A pastor friend of mine from way back when came with his family of four children came to visit and stay in our home.  Every night, just after the children were in bed, he would enter their room with a flashlight and read them a Bible story plus prayer time. 

During the day, the children were a model of obedience, even to the point that when their mother came and asked me, “What can my children do for you; they aren’t happy unless they’re serving.  I thought, "Yeah, right" and I told her that her son could take out the trash and he did without a word.

Wow!  I’d at last found God’s ideal family!  What a father!  What a mother!  And what kids!  Compared to my children, theirs were ready for sainthood and mine were on their way to hell.  Man oh man, did they look good.

A short time later, we were visiting them in their home for several days.  One day, the Dad told his son to take out the trash and immediately the boy began to gripe, complain, and talk back.  Um . . .

Something else was going on.  The father was handy with his hands, a regular Mr. Fixit.  Yet his wife was struggling to haul out the laundry to hang it on the line in the summer’s heat.  They had a drier, but it didn’t work, and although he could fix it, he wouldn’t; just couldn’t seem to get around to it.  When I got up to take my morning shower, I couldn’t help but notice that the tile was coming off the walls in Mr. Fixit’s bath.  Something else he just couldn’t get around to doing.  Um . . . .

What about the bedtime devotional times and the flashlight?  He never got home early enough to put the kids to bed; he was out jogging or doing whatever.  Um . . .

When he did come home, say for lunch or in the afternoon, he’d turn the house into chaos with his frenetic yelling, grabbing the kids, and doing this that and the other with them, such as putting his daughter on top of the refrigerator and telling her, “Jump!”     

What I learned from the time in their house was that what went on at my house was a sham, an act.  His home needed what we all need, a course in home economics. 

Titus is a book that refuses to let the reader be a spectator.  Discipleship means that you get off the bench. 

As Paul begins his instructions to Titus, please note what Titus is to do: “YOU (emphatic) must teach . . .” Stroll down the first 10 verses and you’ll see, “teach, teach, teach, train, teaching, teach” (vs. 1, 3, 4, 7, 9) “The Christian pastoral ministry is essentially a teaching one.”  (John R. W. Stott)

In this section of the book, Titus speaks to the different age groups of the church and by this we see that in the ancient churches there were various generations.  It’s interesting today that whenever churches decide as to who it is that they want to reach, the result is that for some reason, their demographic leaves out reaching the group Paul starts with: the older people. 

Just who does the Bible consider to be “older?”  That’s a question we’ll only deal with as far as the men are concerned because a pastor gets into deep waters when he answers that question for women.)  The answer to the question is 50+.  Titus is to teach the men, 50 years of age and older to be temperate, that is serious-minded, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith (know doctrine), love, and endurance.  It’s a picture of men who are serious about doctrine, serious about living out doctrine, as opposed to acting foolish.  Like our old saying goes, “There’s no fool like an old fool.”  It’s a pathetic sight to see an older person acting foolish.

It’s these people that are such an asset to the congregation—their kids are grown and gone, they may be retired and they have more time than anyone else to devote to ministry.  These are the people in the congregation that are usually the prayer warriors, these are the people who have the experience and good judgment, if they’ve invested their years wisely. 

Another group in the church is the older women.  Their kids are grown and they have time on their hands, but in Crete , they used this time to drink to excess and to use their tongues for slander. These mature in the faith women are to reach outside their homes and be a mentor to the younger women in the church, teaching (there’s that word again) them “what is good.”  What is “good?”  That’s answered in verse 4.

They are to teach the young women “to love (be devoted to) their husbands.”  Say what?  What in the world is going on here?  This sounds like something you don’t need to do, I mean that’s why she married him in the first place because she loves him. 

But there’s something we’re doing if we react that way—we’re reading our culture back into the Bible and our culture wasn’t their culture.  In the ancient world, marriages were most often arranged by the parents; there was no “dating” and then falling in love.  They didn’t get married because they loved each other; they got married because their parents arranged it for whatever reasons.  Love came later.  They are to be devoted to their husbands.

We have to remember that Christianity was radically new back then.  These Cretans were previously pagans in the Empire.  Christianity is revolutionary for them.

What these older women were to be teaching the younger ones is Home Ec 101.  What all these verses amount to is that the wife’s focus is to be on the home.  Remember that the false teachers were “ruining homes?”  Although we can’t know for certain, based on what Paul says here, they were teaching false doctrine to the wives. 

They are to train them to love their children.  Loving children means giving them discipline (Prov. 13:24) the young wife is to be pure.  Pure in devotion to her husband.  Ancient marriages weren’t necessarily known for their purity.  I knew a young wife whose physical purity was unquestioned, but she got involved with reading romance novels one after the other and things didn’t turn out so well. 

“Busy at home”= caring for home.”  The focus of the Christian wife is her home; not her job, not other people’s homes, but her home.  Her home is her passion.  In this regard, there’s an important verse we need to read in Prov. 14:1: “The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down.”  The Christian wife is to learn how to care for her home, not tear it down.

Don’t you like the nice touch Paul makes when he says she’s to be “kind,” kind to her family and kind to those who come into the home.  In her passion for the home, she’s to learn to be kind to those in it. 

There was a time when it was taken for granted that a dignified and competent wife and mother, devoted to her home and family, was a highly desirable but this is no longer the case. Home economics used to be an important major or part of the college curriculum for women, but no more.

A woman who teaches home ec said that her professional association changed its name from National Association of Home Economics Teachers to the National Association of Consumer Education. “It no longer has the word ‘home’ in it!” she lamented. 

Again, the Bible collides with our culture.

In a culture which expects and glorifies youthful rebellion, Titus is to be an example for the young men of self-control.  Self-control wasn’t all that evident in the Roman Empire . 

In what seems suddenly disjointed to us, Paul introduces Titus’ responsibilities to teach the slaves in the church.  (vs. 9)  But if we’re surprised, we’re reading our culture back into the Bible.  Back in Paul’s day, slaves were an integral part of the family.  As we read this, we see that their Christian character would be prized by any employer today.

What we see here is that even the lowest of the social order in the Empire can adorn Christian teaching

Let’s get the big picture, the reason for this radical lifestyle:

1.      Vs. 5: “So that no one will malign the Word of God”

2.      Vs. 8: “So that those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us (the church body) They’ll always have something bad to say, but the idea is your life will be of such a character that what they do say against you will be silly

3.      Vs. 10: “So that in every way, they will make the teaching about God our Savior (note the ref. to the deity of Christ) attractive.”

4.      Paul is saying that what we do shouldn’t discredit the gospel.  But did you notice something Paul emphasizes?  By what he’s saying here, we’re not to present good works and a changed life without a balanced diet of sound doctrine.  If we present the works without the doctrine, then we’re into manipulation, techniques, and gimmicks.  If we present works apart from doctrine (walk by the Spirit), then we’re using gimmicks to see things happen in the congregation. 

In the big picture, we see that no age group, no gender, no social class is excluded from having an impact on the world.  This is our moral obligation to the non-Christian.  Rather than retreating into a monastic existence, our lives and words are to impact the unbeliever.

A few months ago a fellow told me that he’d like to come to CLC, although he lived a ways from the church and he went on to say that he reason he wanted to come was because of the “nice way you treat your wife.”  I can’t pretend that I hear that often, but it was nice to hear. 

When I went to visit a family recently and asked what they liked about CLC, they said that they’ll never forget that, while eating breakfast in our fellowship hall their first Sunday, two people came over and sat with them. 

Truth to take Home: Adorn the doctrine at home.

* = Free Grace Teacher or Ministry