Masculinity, Femininity, and Other Relics of the Ancient World

Transcript

So, this morning, as Greg mentioned earlier, this will be a standalone message in Titus chapter 2, so if you have Bibles or apps or whatnot, feel free to turn there as we kind of get started. Just a little background on this, so early this summer, Pastor Greg was preaching from the Book of Colossians, and he had a particularly challenging text going through what are called the household codes, right, talking about husbands and wives and children and employees and how they relate to one another, and he did just such a great job nuancing these very sensitive and potentially controversial issues, and I’m not like Josh, I don’t have a gift of encouragement, so when I compliment a preacher, it’s really genuine, I’ve got to search for it and find it, but I’m sitting there, I’m like, this is really good, learning from an older, wise brother who’s been faithfully married, who’s raised his kids, I leaned over to my

wife and I whispered to her, I just said, this is so helpful, and then I thought, and I said, and there’s so much here, this needs to be like a whole Sunday school class, there’s just so many complexities and applications for different kind of stages and stations in life, and how do we wrestle through all these issues of the controversy in our culture and practical application, I’m like, we need like a class or something on this. So in the same way that Greg struggled to fit everything in and every question that you might have had in his sermon, I’m not gonna somehow come and be like, okay, so now here’s part two, and we’ve like crossed all the t’s and dotted all the i’s, we put it all in a nice little bow for you, issues related to marriage and family and gender and sexuality and headship and submission and go on and on of all these hot topic and

challenging issues, so no, I’m not gonna try to cover it all, and I looked in the service planner and it said I had 32 minutes, so I’m definitely not gonna be able to cover it all. But this is kind of still very relevant for us, and if you’re single this morning, please don’t check out, it’s not gonna be like a practical kind of like marriage and parenting tips, but rather I want to talk about foundational truths about who God is and what it means to be made in his image. Truths like what does it mean to be a man who reflects God’s image? What does it mean to be a woman who reflects God’s image? And finally, how do men and women, how are they designed to complement one another and serve together in the purpose God has given them? These are questions of teleology, what is purpose in life? These

Sound Doctrine and Healthy Households

are questions of anthropology, what does it mean to be human? Now, if you’ve been paying attention at all, you know that our culture is entirely struggling, trying to figure these things out and kind of crowdsource and reinvent all the things that God has designed and put within the fabric of creation. And I’d actually written a long like rant about this cultural moment, but I’m gonna spare you that, and particularly, I don’t know if you know this meme, it’s like the old Simpsons guy raising his fist in the sky, and it’s the meme of just like old man like waves fist at the sky. And I didn’t want to be like the religious guy that just comes up and is like, man, young people these days, isn’t it crazy? So instead of the rant about the crazy things that you might see on TikTok, I want to give

you just a little bit of my family background as I jump into the text, just so you know who’s talking to you. I’m a millennial child of parents who were the products of the sexual revolution. My mom met my dad when she picked him up hitchhiking in Southern California. They never married, and my dad was never committed to my mom, nor to being a part of raising me. So I only knew him, I have a couple memories of him when I was really young, and then he was around for about a year or two when I was in junior high. In fact, I have at least five half-siblings around the world from my father. He spread his wild oats widely, and none of them knew their dad. So I grew up without a father figure, and I grew up in a community largely influenced by New Age, and you could say, like, countercultural thinking. And honestly,

I was surrounded by other single moms, and a lot of struggling young people, especially boys who had no idea what it meant to be a man, let alone what it means to be a husband or a father. That’s a foreign concept. And then Jesus got a hold of my life in high school, and my rebellion at that time wasn’t doing drugs, it was getting baptized and going to Bible study. My mom went to this Unitarian Universalist church that had a motto, and their motto was, we tolerate all but the intolerant. We tolerate all but the intolerant. So you got to admire the honesty there, even though there’s clearly a lack of self-awareness and a basic understanding of logic. I’ll let you figure that one out. So I joined the Intolerant Club because I took the Bible seriously and started following Jesus, and as a young believer

