Titus 2:1-2, 6 - Christ-Shaped Men

I'm going to invite you to take your Bible and go to the book of Titus with me, the book of Titus.

And we're going to be in chapter two.

Chapter 2.

Some of you might remember a film that was made in or released in 1997.

Yeah, I know, almost 30 years ago, with Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt.

It was titled As Good As It Gets.

Any of you remember that?

If you're under 40, you probably heard about it.

You probably never watched it.

But in this movie, As Good As It Gets, Nicholson plays a character by the name of Melvin.

And Melvin is about, in every way possible, one of the most impossible persons to ever be around.

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.

He is in that way very, very hard to like.

It'd be like hugging a porcupine, this guy.

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.

He's trying to give a compliment where he would normally say something very obnoxious.

And you could tell he's really, really, really trying to get this out.

And he makes an awkward attempt at it, uh, which um Carol doesn't quite understand.

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.

And it is one of the most special moments in the whole film.

And Carol, played by Helen Hunt, says, That has got to be the best compliment I have ever received.

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.

And he's grateful that someone's in his life that's pushing him toward that.

And I think every guy who's in this room understands that sentence, right?

And I've said it several times to Royal.

You make me want to be a better man.

And sometimes we play with it jokingly, and sometimes it's dead serious.

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.

And this is exactly where this text is going to meet us this morning.

But the Apostle Paul is not simply giving us tips for self-improvement here.

He's going to show us something far, far better.

He's going to tell us the things that actually shape people into being different than what they are right now.

And what he will say is that it's grace that teaches us and grace that shapes us.

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.

And it's no easy assignment.

This is rather hard soil that he's in.

And Paul there describes the Cretans as people who are liars, who are evil beasts, who are lazy gluttons.

It's a really difficult culture in which Titus is given this charge to form a community of believers whose lives reflect the gospel.

In the middle of a culture that's completely contrary to what gospel shape looks like.

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.

And so the church's conduct will reflect that.

It will be grace that's made visible.

It's the gospel with skin on it.

And so Paul opens up Titus chapter 2, and as he starts to unpack this, he begins with a command in verse 1.

Titus 2 · chapter mention

Take a look at it.

He said, As for you, but you are to proclaim things consistent with sound teaching.

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.

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.

And he says to Titus, but you, Titus, be different.

Don't be an empty talktor, don't be a deceiver, don't be rebellious, and don't be hypocritical.

But you be different, teach different, build a different kind of people.

Because these false teachers are wrecking homes and lives.

And what you are to teach is meant to bring health and life and development and strength into other people.

And so what follows in chapter two is one of the most beautifully structured passages in all of the New Testament.

And Paul traces the shape of sound doctrine across four groups.

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.

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.

And it's a comprehensive vision of what the gospel-shaped life looks like and what a gospel community looks like.

So this morning we're going to talk to the men.

Next week, ladies, it's going to be your turn.

And it's Mother's Day, so I don't know how that happened, honestly.

So today we're going to talk to the older men and the younger women.

And next week we're going to draw our attention toward the older women and the younger women.

And I know there's no older women in here.

I understand that, but but we'll we'll talk to them next week anyway.

And the question, men, I want you to ask yourself today is what kind of man does grace produce?

What kind of man does grace produce?

And before we walk through this text, I want you to hold intention something at the very end of this chapter.

Look at verse 11 and 12.

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.

Now notice that word instructing there.

It's telling us that grace is not passive.

Grace doesn't merely forgive us and leave us where it found us.

Grace trains us, grace shapes us, grace forms us, it makes us different.

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.

Ladies, I don't want this to be simply a pitchfork uh sermon for you.

Like, this is for the guys and for that guy and for the one next to me.

Right?

I don't want it to be that.

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.

First of all, as we go through this, pray for the men while we're unpacking this.

Pray that these would be the characteristics that are built into the lives of the men of our church.

Here's some other things.

Where those character qualities are highlighted, grab them because they don't have a gender connected to them.

These are for all of us in some fashion.

Also, be an agent of change in the men of your life.

First of all, to be in a place of accountability for them, but also in a place of acceptable growth.

