The duties and responsibilities of the older women really tell us what God expects a woman to do. She is to be devoted to her own husband. She is to bring up children. She is to show hospitality to strangers. She is to be a humble servant washing the saints' feet. She is to be there assisting people under pressure and to be known as one who devotes herself to every good work on behalf of others and not herself. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Television commentator Andy Rooney once said, it's paradoxical that the idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, but the idea of getting old doesn't appeal to anyone. That's true. Growing old has its challenges, but if you're an older Christian, if you've known the Lord for decades, you have a unique opportunity to serve your church.
How? Find out today as John MacArthur looks specifically at the practical and essential role older women have in the church. John's current study from Titus 2 is called Revolutionary Living in a Dark Culture.
And now here is John MacArthur with today's lesson. We go again in our study of the book of Titus to chapter 2, and we're looking at verses 4 and 5. This is Paul's instruction to Titus for the young women of the church. Now remember, this whole chapter gives to us teaching on the character of a healthy church. That is a church that is going to have an effective witness to the world, that is going to have an evangelistic impact. In order for a church to have that kind of impact, the people in it must conduct themselves in a godly way. You will remember in verse 5, he says this instruction is so that the Word of God may not be dishonored, in verse 8, so that the opponent may be put to shame having nothing bad to say about us, and in verse 10, so that we may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in every respect because, as verse 11 says, God's grace has appeared bringing salvation to all men. If the saving grace of Christ is to reach all men, it's going to depend on the character of the church. If we honor the Word, silence the critics, and demonstrate that God is a saving God by our transformed lives, then the gospel will be powerfully effective.
How we live in the church is the issue here and its evangelistic implications. Now in giving this instruction, he begins in verse 1 by just saying, people need to be taught sound doctrine. And then starting in verse 2 and running all the way down more than halfway through the chapter, he says, having a foundation of sound doctrine, here is how the church is to live. The older men, in verse 2, are given prescriptions for godly living. The older women, in verse 3, and then in verses 4 and 5, the young women, and verse 6 through 8, the young men. And then in verse 9 he discusses the virtue of those who are slaves or servants or employees in the world.
So what we learn here then is that evangelistic impact, the effectiveness of the church, how it reaches the world is related to how it lives in very specific terminology. Older men, as verse 2 says, are to be temperate, dignified, sensible, sound in faith and love in perseverance. Older women are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips, not enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good. Then we come to the next category, the one for today, young women, verse 4 and 5, that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands that the Word of God may not be dishonored.
Now before we look at verse 4, let's go to verse 3 for a moment because it's connected. One of the duties comes at the end of the list in verse 3, teaching what is good. Older women have as their responsibility teaching what is good. Literally the Greek word here could be translated, teachers of what is good, kolododoskolas, teachers of good, good being a word that means noble, excellent, lofty. And the idea in the word is not some kind of formal thing.
It's not conducting seminars, writing a book, making tapes, holding formal classes. It is the idea of the very life they live becoming a model of a pattern of goodness. Older women, when their children are grown and gone and they reach the senior years, are not supposed to just wander away from the church and travel around as if they had no responsibility. In their older years, they are responsible to become teachers of the next generation. They do that by mentoring, by discipling, by modeling, by setting the example of godly living with regard to marriage and the family and the home. Now they are then to be teachers of good and the primary ones they teach are the young women, and that's the transition into verse 4. They are to be teachers of what is good in order that they may encourage the young women. The primary responsibility of older women is younger women. Their children are raised, the children are gone, hopefully they've raised up a godly generation of their own. Now within the framework of the church, the older women are to give themselves in a very informal, personal way to the modeling of godliness that only a woman can do to pass on to the next generation. They are to demonstrate virtue as wives and virtue as mothers, virtue as humble, loving, patient, kind, generous servants to the next generation. That, verse 4, begins with the word that.
It's a purpose clause in order that with the purpose or the result that young women will be encouraged. Now the word encourage is probably not translated the best way. It's a very interesting word, the word. The root of it, sophra, is used all over the pastoral epistles, in fact hardly anywhere else.
I think I may have found one or two uses of the root somewhere other than the pastorals, but it appears in the pastorals many places and it has various different endings which change the form of the word. But the form of it that appears uniquely here, sophronidzo which is a verb ending, means to train...it means to train. To say it another way, to teach someone self-control. Some lexicons translate it to make someone sober-minded, to make someone balanced, to make someone steady, to provide someone guidance.
But the best translation is to train someone in self-control. There are other forms of this word in chapter 1, verse 8, chapter 2, verse 2, and we'll see even in chapter 2, verse 5. In those cases it's translated sensible. But it's a little bit of a different word.
