Ladies - Do you match?

It’s customary for a preacher to stand up on Mother’s Day and give a sentimental message about moms. We are going to talk about mothers this morning, but we aren’t going to limit it to that.

Godly mothers are a powerful force for good in this world.

Moses only had a short time with his godly mother, but apparently she sowed seeds in him that enabled him to give up being a prince in Egypt and to “choose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.” There would be no Moses without Jochabed. Godly mothers are powerful.

• No Sarah - No Isaac.
• No Hannah - No Samuel.
• No Mary - No Mark.
• No Eunice and Lois - No Timothy.

Even Jesus was influenced by a godly mother. Godly mothers are powerful.

Moms, you will never know how much influence you can have over your children. If you have a godly mom, you’ve been blessed by God, and you need to tell her you love her and thank her.

But I don’t want to limit this mother’s day message to just moms today. Instead I’m going to speak directly to all you ladies. Men, you can check out and think about fishing or something. Just kidding; you need to hear this, too.

Ladies, you don’t just happen to be a godly mom or a godly lady. You don’t just pop out that way. It’s something to learn, and it’s something to strive for.

We are going to look at a passage this morning that talks about the kind of ladies we need and gives some specific things ladies should strive for in their lives.

Turn with me to Titus 2, and we’ll read verses 1-5.

”1 But speak thou the things which become sound doctrine: 2 That the aged men be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith, in charity, in patience. 3 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.”

There is this lady at my wife’s church in Dalton that we call “Don’t Match.” We don’t call her that because she dresses poorly. She’s actually one of the best dressed ladies I’ve ever met. We call her that because, when my wife was a three-year-old little girl, she bumped into this lady in that bathroom at church and told her that nothing she was wearing matched. That was more than thirty years ago, and every time they see each other now, they are duty-bound to tell each other that they don’t match.

The question this passage puts forth to you ladies is, “Do you match?”

Notice the phrase in verse 1.

”Speak thou the things that become sound doctrine.”

And then in verse 3:

”The aged women likewise that they be in behavior as becometh holiness.”

The word “become” or “becometh” there means “match.” What this passage is saying to us is that there are certain behaviors that match sound doctrine and certain behaviors that match holiness. If you profess to be a Christian and a saved person, then there are certain behaviors and lifestyles that match that profession.

I have been known to not match from time to time. When I was a third and fourth grade teacher, I used to have these dress shoes I was very fond of. They were wing tips that were this reddish-brown color—kind of the color of mud in Tennessee. They were almost orange, and I used to wear them all the time at school.

One day, I was teaching math or something, and this little meek girl in my class name Mary raised her hand. “Yes Mary, do you have a question?” “Um, Mr. Hayden, I just wanted to let you know. You think those shoes match everything, but they don’t really match anything.”

Ouch.

Some things just don’t go together, and when you put them together, it leaves a bad taste in people’s mouth. I love coffee and I love cranberry juice, but I’m not going to be mixing them together anytime soon. I love Japanese food and I love Italian food, but the thought of having wasabi on my pasta makes my stomach churn. Cracker Barrel is great, and lattes are great, but have you noticed that Cracker Barrel is pushing lattes now? Some things just don’t go together.

Paul was saying here that some behaviors and lifestyles match the gospel. They match good teaching. They match holiness. That means other lifestyles and behaviors don’t match the gospel and good teaching.

Let me just stop and say this: You are saved by grace through faith alone. Salvation is not a works thing. Salvation is accomplished by Jesus and all we have to do is believe. But hear this: After you are saved, God does expect you to live differently. God expects you to have a different lifestyle than the lost world around you.

Jesus said in Matthew 5, ”Ye are the light of the world,” and ”Ye are the salt of the earth.” Light and salt are both different. God expects us as Christians to live differently than the world lives. There ought to be a contrast.

So Paul lays out all of these things in our life that should be different here, and I want to focus on what he told the ladies.

Look again at verses 3-5:

”3 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.”

In this passage, we see things Christian ladies are to avoid, things Christian ladies are to be, and things Christian ladies are to do.

Let’s pray and we’ll jump into this passage.

The first two things I want you to see here are...

1. Things Christian ladies are to avoid:

Paul starts by telling ladies—in this case particularly older ladies—two things they need to stay away from and watch out for. They are slander and drunkenness. So let’s look at those:

A. Slander

Paul says:

”The aged woman likewise...not false accusers.”

Apparently, there is a particular temptation among older ladies to sow discord and to gossip. Paul is saying to these ladies, “You need to watch out for this. You need to avoid this. Don’t say things about people that aren’t 100% true. Don’t be a gossip.”

Years ago, we did a Christmas play about a preacher coming to a new small town church, and two of the funniest characters were two old ladies sitting on either side of the auditorium next to a phone just gossiping away and exaggerating everything. That was funny, but it’s not funny when it really happens. It can be a source of destruction, and it doesn’t match the gospel, so avoid slander.

The second thing Paul said for older ladies to avoid is...

