The Portrait of a Godly Woman, Part One: Beginning With the End

Transcript

JR 18
5/14/2023
The Portrait of a Godly Woman, Part One: Beginning with the End
Titus 2:3-5
Jesse Randolph



Sue Ellen Browder is a 78-year-old grandmother who lives in Wyoming. She has short salt-and-pepper hair, she has deep-set brown eyes, she has crow's feet that have been well-earned in her eight decades or so of existence here on earth. Though she is now happily retired, she lived quite an active life in her early years. See, as a young woman growing up in Iowa, Sue recognized that she had a way with words so in her early 20s she pursued a career in journalism. She graduated in the late '60s with a degree in journalism and shortly after her graduation she began her journalism career in California with a newspaper called The Daily Breeze. Hers was a true success story. Sue's articles were well-written, they were appealing, her pieces were acclaimed and eventually she was hired away from that little newspaper, The Daily Breeze, to a national magazine. That magazine was Cosmopolitan or as I'm told it is called Cosmo. Landing the Cosmo job was like landing on the top rung of the ladder for Sue because Sue, you see, was not only a journalist, but she was also a proud and committed feminist. After she started Cosmo, Sue fell under the influence of her editor-in-chief, a woman named Helen Brown. Helen Brown instructed Sue and the other Cosmo writers that they were to write stories that, even if they were completely fictional and invented, were certain to advance the cause of feminism across the nation, from sea to shining sea. So taking her cue from her editor-in-chief Sue went on to write articles for Cosmo which told stories of women from small towns and rural communities, just your average American girls who were engaging in various forms of liberated activity—dressing how they wanted, ingesting what they wanted, sleeping with whom they wanted—as they seemingly with joy bounded through life with substances that would later cause irreversible damage to their bodies, with husbands whom they would later cheat on and divorce and with unwanted babies whom they would later slaughter in the womb. All of this was under the banner of having been liberated. Liberated from the restrictive requirements of that old white man's religion, Christianity. Liberated from the principles God has revealed timelessly on the pages of Scripture.

Well, Sue eventually would leave Cosmo and later in life she would have an awakening of sorts. But that awakening was not so much a faith experience as it was an internal moral crisis that she was going through relating to these articles that she had written for all those years for that magazine Cosmo. What Sue would later admit to is that she had been lying, that she had been writing all of these stories falsely about these repressed housewives in Racine, Wisconsin and these liberated women in Laredo, Texas. She had made this career advancing the feminist cause with her pen not through truthful means, but rather through deceit and lies. It was only a matter of time before her conscience convicted her. In an interview she gave in 2018 the now aged and remorseful Sue said this, “When you start betraying the truth, it will come back to haunt you, it will get you in the end.” And then she goes on to say, “I don't want to take more credit than I deserve for all this evil, but I think that I was certainly part of the evil empire, if you will.” She is talking about the advance of the feminist agenda and narrative. “And what I would like for young women today,” Sue says, “is to tell them the truth so that they could see how my generation got it wrong, why we got it wrong and how they can do better. How your generation,” she is speaking to young women here, “can do better.”

Well, Sue Ellen Browder may genuinely feel remorse for leading people astray, leading young women astray by the various feminist inspired lies she promoted on the pages of Cosmo. But she isn't a Christian, she's not a follower of Jesus Christ, she doesn't have the Holy Spirit living inside of her, indwelling her. She isn't a spokesperson for the Lord, she doesn't speak from the authority of God's Word. So, while she might in good faith be done with her past pattern of lying, she is by no means a champion of truth and by no means a godly example for women in the church.

If Sue Ellen Browder is not a reliable source of guidance and not a faithful model of what a godly woman should be, where can we find such an example? I'm glad you asked. Turn with me in your Bibles, please, to Titus 2, Titus 2, we're going to pick it up in verse 3. We'll work through three verses this morning and we'll carry over into this evening. Titus 2:3, God's Word reads, “Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior. Not malicious gossips nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands so that the Word of God will not be dishonored.” Happy Mother's Day, by the way. Happy Mother's Day. Throughout our time together today both this morning and later in the evening service we're going to be going through this passage, Titus 2, related to God's design, His role, His expectations for women in the church. That is for women who are in Christ, for women who have confessed Jesus as Lord. These three verses are going to give us enough biblical meat to chew on both this morning and this evening. So, I do hope you will come back tonight after you have spent time this afternoon encouraging and loving on the women that God has placed in your life.

But this morning, after laying out some of the context for this passage, which I'll get to in a second, we're actually going to start at the end of the text. Hence the title for this morning's sermon, “Beginning with the End.” Then after starting at the end, we'll go back to the beginning and then work through the text, line upon line, verse upon verse. You'll see the method for my madness in just a minute.

