Teaching Health | Titus 2:1-8

Titus 2:1-8  |  Cody Hale

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Titus chapter 2. Kind of between series this morning, and so I wanted to go and just start early on sharing a heart for discipleship. That's gonna be so much of the culture. It already is so much of the culture here at the Orchard, but it's gonna we're gonna lean into that more and more. And one of my favorite places to go is to Titus chapter 2. We're gonna read the first eight verses together. Titus chapter 2, verses 1 through 8. Beginning in verse 1, it says, But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine. Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled. Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us. Let's pray the Lord together. Heavenly Father, this morning we want to hear from your word. We ask, oh Lord, that your spirit would take your word and apply it to our hearts. That Lord, we come in as one person and we leave as a different person. That you would help us to grow in our understanding, grow in our godliness, grow in our faithfulness, that Lord, we would live lives that are hot after you. I pray for the Orchard Church, Lord, that this would be a disciple-making church, that we would be a sending center, Lord, for pastors, for missionaries, for people to go into their workplaces to have a transformative difference in our community. Lord, take your word today and let it come alive for us in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. So I gained 50 pounds the first year that I was married. And I know what you're thinking. You're thinking with my large frame, I probably carried it really well. But I really didn't. You see, right up until I got married, Megan and I were married a month after I turned 21, and right up until that point, I lived at home with my parents. And I guess without thinking about it, my mom had always kind of curated the food and the groceries that were in our house and the snacks that were available for us to eat. And she had really regulated maybe the amount of food that was being cooked and the amount of food that was being consumed. And so when suddenly I had my own house and I was buying my own groceries, and I married this beautiful little brunette girl that was a good cook, and it was time for me to self-regulate. I just didn't. I just didn't. It was not abnormal for me to come home for lunch from a day at work, and I would make a bowl of soup, I would eat two sandwiches, a plate of chips, and then chase it with a 32-ounce Gatorade. All right? Not exactly a routine for a chiseled physique. And so I remember my mom had not seen me for a couple of months, and she came into town and she saw me, and she was shocked by how much weight I had gained, and she started sounding the alarm on what was going on. And you know what's interesting about that is that the issue wasn't that I didn't know better. I knew better. I knew that ordering a triple whopper and upsizing the fries and the coke were not exactly a recipe for good health. So the problem wasn't with what I knew. The problem was that I wasn't doing anything with what I knew. I wasn't applying what I knew. This is actually at the forefront of Paul's mind as he writes this letter to Titus. You'll notice there in verse one that he says, but as for you, and he's talking to Titus, but as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine. With sound doctrine. Now, most of the time when we think about sound doctrine, we think about making sure that you have all of the right knowledge, all of the true knowledge, and all of the good knowledge. And that's certainly part of it. But Paul has something more in mind than that. The word sound can probably more literally be translated as healthy. Teach what accords with a healthy doctrine. That in Paul's mind, a healthy doctrine isn't just that you know what is good and you know what is true. A healthy doctrine is that you take what is good and you take what is true and you apply it to your life. That you take that knowledge and you do something with it that makes you live in a new kind of way, in a different kind of way. And so at the forefront of Paul's mind is not just that you would know the right things, but knowing the right things, that you would begin to live the right kinds of ways. And so he's writing to Titus. Titus was a young pastor, and he's writing to Titus that Titus would have a healthy church. And he recognizes that the only way that Titus is gonna have a healthy church is if his church has a healthy doctrine. And the only way that Titus's church is gonna have a healthy doctrine is if Titus teaches them a healthy doctrine. And so what we see here is if we want to be a healthy church here at the orchard, is that we have to have a healthy doctrine. And I want us to see from Paul how is it that we teach a healthy doctrine? First, we must show it. We must show it. So I ran track in high school. In my 10th grade year, we got a new track coach. And the interesting thing about this track coach is he made no bones about it. He hated running. He hated everything about running. He would tell us, even when he played football in high school, that he did everything possible to be able to get out of all the windsprints