began to meet Christian men. And honestly, for the first time in my life, as a 16-year-old, I had positive male role models. They just didn’t exist in my life up till then. But I had to learn and struggle, and it continues to be a struggle. And so as a husband and a father to three young boys and four girls, I’ve had to figure it out along the way. So I’m not the expert. I’m definitely not going to win the best family man ever award, but by God’s grace, I might be a runner-up in the most improved category, if you know what I mean. With that background, let’s jump into the text. Would you stand for the reading of God’s Word, and then we’ll pray. We’re in Titus chapter 2. I’m going to read from 1 through 10, but we’ll focus on 1 through 8. But as for you, teach what accords with

sound doctrine. Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. Older women, likewise, are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the Word of God may not be reviled. Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled. Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching, show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us. Bond servants are to be submissive to their own masters in everything. They are to be well-pleasing, not argumentative, not pilfering, but showing all good faith, so that

in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior. This is the Word of the Lord. Let’s pray. Lord, lead us this morning to a deeper knowledge of you. Lord, I confess my need, most of all, in living out the exhortations and the encouragements of this passage, and to be—to being the man that you call me to be. And I pray for your people, that we would be helped by your Holy Spirit in walking out the calling that you’ve placed in our life, of embodying the gendered identity that you have given us, and living it in the midst of a confusing day and age. So help us, Lord, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen. You can be seated. Okay, these are the four points that we’re gonna be covering as we go through this text. Some will be background, some will be jumping in the text, and then looking forward. So first is sound doctrine and healthy households in a

Masculinity and Femininity

world that has gone goblin mode, and I’ll define that a little bit. Masculinity, femininity, and other relics of the ancient world. And the third point will be leave it to Beaver and the lost household economy. And then finally, the God who adopts goblins and makes all things new. So that’s where we’re going. First, sound doctrine and healthy households in a world that has gone goblin mode. Okay, let’s begin by looking at the social context for the letter of Titus. If you look back a little bit in chapter 1, verse 5, it just says this. He says, this is Paul the Apostle writing to this pastor Titus, and he says, this is why I’ve left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order and appoint elders in every town as I directed you. So he needs to put things in to order. So what’s out of order in this young church? Well, as we’ll see, that as was the case both in

the church corporately and in the individual families and households of the believers, things were out of order. And there’s at least two reasons that the text shows. First, there were these false teachers and these religious charlatans leading people astray. I imagine kind of like John Goodman’s the one-eyed Bible salesman from where, oh brother, where art thou? Like just these guys are coming in and preaching for their own gain, teaching a false legalistic gospel. And it says in verse 11, he says, they must be silenced since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach. And that translation, upsetting whole families, I think doesn’t quite get across like the full weightiness of this issue of what these false teachers are doing. It kind of, I imagine, upsetting families is like mom and dad are on the dinner table debating theology, or like the Joneses getting up and leaving because the guest preacher

said something that they didn’t like at church. Okay, I hope that doesn’t happen this morning. But another translation, the Christian Standard Bible translates this phrase like this. It just says, they are ruining entire households. Ruining entire households. I think that better gets across how significant this issue is, the severity of what’s happening. That entire households, the nuclear family, and the extended family, and everything surrounding in the household, were being ruined by this false teaching. So you have these false teachers, but you also have the social context and what it was like to live here in this place of Crete. And in verse 12, Paul quotes this Cretan poet who says this. He says, one of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons. And then lest you think that the Cretan that’s saying all Cretans are liars is lying, he says, real talk, this testimony is true. So here you

have a description of someone offering social commentary on their own pagan culture, saying, man, we are messed up. It’s kind of like, I don’t know if you listen to it, this last week, the song called Richmond, North of Richmond, blew up. And some guy out of nowhere, who no one ever heard of, wrote this protest song about what he’s experiencing, and his angst and frustration in our culture. And it like blew up, and there’s like 25 million views on YouTube, and all the response videos, and number one on the charts. But it just kind of captures, right, a social commentary where you say, I don’t know the solution to what’s going on, but man, I feel like things are messed up here. I feel like I’m in like the late Roman Empire before the collapse, right, type of feeling as you look at the culture. So maybe you might think, okay, it’s not the best, but come on,

