YOUNG MEN BEHAVING IN THE CHURCH
SCRIPTURE REFERENCE: TITUS 2:6 - 9
INTRODUCTION
The story is told of a young student who went to his spiritual teacher and asked the question, "Master, how can I truly find God?" The teacher asked the student to accompany him to the river, which ran by the village and invited him to go into the water. When they got to the middle of the stream, the teacher said, "Please immerse yourself in the water."
The student did as he was instructed, whereupon the teacher put his hands on the young man’s head and held him under the water. Presently the student began to struggle. The master held him under still.
A moment passed and the student was thrashing and beating the water and air with his arms. Still, the master held him under the water. Finally, the student was released and shot up from the water, lungs aching and gasping for air.
The teacher waited for a few moments and then said, "When you desire God as truly as you desired to breathe the air you just breathed -- then you shall find God."
And that is what Titus was sent to the churches in Crete to do, to prepare them to help people find God.
You need to know also that we’re here for the purpose of evangelism. We also engage in edification. We engage in ministry. We engage in prayers, worship, and fellowship.
But all of that will be perfected in heaven. Evangelism won’t have any place there at all because the Bible is clear at the end of Revelation that no one who is a sinner unsaved will ever enter heaven.
And so, the Lord has put on hold the fullness of our fellowship and the fullness of our praise and worship, the fullness of our bliss and blessing and left us here for the express purpose of being human agents of salvation for the lost.
We must proclaim the saving message, yes. We must give a clear word about sin and judgment and repentance and faith. But it has to be made believable by our lives. It does no good to speak about a God who can save when you show a life that doesn’t evidence it.
Now because that is so essential and basic, Paul instructs Titus here in chapter 2 to bring the churches at Crete up to a standard of virtue. That’s what chapter 2 is all about. God is a saving God and God has saved people in order that they might live godly lives, in order that others might also be saved.
So in the second chapter Paul is writing to his young son in the faith, Titus, and he is telling him how to get the church in every city throughout Crete, and there were many of them, up to the place they need to be in terms of virtue to make the gospel believable.
He says you’ve got to approach every group in the church...the older men, the older women, and then the younger women.
And this morning we come to the fourth category, young men. Verse 6, "Likewise, urge the young men to be sensible in all things. Show yourself to be an example of good deeds with purity and doctrine, dignified, sound in speech which is beyond reproach in order that the opponent may be put to shame, having nothing bad to say about us."
Very likely a little bit younger than Timothy who was probably in his upper thirties, we find Titus maybe in his early thirties. Much younger than Paul who now describes himself as the aged, he has gone past the 60 mark, somewhere in his middle sixties.
Three points are made here with respect to responsibility given to young men that is EXHORTATION, EXAMPLE and EFFECT. Let’s start with exhortation, verse 6, "Likewise, urge the young men to be sensible in all things." Likewise is just a word transition that introduces a new category like the prior three categories.
EXHORTATION
You will agree with me this morning that young men have their own set of special problems and dangers. They are maybe more intense in some ways in the earlier part of that vast period called young. But they seem to stretch through the whole period.
Here is an observation:
Younger men have many things as there priorities. Some men set out to conquer college, push through graduate school, learn a new job, establish a family, build up the bank account, and retire at 55.
While having these goals are commendable, we as younger men can sometimes lose their way and miss what’s really important in life as they pursue their goal-filled agenda.
It seems that early in adulthood, young men tend to focus on relationships, women, sports cars, and money. Some never quite get over that and others take as much as 15 years or more to emerge from their adolescent fantasies.
Then as they enter the middle adult years, they begin to evaluate things, and second-guess things, and begin to wonder about their search for meaning and significance. This often leads to what…
One author describes as a “dropout phenomenon” among middle-aged adults when it comes to church involvement. Six reasons for midlife adults to drop out of organized religion and church specifically (I’ll paraphrase):
1) Empty nest freedom,
2) Lack of freedom and anonymity,
3) A heightened career surge that leaves less time for church,
4) Burnout following unbalanced exertion of younger years,
5) Pursuit of leisure activity, and
6) Divorce or marriage problems.
Somebody said it’s too bad youth has to be wasted on the young, but that’s how it is. And youth because it is youth is immature...because it’s immature it has its own set of problems.
For example, temptation is strongest in youth. Lusts are most compelling at that time. Habits are formed that rarely can be killed even in old age. Youth is a time that presents more opportunity for sin, more frequent opportunity for sin.
Youth is a time when ambition is strong, when pride is controlling. Youth is a time of unwarranted confidence, confidence you don’t deserve because it’s never been tested and you’ve never been proven.
It’s a time of imagined invincibility. It’s a time of lacking of experience and experience mellows and softens and brings reality. It’s a dangerous, dangerous time.
So says Paul to Titus, urge the young men to be sensible, to get control of themselves, he means. That common word that simply means to develop self-mastery, self-control, balance, to get their faculties and their appetites, their longings and the desires into harness, to develop discernment and judgment.
Such exhortation, by the way, appears similarly to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:22. It appears in 1 Peter 5:5. Young men must have self-control, self-mastery, and balance.
They must exhibit power over their appetites and their faculties. These are essential if they are to be godly. They’ve got to control their lives. That means, parents, when you are raising your children you need to teach your children conformity to holy standards and that means you need to control them so that your control becomes their control in time.
Illustration
At the banquet, they passed the extra piece of yummy, heavily iced cake to the overweight senior saint. He had already eaten one piece. " Oh, I shouldn’t," he said. But he did.
