Healthy Houses

Titus 2:1-10 “Healthy Houses”

A few years back, when Emily’s parents still lived in Michigan, the house next door to them went into foreclosure. It sat vacant for a couple years and was a blight on that neighborhood block. The grass grew up several feet high. Rats made their home in the back yard. The city had to get involved to mow down the grass and give it some semblance of decency. But it was clear that no one lived there. From the outside it looked bad. Soon the basement flooded because the utilities had been turned off. Several feet of water sat in the basement and mold began growing on all the walls. It looked bad on the outside, the situation was far worse on the inside. Eventually someone bought the house and did a huge amount of work to get it livable again.

In the book of Titus, Paul is very concerned for houses- not the physical structures—but households…families. His desire is for Christians to have orderly lives in their households. Last week we looked at an internal problem that was affecting whole houses: false teaching. Whole families were suffering because of the dangerous teaching of the false teachers. In Titus 2, Paul gives instructions on how to stabilize the situation. In doing so, he points out another problem: an external problem. When there is sin and disorder in Christian households, it reviles the Word of God before unbelievers.

If Christians disobey the commands of Scripture, if the live lives inconsistent with the gospel, there will certainly be internal problems in the family. But there will also be external problems: they will dishonor God’s Word before the watching world. Paul’s concern for stable households reaches beyond the health of the family to the testimony of Christ in the community. I want us to have stable families for the honor of Jesus Christ.

Read Titus 2:1-10

Titus is to teach what accords with sound doctrine or what becomes sound doctrine. There is a lifestyle that matches the gospel. That lifestyle is godliness. What, then, does godliness look like in the household? Paul gives instructions to 6 groups of people: older men, older woman, young women, young men, Titus, and servants or slaves. First we will consider Paul’s instructions to these 6 groups of people, then look closely at the purpose of these commands.

1. Older men
We could debate what the age range is for older men and older women. If you graduated from high school more than 3 decades ago, you may be approaching this category. This “older” category may be despised by our culture of youth, but it should be highly valued in the church. With age comes wisdom and the ability to train younger people

The commands to older men overlap very much with the qualifications for pastors in chapter 1. They should be marked by self-control: sober, grave (dignified), temperate (self-controlled). They should also exemplify mature Christian godliness: sound in faith, charity, in patience. These are the top 3 Christian virtues: faith, hope, and love. The leaders in church are often drawn from this group of me.
2. Older women

Older women are to also model this kind of behavior. They are to be careful in their speech: not false accusers or slanderers. They are to guard themselves from excess. Here in the text it is alcohol. The idea is similar to that of the older men: self-control. The command to be teachers of good things, focuses more on the character of the teacher than what is taught. They are to model godly behavior to the young women.

This word is vs 4: teach in the KJV, train or encourage in other translations, is quite interesting. The idea is “to call to their senses.” Don’t imagine a ladies’ tea with conversation in hushed tones. Think of a godly woman rescuing a young woman from the brink of moral disaster. From what we have learned in chapter 1, there were people in the church living like the sinful culture around them. The call to mature Christian women is to call their younger sisters in Christ away from this and toward godliness. While vs 4 can be the basis for woman’s discipleship groups, it is first the call for mature woman to rescue young women from the dangers of sin and the world.

3. Young women

The instructions to young women are about their role in the home. From what we can learn from Cretan culture, there was movement among some of the women to forsake their roles of wife and mother and pursue what our culture calls “sexual freedom.” In contrast to that, Paul urges young married woman to be pure and to care for their husbands and children.

Whenever we are to talk about the role of men and women in the home, we walk into a cultural minefield. There are 4 different factors at play: 1. What the Bible teaches, 2. What the culture in the Bible times believed, 3. What you and I believe personally, and 4. What our culture believes. All of that is enough to break your brain.

Let’s put it simply: a married woman is to love and care for her husband. She is to submit to him as her leader. If a woman has children, she is to love and care for them. That is the role God has graciously given to women in the home. We read this morning of the husband’s responsibility to love his wife. And much more could be said.

The command to be keepers or workers at home is in the context of a woman caring for her husband and children. The opposite of working at home is not necessarily working outside the home, but being idle outside the home. By doing this, they were forsaking their responsibility to their husbands and children. We get a clue about this from Paul’s instructions about widows in I Timothy 5:13. He instructs the young widows to marry and serve their families so that they will not learn… “to be idlers, going about from house to house, and not only idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying what they should not.”

