A Pattern for Young Men, Part 2

Let's show the world another way to live. And it isn't about yourself. It's about doing something good for somebody else.

Now don't misunderstand the emphasis. Paul is not defining how you become a Christian. He's describing how you live like a Christian. See, Paul is not telling Titus to urge unbelieving young men to live this way so they can be redeemed. He's telling young men who are redeemed to show the world how they have been and that they have been. It's convicting to think about, but the unsaved world gets its impression of the church by the actions they observe in Christians. And in many ways, the reputation of the church becomes the reputation of all the members of the church. The church is made up of diverse age groups. And in Titus 2 verses 6 through 8, Paul turns his attention to the younger men in the congregation. So join Stephen in this message to hear what Paul has to say to the leaders of tomorrow.

This is wisdom for the heart. And today's message is called a pattern for young men. I went on our website, just surfed around looking for good deeds, found a lot of opportunities, whether it's working with a rescue mission, whether it is this bumper crop and filling bags up for food for those who are needy. And along with that will come the gospel.

Serving with Converting Hearts Ministries, working with college students, taking crafts and games to a local mobile home park, serving on a crisis response team where when a natural disaster strikes, this team's ready to go and volunteers working with them and you won't believe the agony they went through to be able to do that, all the licensing and all of the governmental codes and regulations. They're finished. They're ready to go. They're praying for a hurricane to come and can't wait to get started. Then internationally, two teams touched down. I was just told a little bit ago that our team to China just touched down safely.

The team heading to Africa, they're still in the air, dedicating their own time and energy and help to do good things for people who need help. And with that comes the gospel, which demonstrates the grace of God who reached us when we could not help ourselves. This happens to be the pattern for how young men are to act.

Now, don't misunderstand the emphasis. Paul is not defining how you become a Christian. He's describing how you live like a Christian. See, Paul is not telling Titus to urge unbelieving young men to live this way so they can be redeemed. He's telling young men who are redeemed to show the world how they have been and that they have been. Let's show the world another way to live. And it isn't about yourself.

It's about doing something good for somebody else. Secondly, he's going to talk now about a pattern for how young men are to think. Notice the end of verse seven. Titus, now you as an example, and all the young men likewise, are to have purity in doctrine.

Pure doctrine literally means uncorrupted, untainted doctrine. See, young men, young people at large, are more likely to be carried away by doctrinal novelties than the older set who've arrived at their conclusions after years of study and a dedication in and to the Word of God. What Paul is effectively telling all young men to do then is to get a head start. Don't assume that one day you'll understand sound doctrine, which is going to happen. Get a head start on it.

Get started on it today. Understanding truth, the truth of God's Word. And this is not, by the way, knowing some answers that fell out on a doctrinal examination. This is a reference to literally developing a Christian mindset, a Christian mind, to have minds that are reformed. Paul knew it would be impossible to live like a Christian unless you think like a Christian. And Christian thinking, a Christian mind is governed by and determined by, directed by, sound doctrinal truths that are discovered not in ourselves, not in our world, but in this book. And our generation, of all generations while our culture digresses, the church is digressing. Because in modern church history, now more than ever, we are in the process of abandoning doctrinal instruction. Mention the word doctrine and the eyes just glaze over. I want church to be fun, you know, relevant. We want an event. We don't want doctrinal preaching and teaching.

Everything has to be either funny or relevant or quick or whatever. And so our generation, one author said, is suffering from spiritual anorexia. That is, they've lost their appetite for doctrinal substance. I had a guy, and I think I mentioned this to you before, come from a seminary, just finished a semester visiting back home. He came up to me after I preached this sermon and he said, you did exactly what our professor said not to do in homiletic. I said, what did I do? He said, you preached verse by verse and you mentioned theological terminology. We're told not to do that.

That's an evangelical seminary, by the way. Listen to the thinking process of the psalmist who wrote, oh, how I love your law. Your commands make me wiser than my enemies.

