Doug McMasters: Again, happy Mother's Day to all of you.
Doug McMasters: It's a beautiful day, but I know it's also a very complex day, as I was praying and just thinking that for many today it is a day of celebration.
Doug McMasters: You probably already have plans and things you're going to do together, places you're going to go, people you're going to meet in just a little bit, or might be sitting next to right at this moment.
Doug McMasters: But not all of us are filled with that ability and to be able to express that sort of direct gratitude.
Doug McMasters: For others, sometimes our children are a long way away.
Doug McMasters: And we might get a phone call.
Doug McMasters: We might get a video.
Doug McMasters: But it's not the same as getting a hug.
Doug McMasters: For others, young mothers, right in the thick of it, you woke up today exhausted, and you're going to bear the burdens of being a young mother with the with the kind of kind of pressures and difficulties that may show just a little bit on your face, but certainly weigh heavily on your heart.
Doug McMasters: The others of us who are carrying an ache, would love to be a mother, but that's never happened.
Doug McMasters: And so that rest on you, that longing that may or may never happen.
Doug McMasters: Or you've lost a child through miscarriage or through illness or some circumstance that no sermon's really going to be able to touch deeply.
Doug McMasters: Or perhaps your relationship with your mother is strained.
Doug McMasters: Or maybe the relationship you have with your children is strained.
Doug McMasters: And today, while others celebrate, you feel that longing for something to be different there.
Doug McMasters: Today is a reminder of what's broken, not what can be celebrated.
Doug McMasters: And for many of us, today is a day in which we remember those who have gone.
Doug McMasters: I was looking at some pictures just yesterday, my mother, and enjoying the memory of her.
Doug McMasters: But I can't celebrate her today with the kind of word and love that I'd like to.
Doug McMasters: But I want you to know that we're going to be looking at the book of Titus, and it is a portrait of what grace looks like when it shapes a lady's heart.
Doug McMasters: And no matter what condition you're in today, it can meet all of the ladies and all of the men.
Doug McMasters: So I'd like for us to open up Titus chapter 2 together.
Doug McMasters: And whether you're here as an older woman or a younger woman, married or single, mother, grandmother, never had a child, whose lives have mothered dozens of people in this church, even though you don't have a child of your own.
Doug McMasters: I want us to find here in Titus chapter 2 a word for all of us.
Doug McMasters: As you might recall from last week, we listened to Paul's words to the men in Titus chapter 2, that the older men were to be sober-minded and dignified and sensible and sound in love and sound in faith and sound in endurance, and that young men were to be self-controlled.
Doug McMasters: We saw behind all of that that these men, whether they were older or younger, were to be shaped by the grace of God.
Doug McMasters: And this morning, as we turn to Paul's words, as he looks toward the women in the congregation, we don't find a separate category of instruction.
Doug McMasters: We find that the same grace that shapes the men is the same grace that shapes the women.
Doug McMasters: And so before we walk through this passage, I want us to take a look at verse one and just be reminded of something that was said last week.
Doug McMasters: Paul tells Titus in verse one to proclaim things consistent with sound teaching.
Doug McMasters: And we said last week that sound teaching is healthy instruction.
Doug McMasters: It is doctrine that is not abstract, but the kind of truth that nourishes and engenders a particular kind of life.
Doug McMasters: It's wholesome, it's healthy, it's life-giving.
Doug McMasters: And so when Paul steps down deeper into this chapter, he's using that as an overlay, not just for the older men and not just for the younger men, but also for the older women and the younger women, and on into other categories that'll be looked at as we go through the rest of the chapter.
Doug McMasters: And what he's doing here is showing us what healthy teaching produces, what kind of life is visible and shaped by what truth does in the heart.
Doug McMasters: And that it shows us that gospel proclaimed and gospel lived is fueled by grace in both places.
Doug McMasters: So this morning I want us to look at three points this morning as we look through this passage.
Doug McMasters: I want us to see in verses three through five that first of all, the grace of God steadies older women into a life of reverence and wisdom.
Doug McMasters: And that the grace of God also sends these older women into the lives of younger women as servants of grace.
Doug McMasters: And then, third, the grace of God shapes young women into portraits of gospel beauty, all so that God might be honored in a watching world.
Doug McMasters: So let's look at verses two to two three two through five, or three through five.
Doug McMasters: Let me read it together.