Let's jump into our first point for this morning which is to establish the setting of our text. If you are a notetaker here this morning, this is the first heading, the first point for the message—The Setting. Now as we engage here with Paul's letter to Titus, I'm going to start by taking us back in time to a land far, far away, two thousand or so years ago. We're going to go across the globe, across the ocean to this sun-splashed island, right in the heart of the Mediterranean, just north of Africa, just southeast of Greece, an island called Crete. And at this time in history as Paul was writing this to Titus, Crete was a significant trading port. In fact, in his famous poem, The Iliad, the ancient Greek poet, Homer, referred to this island, Crete, as Crete of the hundred cities, which was a reference to its bustling seacoast, even in these days. Crete was and is to this day a beautiful location. It is surrounded by crystal blue waters, it's covered in mountainous terrain, it has valleys and natural land bridges and gorges; but as externally beautiful as this island was during the time of Christ and the apostles, morally this island was rotten. See, because of its strategic location in the heart of the Mediterranean Sea, Crete had been doubly exposed to various forms of secular culture. They got it from the Greeks on the one end and they got it from the Romans on the other end. While the Greeks and the Romans during this time were known for turning out beautiful art and architecture and literature and poetry, morally speaking these civilizations were absolutely putrid. They were steeped in idolatry and greed and overindulgence and lust and homosexuality and various other forms of sexual immorality. Well, in the various decades after Christ ascended into heaven, Crete was also the home to several early Christian churches. One of the Apostle Paul's pastoral proteges, Titus, had been sent to Crete to minister there. Titus, we know from other places in Scripture, accompanied Paul to the Jerusalem Council. We see that in Galatians 2:1-3. Titus had also previously ministered with Paul in Corinth. In fact, Titus' name is mentioned nine times in the book of 2 Corinthians alone.




So, while Titus was younger in the faith and younger in experience, he wasn't wholly inexperienced in ministry. That was a good thing because there were many problems developing and surfacing and brewing in the churches there in Crete. In fact, turn with me back to Titus 1, just one chapter back, and let's look briefly at some of the problems and the problem people that were plaguing the early church in Crete. Look at Titus 1:10, he says, “For there are many rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision.” He's talking about people that were infecting the churches there in Crete. Or look at verse 12. He says, “One of themselves, a prophet of their own, said Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.” In verse 16 he says, “they profess to know God but by their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient and worthless for any good deed.” Who was it that Paul charged with bringing these churches in Crete back in line? Titus.

Flip with me over to Titus 2:1, right before our passage for today. Look at Titus 2:1. He says, “But as for you,” that's a reference to Titus, “speak the things which are fitting for sound doctrine.” Paul was saying to Titus here, essentially there are problems, Titus, there in your churches in Crete and you need to fix these problems, you need to get these churches back in line, you need to instruct them in sound doctrine, you need to bring them in conformity with God's revealed will as revealed in His Word. Note the first aspect of sound doctrine that Paul begins to list out here to Titus is how men and women are to conduct themselves in the church. In Titus 2:2, next verse, and then Titus 2:6-8 he addresses the men. Don't worry, guys, we're going to address that one a few Sundays from now. Then here in Titus 2:3-5 he addresses the women, and again he says to them, “Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good so that it may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands so that the Word of God will not be dishonored.”

All right, so that's the setting. Crete, early in the first century. Paul writing to Titus about how he is to exhort the older women there who in turn are to teach and train the younger women there. Now here is where I'm going to throw you that curve ball that I mentioned at the beginning. Rather than starting right in verse 3 and marching our way down through the text where Paul starts with “older women likewise,” I'm going to take us to the final ten words of this passage at the end of verse 5 where we are going to see the purpose clause that stands over this whole passage of Scripture from which we are going to get our second point for this morning, which is The Stakes. We've seen The Setting, Crete's historical background, now we're going to get to The Stakes. I don't mean ribeyes, stakes like s-t-a-k-e-s.

Look at the last few words of verse 5. He says, “so that the Word of God will not be dishonored.” Did you catch that? Did you catch the weight of those words, the words that God has given us in this passage, the three verses we'll be working through this morning about how Christians are to conduct themselves, Christian women of every generation are to conduct themselves? They are not some dusty old artifacts from the past. They aren't merely a product of their time. They aren't some quaint messages from a long-lost message in a bottle that we are free to ignore. No, these words are timeless and one of the ways we know this is from the timeless purpose clause given to us at the end of verse 5, “so that the Word of God will not be dishonored.” In other words, the way a woman lives or chooses not to live as a woman is tied directly to the honor of God and His Word. Those are the stakes here—the very honor of God and the very honor of God's Word. Now the Greek term here for dishonored is blasphemeo. Sometimes I throw Greek terms around and you are like, what is he talking about. But that word, you know what is being said. Blasphemeo, which means to profane, to slander, to revile, to defame, and yes to blaspheme, meaning for a woman to live contrary to the principles laid out in this text is to profane, slander, revile, defame and blaspheme the very Word of God. Now those words—profane, slander, revile, blaspheme, defame—they might lose a little bit of their sting and a little bit of their punch if we don't have a strong and a robust view of what we hold in our hands in this book, this book on top of my pulpit, that book that sits in your laps.