They're ever with me. I have more insight than all my teachers. I meditate on your statutes. I have more understanding than those older than me, for I obey your precepts. My soul weeps because of grief. Strengthen me according to your word.

Remove the false way from me. Graciously grant me your law. I cling to your testimonies.

Oh Lord, do not put me to shame. I shall run after your commandments. You will enlarge my heart. Teach me, oh Lord, the way of your statutes and I will observe them to the end. Give me understanding that I may observe your law and keep it with all my heart. Make me walk in the path of your commandments. Write delight in it. I shall not forget your word.

How's that for passion? You cannot act like this. You can't think like this. You will never think like this unless our minds are saturated with that which reforms our minds. Titus urged the young men to become devoted to the word of God.

Tell them they cannot have the wisdom of God apart from the word of God. You cannot be profoundly influenced by that which you do not know. Let me add while I'm on the subject, men, just read the word obviously. Meditate on the word. Memorize the word. But then read widely on subjects related to the word that illustrate the word, that dramatize the truth of the word, that illuminate the word.

Good devotional works, books that inspire Christian leadership, Christian thinking and living. You only have so much time. Why read junk? Did you know that in the Christian community, three out of every four books are purchased by women? The truth is our generation of men has stopped reading. The average man buys a book and never gets past the third chapter I've read. So if you're an author, put it all into the first three chapters because that's all they're going to get.

I mean, think about it. You decided to read through the Bible. You probably decided that a few times. And so the book of Genesis you've read more often than any other book in the Bible. You got to get to the Leviticus, plug through numbers.

It might be better advice to young men. Rather than try to read the Bible through in a year, pick one book of the Bible and study it for a year, which is what we happen to do together as a congregation. We study a book every year.

Sometimes we take a wee bit longer. We're never going to become knowledgeable in sound doctrine unless we study it and read it and become acquainted with it and become saturated with it. So I'd recommend go buy the devotional My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers.

It's devotional with some teeth to it. Then when you finish that, go buy his biography and be inspired by what he encountered and accomplished before he died in his early 40s. Read a book that many leaders in our Christian community have said influenced in one of the top three books, Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret. Read A. W. Tozer's The Knowledge of the Holy and the Pursuit of God. Pick up a copy of Charles Ryrie's Basic Theology.

If you want more than that, you can buy one-volume theologies about that thick. You can buy 10 volumes of systematic theology that just sort of puts it all there for you to follow. Read a biography of some Christian from the past. I'm making my way slowly, among other things, through Warren Wiersbe's classic compendium simply called 50 People Every Christian Ought to Know, just a chapter on different men and women that have impacted their world for Jesus Christ. Purchase John MacArthur's book Right Thinking in a World Gone Wrong.

That'll keep you up at night. Biographies, doctrinal reading, in addition to the study of the Word of God, all of them have a way of creating a biblical filter through which you rinse your thoughts and your decisions and your perspective. If we don't have that filter, we're going to believe whatever our decision, whatever our thoughts, whatever our perspective sounds good to me. We're not developing a filter because our minds are reformed and you got to stay at it. One author said the mind is like a garden. If it is not carefully looked after and cultivated, it quickly becomes a wilderness.

Sounds like my front lawn. So it is with a Christian mind. You leave it alone, it will swiftly become worldly in its thinking. Why do you think the Apostle Paul is telling Titus to tell older men and older women and younger women and younger men to live like this? Because the implication is what? They're not or they may not. The mind apart from the guidelines of untainted truth can justify anything.

I mean, how can something be wrong that's bringing me so much happiness? God's will is for me to be happy, so what I'm doing is I know the will of God. We need to accept everybody in the church no matter what they're doing. The problem with Christians I'm coming to believe is that they're just way too judgmental. I'm no bigger sinner than anybody else in that church. See, those are thinkings and perspectives that are unfiltered.