Doug McMasters: In the same way, older women are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not slaves to excessive drinking, they're to teach what is good, so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands and to love their children, to be self-controlled, pure, workers at home, kind, and in submission to their husbands, so that God's word will not be slandered.
Doug McMasters: So let's look at these three movements, which really do give us a portrait of grace in the lives of older and younger women.
Doug McMasters: And the first one is this that older women are to be steadied by grace.
Doug McMasters: Steadied by grace.
Doug McMasters: Now, when you look at verse three, you're not looking at a list of duties.
Doug McMasters: This is not a task list of what ladies are to do.
Doug McMasters: What Paul is doing is painting the picture of a life.
Doug McMasters: And he's painting a picture of a life that's been studied by the grace of God.
Doug McMasters: And he names these ladies, first of all, as older women.
Doug McMasters: And he doesn't put an age on it.
Doug McMasters: And I think that's important.
Doug McMasters: I think what he's talking about here is rather a woman who has accumulated years of experience, who's been able to be positioned within the church in that influential way.
Doug McMasters: My sons go to a church where in their 30s they're some of the oldest people in the congregation.
Doug McMasters: And so my sons and their wives are really standing in the place of older men and older women among a younger congregation.
Doug McMasters: Depending on the makeup of the congregation, that will not be an age-graded thing so much as a sense of balance between who's older and who's younger within it.
Doug McMasters: And so we're talking about ladies who have had accumulated years of experience, who've gone through seasons of joy and sorrow and waiting and loss.
Doug McMasters: And the Lord has settled their souls, even in the midst of that, matured them through all of those experiences.
Doug McMasters: They've been formed by those moments and by God's grace to be in a position of influence in the lives of the younger women.
Doug McMasters: And he uses the word likewise there, if you'll notice that in verse 3, likewise are in the same way, older women.
Doug McMasters: Pointing us back to how grace shaped older men and grace shaped younger men.
Doug McMasters: So grace is now producing this Christ-shaped maturity within the body of Christ in the older women.
Doug McMasters: And Paul gives us four qualities.
Doug McMasters: Again, not a checklist, not a task list, but four brush strokes of a portrait of gospel wisdom.
Doug McMasters: Let's look at them each and then we'll sort of see how this unpacks in relevance and implication for us.
Doug McMasters: First of all, reverent in behavior.
Doug McMasters: Now, the Greek word here is a compound word, which means befitting the holy, something that is suitable to what is holy.
Doug McMasters: So it's not just a Sunday posture.
Doug McMasters: It doesn't just show up on Sunday, but it shows up on Monday in those conversations.
Doug McMasters: It shows up on Thursday night after a difficult day.
Doug McMasters: It's a life that is suitable to living with a deep abiding awareness in God's presence.
Doug McMasters: And the life is suitable to it.
Doug McMasters: My wife smiles at me every time I try to wear something green because you can really, really mess up your look when you're wearing green.
Doug McMasters: And Royal looks at me and she goes, That green and that green do not belong together at all.
Doug McMasters: So we were in the middle of a conversation a couple days ago.
Doug McMasters: And I said, she's having a very deep philosophical discussion with me.
Doug McMasters: And I'm like, I've got a question.
Doug McMasters: And she looks at me like, okay, where's this coming from?
Doug McMasters: And I said, You see that jacket over there?
Doug McMasters: Can I wear it with this shirt?
Doug McMasters: And I showed up, I showed up next to her with it on, and she goes, just do what you're gonna do.
Doug McMasters: And what she was telling me was that shirt and that jacket are not befitting one another.
Doug McMasters: They don't fit together.
Doug McMasters: And when we we hear this word reverent to behavior, it means there's a life that is complementary to holiness.
Doug McMasters: It the life fits together with that.
Doug McMasters: And so this is a lady who brings the calm into the room because she's gone through experiences that have shaped who she is.
Doug McMasters: She's prayed through enough dark nights where she's not panicking when the next one shows up.
Doug McMasters: She's a lady who's watched God's faithfulness in enough times of uncertainty that she can move into a place of uncertainty with confidence and not fear.
Doug McMasters: That's the kind of life that is complementary to the holiness of God.
Doug McMasters: Look at the next one.
Doug McMasters: Not slanderers, not slanderers.
Doug McMasters: The word there is literally diabolos or diabolus.
