Doug McMasters: I'm going to invite you to take your Bible and go to the book of Titus with me, the book of Titus.
Doug McMasters: And we're going to be in chapter two.
Doug McMasters: Chapter 2.
Doug McMasters: Some of you might remember a film that was made in or released in 1997.
Doug McMasters: Yeah, I know, almost 30 years ago, with Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt.
Doug McMasters: It was titled As Good As It Gets.
Doug McMasters: Any of you remember that?
Doug McMasters: If you're under 40, you probably heard about it.
Doug McMasters: You probably never watched it.
Doug McMasters: But in this movie, As Good As It Gets, Nicholson plays a character by the name of Melvin.
Doug McMasters: And Melvin is about, in every way possible, one of the most impossible persons to ever be around.
Doug McMasters: In every way, he's rude, he's obnoxious, he's offensive, and he he really turns off just about every single person he meets, whether in a brief encounter or in some longer interaction.
Doug McMasters: He is in that way very, very hard to like.
Doug McMasters: It'd be like hugging a porcupine, this guy.
Doug McMasters: But there's this special moment in this movie where he's sitting down with Carol, who's played by Helen Hunt, and they're in a restaurant, and he is just it's just trying to come out of him as hard as it can be.
Doug McMasters: He's trying to give a compliment where he would normally say something very obnoxious.
Doug McMasters: And you could tell he's really, really, really trying to get this out.
Doug McMasters: And he makes an awkward attempt at it, uh, which um Carol doesn't quite understand.
Doug McMasters: And he stops and he catches himself and he says, What I'm trying to say is, you make me want to be a better man.
Doug McMasters: And it is one of the most special moments in the whole film.
Doug McMasters: And Carol, played by Helen Hunt, says, That has got to be the best compliment I have ever received.
Doug McMasters: And it really is a profound moment, not because of just how tender it is and how special that would be to say and to hear uh in a relationship, but it really does show the distance between who Melvin is and what he wants to be.
Doug McMasters: And he's grateful that someone's in his life that's pushing him toward that.
Doug McMasters: And I think every guy who's in this room understands that sentence, right?
Doug McMasters: And I've said it several times to Royal.
Doug McMasters: You make me want to be a better man.
Doug McMasters: And sometimes we play with it jokingly, and sometimes it's dead serious.
Doug McMasters: But we know what it means to want to be a better man, to be a better husband, to be a better father, to be a better believer, to be different than what we are right at the moment.
Doug McMasters: And this is exactly where this text is going to meet us this morning.
Doug McMasters: But the Apostle Paul is not simply giving us tips for self-improvement here.
Doug McMasters: He's going to show us something far, far better.
Doug McMasters: He's going to tell us the things that actually shape people into being different than what they are right now.
Doug McMasters: And what he will say is that it's grace that teaches us and grace that shapes us.
Doug McMasters: Now, this book Titus, Paul is writing to Titus, who is a church leader who has been given the task on the island of Crete to strengthen churches there.
Doug McMasters: And it's no easy assignment.
Doug McMasters: This is rather hard soil that he's in.
Doug McMasters: And Paul there describes the Cretans as people who are liars, who are evil beasts, who are lazy gluttons.
Doug McMasters: It's a really difficult culture in which Titus is given this charge to form a community of believers whose lives reflect the gospel.
Doug McMasters: In the middle of a culture that's completely contrary to what gospel shape looks like.
Doug McMasters: And Paul is telling Timothy that the way this is done is not through self-improvement, not through behavior modification, but through how the gospel shapes human lives.
Doug McMasters: And so the church's conduct will reflect that.
Doug McMasters: It will be grace that's made visible.
Doug McMasters: It's the gospel with skin on it.
Doug McMasters: And so Paul opens up Titus chapter 2, and as he starts to unpack this, he begins with a command in verse 1.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at it.
Doug McMasters: He said, As for you, but you are to proclaim things consistent with sound teaching.
Doug McMasters: And that aversive there is significant because it draws a line from what Paul just talked about at the end of chapter one and what he's about to enter into in chapter two.