B. Drunkenness

not given to much wine.

Now, I have to admit, in my experience as a pastor, I’ve never met many older ladies who were “given to much wine,” and certainly not in the church. But apparently, it was a particular problem in Paul’s time.

I think we can expand “given to much wine” here to include any kind of substance abuse, whether it’s alcohol or pills. Be careful here.

So there are things to avoid.

• Avoid wearing stripes with plaid.
• Avoid wearing white after Labor Day.
• Avoid wearing socks with sandals.
• Avoid putting cinnamon in anything but a dessert.
• Avoid mixing Christianity with gossip and drunkenness.

Let’s see what Paul said are some...

2. Things Christian ladies are to be:

I see three things here—three words we don’t use very often—that Paul said should describe Christian ladies. These three things should be all Christian ladies, not just older or younger Christian ladies.

The first word that should describe Christian ladies is...

A. Sober

It says ”that they may teach the young women to be sober.”

Now, “sober” in the Bible does not mean the same thing that “sober” means today. Today, “sober” means “not drunk,” but that is actually not the meaning it had in the Bible at all.

In the Bible, the word sober means two things:

First, being “sober” means you are “sound-minded.” It means you are sensible. It means you aren’t crazy.

We live in a crazy world, and we have a lot of crazy pressures to deal with. Ladies, moms, you have to deal with a lot. There are always things to be afraid of. There are always things to get “stressed out” over, and if you’re not careful, your life can just be overrun with stress and anxiety. It can get out of control.

There were 46 million prescriptions to Xanax (a drug for anxiety) written out in just one year. That’s one out of every six people in the U.S.. I’m not against anxiety medication, but doesn’t that say something about the world we live in? People are stressed out. People are running around like crazy. People are anxious.

How many of you know a mom (maybe it’s you) who is always running around like her hair is on fire? She is stressed to the max and anxious about everything.

That’s the opposite of sober. Sober means “sound-minded.”

But it’s when you look at the second meaning of this word “sober” that you really understand what is going on here.

The second idea in the word “sober” here is to be disciplined.

So sober means “not stressed out, not anxious, sound-minded,” and on the flip side, it means “disciplined.”

Can I humbly suggest that the way to not be stressed out and anxious is to be disciplined?

A sober lady is a lady who disciplines herself so she isn’t stressed out all the time, so she isn’t running around with her hair on fire, and so she can be sound-minded.

Let me just say something here before I move on. I’m not a lady (obviously), but I’m susceptible to running around with stress and anxiety tearing me apart, too. Men are also commanded to be sober.

One thing I’m learning (kind of the hard way) is that older people have a lot of tricks for fighting off the craziness of life, and we need to listen to them and learn from them.

Adulting is hard. Raising kids is hard. You can learn a lot from godly older people about just the rhythms of life: Waking up early; not letting your smartphone rule your life; having a quiet time every day where you read and study the scriptures; not procrastinating about little chores until they become giant balls of stress. You older ladies have a lot to teach my generation about being sober.

So we need ladies to be sober—not stressed out and anxious, but disciplined.

The second word Paul says Christian ladies need to be is...

B. Discreet

The word for discreet is very close to the word for sober, and the meaning is very close. I guess one of them refers to your mindset, whereas the other refers to your actions.

Discreet basically means “careful in your actions.”

We need Christian ladies and Christian moms who are discreet and careful in what they do, what they say, and what they wear.

Ladies, be careful in what you do. Just because something isn’t sinful doesn’t mean that it’s appropriate. It doesn’t mean that it won’t have bad consequences later. Think about the consequences.

Be careful aboutwhat you say. One of the marks of wisdom is having something between your mind and your mouth that stops something up here from coming out down here. This applies to what you post on Facebook and Instagram, too. Be careful what you say.

I think discretion includes being careful about what you wear. I think we can make too much of this, but the Bible is very clear that ladies need to put thought into dressing in a modest way. Our older ladies need to be teaching our younger ladies Bible principles about this. It’s an important part of discretion.

So...

• Be sober - disciplined, not anxious.
• Be discreet - careful in what you do, say or wear

And the third thing Christian ladies need to be is they need to be...

C. Chaste

There’s a word you never hear anymore: Chaste.

“Chaste” simply means “pure”—pure in your thoughts and pure in your actions. Christian ladies should be known for their moral purity.

That starts up here. That starts with the shows you watch and the books you read. It starts with the friends you listen to. It starts by getting in the word of God every day. Everything else is way downstream of that.

We need a bunch of ladies in our culture that are sober, discreet, and chaste.

That matches our doctrine. That matches holiness, like peanut butter and jelly; like summer and sandals; like Moon Pies and RC Cola. Some things just go together, and these mindsets go with being a Christian lady and a Christian mother.

So we’ve talked about things Christian ladies are to avoid and things Christian ladies are to be.

Let me quickly give you...

3. Things Christian ladies are to do:

Paul gives us four things here for Christian ladies to do. Some of these are really unpopular, but don’t get mad at me. Get mad at the Bible.