I think it would be a good thing for all of us to be reminded of what this book is, where this book comes from and who is speaking through this book. God has given us so many pieces of evidence to show us that the book that we hold in our hands truly comes from Him, the living God. First is what the Bible says about itself being the very Word of God. I Thessalonians 2:13 says, “For this reason we constantly thank God that when you received the Word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but for what it really is, the Word of God.” The Bible is not the creation of man. It says that there in I Thessalonians 2:13, it is “not the word of men.” If the Bible were simply the word of men perhaps, we would be justified in treating it as a series of opinions or suggestions that we would be free to accept or reject, depending on how we feel that day or depending on how the cultural winds are blowing in our time. But that's not what the Bible itself teaches. The Bible itself teaches us that it is God's Word. That means when the Bible speaks, God speaks. If we disobey or disregard the Bible, we are disobeying and disregarding God Himself.

Second is the process by which we receive the Bible that shows that it truly is from God. You could jot down 2 Peter 1:20-21 which says, “But know this first of all that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” There are 66 books in the Bible which were written by 40 different authors on three different continents and three different languages and doing so over the span of 2000 years or so. The authors of Scripture included shepherds and a military general and fishermen and scholars and prophets and kings and a priest. Their writings cover several different genres, including letters and laws and history and poetry and prophecy and wisdom. Despite being pieced together by all these different people and all these different ages and these different languages from these different parts of the world, the Bible tells essentially one story. It tells the story of reality, it explains to us how we got here, it explains to us who put us here, it explains the curse of sin which explains why our world is what it is today and why our relationship’s function and malfunction the way that they do. It explains the separation from our Creator that our sin has caused us, and it provides the solution that God has given us to reconcile to Himself in the gospel of grace, the very gospel of Jesus Christ. The Scriptures, say II Timothy 3:15, give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. Assuming we have put our faith in Christ, the Bible also gives us the principles that God wants us to live by and what we are to pursue and what we are to avoid in all areas of our lives, which includes how God wants us to function as men and as women. So, the process by which we received God's Word speaks to its divine origin. That was the second one.

Third, another evidence of the divine origin of the Bible is that it is simply without error, it is inerrant, it is perfect. II Timothy 3:16-17 says that “All Scripture is inspired by God,” breathed out by God, “and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness that the man of God may be adequate and equipped for every good work.” All Scripture is breathed out by God, theopneustos. Every book, every chapter, every verse, every word, every letter has been breathed out by God; and because Scripture has been breathed out by God, by a perfectly holy and a perfectly righteous and perfectly truthful God who cannot lie, it contains absolute truth. There are no errors in this book, there are no flaws in this book. This book is absolutely perfect. Psalm 19:7 says, “The Law of the Lord is perfect.” Jesus Himself said in Matthew 10:35 that the Scripture “cannot be broken.” All these truths about Scripture should lead us to this place of awe and of beholding the very book that we hold in our hands this morning as we remember what Isaiah 66:2 says, which is that the one that God looks to is the one who is humble and who is contrite and who trembles at His Word.

What do you believe about the Word of God? Do you believe that it is God-breathed? Do you believe that it is inerrant and infallible? Do you believe that it is authoritative and sufficient? How you answer those questions of course will shape how you view what God's Word says about His design for women.

Taking it back to our passage in Titus 2, again we have our purpose statement here. This is all building up to that purpose statement at the end of verse 5, “so that the Word of God will not be dishonored.” When a woman lives contrary to God's clear design for women as laid out here in Titus 2, she dishonors the Word of God. To dishonor the Word of God is to dishonor its author. Those are the stakes—the honor of God and His Word. Keep that in mind as we make our way through the heart of this passage eventually where God lays out His standards for what it means to be a godly woman. Keep that in mind that there is this direct correlation between how a woman chooses to live or not to live in keeping with the standards laid out here and her degree of honor and reverence for God and His Word.

All right, we've looked at The Setting, we've looked at The Stakes, the honor of God and His Word, now we're going to look at The Standards. That's our third point here this morning, The Standards, as in God's standards for His daughters, for Christian women, for those women who are committed to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Now note that the heart of this passage, I don't want us to miss this, is this model of woman-to-woman instructions, specifically older woman to younger woman instruction. We pick it up right away at the beginning of verse 3, “Older women likewise,” it says. We'll stop there. Likewise, is a linking term, specifically it is Paul here linking what he is about to say to the older women to what he has already said back in verse 2 to the older men. Look at Titus 2:2, he says, “Older men are to be temperate, dignified, sensible, sound in faith, in love, in perseverance.” Again, we'll cover that in a few weeks. Now he is transitioning to the older women. As we are about to see he is going to lay out specific responsibilities for older women in particular. That brings us to the question and it's the one question that sometimes makes me want to duck behind the pulpit as I ask this question, what makes an older woman. What makes a woman old? Or older, as the text here says. What makes a woman younger? Well, biblically speaking the distinction between an older and a younger woman is not on the basis of how many gray hairs she has or how many wrinkles are in her skin, which is the way our society and the way our culture might typically distinguish between young and old. Instead in Paul's time the distinction would have been made between young and old based on the age of the woman's children and her capacity to have more children, meaning that if a woman is in those years of her life where she is either raising children in her home or is someone who is still capable of bearing children, meaning she is premenopausal, she would be considered a younger woman. If a woman was beyond those years, outside of those years, she would be considered an older woman.

