The Behavior of Women in the Church
Scriptural Reference: Titus 2:3-5
Titus 2:3-5 The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; 4 That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, 5 To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed
Titus 2:3 – 5 Similarly, teach the older women to live in a way that is appropriate for someone serving the Lord. They must not go around speaking evil of others and must not be heavy drinkers. Instead, they should teach others what is good. 4 These older women must train the younger women to love their husbands and their children, 5 to live wisely and be pure, to take care of their homes, to do good, and to be submissive to their husbands. Then they will not bring shame on the word of God. (NLT)
Introduction
I came home late one evening from a day of activities around the office and found my wife sitting in from of the television looking at of those cable shows where they sell you projects by a tele-salesperon.
It was either the Home Shopping Network or QVC. The segment she just happened to catch was on jewelry. But this was not just any jewelry; it had a name --- Diamonique.
I discovered from her that Diamonique is the closet thing to a real diamond in color, cut, clarity, and carat without the diamond cost. A woman can buy a 3 - carat Dominique ring for a price that is substantially lower than the real thing.
They sell this stone paraded in everything from rings to bracelets, from earrings to pendants, from brooches to stick pins by the thousands. It is the highest selling among all races, creeds, and colors. It’s such a high seller, this gemstone has its own week called --- Diamonique week.
They say that the look of a Dominique gemstone is so close to a diamond gemstone that only a trained diamond expert can distinguish what is really lacking. The difference of course is what is on the inside.
Wives have been fooled, mothers have been fooled, co-workers have been fooled, and friends have been fooled by Diamonique that is man made while diamonds are natural made.
Stay with me because I’m going somewhere. Many women have been seduced to settle for what looks like a diamond, what feels like a diamond, what has the color, cut, carat, and clarity of a diamond instead of the real McCoy.
The culture today has seduced older women and younger women into settling for a quality of life that looks colorful, cut just right for them, and a life that carries a lot of value to it, but under the eye of the expert jewelry named God there is something lacking.
Too many women even in the church have settled for a high quality cubic zirconia’s life rather than a life adorned with a quality of ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.
Transition
Paul sent Titus to Crete to prepare the churches there for effective evangelism in the culture. He gave them a theology lesson in the first chapter, now he is giving them a practical lesson in the final two chapters.
That is Titus was suppose to gather women together – old and young and instruct them on how to behave themselves when they leave the church if people are going to believe that they are saved.
We addressed the older men Older men as verse 2 says are to be temperate, dignified, sensible, sound in faith and love and perseverance;
And the younger men are to self-controlled and Titus was to model a pattern of good works; in doctrine showing uncorrutpness, gravity, and sincerity; sound speech that could not be condemned
That was last week, now lets talk to the ladies. Ladies --- are you in the house this morning?
Now remember, this whole chapter gives to us teaching on the character of a healthy church, that is a church that is going to have an effective witness to the world, that is going to have an evangelistic impact.
In order for a church to have that kind of impact, the people in it must conduct themselves in a godly way.
You will remember in verse 5 he says, "This instruction is so that the Word of God may not be dishonored," in verse 8, "So that the opponent may be put to shame, having nothing bad to say about us."
And in verse 10, "So that we may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in every respect." Because as verse 11 says, "God’s grace has appeared, bringing salvation to all men."
If the saving grace of Christ is to reach all men, it’s going to depend on the character of the church.
If we honor the Word, silence the critics and demonstrate that God is a saving God by our transformed lives, then the gospel will be powerfully effective. How we live in the church is the issue here and its evangelistic implications.
Notice that what Paul is passing on to Titus has everything to do with relationship building and not program creation. Also these instructions point to both character and conduct of older and younger women.
Into the Text
I. Older Women in the Church
Older women are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips, not enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good.
The aged women likewise, that they be in behavior as become holiness Similarly, teach the older women to live in a way that is appropriate for someone serving the Lord.
