We live in a culture that prizes things like independence or a culture that is not just accomplishments or self-reliance. When the Apostle Paul wrote to young believers in the first century in Crete, he pointed them to transcendent values that still apply to us today. Alistair Begg is teaching from chapter 2 in the book of Titus today on Truth for Life. We're in verses 5 through 10. Alistair Begg, who is tremendously helpful in his day, uses four words that I want to give you—I want to expound them, and I'll just give you them, and you can ponder them yourself—but he uses four words to describe what is involved in glorifying God—appreciation, adoration, affection, and subjection. When we are subjecting ourselves, our minds, to God's truth, our tongues to his praise, our hands to his service, when we bring our minds, if you like, underneath the privileges, the responsibilities, and the demands that are set out for us in the Bible—because remember, how will we learn to glorify God and enjoy him?
The answer is, he's given us the only rule to this in his word, the Bible. Now, loved ones, do you understand how this transforms everything that you do? When we understand this, then it changes everything. It changes the way we view life in its infancy.
It absolutely transforms what it means to be a teenager, trying to work out your existence, figure out your hormones, and everything else that goes on. It actually makes a huge impact on the way in which we decide how we're going to live our lives in relationship to vocation and deployment and everything else. Unless we constantly stand back and say, God, what am I doing here in the universe? and get the answer right, then we will be like everybody else in the universe, chasing desperately for a Friday to try and get through the miserable existence of the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, so that we can constantly hear on the radio, Don't worry! It's only three days left now till the weekend. Only three days to go, and you can make sense of your existence down at the such-and-such place or over here at the next place. Our whole world is programmed in that way.
And if we're not careful, we'll be right there as well. So we'll see everything that we're doing as simply an addendum to all the things we really want to do. But when you realize that the fourteenth load of laundry—not that I've ever done fourteen loads of laundry, I have never done four loads of laundry, but the fact is—and I don't mean this in any disparaging way, but I mean, I'm in awe of that laundry room when I see all the things my wife does. How do you hold all these things in tension? How do you do all these things?
I mean, be honest, fellas. You can't make the toast pop up and the egg boil and the tea go simultaneously. If your life depended on it, you can't do it. And yet she does this, this, this, this, this—multiple things. And she sits down and says to herself, What the world am I doing?
And if she isn't able to say, I'm glorifying God and enjoying him forever, then she doesn't have sufficient motive for doing anything she's doing. It's not hard to see how a failure to grasp the ultimate big picture then extends itself into the futilities and failures and alienations of contemporary life. There's a reason Woody Allen is messed up as he is. Because he doesn't know the answer to the first question in the shorter Westminster catechism. And he needs to. Tiger Woods needs to know the answer to this first question in the catechism. And so do you. And so do I. Glorifying God in everything.
Enjoying him in everything. Now, with that said, come back to the application which is ours to make in relationship to the home, and in particular, in relationship to young women. Training the young women to love their husbands and their children to be self-controlled, pure. I wonder if these are couplets, if it shouldn't be self-controlled, pure, working at home, and kind. It doesn't really matter.
They're all commas in my version, and yours too, I'm sure. You don't need to really work too hard to understand self-controlled. It is a call to be what we are, isn't it? The fruit of the Spirit is love and joy and peace and gentleness and kindness and meekness and so on, and self-control. He's already said to the older women, or to Titus, make sure that the older women are not out of control. Don't let them be hanging around wine bars and getting totally smashed. They're not gonna be any help to you in the congregation at all.
Make sure that they're not slanderous. Make sure that their tongues have not gone south. And in the same way, the younger women are gonna have to be self-controlled and pure. Pure. Purity, the scrupulous avoidance of everything that is impure.
The avoidance of immorality in my thinking, in my reading, in my viewing, in my acting, in my dressing. I know that there's this book somewhere around, because I see it every time I turn around. It pops up all the time. Some lady has written a book to try and help all the sexually frustrated women in the universe to cut free and live their lives the way they should.
I haven't cracked a cover of it, but I do know this. It's trash. It's immoral. It's unhelpful. And it shouldn't be anywhere near a young Christian woman's library. Why?
Because the Scriptures call us to absolute purity, and anything that undermines that purity is inevitably harmful for us. Now, I'm only pointing that out. I don't know anything about the lady who wrote it or anything about the book at all, frankly, except I just keep seeing it. Some people going, Oh, he's advertising a book now. No, I'm not!