The way women…and men…honor the name of Christ is to faithfully fulfill the responsibilities that God has given them.
4. Young men

The young men get 1 command: be sober-minded or self-controlled. That one command is almost embarrassing. It almost shows that there is a glaring weakness in young men that must be addressed before other instructions can be given. Perhaps this is the case. Young men were to avoid the excesses of drinking at parties and shun the sexual immorality prevalent in that culture. The parallels to our cultural context are quite obvious. There is a need for Christian young men to be disciplined about following Christ and to reject the example of the young men around them who give full vent to their passions.

5. Titus

Paul gives instructions to Titus, which are quite similar to the qualifications of pastors. He is to be an example of godly character and teaching that is sound. He is to be above reproach in his life and teaching. We looked closely at this 2 weeks ago.

6. Servants

The last set of commands are to bond-servants or slaves. These people were considered a part of the ancient household. While ancient slavery does not overlap completely with slavery in modern times, it did share some of its injustices. These people, who were the lowest in society, were able to honor God by their work. They could adorn or dress up the teaching of God by their behavior. They are to be well-pleasing and submissive to their masters. They are to be faithful in their duties. They are not to steal (not purloining) or argue with their masters. Christianity provides a solid work ethic, not a lazy one. These instructions were probably targeted to slaves with unsaved masters.

Those were the instructions Titus was to teach to the churches on the island of Crete. These instructions were given to counter the false teachings that was destroying households. This teaching accords with the gospel and gave stability to the households.

Purpose

It would be tempting to stop here and give you 5 steps for a stable family or something like that. Certainly, we should long for families in the church to follow the instructions in Scripture. I want us to be stable in our faith. But the instructions for a stable family do not terminate on us.

When I was an assistant pastor back in Illinois, a guy came up to the Sr. pastor after one of his sermons. He said, “that message didn’t do anything for me.” He wasn’t being mean…just very honest. In the following conversation, he explained that he wanted a message that would help him as a father, husband, or a business man.

I certainly agree that the Bible impacts all of life. If you preach the Bible, then you will impact all of life. But I do not want the Bible to turn into a self-help book we use to improve our lives here on this earth.

When we open the Bible we encounter God. His voice comes to us off these pages today. We find out who God is and how we can relate to him through his Son Jesus Christ. The Bible tells us the story of Jesus who died for our sins and offers salvation to all who believe in him. It also tells us how we can grow in godliness. And godliness is profitable for all things in this life and in the life to come.

I want us to have healthy and stable families as a church. That’s one reason God has given us these instructions. But the problem begins when we end here…when we are satisfied that everything is OK at home. The problem is that we think these commands TO us are commands ABOUT us. These instructions are ultimately for the honor of Jesus Christ. They are given to us SO THAT the Word of God is not reviled (vs 5); so that opponents of the gospel would have nothing to evil so say about us (vs 8); so that we would adorn the teaching of God our Savior (vs 10).

The ultimate problem with unstable families is not their instability. No, the problem is that they do not adorn the gospel of Jesus Christ. The family is the crucible of gospel living. It is where the teaching of Scripture are lived out before the world. The reason we are instructed on how to be godly husbands, wives, parents, and children is not so we can live happily ever after. It is so we can honor Christ in all of life. The testimony of the church is at stake. The name of Christ is on the line.

The gospel had just come to the island of Crete. What were the people thinking when they watched the newly formed church and watched Christians in the home and on the street. “What is this new-fangled religion called Christianity? Is going to do any good? Or it is going to create havoc in our culture? Should we be scared of it or investigate it for ourselves?”

If slaves became lazy and began to steal, what would their unsaved masters think? If women stopped caring for their husbands and children and gossiped around from house to house, what would happen to the reputation of Christians? If young men throw off all restraints and lived like the world, what kind of testimony would the church have?

The truth claims of Christianity are verified in part by everyday life at home. It is the testing ground for gospel living. We are able to adorn the gospel by our work, by our faithfulness to our husbands, wives, and children. We can uphold the Word of God by our lives or we can revile it.

Titus 2 does not contain the secret to having a vibrant, happy family. The Bible doesn’t promise that our family will have mom, dad, 2 ½ kids, a dog, and a white picket fence. That’s an unrealistic dream of our culture. It doesn’t factor in sin and death and tragedy. What the Bible does give us are instructions on how we can honor Jesus Christ in whatever family situation he has placed us. And best us all…the Bible presents us with a God who promises to save us from this sin sick world…a God who gives abundant and measureless grace to his children.

Titus 2 guides us on the path of honoring the Lord at home. It helps us strive for stable families that adorn the gospel of Jesus Christ. Let’s plead that God would give us solid families. Let’s align our living with the glorious gospel that has saved us…not for our sake…but for the sake of Christ.