Serving in Every Season

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But it was a great week at Vacation Bible School. I was grateful that I got to be a part of it. I was grateful that we got to do it.

There were a lot of people here working. There were a good number of kids that showed up. And the week for me was a picture of what we ought to be doing and what ought to motivate us in ministry, of what our church ought to strive for when it comes to our idea of success in ministry.

And I’ve talked with you about this a little bit, this idea of success in ministry. I think I talked about it last week, that a lot of people will gauge it by the size of your building, the size of your attendance, the amount of money that you take in. If all your numbers are good in those areas, if you’ve got the biggest programs, the biggest crowd, this and that, then you are a successful church.

And I think we missed something there. What I saw this week, and Christy said early on in the week, because we weren’t sure how many kids were going to come. this church hasn’t done VBS in two years because of COVID and so we weren’t sure and we were we were a little late getting our advertising put out and all that so we just honestly weren’t sure how many kids were going to show up but Christy told us early in early in the week Monday as we met for prayer not knowing how many kids were about to show up that if there were five kids here and we knew there were going to be five just if I brought mine and some of you brought yours we’ve already got five there.

If five kids show up, we’re still going to give them all we’ve got. And that’s what I saw happen this week. There are a lot of, and I’m not, I’m not putting down any other church, but let me tell you, there, there are a lot of churches that have a lot bigger programs and a lot bigger crowds, and they may, they may be more entertaining.

Their, their science experiments on stage may work out. They may remember all the words in the lesson. I forgot part of one of the Bible stories one night.

The kids came out really confused when they came back in here after my lesson. Listen, there may be churches where everything goes off without a hitch, but this week a bunch of kids came through Central Baptist Church and they know they mattered to us and that they matter to Jesus. Kids came through and people called them by name and knew them and knew their story.

And in many cases, we had people who were able to work with the kids one-on-one if that’s what they needed. And there were some who needed it this week. So those amens and those that you just heard were from the workers.

All right. But there were children and there were parents that know that they mattered to this church and that they matter to our Lord. And many, many of you had a hand in that.

And you know what? It was ministry. Oh, well, I just guarded the door.

If you were one of the guys out here working security, you kept the children safe and made sure nobody ran off with the church building. You know, it was a successful evening. Well, I was just putting out snacks.

Snacks are very important. Even Jesus put out snacks in ministry, right? But on top of that, I heard groups sitting down having conversations about the gospel where the snacks were springboard into that conversation.

Everything that you all did this week was ministry, even little efforts. They were efforts that pointed people to Jesus. Even if you weren’t here, if you’ve given money to this church, it’s gone into the pot, and it helped pay for vacation Bible school.

If you prayed for us, folks, if you’ve supported this in any way, you were part of that ministry. If you were up here at all last week in any capacity, helping out with children, would you stand please? I want you all to see how many people it took doing their part to pull this off.

and I feel like there were some others that that didn’t stand but that’s all right they’re in class yeah they’re they’re serving this morning and as a result of the ministry that this church did together we had three children that we know of who made professions of faith in Jesus Christ for the first time. And it’s not our goal just to see those numbers and see, hey, they made a profession of faith. Now let’s go get more and boost our numbers.

We followed up with them and are continuing to follow up with them. And one of those came from another church. We have we have sent word, hey, you need to you need to talk to your church.

You need to follow up with your pastor. You need. And so they’re going to talk with them and they’re going to hopefully disciple them as well.

That’s our goal is to invest in people, not only so they can know Jesus, but so they can grow closer to Him. Folks, that’s ministry. And it’s fitting that we should talk about that this morning as we’re coming to the close of this series that I’ve done on ministry.

This morning, we’re going to be in Titus chapter 2. Titus chapter 2, and we’re going to look at a passage that I taught on on a Sunday night several months ago and kind of gave you what I’ve heard preachers called the worm’s eye view. We went through this list of things that Paul points out that are important for the believers on the island of Crete that Titus was working with.

There’s this long list of characteristics that he wanted to see among the believers, and I gave you sort of a view into each of the items on that list. This morning we’re going to take more of a bird’s eye view of what Paul’s talking about here. And so if you would stand with me when you get to Titus chapter 2? If you don’t have your Bible, it’ll be on your screen up here, or you can, in our bulletin, there’s a link where you can get it right there on your phone if you have trouble seeing the screen.

Titus chapter 2. Paul is writing to Titus, who’s the pastor of the church on the island of Crete, and writing to him about training his people for Christian life and Christian service. So he says, but as for you, speak the things which are proper for sound doctrine, that the older men be sober, reverent, temperate, sound in faith, in love, in patience.