Doug McMasters: And he's just finished talking about false teachers, about how rebellious they are, about how empty they are, about how deceptive they are, and how contrary they are and hypocritical that they claim to know God but actually deny him.
Doug McMasters: And he says to Titus, but you, Titus, be different.
Doug McMasters: Don't be an empty talktor, don't be a deceiver, don't be rebellious, and don't be hypocritical.
Doug McMasters: But you be different, teach different, build a different kind of people.
Doug McMasters: Because these false teachers are wrecking homes and lives.
Doug McMasters: And what you are to teach is meant to bring health and life and development and strength into other people.
Doug McMasters: And so what follows in chapter two is one of the most beautifully structured passages in all of the New Testament.
Doug McMasters: And Paul traces the shape of sound doctrine across four groups.
Doug McMasters: He talks about older men, and then he talks about older women, and then he talks about younger women, and then he talks about younger men.
Doug McMasters: And he shows us what the gospel looks like in each of those areas, how the gospel shapes each stage of life that we're in, each circumstances that we might face, each set of pressures that come at us.
Doug McMasters: And it's a comprehensive vision of what the gospel-shaped life looks like and what a gospel community looks like.
Doug McMasters: So this morning we're going to talk to the men.
Doug McMasters: Next week, ladies, it's going to be your turn.
Doug McMasters: And it's Mother's Day, so I don't know how that happened, honestly.
Doug McMasters: So today we're going to talk to the older men and the younger women.
Doug McMasters: And next week we're going to draw our attention toward the older women and the younger women.
Doug McMasters: And I know there's no older women in here.
Doug McMasters: I understand that, but but we'll we'll talk to them next week anyway.
Doug McMasters: And the question, men, I want you to ask yourself today is what kind of man does grace produce?
Doug McMasters: What kind of man does grace produce?
Doug McMasters: And before we walk through this text, I want you to hold intention something at the very end of this chapter.
Doug McMasters: Look at verse 11 and 12.
Doug McMasters: The grace of God appeared, bringing salvation for all people, instructing us to deny godlessness and worldly lust, and to live in a sensible, righteous, and godly way in this present age.
Doug McMasters: Now notice that word instructing there.
Doug McMasters: It's telling us that grace is not passive.
Doug McMasters: Grace doesn't merely forgive us and leave us where it found us.
Doug McMasters: Grace trains us, grace shapes us, grace forms us, it makes us different.
Doug McMasters: And so what Paul is about to describe to Titus and what we're about to look at for older men and younger men are not just moral targets to hit by our own effort, but they are the shape that grace makes us into as older men and younger men.
Doug McMasters: Ladies, I don't want this to be simply a pitchfork uh sermon for you.
Doug McMasters: Like, this is for the guys and for that guy and for the one next to me.
Doug McMasters: Right?
Doug McMasters: I don't want it to be that.
Doug McMasters: You can be an active listener in this week just as much as the men will be called upon to be active listeners next week.
Doug McMasters: First of all, as we go through this, pray for the men while we're unpacking this.
Doug McMasters: Pray that these would be the characteristics that are built into the lives of the men of our church.
Doug McMasters: Here's some other things.
Doug McMasters: Where those character qualities are highlighted, grab them because they don't have a gender connected to them.
Doug McMasters: These are for all of us in some fashion.
Doug McMasters: Also, be an agent of change in the men of your life.
Doug McMasters: First of all, to be in a place of accountability for them, but also in a place of acceptable growth.
Doug McMasters: If grace is going to be the active agent to change their lives, be a part of that active work of grace so that they might be different too.
Doug McMasters: And here's an important thing to hear, ladies.
Doug McMasters: Satan accuses, grace changes.
Doug McMasters: Okay?
Doug McMasters: You want me to repeat that?
Doug McMasters: Right?
Doug McMasters: Satan accuses, grace changes.
Doug McMasters: You may see your guy where he isn't, or where he not at where he should be.
Doug McMasters: He probably already knows that.