that he possibly could. And so he would come and he would park it in the in the bleachers and he would watch us run. But the interesting thing is he was hard on us. He was hard on us. So I ran long distance events, all right? So it was really normal for me on a week of practice, on a day of practice, to come in and to run five miles. And so in our track, that was 20 laps around the track. And so this Joker would be parked up in the bleachers with a bag of chips in one hand and a Dr. Pepper in the other hand, and I would pass him 20 times, and he would be yelling at me all the things that I needed to be doing so that I could run faster and I could run farther. And I'm telling y'all, I'm telling y'all, resentment grew in my heart every lap I passed him. Every laugh I passed him, I had more and more resentment and bitterness that would grow in my heart. Because we recognize that's an awful way to teach, isn't it? The best way to teach is to teach by example. That you really can't teach people to love what you clearly don't value. Right? This is at the forefront of Paul's mind as he's talking to this young pastor. I apologize that the that I have the verses a little bit too low on the screen there. But he's saying there in verse 8, he says, he's or verse 7, I'm sorry, he says that you are to be a model. Titus is to be a model of good works. Then he emphasizes older men and older women. Why is he emphasizing older men and older women? He's emphasizing them because they are the ones that should be living this life out in over a long period of time. They are the ones that are to be models, examples, that they show the marks of sanctification of a long walk with Jesus. See, a major theme in the book of Titus is that behavior must follow belief or your belief is useless. Behavior must follow belief or your belief is really useless. That what Titus, what Paul is teaching Titus is that if you want to have a healthy church, you must have more than just sound teaching. You must have sound teaching lived out. Sound teaching lived out. That this is supposed to be especially true of those who are the teachers in your church. That those that you have your convictions as a church, you have your values as a church, you have your doctrines as a church, and those convictions, values, and doctrines must be exemplified in the lives of the leaders and the teachers in the church. That a healthy doctrine requires the fruit of faithfulness in the lives of those that are teaching the doctrine to the church. That you cannot have a healthy church with a do as I say, not as I do kind of culture. Why? Nobody wants to learn how to run from a track coach that hates to run. Nobody wants to go to a dentist that has unkept teeth. Nobody wants their financial advisor to be drowning in debt. And nobody wants to hear from a teacher that doesn't care enough about what they're saying to apply it to their own lives. Now, I want you to think how it is that we collect teachers for ourselves very often, though. Very often, what is the criteria that we use to collect the teachers that we put in positions of leadership in our churches? Most of the time, it's not decades of faithfulness. Most of the time, it's not because we see that they have a proven character. Most of the time, the criteria that we use is we like to hear them. We like to listen to them. That very often in the church, we prioritize charisma over character. And when we prioritize charisma over character, we have an unhealthy doctrine. We are setting up our church, we are setting up our hearers for ultimate disaster. So think about how different that is with what Paul does, how he contrasts that, right? He doesn't say, go and collect for yourselves a bunch of teachers that are really winsome and articulate. He doesn't say, go and find a bunch of people that can draw a great crowd. He doesn't say go and find the most interesting and captivating speakers in your congregation. He says, go find the older men, the ones who are sober-minded and dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith and love and steadfastness. Go and find the older women who are reverent in their behavior, who aren't gossipy or slaves to much wine, the ones who teach what is good. He says, go to those that have lived out the faith in front of you. Go to those that have shown love over time. Go to those that have shown a growing in maturity. That's what we see, isn't it? What we see is that a healthy doctrine matures. And you know that you have a healthy doctrine in your church because the congregation is maturing, so that now the older men and the older women are able to be teachers, which by the way is presumed here by Paul, are able to be teachers in the life of the church. That is, the best teachers in the church are the ones that have a visible faith and a proven character. That we are to teach teachers ought to be examples, and teachers ought to be proven in their faith. Think about how many of the characteristics here are things that you have to see over the long haul. Particularly, think about steadfastness. Steadfastness isn't something that you can observe in a young Christian. Steadfastness is something that takes place over decades of walking with Jesus, isn't it? Going through