Titus 2 (2019)

Title: Grace for Living a Godly Life

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Introduction

Go ahead and open your Bibles or scroll on your devices to Titus Chapter 2. This morning we are going sort of bridge our series from our Vision Essentials to what is coming this fall. First we are going to take a step into Titus, one of the pastoral epistles, letters that Paul wrote to pastors in a couple of churches and show how the vision that we are going to be walking in, Worship, Grow, Go, translates into living a Christian life. Now, I don’t know if you figured this out yet, but the whole Worship, Grow, Go vision if you really break it down, is just a way of zeroing on on living the Christian life. These are things that all Christians are really called to do and ways in which we are all supposed to live. But in our vision, we have targeted these three areas as areas we need to be hitting in order to see where we are at and evaluate where others are at in this discipleship journey. It helps us know what to do in ministry and how to reach certain people. There should never come a moment where we sort of sit around and wonder what to do now, because the Lord has told us in His Word what we as a church are supposed to be like. Of course, within that there is some room to look a little different than the church down the road or the one across the river. But here in Titus we see some instructions for living a Godly life within the life of the church body.

Let’s pray and we’ll dive right in.

PRAY

Titus 2 CSB

But you are to proclaim things consistent with sound teaching. Older men are to be self-controlled, worthy of respect, sensible, and sound in faith, love, and endurance. In the same way, older women are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not slaves to excessive drinking. They are 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. In the same way, encourage the young men to be self-controlled in everything. Make yourself an example of good works with integrity and dignity in your teaching. Your message is to be sound beyond reproach, so that any opponent will be ashamed, because he doesn’t have anything bad to say about us. Slaves are to submit to their masters in everything, and to be well-pleasing, not talking back or stealing, but demonstrating utter faithfulness, so that they may adorn the teaching of God our Savior in everything. For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, instructing us to deny godlessness and worldly lusts and to live in a sensible, righteous, and godly way in the present age, while we wait for the blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. He gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to cleanse for himself a people for his own possession, eager to do good works. Proclaim these things; encourage and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you.

To give you some quick background on this letter to Titus:

Titus went with Paul to Jerusalem where Peter, James , and John affirmed Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles (non-Jews). Titus acted as Paul’s rep to the local church in the city of Corinth. He was collecting funds to relieve the poor church back in Jerusalem. The other apostles seemed to hold the young man Titus in high regard due to his character and dedication. Paul would refer to both Titus and Timothy as “my son” but this letter does not have the deeply personal encouragement that Paul’s first letter to Timothy contains. We don’t know exactly why, though it is conjectured that Titus may have been more secure in his calling and gifting than Timothy. We don’t know but scholars must scholar. (SMILE) At any rate, Titus becomes the pastor of the church in Crete. Crete is the fourth largest island in the Mediterranean. Paul sailed past it on his way to Rome while a prisoner.

The language used suggests that there may have been a decent sized population of Jews and Gentiles on the island of Crete. The Cretans were not known for being great people to hang out with.

Titus 1:12 CSB

One of their very own prophets said, “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.”

Sounds like a people who desperately needed the Gospel. So Paul leaves Titus there to appoint elders in the church. It seems to be a newer or at least less organized church than what we read about in Ephesus or even some of the other churches. He also charges Titus with combating the false teaching. So as we read this letter we need to look at it with the understanding that there was a backdrop of false teaching and false teachers.

Paul writes direct Titus how to teach the people of the church to live Godly lives and also gives him instruction for how he is to operate as pastor to these people. Today, we can learn from both the messages to the people in the seats and from the messages to the pastor.

