Anybody who comes against the Christian faith, you need to put to shame, not for that as an end in itself, but to shame them into repentance. You need to so live that the opposers of Christianity are embarrassed, humiliated, disgraced because there's nothing bad they can legitimately say about us, and so they look like fools for saying those lies that they say. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Though it's not popular to say, it's certainly true that when men exert decisive, fair, godly leadership, the blessing follows. So how do you cultivate that kind of leadership if you're a man?
And how do you support and encourage that leadership if you're a woman? John MacArthur gives you answers today as he continues his study titled, Revolutionary Living in a Dark Culture. And now here's John MacArthur with the lesson. Open your Bible, if you will, to Titus chapter 2. Paul says, you exhort young men to walk in the Spirit, to seek with all their might, to harness themselves and live in spiritual balance and self-control and not to become victimized by those dangers that are lurking all around them. Having given that exhortation, he then turns to the second point, example, and sets up Titus to be an example of how one lives a balanced life. You'll notice in the verse 7, the word example, and that's obviously the key to it.
He is now going to say to Titus, look, for the sake of the young men, exhort them, and that is to confront them verbally, but also for the sake of the young men, set an example, and that is to confront them with the pattern of your life so that they can copy what you are. Any exhortation lacks force and impact and power without an example. In fact, exhortation without example is that old word hypocrisy. And hypocrisy never teaches people to do right, it always teaches people to do wrong. Paul taught and lived. In Acts 20, he could have just quoted, it is more blessed to give than receive, to instruct them that they should be generous givers. But he didn't just quote that saying of Jesus. He said, you know how I was when I was with you. You know that for the space of three years I ceased not night and day with tears to give you what you needed by way of warning.
You know that I never coveted any man's silver, any man's gold, or any man's clothing. You know the sacrifices I made to earn my own living and the living of everybody around me, and now I say to you it is more blessed to give than receive, and you know what I mean because you saw it in my life. In Hebrews chapter 13, verse 7, we are told to follow the faith of those who are over us, not just to hear what they say, but to follow their faith, to live the way they lived. In 1 Corinthians chapter 3 and verse 17, Paul says, join in following my example and observe those who walk according to the pattern you have in us. In 1 Corinthians 4, 16, Paul says, be imitators of me. In 1 Corinthians 11, 1, he says, be imitators of me as I am of Christ. There is the issue of example. It's absolutely crucial, and I'll go so far as to say it is the single greatest aspect of leadership. It doesn't matter what you say if you don't live it.
People will cancel out what you say and descend to where you live. Now let's go back to Titus. So example is crucial in the teaching of Paul. It's crucial in the teaching of the New Testament. It's crucial in the life of the church, and young men have a responsibility to set an example. Certainly Titus is one, an example that others can follow. This, of course, is a challenge to every young man in ministry as it is to me even now as one who's on the top end of being a young man, but once was on the bottom end of being a young man. All through the years of ministry here, it has been of equal concern to me along with my preaching the truth to you that I live the truth before you, lest my preaching become shallow, unbelievable, and hypocritical.
And so he says to Titus, it's absolutely crucial that you be an example. The word example, a very interesting word. It literally means a blow, like you would do with a hammer. In fact, in John 20, 25, the same word is used. Example, to describe the print of the nails in the hands of Jesus. When the hammer went in and drove the nail through, it left the print of the nail. That's the idea.
It's the word for a dye, a mold, a model, a pattern you would trace over, some imprint or impress. You're to be that. You're to be the perfect living imprint of virtue, the model that others can follow, the life they can trace their own life on. This is crucial in influencing young men because young men look up to other men. They look up to men. They want a hero that they can follow, crucial that you live to become that spiritual hero. Contrast with that, Matthew 23, 3, when Jesus indicted the Pharisees and said, you don't want to be like them because they say and they don't do.
You don't want to be like that. Titus was called to be an example. In a very broad area, look at this, be an example of good deeds.
That's about as broad as you can get. Good is kalas. It doesn't mean superficial cosmetic good, it means inherent good, righteousness, nobility, moral excellence. So he says, you be an example in the whole range of deeds, works, efforts that could be called righteous. You be a pattern of spiritual goodness and righteousness that shows up in every single thing you do. This is referring obviously to general conduct and general behavior. Your life is to be full of good works as an example to other young men of how they're to live.
Young men, that's to be your life. You begin to control your life when you begin to understand that God wants your life to be full of good, righteous, holy deeds. Then there's another matter presented to him, not only in this broad category of good deeds, but notice what he adds in verse 7. In the New American Standard text, it reads, with purity in doctrine. I want to talk to you about that a moment because I think it can be best understood in a way other than what appears by reading it. It sounds like he's telling Titus to make sure he's an example of pure doctrine.