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.

And here's an important thing to hear, ladies.

Satan accuses, grace changes.

Okay?

You want me to repeat that?

Right?

Satan accuses, grace changes.

You may see your guy where he isn't, or where he not at where he should be.

He probably already knows that.

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.

You can model, you can assist, you can encourage, and yes, you can even rebuke, but with grace, because grace makes us better.

It doesn't just tell us we aren't there.

Okay, so be an agent of grace in that man's life.

All right, guys, here we go.

Let's look first of all at the shape of sound doctrine, the shape of sound doctrine in verse one.

Let's look at what Paul tells Titus here.

He said, But as for you, teach what is in accord or what accords with sound teaching.

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.

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.

Now, take a look at that phrase sound there.

Because the English can sound, and the CSB has done it well by giving us a little different of a word.

It tells us there that we are meant to be dealing with sound teaching.

Other versions call it sound doctrine.

But I know what sound doctrine sounds like to some of us.

It sounds like a theological textbook that's heavy enough to hold your door still on a windy day.

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.

And you can kind of go, sound doctrine.

Or it can feel like something so sober that it feels dried out and untouchable.

But I want you to hear how Paul actually describes it here.

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.

So that's one reason.

But whoje, I'm gonna mess it up.

Hoogi I know, whoji I know.

Now listen carefully to whoji know, because it sounds like, because this is where we get our word from, hygiene.

Hygiene.

When Paul is talking about sound teaching, he is talking about healthy teaching, wholesome teaching, life-giving teaching.

Yes, it's precise truth, carefully given, that speaks accurate things about God, but it's a lot more than that.

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.

Paul uses it in 1 Timothy 6 3.

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.

So, what is healthy teaching?

Our Savior is a health-giving savior.

That's why we call him Savior.

He's a deliverer from all things destructive, including ourselves and our sin.

First Timothy one ten.

Paul contrasts sound teaching with things like lawlessness, disobedience, the ungodly, and the profane.

So sound teaching, now catch this, is not merely correct information about God.

Sound teaching is health-producing truth that transforms the way people live.

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.

So, what does that healthy teaching look like when it does take root in people's lives?

And that's where we start to move into this passage a little deeper.

Our second point is the steadfastness of Christ-shaped older men.

Take a look at verse two with me here.

But you're to proclaim the things consistent with sound teaching.

Older men are to be self-controlled, worthy of respect, sensible, sound in faith, love, and endurance.

So there it is.

That's what sound teaching produces.

Six qualities.

Three of them largely external.

The lines are a little fuzzy here.

Three of them are more internal, if I can put it that way.

Three of them display themselves, these qualities, more in the outward sense, and three of them more inwardly are the controls inside.

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.

So let's walk through it.

And as we do, we'll unpack it little by little and then more as we go forward.

First of all, self-controlled or sober-minded.

The first and the third ones are difficult to talk about because our English translations often use interchangeable words there.

And that even the CSB in a different place uses the same word in two different ways.

But let's think about this for a second and let's dig into it.

What this word in the Greek is talking about, quite literally, in its older usage, was someone who was not drunk, right?

Someone who was actually sober.

And we still use that word in that kind of fashion.

And a person who's not dulled in their senses by way of alcohol.

That's sober physically.

But Paul is using it in a more expansive way.

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.

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.

He's not carried along by the latest crisis.

He's not swept up in the emotional currents of the culture.

He's not panicking when bad news comes.

He doesn't lose his head when things aren't good.

There's a clarity about that person.

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.

That's what it's talking about.

Sober-mindedness.

The second one is worthy of respect or dignified.

Dignified.

It's a propriety, a lifestyle that's befitting to the moment.

It's a behavior of living the way one ought to live in that situation.

Now, to be dignified does not mean to be stuffy.

Doesn't mean to be formal.

It doesn't mean that you never laugh or you don't relax.

It doesn't mean that you carry with this this permanent expression of disapproval.

I I went to a church service at actually a pastor's conference in England.

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.

And they prayed like this.

And I thought, if I'm going to be spiritual with these guys, I need to poke my eyes out too.

