Doing Good - The High Cost of Not Doing Good, Part 1

What happens when people stop doing good in a community, in a neighborhood, or in a home?

We see it happening right now. Here's what you must understand. When people stop doing good, evil reigns. Today, we'll explore the high cost of not doing good and how we can stem the tide, one person, one community at a time.

Stay with me. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. The mission of these daily programs is to intentionally disciple Christians through the Bible teaching of Chip Ingram.

I'm Dave Druey, and we're in the middle of our series, Doing Good. I don't know about you, but sometimes just the idea of doing something good for someone else is the furthest thought in my mind. I mean, I get so focused on my own problems that I look right past people who are discouraged or hurting right in front of me. Have you ever been there? Well, in this program, Chip challenges us to regularly practice doing good and reveals how our entire society suffers when we're oblivious to the needs of others.

So if you have a Bible handy, turn now to the book of Titus, and let's join Chip for today's talk. You know, doing good looks different for different people, doesn't it? I mean, for some people, it's rescuing someone from a life of prostitution, or for someone else, it's providing shelter for someone that doesn't have a place to crash. For others, it's remodeling a whole high school and using your gifts and talents and design and painting. And for a whole different group, it's, you know what, remodeling a high school is great.

We did that. But you want to love the kids and be at afterschool programs and teach them the Bible and get to know their parents. It just looks different for different people. This week, I had the chance with one family and they invited another family and they invited their neighbors and they've been planning up for six or seven months and were very fearful and very prayerful. And God just filled the house with all their neighbors and most of which have really never met or understood anything about the Bible or God or Christ.

They just want to love them and they open their home. And for some of you, you're at a stage in your life where your ministry really is right in the marketplace and you lead a team or you go to work every day and maybe it's a division or maybe the CEO or maybe the owner and you have just absolutely said, I'm going to do good. And how people get treated and what our policies are and what our values are, we just work in such a way where people get to see the love and the grace and the holiness of God.

But regardless of how we express it, you'll notice on your notes, here's some things that are true about all of us. Doing good is not a suggestion. It's a command. When you know Christ personally, it's a command. Do good unto others.

We know it's powerful. But I mean, there's something powerful about when you see hurting people and the love of Christ connect. Third, it can be risky. I mean, we're afraid to do good.

We're afraid to get out there. But I've never met anyone that when you've taken a risk and done good that you said, oh, I wish I wouldn't have done that. Doing good starts with who I am, not just what I do. And I would like to suggest that the price of doing good can be costly. It might be social rejection.

It might be time. It might be energy. It might be money.

It might be going to a meeting and preparing for things when you're just overwhelmed and dead tired, but you know it's what God wants you to do. And then finally, here's what I'd like to talk about. Sometimes not doing good can be even more costly. You know, we always think of the price tag of something, and boy, I mean, if I just had more time or just more energy or just more money or sure, I would like to do something someday some way, but I want to tell you there's a high cost of not doing good.

Three things I'll put in your notes. The first is a Barna study on Christian families. Right now, about 70% of the high schoolers in evangelical churches five years after high school are not in church and are not walking with God. The research says that the reason is they do not see the reality of Christ in their home, and they never come to own their own faith. Another Barna study in terms of spiritual engagement in America, there's a category now, used to be very, very small, when they survey all around the country people who say they have no spiritual affiliation.

I mean, just none. They're just out there. And in the 16 to 29 year olds, it's astronomically high and growing. And finally, there's a perception of Christians in America.

David Kinnaman in his book, UnChristian, says, true or not, Christians in America today are viewed as harsh, judgmental, intolerant, anti-intellectual, and hypocritical. And I don't know about you, but that's a big PR problem. In fact, it's worse than the PR problem, because what you know and I knew is there's a lot of corners in which that's true.

In fact, there's times where it's true of me, and there's times where it's true of you. So here's the deal. How do we move the needle?

How do we push the dial? How do we in our homes and in this church and in this city be shining different exceptions where we do good in such a way that people would say, well, they're not intolerant. They're not judgmental. Now, they may say that, but when they would see the facts and see your life and experience you, they would say, I guess I was wrong. We need to ask and answer the question, so what does it look like very specifically for Christians to live like Christians when there's problems in the home, there's problems at work. This was exactly the situation, as Paul writes to this young pastor Titus. The new Christians weren't walking with God. They weren't moral. They were in a culture, in a society that was pulling them away from God.

And just like today, there was a lot of false teachers that were telling people a lot of crazy things, and families were being ruined. And so at the very end of Chapter 1, he tells them, you've got to silence those false teachers. You've got to rebuke them.