I don't think that's it at all. What he is saying to him is this, in the matter of the teaching, you be an example of, literally in the Greek, uncorruptness. Let me tell you what he means. The word uncorruptness is from the word thora. And if you put a little a on the front, athora, it makes it a negative.
It makes it a negative. We have that in English even sometimes. For example, we say a person is pathetic. That means they're sympathetic, they're compassionate, they're caring, they're tender, they have pathos.
If we say someone is apathetic, we mean they're indifferent, they're apathetic, they have apathy. So we use the same what they call an alpha or an a-privitive, which negates a word. So here you have a word that means corruptness, corruption, depravity, with an a in the front of it, uncorrupt, non-depraved. By the way, it is used...this word is used in 2 Peter 1, 4, 2 Peter 2, 19, and translated, corruption, thora, corruption. It has the idea of moral filth. It is also used in another form of a seducer, or a rapist, and of an abortionist in extra biblical literature. So it refers to a corrupt, filthy, immoral, depraved seducer and abortionist, the worst of behaviors.
You add the alpha, and you get uncorruptness. So what he is saying is it's a word that talks about behavior. It's a word that talks about conduct, and he is saying when it comes to the teaching, you live it without corruption. That's what he's saying. The word teaching, didaskalia, is the word that's used 15 times in the pastoral epistles. It's always translated teaching or doctrine. So in the matter of the teaching, the Christian teaching, the doctrine, you maintain uncorrupted obedience.
That's what he's saying. That's what young men must do. Young men must know the Word of God, and young men must live according to it.
That's integrity. The point is not that Titus is to speak pure doctrine. That was already told him in verse 1. He was already told to speak sound doctrine. Now he is being told to live in perfect accord with it, without defect. This also is not the exhortation section. If he was exhorting him to teach a certain way, you may have found it in verse 6. Here he's talking about his example of living, and he is saying maintain an example that shows uncorruptness as regards revealed truth. There's a psalm, Psalm 119, very familiar to us that basically has a couple of verses that reinforce this same great truth. Listen to what it says in verse 9 of Psalm 119. How can a young man keep his way pure? How? By keeping it according to Thy Word.
That's it. If you're going to be an example in every area, then you've got to line up with the Word and live in an uncorrupted way. That's why the psalmist then says in verse 10, with all my heart, I sought Thee, do not let me wander from Thy commandments, Thy Word I have kept in my heart that I might not sin against Thee. What keeps you in line is the Word and the pure obedience to it. Put the teaching in the heart and then submit to it, obey it, and live out the teaching of Scripture.
Thus, Titus would be a model of integrity, consistent living, which would demonstrate to all the rest of the young men exactly how they were to live. And that's how you're to live, young men. There's no premium. There's no premium on sowing your wild oats while you're young. God doesn't put any premium on adolescent iniquity, or on the iniquity of youth, or on the iniquity of adulthood. There is no provision in God's plan for you to have years and years of sinning. At some point in time, you stop that profligate life and become sage and obedient in your old age. Sin at any time in life is an offense to God, even in youth.
Youth is no excuse for it. The Holy Spirit can restrain it. And if one puts the Word of God in the heart, lives close to the Word of God, he can be uncorrupt in living according to the teaching. Then he adds another word at the end of verse 7, dignified, semitase.
It's used in 1 Timothy 3, 8, and 11 to speak of deacons. It means seriousness, seriousness. He's saying you need to be an example to young men of seriousness. Youth tends to be somewhat frivolous, wouldn't you say? Oh, particularly in our culture where we have taken entertainment to the level of a destructive disease, particularly in our culture where we live for entertainment, frivolity, trivia dominates our culture.
People can be frivolous and lack the ability to think seriously. Young men are to learn to think seriously. Does that mean you don't laugh? No, you do laugh. God has given us laughter as a gift from Him, and there are times of joy and there's a season to laugh, but what it does mean is that you understand that things are serious and you need to be serious when you're dealing with serious things. I suppose the error that Paul would have in mind of young men is not that they laugh when they should laugh, but that they laugh when they should cry.
They should have a mature understanding of the issues of life, death, time, and eternity. And then in verse 8, he adds a final feature of this exemplary living. He says, you are to be sound in speech which is beyond reproach. That's right back where he started when he wrote to Timothy to be an example. He started with Timothy on the subject of speech and then moved to others. Here he starts with others and moves to this one of speech with Titus.
Speech is the word lagah. Some have thought this meant sound in the word, having sound theology. No, Titus already has sound theology. He's already been instructed to teach that sound theology in verse 1. He must already know sound theology very, very well because he's going to have to be able to locate and identify men who hold fast to the faithful word as indicated in chapter 1. He's not telling him here to teach sound theology.