The older women likewise, that they be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things, that they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed. Likewise, exhort the young men to be sober-minded, in all things showing yourself to be a pattern of good works, in doctrine showing integrity, reverence, incorruptibility, sound speech that cannot be condemned, that one who is an opponent may be ashamed, having nothing evil to say of you, and you may be seated. Now again, as I said, I’ve given you within the last few months a more detailed view of each of those things that Paul was calling for, but I want to step back and look at the principle behind this of what he was instructing the church there at Crete to do.

He was writing to this group of people and telling them that it was their responsibility to point others to Jesus by the way they lived their lives. And that’s important for us to do. It is important for us as believers to live in such a way that it points other people to Jesus.

Now, I’m not talking about any kind of silent witness here. My dad, years ago when he was my Sunday school teacher as a kid, I remember bits and pieces of things that he said because I was in fifth grade at the time. But I remember him telling a story about a group of people in the entertainment industry in Hollywood who called themselves, at least back then, the silent witness.

And their idea was that they were going to witness about Jesus Christ without being too open and overt about it and driving people away. And I remember thinking, to borrow a phrase from an entirely different group, group of people, why don’t you just come out of the closet about it and be open? Isn’t that an easier way to tell people about Jesus, is just come out in the open and tell people about Jesus?

I understand what their point was, but at the same time, I don’t understand. I think it’s a mistake to buy too much into the philosophy that says, preach the gospel to all the world, and if necessary, use words. I’ve heard that quoted.

I’ve even said it myself, and then a few years ago, I started to think about that phrase, and it’s really not what Jesus told us to do. It’s attributed to St. Francis of Assisi.

I understand the sentiment. We want to live in a way that represents Christ, but to say, preach the gospel, and if necessary, use words, makes as much sense as saying, feed the hungry, and if necessary, use food. Well, what in the world else would I use, right?

We are called on as believers to open our mouths and share the gospel. People aren’t going to see us being nice to other people and just instinctively understand that they’ve sinned against God and Jesus paid for it on the cross. At some point, we’ve got to tell them.

But we do have to remember there’s some wisdom in all of this talking about the way we live our lives, that it does us very little good to open our mouths and tell them if our lives don’t match up with what we profess to believe. So we can’t go to one extreme or the other of saying, well, the only thing that matters is what we tell them, or of going to the other extreme and saying, well, we just need to live a good life. No, no, we need to open our mouths and tell them about Jesus, but we also need to live a life that backs up what we say.

To the best of our ability, we are still sinners, and part of our testimony is being willing to admit when we fall short of what we say we believe and show them what repentance and what that looks like and what it looks like to say I was wrong and he’s right and to rest in his forgiveness. So when he’s telling them that it’s important to represent Jesus Christ and point others to Jesus Christ by what they believe, it’s not Paul letting them off the hook and saying you can just be silent about your faith and live in such a way that you point people to Jesus. He’s up with what they say they believe.

And this lifestyle of pointing people to Jesus is a ministry. It was just assumed that they were going to be telling people about Jesus. You can’t read any of Paul’s letters without him talking about telling others about Jesus.

That seems to be the only thing Paul thought of. It reminds me of something Ann Richards, who was the governor of Texas, said years ago when she was running against George or George W. Bush was running against her.

She said he had a one-track mind that he was always talking tax cuts. That’s the only thing he thought of was you could ask him, George, what time is it? And he’d say tax cuts.

I don’t know if that’s true or not. I’ve just always remembered she said that. For Paul, Paul, what time is it?

The gospel. Paul, what do you want for lunch? Somewhere where we can tell people the gospel.

It was assumed that you were going to be share in the gospel. And to do that and to point people to Jesus with your mouth and with your life is ministry. Do you remember how I’ve defined ministry for you through this whole series?

Any effort you make to point others to, it’s not a trick question, I promise, to Jesus. Thank you. Any effort you make to point people to Jesus is ministry.

And so if we are deliberately living in a way that we know will bolster our testimony, that is part of our ministry. It’s not the only ministry we do, but it’s part of it. And this passage here tells us that every believer has a role to play in ministry regardless of where they are in life.

Because as you read through this, he instructs everybody. He covers the entire spectrum of the church. And he’s clear with every group of people that how we live is a powerful proof of what we believe.

And so he told Titus in verse 1 there, as for you, speak the things which are proper for sound doctrine. Here he’s talking to Titus, and by his reference here to speaking, what Paul’s talking about is Titus teaching and training the people in his church to go out and live in a way that represents Christ. That’s something every church should do, is invest in our people to be able to go out and represent Christ by what we say and by the way we live our lives. So he’s telling Titus, you need to go and train them in these things.