And I thought, okay, that's a little different.

Being dignified is not necessarily being dour, right?

That's rigidity, that's not dignity.

What Paul is talking about here is a holy gravitas, a weightiness of your character, a seriousness of your purpose.

One of my favorite Hebrew words is kabod.

It means glory.

And it can be used otherwise too.

It means weighty.

Heavy.

Right?

Worthy of respect.

Paul uses the same word in Philippians 4 8 when he says, whatsoever things are honorable, think on these things.

So a dignified person is a person whose life invites others to think about honorable things.

Who walks into a room and can shift the tone of that room.

Not because he's an imposing character, but because there's a weight.

A weight to his person, his character.

The third quality is sensible.

Sensible.

And this is a foundational.

Word here for the entire book of Titus because it shows up with older women and younger women and younger men also.

This one is cuts across all of them.

It's a thread that runs through the whole chapter.

And here we find a sensible person, a person who has the right thoughts for the right moment.

A person who's thinking guides their actions.

A person who acts in a way that's proper to the moment.

That's being sensible.

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.

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.

There's a sensibleness to it.

Not emotionless, not detached, but controlled.

These largely outer acting qualities, and like I said, the categories are blurred here, move toward three more inward-focused ones.

And take a look at them as we go forward here.

Sound in faith, love and endurance.

And there's that word healthy again, sound.

And notice, first of all, healthy in faith.

An older man is to be healthy in his trust of God.

Now, obviously, this is not talking about an untested faith.

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?

A healthy faith is not the faith of a person who's never gone through anything.

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.

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.

But he keeps on trusting.

But because grace has taught him that circumstances aren't the end of the story.

God's in control, even when things look very, very foggy.

Sound in faith, sound in love.

This is not just sentimental love.

This is not kind of the affection that shows up at a celebration and disappears when trouble happens.

This is a steady, sacrificial, present love.

It's the kind of love that notices someone who's having a difficult day and moves toward it.

Moves toward that person.

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.

And I want you to know and pray.

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.

And then sound in endurance.

Someone who remains in the station no matter how much pressure there is.

That's what endurance is.

It's active, it's patient, it's persevering, and it's found in the midst of difficulty.

It is someone who stays steady in the midst of the long game of obedience.

And when we think about these six things, this is what grace is shaping in us.

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.

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.

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.

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.

And he's he could have done what he said to Peter I could call legions of angels to free me here.

But he doesn't.

He stays there because of enduring the shame for the joy that's set before him.

Sound in love, greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

And there he is, laying his life down.

Sound in endurance, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame.

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.

He is the producer and the prototype of this maturity.

He is the image into which we are being conformed.

But let me make a point here.

Simply by being old, right?

Bob just read a verse about uh the gray hair is a sign of wisdom.

Uh, if it be found in the way of righteousness, right?

Uh gray hair is not wisdom.

Gray hair in the way of righteousness is a sign of wisdom.

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.

Age alone is not going to produce sober-mindedness.

Some men get more impulsive with age, not less.

Age alone is not going to produce dignity.

Some men get more petty the older they get, more demanding, more entitled.

Age alone is not going to produce self-control or faith or love or endurance.

What produces these things is grace.

Grace.

And so I want you to think of a man, and I'm going to embody a man in 40 years of pastoral observation.

A man sitting in a hospital waiting room.

His wife is in surgery, and the outcome is really uncertain.

His kids are there, and they're pacing the floor.

His grandchildren are playing, and they're too young to understand what's going on.

And this man has been in these kind of moments a hundred times.

And he's steady.

His cheeks are layered with sweat and tears.

His hands are clasped.

But underneath the moment is a calm and a peace and a trust.

And he can put his hand on his son and say, God is in control of this.

He's been faithful to us, and he'll be faithful through this.

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.

Because it's a sermon shaped by days and weeks and months and years of walking with God and having grace move his heart.

This is what Paul is calling for.

He's not calling us to perfection, but he's calling us to a direction that grace brings us to.

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.

So let me talk to you guys, older men.

And uh, I'm gray enough to be one of them now.