don’t call people, right, liars, evil beasts, and lazy gluttons. Surely that would not describe our culture, right? Is it that bad? Well, last year in 2022, there were the different dictionaries, Webster, dictionary.com, and Oxford, they always pick a word of the year. And you guys know what the words of the year were for last year? Okay, it kind of just captures the cultural moment, right? Webster, their word of the year was gaslighting. Okay, you don’t know what that is, look it up. It’s when someone manipulates you and makes you think you’re insane when they’re the actually the one that’s controlling you. Okay, gaslighting. The dictionary.com’s word of the year was, of course, the one word no one knows how to define and everyone argues over. Woman was their word of the year. And then finally, this is the goblin mode. Oxford’s word of the year for 2022 was goblin mode. And if you don’t know what goblin mode means, this

is the dictionary’s definition. A type of behavior which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations. Welcome to Portland. So, this is relevant for us today. And this is our own culture saying, hey, this describes our culture. Goblin mode. So, it’s relevant. He’s writing a letter and instructing Titus to set things into order in these individual households and in individual churches so they can be healthy and not messed up like the rest of the culture. He does this, but two primary instructions. He says, appoint elders, right, who have orderly households themselves to lead the household of God. And he says, with those elders, teach and live sound doctrine. So, you see that in verse, chapter 2, verse 1. But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine. So, what is that? Let’s define that so we know what we’re talking about as we jump into our text. This phrase is

used several times in the pastoral epistles, and every time it’s used, it refers to, and I’m gonna, this is my own definition, but foundational gospel truth and the transformed life that results. Doctrine is only sound in Paul’s definition when it’s accompanied with a life that demonstrates the truthfulness of that doctrine. You see it clearly as he describes these false teachers in verse 9 of chapter 1. Or, and the elders. The elders must hold firm to the trustworthy word, right, give instruction in sound doctrine, and rebuke those who contradict it. And then he describes these false teachers. They contradict sound doctrine by their life, by how they live. And then again in chapter 2, we’re gonna teach what accords with sound doctrine, and now it’s ethics, it’s character. So, that’s sound doctrine. And it’s not primarily private morality, but it’s public ethics, and it’s the right relationships with those around us, and the fulfillment of the

responsibilities of our role within the wider community. And this is where culturally there’s the most rub, I think, because we think of ourselves as individuals primarily, right? That’s that’s just how we’re culturally wired. That does, that is not how the Bible presents people. That’s not, that wasn’t the ancient way of thinking, right? The biblical way of thinking is that I am a member of a community. I’m a member of a family. I’m a member of a church. I define my identity, and through the relationships of the structural of family, household, right, nation that I’m a part of, not primarily, I invent my identity based on how I feel this morning. And so you see that the ethics are taught in relationship to husband, right? Relationship to your wife, wife, relationship to your husband, child, pastor, employee, citizen, ruler, all these are our ethics in the context of

structured and orderly relationships. So that’s relevant now, and you see what he says primarily, this is for pastors and fathers. He says that pastors are needed in these churches to teach sound doctrine, to lead the church, but then to confront those who are standing against it, confront those who would seek to then harm the church. Now the best analogy I can think of for this is the puppy that we got in December, who just turned one year. And Ajax, he has a strange breed, and if you know dogs, you know why this is strange. He’s a half Anatolian Shepherd, he’s a quarter Great Pyrenees, and then a quarter Border Collie. Again, if you know dog breeds, you know this is a tortured soul. This is a tortured soul, because three-quarters of him is livestock guardian, which is, these are like large animals trained to fight wolves and bears, and they’re highly intelligent, but they’re independent

