Speaker: Greg Sanders

Passage: Titus 2:1-15

BECOMING THE HOUSEHOLDS OF GOD

All right, if you have your Bibles, we’re going to be in Titus 2. We start into the portion of Titus, and we’re going to kind of term it Becoming the Households of God. What do I mean by that? I really mean dealing with our homes and how we live everyday life, micro moments, all the in-between. 

We talked early about the Book of Revelation, the first three chapters, Jesus will just walk amongst the churches. Really, what He’s doing is analyzing the churches. I think Titus is kind of the equivalent of Jesus walking around our homes. 

So, there’s going to be some very specific and detailed things that Paul will teach. And remember, Paul is dealing with the island of Crete, and he’s talking to Titus. He’s saying, as a pastor, here’s what I want you to teach people. 

I had a moment yesterday. I was sitting on top of my pergolas, like ten feet off the ground, staining them. The neighbor kids thought that was really funny. It’s like, it would have been funny if I fell, probably, but I was thinking about this teaching, and I had a moment where I realized something that is important for us to set as a foundation as we study this. 

In Galatians 2, Paul will say, “I’m crucified with Christ, yet I live with this life. I no longer live according to the flesh, but I now live according to every word that proceeds out of the mouth of Jesus.” 

What he’s talking about is an exchange that happens when we come to Christ, or when Christ finds us, depending on how you want to term that, depending on which theology bent you’re from. It doesn’t matter to me, both are true. 

But there’s an exchange that happens when we come into the Kingdom, and the exchange that we must understand is that our entire identity, our entire sense of individuality, our entire sense of who we are as a person, stops the moment we come into the Kingdom and we exchange Him instead. 

That’s what Paul means. I am crucified with Christ, yet He allowed me to live. The word he uses for I am crucified in the Greek is the word ego. It means me, my individual identity, is crucified with Christ, yet He allows me to live. 

Then he goes on and says, “And this life that I live,” and the word he uses, the next word is a different word, and it’s a word to be placed into a family. It’s a very interesting exchange that’s happening in the Greek. 

But what he’s really getting at is, when you and I come into the Kingdom, our identity, our sense of individuality, stops, so we become Him. That means, regardless of where you find your identity from, you exchange it for the rest of your life for Him. 

So, when you come into the Kingdom– it’s important that you hear this– you lose whatever you were to gain who He is. Some of the things that we were, we love to exchange. They were good to let go. 

But there’s a lot of things that we tend to want to bring forward because it offends our sense of self to understand that I have to lay those things down, that I no longer have the freedom to choose like I used to because I now choose Him. 

I’m now constricted by the reality of anything that He disagrees with, I now disagree with. Anything He says goes, now goes for me. How He says to handle my spouse is now the way I am to handle my spouse. How He says to handle my boss is how I am regardless of what I feel or think in those moments. 

I don’t know why, but yesterday, I was like, Oh, this whole conversation about identity and about perspective doesn’t actually matter because when I came into the Kingdom, it stopped my perspective, and my identity is now Him– period. 

And every place I want to lateral something across and superimpose it over Him because it’s me, it’s my sense of it’s my perspective, I am now putting it above Him, and it’s now my god. 

Why am I saying that? Because those are the actual lines of demarcation in the Kingdom. When you come into the Kingdom, that is the exchange. And if you choose to stay in the Kingdom, it is at the expense of yourself. You’re choosing Him instead of you. I wish it wasn’t that simple. But it is. 

And if you decide to stay in the Kingdom, you’re like, I have found in Him something I couldn’t find anywhere else, then you come in on those terms. And for the rest of your life, you have laid down your sense of self, and you will continue to lay down your sense of self. And every time the self rises up, you are to put it under foot because of Him. 

And this is everything Paul’s going to deal with in Titus 2. It’s his grid in writing chapter 2, he’s coming at it with an expectation. It’s almost as if he’s walking and saying, I don’t get it. I thought you gave your life to Jesus. How are you still so alive?  