You need to encourage these things. You need to equip them for these things because this is their calling as Christians, and this is what you’re supposed to help them with doing. But he says to speak the things that are proper for sound doctrine.

And some of these words here have multiple meanings or multiple shades of meaning in Greek. And so what he’s talking about here being proper for sound doctrine basically means that the way they live should be noticeably and reliably consistent with what they say they believe. They’re not trying to be undercover about it.

They’re not hit or miss about it. But the world looks at them and says there is something different about them. We notice it.

There’s something different about them, not just at moments, but there’s something different about them as a pattern that we pick up on and it fits everything they say they believe. You know, if I try to play a trick on my kids, a lot of times they can tell, and we tell them we don’t lie in our house, but we do sometimes play tricks. That’s okay.

Depending on what it is. You bring a snake in the house, you live outside. Okay, that’s, I’m just, that’s the rule.

No jokes involving snakes. All right. But if I try to trick my kids, I have to be really careful because they can see the look on my face and read my body language, and it doesn’t match up with the story that I’m telling.

Like if I have just the slightest glimpse of a smile at the corner of my mouth, Madeline will look at me and say, no. See, because the way I’m carrying myself is not consistent with what I’m saying. And she can tell. And so he tells Titus, teach them, train them to do things that fit with what they say they believe.

To carry themselves in a way that fits, that is consistent with what they say they believe. And it means it’s consistent with the truth of the gospel. We’re supposed to live in a way that is consistent with our message that there is a holy God who has unchangeable standards of what is right and what is wrong.

And that’s unwelcome news to our world, but God’s standard of right and wrong has not changed and will not because it’s rooted in who He is. And as long as He is holy, then right will be right and wrong will be wrong. His standard has not changed and we’re supposed to live in a way that represents that.

He in 1 Peter 1. 14, it says, Be ye holy, for I am holy. Now, we cannot perfectly live up to that standard.

We cannot be holy in the same way God is. But that is the goal, is that our behavior as a pattern over time should reflect who He is. And all of the traits that Paul describes in these lists, these are not things that come naturally for us.

Read through these at some point. And we’ve already read through them together. But I tell you what, right there in verse 2, patience jumps not at me.

I’m glad I’m not old yet because he says the older men are supposed to be patient. That does not come naturally for me. That is not my spiritual gift at this point.

I’d like to think I’m a little closer to it than I used to be. But on some level, all of these things are things that run contrary to our human nature. We’re not always loving.

We’re not always patient. We’re not always discreet. If these things came naturally for us, he wouldn’t be talking about needing to be trained in those things, would he?

I’ve never had to teach my children to lie. I’ve never had to teach my children how to say mine. Never once before have we had a lesson with Carly Jo about how to say no. Some of you have heard that word a lot this week at VBS.

No, I tell her she sounds like Squidward. There are certain things that are just part of our nature that we don’t have to have lessons in. It’s the things that run counter to our nature that we have to be taught.

and we may have moments when we are loving when we’re patient when we’re kind when we’re discreet when we’re chaste but look at who we are in a crisis look at who you are in your heart when you’re stressed out when you’re tired when you’re hungry and that’s a pretty uh it’s a pretty accurate picture of who we really are and I don’t always like what I see there these are things that work against our human nature and yet he calls us to be holy now that’s something that only he can do in it’s something that we have to work at but it’s something we cannot do unless the holy spirit does it within us but the answer is not for us to say well it’s just not in my nature so I’m gonna I’m gonna do what comes naturally the world looks at all sorts of things that god has defined as sin and says well I was born that way so it must be all right I don’t care what we’re talking about if we’re talking about the the first thing that comes to mind is is homosexuality but other people well alcoholism, I was born with a taste for it.

It’s in my genes. It’s in my family. Others have said, well, I can’t control my temper because I’m Irish or German or Italian.

Funny how every nationality seems to have an issue with temper. But I’ve heard numerous people say, well, I can’t control my temper because I’m this, that, or the other. All sorts of things that are not right that we say, well, I was born that way, so that’s okay.

No, none of it’s okay. See, we’re all born with a sin nature, and we are all wired in such a way that certain sins get us more than others. Hebrews talks about the sin that does so easily beset us.

The answer is not for us to just say, well, God, I was born with it, so I might as well lean into the curve. No. We’re supposed to resist those things.

We’re supposed to seek the power of the Holy Spirit to turn away from those things as believers, to leave those behind. And so the objective is to grow to be more like God’s design for us. And this is not the entire list of everything God wants us to do, but Paul points out in these eight verses some things that we are supposed to aspire to that don’t come naturally, and that’s not an excuse for us not to do them.