thinkers, they’re hard to train, and their job is just to ignore the sheep, right, and just look for the wolves. And anyone that shouldn’t be there, they get up, right? And then one-quarter Border Collie, right? These are those small little, like, yelping, nipping shepherd dogs that chase around the sheep and get them to go where they’re supposed to go. And their main, and they’re highly intelligent, and they’re trained to learn to obey the shepherd, and do everything the shepherd says to care for the sheep, okay? So you have these two conflicting breeds stuck in this little dog’s head, so pray for us. But I think that’s a kind of a good analogy, and God is calling men and pastors, right, to be able to, to hear the shepherd, to be, to be trained by, by the Lord to care for the flock that God has given us, whether

it’s our families, whether it’s the church, whoever God has given us to care for, to hear the shepherd, and to do the shepherd’s bidding for the good of the sheep, and at the same time, to be the gnarly Anatolian shepherd that has the strongest bite of any dog breed on earth, and be prepared to take on the bears and the wolves when needed, okay? So, not the perfect analogy, but hopefully it’s helpful. Our next point, masculinity, femininity, and other relics of the ancient world. So, again, I know it’s a lot of background, there’s a lot of work to do. As we jump into this text in chapter 2, a few observations. So we see that this passage, that there are ethical imperatives of Christian living, and these ethical imperatives are engendered and not homogeneous. Often, when you think about Christian living, it’s just general, oh yeah, this is what Christian maturity looks like. So, Paul

sees Christian maturity through an engendered perspective of different lenses. A mature man of God looks different than a mature woman of God, and it’s important for us to see this and be at peace with us, and know that it’s a beautiful and good thing. There are certain ways that a man lives out a mature Christian life that are different than the way a woman does. And the second point to see here is that these are based on sound doctrine and its ethical implications, and not on the cultural context. Some will argue that, oh, the biblical teaching about men and women is all culturally based, and when our culture changes, we get to change what the Bible says, because that was based on culture, now we have to reapply it in our culture. So, please notice that it’s based in sound doctrine, not in observations about

Cretan culture, which, as you can see, Paul’s not all that excited about. And it’s also not like, there’s not gender stereotypes in these ethical exhortations that we’re going to read. So, we’re not like talking, oh yeah, well, if you could be a man, right, so yeah, like boys like blue, and manly things, and girls like pink, and girly things, right, it’s just not where he’s going, it’s not the wavelength he’s at. Now, if you’re a soccer fan, you like Lionel Messi, now all of a sudden you like pink. I don’t know if anyone watched the game last night, that was amazing. So, yeah, best soccer player in the world is now playing for the worst team in the United States, it’s amazing, and they’re beating everyone. So, pink is now a dude’s color in my book. So, one last observation before we get into the text is that these ethical

exhortations are not just taught, they are caught. They’re not just taught, they are caught. Modeling is a necessary part of discipleship, and this modeling is also gendered. Mature godly men produce more mature godly men. In the same way, mature godly women are necessary to train other godly women. And in particular, I’m going to say this to the gals here, if you are a woman who’s walked with the Lord, and you have found some maturity and fruit in your life, in that walk, you have an absolutely essential role to play in teaching and training in this church. It’s there in the text. Older women teach what is good and train the younger women. You have an essential teaching and training role in this church. Now, for the men, I don’t know if, like, I’ve kind of gone down some of these rabbit holes. I don’t know if you’re familiar with this, but there’s this whole, like, the, it’s called the manosphere.

Have you ever heard of this? Like blogosphere, but it’s the manosphere. There’s this whole growing industry of, like, alpha male influencers that help young men who haven’t had positive male role models, who grew up without their dad, and are just, like, aimless without a rudder or a ballast in their life. And so there’s this whole industry of dudes that, like, teach you how to get in shape, that, like, teach you how to deal with your addictions and impress the girls. And there’s that intellectual dark web where you can get into all of the kind of weird internet kind of stuff out there. And some of it’s okay. Some of it’s helpful. But it’s, right, it’s touching on an issue and a huge hole in our culture, but it’s missing Christ. It’s often full of a lot of toxicity. And honestly, I think it