The root is the same, but the form of it is different. One form of it is translated discipline. In Titus 2, 12, it's translated sensibly. In 1 Timothy 3, 2, prudent. We'll see later in 1 Timothy 2, it's translated discreet, has the idea of being discreet or chaste. But the best way to understand this term is the idea of training in the art of self-control, learning self-restraint.
In fact, a form of it is translated self-restraint in 1 Timothy 2, 15. So the older women then are to teach the young women the self-discipline that trains them to be able to do their duty, which is to love their husbands, love their children, etc. Older women are engaged then in a training process, to raise a generation of sensible, and prudent, wise, discreet, restrained women who are committed to doing God's will. This is a tremendous challenge.
It's not easily done. A training process implies relationship, ongoing relationship and responsibility, confrontation and affirmation. You older women who no longer have the responsibility of your own children, now have the responsibility of training the next generation of women. Now let's talk about the idea of the young women. How young is young?
Now what I'm going to say is going to make some of you very happy. Young women, to what age does young women refer? Well, in a general sense, we would say it refers to women who are able to bear children or are still rearing children. We would say, generally speaking, that it's a sort of a pre-menopause category of young women, those who are still able to have children.
A good way to understand this is to go back to 1 Timothy 5. I would add even to that, women who are able to have children or are still rearing their children. And if you think about it, women can bear children well into their forties and consequently for the next, say ten to fifteen years even after that, they're going to be raising children. So that would push the sort of child-bearing, child-rearing responsibility up to maybe 60. If you're still having children at 46, 47, remember in ancient times without the means to prevent pregnancy as we have them today and with the devotion to bearing children that was very different than a society like ours that has been clobbered with the idea of reducing the population. People had children and they continued to have children.
The home was the center of life. They bore children well into their forties normally and so as approaching 60, they would still be raising their own children. Now that's consistent with what we see in 1 Timothy. In 1 Timothy chapter 5 and verse 9, it says, "'Let a widow be put on the list.'"
And we'll stop there for a moment. Now the early church had a number of spiritual responsibilities that were officially designated. There were elders, also known as pastors and overseers, we know about them, and there were deacons both male and female who served in the church. But in addition to that, apparently there was some official group of godly widows who served with the church. The church may well have helped to assist them in their needs if indeed their husband didn't leave them support or if their families couldn't support them, or if other women couldn't support them.
All of those were to take place, according to 1 Timothy chapter 5. In other words, if a woman was a widow, the other men in her family or extended family, sons, uncles, brothers, cousins or whatever were to support her. If she didn't have men who could, then other women were to support her.
That's all outlined in this chapter. And if the other men and women weren't available to do that, then the church would care for her. So some of these widows would literally be physically cared for by the church. But apart from that, there was a list of widows, whether cared for by the church or not, who were official servants of the church. And they would serve the church.
They had a number of tasks. If you go back into the history of the church, they had fairly defined responsibility. They would visit the church's younger women.
That was a priority obviously drawn from Titus 2. They would visit these younger women to teach them, to instruct them, to help them in daily tasks, to show them things about being wives and about being mothers and about being homemakers. And they had an ongoing responsibility to be available to those women in the church who needed their help. They were also used to provide teaching and counseling when women had needs that were specific and problematic. They also visited the sick and the afflicted and those in prison. They provided hospitality to travelers such as itinerant preachers, evangelists, and missionaries and traveling Christians who may be coming into town because they were being persecuted in another place.
They had responsibility also to help with their own grandchildren and their extended family and whatever needs were there. One of the ministries that they had that was quite unique was they would go through the city streets and the marketplace on a daily basis to pick up the babies that had been left there. Ancient times also experienced a women's liberation movement, especially in the time of Paul. Women didn't have the means of abortion that people have today because they didn't have the medical advancement, so they gave birth to their baby and just left it in the marketplace.
Male childs would be picked up and trained to be gladiators. Female children would be picked up and trained to be prostitutes. In order to save these little lives, Christian widows, those who were on the church list, would comb the marketplace and the public places of the city daily and they would scoop up the little lives and put them in Christian families so that they could be raised to be Christian young people. This was one of their responsibilities with abandoned babies. And so the church had these godly women on a list and they represented the church.
They were officially the church representatives. Now you'll notice that in order for a woman to be on the list, she had to be sixty, put her on the list only if she is over sixty years of age. That seems to be the break point. And as I said, that would be the normal point in which your children are gone. Now many would be earlier than that in life and maybe their children were gone, but they might have not gone through the menopause period, they might have still had physical desire for a man and consequently it would be normal for them to remarry again, as the text will point out. But once they pass the point of sixty, their childbearing years are over, the years of sexual desire are over and the responsibility of rearing children is over, they can then make a commitment to spend their life the rest of the life that God gives them in the service of the church. The Roman Empire, by the way, indicated sixty as the recognized age for someone who could be officially called . These women were to be models then of virtue.