struggles, going sinning and repenting and turning away, maturing and failing and getting back up and persevering, isn't it? You think about what it means to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. Well, you don't know that in the short term. It takes a long period of time of being able to see this in the life of a person. And so this is what he's saying about healthy doctrine that healthy doctrine comes from the kinds of teachers that are tested and wise and grounded in their faith, the kinds of people that have been established over the long haul. And so Paul is flipping our metrics for teachers on its head. He doesn't prioritize charisma, he prioritizes character. See what happens is when we prioritize charisma and we allow someone's charisma to elevate them into positions that their character is not yet ready to withstand, then what happens is ultimately we experience scandals in the church. Have you heard about any scandals in the church? This is a systemic problem. The systemic problem is that we continue to prioritize gifts and we continue to prioritize charisma, and we do it by discounting the importance of character. What we want is for a person to go through the stages of development so that ultimately their character is able to sustain what their charisma might enable. John Eldridge is a Christian counselor, and he says that what you can do is you can take this pattern of development that we see here in Titus, this pattern of the older men discipling the younger men, the younger older women discipling the younger women, that you can actually see this pattern of development if you pay attention throughout the scriptures, that this is part of God's design. He says you can go and you can look at people like Moses, you can look at David, you can look at Solomon, you can look at the prophet Elisha. This comes up time and again. You can even think about the way that Jesus leads his own disciples. And he says that what we want to make sure is that every person is going through the proper stages of development so that when they're at the stage they're supposed to be on, they're able to withstand that and be able to continue to grow and mature into the next stage. That if you skip a stage, what ultimately happens is it brings disruption to your soul, and it potentially can bring harm to the people over whom you have influence in your life. And so he's approaching that this particular uh group, uh grouping is really focused on young men and how men are developed, but you'll see that the principles are transferable. I actually think he has a new book, which may even be out now, that really talks more about women. But he says, on a young man's journey, his journey toward healthy development must begin at a stage he calls the beloved son. That the first 10 years of a young man's life, what he has to become convinced of is that he is the beloved son, especially of his father. Of course, the mother matters. The mother matters most in the first five years, the father matters the most in the next five years, but he has to come out of the age ten, and of course these lines are a little blurry, but he has by the time he's 10, have it well settled in his heart that he is his father's beloved son, that his father is devoted to him, his father is committed to him, his father uh is cherishes him and is invested in teaching him. And he says if he doesn't come out of this life, this life stage with being convinced that he is the beloved son of his father, then what happens is he'll spend the rest of his life looking for dad replacements. He'll run to ladies, he'll run to jobs, he'll run to achievement, he might run to pornography, he might run to a hundred different places, but he's gonna spend the rest of his life looking for dad replacements so that he can find the validation that he's ultimately looking for. And it's gonna wreak havoc in all of his other relationships, his relationship with his wife, his kids, on so on and so forth. The next stage is what we would call the ranger stage. And this is really ages 11 to 20. The ranger stage is a stage of high risk, it's a stage of testing. It's you're you're you're discovering courage and you're discovering what you're capable of and what you're not capable of. You're kind of throwing yourself out with that less than fully formed frontal cortex, right? Uh frontal lobe. You're really struggling with uh with what your body image is and who you're gonna be and becoming a man. This is this is a necessary part of the development. And if you short circuit this, if if because of helicopter parenting, this isn't possible, or in because of timidity on the part of the young man, this doesn't take place. What ultimately becomes is he becomes insecure in his own masculinity. She becomes insecure in her own femininity, right? So for the rest of their life, they're battling with a sense of insecurity that was really because of underdeveloped muscles that happened in adolescence. After that comes the warrior stage, ages 20 to 40. The warrior stage, this is the age in which traditionally you become one of the soldiers for your people. This is when you stand up to defend your people. And in the warrior stage, this is really when you're starting to decide what