"Not malicious gossips" What an immediate contrast this is? From the presence of the Lord in reverent behavior to gossiping! Do not be malicious gossips. Now that your children are gone, don’t spend your life sitting around, slandering other people, and tearing them apart.
"Nor enslaved to much wine" And do not be enslaved to wine, wasting your life away, trying to avoid reality. In Crete as elsewhere, older people turned to stimulants to refresh their weary bodies, tired minds, and he says your women are not to do that.
Your women don’t need to become slaves to that. It must have been a common thing as it even is today. These older believers are not to become drunkards, they’re not to give themselves to wine, and they’re to maintain their senses.
One of the other duties of the older women comes at the end of the list in verse 3, "Teaching what is good."
Older women have as their responsibility teaching what is good. Literally the Greek word here could be translated "teachers of what is good," kalos didaskalos, teachers of good.
Good being a word that means noble, excellent, lofty. And the idea in the word is not some kind of formal thing, it’s not conducting seminars, writing a book, making tapes, holding formal classes, it is the idea of the very life they live becoming a model of a pattern of goodness.
Older women when their children are grown and gone and they reach the senior years are not supposed to just wander away from the church and travel around as if they had no responsibility.
In their older years they are responsible to become teachers of the next generation. They do that by mentoring, by discipling, by modeling, by setting the example of godly living with regard to marriage and the family and the home.
Now they are then to be teachers of good and the primary ones they teach are the young women, and that’s the transition in to verse 4, they are to be teachers of what is good in order that they may encourage the young women. The primary responsibility of older women is younger women.
II. Younger Women in the Church
What does it say in verse 4 and 5, "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 that the Word of God may not be dishonored."
In our culture what is being said in these verses to young women is the very opposite of what young women are being taught. Young women today are being taught to love whoever they want, farm their children out to somebody else, don’t worry about being sensible, do whatever pleases you.
Don’t worry about being pure; fulfill your physical and lustful desires. Don’t work at home, work outside the home. Don’t worry about being kind; you do whatever you want. You grab your moment in the sun. Take care of you, not somebody else. And by all means, don’t be subject to your own husband.
When this comes into the church it therefore dishonors the Word of God. I mean, even an unbeliever can read those verses.
And if he/she can read the Bible and look at the church, he can make a very simple conclusion...you Christians say you believe the Bible, why don’t your women live like this?
I know what you probably thinking; Pastor what is my motivation for doing what this passage subscribes especially if you know what it is like in my home?
If you love Christ, if you seek to honor God, if you want to lift up and exalt the Word, if you want to silence the critics, you will be eager to obey these commands. If you want to do what the society says, if you want to fulfill your own fleshly desire, you will disobey them.
All right, verse 4, "Encourage these young women," that is train them, "in the matter of self-control to love their husbands." That’s one word, philandros, to be husband lovers.
Ephesians 5:25 says, "Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church." That’s the key. You love your wife like Christ loved the church. How did He love the church? He loved the church when the church was sinful. He loves us when we aren’t worthy of His love.
He loves us sacrificially. He loves us protecting. That’s how husbands are to love their wives and that’s how wives are to love their husbands. You’re to be a husband lover. You’re to love your husband.
You say, "You don’t know my husband. I don’t love my husband; my husband is not lovable. That is...he has turned me off; I don’t love him anymore. I don’t care for him anymore."
My response to you is that is disobedience, which is disobedience to the clear Word of God. You are to love your husband.
And I’ll tell you how it works. If you don’t love your husband then you need to train yourself to love your husband.
And the way you train yourself to love your husband is to continue to serve and serve and do every good thing and every kind thing and every gracious thing and every generous thing and you will make such a massive investment in him, you will say, "I’ve got too much in this guy not to love him."
It is a sin to disobey this command. It is a sacrificial love, it is not necessarily the love of emotion, it’s the love of will and a deep commitment. And that’s where healthy relationships begin.
Secondly, he says, "Teach these young women to love their children." That’s one word, philoteknos, to be children lovers...to be children lovers.