Next the text says that older women are to be “reverent in their behavior,” verse 3, “not malicious gossips nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good.” We see four traits laid out here, two of which are stated positively and two of which are stated negatively. All of which the godly older woman is called to model to the younger women that God has placed in her life. We're going to work through these one by one. First, we see that the godly older woman is to be reverent, she is to be reverent in her behavior. Now that phrase links together two Greek words that are unique, in fact they are found nowhere else in the New Testament but here. In some of the extrabiblical Greek writings of the day we do see this word and it is used to refer to a priestess or someone who is temple proper. But in the context of Scripture and Christian living it brings in more the idea of having a holy character. Older women in the church are called to have a dignified demeanor, to act in a dignified way. To be dignified is an internal state of mind, it refers to how a woman carries herself, how she views herself, never losing sight of the fact that her citizenship is not of this world and that her chief identity is not even in being a woman but is being in Christ. That internal state of mind in turn will bring about this outward deportment that will lead to this external way of living which matches up with her internal godly, holy character. That means that the godly older woman demonstrates externally dignity in her manner, in her conversation, in her habits, in her dress. This outwardly expressed dignity is what John Calvin once called a holy decency and it stems from a radically transformed heart that does not focus externally on her deepening wrinkles or her streaks of gray, but instead is focusing inwardly on her own pursuit of holiness and growth in the Lord. It calls to mind I Timothy 2:9-10, the godly older woman strives for this standard. These women adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, “not with braided hair and gold and pearls or costly garments but rather by means of good works as is proper for women making a claim to godliness.” Such a woman, a godly older woman, also remembers the words of I Peter 3:3-4, “Your adornment,” he says, “must not be merely external, braiding the hair and wearing gold jewelry or putting on dresses, but let it be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit which is precious in the sight of God.” See, nothing will grace a local body of believers than a church full of women like that—godly older women, mature women who know and embrace God's call on their life to conduct themselves in this reverent and dignified way. Truth be told, nothing is worse than the opposite, to have a church whose older women are more focused on what is on the outside and dressing up the outside when deep down in their hearts their hearts are leading them in the direction of being disordered and scandalous and out of control. Godly older women, then, are to be reverent in their behavior.

Next the text says that godly older women must not be malicious gossips. Malicious gossip is a false accuser. This is describing the person that is known for adding facts to the story, for embellishing, for leaving out key details that are necessary to paint the full picture. This is a person who is marked by dishonesty. Now get this, the word here for malicious gossip is diabolos. That word is mentioned 34 times in the New Testament and 33 out of the 34 of those times, guess who that term refers to? Satan, the devil, the adversary, the father of lies. The only other time that word diabolos is used in Scripture to describe someone other than Satan is right here in this verse where Paul is using that word to describe gossiping, slandering, loose-lipped older women. Did you hear about so-and-so? Don't tell them I told you this, but . . . I can't say much more right now but be praying for . . . It happens. It would take me all morning to list the number of churches that have been fractured and split and divided or torn asunder by the slanderous attacks and accusations that are hurled around by gossiping older women. The point is, Paul could not have used a stronger word here to arrest the attention of the older women there in Crete and arrest the attention of the older women here in Lincoln to say to us, to say to you, don't be devilish with your tongue. Of course, that lesson applies to all of us, male and female, old and young, to not follow the example of that older woman who is becoming devilish with her tongue lest we become devilish ourselves.

Back to the godly older women, though, she recognizes that she cannot be reverent in her behavior while at the same time acting like the devil with her tongue. She recognizes the perils and the specific sins that are associated with the tongue which we have been studying for many months now in the book of James. She recognizes that gossips and slanderers are among the vices that are listed in Romans 1:29-30 as being the mark of those who possess a depraved mind. She recognizes, as II Corinthians 12:20 puts it, that some of the key marks of a dangerously unhealthy church is that it is full of strife and jealousy, angry tempers, disputes, slanders, gossips, arrogance and disturbances. The godly older woman doesn't partake in any of it. She doesn't vent. She doesn't spout off. She isn't given to complaining or bitterness or jealousy. She doesn't start spreading rumors and lies and vitriol. Rather she is self-controlled in her speech. Her speech follows the pattern of Ephesians 4:29 in that it builds up rather than tears down. She refuses to do the devil's bidding by engaging in gossip and slander.

Next our text says that the godly older woman is not enslaved to much wine, we're still in verse 3. This apparently was a problem for the women of Crete. They had this tendency to go to excess. The way this phrase is formed, “enslaved to much wine” refers to a woman whose drunkenness has total mastery and dominance over her, meaning she is a confirmed drunkard, in total bondage to this sin. It is a strong term and using the term Paul is saying it's a terrible thing when an older woman, this woman who is to be this paragon, this example of faithfulness, is a confirmed drunkard. Now does this mean that a godly older woman can never have a glass of wine? The text doesn't say it, I can't say it. The most I can do is point to several passages in Scripture which associate the potential for sin and irreverence associated with alcohol consumption. We know from Proverbs 20:1 that “wine is a mocker.” We know from Proverbs 23:32 that alcohol “bites like a serpent and stings like a viper.” The most I can do is remind the godly older women, women in the room, of this truth, that no matter what behavior you are engaging in that you are to be reverent in your behavior. Dignified, holy, priestess-like, self-controlled in all of your actions as you possess a general spirit of temperance, ever mindful of who you are ultimately serving, the living God, and also ever mindful of those who are watching you and following in your footsteps—the younger women in the church.