TITUS 2:1-15

All right, you with me? Yeah, let’s go. Titus 2, we’re going to read verses 1 through 15. “But as for you, promote the kind of living that reflects right teaching. Teach the older men to exercise self-control, to be worthy of respect, to live wisely, to have a strong faith and to be filled with love and patience.” 

Those are the verses we’re gonna deal with today. I’m gonna read on so we get the rest of the context. “These older women must train the younger women to love their husbands and their children, to live wisely and be pure, take care of their homes, to do good, and be submissive to their husbands. Then, they will not bring shame to the word of God. 

“In the same way, encourage the young men to live wisely in all they do. And you yourself must be an example to them by doing good deeds of every kind. Let everything you do reflect the integrity and seriousness of your teaching. Let your teaching be so correct that it can’t be criticized. Then those who want to argue will be ashamed because they won’t have anything bad to say about us. 

“Slaves must obey their masters and do their best to please them. They must not talk back or steal, but they must show themselves to be entirely trustworthy and good.” Whew, that’s going to be a fun one.

“Then they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive in every way. For the grace of God has been revealed, bringing salvation to all people. And we are instructed to turn from godless living and sinful pleasures. We should live in this evil world with self-control, right conduct, and devotion to God, while we look forward to that wonderful event when the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, will be revealed. 

“He gave his life to free us from every kind of sin, to cleanse us, and to make us his very own people, totally committed to doing what is right. You must teach these things and encourage your people to do them, correcting them when necessary. You have the authority to do this, so don’t let anyone ignore you or disregard what you say.” 

BUT AS FOR YOU

All right, let’s jump in. We’re gonna start with verse 1. “But as for you, promote the kind of living that reflects right teaching.” It’s a transition in the passage we’re coming out of chapter 1. Chapter 1, if you remember, Paul’s dealing with leadership. 

He opens up and talks about what the leadership of the church should look like, the standard they’re to be held to. And then he moves to another section, and he talks about what happens when people lead wrongly, when they teach incorrectly. And then he’s shifting here, and he says, “But as for you.” 

I’d love to offer that that statement needs to become personal for us. I don’t want us to just read it as, Oh, this is to Titus. I want us to take it to heart. “But as for you,” as in everything Paul’s going to teach here needs to be taken personally like it was written to us. 

I would offer that Paul’s going to deal with the totality of our lifestyle in this. He’s not going to just deal with how we handle ourselves at church. There are no areas of our lives that are exempt from the Kingdom. The Kingdom is a holistic thing. It is intended to infect and affect every part of you. 

He says, “Promote the kind of living that reflects right teaching.” He’s going to make a really clear statement that we are to push on and promote a lifestyle that reveals a right understanding of who Jesus is, a lifestyle the way we live every day in the micro moments reveals what we actually know and understand about Jesus. 

Paul’s statement to Titus is, I want you to teach people that how they live in the micro moments tells me what they actually know about Jesus. I will be able to watch their lives and tell you whether or not they’re actually submitted to their King. 

So, as we embark on this, I want to challenge us to be open and ready to grow. I had a Bible college professor named Randy Remington. He’s now the head of Foursquare. He taught an idea called Private/Public, and it went like this: you will never be in public who you are not authentically in private. Your hidden world will be exposed. So, you want to walk in high levels of authority, you want to walk in integrity, you better be that person behind closed doors. 

Have we not seen that principle played out over and over and over in our culture, where sooner or later, you find out, Oh, there was some stuff that was hidden that we didn’t know about? Paul’s dealing with that very thing. 

So, my question to us is, are you prepared and willing to embrace the private areas of your life, have them exposed and dealt with? Because that’s what you have to be willing to do to come into this text correctly. We have to be willing to invite the Lord into every micro moment. 

What do I mean, micro moments? It means we’re going to invite the Lord to talk to us about how we handle our marriages. What do you mean? I mean, when you and your spouse don’t get along, do you do it in a Christ-like way? Well, how do you do that? Exactly, the decision to do one eliminates the opportunity for the other. 

