Speaker: David Mitchell

Passage: Titus 1:5-9

TITUS 1:5-9

All right, hey, good to be back with you. My name is David. Get to serve as part of the teaching team here at Vintage, and we are in the letter from Paul to Titus. And so, it’s this short letter, it’s direct, it’s punchy. 

What I would say is this: if you were with us for the previous series on Revelation, Revelation begins with Jesus walking amongst the churches, right? And Titus is Jesus walking amongst our homes. So, it’s more intimate, more personal, more direct. 

And so, remember the teaching from Revelation, the word that came from it was, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” And so, my hope, my prayer in Titus, as we study four or five verses of the first chapter– Titus 1:5-9– that our ears would be open to the kindness and the conviction of God. 

I say often, when I teach, that the Scriptures say that it is the kindness of God that leads us to repentance. And so, I want all of us with open hearts and open hands to say, God, would Your kindness fall upon me? That there is something in my life to be convicted of, then I might turn and repent. 

So, Titus is this book, it’s written from Paul to Titus. Surprise, surprise. It’s from a spiritual father, in a sense, to his spiritual son. We know that Paul, at this stage of writing it, is about sixty or so. 

And who of you know, maybe particularly men, but as you get a little bit older, into your sixties, you care a lot less about what people think, right? At least it appears this way when I’m traveling on public transport or airplanes or in the locker room at the gym or something like that. The sixty-year-old guys, they just don’t care, all right? 

And so, Titus is this book written by a guy who is direct, he’s a straight shooter. And Paul, he’s been imprisoned the first time, he’s about to be imprisoned a second time, and that second time, he dies, likely beheaded by order of Emperor Nero. So, we have a man on a mission speaking directly. 

A MESSAGE SPECIFICALLY FOR MEN

Now, before we get into the text today, Titus 1:5-9 is written specifically to men. Now, there’s a temptation when you’re teaching to sort of generalize it and say, Hey, let’s just make this about men and women. Let’s just do that so that everyone has something to learn from this. But I’m not going to do that today. 

What I’m going to ask for the women in the room is that if you’re married, or if you’re raising a man, a young man, an older man, if you’re friends with a man, if you’re serving alongside a man, I want you to take this and say, How can I encourage men to model the blueprint of what masculinity looks like in Scriptures? 

You women, you have a role. The Proverbs are very clear on this. Women are not to nag men into greatness, right? We don’t criticize people into greatness. In fact, the Proverbs will say that a nagging wife is like a leaking roof that drips and drips and drips, right? 

So, that’s not your role in this passage. Your role is to get really clear on the blueprint and pray for the men in your life and encourage the men in your life, and call them to this greater standard. 

Last time I taught, I mentioned the four-part framework from the book Raising a Modern Day Knight, which says, “A man accepts responsibility, rejects passivity, leads courageously and lives for the greater reward.” 

That’s what men do, right? We accept responsibility, reject passivity, lead courageously, yell at our children– no. We may have done that this morning, almost, so let’s look at this. 

TITUS 1:5-9

So, there’s this focus on men. If you’re a man, this passage is a call to act like one. Titus 1:5-9 says this: The reason I left you in Crete was that you might put in order what was left unfinished and appoint elders in every town, as I directed you. An elder must be blameless, faithful to his wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient.” 

If my kid’s barcode number comes up while I say that, you can tell me that I’m in violation of verse 6, all right? “Since an overseer manages God’s household, he must be blameless– not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain. Rather, he must be hospitable, one who loves what is good, who is self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined. He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it.” 

In our country, in the Western world, we’ve been under a collective mental health crisis where we pretended like we didn’t know the difference between men and women. And the Scriptures are very clear about the difference. Here is what a man is.

It’s my problem with those gender-neutral bathrooms is that you ladies, you gotta start lifting the seat up. Okay? It’s just you’ve been putting the burden on us all the time, all right? It’s time to take your share of responsibility. That wasn’t in the notes. 

LIVING ORDERED LIVES

Okay, idea number one from this text: what does a man do? A man puts in order anything that is unfinished. Put your life in order. Now, I know that Titus 1 is speaking specifically about putting elders in order, putting authority and leadership in order. But I want to challenge every man in the room: have you put things in life in order? 

Your sexuality is intended to be put in order. So, if you are having sex with anyone other than your wife, you’re out of order. That includes sex with yourself, sex with someone of the opposite gender. Our sexuality is to be put in order. And anything outside of what the Scriptures teach, we’re out of order.

Our money is intended to be in order. If you’ve borrowed foolishly, if you’re spending foolishly, if you’re not providing well, you are out of order. This is not intended to shame us, this is intended to call us to a place of responsibility. 

Your home should be in order. If you’re not leading well, if you’re not showing up in your home, then according to Scripture, you are out of order. 

Again, if Revelation was Jesus walking amongst the church, Titus 1 is Jesus walking amongst our home, and He’s looking squarely in the eyes of the men, and He’s saying, You need to put things in order. He says, You need to put things in order that they would be finished and completed. 

What Paul is teaching Titus is that men don’t leave things unfinished. Now, I’m not talking about the flooring project that I’ve currently got going on, but that may be part of this. Is there anything unfinished in your life? Is there any part of your life that’s uncompleted? Do you say, Hey, I need to put that in order? 

Jesus on the cross, as He was dying, said, It is finished. That’s what men do: they complete the unfinished things in front of them. Paul will write elsewhere in Corinthians, “I have finished the race.”

That’s what we’re intended to do, is to be those who finish, who don’t just start and then fall off, who don’t just receive the Word of God and then hear it and then spew it out later, but we allow it to sink deep, to complete its work within us. That’s what the Scriptures teach, and that’s what men do. So, men are to live ordered lives, we are not to leave things unfinished. That’s idea number one. 

APPOINTING LEADERS

Idea number two: appointing leaders. This specific passage in Titus, the context, of course, is about appointing elders in a church. And this can be an easy part for us to hear and say, Well, okay, there’s, let’s say, eight hundred people here at Vintage. There’s about eight elders or so. So, let’s say one percent of the entire church can be appointed an elder. So, we could say, All right, well, that means I don’t need to worry about this text. 

No, what Titus is saying is, for somebody to be selected into leadership, they need to follow this blueprint of what it means to be a man. So, whether or not you get called to be an elder of Vintage is not relevant, you need to make yourself ready to be called upon.

Elsewhere in the Scriptures, in James, he will write, “If any of you is sick, let him call the elders that they might come and lay hands on him.” And I want to ask each of you in the room, whether you’re an elder or not, can you be called upon when someone’s in need? Can you be trusted to walk safely into someone else’s home and pray for them? 

We may not all be elders, just like in this country, there’s only one president, right? We’re not all president, and I can’t be it, by the way. I have the wrong birth certificate, which apparently is a problem. 

It’s the one thing when people say, What do you miss about England? I say, I miss the fact that I can’t be in charge of everything. But the fact that I can’t be a president is not relevant to the fact that you and I are called to be the kinds of leaders that God can call upon when needed. And that if anyone is sick, are you somebody that they can call and trust to come and pray for them? 

So, America today, we need men who can be trusted, relied upon, and placed in positions of authority and responsibility. That’s what Titus is teaching us. Yes, it’s a picture of eldership and appointing overseers over a church. But for us today, it is about us readying ourselves that we might be those who God can say, I need you to step up right now. I need a man like you to step up. 

Remember the context of Crete. Later in chapter 1, verse 12, it’ll give us the context– we’ll go more into that in a future week– but it says that the people in Crete were rebellious people. They were guilty of meaningless talk, deception, false teaching, always lying, evil brutes, lazy gluttons, right? Does that sound familiar? Okay, you say, That sounds like Denver. 

But it sounds like our context, right? Sounds like our city, sounds like our region, sounds like our country. Rebellion, meaningless talk, always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons, and what God is saying to Titus through Paul is we need men who can run counter to that river. We need men who can swim upstream. We need men who can stand against all of that. 

Rather than rebellious talk, we speak courageous talk. Rather than deception, we speak truth. Rather than being lazy gluttons, we’re the hardest-working men in the city. Rather than being evil, we stand for good. That’s what Titus is calling us to. 

FAITHFUL AND COMMITTED MEN

Okay, so idea number three in Titus 1: it describes the characteristics of what a man is. One of the things it says is he is faithful to his wife. In the original text, it would say he’s the husband of one wife or he’s a one-woman man.

Remember we said, He who has ears, let him hear, right? We can come into this, and we can say, Hey, I failed at that thing. I’ve slept around. I’ve been unfaithful with my eyes. I’ve lusted. What the Scriptures will teach us is that because we have heard this today, if we allow the conviction of God, what we are saying is, I’m drawing a line, I’m committing to a life of faithfulness. I am going to be a one-woman man. 

Now that, of course, in the context of marriage, refers to this legal agreement that says, I’m married to this one woman. But it also means the covenant, the agreement that we make with our eyes. That when you’re at the gym, when you’re out in the streets, when you’re online, you are saying to yourself, I am faithful. I am a one-woman man, and I can be trusted. 

So, we want to feel the conviction of God, right? Job will say, “I have made a covenant with my eyes.” And there’s probably not a single man in this room who hasn’t at one point broken that covenant and been unfaithful. 

Jesus said, Hey, look, if your eyes or your hands cause you to sin, gouge them out, cut them off. Why? Because less you’re going to end up in Gehenna, this fire outside the city, your entire life is going to be consumed. And we know the reality of that. 

And so, what Titus is being called to is to be on the lookout for men who know what it is to be faithful, who know what it is to be committed. And I want to encourage you, if you’ve fallen short on this, that in 2 Corinthians 7, Paul will teach about the difference between earthly sorrow and Godly sorrow. 

Earthly sorrow leads to death. Earthly sorrow sounds like this: I’m a piece of trash, I’m an idiot, I’m a fool, I’m covered in shame, I’m not worthy. That’s what earthly sorrow sounds like. And in 2 Corinthians 7, Paul will say, Stop playing around with that stuff. He says, Instead, go after Godly sorrow. 

Godly sorrow leads to repentance. And so, Godly sorrow doesn’t sound like, I’m a piece of dirt. Godly sorrow says, God, my Father, I have sinned against You. Is it Psalm 51, David’s Psalm? Yeah, read that Psalm. That’s Godly sorrow. I have sinned against You, and You alone cleanse me. Make me whiter than snow, right? That leads to repentance, that leads to a changed life. 

Be a one-woman man, with your eyes, with your heart, with your hands, everything. 

RAISING GODLY CHILDREN

Idea number four: raising your children. Oh, this is tough stuff, right? This is something that I fail at every day. If my kids were in the back, they’d say, Amen. 

And we could read Titus, and we can say, Wait a second. We know that at least at this time in writing it, Paul was single, right? It’s possible that he’d been married earlier and his wife had died. We’re not sure. But according to all of the kind of data that we have, Paul didn’t have children. And so, it can be easy to look on that and say, What do you know? 

Because he says, Hey, I want you to raise the kinds of children that it cannot be said of them that they are wild and disobedient. And again, this can be really hard, but I want you to know that in Scripture, you’re not alone in that struggle. 

In fact, in Samuel, the people will come to Samuel, the prophet of God, and they will say, Hey, you’re old, and your sons do not follow your ways. In other words, they’re wild and disobedient. 

In Job, we will see in Job 1, there’s this party and celebration that goes on, and it says after that point, when these celebrations ended, sometime after several days, Job would purify his children. He’d get up early in the morning and offer a burnt offering for each of them. For Job said to himself, “Perhaps my children have sinned and have cursed God in their hearts.” This was Job’s regular practice. In other words, he experienced the reality of children who were not following after God. 

And so, again, what I want to encourage us in this text is, as men, to reject passivity. What would passivity be like? Ah, my kids, they’re just a nightmare. That’s passivity. And accept responsibility, which is to say, As much as is within my control, I’m going to raise these children to be lovers of Jesus. I’m going to raise these children, if they’re young boys, to grow up to be one-women men, I’m going to raise them to be faithful with their eyes. I’m going to raise them to be obedient.

And again, I struggle, I fail at this all the time, maybe possibly on the drive here to church when they kept turning the radio off and the heat up. These are little things. But look what this is saying, is that for you and us as men, we’re going to accept responsibility for the children that we raise. 

And you know, Arthur Brooks, who’s a professor and an author and a writer, he was explaining the other day on this brief video about the importance of dads– he’s a data social scientist– and he said, look, if you want to raise great children, number one, love their mother. Love mom. 

Number two, he talks about the religious practice, and he says, look, if you want to know whether your children are going to follow after God, there’s a forty percent greater predictive capacity where if dad follows Jesus than if mom follows Jesus. 

In other words, if mom follows Jesus, the kids will follow Jesus at this level, right? If dad pursues Jesus, forty percent higher. Dads really, really matter. They set the tone, they set the vision, they set the direction, whether they know it or not. 

And so, if you’re struggling as a parent, whatever age your kids are, if you want to be a great parent, what Titus is teaching us is that as a man, what is within your control is to be a passionate follower of Jesus, to pursue Him. 

MANAGING GOD’S HOUSEHOLD

Idea number five: be ready to manage God’s household. It says this in verse 7: “Since an overseer manages God’s household, he must be blameless, not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain.” 

The lesson for us is this: that you and I are to be men who rightly manage our own household, that we might be men who can be trusted to manage God’s household. That we might be men who can be trusted to lead businesses, to lead ministries, to lead nonprofits, that we have to pay attention to how we’re managing our own household. 

So, I want to ask you a question with open hearts, open hands, verses 6 and 7 say, “An elder must be blameless, faithful to his wife, whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient. Since an overseer manages God’s household, he must be blameless, not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain.” 

I want to ask you before God right now– not before me– but before God: which of those things is He convicting you of? Which of those things does He want to bring to a place of being finished? Which of those things is He calling you to put in order? 

Look, I want to join you in that. I remember one time, more recent than I’d like to admit, but one of my kids was raising their voice against me. I said, Hey, don’t yell at me. And guess what he said? Who did I learn that from? I said, You learned that from your mother? I didn’t know that. But it’s one of those things, I say, God, I’m too quick-tempered. I’m too quick-tempered. 

And so, this is what men do, right? Men complete things. Men finish things. Men put things in order.

AVOID DRUNKENNESS

Idea number six, a quick one: avoid drunkenness. So, the Bible doesn’t teach us that you can’t drink alcohol. There’s examples where Paul speaks about it. Jesus, of course, turns water into wine, but we’re to avoid drunkenness. 

And again, the simple test I want to give you is, could you step away from alcohol for a week, two weeks, three weeks, a month? Can you do that? If you can, then it gives a picture of self-control. And if you can’t, then you need to seek help. 

LOVE WHAT IS GOOD

Number seven: love what is good. See, what we get in Titus, yes, we get a lot of things that are not to be present in a man’s life. But then he says in verse 8, “Rather, he must be hospitable, who loves what is good, who’s self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined.” 

When the world is crying out, What is a man? Titus 1:8 tells us. A man is someone who’s hospitable. A man is somebody who loves what is good. A man is someone who’s self-controlled, who’s upright, who’s holy and disciplined. 

Notice that in Titus 1, there is even an ordering to the putting in order. So, he doesn’t say, Open up your home at the beginning. He says, Put your life in order. Put your life in order so that you can open up your home, so that people aren’t walking into a house that is filled with rage, a house that is filled with just bickering, a house that is filled with drunkenness. 

Put those things in order, and then be a blessing to the neighbors and family around you. Be the kind of man who can open up your home. 

So, having focused on the traits that should not be present in the house, in the life of a man, Paul shares what should be present: hospitality, loving what is good. So, get your house in order and then open up your home. 

SOUND DOCTRINE

Idea number eight: sound doctrine. It says that you and I are to be those who build our lives upon sound doctrine. Now, the Greek word for that is hygianinousē. What it means is not simply an absence of illness, but it means a wholeness and a health. 

So, what it says in Titus again, “He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it.” In other words, what Titus is teaching us is to be a man, you have to stand for something, and you have to stand against something. 

You have to be the kind of man who knows that when there is false teaching going on, you can stand against it, and the only way to be able to do that is to sit at the feet of the Holy teacher and say, God, Teach me. Teach me what I do not know, and help me to be the kind of person who encourages those with sound doctrine. 

Again, sound doctrine, this hygianinousē– I’m guessing it’s where we get the word hygiene from– it’s not just about getting out the dirt, it’s about filling them with good.

A BLUEPRINT FOR MEN

So, this passage teaches us what it looks like for a man who is close to death to write with focus and vision to a younger man. And I want to just challenge the older men in the room: is this how you speak to the younger men in your life? 

Do you speak with this kind of clarity? Do you speak with this type of direction? Do you speak with sound doctrine? If not, that’s an opportunity to come before God and say, God put my life in order. 

What it teaches us in this passage is a man is faithful, sober, blameless, has his house in order, his marriage in order, his sexuality in order, he’s hospitable, and he’s self-controlled. The world wants to tell us what a man is. The world wants to tell us what sexuality is. The world wants to tell us what marriage is. The world wants to tell us what good financial management is. 

But when we listen to the teaching of the world, it’s like taking financial advice from a broke person. Why on earth would we take our relationship marriage cues from a group of celebrities whose lives are train wrecks? We keep elevating men who are not men. They do not match the blueprint of Titus 1. 

And lastly, I just want to encourage us to build our lives upon this sound doctrine. The translation will say that this is teaching that is reliable, accurate, and true. And for the women in the room, I want you to encourage your men in this. I want you to pray for your men in this. And as men, we need to call other men to this, that we would be the kind of men who our lives in every way are reliable and accurate and true. 

Last point is this: the Scriptures will say to us that the wounds of a friend are faithful. The wounds of a friend. That means a friend coming with a faithful wound, saying, Hey, before God, I see this in you, that’s a faithful wound. 

And if you and I haven’t been faithfully wounded in the last six months, twelve months, we need to be around those who will faithfully wound us. Those who will come and say, Hey, look, remember, you’re living at this level, and the Scriptures call us to this. 

Let’s stand together and pray. Lord Jesus, as we gather around Your direct, reliable, accurate teaching this morning, we thank You for Your kindness that leads us to repentance. We’re so struck this morning by that picture, Jesus, of when You walked forth at Calvary and the cry went out, Behold the man. 

Jesus, You are the man. You’re the picture of masculinity, You’re the picture of strength, the picture of faithfulness, and help each of us to grow to be more like You. So, we pray for that. This city, this region, this nation, this world needs men modeled after the Scriptures, and so we pray that You would help lead us there, please. In Jesus’ name, amen.