Doug McMasters: Does that sound familiar to any of you?
Doug McMasters: It's the devil.
Doug McMasters: This is the word that's actually used for the accuser, the one who tears down through destructive speech and accusation and slander.
Doug McMasters: And Paul is saying here that older women's speech must not carry the quality of the enemy.
Doug McMasters: Why is that?
Doug McMasters: Because the longer you live in this world, the more you realize how powerful words are.
Doug McMasters: When you're a kindergarten, you know, you can say sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
Doug McMasters: And you get older and you realize I'm not singing that song anymore.
Doug McMasters: Because they do hurt me.
Doug McMasters: I'd rather have the sticks and the stones.
Doug McMasters: And so we know that a word fitly spoken brings health and life, but a word that's said in haste, it can wound.
Doug McMasters: A piece of gossip can fracture a friendship, or it can even divide a church.
Doug McMasters: And older women, precisely because they're the kind of women that people look to and listen to and want to lean on, they're the women who recognize how responsible their speech is and how powerful an influence it can be in the lives of others.
Doug McMasters: And so Paul is calling on the older women to have the kind of speech that reflects Christ, not the enemy.
Doug McMasters: One that's encouraging and that builds up rather than one erodes or destroys.
Doug McMasters: Look at the next quality here.
Doug McMasters: Not enslaved are not slaves to excessive drinking.
Doug McMasters: Now, obviously, there is on the surface level an obvious about that, but it gets beneath the surface here.
Doug McMasters: This is not just talking about, you know, what the A ABV is on the beverages that you're drinking.
Doug McMasters: It's not just talking about can I have one and not three?
Doug McMasters: Can I have three and not six?
Doug McMasters: Can I do it once a week and not six days a week?
Doug McMasters: That kind of discussion misses the point.
Doug McMasters: What it's asking here is, ladies, what has mastery over you?
Doug McMasters: Where do you go when the pressures come?
Doug McMasters: When griefs and disappointments and loneliness tempt your heart to find a release.
Doug McMasters: Where do you go?
Doug McMasters: Well, some people will go to alcohol, some people will go to shopping, some people will go to social media, some people will find something to numb the gnawing difficulties of grief and disappointment and loneliness.
Doug McMasters: And here the Lord is saying, don't be enslaved by the things, because every one of those false masters is only going to ensnare you, not relieve you.
Doug McMasters: And if you give yourself over to them, you'll find yourself bound, not free.
Doug McMasters: And so find your freedom in Christ, find your freedom in truth, not things.
Doug McMasters: Fourthly, they are to be those who teach what is good.
Doug McMasters: I love this word.
Doug McMasters: And the word therefore good carries with it not only a moral aspect to it, but an aesthetic aspect to it.
Doug McMasters: Teach that which is beautiful, it could be said.
Doug McMasters: To talk about those things that are choice, are pleasant, are excellent, are beautiful to look at, in which the outward appearance and the inward disposition of the heart meld together.
Doug McMasters: To be a teacher of that which is welcoming to people, that is seen as beautiful or the right way to live.
Doug McMasters: Paul's not talking about a classroom here.
Doug McMasters: He's not talking about getting behind a microphone or standing behind a platform or a podium or even a pulpit.
Doug McMasters: What he's talking about is the teaching of a life, the steady curriculum of your character, in which you could be in a kitchen or a living room, you could be in a conversation after a Sunday morning service, you could be on a phone call in a Wednesday afternoon, and there you're shaping someone's understanding of how to respond in the middle of bad news, or how to grieve with hope, or how to open up your home and your heart to people with needs.
Doug McMasters: So this is teaching not primarily even by what you say, but significantly deeper than that by how you conduct yourself, in which your life is the lesson, not simply your words.
Doug McMasters: Now, all of this, like I said, is a portrait, a portrait of a lady who is living her life empowered by the grace of God.
Doug McMasters: Now think of Proverbs chapter 31, often read as a checklist of accomplishments, but it shouldn't be seen as that.
Doug McMasters: The point in verse 30 of chapter 31 of Proverbs says, Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord, she is to be praised.
Doug McMasters: And in verse 26, it talks about what this woman is like.
Doug McMasters: She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.
Doug McMasters: And so, Paul, when he's painting this portrait of a godly older woman, he is pulling out of the book of Proverbs that picture.