Doug McMasters: Helping him be aware of that may be needed, but helping him get there won't be simply by accusing him that he's not there.
Doug McMasters: You can model, you can assist, you can encourage, and yes, you can even rebuke, but with grace, because grace makes us better.
Doug McMasters: It doesn't just tell us we aren't there.
Doug McMasters: Okay, so be an agent of grace in that man's life.
Doug McMasters: All right, guys, here we go.
Doug McMasters: Let's look first of all at the shape of sound doctrine, the shape of sound doctrine in verse one.
Doug McMasters: Let's look at what Paul tells Titus here.
Doug McMasters: He said, But as for you, teach what is in accord or what accords with sound teaching.
Doug McMasters: Now, like I said, Paul is drawing the line here between false teachers on one side who profess to know God but deny him, who are teaching things that are untethered from the truth, that are full of emptiness, no substance, no shape, destructive.
Doug McMasters: And on the other side is meant to be Titus, and by extension, every other faithful pastor and every other faithful church, who are teaching those things that are in accord, what's fitting with and suitable to, and what lines up with sound doctrine.
Doug McMasters: Now, take a look at that phrase sound there.
Doug McMasters: Because the English can sound, and the CSB has done it well by giving us a little different of a word.
Doug McMasters: It tells us there that we are meant to be dealing with sound teaching.
Doug McMasters: Other versions call it sound doctrine.
Doug McMasters: But I know what sound doctrine sounds like to some of us.
Doug McMasters: It sounds like a theological textbook that's heavy enough to hold your door still on a windy day.
Doug McMasters: And you might have cracked a page or two of it, but the rest of it's just too complex and too deep and too too much for you to handle.
Doug McMasters: And you can kind of go, sound doctrine.
Doug McMasters: Or it can feel like something so sober that it feels dried out and untouchable.
Doug McMasters: But I want you to hear how Paul actually describes it here.
Doug McMasters: Because the word that Paul is using in the Greek, and I don't typically use Greek words out loud, one because Konstantinos is here, and I know he'll tell me I'm not saying it right.
Doug McMasters: So that's one reason.
Doug McMasters: But whoje, I'm gonna mess it up.
Doug McMasters: Hoogi I know, whoji I know.
Doug McMasters: Now listen carefully to whoji know, because it sounds like, because this is where we get our word from, hygiene.
Doug McMasters: Hygiene.
Doug McMasters: When Paul is talking about sound teaching, he is talking about healthy teaching, wholesome teaching, life-giving teaching.
Doug McMasters: Yes, it's precise truth, carefully given, that speaks accurate things about God, but it's a lot more than that.
Doug McMasters: It is healthy in that it produces health, it gives life, it comes into the life of a person or into their family or into a church, and it makes them well, it makes them healthy and wholesome and whole.
Doug McMasters: Paul uses it in 1 Timothy 6 3.
Doug McMasters: He said he warns there against things that do not agree with sound words, healthy words, the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the teaching that accords with godliness.
Doug McMasters: So, what is healthy teaching?
Doug McMasters: Our Savior is a health-giving savior.
Doug McMasters: That's why we call him Savior.
Doug McMasters: He's a deliverer from all things destructive, including ourselves and our sin.
Doug McMasters: First Timothy one ten.
Doug McMasters: Paul contrasts sound teaching with things like lawlessness, disobedience, the ungodly, and the profane.
Doug McMasters: So sound teaching, now catch this, is not merely correct information about God.
Doug McMasters: Sound teaching is health-producing truth that transforms the way people live.
Doug McMasters: It is obviously correct information about God, but it's correct information about God that produces in its truth a transformation in the way that people live.
Doug McMasters: So, what does that healthy teaching look like when it does take root in people's lives?
Doug McMasters: And that's where we start to move into this passage a little deeper.
Doug McMasters: Our second point is the steadfastness of Christ-shaped older men.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verse two with me here.
Doug McMasters: But you're to proclaim the things consistent with sound teaching.