When you’re at work, would your boss say, Whew, man, they look like Jesus, they work like Jesus, they take breaks like Jesus? We’re going to talk about the stuff that is difficult and it’s going to confront the way we live. 

I just want to advise you and encourage you to be committed, to respond correctly to the Holy Spirit because it’s a dangerous thing to see things in the Scripture, have them expose things in us, and to refuse to deal with them. 

It actually does something: it hardens your heart. You become calloused, and it doesn’t happen immediately. You systematically become calloused when you quit paying attention to the conviction of the Lord, and over the course of time, you will just stop hearing His voice. 

And then people start to go, Well, He doesn’t talk to me anymore. Yeah, it’s because you stopped listening. Your own stubborn rebellion has caused you to be deaf to Him. That’s on you, not Him. 

It’s hard to deal with how transparently honest that statement is. But church, we are in control of our hearing. The fastest way to hear God more is to obey God faster. Because oftentimes, when He speaks and you don’t listen, He stops speaking. Because why would He keep speaking if you weren’t paying attention? Just some thoughts. 

PAUL’S TEACHING TO OLDER MEN

So, Paul’s teaching to older men. We’re going to start with the guys. Ladies, trust me, yours is coming, but not today. We’re going to deal with this in the way the Scriptures deal with section through section. So, that might mean there’s a couple days you’re like, Well, I don’t know, church really wasn’t for me. It was about the guys. Knock it off. It’s the Scriptures. 

We’re learning how to be the people of God, and it’s impossible to become the households of God if both genders don’t understand how to be who God’s called them to be. 

And the first place we’re going to start is with headship because that’s what Paul does. Because Scripturally, whether we like it or not, guys, we are the first line of defense in the home when things are out of whack. 

Whether we think it’s because she’s being an idiot or not, it’s still us because she was part of us from the Genesis account, grafted out of us from the Genesis account, so always to be covered by us. So, no matter how we like it or not, it still points to us. 

So, Paul is going to start with the older men. This same root word as elder that he uses in chapter 1, but without the focus on official title, he changes the way the word presents. We need to understand this and the statements in chapter 1 is the only difference being chapter 1 was a list of qualifications for leadership in the church. 

This is to be understood as the standard for masculinity in the Kingdom. This is what men are to be in the Kingdom– all men. I want to restate this and restate this and restate this. This is not just aimed at leadership. 

So, nobody gets to say, Oh, this doesn’t apply to me. The word carries a meaning of ambassador, which is really interesting. We should understand this as the right and proper way to reveal the Kingdom around us. This is what Paul’s statement is: this is what the ambassadors in the Kingdom that are men should live like. 

Well, who’s an ambassador? Guys, all of us are to be ambassadors. Ambassadors for Christ, revealing Him at all times. So, an important thing in this study is who’s it aimed at? What’s an older man in our context? 

Because in our culture, we would say older guys, we’d probably aim that around sixty, seventy, and say that’s an older guy. That is not what Paul’s aiming it at. Why? The life expectancy of this time was thirty-seven to forty-one because of the infant mortality rate. 

It was really rare for guys to get old in the tooth and live sixty, seventy years. Did it happen? Sure, but Paul’s not speaking to men saying, Hey, when you get to sixty or seventy, this is what I expect for you. 

He’s actually talking to what we would call middle-age. The timeline for the way their life span out is sixteen to twenty, men would do military service, and then from twenty to thirty, they were to get their education, they were to go get their philosophy, they were to develop their trades. And then at thirty, they were considered a full-fledged adult, mature and standing on their own in culture.

So, really, for our conversation, gentlemen, anybody above twenty-nine, this is aimed to you. Anybody below, you don’t get a pass because Paul’s going to deal with you as well, but he’s going to give you a different standard. 

Why is that important? Because it reframes the conversation. Because right now in our culture, I would say we think of anybody below thirty-five as still probably not having an opportunity to make any decent decisions. We don’t expect much out of them. That’s wrong from a Kingdom point of view. 