The objective here is for us to live in such a way that we don’t provide the pagan world around us with excuses to reject Jesus. The world outside of here has plenty of excuses on its own to reject Jesus. But shame on me if I give them yet another reason because they say, well, look at that guy.

Look at Jared. He says he’s a Christian and look at how he acts. Have you heard that before?

Maybe not about yourself, but I’m sure we’ve heard that. Even Gandhi famously said that he didn’t care for Christianity because of the Christians. Now, I’d submit to you the Christ he said he revered was not the Christ of the Bible.

But still, we’ve all heard that on some level. I’m not interested in Jesus because of all the hypocrites in the church. Folks, the world is going to have all the excuses it wants to reject Jesus, but it’s our job to make sure we’re not one of those excuses.

He says here in verse 8, to do these things so that one who is an opponent may be ashamed having nothing evil to say of you. See, the way we live our lives is part of our ministry in that it can either point people to Jesus or away from Jesus. I saw something this week online where Greg Laurie had said we should be the bridge that brings people to Jesus rather than the barrier that keeps them away.

I tell you what, that nailed me right in my spirit. How we live is a powerful proof of what we believe. And it’s ministry.

The way you live and the way you do or don’t point people to Jesus Christ in your daily life is part of your ministry. And so all of this, If you’re reading through this at the beginning and saying, what does this have to do with ministry? It’s that.

That this is what undergirds our entire ministry. If we don’t get this right, it’s hard to get any of the rest of ministry right. But he talks here about the way they were going about ministry.

And it leads us to something very simple. Because I think we’ve made ministry complicated. And hopefully I’ve done something to clear that notion up for you over the last few weeks.

My hope is that instead of sitting there saying, I can’t do that, I can’t do ministry, my hope is that instead you’re sitting there now saying, how can I figure out what my ministry is? Because we all have one, and God’s going to equip you with the gifts and whatever you need to do what He’s called you to do. But ministry in its simplest form takes place within relationships.

These were not only things that Titus was supposed to teach the church. Yes, that was his ministry as the pastor of this church, was to speak the things that were proper for sound doctrine, as it says in verse 1, for him to do the teaching and the shepherding. But these were things that they were supposed to pass on to others.

You see in verse 4, it talks about the older women admonishing the young women. Now that sounds like a harsh word, but it’s really just talking about encouraging and providing an example. Admonish them to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the Word of God may not be blasphemed.

It said the older women were supposed to pass on to the younger women what they had learned. And it says in verse 6 that the older men are supposed to pass things on to the younger men as well. Likewise, exhort the young men to be sober-minded in all things, showing yourself to be a pattern of good works and doctrine, showing integrity, reverence, incorruptibility, sound speech that cannot be condemned.

These were things that were passed on. Now, he is not talking here about a class. He’s not talking about a formal intervention.

I’ve heard in churches some of the older women, and I’m going to use the word busybody. I’m not referring to all older women as busybody, but I’ve got one or two that I’m picturing in my mind not here, but in a previous instance, who were. By the way, young men can be busy bodies too.

It’s not just the older women. But in this case, I overheard a couple of women saying, look at how she dresses. We just need to get together with her and straighten her out and teach her.

After all, Titus says, okay, we’re not talking about a formal intervention. There’s a right way and a wrong way to do this. This is not a license to go and beat everybody over the head.

What he’s talking about here, if you look at the pattern of the early church, they were spending their days together. They were in fellowship together. They were breaking bread house to house.

They were spending time together. And over time, as you do that, relationships grow. And it’s only normal that in the context of those relationships between Christians, things are going to rub off, hopefully for the better.

As you’re spending time together, you learn from each other. As you’re spending time together, you grow together. How many spiritual conversations about God, about ministry in general have we had this week, those of us who are up here for VBS, that weren’t directly related to VBS.

Several. And I know in some of those conversations, I’ve learned some things or been reminded of some things that I need to be reminded of. As you’re serving together, as you’re spending, you know, I hate the phrase doing life. I think it’s been way overused by megachurches, but sometimes it just fits.

As you’re doing life together, as you’re living life together, what you know about God and who He is and what He wants for you, the spiritual lessons that you have gleaned from His Word by the power of the Holy Spirit, those things are going to rub off. It’s just natural. Some of the best teaching I do with my kids is not when we’re sitting down having a homeschool class. Because when we’re sitting down having a lesson, I can be sitting down after work and doing a Bible lesson with them and they’re just off in la-la land.