He's simply telling him to talk in a healthy way. The word lagah doesn't always mean the Word of God. It can mean talk, language, speech. That's what it means in Ephesians 4, 29. It's just the word for speech. That's what it means in Colossians 4, 6. Let your speech be always with grace. The issue's not teaching, it's not theology.
And the word sound here, hugia is from hugiaiao which means to be healthy or to be wholesome. We get the word hygiene from it to induce health, life-giving, health-giving. Let your speech minister grace to the hearers. Let it be health-giving, spiritually healthy, spiritually life-giving, edifying, building up.
How healthy? So that it is beyond reproach. It is unable to be accused, it is unable to be condemned. Titus, look, you've got a tremendous job. I want young men to be sensible. I want their lives under control. And in order to get their lives under control, they have to be committed to good deeds. They have to be committed to living lives of uncorruptness alongside the truth. They have to be committed to being serious about serious matters, and they have to speak with their mouths the things that are wholesome and healthy and life-giving and spiritually edifying.
Titus, you not only need to tell them that, you need to show them how. The young man then has a goal in his life. That's the goal for all of us who could still be considered young, to be engaged in noble, excellent works of righteousness that are not cosmetically good, but essentially good, to give our lives to good things, things that honor God, that are spiritually noble, kingdom-building. We have an obligation as well to live purely, according to the standard of Scripture, with integrity, obeying it. We have an obligation to maintain seriousness regarding holy issues and the issues of life. We have an obligation to speak in such a way that out of our mouth come words that minister spiritual health to everyone, and our speech is so impeccable that no one can ever criticize it.
This is what young men are to be. God doesn't want to evaluate a man like the world does. How does the world evaluate a man?
They evaluate a man by what he does for a job, or who he knows, or what he owns. None of that means anything to God, who evaluates a man by what he is. Look at Ecclesiastes for a moment, because there's a good concluding exhortation in chapter 11.
Ecclesiastes chapter 11, verse 9, is a good summation of what we have just learned. Rejoice, young man, during your childhood or your youth, and let your heart be pleasant during the days of your young manhood, and follow the impulses of your heart and the desires of your eyes. Stop there for a moment. He's saying you ought to enjoy your youth. There's nothing wrong with having fun and joy. There's nothing wrong with your heart being pleasant during the days of your young manhood. There's nothing wrong with the thrills of youth and the exhilaration of adventure and discovery and love, achievement, nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with following the impulses of your heart, those desires, those longings, those adventures that you really would love to fulfill.
Nothing wrong with somehow capturing the delights and desires of your eyes. But just know this, God's going to bring you to judgment for all those things. You're going to have to stand before God to account for the fact that some of those were wrong desires, and some of those were wrong impulses, and some of that rejoicing was irresponsible. God doesn't want to rain on your parade. God doesn't want to stop your joy and your fun and youth. He just wants you to know you've got to give account for it. So, verse 10, remove vexation.
What's that? Sadness, remorse, what makes you sorry. Take anything out of your life that's going to leave you with guilt and sorrow. Remove it from your heart. And then put away, not pain, but put away, you'll see in the margin, evil from your body. Anything that's going to produce an evil consequence, that's going to inflict you with evil because childhood and the prime of life are fleeting.
And why would you want to fill it up with stuff that makes you sad and hurts you? Put away the stuff that's going to make you pain. Put away the stuff that's going to make you weep, the things that are going to bring you into judgment before God. Enjoy your youth, but get it under control.
How do you do that? Verse 1 of chapter 12, you do it by remembering your Creator in the days of your youth. Before the evil days come and the years draw near when you'll say, I have no delight in them, the day is going to come when you can't enjoy your old age. The day is going to come when you're going to be old, and I'll promise you won't enjoy it, He says. You won't enjoy it, but you know what you will enjoy? In your old age you will enjoy the wonderful memories of a well-spent youth. But if when you get old and you can't enjoy your old age and you can't enjoy the memories of your youth, then you've got no delight. So live your life in youth so that you can enjoy it all over again in old age. And then finally, the effect to the exhortation and the example.
We add the effect, why all of this? Why are young men to live this way? Why are young women to live this way? The older women, older men, here it is, verse 8, the purpose clause, the purpose result clause, in order that the opponent may be put to shame, having nothing bad to say about us, so that you can silence the critics of the faith, so that you will cause people to be shamed when they criticize Christianity. Boy, we're a long way from that in this world, aren't we?