Paul’s statement is, every man in the Kingdom is to live as a representative of Jesus. So, what he’s preaching here and teaching here to Titus is this is the standard for men in the Kingdom. 

JESUS AS THE STANDARD

So, in order to create this picture of Kingdom masculinity, Paul’s got a mental image of something. He’s going to use Jesus. And he’s starting to give qualifications of who Jesus was. He doesn’t use the term expressly, but all the pictures are things that he sees modeled in front of Jesus. This is a common thing he does in his teachings, where he’ll just hold Jesus up as who we are to look for. So, I want to call us to look at the man, Jesus Christ. 

So, the first thing Paul says is that men are to exercise self-control and I’d say this: Jesus carried the discipline to exercise self-control. What do you mean? Think about Luke 4 in the wilderness. 

Luke 4, Jesus is probably twenty-nine at this time, it’s right before He steps into ministry, so we’re not totally sure, but he’s at most thirty, probably twenty-nine. Goes into the wilderness, tempted by the devil, tempted on every level– power, appetite, all of it. And Jesus sees the end game and refuses to give in. 

I want you to consider that because the root word here to exercise self-control is to be sober, is what the word means. It doesn’t necessarily mean to abstain. It means to walk in moderation. 

What are we talking about? Are we talking about alcohol? Yes. Are we talking about any other kind of substance? Yes. Are we talking about pornography? Yeah. It means don’t do it. He says, exercise self-control, men, that you are to live not just be sober, you are to live in sobriety. 

Which the idea here is dealing with the topic of being controlled by something, and Paul’s using something out of the Hebrew culture that Solomon will speak of in the Proverbs about the dangers of not being a man under control or being controlled by something, men must be capable of managing and moderating their appetites and passions. 

A lot of your Bibles and translations will lean this directly to alcohol. That’s how a lot of translators brought it through. But the word really meant not to be mixed with anything. It was the idea of not allowing you to be diluted by something controlling you. Should alcohol be managed? One-hundred percent. Drunkenness is sin. 

But I think this concept that Paul’s talking about is aiming at a far broader palate. He’s saying nothing should control you, not a hobby, not your workout regimen, nothing addictive for sure, not a TV show. Nothing gets supremacy in your life except Jesus. 

Paul will point our eyes to it, says men, it should be worthy of respect. Jesus lived in a way that was worthy of respect. How do you know that? Luke 18, a rabbi comes up to Him and says, “Good teacher” or “Rabbi,” and Jesus stops him and says, “Why are you calling me that?” 

Why was he calling Him that? Because the way Jesus lived drew respect. The word here, the original word, it means to be venerated or honored for character. The picture in the Greek is someone who can walk into a room and shut the room down. 

I don’t think Paul’s looking for us as men to walk in and the room goes quiet. He’s grabbing onto a military picture. He’s talking about leaders that evoke reverence through reputation. See now, we’re onto something guys. He’s calling Kingdom men to live in a way that evokes that kind of response. 

What do I mean? Venerated carries the idea of reputation. Reputation isn’t made in a moment. Reputation is the byproduct of a life pattern of wisdom, character, and integrity. I had a Bible college professor who said it this way: reputations take a lifetime to make and a moment to destroy. 

Now, I think a moment to destroy is a little harsh. What do you mean? You know the fastest way to fix your reputation when you screw it up? Own it. Don’t make an excuse instead of going, Well, you know, I was struggling. No. You know, actually I sinned. It was sin. What I did was sin. Please forgive me. I’m going to make it right. That’s how you fix things. 

When you screw them up, when you offer an excuse, and a justification, Yeah, you know, my parents weren’t that good to me, and I got all these– just stop it. Just stand up as a man and say, You know, what I did was wrong, and I need to ask your forgiveness for that because it was wrong. No excuse. That’s how you fix it. 

But the basic concept here is to live in a manner that merits being given respect, which means you live in a way that makes sense to people. They’re like, Oh yeah, he’s good person. Integrity, it deals with choices, reactions, and processes. 