fights are worth it, what what risks are actually worth taking. I'm not gonna go and jump my mountain bike off of every mountain, but that mountain might be okay, right? This is when you're deciding what causes you're gonna stand for, what causes you're gonna live for. This is the time in which you're getting your training, when you become an apprentice, when when you are receiving your education, when you're starting and establishing your career. This is the time in your life in which you're finding your mate and you're starting the trajectory of your life over the long haul. Now, many of us want to skip over the warrior stage and go straight to the king stage. But what happens is if you skip over the warrior stage and go straight to the king stage, is you don't develop the resilience that will be necessary for the leadership that you're ultimately going to have. So once you've gone through the lawyer stage, now, now we're ready for the king stage. The king stage is the era, is the time in your life in which you really become the main influence over the domain that God has given you. This is traditionally your main uh money-earning years. This is the time in which you establish, you begin to establish yourself as a type of patriarch, as a source of wisdom, as a source of stability for your family. And in the king stage, the king stage, you know you're ready for it when you start to realize that leadership is no longer about you. That it's not about developing your own name, it's not about establishing your own realm, it's not about making sure that you are known, that leadership is actually about the good of the people entrusted to your care. It's about making sure that those in your family are flourishing, those under you at the company are flourishing, those under your leadership at the church are flourishing, that when you're ready for the king stage, you'll know it because you'll recognize my life isn't about me. My life is about stewarding the resources in my care, stewarding the opportunities that I have to make sure that the people that have been entrusted to me can reach their maximum potential. And then finally, we have the sage stage. This would be really 60 plus. Now, historically, this has been the most revered stage of all the ages among history, among communities throughout the history of human civilization. Unfortunately, in our culture, the stage has really been diminished. People are not looked to with the same kind of reverence that they once were. But the purpose of the sage is that throughout your life you have collected wisdom, you've collected knowledge, you've collected experiences, and now your responsibility is not to not sit on that wisdom and not sit on those experiences, but to now pass it on to the next generation. That they could avoid some of your pitfalls, that they could learn from some of your experiences, that they could learn to not take for granted what you maybe once took for granted. The sage becomes the lead advisors to the kings. They don't have maybe the stamina that they once had to lead what they once could lead, but they have more knowledge and more know-how than they ever did. And so they're able to pass that on to those that perhaps have the stamina, but don't yet have all of the experience and the knowledge. Now, what should we do with this? What should we do with this? I think there what we should do is we should both look behind, look back, and we should look forward. You ought to look back and you ought to say, okay, which of these stages got disrupted for me? Which of these stages did I miss out on? It's not too late, y'all. It's not too late. Like if you grew up in a house in which you did not have it established that you were the beloved son or daughter of your dad, it's not too late for you. We just got to go back with someone that can walk with you through that and disciple you and how you can know that you are the beloved son of the Almighty to be able to cultivate that in your heart. Maybe you're insecure because the ranger stage stage was disrupted. Or maybe, maybe you skipped over the warrior stage and got to the king stage too quickly. What you need to have is the humility to be able to go back and recognize those areas that were disrupted and then seek out brothers or sisters in your life that are maybe have those stages well established and ask them to disciple you specifically in those areas. I think counseling can be beneficial in times like this. But we should also look forward that all of us have responsibilities in the future. And we need to recognize that the call in our lives is not to remain static. So I need to recognize if I'm in the ranger stage, what do I need to be doing to prepare for the warrior stage? And if I'm in the warrior stage, what do I need to be doing to prepare for the king stage? And if I'm in the king stage, what do I need to be doing to prepare for the sage stage? That I need to be always looking back to think, okay, what needs to be dealt with, but I need to be looking forward so that I can make sure that I'm preparing and I'm growing as a person so that I'll be able to be for my family, for my church, and for my community what the Lord has for me to do. That is, we must be the kinds of people that teach