Doing Good - Doing Good - Where it All Begins, Part 2

Let's face it, we all admire people who do good for others. I mean, when you see stories about little children saving up money to help a cancer patient. I mean, there's something in your heart that says that is so awesome. We all know that doing good changes the world. But did you know that you doing good can really change your work? Today you'll learn how.

Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chipin group, Living on the Edge is an international discipleship ministry featuring the Bible teaching of Chip Ingram and Dave Druid. And in this program, Chip continues his series. Doing Good. What happens when Christians live like Christians? He's going to use the Apostle Paul's instructions to his young protege Titus, to explain what it really means to do good.

The kind of good that changes families in schools and workplaces and neighborhoods. Now, chips lead a lot of groundwork in our previous program. So if you missed it, maybe pick that up when you can it Living on the Edge, dawg, or on the chipping ramen and take a second to get his message notes while you're at it. They'll help you get the most out of the teaching. Well, now let's join Chip for part two of his message. Doing good where it all begins. From Titus, Chapter one.

What you see is a Christianity across America and parts of all over the world where most Christians don't live like Christians. And those of us that never open the Bible growing up. And those of us that didn't know anything about God. When you meet lots of Christians who say one thing and live a different way. Here's what we do. Not for me. So there's a lot on the line. There's a lot at stake. So let's walk through. How do you become the who, first of all, the qualifications for a leader of a people to do good?

First and foremost, it's character and the word is blameless, blameless. The word blameless means above reproach. It says it just means having a good reputation. In other words, when when your name comes up on the screen of people's mind, both inside or outside of the church, as a church leader or as a person or the greatest Christian someone ever knows, you're above reproach. They can't say, oh, yeah. Says he's a Christian, but my land's the way he treats people. Oh, yeah. She says she's a Christian, but man, she's a ruthless supervisor. You know, they say they're a Christian. But my lands, I can I can hear them screaming at their kids across all the way to our house. It doesn't mean you're perfect. That means you have a good reputation. And then the rest of this passage, what he's going to do is he's going to describe what blameless looks like in different areas. And so he goes for the jugular because you can fake it out there. So he goes right to the home at the home. He says blameless. Looks like being devoted and disciplined, being devoted in your marriage and discipline. And notice the text, he says the husband, but of one wife, literally, the Greek says a one woman husband. And for some of us, we read that we think, well, what's that mean? He's not talking about your history. The average Roman man, especially in a fluent Roman man, had three women in his life. Woman number one was a slave girl who helped around the house and was available for sex at any time. Woman number two was a temple prostitute. That is, a man would go to work and worship at the various temples part of the temple worship in that time was temple prostitutes. So they're giving glory for God and having sex outside with the temple prostitute. Woman number three was a wife who bore children and carried on the family name. And women lived with this is reality. This is the way life is in that world.

See, Jesus liberated women. Jesus said a woman matters. He says, you want to be a leader in the church. You need to be a one woman man. And that's your wife. And in our day, he would say, you need to be a one woman man. That means your mind and your heart doesn't float. Not just in your behavior. But Jesus said when a man lesson his heart for another woman, he commits adultery with her already. So he says, you're a one woman man with eyes for your woman, not on the Internet, not other places, not being flirtatious. He says that's how you're blameless at home. Second, he says you need to be a engaged parent.

Knows, he says, whose children believe literally that they're faithful. And the word for children is it's from smaller children, probably up into maybe the middle teen years. And basically says that, you know, your children, they're not cookie cutters. They don't have it all together. They don't ever not mess up. But they're they're. There's a sense of propriety. There's order.

They're respectful. And basically what it says is if you're not investing in your kids and loving your kids and discipline your kids, not that they're perfect, but they're following you. If you can't lead your home, you can't lead the church. And so, first and foremost, a blameless leader or a blameless Christian, if who we are is a prerequisite for what we do. Starts in our home. Notice he moves from the home and he moves from there to our relationships.

And relationally, he says you need to be emotionally mature when you look at the next four phrases. It's not not not not for things you're not to do. And when you dig a little bit behind in, what you realize is what is really looked at is someone in their relationships who have emotional maturity. And so the first one, he says, is that you're not addicted to power. Literally, he says you're not self willed, you're not overbearing. The word means to be selfish, arrogant, disregarding the interests or opinions of others. This is people. They're intolerant. These are people that when you talk to them, you they glaze over. They don't look, it's my way or the highway. And by the way, it's my way.

He says that's that's emotional immaturity.

That's insecurity that's being threatened. You can't be overbearing. Need to listen to people. Need to be gentle. Would be the opposite of that. Second, you can't be addicted to anger. He says he can't be quick tempered.

And this is a very interesting word in Greek. There's two words for anger. One has the idea of something happens and you blow up like a flame and others like a smoldering coal that you hang on to.

And he says when something there's always crises and anger is an emotion. It's neither bad nor good. But we have anger. He says it needs to be controlled. But this isn't the quick blow up anger. He said that's pretty obvious. This is the kind of anger that gets down in people's soul. If you ever been around people that, you know, something just sort of negative. I mean, the most wonderful thing, that kind of negative sarcastic. You know, no matter what's happening, they have these little sarcastic barbs, not only negative and sarcastic, but they're always critical, doesn't measure up, doesn't measure up down behind. That is an angry person. Through your angry at God or angry themself or angry with others, and he says it's not emotional maturity. It's not healthy.

It's not how leaders in the church. Doing good doesn't flow out of anger. The third emotionally mature response, it's not dependent on substances, he says literally. It's not given too much wine. The literal phrasing is not sitting long over wine.

And, you know, that was the kind of drug of choice in that day.

And the Bible's very, very clear, I mean, Jesus, when they took the Lord's Supper, used wine, the Bible does not teach abstinence from alcohol. The Bible teaches drunkenness is wrong. But the core behind this is any substance that controls you. You know, in our day, he could say prescription drugs. He could say the Internet. He could say TV.

He could say food.

But this issue of of alcohol, both then and now is it's a big one and, you know, you have some people that have freedom to drink moderately and wisely and and other people. We were in South America and we were.