Wow! People criticize Christianity mercilessly and they don't feel ashamed to do it. They would feel ashamed if their criticisms were obvious lies because of the virtue of God's people, wouldn't they? The opponent, that's a singular word, any opponent, any opposer, it's used in Acts 26, 9, 1 Thessalonians 2, 15, to describe someone who is hostile. In Acts 28, 17, it's used for something contrary.
It's used in the gospels in another form of winds that are contrary to the ship, keeping it from going the way it should go. Anybody who opposes, he could be referring to the cretin errorists and false teachers described back in chapter 1, starting in verse 10, called rebellious men, empty talkers, deceivers, and so forth. But anybody who comes against the Christian faith, you need to put to shame.
What does that mean? To embarrass them, to humiliate them, to make them look stupid, to disgrace them. Not for that is an end in itself, but to shame them into repentance, to shame them into repentance. You need to so live that the opposers of Christianity are embarrassed, humiliated, disgraced because there's nothing bad they can legitimately say about us, and so they look like fools for saying those lies that they say. Notice the word us. You might have missed that.
Us. Paul's throwing himself in there. You say, Paul, you're not even in Crete.
How in the world is the opponent going to say anything bad about you? Here's his point. One Christian stands for all.
Is that not true? Titus, what you do will affect me. If you destroy the credibility of Christian faith, I go down with you.
We have solidarity at that point. One Christian's failure affects the rest. One's reproach falls on his brother and his sister. One's iniquity casts a shadow over the church.
The word bad is foulas. It means worthless. Don't let them say that we're worthless. Don't let them say that our Christianity has no value. Don't let them speak evil against us.
Silence them, and not only silence them, but put them to outright shame for the falseness of their accusations, which is so evident because of the known testimony that you maintain. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. The title of John's current study, Revolutionary Living in a Dark Culture. Well, something I want to point out from the message today is the handful of word studies that helped explain the passage. For example, well, the very word example, where Paul talked about being an example of good deeds.
John, you said that the meaning there in the original Greek has to do with how the blow of a hammer leaves a perfect imprint, and the point is that young men should have the imprint of virtue on their lives. So now let me ask this for our listeners who hear this and want to study Scripture and discover those rich insights on their own. Do you have any recommendations for study tools, or is that a process that's only for pastors and seminary professors? Not at all limited to professors and pastors. This is the responsibility of all believers to be an example. Scripture makes that very clear. We're called, Paul says to the Philippians, to shine as lights in the world.
That's what being an example means. I would suggest a couple of things. I would suggest a very good starting point, since we're talking about the book of Titus, and that is to get a copy of the New Testament commentary that I've written on Titus. Some of you know I've written New Testament commentaries on all the books of the New Testament, totals up to 33 volumes. Most Christian people don't think of commentaries as an important part of their life. Devotionals, yes, commentaries, no.
And so for many Christians they stay at a superficial level. If you want to really deepen your understanding, if you want the hammer to leave a real imprint, read commentaries. And I would suggest that since we're on the book of Titus in this series, that would be a great place to start. The Titus commentary includes a comprehensive look at the Christian's responsibility in a pagan society, and many other topics like the qualification of pastors and church leaders, men who must be silenced in the church, namely false teachers, the character of a healthy church, the preacher's authority, many more things. You need to know what the Lord expects for his leadership in the church and for the church. So much of it is in Titus. It's a marvelous tool for Sunday school teachers as well as pastors, and just for all believers to know what their responsibility is in the life of the church. Reminder again, the New Testament has been covered in the MacArthur New Testament commentaries.
There are 33 volumes, and we give you a discount on each volume if you order the entire set. But if you don't want to jump in at that level, you can begin with the commentary on Titus, or if you want to take the big leap, you can purchase the full MacArthur New Testament commentary series by letting us know you want that and you can do it today. Friend, to order the Titus commentary or any volume in the MacArthur New Testament commentary series, or to order the whole series with a discount on each volume, get in touch with us today.
You can place your order from our website, gty.org, or you can call us, 800-55-GRACE. Titus is a short letter, but it's packed with insights on church leadership and the roles of men and women and how to live a godly life and more. Again, to order the Titus commentary or the entire MacArthur New Testament commentary in 33 volumes, call 800-55-GRACE or go to gty.org. Now if John's series on Revolutionary Living in a Dark Culture has helped clarify the roles of men and women for you, or if your family has been strengthened by this daily broadcast, or if God used grace to you to draw someone you know to Christ, those are the types of stories we love to hear. So email your story to letters at gty.org or drop your letter in the mail addressed to Grace to You, Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412. Now for John MacArthur and our staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Remember to watch Grace to You television this Sunday on DirecTV channel 378, that's NRB-TV, and then be back starting Monday as John shows you how you can live a revolutionary life, even in the workplace. It's another half hour of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.