comes up because the church doesn’t play that role in men’s lives, right? We need more than just once a month breakfast with the dudes to disciple men. So, with all that said, let’s look at these particular traits for men and women as we jump into this. And I want you to kind of think of it like this. There’s going to be, it’s just a long list, okay? We don’t have time to dig into them to say, oh, what is the significance of this? So what I did is I just put a question, a self-awareness question connected with each character trait. And I want you to hear this not as like an angry dad or like a judgmental preacher, why aren’t you any better? But more like a personal coach or trainer that just says, hey, these are some helpful questions to ask yourself to check in. How am I doing with this? I dealt with some serious health issues. I had

knee surgery. I was talking to back surgeons about dealing with a back injury. And I just realized, in order to get healthy, I need help. And I called up a buddy who’s a trainer. I just said, dude, help me get healthy. I can’t do it on my own. And so as I go through this, I want to encourage you to look for maybe one, two, or three of these questions that you’re like, oh, yeah, the Spirit’s saying something about that. That’s a little like check engine light in my life. I want to dig into that. I want to get help from another brother or sister in that area, okay? So hear this as like a coach or trainer as we go through it. But first, we’re going to go through the gospel in the life of a man and what it produces. And then we’ll go to the ladies.

So first, it says, sober-minded. Or I kind of summarize this, just self-controlled. And the question for that is, are there any out-of-control desires or habits in my life that are causing me or others harm? God calls men to be self-controlled, to be able to control our desires, to control the decisions that we make. Next is dignified, right? This essentially means, are you worthy of respect? And the question is, am I respected most by those who know me the best? It’s easy to impress, right? People on Sunday, people on social media. I think the real question about dignity is, am I respected by those who know me the best? Sound in faith, right? Did the gospel live in me today? Am I in right relationship with God? Sound in love. Is there anyone whom I fear, dislike, disown, criticize, hold a resentment towards, or disregard? If so, what am I doing

about it? It’s just, am I in right relationship with those people around me? And if not, what am I doing about it? Sound in steadfastness. I think this is referring to persevering in the different seasons of life. And the question would be, is my life on a trajectory of moving closer to God, or am I stagnant and drifting away? And I don’t think you can be stagnant and not drift. I think it’s, there’s two directions. We’re getting closer, or we’re drifting away. Then he goes on, and Paul describes as he calls Titus and how he’s to live. He says to him, he says, he says, I want you to be a model of good works. And so the question I’d ask is, is my life marked by just staying out of trouble or by accomplishing great things for the glory of God and the good of others? Is being a good Christian man just about staying out of trouble and keeping

your nose clean? Or is it about accomplishing great things for God’s glory and the good of people? And then the idea of integrity and teaching. Can those around me see plainly that I’m growing in my understanding and application of sound doctrine? Is there evidence that people around me see, hey, that man’s growing. And then finally, speech and conduct that silences opponents. Paul commends that to Titus. And the question is, do I have the courage to stand up for what I believe in or do I remain silent and passive? This is probably the hardest thing for men that did not have a strong, stable father figure in their home. How do you have courage and stand up for what you know is right? It’s just hard. Okay, so I hope the Spirit has highlighted one or two of those kind of like coach questions to examine and maybe examine with another brother. And now for the ladies,

the gospel and the life of a woman produces. A reverent question is, is my life marked by one of worship and devotion to God? Not slanderous. Do I confidentially pass on to another what was told to me in confidence? Not slaves to wine. Are there out of control habits in my life that are causing me or others harm? And then it goes on and it talks about teaching the young women. So teaching what is good and training younger women. Are there relationships in my life where I’m either learning from or teaching other women? So you notice there’s two sides of this, right? He exhorts the older women to teach the younger women. But it’s entirely possible for you to be a younger woman and not avail yourself to those relationships or even avoid them. And so I think it’s a dual responsibility there.

Next is a loving companion to your husband. And he uses these hyphenated words, right? And the love is the phileo, is a companionship, friendship kind of love. And the question I have there is just, am I known as a woman who loves her husband? Or if I’m single, do I believe that marriage is a good gift of God that I want to be ready to receive? So I really think there is an application for the married and the single. Because, right? So I think it’s obvious for what that means, the call to love your husband. But if you’re single, you don’t have a husband to love. But do you love the idea of marriage? Not in an idolatrous kind of way, but just in a, I trust you, Lord, with this thing. And I want to be ready for it when God brings it my way.