You're young, but you need to stand up and tell them this is what's true. And then in Chapter 2, he says, now, here's what you must teach. In fact, open your Bibles, if you would, Titus Chapter 2.

And it's an emphatic position. He goes, look, those false teachers are ruining families. They're discrediting the gospel.

They're making the church to be out of, you know, look crazy. So you, Titus, here's what I want you to do. Teach what's in accord with sound doctrine. Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled and sound in faith and love and endurance. Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live. Not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what's good. Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home and to be kind and to be subject to their husbands. Purpose clause. Why should older men, older women and younger women live in a way that reflects Christ? So that no one will malign the Word of God. Similarly, encourage, literally it's exhort or admonish, the young men to be self-controlled. In everything, set an example for them by doing what is good. In your teaching, show integrity and seriousness and soundness of speech that can't be condemned. Second purpose clause.

Why? So that those who oppose you may be ashamed that they have nothing bad to say about us. Finally, he goes from the home and those relationships to about 60 million slaves were in the Roman Empire. The church was made up of at least 80 percent slaves and their masters usually were not very kind. And he gives them this charge that when you read it, if you read it in the first century, you'd shake your head and say, how could anyone do this apart from the power of Christ? Similarly, he goes on to say, teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything. To try to please their masters, not to talk back and not to steal from them. But to show that they can be fully trusted so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our savior attractive.

Last purpose clause. Live in such a way in the marketplace that literally your life, your work ethic, your integrity, your competence would make the Christian life and the person of Christ attractive. And so what I want to do is I want to dig in with you and let's look at what this really is at home. Christians living like Christians at home. He says older men are to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled. Philo quotes Hippocrates and he says there were six stages of a man's life. And this word is used in the ancient Greek at this time for a man who's between 50 and 65 years of age. It's the sixth stage of a man's life. When he says the older men, this is different from the elders.

Chapter one, it was the shepherds of the church, the episcopas, the people that were in charge of the church, the leadership. He's now saying the older men, the guys that have been around, the people look to. He says here's what needs to characterize their life. Temperate literally means a life of moderation and stability. It's a person that has their passions under control. They don't drink too much.

They don't work too much. A person that's worthy of respect literally is a serious-minded person with regard to their purpose. It has the idea of not being sort of a clown.

Not someone that people look at and they're just kind of an embarrassment. Their life is a joke. Instead, they're worthy of respect. They're wise. They're above reproach.

They have a track record. You look at their life. You look at their work. You look at their family.

You respect them. Self-control here is a matter of just one self-discipline. It has the idea of having your appetites under control, whether that's for sex or buying or food or money or work. It's just discipline. It's living in a way that makes sense.

You don't come to your senses. You know what's important and your life reflects that. And then he goes on from these character qualities to say, sound in faith, in love and endurance.

And the word sound literally means to be healthy. You have a healthy faith. In other words, you walk with God. You take risks.

You're in His Word. You have a healthy love. You care about people. You walk in a room and you're around an older person like this and you think, I'd like to love my wife the way that guy loves his wife and I get to be that age. And, you know, people at this age, they either have their kids are kind of grown and you say, I'd like to have a relationship with my adult kids the way he has a relationship with his adult kids.

When you meet him at work, it's a person that isn't easily threatened or overly insecure. It's just they have healthy relationships. They love people. They care about people.

They've kind of grown beyond trying to prove they're a somebody. And then finally, they have endurance, hupo meno, interesting word. It has the idea of holding up under pressure and adversity. Paul uses this phrase a lot, faith and love. And then often he says hope. And to this particular group, I think maybe because it's Crete, there's hope.

But when you really hope, biblical hope is the certainty of Christ's return, the certainty of His promises, what that does, that gives you endurance. It's the kind of person that you say, like I have a couple of friends, they've been bankrupt a couple of times. Or they lost their wife eight or nine years ago to cancer and they keep pressing ahead.

Or you know what, they got a really raw deal. And you know what, they're not bitter. They're not resentful. In fact, to summarize, older men, you're 50 to 65 and above, basically he says, what's it look like for an older man to be a Christian who lives like a Christian? It means you're a wise, godly example of a vibrant walk with God.

You have authentic relationships and you finish well. Older men, that's what it looks like for a Christian to live like a Christian. And when you live that way, people don't malign. That's a weird word, but it means they don't discredit the word of God. They don't think that what you believe is crazy. What they say is, I don't know where you got that, but I like to explore what you believe and why. The next group is older women.

