Titus 2:2-5 inductive...

Observation

Who Titus (v1), older men and women (v2-3), youg women are their families.

What Titus speaks to the senior saints in the church about their ministries to the younger families in the church.

When

Where: no specific reference to where but the young woman’s relationships with her husband and children will predominately center around her home plus it’s mentioned “homemakers” (v5).

Why: So that God’s word will not be blasphemed (v5b). Read also 2:11-15

How: Pattern in good works and integrity, reverence, and incorruptibility in teaching (v7), sound speech (v8), exhorting (v9), rebuking with all authority and letting no one despise you (v15).

Interpretation

The first group that the pastor is supposed to teach is the natural leaders of Christian community, the older men.

“reverent” means that his actions and demeanor make him ‘worthy of respect’.

Meaning that the older men have to be integrated into the lives of the Christian community because we are supposed to regard their lives.

Them being sound in the faith, in love, and in patience meant that they were committed to maintaining both the vertical (to God) and horizontal (to others) relationships that comprise the Christian community.

The older men are the front line for making grace ripple through the body of Christ. This is how it begins to flow!

The older women in the church must control their tongues (not slanderers), control one’s appetites (not given to much wine) and biblically focused purpose (teachers of good things)

If these are misguided it would damage the credibility of the life-changing power of the gospel!

Paul expected that the self-control of the older male leaders would positively influence the behavior of older female leaders with the result that their reputations would promote the gospel.

The godly conduct that Paul required of older women was not only for the sake of their reputations.

After identifying the negative behaviors spiritually mature women should avoid, Paul identifies their positive pursuits.

The apostle says that Titus should “teach” them “to teach what is good.”

Here the ripple effect of godliness is obvious: Good teaching leads to more good teaching.

The specific reason Paul gives for Titus to teach the older women is so they will teach the younger women (v4).

Paul places commitment to family the highest priority of a young wife (v4-5).

Why do you suppose that Paul gives this gentle reminder that even more important than love for one’s children is love for one’s spouse?

Because children will not readily understand the greatest of God’s earthly gifts (love shared by a Christian spouses)

unless a mother’s love for her husband is evident in the home.

What does false teaching do (1:11)? ruins whole households”.

Application

Application

It seems that many older men in our church have either

gone to be with the Lord (passed away)

become home-bound

or have never really had an interest in the things of God, so they fall away.

Pray that the Lord would send older men to the congregation to can take on these roles.

How do we get the older women with controlled tongues, appetites, and biblical purposes

If these are misguided

to interact with younger women who really need the advice of those with greater experience?

How can they come together to minister and be ministered to these “good things”, that relate to the matters of marital and family life?

Paul’s instructions for older women caution church leaders not to ignore:

1) proper lines of family authority (; Cor. 14:35)

2) the real dangers of sexual temptation even for those with religious zeal; and

3) the great advantages to the church of having those with marital, child-rearing, and church experience

understand how valuable is their willingness

to communicate the daily responsibilities of the faith to those with less experience.

When these dynamics are multiplied many times though the spoken and modeled instruction

of mature women throughout the church, the entire body is nurtured by the spreading influence of these spiritual mothers.

Paul places commitment to family the highest priority of a young wife (v4-5).

Why do you suppose that Paul gives this gentle reminder that even more important than love for one’s children is love for one’s spouse?

Because children will not readily understand the greatest of God’s earthly gifts (love shared by a Christian spouses) unless a mother’s love for her husband is evident in the home.

What does false teaching do (1:11)? ruins whole households”.

[So in church, we can’t set up classes that have all the older people in one room. They are supposed to interact.

We do not want to structure ourselves against God’s design do we?]

The next set of responsibilities specified for younger women underscores the ripple effect of godly leadership in the church.

Just as elders (1:8), older men (2:2), and older women (are in the control of their tongue and appetites; see 2:3)

are to exercise self-control, so are younger women.

Their self-control is linked here to being “pure” (or chaste).

This term hints at the sexual constraint aspects of self-control, although it also refers to fidelity in one’s relationship with God.

Love for one’s spouse would seem naturally to produce fidelity and restraint on one’s ungodly passions, but perhaps Paul speaks of the need for these controls because of the next instructions.

Then it literally says that the younger women should be taught to be “home workers.”

The emphasis

(particularly in light of the earlier instruction to the older women not to be caught in the vices of inactivity in the church community)

{The emphasis} is on being productive in the normal occupations of a wife each day.

Here’s where scripture draws the line for married women.

The inspirited Apostle ranks a wife’s obligations to care for her husband and children over her personal benefit or fulfillment.

Any woman who desires and makes career status or financial advantage a higher priority in her life than the welfare of her marriage, children, or home, transgresses Scripture.

“good” follows that. Meaning joyful and happy, excellent, pleasant.

He wouldn’t want a routine formed in the home over household duties, devoid of compassions for a husbands needs or a child’s needs.

Someone who sees serving in her family as a homemaker, as joyful and pleasant, will be protected from getting a callousness of the secular world, regarding the value of the homemaker and her routines.

And then, something that is received a whole lot easier to come from an older woman to a younger woman, is that she is to be obedient to their own husbands.

Where Paul documents that the love of a husband (which is a Christ-like love- full of action) is complemented by the love of wives who are to submit to their husbands in everything ()

The consequence of such conscientious care for both material and spiritual concerns is that “no one will blaspheme (malign) the word of God” (v. 5b).

As opponents in the church and potential faith seekers in the culture examine “what is in accord with sound doctrine” (v. 1)

through the behavior of the young women in the church,

the Word of God gains credibility.

The wonderful message implicit here is that what happens in the home

as a result of a woman’s care

is a powerful tool for the progress of the gospel.