Next verse 3 says that the older women are to teach what is good. The godly older woman is to be a teacher of what is upright, what is proper, what is fitting. Through a life dedicated to the study of Scripture, the godly older woman knows the importance of teaching the younger women that which is good and noble and lofty and excellent. She has navigated the tension between what the world says how women should live and where they should find their identity and where they should find their joy and what the Scriptures teach about those different subjects. Not only that, but the godly older woman has also carried the weight of domestic responsibilities over the years. She has kept her family fed, she has kept the family clothed, she has done endless loads of laundry, she has dealt with dishpan hands. She has learned countless, precious lessons in marriage that she can pass on to the younger women, from the early years of crying herself to sleep in the middle of a conflict, to those middle years of growing closer and closer as she became more bonded to her husband, to those later years of watching her husband's health decline and possibly even holding her husband's hand as he went on and passed on from this life. She has been through it all. What this text tells us is that the godly older woman is now called to take this experience and teach it, based on the years she has lived, based on the mistakes she has made, based on the sins she has committed, based on the forgiveness she has received, based on the lessons she has learned and the wisdom she has gained. The godly older woman has this level of depth and spiritual fortitude and practical experience which gives her the ability to now turn around and teach and train the younger women in the church with that same truth and experience.

Now some of you, and I won't point fingers, here today are more mature. You are older, what we like to politely call the seasoned saint. You have been married for many decades, you've raised your children and now you are in that glorious phase of grandparenting. But listen carefully now. Your work in the church is not done, it's not done. In fact, as it relates to your ministry here in the church, in some ways your ministry has just begun. Our passage for today is not vague. Through the pen of the Apostle Paul God Himself is telling the older women that you need to be intentional about taking steps to pass on the experience that you have gained and the truth you have learned to younger women in this body. It's time to take that legacy of spiritual development and growth and godliness that you have accumulated over the years and pass it on. Don't be a dam of biblical knowledge so that the knowledge and the wisdom that you have accumulated ends up getting buried in the grave with you one day. Instead, pass it on. Leak it out. Share it. Invest with the younger women in this church. Find one, two, three, whatever band width you have, younger women in this church, maybe women you don't know very well at this point and build a relationship with them. Invite them over to your home, go out to coffee with them, go through a book of the Bible with them this summer, read a book with them this summer. Pour into them, teach them, make yourself available to them as a resource. Make that the lasting legacy that you leave here in this church. To the younger women here this morning my exhortation to you is to not sit on your hands. You need to be seeking out those older women. You need to be getting on their calendar and sending them that text and bending their ear and asking them to invest in you and to teach you and to train you and to equip you and to pour into you as they share with you. Titus Tuesday is a wonderful weekly ministry, I'm fully supportive of it, I'm glad we have it. I would encourage any ladies here who are not a part of Titus Tuesday to get involved with it when they pick back up. Titus Tuesday is great. Titus 2, what is being pictured here in this text, older women who are committed to passing along what they've learned through life to younger women is even more important. Central, paramount to the long-term spiritual health of the women in this church and the church as a whole.

Now note, the teaching, the training, the equipping that the older women provide in the lives of the younger women in the church context here is not aimless, it's not directionless, it's not purposeless. Rather the teaching and the training that older women are to impart to the younger women has a specific focus, which we see in verse 4. Look at verse 4. This is now pivoting from older to younger, and it says, “So that they,” meaning the older women, “may encourage the young women.” So that is a purpose statement. Older women are called to model that mature example that we see built out in verse 3, “So that they are able to encourage the young women,” to live in the various ways that we are going to now see mentioned in verses 4-5. Now before we work through verses 4-5, I want to highlight that word here in verse 4, encourage. “So that they may encourage.” Of course, when we see that word, encourage, our minds automatically go in the direction of affirmation, like that's so encouraging that she said that to me. That's not the meaning of the word Paul uses here, not in that sense. Rather the word that he uses here for encourage actually means to train, to teach, to instruct. That word literally means to bring someone to their senses, meaning the older women are to help the younger women come to their senses, to wise them up as to their responsibilities as women of God, and in this context, especially as wives and mothers or future or potential wives and mothers.

We're now going to work through verses 4-5 and we're going to see these seven subjects of study that the godly older woman is to impart to the younger women that the Lord has placed in her life. These seven subjects that we'll work through in a second fall into two broader categories—the heart and the home. The godly older woman is to train the younger woman that she is to watch her heart, and the godly older woman is to train the younger women as to how they are to love their home. Watching their heart, loving their home.