This is women that are 60 and above. The phrase is reverent in all their ways. The word literally means they live a holy life. Or it was used of a priestess in a temple.

They would live like a priestess in the temple, a life of reverence. Negatively, they're not slanderous. We all have struggles with our tongues, but when your kids get grown apparently and you have a little bit more time on your hands, Paul thought, you know, be careful, ladies. It's easy to talk about other people when they're not around, and he says, this is the kind of woman that doesn't do that. And she's not addicted to much wine. It's that same word for self-control, just a little bit different view of it. But it's someone that, as she gets older, her priorities don't slide, and she doesn't just spend her time thinking about her and have I lost my youth and what's really important and find my role again because the kids are out of the house so I can talk bad about other people.

It makes me feel better, or I sort of sedate my pain in some ways. Paul says, no, no, no. The Spirit of God says through him, this is a woman that's holy and godly. In fact, that's her heart and her character, but then her focus is she teaches what is good.

It's a beautiful word. She teaches what is beautiful. She teaches what is winsome. She teaches what encourages. And then the focus of her teaching is younger women, and we're going to find out literally the word younger here. It's not just an age word. It literally means new or fresh and probably refers to, not exclusively, but probably refers to a lot of women that just got married.

And it's new, and it's fresh, and they don't know what they're doing. What she sees is, you know, I don't know about you. Us men don't know much about you women. I mean, we've taken courses.

I've read so many books with Teresa, I can't hardly stand it. I've listened to, you know, tapes. I've watched DVDs. I've gone to seminars. I've been to counseling, and I still.

All right? I mean, it's like there's some things I just accept. They are a mystery.

I mean, they really are. And only another woman can teach another younger woman about what it means to be a woman of God. What it means to respond and live in the culture that we live in. And what do you do when you're pregnant with that first baby? And what do you do with the first boyfriend?

And what do you do when you're bombarded by all those magazines that say you need to be super skinny and super this and super that, and you struggle with your self-image? It's an older woman that comes along with focus, and she helps younger women understand what matters and who matters and who she really is. I've watched my wife do this ever since Annie was a little girl. They'd read books together, and then as she was, you know, flourishing and beginning to grow and become a woman, I noticed they had all those talks, and they would go out and have coffee and share. And it seems like that every six months they were reading a book together. And then before she got married, I noticed they were spending a lot more time together. And then when she got pregnant, they were spending a lot more time together. And then when she had a baby, it was like, you know what?

I just stepped back and said, this is an amazing thing. And left to myself, you know, there's been seasons where I've kind of felt left out, you know. If you're a young father and your wife has a baby, you kind of feel like after about two weeks, I mean, do I not even count anymore, right? She's just, you know, and then like two months and then three months, and you're thinking, hey, everything's okay, why don't we just like go out, we get a babysitter.

A babysitter? What? You know. But as you get a little older, I've watched this amazing thing happen between my wife and my daughter. And I just thought, it's a picture of beauty. But God wants that for every young woman. My wife and one of her friends, Janet, have done a Bible study and literally, you know, scores and scores of women in our church over the last few years. It's called Five Aspects of a Woman.

And it's really a study about how to be a woman of God and what are those aspects. And it's just exciting to see women about 60 and above investing in young women around here. Because when that happens, you know what? It validates.

It gives credibility. It's tough to be a young man. It's tough to be a young woman.

But when that kind of relationship happens, it authenticates God's Word and His truth. The third area is these young women, either newly married or they're at least young in life. And there's couplets. There's three different couplets.

He pairs them together. He says, older women, you need to teach them to love their husbands and their children. There's a lot of demands on a woman.

Like, how do you do that? And to be self-controlled and pure. Same word about mastering their own life and their own discipline and their own appetites. And that word pure literally just means holy. Set apart. Having the right kind of thoughts, putting the right kind of things in your mind.

Being pure in how you think about life and in your behavior. And then busy at home and be kind. Literally, the busy at home is a keeper of home. And what you need to understand as you read this passage is the average woman, when this was written, she lived in a home in a separate apartment. When the men ate, she didn't eat with her husband. You know, the idea of a family meal, that didn't happen.

She ate by herself or with the children. Most of the men, as we learned last time, were not a one-woman man. They were a three-woman man. And they had a slave girl that they could have sex with.

They had a temple prostitute and they had a wife to bear children for their lineage. And so, I mean, life. Life for a woman was terrible. Like in some countries that we could probably name today.