a healthy doctrine, a robust doctrine of development that is developing through the life cycles so that each of us becomes who God has called for us to be. To be able to do that, we've got to show it. And then we have to share it. We have to share it. By share it, I mean that once you recognize that you are collecting some knowledge and some experiences, you have to recognize that you are accountable to God, that you are responsible in the face of God to make sure that you are reinvesting those experiences and that knowledge into other people. You'll notice what Paul says and what Paul doesn't say. When we think about teaching sound doctrine, which verse one tells us that's what he has in mind, we typically think of something like systematic theology, don't we? We think about all these ologies, eschatology, the doctrine of the end times. We think about soteriology, the doctrine of salvation, we think about anthropology, the doctor, the doctrine of mankind. And all of those things are significant. But what's interesting here is that Paul talking about sound doctrine doesn't emphasize any of those things. What does Paul talk about when he talks about a healthy doctrine? He talks about homemaking, he talks about submission, he talks about the kind of wife that you're gonna be in the kind of Husband that you're gonna be. He talks about the kind of example that you are. He talks about practical real life applications of growing in godliness and growing in faithfulness. And why is that? See, Paul recognizes. Paul recognizes he's writing to a church that's in the region of Crete. And he recognizes that Crete is not going to be impacted by a bunch of well-informed Christians that have indistinguishable lives from their neighbors. No, Crete is going to be impacted when you have a church of people that are different kinds of parents and different kinds of husbands and different kinds of wives and different kinds of neighbors, and that people are able to associate that the difference in you is because of Christ abiding with you. That they're supposed to recognize that there is a transformation, not just in your intellect, not just in your knowledge, not just in your doctrinal foundation, but in the development of who you are as a man or as a woman. And so to be able to do that, what Paul is showing us is that the method of education is very different than the one most of us inherited. Most of us inherited going and learning from the gurus, right? This was a prominent issue in early Israel. To go and learn from the gurus, to find the best and the brightest teachers, and to have our teach our kids to make sure they're in those classes and those private schools and those universities. But what Paul is showing us is that if we want to have this kind of learning, if we want to have a healthy doctrine, we need to learn how to teach like a family. Teach like a family. Now, I want you to think about how different it is to teach like a family than to teach in a classroom. And I get teached like a family by seeing the older men mentoring the younger men, the older women mentoring the younger women. How different is that? You know, in a classroom, it's formal and distant, isn't it? But in a family, it's up close and personal. In a classroom, my concern is your knowledge and your skills. In my family, my concern is forging your identity and forming your character. In a classroom, the teacher might know your name if the classroom is small enough. But in a family, we know one another's strengths and weaknesses, vulnerabilities and liabilities, greatest fears and greatest aspirations. That the concern of a classroom is can you do the right things? Do you know the right things? The concern of a family is, are you going to become the right person? Are you going to become the kind of person that God intends for you to be from the beginning? See, this is the concern of the church. The concern of the church is not foremost your knowledge, it's foremost the forging of your identity and the formation of your character. And that we're to teach in such a way that forms this. And so the goal here is not that we would have a bunch of sages on stages that are really winsome and articulate. The goal here is not that we would be able to surround you with people with great charisma. The goal is not that we would have a bunch of people that can impress you with their resume. The goal is that we would share life with each other in such a way that brings presence into close range so that you can begin to see what you need to see and learn what you need to learn. That the best way to learn is to take a hands-on approach. And the approach that I see Paul teaching, the approach that I believe that Jesus teaches, is a type of family apprenticeship. For millennia, this is how people primarily learned to be who they were gonna be and to do what they were gonna do. They learned it through being apprenticed by their parents, by being prepared to go into the vocation that their parents were prepared to go into. Now think about what this would look like in the life of the church. You know, most people I have found have never seen what a healthy, godly marriage actually looks like. They've heard about it, they know in theory that it's a thing, but