They haven't been purified. The problem with the church is not that we're teaching too little. We're not teaching enough. If you want young men to think correctly and to grow in Christ, they got to learn of Christ and become acquainted with the doctrines of Christ and the commands of Christ which come from the Word. Now notice Paul adds at the end of verse 7 another aspect of how they are to think which of course is reflected in how they act. Young men are to be dignified. Now we've already encountered this word as well. I find it interesting that older men were told to be dignified and now younger men are told to be dignified too. That had, if you remember, the aspects of living with a sense of gravity, sanctity, respect, ability.

The word speaks of a willingness. We challenged older men to grow up and act like their age. You remember that? And it was harsh. I got a three-page email from somebody who said, man, you are just way out of line. You let the old men have it like that? Way too hard on old men. I preached on older women the next Sunday and he wrote me an apology. He said, oh, we were so hard on the older women. I apologize for what I said about the older men thing.

Dead serious. Now talking about young men. Describe someone who is worthy of respect. This doesn't mean the Christian young man is a cold wash rag. Whatever you do, don't invite that guy to anything.

Just comes in and just sucks the energy out of the room. It doesn't mean he can't have fun and laugh. What it does determine is what he considers fun and that at which he laughs. The dignity that Titus is to model for young men and for young men to model to their world has this aspect of seriousness that earns you the right to be heard. The world is not going to take your Christianity seriously if you don't.

If it's trivial to you, it'll never be significant to them. Which is exactly what Paul has in mind as he talks about what your world is hearing from you in this next dimension of patterning godliness. He not only delivers a pattern for the way young men act and the way young men think, but thirdly now Paul talks about the way young men speak.

Verse eight. We're to be sound in speech, the way young men are, which is beyond reproach. Sound comes from that word again, hygiene, healthy, clean, and logos, the word.

You are known for your clean words. Now for the Greeks, the term logos could have a number of connotations. Jesus Christ is called the logos.

The explanation of God. In Ephesians four, however, Paul uses it in a very daily kind of context. And here also in Titus, this is the context of normal day to day speech. This is just how you talk.

It's a reference to your vocabulary. I mean, we've been scaling the heights of true doctrine and now he's going to get down to how we talk. See a pattern for godly living is not just how a young man acts or thinks, but even down to the nitty gritty of how he talks.

I can't help but wonder what kind of example we as older men are in modeling for the younger men. Do we pray now understanding at our age with the psalmist, Lord, you're going to need to set a watch, a guard before my mouth. You're going to need to keep the door of my lips. Psalm 14, three, because our world out there says, as unbelievers are quoted in Psalm 12 verse four, our lips are our own.

Who will be the Lord over us? That's the unbelievers thought you're going to tell me how to talk. In fact, I know immature believers who would say, you can't tell me how to talk. I got liberty. Don't you know the First Amendment freedom of speech?

Yeah, I do. But the maturing Christian understands that our freedom of speech is not a license to speak anything. We are not free to say things that discredit the gospel or hurt the reputation of Christ, which is, by the way, the direct motive of clean speech. Paul gives us here at the last phrase of verse eight.

Look there. So that your opponent will be put to shame, having nothing bad to say about us. You know, I ought to be talking with clean language so that your opponent can't have anything dirty to say about you. So don't say dirty things. And if you don't say dirty things, they can't say dirty things about you in the church. Now, I think it's surprising. In fact, I want you to notice at the end of verse eight, a rather surprising pronoun there, you'd think Paul would have written so that now you young men speak with clean language so that the opponent will be put to shame, having nothing bad to say about you.

Nobody says, is it? Having nothing bad to say about us. You see, you develop a godly reputation.

And guess what? The church ends up with a godly reputation. And it works the other way around. Whatever you are like in your world, your world thinks that we're all the same way. How you think, talk and act on that campus or in that boardroom or in that corporation or that neighborhood, they just assume if you're part of this church, then that's the way we all are. We all think that way. We all talk that way.

We all act that way. Our reputation as a body of believers, a local assembly is directly tied to each of our individual reputations out there. So if you're not acting like a Christian, not thinking like a Christian, not talking like a Christian, you have my permission to never tell anybody where you go to church.