Let's work through these one by one. Picking up in verse 4 it says, “So that they may encourage the young women to,” #1, “love their husbands.” Note there are no caveats, no conditions to that language in verse 4. It doesn't say love your husbands when they are nice to you. It doesn't say love your husbands when you feel loved by them. It doesn't say love your husbands when they make you feel like you are living in a fairy tale or that you are a princess. No, what does it say? Love your husbands. Period. Not only that the word Paul uses here for love is unique, it is the Greek word philandros and it is two words, two Greek terms just mashed together. We have andros, that's man or husband, and phileo, the verb for love. It's literally she is to be literally a husband-lover. Now you've heard I'm sure from this pulpit many times that there are many different Greek words for love that exist. Agape is sacrificial love, eros is the sexual love, storge is the familial love. Here we have phileo which means brotherly love. Brotherly love means to love somebody fondly, to have affection for them. Even you could really translate this to like them, meaning the godly older woman is to train the younger woman not only to love her husband but to like him. Those are different things, aren't they. To love him, to like him even when he forgets to put the toilet seat up. Or is it down, I can't remember. I always get it right, that's all I know. Even when they have morning breath, even when they aren't reading your mind she is to love, she is to like her husband.

Second, verse 4, it says she, the older woman, is to train the younger women to love their children, because she has been through the sleepless nights of infancy and witnessed the early stages of rebellion in the toddler years and sat for hours at the kitchen table as her kids struggle through their homework and been beside her child at the bedside when her kid was mercilessly teased at school. Because she has prayed without ceasing through the trials of the teenage years and because she zipped up the dress of her daughter on her wedding day, she has much needed perspective that she can share with that younger woman who is struggling to remember that her children are a gift from the Lord, a heritage from the Lord as Psalm 127:3 puts it. The godly older woman reminds the younger woman of how important it is to affectionately and lovingly care for her children. She helps the younger woman steer clear of exasperating her children. She walks that younger woman through the process of what it means to lovingly impart discipline to her children, and she reminds the younger woman of what a blessed stewardship the child is. Last the godly older woman reminds the younger woman that she doesn't need to climb the corporate ladder to be an eternity-shaping, gospel-advancing world changer. Rather she is doing gospel-advancing work and eternity-shaping work, true world-shaping work with every band-aid she applies and every tear that she wipes and every book that she reads to her children and every prayer that she offers on their behalf.

Third, moving into verse 5 now, the godly older woman is to train the younger women to be sensible. To be sensible means to have a sound mind, to be self-controlled, to be disciplined. This is to be unlike the woman who is described in Proverbs 11:22, that's the beautiful woman who lacks discretion. No, the sensible woman, no matter what her physical appearance is, she applies God's wisdom through right thinking and right living. She submits her thoughts and her feelings and her emotions to the Word of God. She curbs her passions, whether they be verbal or dietary or sexual or financial, by the Word of God. She is not a slave to her own desires. She doesn't allow her emotions that occasionally overtake her to rule over her or to otherwise justify sinful conduct and behavior. Going back to verse 3 by the way and looking at the older woman, you see how important it is for the godly older woman herself to be reverent in behavior before she starts training and instructing the younger woman as to what it means to be sensible. The one goes with the other.

Fourth and continuing on in verse 5 here, the godly older woman is to train the younger women on how to be pure. Now that word for pure here carries with it the idea of morality and goodness and obedience, and in this context sexual purity, chastity. Or in the context of married women, marital fidelity. It's a proven historical fact that on the island of Crete where Titus was ministering, younger Christian women were becoming increasingly vulnerable and influenced by the immorality of the blowing winds of the culture there. They were increasingly being tempted to adapt and to accept the ungodly sexual mores and values there. Well, guess who would have been uniquely suited at this time to remind the young Christian woman that as God's daughter she is to turn away from all sexual impurity and sexual immorality and instead pursue a life of holiness and purity? The godly older woman. She has walked that road, maybe in a different decade, maybe with different objects or sources of temptation and desire, but the same road, nonetheless.

Fifth, the godly older woman trains the younger women to be workers at home, it says in Titus 2:5. I'll state this as simply and as plainly as I can because this is when a lot of people will tune a message like this out. Workers at home, there is a real sophisticated definition to his term. Do you want to hear it? It means workers at home, that's what it means. Home workers. What this verb is talking about, what this word is talking about is older women training younger women to view their work in the home as their top priority, as the place where they have a maximum sphere of influence, their greatest place of responsibility. The godly older woman helps the younger woman see that no matter how many degrees or letters she has attained, no matter how many prestigious titles or positions she holds, in our day no matter how many likes or subscribes or followers she has gained, none of those come anywhere as close to the important role she plays and the influence she has through her role in the home. Note that it doesn't say, stayer at home or sitter at home. It says worker at home. The godly older woman is working with the younger women to ensure that their homes are being invested in, that her home is under control, that her home is not neglected, that her home is not a place of chaos and disorder. Rather her home is being diligently attended to. It brings in the picture of the Proverbs 31 woman and she is ensuring that that younger woman's home is a safe shelter and a haven for her husband and her children. The godly older woman helps the younger woman prioritize the home.