that wasn't the experience they had growing up. And now they're here and they're in their 20s, they're in their 30s, they're in their 40s, they're trying to figure out how to have a godly marriage, but they've never seen it. You know what we need? We need an apprenticeship program in the church where we have older couples that have walked with the Lord together for decades with one another to have these young couples over for dinner just so they can see what it looks like to have a godly, godly marriage. People need to know what it's like for a man of God to suffer, to go through job turmoil. They need to see what it's like for a woman of God to well and to pray for a wayward child. We need to do that, and the only way to do that is not from a stage. It's at kitchen tables with one another, sharing life with one another, sharing presence with one another. Y'all, this is how Jesus taught his disciples, isn't it? We're gonna talk more about this in the future. This is how Jesus taught his disciples. He didn't just stand and teach, he did some of that, but he lived life with them and he lived it up close so that they could see it. Visible faith, proving character, remember. In fact, Mike Bring, he says that you can take the method of Jesus and you can see how he's apprenticing his disciples to live hands-on so that now it begins to pass on. And so if we want to make the kinds of disciples that Jesus made in our church, then we're gonna have to use the kind of methods that Jesus used. And I think that's what Paul is getting at. Mike Bring says that you can really take the method of Jesus' discipleship and you can break it down like this. It starts with, I do, you watch. That in the beginning, I'm gonna live out this life, I'm gonna live out these principles, and I just want you to observe them. Over time, it's gonna evolve to I do, you help. This is what Jesus does with his disciples. He starts sending them out and bringing them in, sending them out. They mess up. He brings in his disciples and he corrects them and he teaches them, he sends them out again. I do, you help. I'm gonna let you help with what I'm doing. Then over time it evolves again. It goes to you do, and now I'm gonna help. And then eventually it becomes you do and I watch. That's full circle. And if you think about the way that you learn how to do things, y'all, this is how you learn. It's no different when it comes to your marriage, it's no different when it comes to your parenting, it's no different when it comes to your grandparenting, it's no different when it comes to your career. All of these things are woven into the architecture of who God has designed for us to be. I think about it when I retrofit the way I learned how to preach, this is exactly what happened. I had a youth pastor who noticed something in me before I noticed something in me, right? And so he would go and he would preach different events, and he would just invite me to go around with him, and I would ride in the car with him, and I would ask him questions the whole way there and the whole way back, and then I would just watch what he was doing. He would walk me in and he would say he would show me kind of where he was taking future sermon series and how he was arriving at certain points. Eventually, eventually, he let me start helping him. He would come in, he would bounce an illustration off of me to see if it was good. He would ask my impressions on certain things to see if it made sense to him or it made sense to me. Sometimes he would take my suggestions, oftentimes he was smart enough not to, right? But but in I was I was helping him and I was he was forming, I thought I was helping him, but really he was forging my character and forging my understanding. Well, eventually, I was 15. He said, Hey, Cody, we're gonna kick off the school year and you're gonna preach. I said, I'm gonna do what now? And I got up there, y'all, and I said literally every single thing I knew about the Bible in seven minutes. I looked to him, I said, Todd, that's all I've got. And I sat down. It was awful. It was so, so bad. And yet, what did he do? He called me into his office. He said, Man, there was so much good here. There's a lot we need to work on, but there's a lot of good to hear too. And he worked on it. And then he let me do it again, and we worked on it. Let me do it again, and then we work on it. But you know, now, Todd doesn't help me so much with my sermons. Todd doesn't really have much input into what I'm saying. But what Todd has is the joy of being able to watch me and knowing that wherever the Lord takes me and however the Lord chooses to use me, he's a part of that. He's making an investment in the orchard church, and he's never even been to the orchard church. You see, y'all, there's a lot more joy on the table for all of us to experience. But there are two different groups of people if you want to experience more joy. Some of you need to open up your lives. You need to be willing to be inconvenienced a little bit to allow some younger believers to come into your life and join you at breakfast and join you at dinner and join you at Thanksgiving. You need to bring them in, and you know, you're gonna say, I don't have anything to offer. Yes, you do. Just