Doug McMasters: But he's also looking somewhere else because that flowering image is also given another place, and that is in Christ Himself.
Doug McMasters: Christ is the ultimate reverent one, whose life was always suitable to the holy.
Doug McMasters: He is the one whose speech was always to build up.
Doug McMasters: He is the one who was enslaved to nothing, but rather gave himself to the will and word of the Father.
Doug McMasters: And he is ultimately the teacher of what is good.
Doug McMasters: And so, ladies, older ladies, particularly, you're not given a checklist.
Doug McMasters: You're being encouraged to grow in Christ.
Doug McMasters: And the more you grow into Christ, the more these things will become fruitful in your life.
Doug McMasters: Because as grace is operative in your life through Jesus, it's going to steady you and it's going to form you, and it's going to give you a life in which others will find beauty on display.
Doug McMasters: So think about some ladies in our church right now.
Doug McMasters: You'll never see them leading a program, you'll never watch them stand behind a microphone.
Doug McMasters: But when they come into your presence or into the presence of others, they're there as a calming, settling, steadying influence.
Doug McMasters: And whenever a younger woman's life is falling apart, whenever the marriage is filled with difficulties, whenever a diagnosis comes that's uncertain, that's where you go.
Doug McMasters: You go there.
Doug McMasters: You go to that person who talks to you.
Doug McMasters: And who can tell you, let me tell you what it was like when God met me in that moment.
Doug McMasters: Her life isn't flashy.
Doug McMasters: She doesn't have to be the loudest or most vibrant in the room.
Doug McMasters: But she's the most welcome because she has wisdom.
Doug McMasters: So let me speak to you directly, ladies.
Doug McMasters: I just want to say a word to you.
Doug McMasters: Your life carries more influence than you realize.
Doug McMasters: All those prayers that you prayed through in those sleepless nights, all of those battles that you fought, all of those times when you chose faithfulness when nobody else was watching.
Doug McMasters: They've all shaped you.
Doug McMasters: They've shaped you to be a presence in this congregation.
Doug McMasters: And you're here, as we'll see in just a moment, to help.
Doug McMasters: But you've been shaped by grace.
Doug McMasters: And I don't want you ever to underestimate the value of that and the treasure that God has been building within you.
Doug McMasters: Because there are people here who need your steadiness.
Doug McMasters: There are people here who need the calm that's been forged in your difficulties.
Doug McMasters: And for those of us who have gone through hardships, sometimes it's hard to see beyond the pain.
Doug McMasters: But, ladies, I want to speak to you who have dealt with a lot of pain.
Doug McMasters: Where it feels like perhaps you've even experienced more pain than fruitfulness.
Doug McMasters: Suffering is the very place in which God shapes character often.
Doug McMasters: And those experiences that you wish you could erase are the very material out of which God builds the portrait of a godly woman.
Doug McMasters: Because there's not a woman who's never struggled.
Doug McMasters: And the young women don't see a woman who's never struggled.
Doug McMasters: They need to see a woman who struggled and found God to be faithful.
Doug McMasters: They don't need a woman who knows all the answers, but a woman who herself has had questions and found herself driven deeper and deeper into the faith and trust of God.
Doug McMasters: Now watch how Paul moves from that portrait.
Doug McMasters: Because he's not only shaping older women, but he's sending them somewhere.
Doug McMasters: Not only shaped by grace, you are sent by grace.
Doug McMasters: And take a look at chapter 2, verse 4.
Doug McMasters: So that they may encourage the young women.
Doug McMasters: There's a ministry that older women are called to have.
Doug McMasters: A service of training and encouraging the younger women.
Doug McMasters: This is a word that has a specific dimension to it about bringing someone to their senses or helping somebody see the pathway that should be walked on and helping them to walk on it.
Doug McMasters: About forming the whole person, not just giving them information.
Doug McMasters: And so here Paul is describing this, and he doesn't even have a classroom in mind.
Doug McMasters: He doesn't have a church program in mind.
Doug McMasters: He doesn't have a six-week curriculum in mind at all.
Doug McMasters: He's talking about in the midst of your organic relationship among the body of Christ, that you're embodying a grace-filled shape that can move from your generation to the next.
Doug McMasters: Of one older woman stepping into the life of a younger woman with steadiness and shape that helps them be steadied and shaped also.
Doug McMasters: And this is what I call gospel order.
