Titus 2:1-8

“As for you, Titus, promote the kind of living that reflects wholesome teaching. 2 Teach the older men to exercise self-control, to be worthy of respect, and to live wisely. They must have sound faith and be filled with love and patience. 3 Similarly, teach the older women to live in a way that honors God. They must not slander others or 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 work in their homes, to do good, and to be submissive to their husbands. Then they will not bring shame on the word of God. 6 In the same way, encourage the young men to live wisely. 7 And you yourself must be an example to them by doing good works of every kind. Let everything you do reflect the integrity and seriousness of your teaching.8 Teach the truth so that your teaching can’t be criticized. Then those who oppose us will be ashamed and have nothing bad to say about us.”

As we continue with Mentoring Matters in our series “Firm Foundations” in the book of Titus we are going to see what the Word of God has to say to women. Now while much of what Paul has to say is not very popular in our present culture, it desperately needs to be preached today. Because many women are modeling their lives after worldly wisdom instead of the Words. As we study this passage the question that we need to ask is, when it comes to being a woman are you going to listen to God’s Word or the world? Ladies you are being constantly bombarded by what the world tells you a women should be, but it’s here that the Bible provides a breath of fresh air. Because it’s here that we discover the difference between the Worlds expectations and the Words exhortation. Now there are people who look at this set of verses and think Paul is just picking on women. But nothing could be further from the truth, Paul is actually elevating women to a place of high honor. You see just like in ancient Crete we live in a world where women are evaluated based on looks.

•                how “pretty they are”

•                how sexy they are

•                how thin they are

•                how popular they are

•                (pause) or by how much skin you can show

While the world focuses on your looks the Word focuses on your life. It’s here that we see the clash between the call of the culture and the call of Christ. While the world wants to try and convince you that it’s all about your looks, ladies the Word of God reminds you that it’s actually about your life. Unfortunately many of you are trying to live up to the Worlds expectations instead of living out the Words exhortation. Trying to live up to the world’s ideals is exhausting but living out the Words is energizing. Paul lived in a pagan world and so do we, a world that looks at life though a paganistic point of view, including viewing women as objects to be used and abused, instead of to be valued and treasured. But the first thing I want you to see here is that God’s word doesn’t just value women it gives them worth and challenges the culture to do the same. Ladies where are you trying to find your worth is it in what the world says or what the word says? Are you trying to find it in your looks or in the Lord? The first counter cultural challenge that we see is that the Word puts the focus first on older women, while the world puts the value on youth God’s Word puts value on wisdom. As we learned last time the term older is relative because it means being older than others. At its heart it speaks to maturity and reminds us that we need mature women who are modeling maturity and mentoring younger women toward maturity.