Keep it a secret. God's method. Howard Hendricks used to love to say this and never forget it. God's method has always been to take a clean person and drop him in the middle of a corrupt culture.

It's true, isn't it? He takes a clean person, drops him into the middle of a corrupt culture where they reveal through their everyday conversation, which is clean, through their thinking process, which is governed by biblical truth, through the way they act, which is self-controlled and dignified. Through all of that, this clean person who's been dropped into a corrupt culture is able to demonstrate what it means to follow the true and living God. And you live, young men, you live with a growing sense of awareness and Paul wants you young men to grab it by the collar. Now it isn't just about you. It is about us. And ultimately it's about the character and honor of the one who leads us, Jesus Christ. I love the way the apostle Peter put it in his first letter where he wrote, keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, those unbelievers. Keep your behavior excellent so that in the thing which they slander you as sinners, they may, because of your good deeds, end up glorifying God. We ultimately show our world by talking and living and thinking differently than our world.

And in so doing, showing them something far better. A few months ago, and I close with this, I met a former professional football player. He used to play for the Chicago Bears. Hope that's not offensive to you.

Big guy, six, seven, six, eight. I just knew I talked to him like this. After some initial conversation, I steered the discussion to spiritual things.

He didn't know I was a pastor and I invited him to church and he immediately began to smile. He said, well, I don't have time. I thought, man, this is great. I said, what do you mean you don't have time? He said, well, you know, I'm a businessman, but on Sunday I have a circuit and I travel around the state of North Carolina giving my testimony and delivering the gospel to juvenile detention centers and jails and prisons. So I said, wow, that is fantastic.

Would you share your testimony with me? He said, I'd be glad to. So he told me, kind of fast forward of the tape to his professional career. He said, I was living the dream. I was signed early in the NFL draft.

Had several years winning seasons. So the pinnacle of my career was beating the Dallas Cowboys. I said, praise God, I'm so glad that happened. He said, we won that game because on one play I rushed Troy Aikman and caused him to fumble and I picked up the fumble and ran for a touchdown. He said, I can remember this was the ultimate.

He said, I can remember spiking the ball in the end zone right on top of the star in the carpet, the Dallas Cowboy logo. I said, man, I'd love to live that dream for just a moment. He said, but in the hotel room that night, the euphoria of all of it had gone. And he said, I was sitting there alone. And he said, I was overwhelmed with a sense of emptiness. He said, this had been my dream.

And in my position, this is the ultimate play. And he said, I realized then there had to be something bigger and better. He said, it wasn't long until I picked up a Bible and began to read it. God connected me with some believers and I eventually understood the gospel and accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. And he told me, big granny, he said, that moment in the Dallas stadium cannot compare to seeing some young man give his heart to Jesus Christ.

That's what Paul is saying to young men. You know, as you live your life and you chase your dreams and it might be playing football, just remember there's nothing more important than the credibility of your testimony. There's nothing more vital than the delivery of the gospel. There's nothing more critical than the reputation of the church, your brothers and sisters, whose reputation hangs upon yours. And there's nothing more ultimately glorious than bringing honor and attention and praise to our great Redeemer and Savior, Jesus Christ.

This has been a powerful reminder and challenge for us today, and I'm glad you were able to join us. You've been listening to Wisdom for the Heart, the Bible teaching ministry of Stephen Davey. The lesson you just heard is called A Pattern for Young Men, and it's part five in a series called Family Talk. If it would bless you to have a copy of this lesson, or if there's a young man in your life that you'd like to share this lesson with, we'd be happy to help you get a copy. This and all of Stephen's sermons are freely available for you to download from our website.

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Again, that's Wisdom for the Heart, PO Box 37297, Raleigh, North Carolina, 27627. We'll be back tomorrow with another message from God's Word, so join us at this same time right here on Wisdom for the Heart. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back.