Doug McMasters: Older women shaped, older women sent, younger women developed into the same shape by the grace of God.
Doug McMasters: And that relational chain is the gospel transmitted from life into life.
Doug McMasters: What does that look like in practice?
Doug McMasters: Well, there are a number of opportunities for older and younger ladies to meet one another.
Doug McMasters: We have bring your own luncheons once a month.
Doug McMasters: We have fellowship meals together.
Doug McMasters: The ladies have their brunches and retreats.
Doug McMasters: They're saying hello to one another before and after the service.
Doug McMasters: We have a church directory.
Doug McMasters: There are a lot of places where we can intersect with each other, prayer meetings on Wednesday night, ladies' Bible studies on Saturdays, and other times.
Doug McMasters: They're all places to intersect with one another so that there might be the opportunity to say, can we have a little bit of time together?
Doug McMasters: And it may just be 10 minutes in a pew after most people have already gone home.
Doug McMasters: Or it might be, come over to the house and let's have a cup of tea or coffee.
Doug McMasters: It might be a widow who takes a single woman and says, You don't have to be married to have the fullness of life.
Doug McMasters: Who takes a young lady and says, Let me show you the way.
Doug McMasters: Ladies, your life is a curriculum, and the young women need it.
Doug McMasters: You don't need to be perfect to be helpful.
Doug McMasters: You just need to be available.
Doug McMasters: You need to have an open door for others to say, I want to enter in.
Doug McMasters: And that's the ministry, and it's really that simple, but it's really that profound, also.
Doug McMasters: And so, young ladies, I want to I want to say something else here.
Doug McMasters: You are not meant to navigate your circumstances alone.
Doug McMasters: God has given you resources, and the resources are around you right now, they're with you.
Doug McMasters: And so we have older ladies who are meant to be available, and younger ladies who have a need.
Doug McMasters: And let's see what we can do to close the gap between that.
Doug McMasters: Sometimes it means asking, sometimes it just means offering.
Doug McMasters: But it does mean connecting in every way because none of us were designed for isolation.
Doug McMasters: We're in this together.
Doug McMasters: And so Paul is saying here that these older women are not only shaped, but they're sent into the lives of the younger women.
Doug McMasters: And that the younger women, though they might be hesitant, are to seek those older women out and ask them questions and invite them in and find out where they've struggled and where they've sought God in the midst of those things, or where they're suffering and how God has been faithful through that, too.
Doug McMasters: Because you both need to know that you belong and that someone else is carrying the same burdens and is shaped by the same grace.
Doug McMasters: And I know the hesitancy here.
Doug McMasters: I have dealt with too many regrets in my life.
Doug McMasters: No one will ever hear my story.
Doug McMasters: Does that ring in your heart sometimes?
Doug McMasters: I just can't be that kind of helper.
Doug McMasters: The enemy would love nothing more than to tell you that and to keep you isolated.
Doug McMasters: He would love to take every single one of your missteps or every single one of your suffering moments, or every one of many of those what you might deem as failures, and lock you up in silence.
Doug McMasters: But your story is not meant to be a story of perfection, it's meant to be a story of grace.
Doug McMasters: And the grace of God saved us when we were rebels.
Doug McMasters: And we can speak about that grace, so we can also speak about the grace of God in the midst of our difficulties and hardships and even our failures.
Doug McMasters: Because the young women need to hear that too.
Doug McMasters: Now, watch how Paul moves not only to shape the older women, but to send, steady the older women and send the older women, but to shape the younger women.
Doug McMasters: Look at the rest of verse 4 and verse 5.
Doug McMasters: So that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands and to love their children, to be self-controlled, pure, workers at home, kind, and in submission to their husbands.
Doug McMasters: That's a lot to carry.
Doug McMasters: It's really interesting how this is weighted.
Doug McMasters: The younger women are forming a home, they're shaping children, they're balancing relationships and expectations.
Doug McMasters: And sadly, expectations are all over the place.
Doug McMasters: Culture and social media, the rest of your family, extended friends, and sadly, sometimes even in the church itself, expectations.
Doug McMasters: And those expectations can feel like a burden rather than a blessing.
Doug McMasters: And Paul is not adding to that weight.
Doug McMasters: He's showing how gospel order works as it moves from in one generation into the next.
Doug McMasters: And again, this is not a portrait of a superwoman.