WISE LIVING

Paul will go on and says that men need to be challenged to live wisely. Now, Luke 2:52 says Jesus grew in stature and wisdom. I love that because it tells us that Jesus didn’t show up on the earth with all that stuff already in Him. He had to develop and grow into it. How he had to pursue it through teachability. He had to become a student. 

What does it mean to live wisely? The word here means to curb one’s desires and impulses. It is the picture of being driven by principles, not appetites. It carries this concept of being capable of choosing patterns of living that are beneficial, proper, and integrable. 

The next phrase that Paul will give is that men are to be strong in faith and filled with love and patience. Well, Jesus, according to John 1:14, says He was filled with grace and unfailing love. So, Paul’s terms here are love and patience. It’s a combo phrase. 

Love is agape. Now agape love should be understood as benefacting love, or love that is for the benefit of another. It means that the love activity is helping someone. It’s doing something for them. 

Patience, here is hypomone, which means enduring the ability to stay in or under difficulty. That’s a fun one. Paul calls us to look at Jesus because He’s partnering it with faith. What he’s saying is you are to live in love towards the world around you. 

You’re to live with patience towards the world around you, not because they deserve it, and not because you like them, but because of your faith in Jesus because you love Him, because you trust Him. You’re going to put this activity into play. 

In other words, you and I as men, we don’t live in love towards others because they’re lovable. We live in love towards others because of our love for Him. We’re not patient in difficulty because people are easy to deal with. We don’t stay in tough situations because it’s fun. We do it because we love Him, because of our faith and our trust in Him. 

What do you mean? Well, He’s sovereign. What does that word mean? It means He’s in control of things. So, I don’t just get to yank up my roots and go someplace else when I don’t like something because I trust that He put me where I’m at for a reason, so I stay there in difficulty, under difficulty, because of my trust in Him, because I know that he works all things together for good to those who love Him and are in Christ Jesus. 

And so, as long as I stay committed to His sovereignty and trust Him, I can trust the process. Paul says that men are to be filled with that. It’s the picture of men being rooted in Jesus and then putting on a lifestyle of love being strong and unwavering in circumstance. 

Be settled in your ability to love others and settle in your willingness to come under difficulty. Paul’s given a picture of living every moment by the principles of the Kingdom, not the whims of passion and emotion. 

So, for Paul, he’s just drawn our eyes to Jesus. He’s the picture of masculinity. Now, I want to remind us– I said it in the beginning, I’ll say it again– these declarations from Paul are not reserved for leadership. This is every guy. None of us get an excuse. This is the standard we’re to hold as men who follow Jesus, to aim to be like Him and carry His nature. 

PAUL’S MESSAGE TO YOUNGER MEN

And then Paul doesn’t want to leave the young guys out under twenty-nine, so he adds a phrase in verse six: “In the same way, encourage the young men to live wisely in all they do.” He uses the same word as he uses for older men, calling them to live with moderation, considering the outcome of one’s decisions. 

Young guys, that you should be in your young man’s season of life, this question should be the most dominant thing you’re asking: if I do this, where’s it going to take me? Consider that standard in light of our current culture, are we as believers expecting that level of maturity out of young men? 

And when Paul’s talking to young men, he’s talking to guys that are fifteen, sixteen to twenty-nine, that in the Kingdom they should be asking this question: if I do this, where’s it going to take me? 

Learning how to play the long game mentally, learning how to exercise that kind of self-control, to go, I’m not doing that because it’s going to take me to the wrong place. 

Are we as young men expecting that kind of maturity from ourselves, or have we bought into the lie of our culture that says we’re just going to be young and dumb for a while? We just get a pass to be stupid until we figure it out. We’re gonna sow our oats, whatever that means. That’s not what Paul says here. Paul says there’s a standard for masculinity in the Kingdom. 

Ladies, one thing for you in this: this is the guy you’re supposed to look for. When you find a man that doesn’t measure to this, you don’t have to be mean about it, but just know you haven’t found a man that’s grown up in Jesus yet. 