Some of you probably don't think you are an older man.

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.

I'm like, oh boy, okay.

If you are 45 or older, you are well within the older category.

If you're in your late 30s, you're already over the hill statistically.

You have already reached the top, and you are about to find out how fast it is on the downside.

But I want to talk to you.

You don't have to be perfect, but you can be present, right?

You can be willing, you can offer yourself to grace.

God is at work in you, and he wants to use you.

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.

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.

Be available to him, be visible to him.

Let them see how you've handled frustration, let them watch you deal with disappointment.

Let them hear you talk about how you've walked through loss.

They need to hear that.

Because your life is a lesson and not just one, it's a whole curriculum.

And if you're an older man who's failed, repentance can teach also.

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.

And that is how to find the grace of God meet you even in your failures.

David sinned catastrophic.

Peter denied Christ three times.

Not something to be proud of, but something even grace can redeem and use you in the middle of.

So drop down and take a look at verse six.

In the same way, encourage young men to be self-controlled in everything.

The older men get six, the young guys get one.

Doesn't seem fair, does it?

One word, one quality that covers it all.

Self-controlled in everything.

A disciplined mind, a governed life, the one thing that will be the root of all the others and meets every situation.

Because if a young man lacks self-control, everything else falls apart.

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.

Again, this is not simply produced by moral achievement.

It's grace that produces this self-control.

The pressures of ambition and the pressures of desire, the pressures of comfort and approval and status are dangers to young men.

And the answer is this: a grace-shaped ability to be controlled in the face of those youthful desires and temptations.

But you're not left alone, young men.

Take a look at verse seven.

Make yourself an example of good works with integrity and dignity in your teaching.

There you have it, young men.

You're not left without a model.

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.

And I would dare say a charge to all of our older men.

Be an example to these young ones.

Because younger men were going to learn self-control, not from a book, but from a life.

They're going to see it by the older men who are living it.

Because this is the way God has designed his people to work together.

Now let's drop down to the bottom because we need to say this.

We're going to say more about it later.

But look at verse 11 and 12 again with me.

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.

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.

It's not punishment, it's formation.

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.

That's parenting.

And here grace is instructing us with patient, careful, daily shaping that makes us these kind of people.

Because grace is our teacher, it is our trainer, it is the one who forms us.

A godly man's self-control, whether he's young or old, is not with white knuckled determination.

It's not gritting your teeth and trying harder.

It's grace at work in your life as you surrender yourself to God-shaping influences.

So if you're under 45, you're not alone.

You've got models in front of you, and you've got the grace of God working within you.

You don't have to figure out all of this on your own.

You were never meant to.

You have influences to help you.

And so, young men, I want it, I want to say to you something I said to the older men.

I told them to be available.

But one of the difficulties of being an older man is you respect another man's space.

And so you're not going to impose yourself, even though you are available.

And that means a young man, you need to ask.

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.

Talk to them.

Ask them what they would do differently.

Ask them about how they handled those pressures and those disappointments and those temptations.

And listen to this verse I grabbed a hold of when I was a new believer, Proverbs 13, 20.

Whoever walks with the wise shall be wise.

But a companion of fools will suffer harm.

Go find a wise man and walk with him.

And remember, in the midst of it all, grace is active to shape us.

None of this is self-generated.

What Christ has done for us is what Christ is doing in us.

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.

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.

Because apart from the grace of God, it is.

But I want to tell you this the grace of God has appeared for all people.

When Jesus came into this world, he did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.

And he came to seek and to save the lost.

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.

But you need to come to grace himself.

And he's called the Lord Jesus Christ.

And he gives you a wonderful invitation.

Come unto me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am lowly and gentle in heart.

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.

Let's pray together.

Father, we thank you for the wondrous truth that you've come to seek and save.

We thank you, Father, that our lives are not stagnant, but shaped by grace.

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.

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.

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.

And Lord, we pray that you would make us such.

Make us people that are anchored in your word and ready to serve one another and seeking to be shaped like Jesus Himself.

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.

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.

And Father, we ask this in Christ's name.

Amen.