Next, a loving mother to her children. Am I known as a woman who loves her children? Or if I do not have children, do I believe that motherhood is a good gift of God that I want to be ready to receive? And again, loving your children. Or if you don’t have them, is motherhood something that you delight in and trust God as to whether he will give it to you? Or is it something like with our culture that you have bought into the lie that children are a burden? That children are too costly. They will take your freedom away.

And just a couple more. Self-controlled. I guess we did that one. It has overlap. We’ll go to pure. Pure. Do I return to the sin that Jesus has washed me from? Do I return to the sin that Jesus has washed me from? And they’re working at home. And we’re going to get into this more, so I’m not going to expand on it now. But just a simple question is, do I neglect or procrastinate in my responsibilities? Kind. Is my life characterized by gentleness and generosity?

And then finally, submissive to their own husband. And this is the question I have there is, do I seek to encourage and affirm the godly leadership qualities and opportunities that I see in my husband? And again, this could be a whole sermon, Pastor Greg, did I seek to encourage and affirm a whole sermon, Pastor Greg did touch on this. But notice that I’m not saying, do I do what he tells me to do? Notice I’m not like, I’m not going there. And I don’t think that’s what this concept is. But rather, it is about encouraging and affirming those qualities and opportunities you see in your husband, where he can shine, where he can take that responsibility and be that man that God has called him to be. So again, there’s a lot there. I encourage you to go back to this text. But again, hear it not as, oh man, I’m blowing it there, I’m blowing it there, I’m blowing it there.

The Lost Household Economy

No, like, we’re all on the journey. Hear this as, okay, there’s a couple areas that I need to do some reps on. It’s a couple areas that I’m going to talk to a friend and seek some help in. Now the next point, leave it to Beaver and the lost household economy.

So in this section, I want to address some of the main common misinterpretations of this text, and perhaps some of the things that issues that you might have or our culture would have. And honestly, I think the most significant misunderstanding is that what this text is saying, particularly when it says women, you should be working at home. I think what people imagine is, oh, we’re supposed to go back to the 1950s and leave it to Beaver. That’s what Paul’s talking about, right? The honey, I’m home, and dinner’s hot and ready. Wow. Or father knows best, or just pick your quintessential American 1950s sitcom. Now, these that represent what you might say traditional family values, right, where dad puts on the suit and goes off to work and his wife stays home and keeps the house and always has dinner ready. Is that what Paul’s talking about? By working at home? So I literally have

this long quote from an author named Nancy Piercy that digs into the history of this. I will let Nancy whet your appetite to answer this question, and then maybe I’ll post it on the Facebook group. But this is author Nancy Piercy wrestling with this question of gender roles in the home and in the workplace, and I think it’s worth us hearing her perspective. So I’ll start this quote. So she says this. She says, when I was younger, I was attracted to feminism. I scoured the shelves of the local library for feminist books and always had one or two on my nightstand. I read all the feminist classics and thought each was better than the one before. My flirtation with feminism continued even after I was married and gave birth to my first child, especially after I had a child. At the time, I was attending seminary, and having a baby meant

having to drop out of school. It seemed that I faced the bleak possibility of never fulfilling my deepest interest and calling. It struck me as decidedly unfair that men, when they become fathers, do not have to face the threat of losing their access to education and vocation. That made me wonder, why do the paths for men and women diverge so sharply when they have children? As I researched the subject, I discovered that it was not always so. Before the Industrial Revolution, when economic work was performed within the household, both men and women spent most of their time in the home and its outbuildings. Fathers were able to be far more involved in child-rearing than today, and mothers were able to be involved in economically productive work without putting the kids in daycare. Work was not the father’s job, it was the family industry. Often the living quarters were in one part of the house, with offices, workshops, or stores in another part