A young woman who sat watching the senior saint was agonizing over an alcohol addiction. " I shouldn’t, " she echoed, later that evening. But she did. A teenager who watched was struggling with his obsession with pornography. "I shouldn’t," he said that night. But he did.
A mother who watched was deliberating whether or not to leave her husband for an attractive man at work. "I shouldn’t," she said to herself. But she did. A young pastor, wrestling with resentment pushing him toward resigning his church, watched the senior saint succumb to temptation. "I shouldn’t," he resisted.
We never know who is watching.
We never know who is influenced by those " little" decisions. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace . . . and self-control.
Self-control is not the same as "delayed gratification." In our culture, "delay" means waiting two minutes in the fast food drive-thru instead of one.
Unlike the woman who gave up Coke for Lent - and drank Pepsi instead - self- control may mean giving something up completely. Self-control is the ability to direct my physical desires to fulfill God’s purposes, instead of using them for my own personal gratification.
Self-control means taking care of my body in a God-honoring way. Self- control means biting my tongue instead of making that sarcastic remark. Self-control means saying "No" to something I want but that I know isn’t good for me.
Self-control says to a watching world that God’s long-range purposes for my life are more important than what looks good right now.
EXAMPLE
Having given that exhortation he then turns to the second point, EXAMPLE, and sets up Titus to be an example of how one lives a balanced life. You’ll notice in verse 7 the word "example" and that’s obviously the key to it.
He is now going to say to Titus, "Look, for the sake of the young men, exhort them and that is to confront them verbally but also for the sake of the young men, set an example and that is to confront them with the pattern of your life so that they can copy what you are."
Any exhortation lacks force and impact and power without an example. In fact, exhortation without example is that old word "hypocrisy." And hypocrisy never teaches people to do right, it always teaches people to do wrong.
"In all things show yourself to be an example of good deeds" He is now saying to Titus, “Set an example with the pattern of your life so that they can copy what you are. Be a sermon; don’t just preach one.
Instead of being exclusively verbal; offer to the Cretans a visual as well." Paul shows that the best way to teach young men is through good deeds and example – putting the verbal and visual together for maximum impact!
Charles Spurgeon once said: A man’s life is always more forcible than his speech. When men take stock of him they reckon his deeds as dollars and his words as pennies. If his life and doctrine disagree the mass of onlookers accept his practice and reject his preaching.
In Hebrews chapter 13 verse 7 we are told to follow the faith of those who are over us, not just to hear what they say but to follow their faith, to live the way they lived. In Philippians chapter 3 and verse 17 Paul says, "Join in following my example and observe those who walk according to the pattern you have in us." In 1 Corinthians 4:16 Paul says, "Be imitators of me." In 1 Corinthians 11:1 he says, "Be imitators of me as I am of Christ." There is the issue of example.
Your life is to be full of good works as an example to other young men of how they’re to live. Young men, that’s to be your life. You begin to control your life when you begin to understand that God wants your life to be full of good righteous holy deeds.
Not only be an example in good works, but also be an example in doctrine that is uncorrupt, grave, and sincere. We as young men must know the Word of God and we as young men must live according to it. That’s integrity.
The point is not that Titus is to speak pure doctrine that was already told him in verse 1. He was already told to speak sound doctrine. Now he is being told to live in perfect accord with it, without defect.
Listen to what it says in verse 9 of Psalm 119, "How can a young man keep his way pure? How? By keeping it according to Thy Word." That’s it. If you’re going to be an example in every area then you’ve got to line up with the Word and live in an uncorrupted way.
That’s why the psalmist then says in verse 10, "With all my heart I sought Thee, do not let me wander from Thy commandments, Thy Word I have kept in my heart that I might not sin against Thee."
Not only be an example in good works, not only be an example in doctrine that is but also be an example in sound speech. Speech...that’s your conversation, what comes out of your mouth.
Let your speech minister grace to the hearers. Let it be health giving, spiritually healthy, spiritually life-giving, edifying, and building up. How healthy? So that it is beyond reproach. It is unable to be accused; it is unable to be condemned.
EFFECT
And then finally the effect...to the exhortation and the example we add the effect. Why all of this? Why are young men to live this way? Why are young women to live this way? Older women, older men?
Here it is, verse 8, the purpose clause, the purpose result clause, "In order that the opponent may be put to shame having nothing bad to say about us so that you can silence the critics of the faith, so that you will cause people to be shamed when they criticize Christianity."
Don’t let them say that we’re worthless. Don’t let them say that our Christianity has no value. Don’t let them speak evil against us. Silence them and not only silence them but put them to outright shame for the falseness of their accusations, which is so evident because of the known testimony that you maintain.
CONCLUSION
Titus, look, you’ve got a tremendous job. I want young men to be sensible, I want their lives under control and in order to get their lives under control, they have to be committed to good deeds, they have to be committed to living lives of uncorruptness alongside the truth.
They have to be committed to being serious about serious matters. And they have to speak with their mouths the things that are wholesome and healthy and life-giving and spiritually edifying. Titus, you not only need to tell them that, you need to show them how.
Young men let your behavior be modeled by the life you live and the love you have for God Almighty.
Prayer:
Dear Lord,
Help me be the young man that will bring you honor. I need guidance during the day and discipline during the night. May your grace give me the freedom to confess faults and sins when I have committed them and your mercy release from the justice will deserve. Please let the Holy Spirit help me in the choice of my friends and the choice of the boundaries with the opposite sex. Today I trust in you. In Jesus name -- Amen.