Doug McMasters: Older men are to be self-controlled, worthy of respect, sensible, sound in faith, love, and endurance.
Doug McMasters: So there it is.
Doug McMasters: That's what sound teaching produces.
Doug McMasters: Six qualities.
Doug McMasters: Three of them largely external.
Doug McMasters: The lines are a little fuzzy here.
Doug McMasters: Three of them are more internal, if I can put it that way.
Doug McMasters: Three of them display themselves, these qualities, more in the outward sense, and three of them more inwardly are the controls inside.
Doug McMasters: And together they they they form a portrait, not of a personality, not of a temperament, but of the shape of grace that carves men into this image.
Doug McMasters: So let's walk through it.
Doug McMasters: And as we do, we'll unpack it little by little and then more as we go forward.
Doug McMasters: First of all, self-controlled or sober-minded.
Doug McMasters: The first and the third ones are difficult to talk about because our English translations often use interchangeable words there.
Doug McMasters: And that even the CSB in a different place uses the same word in two different ways.
Doug McMasters: But let's think about this for a second and let's dig into it.
Doug McMasters: What this word in the Greek is talking about, quite literally, in its older usage, was someone who was not drunk, right?
Doug McMasters: Someone who was actually sober.
Doug McMasters: And we still use that word in that kind of fashion.
Doug McMasters: And a person who's not dulled in their senses by way of alcohol.
Doug McMasters: That's sober physically.
Doug McMasters: But Paul is using it in a more expansive way.
Doug McMasters: He's talking about not that narrow meaning, but that internal sort of controls that leads to outward action of mental and spiritual clarity that comes.
Doug McMasters: A sober-minded man is a man who sees life clearly, whose senses about the world he's in are not dulled by sin and error.
Doug McMasters: He's not carried along by the latest crisis.
Doug McMasters: He's not swept up in the emotional currents of the culture.
Doug McMasters: He's not panicking when bad news comes.
Doug McMasters: He doesn't lose his head when things aren't good.
Doug McMasters: There's a clarity about that person.
Doug McMasters: There's the capacity to be able to come into any situation and to assess it, to weigh it out, and to respond to it rather than being at the whim of reactions.
Doug McMasters: That's what it's talking about.
Doug McMasters: Sober-mindedness.
Doug McMasters: The second one is worthy of respect or dignified.
Doug McMasters: Dignified.
Doug McMasters: It's a propriety, a lifestyle that's befitting to the moment.
Doug McMasters: It's a behavior of living the way one ought to live in that situation.
Doug McMasters: Now, to be dignified does not mean to be stuffy.
Doug McMasters: Doesn't mean to be formal.
Doug McMasters: It doesn't mean that you never laugh or you don't relax.
Doug McMasters: It doesn't mean that you carry with this this permanent expression of disapproval.
Doug McMasters: I I went to a church service at actually a pastor's conference in England.
Doug McMasters: And I was sitting there eager to hear the preached word, and there was a number of guys up on the platform, and every one of them, and there were several of them all lined up, and they were about to pray.
Doug McMasters: And they prayed like this.
Doug McMasters: And I thought, if I'm going to be spiritual with these guys, I need to poke my eyes out too.
Doug McMasters: And I thought, okay, that's a little different.
Doug McMasters: Being dignified is not necessarily being dour, right?
Doug McMasters: That's rigidity, that's not dignity.
Doug McMasters: What Paul is talking about here is a holy gravitas, a weightiness of your character, a seriousness of your purpose.
Doug McMasters: One of my favorite Hebrew words is kabod.
Doug McMasters: It means glory.
Doug McMasters: And it can be used otherwise too.
Doug McMasters: It means weighty.
Doug McMasters: Heavy.
Doug McMasters: Right?
Doug McMasters: Worthy of respect.
Doug McMasters: Paul uses the same word in Philippians 4 8 when he says, whatsoever things are honorable, think on these things.
Doug McMasters: So a dignified person is a person whose life invites others to think about honorable things.
Doug McMasters: Who walks into a room and can shift the tone of that room.