The first thing is...

A. Teach

It says to the older ladies that they teach the young women.

Let me tell you: The things I’m preaching this morning, I’m not the best person to be preaching them. Far from it—the best person to be preaching them are Christian ladies who are further along in life, and Christian ladies who are younger need to listen.

We live in such an arrogant age. Young people think they know everything. We think we are so wise. We think we are God’s gift to the human race sometimes. There are these huge generation gaps that are culture just tries to make bigger and bigger.

They shouldn’t be in the church. The church should be a place where the older ladies are teaching the younger ladies, and where the younger ladies are actively trying to learn from the older ladies.

Christian ladies should be teaching and should be learning from each other.

Ladies, that means you shouldn’t just hang out with ladies who are your own age. You should seek to spend time with some of the ladies who are twenty or thirty years older than you. On the flip side, some of you ladies in your sixties or seventies need to have some ladies over who are in their twenties and thirties and spend some time with them.

There should be teaching and learning.

The second thing Christian ladies are to do is to...

B. Love

It says that the older ladies are to teach the younger ladies ”to love their husbands, to love their children.”

Notice this is something that you are to learn. It doesn’t just happen. It’s an action. It’s something you have to do.

Sometimes it’s really hard to love a man who is selfish, who is a klutz, or who is difficult. Sometimes it’s hard to love children who won’t do their homework, won’t clean their room, or are fighting with their brothers and sisters.

But if Momma doesn’t do it, home is going to be a very, very dark and harsh place.

This may come as a shock to you, but I’m not easy to love. My kids aren’t easy to love. I’m so grateful that my wife works at it.

The Bible teaches that the husband is the head of the home. That’s an unpopular teaching, but it’s still a biblical one. But I think if the husband is the head of the home, the wife is the heart of the home.

So you have to love. If you have a husband at home, you have to love him even when it’s work. If you have kids, you have to love them even when it’s work.

Teach (or learn) love. The third thing it says for ladies to do is to...

C. Keep

It says ”to be keepers at home.”

When I was a kid and I’d read this verse, I thought this meant that ladies were not supposed to leave the house. That’s silly. Obviously that’s not what this means.

I’ve researched this phrase and it means two things:

It means you as Christian ladies need to guard your home. Watch over it. Protect it, but not in the Glock or Sig Sauer sense. We aren’t talking about you shooting people here, but just know what is going on there and work to keep bad stuff out of your house.

But the other sense—I think the main sense—is that Christian ladies need to take responsibility over making their house a home. Work at making your house the kind of place you want to come home to. Work at making it the kind of place where you are happy to be.

I do not believe that God is against ladies working outside of the home. The virtuous woman in Proverbs 31 did a lot of commerce in that chapter. God used a lot of working ladies in the early church (like Lydia the seller of purple). But I do think that your house, ladies, is your domain. It’s your special place of service, and if you work at it, it can be a wonderful part of a godly Christian family.

Make your home a special place—Not an expensive place; not a fancy place; not a perfect place, but a special place. Make it a place you want to come back to.

The Bible mentions so many ladies in the early church whom God used because they opened their homes. Ladies, your home can be a powerful launching pad; it can be a base; it can be a little slice of heaven in a hellish world, but you have to work at it.

So teach, love, keep, and one more thing here...

D. Submit

Now this is a really, really unpopular teaching, but the Bible teaches that if your behavior is going to match your profession, and if your behavior is going to match your doctrine, then you need to order your home the way God intended.

This doesn’t mean, as feminists would tell us, that women are less important than men or are somehow lesser creatures. That’s ludicrous. I don’t think anyone could read the New Testament and come to that conclusion. What it does mean is that God has ordained a certain order in the home, and godly ladies can do a great deal of good in this world by rejecting the world’s notions and embracing what the Bible says about how your home should be run.

Conclusion

Let me make one more point and I’ll wrap this up: The world is watching us. They aren’t watching us in church. They could care less what we do in church. They are watching the way we live our lives.

I have always believed that one of the most powerful tools we have is having truly Christian homes. True Christian homes are a purple cow in the world today. They are remarkable. People have to talk about them.

Ladies, you can do a world of good by making sure your lifestyle matches your teaching.

Moms and ladies, thank you for your sacrifice. I wouldn’t be here today were it not for a godly mom:

• A mom who made me go to church.
• A mom who sacrificed and worked a second job as a janitor and as a bus driver so I could go to a Christian school.
• A mom who I saw many times sitting in her armchair with her Bible and a cup of tea.
• A mom who worked hard to make our house a home.
• A mom I still look to for advice and I still get excited about coming home to.

And I’m so grateful that my kids have a godly mom. I love you, Amanda.

Ladies, there is an old saying that the hand that rocks the cradle rocks the world. You can have such a huge impact for God.

Let’s stand for invitation with heads bowed and eyes closed.

1. Do you have a profession, have you trusted Christ as you savior?
2. Do you match?