No! This meant something in first-century Crete, didn't it? The people in first-century Crete, when they read it out, he said, And make sure that the older women teach the younger women to be self-controlled and pure. The people looked around and said, Well, you know what pure means in Crete, and you know what pure means in Cleveland. You know what it means in relationship to your mind. You know what it means in relationship to books and magazines and junk.
Paul writes in the Philippians the same thing, doesn't he? Whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are holy, whatsoever things are good and kind and nice and of good report, think about these things. That's what you fill your head with. Do not think for a nanosecond, young lady, that you can fill your head with all that other drivel and have your emotions completely stimulated by that which is immoral and impure without finding that your lifestyle will begin to follow it. Because we are what we think.
And unless our minds are completely disengaged from us, which is an indication of insanity, then what happens through our minds affects everything. So they are to be not only self-controlled and pure but working at home and kind. Working at home and kind. I like to keep them together, because I think that when you take that working-at-home thing—I think working at home, doing all that work at home, I think it's probably hard to be kind. I mean, I don't know, because I don't do that much work at home, I have to be honest. Not because I don't want to, but there's not really a lot to do.
We've now got a lot left, and Sue's so good at it, I mean, why would I interfere? But the fact is, what does this mean to work at home? Some translations say, keepers at home. Does it mean you can't go out of the house?
Clearly not. Now, we can make it say more than it says, but we can't have it say less than it says. What's the obvious application here? The obvious application is that a young woman's sphere of influence is primarily in the home. The sphere of influence exercised by a young woman is primarily in the home.
And if she fails to exercise it there by going somewhere else to exercise it, then she leaves a phenomenal gap behind. And so apart from the necessities that may become upon us as a result of the contingencies of life—maybe as single mothers or whatever it might be—it's hard to square the increased acceptance of a kind of daycare mentality in relationship to the clear instruction that you have here in this verse. The presupposition is that the young women have husbands and have children. If they have children, therefore, they have to look after the children.
Therefore, they're gonna have to look after them in the home, and that's gonna demand being kind. I think this is probably the key place where young women, and actually young couples, face the supreme challenge of Romans chapter 12, 1 and 2. You remember, Paul says, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as living sacrifices, wholly acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service or your spiritual worship. But then he immediately says, And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds. In other words, as Phillips paraphrases it, don't let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold. Just because everybody else has adopted a certain way of going at things, that doesn't mean that you as a Christian young woman have to do the same thing.
You can either choose to go with the flow, or you can choose to go against the flow, and any dead fish can swim with the tide. Now, he's not directing this solely to the young women. You will notice he immediately comes down, and he says, And the same thing is true for the younger men. Verse 6, Likewise urge the younger men to be self-controlled. If the younger men are going to become the leaders in their homes, then they're going to have to exercise a headship, because their wives are to be submissive to their own husbands. So the husbands are going to have to be submissive to what the Scriptures say so that they can exercise the leadership so that they don't abrogate their leadership, so that they don't walk away from and say, No, I'm not going to be a leader in my home.
Yes, you are. And if you're going to be a leader in your home, you'd better be self-controlled, and so better I. So that our wives, then, can be submissive to us. Notice—and notice carefully—submissive to their own husbands. Not submissive to everybody's husband. My wife's not submissive to you, sir.
Nor is your wife to me. Submissive to their own husbands. That doesn't imply any sense of inferiority at all. If you think it does, you don't understand your Bible. There is no more an expression of inferiority in this than there is any inferiority within the Godhead, whereby Christ the Son submits to the instruction and direction and will of the Father. Christ and the Holy Spirit and God the Father are coequal and coeternal with one another. So the Son submits to the Father in order that the purposes of God might be established in salvation, and the wife submits to the husband in order that the purposes of God in creation might be worked out. It's really very straightforward. And the obedience that is represented in submission is not the obedience of children to their parents, as if somehow or another the husband now has a sort of autocratic authority to come up with a list of rules and regulations and then just demand that his wife fulfills them all.
No, it's not that. It is simply that the wife exercises her submission to the ultimate headship of Christ by exercising submission to the headship of her husband. And the husband exercises submission to the headship of Christ by providing the leadership that he, frankly, may want to avoid.
It's straightforward, but it isn't easy. And the reason it's so important, as we've seen, is because a healthy home—a healthy home that functions in unity and in harmony, that brings glory to God—is a tremendous lighthouse in contemporary society. It was in Crete, and frankly, it is in Cleveland. And failure to live in the fulfillment and submission—subjection, to use Thomas Watson's word—failure to live in subjection to the truth of God's Word, whereby we give him glory and enjoy him—simply maligns the Bible and provides ammunition to those who look on and say, You Christians are no different from anybody else at all. I was in your house.