Doug McMasters: Not because he's an imposing character, but because there's a weight.
Doug McMasters: A weight to his person, his character.
Doug McMasters: The third quality is sensible.
Doug McMasters: Sensible.
Doug McMasters: And this is a foundational.
Doug McMasters: Word here for the entire book of Titus because it shows up with older women and younger women and younger men also.
Doug McMasters: This one is cuts across all of them.
Doug McMasters: It's a thread that runs through the whole chapter.
Doug McMasters: And here we find a sensible person, a person who has the right thoughts for the right moment.
Doug McMasters: A person who's thinking guides their actions.
Doug McMasters: A person who acts in a way that's proper to the moment.
Doug McMasters: That's being sensible.
Doug McMasters: And so a person who's sensible is learned by grace and been taught by grace to govern their desires and to govern their reactions and their impulses.
Doug McMasters: And who isn't always saying what first comes to mind and isn't always acting on what feelings first rise, and isn't always chasing what first opportunity presents itself.
Doug McMasters: There's a sensibleness to it.
Doug McMasters: Not emotionless, not detached, but controlled.
Doug McMasters: These largely outer acting qualities, and like I said, the categories are blurred here, move toward three more inward-focused ones.
Doug McMasters: And take a look at them as we go forward here.
Doug McMasters: Sound in faith, love and endurance.
Doug McMasters: And there's that word healthy again, sound.
Doug McMasters: And notice, first of all, healthy in faith.
Doug McMasters: An older man is to be healthy in his trust of God.
Doug McMasters: Now, obviously, this is not talking about an untested faith.
Doug McMasters: For anybody who's been in athletics at all, you know that the degree of your strength and your abilities have been honed by a lot of testing, right?
Doug McMasters: A healthy faith is not the faith of a person who's never gone through anything.
Doug McMasters: A healthy faith is an older man who's gone through the furnace, who's lived through life's difficulties, whose trust in God has matured and strengthened in the middle of them.
Doug McMasters: This is a man who's sat at the doctor's office and gotten the hard news, or stood at a graveside and wept with loved ones, or has walked through seasons where God feels distance and his prayers seem unanswered, and God's promises seem more conceptual than real.
Doug McMasters: But he keeps on trusting.
Doug McMasters: But because grace has taught him that circumstances aren't the end of the story.
Doug McMasters: God's in control, even when things look very, very foggy.
Doug McMasters: Sound in faith, sound in love.
Doug McMasters: This is not just sentimental love.
Doug McMasters: This is not kind of the affection that shows up at a celebration and disappears when trouble happens.
Doug McMasters: This is a steady, sacrificial, present love.
Doug McMasters: It's the kind of love that notices someone who's having a difficult day and moves toward it.
Doug McMasters: Moves toward that person.
Doug McMasters: The kind of person who loves enough to remember not just to be at the funeral, but to give a call three weeks after and say, I know it's a lonely moment right now.
Doug McMasters: And I want you to know and pray.
Doug McMasters: It's a love that's shaped by the gospel, that's shaped by the love of God, who's loved us when we were unlovable.
Doug McMasters: And then sound in endurance.
Doug McMasters: Someone who remains in the station no matter how much pressure there is.
Doug McMasters: That's what endurance is.
Doug McMasters: It's active, it's patient, it's persevering, and it's found in the midst of difficulty.
Doug McMasters: It is someone who stays steady in the midst of the long game of obedience.
Doug McMasters: And when we think about these six things, this is what grace is shaping in us.
Doug McMasters: And the reason why it's grace that's shaping it in us is because, as we'll notice later in Titus 2 at the very end of it, the grace of God has appeared, and it's Jesus who's appeared.
Doug McMasters: And so we find Jesus as the truly sober-minded one, who in the middle of the Garden of Gethsemane, when every impulse would be to run away from what's about to happen, he cries out, Not my will but yours be done.
Doug McMasters: When he's standing before Pilate, and he's belittled and mocked and beaten, and he's able to stay steady in a room where people are accusing him, and rattles Pilate, but he stays steady.