Sixth, the godly older woman trains the younger women to be, here is our next word, kind. Having been around people who are unkind, not nice, inconsiderate, unsympathetic, harsh and having herself battled the temptation especially in the home with her own husband, with her own children to act in these unkind, ungodly ways, the godly older woman now trains the younger women to be kind. She reminds the younger woman that kindness, Galatians 5:22, is fruit of the Spirit. She reminds the younger women of the immense kindness that she has been shown by God through Christ. Ephesians 4:32 says it plainly, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another just as God in Christ has forgiven you.” She reminds the younger woman that such kindness is most powerfully and radically demonstrated when it is extended to those who least deserve it—for the woman at church who maybe has been giving you the cold shoulder for the past few months, to the husband who (I was going to say the toilet seat thing again, I'm not going to do that again. I got that wrong the first time; I'll get it wrong the second time). But to show kindness to those who may not be showing the most kindness to you. The godly older woman undoubtedly has faced various temptations to be unkind herself over her life and her ministry, and she now imparts to the younger women how important it is to be kind as a child of God.

Seventh, last one here, the godly older woman teaches the younger women to be subject to their own husbands, there in verse 5. That word subject to can also be translated submissive, meaning godly older women train younger women, Christian wives, that they are to line up under the authority of their husbands, as he lines up under the authority of God Himself. Over the years surely the godly older woman had questions that she wrestled with that are now being asked by the godly younger woman that she is pouring into, that she is teaching, that she is training. Questions like, am I required to submit to my husband if he is an unbeliever? Answer, yes. 1 Peter 3:1. By submitting to my husband am I inferior to him? Answer, no. Genesis 1:27, she is made like him in God's image. Or 1 Peter 3:7. if they are both Christians, they are fellow heirs, joint heirs of the grace of life. The godly older woman with years of experience and patience and yes, difficulty helps answer not only those questions but helps the younger woman see what submission truly is—the wife's fulfilling her God-given design to be her husband's helper, the wife being willing to act as her husband's perfect complement as he shoulders the weight of the leadership of the home, and the wife being committed to having her marriage picture Christ, His love for the church, the very Gospel message itself.

In giving a tribute to his wife, Susanna, the great Charles Spurgeon once had this to say. This kind of ties in to this last one, #7. He says, “She delights in her husband, in his person, his character, his affection. To her he is not only the chief and foremost of mankind but in her eyes, he is all in all. Her heart's love belongs to him and to him only. He is her little world, her paradise, her choice treasure. She is glad to sink her individuality in him. She seeks no renown for herself, his honor is reflected upon her, and she rejoices in it. She will defend his name with her dying breath. Safe enough is he where she can speak for him. His smiling gratitude is all the reward she seeks, even in her dress she thinks of him and considers nothing beautiful which is distasteful to him. He has many objects in life, some of which she does not quite understand but she believes in them all and anything she can do to promote them, she delights to perform. Such a wife as a true spouse realizes the model marriage relation and sets forth what our oneness with the Lord ought to be.”

That's not going to get me any speaking invites, reading that summary of biblical marriage. That's okay. This is not mere fluffy, British Victorian prose from the prince of preachers. Rather this is biblically driven language, describing a godly wife who joyfully submits to the husband that God has providentially joined her to.

Now I get it, it's Mother's Day and here I am dropping a four-things list here and seven more things there. Some of you may be thinking, it's Mother's Day, I just came here to be encouraged. Where are my flowers? I want my photo by the photo booth. I get it. But you have to understand, my job is not always to encourage, and my job is not, certainly not to tickle ears and to make everybody feel good about themselves every Sunday that they come in. That's not in the job description. My job is to be biblical; my job is to preach the Word. Nevertheless, I do want to wind down our time together this morning with some words of encouragement which I do think can fairly be gleaned from this text. This will lead us to our fourth point if you are still taking notes and still awake. We have The Setting, The Stakes, The Standards and last we have The Satisfaction, as in the satisfaction of living in a godly manner, in the manner God has designed you to live.

The Satisfaction. I'm going to make a few sub-points here. First, I just want to remind you that God is not some angry taskmaster who has given us a list of virtues like we see here in Titus 2:3-5 that He wants to nail us on when we don't get them right. Rather He has given us this list of virtues and traits as a loving Father who wants the godly women here to seek Him and know what it means with clarity what it means to please Him. He wants true women of God to see how living in these specific ways as a woman will honor Him and bring joy to them as they function in the very manner that they were designed to function. Second, if you are a Christian here this morning that means the Holy Spirit lives in you and Christ is being progressively formed within you. What that means for any Christian woman here is that you actually can do all the things that are being laid out here in the Word. You have the ability to do it. The same Spirit who lives in you and is sanctifying you and is growing you in Christ is the same Spirit who breathed out these very words; and the two go hand in hand. You can do these things in the strength of the Spirit. II Peter 1:3 says, “His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness through the true knowledge of Him who has called us by His own glory and excellence.” God's commands are clear, and He has given you, ladies, the ability to obey them. The question is, do you want to? And will you? Third, that purpose statement that we see here at the end of verse 5, “so that the Word of God will not be dishonored” can be flipped around to read positively, meaning it can be phrased, we can think of it as if you live according to these standards the Word of God will be honored and God Himself will be honored. So, the Christian women here this morning, think of what you heard this morning as an opportunity to honor the Lord, to live differently than the way the world is calling you to live, to live counter-culturally in this sinking ship of society and to avoid the traps that are being set by Satan in our culture.