Women, this is your highest calling, to raise godly children. That’s your highest calling. Your greatest contribution comes in motherhood. That’s generally true.
Obviously God doesn’t want all women to be mothers or they would be. God has designed some women to have the uniqueness of singleness and others not to have children for His own purpose.
And we can thank God for what single women mean to the Kingdom, and we can thank God, and I do daily, for what women who have no children mean to the Kingdom because God has given them freedom to serve in unique ways.
But generally speaking women are mothers and they are to bear children and in bearing children they have then the responsibility to love those children that means to sacrifice their life on the children’s behalf.
Again, the love is not an emotion, it’s not standing in the corner gloating when your little child is all dressed up at how handsome or how beautiful she is, it is the responsibility of pouring your life sacrificially into that little life so that that child grows up to love Christ.
Women are to be taught, according to verse 5, to be sensible. That is to have sound judgment, common sense, right thinking, and right priorities, very basic.
The older women come along and they teach the young women the common sense stuff of life, just the normal processes of knowing your priorities, thinking right, making sound judgment, and applying wisdom.
Then he says, "Teach the young women to be pure," hagnos in Greek, chaste, morally pure, virtuous, sexually faithful to their husbands.
Teach them that they are devoted to one man and that’s it. Morally pure. First Peter 3:3 says that women are not to adorn themselves merely on the external.
So if you want to be a holy woman, you work on the inside. And that’s what he’s saying. Teach women to be adorning their heart, teach women to be virtuous and godly on the inside.
So if you’re going to claim godliness and virtue and holiness and purity, it ought to show up on the outside.
Women who make a claim to godliness had their passions under control, they wouldn’t do anything to excite lust, they wouldn’t do anything to draw attention to themselves when God’s people come together for worship.
Holy women have always conducted themselves that way so Paul says you teach the young women to be pure like that.
And then he says, "Workers at home." And here’s the one that gets all the heat nowadays because women don’t want to work at home.
Fifty-six percent, says Megatrends 2000, fifty-six percent of mothers with children under six work outside the home.
Seventy-three percent of mothers with children six to 17 work outside the home. That stated then when we would have reached the year 2000, ninety percent of women between 16 and 65 will be at work outside the home. Nobody will be home...nobody.
Women don’t want to be workers at home. Why? Because Satan sells the system on that. Why? Because it’s anti-God, anti-Christ, anti-Bible and it devastates the testimony of the church.
And if you don’t think that’s it, listen to the agenda. Vivian Gornek(?), feminist author, University of Illinois, "Being a housewife is a illegitimate profession." That’s the whole thrust.
The choice to serve and be protected and planned toward being a family maker is a choice that shouldn’t be. And then she says, "The heart of radical feminism is to change that."
It’s simply the sphere of a woman’s life is her home, that’s her domain. It doesn’t mean she has to be there 24 hours a day and can never leave.
What I’m not saying that because you don’t want to lock her up with soap operas either, but what it does mean is that is the sphere of her life.
The home is where a woman provides the expressions of love for her husband and her children. The home is where she leads and guides and teaches and raises the godly generation.
The home is where she is protected and secured from other men and potentially wicked relationships and abuses. The home is where she lodges strangers, washes saints’ feet, shows hospitality and devotes herself to every good work.
That’s her sphere. And whatever of that home and whatever of the goodness of her life she can take outside and not sacrifice the home is between her and the Lord and her husband.
CONCLUSION
As I say in conclusion, I know there are a myriad of things that may flood your mind, exceptions here and there and everywhere and what about a woman who is single working in the world and what about a woman who has no children working, and again I just remind you, those things you need to pray about and decide in your own family and then follow the leading of the Lord.
And the first time there’s indication that any environment like that is compromising your commitment to Christ, compromising your commitment to your husband, compromising your commitment to your home, you need to change that.
And I can only pray that every gift and every talent and every opportunity that you have as a woman will be maximized with the home as the center priority and then in whatever extending circumference God will allow, but always for His glory.