Doug McMasters: This is a portrait of a lady shaped by the gospel.
Doug McMasters: And let's take a look at the elements here.
Doug McMasters: First of all, affectionate love.
Doug McMasters: To love her husband and to love her children.
Doug McMasters: And again, the language in the original language speaks of not just a sacrificial giving up, but rather of an affectionate love.
Doug McMasters: It's a word from which we get Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, which is anything but a city of brotherly love.
Doug McMasters: But it's talking about a love that's not cold and duty-bound.
Doug McMasters: It's talking about a warmth and a delight and an affection in that most intimate of relationship that you have with your husband and your children.
Doug McMasters: One that welcomes the husband warmly at the end of a day, in which you've worked, or he has worked, or you've both worked.
Doug McMasters: Or the kind that gets down on the level of the child and just speaks with them at that place.
Doug McMasters: Or someone who treats others with patience and kindness, even though the day's been long.
Doug McMasters: Because you can be very correct in teaching and starve the people closest to you.
Doug McMasters: You can lead a Bible study and you can wound your children.
Doug McMasters: But here, grace is shaping the heart and shaping it by love to make you warmer and deeper and more reflective of the one who loved us with an everlasting love.
Doug McMasters: Self-controlled.
Doug McMasters: It's interesting this one pops up again because it's the exact same thing that's said about the older woman back in the earlier part of verse 4, but it's also what's said about the older men and the younger men.
Doug McMasters: This is the single one characteristic of the family of God in every dimension in Titus chapter 2.
Doug McMasters: This is family-likeness for everybody.
Doug McMasters: Self-controlled.
Doug McMasters: This is our family resemblance, in which the inner ordering of our life, being shaped by the grace of God and formed into Christ's likeness, is what leads us to live our life in a distinct way.
Doug McMasters: And so younger women need to learn from older women what it means to have their life ordered by the gospel, to have their priorities set by the grace of God.
Doug McMasters: And that shows in the next one, pure, pure.
Doug McMasters: This is not just mere, this is not just moral purity, this is single-heartedness and single devotion.
Doug McMasters: A whole-hearted focus.
Doug McMasters: This world wants to divide us and to compartmentalize us.
Doug McMasters: But here is an integrity of life from the inside that is wholly devoted to Christ.
Doug McMasters: The world tells women you're not enough and at the same time too much.
Doug McMasters: And here, scripture is saying, make your whole life focused on Him.
Doug McMasters: The next one is to be workers at home.
Doug McMasters: And it's been dismissed as outdated because people don't really wrestle with what it actually says.
Doug McMasters: Because Paul is not saying that the only place that a woman should be is in the home.
Doug McMasters: He's not talking about where they are to be, he's talking about what their res where their main responsibilities are.
Doug McMasters: Paul is talking about a stewardship.
Doug McMasters: And the home is not a place, it's a domain.
Doug McMasters: And that they are to be workers in this domain.
Doug McMasters: Because the intimate place of your relationships is the most significant place of your influence.
Doug McMasters: It is the place where formation happens.
Doug McMasters: It is the center of gravity for your family.
Doug McMasters: And younger women are entrusted to bring influence into that intimate place with wisdom and grace as they take over the responsibilities of it.
Doug McMasters: And so you reflect the love of God and the wisdom of the spirit.
Doug McMasters: So think about it, for example.
Doug McMasters: Here's a woman whose children are in school.
Doug McMasters: She works three days a week, and she's overseeing the home.
Doug McMasters: And it's not just micromanaging the chores that need to be done, but she has a governance over the home itself.
Doug McMasters: This is her domain.
Doug McMasters: And so she pays attention to the flow of the household.
Doug McMasters: She notices the mornings that are starting to get a bit frantic.
Doug McMasters: And so she adjusts the whole family schedule, including her husband's, so that some good rhythms of routine can be rebuilt back into the home life.
Doug McMasters: That's her influence.
Doug McMasters: She shapes the weekly rhythm so her family isn't constantly scattered.
Doug McMasters: And so she works to protect evenings or some other time in the home to where those things can be brought where they belong, to center itself on family love and as believers, growth in Christ.
Doug McMasters: She not only pays attention to the flow of the household, she also pays attention to needs that might be coming.
Doug McMasters: Sees a daughter who's overwhelmed with schoolwork and tries to help her restructure her schedule so she has some breathing room.
