Young Men Behaving In The Church

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.