Just horrendous. Well, now this revolutionary comes named Jesus. And he starts talking about women being co-heirs of the grace of God. And equal and God-side and loved and cared for. And he gives these ridiculous commandments in this culture that men should lay down their life for their wives and care for them and love them and protect them and provide for them and connect with them and communicate with them. Well, in Crete, you have this wild culture going on. Apparently some of the younger women were getting emancipated.

But in their emancipation, we're starting to sort of take their emancipation where they were violating some of the cultural cues to such a point that it was undermining whole families. And Paul's saying, you know, be careful about your focus. And there's a lot of things you can do as a woman, but make sure your priority is in order. There's certain things that no one else can do but you.

No one can love your husband or be a mom to your kids like you. No one can have kind of the self-control and model purity like you, especially in that culture or in ours. And so he's saying to them, make sure that how you live, how you relate, honors what God says.

Chip will be back in just a minute with his application. You've been listening to the first part of his message, The High Cost of Not Doing Good, from his series Doing Good, What Happens When Christians Live Like Christians. The Bible teaches that we're saved by God's grace and by our faith in him. So where does that leave doing good works? I mean, why does it matter how we interact with one another? Well, through Chip's teaching in the book of Titus, we'll learn how our decision to do good for another person is more than just a simple gesture. It's an opportunity to impact their life.

Don't miss the easy ways you can practice doing good every day and how we can dramatically change our world for the better. For more information about our resources for this series, go to livingontheedge.org or call 888-333-6003 or go to the Chip Engram app. Well, before we go any further, Chip has joined me here in studio to talk about an issue that's been on his heart recently. Chip?

Well, thanks so much, Dave. For months, the world has been witnessing the tragedy of the war in Ukraine. No sane person hopes for war. But when you're in one, you want soldiers in the fight who are both passionate and well-trained for battle. As Christians, we're in a spiritual war against the powers of darkness. Ephesians 6 details the importance of preparation and training and readiness for the fight that we're in.

Listen to what Paul says. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's evil schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this darkness, and against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. This is what we're training for, and we need warriors who equipped with the truth, who are able to speak light into this world. And Living on the Edge, we are absolutely committed to helping people go deeper in the truth, to put on the full armor of God, and to be men and women who are not passive, but enter the battle for the souls of their children, for our country, and for the future.

Here's my question. Would you help us? Would you help us disciple people, equip the next generation, and help pastors in this battle that we're in, not against political issues, not against cultural issues, but against the spiritual forces of darkness behind so much of the evil that we see? Would you pray with us, and then would you consider making a financial contribution between now and July 7th, as every gift will be doubled dollar for dollar? I want you to know that myself and our team are all in, and we want to make a difference, and we need your help. Thanks for doing whatever God chose you to do.

Visit livingontheedge.org. App listeners, just tap donate, and thank you for praying and doing whatever the Lord leads you to do. Here again is Chip to share some final thoughts from today's message. As we close today's program, I want you to really think about your perspective of your world. We throw stats around, and right now the statistics are pretty grim when it comes to the effectiveness of churches, the effectiveness of Christians living out their faith. There's great exceptions.

I'm with you there. Overall, it's a little bit discouraging. I think what happens to me is I start to just tune all that out, and I'm tired of all that negativity. I forget that the real change, the real transformation, it just happens like one very ordinary, regular person at a time. The world has gone through difficult times before. God is about and is raising up people that are really making a difference. I'd like you to just kind of pause with me, and I want to talk to two groups, an older man and an older woman. Everyone is free to listen in, but you heard very clearly and specifically some things that you can do that are good. We've lost respect for people that are old.

Every commercial is about cream to make you look young and surgeries to make you look young. We don't respect anymore the value of wisdom. Here's what I want to tell you. You need to bring it. Grandparents, you need to flat-out bring it. Women, you need to ask yourself, who am I discipling?

Who am I investing in? You men who feel like the world keeps passing you by, your life experience just as a man of God. You've raised some kids.

You've been through work stuff. You need to bring that. Take initiative.

Do good. Let's care for this younger generation. Believe me, younger people in our day are desperate to hear a word from older people.

You may not think so, but I do Bible studies with them all the time, 20- and 30-year-olds longing for that parental wisdom. You could provide that, and you could do it today. Great word, Chip. Thanks. Just before we close, would you pray for those who are feeling challenged to respond to Chip's encouragement right now?

There's always a spiritual battle when we feel prompted to draw near to God. Thanks for taking a minute to do that. And if there's a way we can pray for you, let us know. Call us at 888-333-6003 or email chip at livingontheedge.org. We'd love to hear from you. Join us next time as Chip continues his series, Doing Good. Until then, this is Dave Drouie saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge.