Churches Helping Families

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Transcript:

Open your Bibles and turn with me to Titus chapter 2. Titus chapter 2. Today’s the last message in this series on building godly families.

I’m sure I’ll talk about families again at some point, but as far as this series, we’re coming to the close of it. And as I’ve been preaching, as I’ve been studying and preaching on the family, I’ve been thinking about my own and how grateful I am to have had the parents that I have and the extended family, really, that I have. Good people, not perfect.

We’re not a perfect family, but we’ve got some good people in my family. I was thankful for my parents when they offered, I don’t think Christian even had to ask, but they offered to keep Benjamin for a week so that we could run around and do vacation Bible school and all that without having to keep him, and they were willing to meet us halfway yesterday to pick him up. I was really thankful when after we broke down on I-40 on the way to meet them, I was really thankful as I was hanging halfway out of a hot car engine to see them coming.

I was really thankful for them at that point and them bringing us back. They didn’t get home. They didn’t get back to Oklahoma City until 1.

30 last night. But I really am thankful for the kind of parents that God gave me. And I know most people would do that for their children, but the fact is my parents did that, and I was grateful.

They’re wonderful, loving people. Somebody last week was complimenting me on my parenting, and my first thought was to say, Christian, are you listening to this? Make sure you pay attention to what this nice lady’s saying.

But after that, I said, well, I had, you know, really not me. I had good role models. My parents are good people.

My dad especially, not that he’s better than my mother, But for a dad, I mean, he was a very involved dad, still is. But I was telling how when I was a kid, sometimes they’d have ladies’ events at the church, and they’d get to go off without their kids for a while. And all of the dads, it seemed, tried to figure out how to get out of having to take care of their kids, having to deal with their kids.

And my dad was the kind that I remember on numerous occasions. Not only would he take us willingly, gladly take us and watch us, and either watch us at home or take us out and do something fun, But he’d tell everybody else he’d take their kids too. And so he just kind of raised everybody, I think.

But I had a good role model as a father. And again, not perfect, but I try to look to his example where applicable and learn from his example and also learn from his weaknesses as well and try to do even better. I know that my parents were made better as parents by their involvement in church.

My parents, I grew up thinking my family was normal, and the further I progressed in school, I realized we were the weird ones, because my parents were still married to each other. They had us in church every Sunday, well, three or four times a week. We were just, I thought that’s the way everybody lived, but my parents were weird, I guess, and still are.

I want to be weird like them. But I know their being in church and having us in church made them better parents as they learned the principles of God’s Word is how they apply to the family, learn by example. I know it made us better kids by being in church, made me a better son to them, learning what God’s Word said about how I was supposed to act and treat my parents, and looking to other godly examples.

And I truly believe it makes me a better father to be in church, to be involved in church. It makes me a better father to Benjamin and a better husband to Christian because I can look around at the examples around me and learn things, see examples that I won’t necessarily see in the rest of the world. The church is an excellent place for families, or at least it should be when the church works correctly.

It’s an excellent place for families. People ask me, especially people from other denominations that where they’re required to have certain degrees to even pastor or anything like that, well, ask me where I went to seminary. And now if I’m not in the mood or whatever, I’ll just tell them I didn’t go to seminary, Didn’t go to Bible college.

If I’m feeling mischievous, as I often am, I’ll tell them I went to Southgate, and they’ll say, well, where’s that? If you don’t know, that’s the church I went to as a teenager, and where Christian and I met. Anyway, that’s where I went to seminary and Bible college because I learned more about God’s Word during my time there than anywhere before it, all the years leading up to it, and learned about ministry and learned about life.

Two of the best examples I’ve ever had in ministry were two men that some of you I know, named Mike Mobly and Doug Brewer, who’s the youth pastor and pastor over there, respectively. And watching them, not only at how they did ministry, but how they treated their families while they were in ministry. And there were other godly men that I was able to look to, for examples, even before I was a husband, even before I was a father, to learn from their example.

But one of the things that I love about these two men is the way they always made time for their families. And now I know they’re not perfect at it, and I know I won’t be perfect at it, but I try to follow the example that I learned from them of not, as important as the calling to pastor is of not sacrificing my family on the altar of ministry, that they would take time out of their day to go to their kids’ school and be involved in what they were doing, or they would make me wait while we were having a conversation, unless it was really important, they’d make me wait while they took a call from their wives. Things like that.

It’s not as though ministry was just an afterthought to them, but their families were so important. It was their first ministry. And folks, I didn’t learn that from seminary, not that they don’t teach it.

I don’t know if they teach it or not. But I didn’t learn that from seminary. I didn’t learn that from out in the world.

I learned that in the local church. And folks, the local church, whether we’re talking about you going into ministry as a pastor or ministry as a Christian. We as Christians, we’re all called into ministry of some sort.

There’s so much that we can and should learn in the local church about not just how to do ministry, but how to minister to our families as well. And so as we close out this series, we’ve talked about really why we should care about the family. We’ve talked about the role of the husband.

We’ve talked about the role of the wife. We’ve talked about the responsibilities of children and parents. I want to close out today by discussing the role of the church.

in the family because the church does play a role. The church does play a role. There are some things that the church does and should do very well, and there are other things that the church should not do.

Example number one, the best example I can give you is that the job of the church is not to raise our children. That sounds almost heretical in our culture where people say, oh, I want my kids at church. The youth pastor, I want them teaching them.

I want this going on. I want that going on for my kids to learn. There are things that, you know, I’m all for kids being at church.

I think they should be at church. I think they should learn things at church and be involved and be active and have friends and have things to do. But the idea of foisting our kids off on the church and saying, here, raise them, folks, it doesn’t work.

Because as far as services, as far as this teaching time, and not including Sunday school and Bible studies and other times when they might be here. We’re talking three hours a week in church of these services. Folks, just in sheer numbers of time, if we’re talking about somebody raising somebody and having an influence, we’re losing to the schools big time.

We’re losing to the media big time. If kids are foisted off on the church and said, here, raise them, produce godly kids, folks, it won’t happen. We don’t have the time.

Not that we don’t want to take the time. We just don’t have the time with them. If we’re the only ones, if the church is the only one investing in them to make them godly, not to make them godly, but to raise them to be godly, if the church is the only one investing in them, it’s not going to work.

We need godly parents to raise children. We need godly husbands and wives to love one another. And folks, the church does not take the place of anybody in the family.

The church comes alongside to help, to support what should be going on in the house, in the home. We’re going to look this morning at Titus chapter 2. It’s a passage I preached on here before, but we’re going to come at it from a little bit different perspective today.

So in case you do remember the message from several months ago, and I won’t make you raise your hand, I won’t give you a quiz on it or anything, but if you do remember me preaching on this a few months ago, it’s going to be a different message today. Verse 1 of chapter 2, before we get into it, Paul is writing to Titus, who is a young pastor, kind of like Timothy, As a matter of fact, I read yesterday where some people try to say that he was Timothy, that Timothy and Titus are the same person. And I remembered back to the book of Acts where, make sure I don’t get them mixed up, but it seems like Paul insisted that Timothy be circumcised and Titus not be circumcised or vice versa.

And I thought, well, there, how can they be the same person? Yet there are serious Bible scholars who try to tell us that this is written to Timothy. Titus was separate from Timothy, and he’s a pastor on the island of Crete, a big island south of Greece.

And it’s written to him to help him as he shepherds this church, as this young man pastors this flock. And Paul has written him with advice to help him to do that right. Titus chapter 2 verse 1 says, But speak thou the things which become sound doctrine.

Teach them sound doctrine. Teach them the truth of God’s Word. Verse 2, that the aged men be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith, in charity, in patience.

Those two verses are tied together. We’re to teach sound doctrine in order to feed into the kinds of behaviors that become sound doctrine. See, if our church, if any church, is so focused on being good, but they neglect the truth over here, then all you’ve got are what the Bible calls whitewashed tombs.

You’ve just got a bunch of empty shells of outwardly seeming good people who don’t know the truth of God’s Word. It’s never been alive in their hearts, the truth of God’s Word. On the other hand, if we can’t be so focused on the truth, folks, if we’re focused on the truth, we won’t neglect this, but we can’t just make sure people are educated with the right things that they need to know and not expect that we’re supposed to behave a certain way, that we’re not supposed to apply it in our lives.

We’re supposed to teach the truth. The church is supposed to teach the truth of God’s word and then show how it’s to be applied in people’s lives. So he says, teach thou the things that become sound doctrine, and then he ties it into the way that the church people are supposed to behave.

That the aged men be sober, be grave, temperate, sound in faith, in charity, in patience. And folks, I won’t go into great detail. I have before, but I won’t go into great detail this morning on what those words mean because they’re fairly self-explanatory.

We know what it means to be patient. We know what it means to be charitable or loving, sound in faith, temperate. Grave and sober are a little more difficult, but grave basically means serious about the things that we need to be serious about.

And sober means sober-minded, to be clear-thinking. These are not necessarily attributes that are valued in our society today, but in the local church, they need to be taught and exemplified. The aged women likewise, verse 3, that they be in behavior as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things, that they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.

And I honestly cannot tell you why there are more instructions there. There are three verses of instruction there for the older women and one verse of instruction for the older men. Now, I don’t think it’s that God says here you have three times as much responsibility.

I think maybe Paul just got a little more specific, probably in response to, we know from some of the other early churches that there were some problems with some of the women, specific problems, excuse me, with some of the women, not women as a whole, but specific women who were causing specific problems in the churches. That may have been his way of addressing specific problems that were coming up. Teach them to do these things.

And by the way, these things for the men are not easy either. But he says, teach sound doctrine to the people so that they will act in such a way that the men will be godly men, that the women will be godly women and will teach the young women to be so also. See, there’s an element here of not just learning it, not just living it, but also passing it on, expecting it from the younger generation.

Young men likewise exhort to be sober-minded. The young men were not left out here either. He just comes back to them in verse 6.

The things that the men are taught, the older men are taught, the things that the older men live, they need to pass on to the younger men as well. In all things, so that nobody is left out here, so that nobody’s got a greater burden than anybody else, in all things, showing thyself a pattern of good works. In case any character trait or character flaw was left out to be addressed, in case any virtue was left out unmentioned, he says, in all things, showing thyself a pattern of good works.

Here’s what it boils down to, Titus. Teach your church sound doctrines so that they go out and, as a result, show themselves a pattern of good works. In other words, teach your church not only to believe the right thing, but to do the right thing.

And we could get into a laundry list of do’s and don’ts and behavior, but it’s a lot easier just to say, do what God expects of you. Teach the people in the church to do what God expects of them and teach them to teach each other as well. In all things, showing thyself a pattern of good works, in doctrine showing uncorruptness, gravity, sincerity, sound speech that cannot be condemned, that he that is of the contrary part may be ashamed, having no evil thing to say of you.

Folks, this passage was written a little over 1,900 years ago and is still as relevant as the newspaper, depending on how relevant your newspaper is. It’s as relevant as it can be today. Verse 8, he says that he that is of the contrary part may be ashamed, having no evil thing to say of you.

Paul is addressing in Titus’ church certain problems that had come up with behavior with people not only not living the way they were supposed to, not believing the way they were supposed to, but also teaching and infecting others with their wrong beliefs and their wrong behavior. And as a result, the people that he says are of the contrary part, the people who were opposed to the church, the people who were opposed to the gospel, the people who were opposed to the claims of Christ, were given occasion to speak evil of him, of his doctrine, and of his church because of the bad behavior on the part of the people. Why is that so relevant?

What does that have to do with us? We have all heard, I would be willing to bet if I was a betting man, that we have all heard people say that they don’t want to go to church, they don’t want to be Christians, they don’t want whatever because of the hypocrites. Of course, my response to that is not necessarily as nice as it should be.

I’ve had people tell me when I’ve invited them to church, not here, don’t worry about it, but back home, no, I don’t want to come to church. There are too many hypocrites. And I tell them, come on, there’s always room for one more.

Again, that’s not as nice as it should be, but I have said that in the past and I probably should repent of that. But we’ve all heard people say they don’t want to come to church because of the hypocrites. They don’t want any part of Christianity because of the hypocrisy.

They see people around us that claim to be born again, that claim to have been bought with a price, that claim to have been redeemed by the blood of Christ, and yet they live as bad as the world, if not worse. When every indicator says that the churches are no different from the community around them, people say, what’s the point of Christianity? Folks, they’re not just slandering us.

If they’re slandering us because of the bad things that we do, we deserve it. The fact is, what we do as people who claim the name of Jesus Christ reflects on him, accurately or inaccurately. And so when we think, oh, it’s just a little bit of sin, it’s just a little bit of this or that, it’s not a bad thing, we’ll excuse it, we’ll justify it, and we’ll not behave as though we know we’re supposed to, the world sees it, and it doesn’t just reflect us, it reflects on Christ. It reflects on his church.

I used to tell my sister there was a time, and I hope it wouldn’t embarrass her to share this. She’s pretty open about it. There was a time when we were teenagers that she had started to rebel against my parents.

And people at church used to tease that she had three parents because I’m kind of the poster child for oldest siblings. Just was on her all the time trying to make sure she did the right thing. And some of you have older siblings, and probably that drove you crazy.

Some of you are older siblings and thinking, well, why wouldn’t you do that? She had started to rebel against my parents, and I was just as disappointed as they were about some of the things that were going on. And so I used to drag her to church with me.

Now, that’s not to say that my parents weren’t going to church, but I was 16, and I had a car, and I was at church every day. Because I liked being at church. I liked being around God’s people.

And there were always things going on. And I may not have spent eight hours a day up there, but I was at church every day. And I would drag her up there with me, and we would do things.

And there was something that, well, she started going to church more. She started listening to the teaching of God’s Word more. It began to sink in, and things began to change, and that was good.

And we developed a saying. I don’t know if she’d remember it now, but I used to tell her, remember who you are and who you represent. Because we lived in a town, it’s about 50,000 people now, but my family had lived there for three generations, not that we were prominent or special or rich or anybody, but through the various churches we’d been part of and my grandparents having lived there, there were people that had lived there for years also that we knew and who knew us.

And word just gets around. It was like a small town within a bigger town. And I told her, the things you’re doing, the things you’re doing at school, the language you’re using, the way you’re dressing after you, I said, these things don’t just reflect on you.

They reflect on our family. They reflect on our church. People know where we go to church.

And they reflect on Jesus because you tell people you’re a Christian. Folks, not that I’m perfect in this either, but I think, even though it came from me, I think it’s pretty good advice that we remember who we are and who we represent. And that’s the advice that basically he gives them here.

In all things, showing thyself a pattern of good works. In doctrine, showing uncorruptness, gravity, sincerity, sound speech that cannot be condemned. that he that is of the contrary part may be ashamed, having no evil thing to say of you.

If we, as Christians, are tired of the way the world perceives us, if we’re tired of them thinking we’re hypocrites, if we’re tired of them thinking we’re just like them, if we’re tired of them thinking all of the negative things that they think about us, why don’t we work harder to prove them wrong? Why don’t we just do what we’re supposed to do? Now, that doesn’t mean the world’s instantly going to fall in love with the church or that the world’s instantly going to fall in love with God because there’s an element in here of people not liking the church, people not liking Christianity because they’ve rejected Christ, because people don’t like to admit their sin.

Folks, we can’t change that, and that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about being soft on sin. I’m not talking about minimizing the blood or the offensive parts of the gospel.

What I’m talking about is by our behavior, if there’s anything in our behavior that gives the world outside an occasion to speak evil of us, gives the world an occasion to speak evil of our church or of the gospel and the Christ that we represent, we ought to knock it off. It’s just as simple as that, that they might have no evil thing to say of you. He says, exhort servants to be obedient unto their masters and to please them well in all things, not answering again.

We’re going to stop right there. This passage has led us up to the point where we’re going to stop today, because up to this point, he’s been talking about the older in the church, the older women, and how Titus was to teach them sound doctrine and teach them the way to behave so that they would behave that way and that they would pass it on to the younger men. Folks, that is discipleship.

We talk about, churches talk about discipleship, and a lot of churches don’t do anything about it. I’m hoping that in the next, in the coming weeks, we’ll start something along those lines with disciple way. But folks, the reason a lot of churches don’t do anything about discipleship really in any organized way is because we’ve made it more complicated than it needs to be.

Discipleship is any relationship between two or more people where we pass on the things that we’ve learned about Christ and about how to follow Him. Folks, that’s discipleship. What he’s talking about here is discipleship, where he passes on what he knows, what Paul has instructed him in, what he knows from the Word of God and what he knows of Christ, to teach those things to his congregation.

And folks, If the pastor of the church is the only one doing any discipling, it’s not going to get done. Now, I have a responsibility to lead in it, but if I’m the only one, just like with evangelism, if I’m the only one telling people about Christ, if I’m the only one inviting people to church, if I’m the only one making people feel welcome when they come in the door, and by the way, I’m not saying these things are going on, I’m just saying if. Well, the same thing is true with discipleship.

Of all of these things, it won’t get done. At least it won’t get done in the numbers that it needs to be done. What he’s talking about here is teaching his people to go out and teach one another.

The older men who’d been through experience in life and knew more about the world, they were wiser whether the younger people wanted to admit it or not. Whether young people want to admit it today or not, our elders have things to teach us. And people who’ve walked with God for a long time, people who know what it means to follow Christ, have something to share with those who come behind.

That’s why I don’t understand the concept of a generation gap in a local church. It doesn’t make sense to me and it shouldn’t be there. We’re all one body and there should be relationships between the older people and the younger people and the in-between people as we all pass on to those behind us what we know about Christ and about following him.

Folks, he tells Titus, teach sound doctrine for your people. and then the older men, that they should live this way, and then in verse 6, that they should pass it on to the younger men as well. Young men likewise exhort to be sober-minded.

And when he says likewise, that follows what he’s talking about, about specifically the older women teaching the younger women. I don’t think he’s saying, Titus, just like you taught the older men in verse 2. Now in verse 6, go and teach them likewise.

I think he’s referring to the verses right before it, where the older women taught the younger women. Likewise, let the older men exhort the younger men. And now we’ve talked about this before in terms of discipleship.

I want us to talk this morning about the family, how this applies to the church coming alongside and helping the family. Because what we’re talking about as Christians, even in raising our family, really, whether we realize it or not, is discipleship. I am supposed to prepare my child for life as any parent is supposed to, but as a Christian parent, as a Christian father, I have the added responsibility of not just preparing them for life, but of discipling my children, of doing everything I can to raise them up to be godly men and women, faithful followers of Jesus Christ. And folks, the church does have a role in helping make sure that’s the case.

The example given throughout here is that the older teach the younger. Now, I submit to you, at this point, most of them had been Christians for, Well, I don’t think there was as big a gap as there is today. You know, we’ve got people who’ve been Christians for 70 years or however long, and people that have been Christians for a few months.

At this point, nobody except the youngest had really been a Christian for the majority of their life because all of it was so new. Jesus had only been crucified at the most 30 years before this was written, and it had taken the gospel a little while to make it this far. but there was wisdom to be shared from those who were older.

And folks, I think this truth is not necessarily for us chronological age because you can be young and have walked with Christ for many years and be older and have just found him. I believe it was 21 years ago that I was born again as a Christian. I was five years old at the time.

Now, did I immediately know everything I needed to know to go out and teach other people? no, I needed to be taught. And that’s where not only my family, but the local church came in.

And I learned from my parents the principles of God’s Word. I learned Bible stories. I learned how to apply the truth of the Bible to my life.

I learned how to read the Bible. I was taught those things in church as well and got to see it wasn’t just my parents. My parents weren’t just crazy, but here are all these adults, all these godly people that are trying to do the same things that my parents are doing.

And folks, even at five years old at Temple Baptist Church in Norman, Oklahoma, I began to be discipled. I began to see these kinds of examples played out before me. Later on at Southgate, I saw these things being played out before me and learned not just the principles of God’s Word, but how to apply them to my life.

What it meant to take a stand for Christ in my school. What it meant to be a faithful Christian at work. What it meant to go out and tell people about Christ, what it meant to one day love my wife and love my children, the things that I needed to know, not just about theological matters, not just about abstract debates, but the things that really apply on a day-to-day basis where the principles of God’s Word should have an impact on the way we live our lives.

I learned those things not just by studying the Bible, but by studying the lives of people around me. And now I’ve been a Christian for over 20 years. And there are people older than me who I’ve met over the years who have not been a Christian as long as I have.

And you know what? I’ve been able to share things that I’ve learned with them. I don’t think it’s just a chronological thing here.

But in general, the principle is that those who have gone further in life, whether it’s our life here on earth, whether it’s our spiritual life, the ones who have gone further down the trail, teaching those who are further behind, and bringing them by the hand along with us to where we need to be. That’s the principle that’s taught here. And that’s what should be going on in our homes.

That’s what the ideal is for what should be going on in our homes. We can’t be so worried about our own spiritual condition, and I want to learn God’s Word, and I want to know more about Him. I want to know Him better, all the while neglecting our children and leaving them alone to find their own way.

I need to be discipling my children, and I try to do that. I think of the opportunities I’ve wasted already, that I could have been telling Benjamin Bible stories already instead of reading him I’m a little teapot. There’s nothing wrong with that until you’ve read it 60 times and have to hide the book.

But I want to not just do it when I think about it, but as the years go by, I want to be intentional about discipling my children. And folks, the same thing they see at home is what they need to see on an even bigger scale here at the church. As they come in and they see what it means for, as Benjamin grows up and sees what it means for men to be here, week after week, serving God, studying His Word, praying, leading, loving their wives, loving their children, demonstrating to Him what it means to be a godly man, reinforcing what He sees at home.

Folks, the things that God calls on us as Christians in our families to do, they will not see. Our children, our grandchildren, some of us are great-grandchildren. They will not see out in the world.

They’re not going to see it. By and large, they’re not going to learn these things in the public schools. They are, by and large, not going to see these principles modeled out, I’m sorry to say, by our government leaders.

They are not going to learn these things on MTV and Nickelodeon. They’re going to see these things from godly parents, and that needs to be reinforced in the church where it’s not going to be reinforced elsewhere. Demonstrate to them that, hey, my parents, my grandparents, they’re not crazy.

They’re not the only ones that live this way. Here are all these people. Here are all these people that I can look to.

Again, I look to my parents’ examples, but I also look to Brother Doug and Brot

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