of the house. Husband and wife worked side by side, not necessarily at identical tasks, but sharing in a common economic enterprise. That struck me as a much more balanced arrangement. How do we lose this vision of an integrated household? And then she’s going to go on, and she talks about the Industrial Revolution, right, which pushed men out of the house and left only the domestic duties in the home. And I literally call this a disintegration of the household and the home. And then she ends her kind of critique and historical study by just saying, no wonder feminists sensed that many of the rewarding and interesting activities of life had been transferred to the public realm, right? Education and all these essential elements had been sent away from the home. So, is Leave It to Beaver, with its so-called traditional family values, the biblical vision of the household? I would say no, it’s not, because it represents a post-Industrial Revolution

disintegration of the household, where meaningful vocation and education have been removed from the home. And then now, this is how Nancy Piercy comments on Titus 2.5. She just says this, consider the passage urging women to be workers at home. Of course, at the time, everyone was a worker at home. They worked on the farm, or in a home industry, or home-based craft. There was nowhere else to work. With a few exceptions, like sailors and soldiers, men were workers at home as well. So, she says, a proper understanding of the household may change the way we typically interpret this verse. And so, this idea of household, this calling back to the home, and you might be thinking, oh, okay, this is making a little too big deal about it. And that’s just maybe, that’s just not how our society is structured today, right? Most men, many women

work outside the home, and they’re just doing the best that they can. There’s a lot of single, singles as households, right? This is interesting, historical, but that’s not where we live today. And so, I would say, you’re right, right? It is very old school. It’s helpful to understand the context of this verse, so we don’t misinterpret it. But how relevant, how important is this, is a reintegration of the household, and a centering of our lives more around family, and the bringing up of the next generation, than our kind of corporate ladder, professional world would seek us to pursue. How important is that? So, I’m going to kind of close this point with one historic observation, and one pastoral exhortation. First is just the historic observation. So, we live in a society of growing secularism, right? Of a leaving of the Christian faith, and becoming more secular. We also, on the other hand, live in a society with increased

divorce, desertion, cohabitation, single-parent homes, and child rearing is being pushed farther and farther out. Some would say that there’s an epidemic of loneliness among the elderly, like there’s just a disintegration of the family unit in our culture. So, two things, secularism and the family falling apart. What is the relationship between these two things? Now, many have assumed that secularism has grown, and as a result, now the family structure has been broken apart. That has been the standard assumption, but there’s a researcher named Mary Eberstadt, and she wrote a book called, How the West Really Lost God, and she actually argues that it went the opposite direction. That in many situations, people became more secular because they stopped getting married and stopped having kids. So, she writes this, she says, like the waning of Christianity, the waning of the traditional family means that all of us in the

modern West lead lives our ancestors could not have imagined. We are less fettered than they in innumerable ways. We are perhaps the freest people in the history of all humanity. At the same time, we are more deprived of the constellations of tight bonds of family and faith known to most of the men and women coming before us, and in fact, it will be argued, has had wider repercussions than have yet been understood. What this book means to impress is that family and faith are the invisible double helix of society, two spirals that when linked to one another can effectively reproduce, but whose strength and momentum depend on one another. So again, this, a deep valuing of family and an integration of the household of husband and wife working together to invest in the next generation and to see their home as an embassy of the kingdom

of God and as a light to their community, that is an essential part of the passing on of the faith to the next generation and on the health of the church and society. And so, in conclusion, the pastoral exhortation here would simply be, right, whatever your station in life is, whatever your situation, seek to join yourself to the household of God, which is the church, and learn from those that are one step ahead of you, and teach and be an example to the people that are coming after you. And if God in his mercy has given you a household even remotely similar to what Paul is describing in this passage, then you have an amazing opportunity to make your home a light in your community and make it that embassy. And so, invite people into your home, involve your kids in the mission of God and making a difference in your community. And for those,

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The God Who Adopts

and especially for the moms, every sacrifice that you make for the faith and wholeness of the next generation will be paid back a hundred or a thousand fold. It is worth every sacrifice. And to all the dads that take that time to invest in their family and pass up the extra opportunities in the corporate ladder because they know that’s going to keep me away from home more than my son or daughter needs at this moment, that’s worth it. And God’s people are, like, we have a different grid of priorities than this world, and walk in them with courage. And now, in the final point, I want to bring us to the gospel, and I want to remind us of this God who adopts goblins and makes all things new. And this is so important that we see this after this passage of exhortations where he’s saying, this is what it means to be transformed by this gospel.