Their qualifications to be put on the list are quite interesting. Look at it in verse 9. First of all, they had to be at least sixty years or thereabouts and they have to have a reputation of being the wife of one man. That doesn't mean they only had one husband, it means a one-woman man in the Greek.
I can only wish that they had translated that right because every time it appears it's misleading. It is in the Greek a one-woman...they were a one-man woman, that's the idea. They were a one-man woman. That is to say they were totally devoted to their husband. They may have been married a couple of times, perhaps widowed earlier in life and would be instructed to marry again. It may have been they had an unbeliever depart and left them and they then were free to remarry. The issue is not how many times they were married, the issue is were they known as a wife devoted to the man who was her husband. They were virtuous in that sense that they were loyal, faithful wives.
That would be the moral qualification...a moral qualification. Again I note, if a woman had lost her husband earlier in life and he had died, she is free to marry. In fact, she's instructed to marry right here. It tells us in the remaining part of the text that, in verse 14, younger widows should get married again.
First Corinthians 7, 39 and 40 says that widows are to marry only in the Lord, so they should find a Christian husband and be married again because they need their physical desire fulfilled, they may have time to bear more children, they need a father to care for the children, they have obvious reasons. But in this situation, you have a woman who is sixty years of age, her husband is gone, she has no compulsion for the physical aspect, she is willing to devote the rest of her life to Christ, she has no children in the home to raise, and she goes on the list of the church if she has been a moral woman faithful to her husband. Then verse 10, if she had a reputation for good works. That is to say, she has done those kinds of things that have demonstrated her excellent character. She is a noble woman. She has an unrelenting pursuit of doing good for others.
She is unselfish. She is devoted to others like the woman of Proverbs 31, or like Dorcas who was always making garments for the poor. And then additionally, if she has shown hospitality to strangers, if she has washed saints' feet, if she has assisted those in distress, if she has devoted herself to every good work, and then that one I skipped, which is really the heart of it, if she's brought up children. This particular duty was for someone who had a godly reputation, who had cared for strangers, who had humbled herself to wash the dirty feet of those who walked in the dust or the mud, it was either one. She was known because she had devoted her whole life to every good work, utterly selfless, but she had brought up children.
And the implication is they are godly children. She had lived in, as 1 Timothy 2.15 says, faith, love, and sanctity with self-restraint, and so she had preserved herself from the stigma that woman bears having led the race into sin by raising up a godly generation of children. Look in the congregation, says Paul, you find those kinds of women, you put them on an official list and you let them take care of the younger women, and you let them minister to the sick and the afflicted, and you let them take care of the abandoned babies and serve in any way they can hospitality toward those who need it, care for those who need it, assisting all who are in distress. This is a woman who has relieved the afflicted, that's what assisting those in distress means. This is a woman who knows how to care for others. Her time has been spent, her life has been spent on her children, on her husband, and on the needs of others. She is a woman known as one who does good work. Now, on the other hand, let's follow this text a little bit, verse 11, don't put younger widows on the list.
Why? They'll want to be on it. Some will lose their husband and they'll be so distressed and so bereft and mourning so deeply, and they'll say there never will be a man like him, I never want to marry another, I don't want another man, he's the only man I ever want, and in the emotion of that moment and the devotion to that love that was there with that man, they will devote themselves to Christ and say, I want to be on the list, I'll give the rest of my life to Christ, I don't ever want to marry again. But verse 11 says, when they feel sensual desires, when the normal sex drive rises in disregard of Christ, they want to get married.
And they will have made this public promise, and apparently there was some public forum in which this actually took place, and there will then incur condemnation because either they will reluctantly keep their vow or they will break their vow in either place, they will be condemned because they set aside their previous pledge. Don't let the younger women do this. They have a normal desire which results in the bearing and the rearing of children, the need for a husband and all of that. At the same time, he says in verse 13, younger women who might be a bit immature will go around learning to be idle, going from house to house and not merely idle, but they'll gossip and be busybodies and talk about things not proper to mention.
They'll just go around talking and instead of going and helping and teaching and instructing and counseling, they'll collect information here and move it over here, collect more information here and move it over here, and pretty soon the thing will be all over the place. So don't let younger women do that. The younger women, you must instruct, verse 14, to get married, bear children, keep house, give the enemy no occasion for reproach for some have already turned aside to follow Satan.