let them observe your life. Let build a relationship that can turn into coaching so they know where to go when they need advice, so they know where to go when they need counsel. You think their parents are available, but many of them are not. They need you. Some people here, if you want to have more joy in your life, you need to open up your life and inconvenience your life so that you can have an investment that pays off for the long haul. Others of you, you need to humble your hearts. You need to humble your hearts. Our education system now, we pool ignorance together. Have you noticed this? We take all of the seventh graders and we put them in a class so that all the seventh graders are asking one another for advice. All of the seniors are asking one another for advice. All of the 25-year-olds are asking one another for advice. And it's just pooled ignorance. They don't know better, right? Do you know what they need? Man, they need people in their 60s. Like they need people in their 70s, they need some gray hair, some salt and pepper beards in their lives. You know what I mean? And so, you, if you're younger, have to recognize that I'm surrounded by pooled ignorance. I need to humble my heart so that I can have a teachable spirit to go and to seek out those who are be who are older than me and more advanced than me and further along than me so that I can learn from them. One of the main things that I hear from the older generation is I would love to be able to mentor some of the younger generation. They don't seem to be interested in anything that I have to say. You need to humble your hearts. Because don't you want to be a better wife? Don't you want to be a better husband? Don't you want to be prepared for parenthood? That's gonna be more joyful for you, man. That's gonna be more joyful for you. And those resources are available in Jesus' church. That we have to show it. And we have to share it. And then finally, we have to simplify it. We have to simplify it. The best teachers are the ones who can take really complex concepts and teach them simply, aren't they? Make them in an understandable way that we can apply to our lives. I think about that in our family. So my wife, Megan, taught kindergarten for 18 years. And so our kids will come, we'll be riding down the road, and they'll ask a question, and I'm gonna philosophize about it and theologize about it and intellectualize about it. And you can look back and you can tell they're more confused than they were when they started with the question. And then Megan will give a one-sentence clear analogy, and they're like, oh, dad, why didn't you just say that? Because I'm not that smart. That's why, right? Like, I'm not smart enough to say that. That's really a gift, isn't it? That the best teachers put the put the complex realities of the glories of God on the bottom shelf so that all of us can take them and apply them to our lives, so that they can form our character and change the way that we think and change the way that we act. I think what we see here is Paul doing a masterclass of just that. That Paul, as being the more advanced teacher, teaching Titus, is showing him how to simplify his message. Paul does this by repeating himself. There's two different repeats that we find here in the text. The first repeat shows us that we need to remember cause and effect. This first one is not as obvious to us in the English, but it would be very clear to us in the Greek. If you'll look there in verse 4, you'll see it has the word so. And then in verse 5, it has the word that. And then in verse 8, it has the phrase so that. These are actually all the exact same word in the Greek. It's a henna, it's a henna clause. And these henna clauses, the purpose of them is to reveal in the text a cause and effect relationship. And you know, when we think about living out a healthy doctrine, what we're really talking about is living in wisdom. Wisdom is skillful living, isn't it? Do you know one of the primary differences between the wise and the foolish is the difference between cause and effect? The wise understand cause and effect. That is, they understand that life is connected. They understand that what I did yesterday impacts what I experienced today. And what I do today impacts what I'm gonna experience tomorrow. The foolish person doesn't think like this. The foolish person believes that life is disconnected, at least for them. That yesterday is about yesterday and today is about today, and tomorrow will be about tomorrow. That it doesn't matter if I make catastrophic decisions today, I'm gonna be the exception to the rule tomorrow. It's gonna be just fine, right? That the wise person understands that what I eat in my 20s and 30s is going to have a lot to say about my health in my 40s and 50s. The unwise person says, hand me that triple whopper, it's all gonna be just fine. I'm the exception to the rule. And so what we see here is Paul is upholding, and he's wanting these different generations in the local church that are gonna have a healthy doctrine. He's wanting them to understand and to recognize that there is a cause and effect relationship in what they're doing. With the in verse 4, he's talking to the older men and the older women, and he's