Doug McMasters: When he's surrounded by soldiers who are gambling for his clothes at the foot of the cross, and mockers are staring at him and daring him to come down.
Doug McMasters: And he's he could have done what he said to Peter I could call legions of angels to free me here.
Doug McMasters: But he doesn't.
Doug McMasters: He stays there because of enduring the shame for the joy that's set before him.
Doug McMasters: Sound in love, greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
Doug McMasters: And there he is, laying his life down.
Doug McMasters: Sound in endurance, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame.
Doug McMasters: So every quality Paul is telling Titus that the older men should find grace shaping in their lives and should move themselves toward is found ultimately in Christ.
Doug McMasters: He is the producer and the prototype of this maturity.
Doug McMasters: He is the image into which we are being conformed.
Doug McMasters: But let me make a point here.
Doug McMasters: Simply by being old, right?
Doug McMasters: Bob just read a verse about uh the gray hair is a sign of wisdom.
Doug McMasters: Uh, if it be found in the way of righteousness, right?
Doug McMasters: Uh gray hair is not wisdom.
Doug McMasters: Gray hair in the way of righteousness is a sign of wisdom.
Doug McMasters: So if you're walking in the way of righteousness, it doesn't matter what hair color you've got or what other what hair color you dyed your hair.
Doug McMasters: Age alone is not going to produce sober-mindedness.
Doug McMasters: Some men get more impulsive with age, not less.
Doug McMasters: Age alone is not going to produce dignity.
Doug McMasters: Some men get more petty the older they get, more demanding, more entitled.
Doug McMasters: Age alone is not going to produce self-control or faith or love or endurance.
Doug McMasters: What produces these things is grace.
Doug McMasters: Grace.
Doug McMasters: And so I want you to think of a man, and I'm going to embody a man in 40 years of pastoral observation.
Doug McMasters: A man sitting in a hospital waiting room.
Doug McMasters: His wife is in surgery, and the outcome is really uncertain.
Doug McMasters: His kids are there, and they're pacing the floor.
Doug McMasters: His grandchildren are playing, and they're too young to understand what's going on.
Doug McMasters: And this man has been in these kind of moments a hundred times.
Doug McMasters: And he's steady.
Doug McMasters: His cheeks are layered with sweat and tears.
Doug McMasters: His hands are clasped.
Doug McMasters: But underneath the moment is a calm and a peace and a trust.
Doug McMasters: And he can put his hand on his son and say, God is in control of this.
Doug McMasters: He's been faithful to us, and he'll be faithful through this.
Doug McMasters: And in that moment, that son and daughter and grandchildren are going to get a lesson I could never speak as a preacher or any other preacher.
Doug McMasters: Because it's a sermon shaped by days and weeks and months and years of walking with God and having grace move his heart.
Doug McMasters: This is what Paul is calling for.
Doug McMasters: He's not calling us to perfection, but he's calling us to a direction that grace brings us to.
Doug McMasters: A steadiness of character that's been forged by grace, has been tested in time, and that is visible to anyone who is paying attention to it.
Doug McMasters: So let me talk to you guys, older men.
Doug McMasters: And uh, I'm gray enough to be one of them now.
Doug McMasters: Some of you probably don't think you are an older man.
Doug McMasters: We had we had a new image group at church, and I had a 75-year-old come to me as they were walking in and saying, I'm looking forward forward to being with the older people today.
Doug McMasters: I'm like, oh boy, okay.
Doug McMasters: If you are 45 or older, you are well within the older category.
Doug McMasters: If you're in your late 30s, you're already over the hill statistically.
Doug McMasters: You have already reached the top, and you are about to find out how fast it is on the downside.
Doug McMasters: But I want to talk to you.
Doug McMasters: You don't have to be perfect, but you can be present, right?
Doug McMasters: You can be willing, you can offer yourself to grace.
Doug McMasters: God is at work in you, and he wants to use you.