Well, one woman who got it, got these standards, got what is being said here by Paul in Titus 2:3-5 was a woman named Sarah Pierpont. Sarah Pierpont was born in 1710 in New Haven, Connecticut, and she had an early conversion experience. She came to Christ at the early age of 6. When she was just 13, she met a 20-year-old student at Yale Divinity College named Jonathan. The two immediately hit it off, Sarah and Jonathan, especially as they talked about matters related to the Christian faith. Four years later when she was just 17 and he was about 24, Sarah Pierpont married this young man and became Sarah Edwards. The young man, Jonathan, was Jonathan Edwards, a man who would be used mightily in the Great Awakening of the 1730s and the 1740s. Well as Jonathan and Sarah moved into marriage, Sarah proved herself over and over to be that godly young woman who was both watching her heart and loving her home. On the heart side of things, she was a woman with a clear and pure devotion to Christ. She was a woman of the Word and a woman of prayer, a woman who enjoyed singing rich theological hymns and a woman who was committed to building up other godly women in the faith. In the words of Edwards, Jonathan Edwards himself, of his wife, “She has an extraordinary sense of the awful majesty, greatness and holiness of God. She has a deep mourning over sin as committed against so holy and good a God.” He also said, “She has an overwhelming sense of the glory of the work of redemption that is found in Christ.” In other words, Sarah never lost sight of the truths of the Gospel and the God behind that Gospel through which she had been saved. But that devotion didn't just get all stored up in the heart, it leaked out into her home. She truly not only watched her heart, she loved her home. Her devotion to the home is evident from all the things she did in the home. Here is a list of what Sarah Edwards would do on a regular basis to tend to her home. Don't take these as law, by the way, okay?
Breaking ice to haul water
Bringing in firewood and tending the fire
Cooking and packing lunches for visiting travelers
Making the family's clothing by shearing sheep, weaving and sewing
Growing and preserving produce
Making brooms
Doing laundry
Tending babies
Nursing illnesses
Making candles
Feeding poultry
Overseeing butchering
Teaching her sons whatever they didn't learn at school and teaching her daughters about homemaking creativity.

She watched her heart; she loved her home. Her godliness didn't just grow in a vacuum or develop in a vacuum, it grew in the laboratory of her home. The ways in which the Lord rewarded the labors of Sarah Edwards, this godly young woman, are almost unfathomable. In 1900 a historian named A. E. Winship traced the lineage of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards and the eleven children that they raised in their home, and he discovered the following. This is about 170 years after the Great Awakening. By 1900 the descendants of Jonathan Edwards and Sarah Edwards included 13 college presidents, 65 professors, 100 lawyers, a dean of a law school, 30 judges, 66 physicians and a dean of a medical school, 3 U.S. Senators, 3 mayors of large cities, 3 governors of states, a Vice President of the United States. Winship the historian then goes on to say, “Many more of the Edwards' entered the ministry in platoons and sent 100 missionaries overseas as well as stocking many mission boards with lay trustees.” He goes on and says, “Much of the capacity and talent, intelligence and character of the more than 1400 of the Edwards' family is due to Mrs. Edwards.” What a legacy left by Sarah Edwards, a godly young woman who was intent on watching her heart and loving her home.

Hopefully this message has given you a clearer picture of God's portrait for the godly woman. Hopefully it has encouraged the women here to strive to live in a manner more and more like this. Now are we all promised that lineage that Sarah and Jonathan Edwards had? Surely not. But are you promised if you live faithfully for God in the way that He has designed and laid it out in His Word that you will receive eternal rewards that will go on and on and on? Yes indeed.

Let's pray. God, thank You so much for this time together, thank You for the truth of Your Word, the perfection of Your Word and the timelessness of Your Word. Thank You for this section of Titus 2:3-5 which as we saw this morning is not reserved to a specific time in history, it's not reserved for 2000 years ago but these are eternal truths that the women in our midst today can take, can sink deeply into their hearts, can aspire to live out and in doing so know that they are honoring You, the living God, as You have revealed Yourself in Your Word. For us men I do pray that we would be faithful to encourage those godly female examples in our lives, whether mothers or sisters or daughters, aunts, grandmothers, whatever the relation, wives, I do pray that we would be faithful men to encourage those who are striving to live in accordance with your Word and striving to follow the godly example that we see here. Help us to be faithful in coming aside these women, the godly women that You have placed in our midst, so that they can be encouraged and spurred on to run the race in this part of their lives. Again, we thank You for the privilege that we have had today to gather around the Word, to hear from You through Your Word and ask that we would be found faithful the rest of this day. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.