Doug McMasters: And it might mean we're skipping music lessons this week.
Doug McMasters: It might mean it doesn't matter if you get an A this time.
Doug McMasters: And restructuring those things so you can bring back a sense of pace and life into the life of your children.
Doug McMasters: She takes control of that so she can initiate a reset of the frantic pace of life that we sometimes get ourselves caught up into.
Doug McMasters: She has domain in the holes in the home, so she coordinates hospitality.
Doug McMasters: It's not a performance, but a ministry.
Doug McMasters: This is about stewardship.
Doug McMasters: It's not about where you have to be, as so much as what you take charge of.
Doug McMasters: It's your domain.
Doug McMasters: It's where people are formed, it's where peace can be cultivated, and it's where the grace of God can be visible in those patterns of life that you're shaping.
Doug McMasters: The next word, kind, kind, really means strength under control.
Doug McMasters: The choice to soften when the world would want you hard.
Doug McMasters: The choice to build when the world would want you to tear down.
Doug McMasters: The choice to extend grace when it would be easier to be judgmental.
Doug McMasters: That's what it means to be kind.
Doug McMasters: Because to be kind means you have to make an intentional focus on those things to be soft and to build and to extend grace.
Doug McMasters: That's kindness.
Doug McMasters: A kindness that steadies your relationships and diffuses the conflicts and brings an inviting atmosphere in the midst of conflict or confusion.
Doug McMasters: And then, last of all, number six, in submission to their husbands.
Doug McMasters: Now, Paul comes to this last quality, and again, one that requires some careful handling and thinking.
Doug McMasters: What this is talking about is a voluntary ordering, a willingness to enter into a relationship as structured by God's design.
Doug McMasters: It doesn't say a word about domination, it doesn't say a word about eraser of a woman's voice or a woman's gifts or a woman's opinions or a woman's dignity at all.
Doug McMasters: At all.
Doug McMasters: Again, it's a posture.
Doug McMasters: It's one that mirrors the humility of Christ Himself, who submitted him to the activity of saving humanity by becoming human in the incarnation, by going to the cross in suffering, by dealing with all of those things, so that we might be able to say, thanks be to God through Christ Jesus, my Lord and Savior.
Doug McMasters: Now, the husbands aren't mentioned here in Titus chapter 2.
Doug McMasters: We could go to Ephesians chapter 5 and find them mentioned here.
Doug McMasters: And there the husbands are called to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.
Doug McMasters: That the husbands are to be seen as bending toward their wife in sacrificial care and love, so that just as the church is not only saved, but sanctified and eventually presented into the presence of God in full glory, so a husband is to bend himself toward his wife in sacrificial love, so that the wife is strengthened and settled and sanctified in the grace of God.
Doug McMasters: I'd like to think of it like this: like a dance.
Doug McMasters: The beauty of a dance is not found in one partner overpowering the other, or two partners in conflict with each other.
Doug McMasters: It's found in the harmony of their movements.
Doug McMasters: It's found in the middle of trust and attentiveness and a shared focus.
Doug McMasters: That's a good dance.
Doug McMasters: Yes, one leads, another follows, but the following is never passive, and the following is never forced.
Doug McMasters: It is an active, responsive, skilled, and essential part of making that dance beautiful.
Doug McMasters: And this is what Paul's talking about here: to move together in step with one another, by the grace of God, so that you might display the love that Christ has for his people, and to do so in the midst of every day, in the ordinary rhythms and patterns of the day.
Doug McMasters: That's what a Christian marriage is: a beautiful dance.
Doug McMasters: Now, some of you are not married, and some of you don't have children.
Doug McMasters: Is Paul excluding you here?
Doug McMasters: I don't think so.
Doug McMasters: Because every quality that he's named so far, love and self-control and purity and stewardship and kindness and a willing submission to God's ordering, that could apply to all of us, whether we're married or not.
Doug McMasters: The sphere might look different, but all of our relationships need warmth and affectionate love.
Doug McMasters: All of our lives need ordered by God's self-control.
Doug McMasters: All of our lives need wisdom and stewardship.
Doug McMasters: All of our lives need to be in a place where we're kind, in which we deal with work or other things in society according to God's order.
Doug McMasters: Again, we're here pointed to Christ, young ladies.
Doug McMasters: We're here to see Christ who loved perfectly, who loved patiently and sacrificially and unwaveringly, who extended love even to those who rejected him.