Doug McMasters: Every trial that you've faced in your life, every temptation you've resisted, every sin that you've repented of, every Sunday that you've shown up, every Bible that you've worn out, everything that God is producing in you is meant to be used through you to be of influence to other men.
Doug McMasters: So let me encourage you with this: take that maturity, however weak and frail you think it might be, and show up in a young man's life.
Doug McMasters: Be available to him, be visible to him.
Doug McMasters: Let them see how you've handled frustration, let them watch you deal with disappointment.
Doug McMasters: Let them hear you talk about how you've walked through loss.
Doug McMasters: They need to hear that.
Doug McMasters: Because your life is a lesson and not just one, it's a whole curriculum.
Doug McMasters: And if you're an older man who's failed, repentance can teach also.
Doug McMasters: A man who has stumbled and has been restored by grace may not teach what an unfallen man can teach, but he can teach something that guy can't.
Doug McMasters: And that is how to find the grace of God meet you even in your failures.
Doug McMasters: David sinned catastrophic.
Doug McMasters: Peter denied Christ three times.
Doug McMasters: Not something to be proud of, but something even grace can redeem and use you in the middle of.
Doug McMasters: So drop down and take a look at verse six.
Doug McMasters: In the same way, encourage young men to be self-controlled in everything.
Doug McMasters: The older men get six, the young guys get one.
Doug McMasters: Doesn't seem fair, does it?
Doug McMasters: One word, one quality that covers it all.
Doug McMasters: Self-controlled in everything.
Doug McMasters: A disciplined mind, a governed life, the one thing that will be the root of all the others and meets every situation.
Doug McMasters: Because if a young man lacks self-control, everything else falls apart.
Doug McMasters: But if a man has self-control in his relationships and in his work and his worship and his character, he'll have self-control in his future also.
Doug McMasters: Again, this is not simply produced by moral achievement.
Doug McMasters: It's grace that produces this self-control.
Doug McMasters: The pressures of ambition and the pressures of desire, the pressures of comfort and approval and status are dangers to young men.
Doug McMasters: And the answer is this: a grace-shaped ability to be controlled in the face of those youthful desires and temptations.
Doug McMasters: But you're not left alone, young men.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verse seven.
Doug McMasters: Make yourself an example of good works with integrity and dignity in your teaching.
Doug McMasters: There you have it, young men.
Doug McMasters: You're not left without a model.
Doug McMasters: And that model is found here as Titus was speaking to the younger men in the church, and a charge to me, a charge to Micah, a charge to our elders.
Doug McMasters: And I would dare say a charge to all of our older men.
Doug McMasters: Be an example to these young ones.
Doug McMasters: Because younger men were going to learn self-control, not from a book, but from a life.
Doug McMasters: They're going to see it by the older men who are living it.
Doug McMasters: Because this is the way God has designed his people to work together.
Doug McMasters: Now let's drop down to the bottom because we need to say this.
Doug McMasters: We're going to say more about it later.
Doug McMasters: But look at verse 11 and 12 again with me.
Doug McMasters: The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, instructing us to deny godlessness and worldly lust and to live in a sensible, righteous, and godly way in this present age.
Doug McMasters: That word training there is the kind of training that talks about a parent teaching their child how to grow up and to live in this world.
Doug McMasters: It's not punishment, it's formation.
Doug McMasters: It is shaping through careful, patient, daily work the life of your child so that they might be well equipped in this world to carry on in all the responsibilities and circumstances that they have or will face.
Doug McMasters: That's parenting.
Doug McMasters: And here grace is instructing us with patient, careful, daily shaping that makes us these kind of people.
Doug McMasters: Because grace is our teacher, it is our trainer, it is the one who forms us.
Doug McMasters: A godly man's self-control, whether he's young or old, is not with white knuckled determination.
Doug McMasters: It's not gritting your teeth and trying harder.
Doug McMasters: It's grace at work in your life as you surrender yourself to God-shaping influences.
Doug McMasters: So if you're under 45, you're not alone.