He reminds the readers in the church, this is in chapter three, verse three, he reminds them of where they came from. He says in chapter three, verse three,

we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves of various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy and hated by others and hating one another

— Titus 3

(ESV)

. But he doesn’t just point fingers and be like, yeah, the Cretans are like this. He says, hey, you and me both, like, we are cut from this cloth. This is our culture and community as well. And we’ve come from these broken places. We’ve tasted the bitter cup. We know the results of broken marriages, broken families, and all the mistakes in these areas that we have made. He says, that’s where we’ve come from. And then he says in verse four, but when the goodness and loving kindness of God, our Savior

appeared, when the goodness and the loving kindness of God, our Savior appeared, God’s love shows up. God’s love makes all the difference through Jesus. And he says he saved us not because of our works done, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy. So now here he says, you’ve come from all this junk and then the mercy of God comes and you’re saved not by your righteousness. And here’s where I think that kind of leave it to beaver traditional family value idol comes in where, where for some of us, we so lift up success in our parenting or in our marriage or in our, our, our vocation and our keeping up with the Joneses that, that, that it becomes the ultimate thing we need to have or God doesn’t love me or, or I can’t love myself or, or have meaning in life. If I don’t, if my kids aren’t

perfect and, and my, my marriage isn’t satisfying and, and all these things. And he says, no, look, this grace has come into your life. It’s brought you from the biggest depth. And then even the best righteousness that you have formed and mustered up based on all these right decisions and good things you’ve done and all that. He says, and you have to lay that aside too, because that is not sufficient. And you have not been saved by that righteousness. Anything that you put your hope in and say, I need this. If only I get this, if only my, my, my kids would be successful. If only they would walk with the Lord. If only this you’re going to, you’re going to break their heart and break their will and break your own in the process. When we make good things like family into ultimate things, but instead we fall on the mercy of God.

And it says that he, he saved us by the washing of regeneration, renewal of the Holy spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ, our savior. So that being justified by his grace, we might become heirs of the hope of eternal life. Now, do you, do you hear that word heirs? Now he brings this idea of household back around and he says, you have been adopted as children of your heavenly father, and you’ve been made heirs of his kingdom. He’s purchased for us a new heavens and a new earth and new glorified bodies. And this shadow of marriage and family life that are so essential and important in this life, they will fade away at the reality of, of the bride of Christ coming to meet her bridegroom, right? And there will be a renewed cosmos and a renewed order where everything in this world is out of order and

family will always come with the thorns and frustrations of the curse. It will be stripped away and we get to enjoy that reality. And that’s what it means that now we get to live today as heirs of a great King and a great kingdom that is ours. And so even if you’re, you’re here and you’re like, I’m single, I don’t have a household or I’m divorced or I’ve lost this, or I can’t have kids, whatever the failings are of, of how you feel like I don’t reach that ideal of what the scriptures give for us to aim at. Jesus says to us, you are an heir of a greater kingdom, of a greater family, of a greater household. So rest in that and then seek to build the best reflection of that kingdom that he, that all of your strength can, can, can devote to and his spirit can empower. Let’s pray together.

Lord, thank you that we are heirs of a greater kingdom. Thank you that we are members of a larger household and you have, you have placed us that we were orphans, that we were lost and you adopted us. You called us your own, that we get to be yours. And somehow you invite us to, in small and simple ways, reflect your character and adorn the gospel of our God to put it on, to show it off. And I, I pray that for the singles, for the children, for the husbands, for the wives, for the grandparents, for, for folks in every, every station in life and, and household structure, Lord, let us be beacons. Let us foreshadow that great kingdom and your, your glorious household that you have established. It says in Ephesians that it’s from you that every household finds its name, that you are the, the father and we find our meaning and identity in you to help us, Lord Jesus. I’m praying your name. Amen.