February 17, 2008 Sermon

Live the Example
Titus 2

As a young teen I learned a few card tricks.  But a local magician whom many of you know, Brandon Butters, does much more intricate and professional versions of a couple of those old tricks I learned way back when.  At last December’s Madrigal Dinners at West High School, Brandon strolled among the tables, performing magic tricks.  He did one of “my” old card tricks.  As he went through his routine I remembered the trick.  I knew where to look, and when, to catch him in the act.  But his delivery and the alluring nature of his deception tore my eyes away from his manipulation of the cards.  I saw what he wanted me to see.  More importantly, I did not see what he did not want me to see.

How easily we can get distracted.  Our eyes track movement.  Our ears track gossip.  Our minds track controversy.  Today we read the second chapter of the New Testament book of Titus.  No doubt many of us got distracted by all the juicy stuff at the start of the chapter, all that stuff directed at older men, younger men, older women and slaves.  Our modern sensibilities were offended and we missed the most important part.  I do not suggest that the author of Titus tried to distract us like a magician.  I do suggest that we probably were not looking in the right direction when the major point of the passage came along.  Let us make sure we do not miss it again: by the grace of God, live an upright life. 

By the grace of God, live an upright life.  Behave yourself with God’s help.  Jesus showed us the way.  He lived a perfect life, without sin.  He instructed us to imitate him.  Do your best to live as Jesus taught us to live.  Forgive yourself when you fail, but keep trying.  Forgive others when they fail, but encourage them to keep trying.  Behave yourself with God’s help.

Titus worked with the Apostle Paul.  When Paul got called to the home office in Jerusalem to defend his evangelistic work (a scene recounted in Acts 15) Titus accompanied him.  Titus also made at least two trips to Corinth as Paul’s representative.  There, he smoothed over arguments the temperamental Paul was having with the leaders of the Corinthian church.  He also started the Christian ministry on the island of Crete.  Titus, in other words, was an important, reliable, mature early Christian leader.  And Paul still felt the need to instruct him.  “As for you,” Paul writes at the opening of Titus 2, “teach sound doctrine.”

Next come the instructions for older and younger men, for older and younger women, and for slaves.  Three times this section commands that Christians not become enslaved to drink.  Today we might add that Christians must fight against addiction to anything that destroys the body and/or soul.  If we hope to behave ourselves with God’s help we need to deal honestly with addiction.  If you have an addiction, ask God for help and then do what God directs you to do.  The old story has it that a man stranded on a rooftop in a flood prayed for rescue.  Along came a man floating on a log, then a guy in a boat, and finally a Coast Guard helicopter.  Each offered to carry the stranded man to safety.  He refused each offer, saying that he trusted that God would deliver him.  Finally, a mighty voice thundered from the heavens, “I sent you a log, a boat and a helicopter!  Just exactly what kind of help are you waiting for?”

Titus 2 lists several examples of human brokenness as powerful as addiction: the seductiveness of gossip, unfaithfulness in relationships, envy, lack of self control.  All these and more can drag us under.  But God can deliver us no matter what threatens to flood over us.  The trick is we must accept the help God sends.  Begin with prayer.  Occasionally prayer alone will heal our brokenness.  Often, however, we need something more.  God can work through counselors, doctors, wise old mothers and fathers, and a host of others.  “With God’s help, behave yourself,” usually requires accepting the help God sends us through other human beings.

My wife Linda and I happened across a link online to a book entitled Why Men Hate Going to Church, by David Murrow.  I confess I have not read it, though I might.  We did sample a few of its opening pages.  We learned that the author believes a central reason far more women participate in church than men is that guys see church as unmanly.  He claims that many men practice masculinity, a religion that competes with what they perceive as the overly feminine nature of modern American Christianity.  It is a provocative thesis; a number of men I know surely feel this way.  But as interesting an idea as this is, it may not dig deeply enough.  Men, and many women, do not participate in church because their pride will not allow it.  Asking an unseen God for help seems soft.  Turning to a community of faith for help seems weak.  They cannot bring themselves to admit they need help even when they are drowning.

I have a DVD in my office entitled Kennard vs. Katrina.  A man named Kennard Jackley made it while staying in his home as Hurricane Katrina tore past.  He kept his camera rolling through it all, starting with television weather reports about 36 hours before the eye hit his neighborhood.  He shows almost every other house in his neighborhood getting pulverized into debris floating in the raging floods.  He shows the waves battering open his front door and slamming higher and higher up the steps to the second floor, where he has retreated.  At the start he states that he has made a calm, careful decision to stay—though the authorities have ordered a complete evacuation—because if God wants him to live, he will.  Meanwhile, he intends to protect his property from possible looters.  It is a manly attitude.

But some time in the middle of the storm Jackley starts screaming out to God.  You can hear him calling, “Jesus!  Jesus!”  More than once he says prayers while rolling the videotape.  The worst part of the storm lasted about three hours.  During that period, with the wind screaming and the hail pounding and the storm surge rising, Jackley breaks into sobbing.  “Oh my God, I’m gonna die here and nobody’s gonna find me,” he moans.  Days later, when the crazy few who stayed through the storm have begun meeting each evening to barbeque the meat left in their non-functioning refrigerators over fires made from driftwood that used to be house lumber, Jackley says to a neighbor, “I wish I had known that God meant to save me by getting my skinny (bottom) out of here before that hurricane hit.”

I wish I had known.  The Bible tells us what we need to know.  The Bible tells us to behave, but it tells us to do so with God’s help.  By the grace of God, live an upright life.  With God’s help, behave yourself.  Turn to God in prayer.  Admit you need help.  Confess that sin has you in its grip.  Do not just try to hunker down, hang tough, and make it through on your own.  When the storms of life hit—and they will—take the help God offers.  Quite often that help comes in the form of people who have the skill and the compassion to help you make a decisive move toward healing your brokenness.  When these people come into your life, accept their help.  Seek them out.  Get over your pride.  Pray, yes.  And then receive with humility the answer to your prayers.

We all must fight with what our passage is pleased to call “the worldly passions.”  These passions have us in their grip.  We cannot defeat them without help.  We must fight against them and we need all the help we can get to prevail.  By the grace of God, live an upright life.  With God’s help, behave yourself.  And let the first move you make to receive God’s help be the move down onto your knees.  Let the second move be humble acceptance of the helpers we need.