And if you think you can grow him up in Jesus, you’re crazy, and you’re going to sentence yourself to a lot of difficulty. So, don’t do it. Have the guts to hold out for what the Lord wants for you. 

QUALITIES FOR ALL MEN

So, these are the character qualities that Paul’s calling men to live: number one, men– younger and older– are to be sober in life and moderate in all things, and it means nothing has control of us other than Jesus. Not alcohol, not an addiction, not a habit. Here’s my question: men are your appetites under the authority of Jesus? 

Secondly, men are to be easy to respect and follow. They are to live lives that speak of integrity. Guys, that means that we shape our lives to be like Jesus. We study His nature, His character, so that those around us can see what true Kingdom character looks like by the way we live. 

I want you to think about this idea: we as men are living in a way to let people know what it feels like to be close to Jesus. We are to aim at living in a way so that those around us would say, It just feels like I’m with Jesus. He carries so much of His nature. I just feel like I’m with the Lord. 

Do we walk in the integrity that honors the way Jesus lived? We’re carrying His nature so we look like Him and act like Him. Would those around us say, Yeah, he’s doing it.

The third thing men in the Kingdom are to do is weigh their life decisions and impulses for wisdom and for outcome. Two questions that you have to ask, guys, is this decision going to lead me where I want to go? Is this decision going to lead me where He wants me to go? 

That has to become the central drive for men in the Kingdom, that we desire to make decisions that follow the desires of our King. At all times, do your life decisions reveal Jesus? Does your current trajectory land you at Jesus? 

The fourth thing: men are to have their belief in Jesus drive how they love others and how they endure difficulty. This means that true masculinity both lives and loves from a faith perspective, not a human perspective. 

Guys, this is paramount in how we love our wives. We love them from a faith perspective, not a human one. We don’t love our wives because they’re lovable. It’s great when they are. We love our wives because He told us to, and we made a covenant with Him to do it. 

That’s why Paul teaches in Ephesians, “Husbands, love your wives the way Christ loved the church.” He was trying to give us a clue, you will never be able to love her because she’s lovable. You will only be able to love her the way He loved the Church. 

You think the Church is lovable? Look through the history of the Church. Jesus hasn’t loved us because we were lovable. He loved us because he’s committed to loving us. It means true masculinity stays in the fight because of a faith perspective, not a, Yeah, can I do this perspective. It means we don’t bail when it’s tough, and we don’t stay because we want to. We stay because we’re committed to Him. 

GROUNDED IN ENCOUNTER

I would love to offer a simple thought, gentlemen: we can’t do this unless we are rooted and grounded in an encounter with Him. You cannot do this just because the Bible says to do it, you have to be drawing from Him supernatural authority and power to live this way. 

If you’re not disciplined to get up as a man and get on your face before your God, you will be lacking the necessary grace to pull this off. And everybody around you can feel it. What they’re supposed to be feeling is what it is like when He walks into a room, that we are as men to walk into a room and change the environment because we carry His nature. 

How do we carry his nature if I’m not encountering His nature? How as a man am I going to be shaped by His nature if I’m not sitting with Him, if I’m not allowing Him to deal with me? 

We’re supposed to be able to take all the difficulties, all the struggles in marriage, all the struggles at work, we take it to Him. We lay it in front of Him. We say, This is awful. I hate this. How do I deal with this? And we give Him a place to speak. 

We give Him a place to challenge us, so that we walk out of that place, and we’re not walking out based on the reaction of the world around us, we’re not walking out with authority that says, I am here to bring Him to you. 

I say it this way: we are to be living from the other side. Our life source is to be from the other side. If you’ve put upon your wife that she’s your life source, repent for it. If you’ve made her into a God, take her off the throne, put Him back on it, and step back into masculinity. 

Lead your home from the other side, that you will contend for her, you’ll contend for your kids, you contend for your boss. You go before the Throne, and you’re like, Lord, You put me here as a man to stand in the place you gave me to be a man. So, I’m going to be here in this place, and I’m going to draw out of You everything that I need to do this. 