I didn't see any indication of submission. I haven't heard as many unkind words in a month as I heard from you about your husband. I met you for coffee, and all you did was knit, knit, knit, knit, knit, knit, my husband, knit, and didn't come home, knit, and the thing, knit, knit. You were doing that to the glory of God, were you? Did it help you to enjoy him?
Of course it didn't. So that's what he says. He says, I'm not giving you this instruction so that you will be able to pragmatically simply benefit from these things, but in order that no one will malign the Word of God, in order that people will not be able to say they will be shamefaced when they say things against us.
See, it takes it to an entirely different level. And that's why he's able to say the same thing, and we'll finish here with slaves. Slaves are to be submissive. Notice, again, the phraseology, to their own masters. And notice how comprehensive this is in everything.
In everything. You can think this out for yourself, but I think that creates the impression, at least, that these are Christian slaves and Christian masters, because slavery was embedded within the context of Crete and the whole Roman world. When we think of it in terms of, you know, 1930s in the southern states of America, we think about it entirely differently from what it was. And Paul here is not addressing the question of slavery per se, but what he's saying is this—that when Christ transforms you, whatever your status in life, then if you do what you do in wherever you are set to the glory of God and to the enjoyment of his purposes, and if you make sure that you're not guilty of backchat, that you're not stealing stuff, that you're not argumentative, then what you will discover is that you will make the doctrine of God our Savior, the wonder of the gospel, you will make it increasingly and wonderfully attractive. I think that these are probably Christians, because otherwise he couldn't say in everything. If they've got to submit in everything, they can't submit to that which would violate their conscience. They can't submit to that which would cause them to disobey the clear instruction of God's Word.
So the assumption would appear to be that they are living within that framework. It all comes down to the simple things that we've learned along the way, doesn't it? You know, the old doggerel, you're writing a gospel, a chapter each day, by the deeds that you do and the words that you say, and men read what you write, distorted or true. So what is the gospel according to you? What does the gospel look like when you have to go through another week as a young mom with a traveling husband or with children who are unwell, where you're facing the blues, the discouragements, you say to yourself, I don't know how long I can keep this up, what am I doing here? Let me tell you what you're doing. You're glorifying God, enjoying him, pushing a broom, clearing—getting the cereal that got all splattered on the way out when you're left, and the bomb has gone off, and Father Joe went off with the screaming urchins that are your wonderful children, and you look at the thing.
He said, Amen. The only way I know you can do this is you're going to have to do it to the glory of God. If you do it to try and feel good about yourself or to make others impressed with you, it's insufficient motive. It'll never work.
It'll never sustain you. As children in Scotland, we had a song—some of you will have sung it as well. This is not a sentimentalism. This is actually quite good theology. Did you sing this song, Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam?
To shine for him each day, in every way, try to please him at home, at school, at play. A sunbeam. A sunbeam. Jesus wants me for a sunbeam. A sunbeam. A sunbeam. Yes, I'll be a sunbeam for him. Sometimes, as yesterday, the sun has a peculiar iridescence to it through the lingering raindrops on the leaves and on the windows, the way that the smile of our lives may have an iridescence to it that shines through the tears which accompany our endeavors to fulfill the exhortations of God's Word. You see, you don't stay married because of the benefit to you.
You stay married because God says, Stay married. Glorify me. Live for me.
Shine for me. And if we want to know how to do it, it starts in verse 11, and he tells us, but I wouldn't be no sunbeam if I went to verse 11 right now, so we'll pause and pray. O Lord our God, for your Word we thank you. Help us to imbibe all that is true of yourself. Help us to forget everything that is untrue or unclear or unhelpful, and live in the light of your promises. I pray particularly for those in our congregation who are up against it in relationship to these things, that your Word will be a lamp to our feet and a light to our path, that your kindness will bring us to repentance and to faith, and that we might walk with you in lowliness of heart, fulfilling the functions to which you've called us within your body. And we pray in Christ's name. Amen. When we live our lives God's way, we give him the glory, and we make the gospel attractive to others.
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I'm Bob Lapine. When we read the Apostle Paul's directives in scripture, they are certainly straightforward, but they're not always easy. How's it possible for us to live out our faith each day? We'll find out tomorrow as we hear the conclusion of a message titled Teaching that Accords with Sound Doctrine. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.
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