wanting them to know that their willingness to teach and instruct and live as people of character is going to determine their ability to train and perpetuate their faith with the next generation. In verse 5, he's really talking to the younger men and the younger women, and the impact that he wants them to see is like the way that you live out your faith is going to determine whether or not the word of God is reviled. Are your kids gonna revile the word of God? Well, I don't know. Are you living as a person of integrity? Are your friends gonna revile the word of God or are they gonna revere the word of God? Well, I don't know. Are you living out the Christian life in front of them? Are you living as a hypocrite or are you living as an honorable man or as an honorable woman? There's a cause and effect relationship. And then in verse 8, he gets to Titus himself. And he wants Titus to recognize that the veracity of his ministry, the verification of his ministry will come by the honor of him modeling these good works. And if he does that, if he does that, then his enemies will have nothing evil to say about him. If he doesn't do this, then all of the accusations of Satan are actually verified in his life. And so Paul is here and he's saying, you need to remember cause and effect, and remembering cause and effect, you need to focus on self-control. You need to focus on self-control. This is the second repeat that we find in Paul's simple message. You'll notice that there's one characteristic that comes up for all four of the different people groups that show up here in Titus chapter 2. He says that the older men are to be self-controlled. He says that the older women are not to be slanderers or slaves to much wine. This is self-control. He says that the young women should be, verse five, self-controlled. And then my favorite, my favorite of all the verses is verse six. He says, likewise, urge them young men to be self-controlled. Why is that my favorite? Do you notice how the older men he gives a long list of characteristics? The younger women, the older women, he gives a long list of characteristics. The younger women, long list of descriptions. Gets to the young men, he's like, guys, for the love. Can you just be self-controlled? Can you just be self-control? Can you remember one thing, right? He's simplifying the message. But in some ways, he's culminating the message. This has been his message all the way through. Now, what is self-control? Self-control is living your life in light of cause and effect, isn't it? Self-control is living today like knowing that tomorrow is the consequence of what I decide to do today. So self-control is the maturity to take responsibility for yourself because of your love for other people. I'm going to take responsibility for myself because I recognize as an older man, the way that I live is going to impact my children, impact the younger generation coming up before me. I'm going to take live a life of self-control as an older woman because I recognize that I'm setting an example for those that are coming after me. As a young woman, I'm going to live a life of self-control because I recognize that I'm sowing today in my early years what I'm going to reap in my later years. The same for the young men. That because of the love that I have for those in my family, for the love that I have for those in my church family, for the love that I have for my neighbor, I'm going to choose to self-regulate out of maturity and self-control because I want to be able to express that well to them. You know, most of the counseling needs that come into the life of the church, most of them can be resolved with self-control. Not all of them, most of them can be resolved with self-control. That the hardest person that you're ever going to find in your life to lead is to lead yourself. You're hard to lead, aren't you? It's easy to tell everybody else what they should do. It's easy to tell everybody else what they can do better. It's really hard for you to tell yourself what you need to do better and to tell yourself to wrangle it in. But you see, the reason that I think it is the summary and the simplification of Paul's entire message here is that self-control is really about greater love. You see, I'm going to watch and be mindful of what I eat today because I want to make sure that I'm around for you tomorrow. That's love, isn't it? That's self-control. I'm going to be mindful of the things that I say to you. Because I never want to speak recklessly and hurt you unnecessarily. I'm going to be mindful of the things that I do. Because I want to make sure, recognizing that the things that I do have implications and consequences in your life. I'm going to be mindful of how I act. Because I recognize that the way that I act either elevates Jesus' reputation in the minds of others or it lowers it in the minds of others. That you can simplify this entire message as to a message of self-control, because self control ultimately means to live under the spirit of the one who says, not my will, but your will be done. And when it comes to living under the spirit of one who says, Not my will, but your will be done, that's a pretty good starting line for teaching health. Let's pray to the Lord together.