That's sad. If they don't get married, their physical desire will lead them into sin. They need to get married, bear children, keep house. That's their domain. That's their area. That's their responsibility. That's their calling.
That's their place. And that allows the enemy no occasion to bring reproach on those women who name the name of Christ and go out and scandalize the name of Christ by their sin. So don't put the younger women on the list. So what we learn from that passage is that there are younger women and older women and the older women are kind of in the 60 and up category and the younger women are below that, at least at the point where they're still bearing children, capable of bearing children or rearing children. And if they're younger than that, they ought to get married. The desire, the physical desire is still there and perhaps there are even children still in the home from the husband who has died and it's better for them to do what God has called them to do and that is to care for those children, keep house and don't give the enemy the opportunity to bring reproach on Christ.
Now the older women are the 60ish and up and we now know who the younger women are. And the duties and responsibilities of the older women noted there in verse 10 really tell us what God expects a woman to do. She is to be devoted to her own husband. She is to bring up children. She is to show hospitality to strangers. She is to be a humble servant washing the saints' feet, even as Jesus and the disciples did in John 13. She is to assist the people under pressure. That means if somebody just lost a loved one, go make the meals, wash the clothes, care for the children. That's the kind of person she is to be. She's to be there assisting people under pressure and to be known as one who devotes herself to every good work on behalf of others and not herself.
That's what she was when she was young and that's what qualifies her to be on the list of widows when she grows old. Now let's go back to Titus. And here, with that as a background, in Titus chapter 2, we hear some very familiar words. The young women were encouraged, you remember, in 1 Timothy 5, to marry and bear children and all.
And here's the same thing. Encourage young women, love their husbands, love their children, be sensible, pure workers at home kind, being subject to their own husbands. And again, I remind you that there's always a move against this and it rises out of the fallen flesh of a woman who wants to lord it over her husband, who wants to express herself, who wants to run independent of the plan and purpose of God. That's what the sinful flesh does and it's exacerbated by Satan as he develops the culture to call its siren call to the woman outside the home. You're listening to Grace to You with John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary.
The title of his current study here on Grace to You is Revolutionary Living in a Dark Culture. When we talk about God's instructions for younger women as well as for younger men, which we will consider tomorrow, what we are ultimately getting at is God's instructions for the family. And even for Christians who are committed to following God's pattern for the home, sin is still a reality that can hurt family relationships. And so, John, if you could condense your counsel to as few words as possible, what would you say is the secret to harmony and contentment in the home?
Well, honestly, I don't think it's a secret. I think that success in marriage and family is laid out in Scripture. God created us. He created the family. He ordained the family to pass righteousness from one generation to the next. And He's given us ample instruction in His Word to fulfill that family calling. And that, of course, leads me to mention the book The Fulfilled Family.
And here's the good news. We offer it free to anyone who has never written or called us before. This is a Get Acquainted gift from Grace to You. The book title again, The Fulfilled Family. I offer this book to you as a way to make dramatic improvements in your home. It's a compact book, but it's power packed.
It's based on what is probably our most popular series in the last 40 years. And like that series this book is called The Fulfilled Family. It's a handbook that distills the heart of what Scripture teaches about the most essential of all earthly institutions. Some of the chapters are the first principle for family harmony, mutual submission, the wife's role, the husband's duty, the children's responsibility, and the duty of parents together to provide nurture and admonition for their children. It's about 80 pages, practical, helpful, and the best part, we'll send you a free copy if you've never contacted us before.
Yes, friend, whether your children are newborns or college-aged, this book provides practical advice. The title again, The Fulfilled Family, free to anyone contacting us for the first time, so get in touch today. You can call us at 800-55-GRACE or visit our website, GTY.org. If you've called or written before, or if you'd like extra copies of The Fulfilled Family to give to your loved ones, the book is reasonably priced, shipping is free, you can order by calling us at 800-55-GRACE or you can shop online at GTY.org. That's our website, GTY.org, and while you're there, take some time to check the thousands of Bible study resources that we have available free of charge. You can read articles on a wide range of issues at the Grace To You blog. You can catch episodes of this broadcast that you may have missed. You can download any of John's 3600 sermons, both in audio and transcript format. And if you're not sure where to start, let me recommend Grace Stream. It's a continuous broadcast of John's teaching from Matthew to Revelation, and it's a great way to stay saturated with God's Word. Our web address one more time, GTY.org. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson with a question for you. You may have heard that Scripture teaches that a woman's place is in the home, but what exactly does that mean? Consider that tomorrow when John returns with another 30 minutes of unleashing God's Word, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.