Doug McMasters: Christ Himself, self-controlled, perfectly pure, the steward of what he was given and kind, and also perfectly submissive to the Father's plan as he went to the way of the cross.
Doug McMasters: Now I want you to see the purpose statement behind all of this, not just for the older women and younger women, but also for the older men and younger women, younger men.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at the last phrase.
Doug McMasters: So that God's word will not be slandered.
Doug McMasters: Paul is lifting the eyes of the older women and the younger women, lifting the eyes of the older men and younger men, and he's lifting us beyond ourselves.
Doug McMasters: He's lifting us beyond our homes.
Doug McMasters: He's lifting us beyond the church.
Doug McMasters: He's lifting our eyes to the watching world.
Doug McMasters: And he's saying the way that you live your life as a believer is not just a private matter.
Doug McMasters: The way you love your wife or your husband, the way you love your children, the way you steward your home, the way you speak, the way you treat one another across generational lines, all of that communicates and all of it's being watched.
Doug McMasters: And the watching people are drawing conclusions about God.
Doug McMasters: But when grace shapes us, the word of God is adorned, the word of God is made beautiful, the word of God is given credibility.
Doug McMasters: Because people will look at the life of a gospel-shaped man or woman and say, Whatever they believe, that's producing something I know I'd like to lean into and move toward.
Doug McMasters: But when the world patterns shape us, when slander flows, bondages remain, and the home is indistinguishable from every every other home on the block, the word of God is going to be easily dismissed.
Doug McMasters: It's not because the gospel has failed, it's because the gospel hasn't been put on display.
Doug McMasters: And that's our calling as God's people.
Doug McMasters: To know that sound teaching is not just something for our head or even for our emotions and our heart.
Doug McMasters: It's something for our very hands.
Doug McMasters: And it's meant to be produced in the character that we have and shown in our interactive intergenerational relationships with each other.
Doug McMasters: And all of it is made possible by what's there at the end of this chapter in verse 11.
Doug McMasters: The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all, instructing us to deny godlessness and worldly lust and live sensible, righteous, and godly way in this present age.
Doug McMasters: Isn't passive.
Doug McMasters: Grace has brought us to Christ, and grace is shaping Christ within us, and grace is meant to be shared across the generations so that we might one day put Christ on display to this watching world.
Doug McMasters: Happy Mother's Day, all of you.
Doug McMasters: Let's be Father, we thank you for showing us something about the steady character of godly women through their reverence and their speech, through their freedom and their teaching.
Doug McMasters: We thank you for giving us responsibilities to one another, older women and younger, older men and younger.
Doug McMasters: And we thank you for the clear instruction of how a younger woman here is to be shaped, but also all of us in our own way.
Doug McMasters: All of it so the Word of God will not be reviled but adorned.
Doug McMasters: That the watching world would see a life of gospel beauty, one that can't be explained by our personalities or our culture or our efforts, but only by the grace of God.
Doug McMasters: And so, Father, this morning, as we've honored the women in this church, the women, the mothers who are in the thick of the hardest and most beautiful work on earth, and grandmothers whose faithfulness has shaped generations that they may never see, for the spiritual mothers who have never borne a child but have shaped the hearts and lives of others' women, for the single women here whose lives are filled with purpose, for the widows, though they carry grief, have also carry a quiet strength.
Doug McMasters: For the women who long to be mothers, for the women who carry grief today, who miss their mothers or their children, or the life they thought they would have.
Doug McMasters: We honor them, Father.
Doug McMasters: But we want to honor them most of all with this wonderful life-giving truth, that the grace of God has come, and the grace of God has come to deliver us from judgment and from all the pollution of this world, so that we might be shaped into gospel beauty.
Doug McMasters: And Lord, I pray that you would be with them.
Doug McMasters: I pray that you would shape the ladies in our congregation through all of their seasons, so that their stories might be shared with one another, that the grace that's mentioned here would flow freely from generation to generation and from life to life and heart to heart.
Doug McMasters: We pray that the Word of God would never be reviled because of us.
Doug McMasters: We pray that it would always be adorned and made beautiful, made credible, made visible through the grace shaped lives of your people here.
Doug McMasters: And Father, we ask this in the name of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself up for us.
Doug McMasters: And we pray this in Christ's name.
Doug McMasters: Amen.