Doug McMasters: You've got models in front of you, and you've got the grace of God working within you.
Doug McMasters: You don't have to figure out all of this on your own.
Doug McMasters: You were never meant to.
Doug McMasters: You have influences to help you.
Doug McMasters: And so, young men, I want it, I want to say to you something I said to the older men.
Doug McMasters: I told them to be available.
Doug McMasters: But one of the difficulties of being an older man is you respect another man's space.
Doug McMasters: And so you're not going to impose yourself, even though you are available.
Doug McMasters: And that means a young man, you need to ask.
Doug McMasters: You need to walk up to those older men that you want to have in your life and invite them to coffee, invite them to a meal, ask them about decisions that they've made in their marriage or their career or their finances or their temptations or their troubles or their sufferings.
Doug McMasters: Talk to them.
Doug McMasters: Ask them what they would do differently.
Doug McMasters: Ask them about how they handled those pressures and those disappointments and those temptations.
Doug McMasters: And listen to this verse I grabbed a hold of when I was a new believer, Proverbs 13, 20.
Doug McMasters: Whoever walks with the wise shall be wise.
Doug McMasters: But a companion of fools will suffer harm.
Doug McMasters: Go find a wise man and walk with him.
Doug McMasters: And remember, in the midst of it all, grace is active to shape us.
Doug McMasters: None of this is self-generated.
Doug McMasters: What Christ has done for us is what Christ is doing in us.
Doug McMasters: And so here we are as God's people, being the result of a Savior who's come to deliver us from our sin and to instruct us on how to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live soberly and righteously in this present age, conforming us to the image of Christ.
Doug McMasters: If you're here in this room this morning and all the stuff I've talked to you feels really, really foreign, and if everything that I've talked about by way of the steadiness of these older men feels impossible, or if everything I've talked about about younger men being self-controlled feels like a standard that's outside your reach, that's the point.
Doug McMasters: Because apart from the grace of God, it is.
Doug McMasters: But I want to tell you this the grace of God has appeared for all people.
Doug McMasters: When Jesus came into this world, he did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.
Doug McMasters: And he came to seek and to save the lost.
Doug McMasters: And every single one who's received these words and felt the effect of them, where it is familiar and not foreign to them, where it doesn't feel impossible but reachable through the grace of God, can be you too.
Doug McMasters: But you need to come to grace himself.
Doug McMasters: And he's called the Lord Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: And he gives you a wonderful invitation.
Doug McMasters: Come unto me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Doug McMasters: Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am lowly and gentle in heart.
Doug McMasters: Come to the Savior and join in the instruction of grace and find yourself transformed from who you are today to what Christ is and what you shall be in eternity.
Doug McMasters: Let's pray together.
Doug McMasters: Father, we thank you for the wondrous truth that you've come to seek and save.
Doug McMasters: We thank you, Father, that our lives are not stagnant, but shaped by grace.
Doug McMasters: And so, Father, I want to pray for us that we would have submissiveness and receptivity of heart to you, that we would hear the instruction that grace is giving, that we would yield ourselves to the training that grace is providing, that we would follow the steps of our Savior who models it.
Doug McMasters: And that we would build amongst our body not just amen here or there, but a cache of men who are being shaped into the likeness of Christ.
Doug McMasters: The kind of community where we build together, younger and older together, bound together by the gospel, shaped by the same grace, and all of us walking toward that same blessed hope, the appearing of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: And Lord, we pray that you would make us such.
Doug McMasters: Make us people that are anchored in your word and ready to serve one another and seeking to be shaped like Jesus Himself.
Doug McMasters: Father, I pray for the ladies of our church that they in their own life will also build into their life these qualities as they give themselves over to the grace of God.
Doug McMasters: And we pray, Father, for those relationships in our church that are close and intimate, where they might be related by blood or by marriage, to where the ladies can be a place of assistance through accountability, through modeling, and through gracious activity that leads men to want what you will shape in their lives.
Doug McMasters: And Father, we ask this in Christ's name.
Doug McMasters: Amen.