things, it doesn't really matter to which age group it was directed. These are areas of personal holiness, personal sanctification that we need to pay attention to. And so when we see a passage that uses a word over and over, it probably means that we should pause and say, okay, that's an area of importance. And so that's why I wanna end with this. And I told you early on, I promised that I would really pray and see what the Lord had for us, even in these passages. And I feel like this self-control thing is what we're to camp on. What is self-control? Well, we know that it's listed in Galatians as a fruit of the Holy Spirit. The Greek word here is the word sofron. And it actually refers to a state of mind, a way of thinking. I'm going to say sound mind often. And you think that's not self-control. Well, it is. This is what the word means. It means a sound mind, a balanced mind. A sound mind affects so many areas of our life. It helps us curb our desires and impulses, but it affects our emotions, our habits, our behavior, our speech. Someone with self-control or a sound mind has, in our own words, our proper and our reaction to other people's words, our own behaviors and our reactions to other people's behaviors. Now, okay, let's get this straight because we gotta remind ourselves all the time. We don't earn God's attention. We don't earn God's favor by trying to do these things, okay? Self-control, sound mind, and all the other things we talked about, this is a result of things we grow into to sync with God's character. Personal sanctification because we know him. We don't do this and say, I hope he's gonna see what a good girl I am, and then he'll like me more, okay? Just wanna always, we need to make that clear because it just eaps into us, okay? And that is legalism. If I follow the rules, God will do his part, and that's not what we're talking about here. And I wanted to preface that because I made a couple of lists. I made, the first list here is going to be a person without a sound mind and some characteristics that we see in a person without a sound mind, and then I'll come back to a positive list of characteristics we see when someone has self-control, a balanced mind, a. sound mind. So let's do the negative one. Emotionally, she tends to fall apart in crisis. She often seeks escape from problems of life. During a given day, she rides a roller coaster of emotions, sometimes moody or broody, sometimes giddy. Intellectually, without self-control, she lacks the balanced discernment. She is not careful about who or what influences her. Spiritually, she can easily embrace unbiblical ideas or philosophies, especially those that tend to focus on how I feel. Relationally, without self-control, overly concerned about what other people think. Depends on approval of others. Has high expectations of people. Easily provoked. Remembers offenses. Financially, without self-control, she is impulsive. She uses spending as a self-soothing technique. She finds difficulty saving for delayed gratification. Professionally, she can be the argumentative one. She can be resentful of those in her peer group. She can be the one that brings drama into the situation. And nutritionally, she may eat for pleasure or to soothe. She lives to eat. So, as I read through that list, did you feel a few twinges of like, some of you are thinking, was she talking about me? No, I don't need to go to you to do my research, okay? I can just go here to do my research. I can find it right here, okay? But it's okay if we read through that and we see what a life without self-control looks like. Because if we have those twinges, it means two things, okay? The first thing it means is you're not afraid to look into the mirror of God's Word. And we need to be not afraid to look into the mirror of God's Word and see the outcome of not growing in a sound mind. Not growing. This is the outcome. That is what the outcome would be. And the second thing that we have to remember is that every one of us in this room is in the process of growing in the Lord. In the process of personal sanctification. I would hope that if I live another 20 or 30 years, I have more growth. I would hope I would be a more delightful, godly old lady 20 years from now. Well, that means I have headroom. I have more growing room, okay? So, we're all growing. So, we don't get discouraged. Because we want to live a counter culture life. How does a sound mind, which is self-control, send a positive message to those around us? How does it adorn the gospel of Jesus Christ? So, now let's go through our positive list, our happy list, okay? A woman with a sound mind will fear the Lord and live for his approval, rather than fear the approval of people. She will consider carefully what she reads, what she watches, what she listens to. She will exercise balance and restraint in food, in entertainment, in shopping, in indulgences. Do you know that indulgences are okay with a balanced mind? A balanced and sound mind? She will no longer make excuses due to her past, but use her past as a stepping stone for greater fruitfulness in the future. She will consider the needs of others. How does my behavior right now affect other people? She will be grateful for what God has given, rather than what he has not. Find the hidden joys in the world around her. And lastly, she will be emotionally stable, slow to anger, not easily provoked, calm in crisis. She will be the girl you want to have with you in a car accident. She will be calm in crisis and persevere through difficult problems. Isn't that a picture of a delightful Christian woman? And how different we might look in a culture that has no self-control. So what is our goal with the sound mind, with self-control? Why does it matter? So I want to tie this all up by giving you two goalposts like a football field, okay? And they're in our passage, and I want to make sure you have them underlined, circled, highlighted, whatever. One is in verse 5. I'll put them up on the screen for you. Verse 5, that the word of God may not be reviled or blasphemed. This is our goal. I like to say, do no harm. Like, do no harm to the word of God by our actions, by our behaviors. This is our one goalpost. And our other goalpost in verse 10, to adorn or to decorate the doctrine of God our Savior. That is our goal in life. Do you know who came to mind of someone who I think is just such a delightful, supreme example of someone who lived her life to adorn the doctrine of God our Savior was Mother Teresa. And you know, we use her name as a contrast. Like, well, I'm no Mother Teresa, you know. But this woman, think about this. All of the people that she served, you know that saying, you may be the only Bible someone ever reads, okay? Certainly in the slums in Calcutta where she was ministering, she was the only Bible around. She was the only view of the doctrine of God our Savior. Did she adorn it? Did she make it more beautiful? Did she decorate it? It's probably an extreme example for us, because like I said, we have trouble reaching that. But it's a good example of what it looks like to adorn, make it more beautiful. So how do we press on? Now I want to leave us the very last thing. I want to take us to a familiar passage and just answer the question, how do we grow in self-control? Which means a sound mind, a balanced mind. Taking us to Romans chapter 12.

And I'll stop right there. The renewal of your mind. Praise God that we can renew our minds every day. That's what gives me hope to grow in a sound mind, in a balanced mind, in self-control. Because we can renew our minds in the scripture. We can renew our minds with the doctrine of God. We can renew our minds in yielding ourselves to the Holy Spirit. Just like our driver's license that you still don't have the picture from when you were 16. It has been renewed and renewed and renewed over and over. Wouldn't it have been fun if we saved all of those? I wish I'd have saved every day. Wouldn't that make a fun display? But anyway, that's what renewal is. Over and over. It gets better every time. I do think my picture's better now than 16. But anyway, that is our hope right there. We're growing, girls. Personal sanctification. And sanctification just means sinking with God's character, that we become more like Him. So next week, come back and we're going to take verses three through five. We're just going to slice and dice them all up and it's going to be good. I think you're going to like it. So Father, thank you for this text that we have. I pray you would help every one of us to grow in these areas, to yield to you, to not make excuses for the flesh. But Lord, to wake up tomorrow with our mind renewed in you and to recognize that you are growing us in your character. We thank you for that, Lord God. We praise you for this passage. In Jesus' name, amen.