But we can be driving down the highway in the truck and they start asking me questions and they start soaking it up and we’re just spending life together. I remember a time a few months ago, just working out in the yard, Benjamin starts asking me questions about ministry. I can sit there and try to teach them history and it goes right over their heads, but we’re sitting there at the dinner table and I mentioned D-Day to Charla and they asked me what’s D-Day and I think we covered that and you don’t remember, but I start just talking at the dinner table about D-Day and about what those young men sacrifice for, what they stormed the beaches for, the freedoms that we have and take for granted and people want to take away from us and silence us now today.

And I had myself and the children in tears and they got it. Just spending life together. We teach and learn best through relationships.

And that’s what he’s describing here. Not that the old women were going to get together in a council and go straighten out the younger women, but that they were going to invest in each other. They were going to spend time together.

They were going to build relationships and through that they were going to teach them through their wisdom and also through their example of what it meant to be a good wife and a good mother. Likewise, the older men were going to do that with the younger men. Not get together and say, we need to have a meeting about this, we need to have a class about this, but let’s go fishing, let’s go to lunch, let’s go have coffee, and they would talk.

I don’t know that they went to coffee back then, but that’s how it would work in our day. Relationships together in the church, investing in one another. It’s describing people living their lives together and allowing spiritual growth to happen naturally as the Holy Spirit worked through that situation.

So let me tell you, if you ever think that you don’t have the skills or the talent to serve anywhere in ministry, just consider the fact that pointing others to Jesus Christ often begins with just spending time together. Not all of it is cold call knocking on somebody’s door. Not all of it is standing on a soapbox on the street corner with a bullhorn.

As a matter of fact, I would submit to you those may not even be the most effective means of ministry. Now, if God’s called you to do those, go do them. But sometimes the most effective ministries start with just spending time together.

And it doesn’t require a budget. It doesn’t require facilities or personnel to do that. It’s something all of us can do.

Now, as a church, we pool our resources for budget and personnel and facilities so that we can take that a step further. But don’t think you can’t do anything in ministry because you don’t have the budget. or you don’t have lots of help or you don’t have a big building to do it.

It starts with relationships. And as we talk about how the older women were supposed to invest in the younger women and they were supposed to learn from the older women, and same thing with the men, that brings me to my final point this morning that there’s no infancy or requirement exemption to ministry. Now what do I mean by that?

I met a man years ago in the first church I pastored and I thought surely he’s got to be interested in doing something in ministry because he’s got all these opinions and thoughts about how everybody else is doing ministry. So bring him in and give him something to do. And so I was asking him, would you be interested in helping out with this?

No, I’m not going to do that. Normally when people say no, it’s just I’ll pray about it and then it’s never mentioned again and they hide when they see you coming. But he was really open.

No, I’m not doing that. Okay. Well, would you like to help out with this?

Nope. I’m not doing that either. Okay.

Is there something in particular you, is there something you’d like to do? Something you’d feel led to do? No, I don’t have to do anything.

This man’s dead and he doesn’t even realize it. Okay. Why, why do you not have to do anything?

I worked in the bus ministry 40 years. I’ve done my time. I’m retired.

I don’t have to do anything else now. And I remembered, I remembered what my pastor to say growing up. There is no retirement in ministry.

There’s just reassignment. Now, to be fair, if the Lord tarries long enough and I live long enough, there will be a day that I’ll retire from pastoring, at least full-time pastoring. I think I’d get bored if I didn’t have anything to do.

But at some point, I would retire. When I say there’s no retirement from ministry, I don’t mean that there’s no retirement from a particular assignment. But there’s no point where we say, I’ve done my time, I don’t have to do anything else for the Lord anymore.

He says the older people were to encourage and equip the younger ones. By the way, he also, Paul told Timothy, don’t let any man despise your youth. Do what God’s called you to do.

There should be, he breaks it down here into old and young. I know in our day and age, we have all these, we have adolescence that’s supposed to last until you’re about 50 now. And then there’s middle age, there’s working age, there’s retirement, there’s senior adult, there’s all these things.

There was no spectrum of age divisions in their day in the Roman world. You had old and you had young. He says, old, you’ve got a role to play.

Young, you’ve got a role to play. That covers everybody. When it comes to human beings, there’s only one non-arbitrary difference between us.

God made two kinds of people, men and women. Race is something we made up. Age, I mean, you can’t cut somebody in half and count the rings.

Age is not necessarily all that scientific a demarcator either. There’s men and there’s women. Guess what?

He covers both of them. Everybody is involved in ministry. Everybody is in the life of the church.

Don’t lie to yourself and say, I’m too old. There’s something you ca