PRAY

I. We are to model Godly lives for one another. (v. 1-10)

A. The pastor is to teach sound doctrine. (v.1)

Pastors are to teach the Bible. From beginning to end, this is the very Word of God. It is sufficient. It is inerrant. It is infallible. It is powerful. As a pastor I am charged with teaching sound doctrine. Doctrine that is from the scripture. Not based on the scripture plus some cool ideas I have, but soundly from the Word of God so that you will grow and be able to stand up against the attacks of the enemy. Hear me now: If you ever hear me say something that is not Biblical then I want you to ask me about it. But know that you need to be able to tell me from the Bible why I’m wrong. Sound doctrine is Biblical. Now, there are some areas where well meaning Christians disagree about what the Bible is referring to or the way in which a specific Greek word is used or what something meant culturally back then. I think there is room for this kind of disagreement on secondary or tertiary issues and still worship together and serve together. So the pastor is to teach sound doctrine.

B. The older Christians

The older men

self-controlled

worthy of respect

sensible - wise and prudent, self controlled,

sound in faith, love, and endurance

The older women

reverent in behavior

not slanderers

not slaves to excessive drinking

To teach what is good

encourage the young women

to love their husbands

to love their children

to be self controlled, pure

workers at home

kind

in submission to their husbands (corresponds with reason 1)

C. The younger Christians

Young Men

to be self-controlled in everything

TITUS is to be a good example

of good works

with integrity and dignity in his teaching

Message sound above reproach (corresponds with reason 2)

D. Christian Slaves

Now this one is one we have real difficulty with. Back in the Bible times, people owned slaves. Slavery is a terrible thing and I wish it didn’t exist anywhere in the world today. But this is written to people who were in a particular situation and helping them know how to live Godly lives in whatever situation they found themselves. And some of those people were in the situation of being slaves. These Christian slaves were instructed to:

submit to their masters in everything

to be well-pleasing

not talking back

not stealing

demonstrating utter faithfulness (corresponds with reason 3)

II. There are effects to living a Godly life.

Effects that go far beyond us. We tend to get really self centered and only think about the way things we do effect us personally but our lives touch more than ourselves. Here are some specific effects that Paul gives to Titus that these things will cause:

A. So that God’s message will not be slandered.

The Greek word there is the same word where we get blaspheme from and can also mean revile. (blasphemeo)

The sense of the word is: to be or become maligned or denigrated with speech

Does your behavior cause the gospel to be slandered? Or worse?

B. So our opponent will have nothing bad to say.

Titus’ message was to be sound beyond reproach, no accusation could be made

C. So that we might adorn the teaching of God.

their behavior was to adorn the gospel… make it more attractive. Does your behavior make the message of the Gospel look more beautiful?

I’m not speaking of being perfect. You can’t do that. But is the way you conduct your life, even when you sin and how you deal with your sin, showing the world the beauty of the Gospel?

III. There is a theological basis for Christian Living.

There’s a why for this. A basis for Christian living and of course there are results as we saw just a moment ago.

A. The appearance of the Grace of God. (v.11)

Jesus

B. The purpose of the appearance (v.12-13)

Paul is not a universalist. He’s not saying all people get saved. He’s talking specifically about these groups of people that he has addressed in verses 1-10.

C. The significance of Christ’s sacrifice. 

IV. Grace Works

A. Grace redeems

Salvation - making a new creation - the old has passed and the new has come

Jesus’ work of redemption on the cross and the acceptable sacrifice.

B. Grace reforms

Only the gospel of the grace of Jesus Christ will transform and reform someone. This is not behavior modification. I’m not telling you to act right so God will approve of you. That doesn’t work. In fact, the apostle Paul elsewhere in scripture would say that all of our good works don’t amount to anything basically because of our sin. Even on your best day you are not good enough and even on your worst day you are not too far from the love and grace of Jesus Christ.

Paul gives Titus the way the grace of God changes how we live: it teaches us to:

deny godlessness and worldly lusts.

live in a sensible, righteous, and godly way

Because of Jesus you can live a life like the ones mentioned here. But alone you can do nothing.

Rely on Him, trust on Him. Get to living obedient lives.

Grace actually transforms

C. Grace rewards

A reward we don’t deserve.

Live godly today looking forward to the blessed hope

Christ’s return