Are you loving those in your care from His storehouse, or are you trying to love from your own abilities and desires? Are you staying in the difficulty because of your covenant with Him, or are you trying to find a way to bail out of it because it’s tough? 

I want to close with one idea: Romans 13:14, the same author, Paul, is giving a tutorial for how to live. I want to give it because I think if we overlay this tutorial, it unlocks Titus. Paul says, “Instead, clothe yourself with the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ, and don’t let yourself think about ways to indulge your evil desires.” 

Three phrases I want to look at: clothe yourself is to sink into a garment. It’s the active choice to clothe oneself. It’s like putting on a coat. It means you have to make an active choice to put on Jesus. He’s not just going to jump on you. You got to make the choice to put Him on. 

The words don’t let. Don’t let yourself think about ways. The idea is to make no allowance for or make no provision. It means don’t produce, don’t construct, don’t fashion or create a path for your evil desires. 

The word evil desires here doesn’t just mean the bad things you might want. It actually means flesh. It’s the word sarx in the Greek. It’s the same word Paul uses in Galatians 2. I’m crucified with Christ, yet I live with this life. I no longer live according to the flesh– to sarx. 

What Paul is saying here is you cannot make a provision for your humanity to come out. You can’t give it a pass. The answer is, you got to put on Jesus. And every time your flesh wants to come out, you say to your flesh, Nope, putting on Jesus. I’m going to act like Jesus. I’m going to do what Jesus said in this moment. I know you deeply want to react. I know you deeply want to act the way you want to act. But you see, I’m crucified with Christ, so you’re not alive anymore, so shut up. 

Oh, how do I live then? Well, finish Galatians 2: I’m crucified with Christ, and yet He let me live, but this life I’m living now, He didn’t let me live. He told me to live from every word that proceeds out of His mouth. So, I am now to take the tutorial of what He gave me and live that way.

It means all my reactions, all my behaviors, all my patterns, they’re now subject to what the Lord says, and I have been given the ability in Christ to push my sin nature down and subdue it. That’s Kingdom masculinity. That’s what we have to come back to. We’re going to deal with it later. 

He says, when we live this way, the Gospel gets attractive to the world. People start wanting Jesus. When men live like men again, they become the men God built them to be. Guys, I know it’s a tough message. I’m in it with you for sure. 

Stand with me, please. I’m going to invite the prayer teams up. I don’t know if this is the prayer team kind of message, but if it is, great, use them. I think this is a go-get-alone-with-the-Lord-and-examine-your-life kind of message.

Guys, headship is a real thing. God has called men to lead the home. He’s called men to walk in authority. It’s not South Park authority, like, you know, you respect my authority. Not like that. He’s called them to walk in Kingdom authority, which is to live like Jesus. 

So, when they walk into a room, the world feels like the Lord’s with them. When you walk in the living room, does your family feel like Jesus is with them? If you analyze your own behavior, could you say, Yeah, I feel like I’m representing the Lord with them? 

If not, the answer is not woe is you. The answer is just repent. Let’s get back to this. Sometimes I hated getting spankings growing up, but they were good for me, that discipline taught me what not to do. We have to come back to realizing He is the standard, not how we feel. 

All right, let’s pray. Holy Spirit, there’s a heaviness in the room because there’s an honesty in this that’s kind of tough to swallow. So, in whatever way You can, would You give us a spoonful of sugar?

Lord, would You itemize in Your kindness and Your mercy the places we’ve got to change, Jesus? We don’t take any shame out of this. We just simply take a challenge to be like You, to be men that reflect You. 

And Lord, I love that You’re not a God that says, Oh, you’re awesome. I love that You’re a God that challenges the places we’re not. I love that You believe the best for us, that You know we can be these men. And we embrace it, and we say, yes, we want to be these men. 

So, all the conversations that need to happen with You, with loved ones, with bosses, whatever it looks like, Holy Spirit, would You guide us in this process, that we would take our rightful place in the households of God? And Lord, we want to do that first before we ask you to start dealing with anybody else. We love You. We honor You. Jesus’ name, amen.