Do you notice that our culture is not shy about what it accepts and what it rejects? Our culture is very clear about what it considers good. It applauds it, it sets it up, like this is what everybody should be. And our culture is very clear about what it considers wrong or evil by what it condemns. And not only by what it condemns, but also by what it mocks. Mockery is one of the main ways our culture expresses its opinions, negative opinions about things. Some mockery is pretty overt, but some is a lot more subtle. For decades, our culture has used mockery to express its dislike, to wage war against men. From father knows best, we've had a steady diet in our entertainment, a father knows nothing. The kids are smarter than he is, he needs his wife who is omni-competent, who is responsible, who fixes all his messes. He needs her to be more of a mom than a wife. Because men are idiots, men are ignorant, men screw things up, men are the butt of all jokes. If they ever actually fix a problem, it's by accident, it's not actually by what they did. And even the family pet is smarter than the man. However, the more that we've mocked, marginalized, and mistreated men, the faster our culture has deteriorated so that now there's far more damage being done to women and to children than in previous generations, which did not wage war against men. Men are more likely to drop out of high school, not go to college, and go to jail. Now there aren't enough social programs, there aren't enough prisons to deal with the fallout, but rather than spending time on the problems, the Bible gives us solutions. So turn to Titus chapter 2. Titus chapter 2, that's page 1100. 1100 in those blue Bibles that the ushers give out. Titus chapter 2. So we did a Christmas study in the book of Ruth, and I hope that was helpful. And now we're back in Titus when I preach, and we'll finish Titus sometime in the spring. And to get all of us up to speed, let me just tell you a little bit about the book of Titus. Titus was a ministry partner of an early Christian leader named the Apostle Paul who wrote most of the New Testament. So he and Titus were together doing ministry on the island of Crete. You could go there today. It's a real place. It's in the Mediterranean Sea. It's just south of the country of Greece. And around 6263 AD, they were on this island and they were planting churches and they were visiting believers on this island. And as they were doing all of that and interacting and meeting with Christians, They came to learn that Crete was an absolute mess. Listen to the description of it by one of its residents in chapter 1 verse 12. One of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said that Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons. Now obviously, generalities are not true of every single person, but in general, a resident of the island said this is what it's like to be on Crete. This is what a Cretan is like. Verse 16, they profess to know God, they're very religious, but they deny Him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work. So the way people lived there, their values, their culture, what they lived for, how people envisioned the good life, what they believed about God, what it was that meant most to them, all of that gave evidence that their culture on the island was dying. Sin was rampant. The island was overrun by false teachers propagating false teaching. They're bringing their lies and bringing that dying culture actually into the churches. So churches were full of people who rejected the truth, full of people who were living lives in opposition to the truth, all while calling themselves Christians. Paul wrote this letter that we call Titus to his friend. And in chapter one, verse five, he says why he left him there. Hey, I had to leave, but I wanted you to stay, he says, to straighten out the churches, straighten them out, bring some order. And he said, what that means is like, here's the truth and here's their lives all over the place and what they believe and what they think. And so you need to take the truth and you need to align their thinking, align their doctrine and align their lives to the truth. Well, starting in chapter two, verse two, Paul gets very specific with instructions for specific groups in the church, four groups, older men, older women, younger women, younger men. The hope is that as all of these people are in these churches together, that these instructions will help the Christians on the island of Crete thrive in a dying culture. I don't know if you've noticed, but our culture is dying. We are drifting further and further into rebellion in what we think and how we live. So how do we as Christians in the culture, how do we hold the line of truth? How do we stay godly? How do we have a godly life when there is nothing in the culture that is encouraging you to do that? See, God did not save us to become like the culture that hates Him. He saved us out of that culture. He saves us and He makes the church into a counterculture, a different culture. And why does He do that? He does that so that our transformed thinking and our transformed lives will bring life and health and truth and love to the people in our culture who are dying along with it. Our lives are to be different, our thinking, our values, our spending, our time use, what we live for, what means most to us, all of that should be different than the world that we see around us. Listen, not so that we can look down on the culture for not being like us. Not so we can see ourselves as morally superior than everybody else. Not so we can point our fingers at how evil our culture is becoming. And it wasn't like this before. Not so we can look down on all those pagans, all those sinners out there. No, we're to live different lives. We're to live godly lives. Listen, for the purpose of reaching the people around us. We should be different than our culture to show our culture that Jesus is better. He's better than what they live for. He's better than what they value. He's better than what they spend their money on. He's better than what they crave and give their lives to. And when they see that Jesus is better from lives that scream, Jesus is better. Jesus is used, God uses that to rescue more people out of the dying culture, just like he did with you and just like he did with me. Chapter two, verse 12, we see how lives are transformed. How is it? How does my life change? What happens? What is it that changes a life? Well, look at chapter two, verse 11. The subject is God's grace. Verse 11, for the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people. But look at verse 12. It's the grace of God that is training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions. And it's the grace of God that's training us to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age. So how are our lives changed? Answer, grace. It's God's grace. God's grace trains us. The more we understand, the more we experience God's grace in our lives. He uses that to make us more and more like Christ. And that change will come out first. Look at chapter two, verse 12. It comes out in the lives of older men, men over 50 who care about their characters. Verse 12, older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith and love and steadfastness. The change that grace makes is also gonna be seen in older women, women past childbearing years, caring about their characters, helping younger Christian women do the same. Verse three. Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They're to teach what is good and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind and submissive to their own husbands. Why? So that the word of God may not be reviled. So we've already looked at those other groups, those three groups, and now today and next week, we look at this final group in the church, the younger men, men between the ages of 12 and 50. That would be a younger man by the definition there in verse six. Listen, there could be no larger difference between what our culture tells you that you should be and what the Bible tells you you should be as a man. Our culture says, stay still, stay quiet, and stay stupid. Stay a child until the last possible second. Postpone adulting as long as you can. Take advantage of everyone around you so that you can maximize your fun, your pleasure, your comfort, and your ease. So you're gonna have to choose, I'm gonna have to choose who I'm gonna take direction from as a man. Because both the Bible and our culture are trying to squeeze us into its mold. It's trying to conform us to the image of one or the other. You see, what happens is most of us, we want the best of both worlds. We want our feet and kind of both. We want to try to get the best of both, but both worlds are diametrically opposed to each other. As far as what's important, as far as what's true. So if God's grace has taken hold of your heart, then the kind of man God wants you to be is a man like Jesus, the perfect man, the God man. God is seeking to make you like him, but the world is seeking to make you more rebellious, like Satan. Jesus only spoke the truth. Satan is the father of lies. Jesus lived to do the will of God. Satan lives to oppose the will of God. Jesus blesses God. Satan blasphemes God. Jesus declares God's word. Satan discredits and denounces God's word. See, at the end of the day, there's really no partnership between God and rebellion. There's no friendship between Jesus and Satan. There's no connection between truth and lies, good and evil. So how many of us in this room are between the ages of 12 and 50 and are men? Raise your hand. So listen, this message today is specifically directed towards you and towards me. However, What we're gonna see in verse six, we're actually gonna see is for all Christians. So really, while I'm gonna be speaking to the young men specifically, the spillover from that should splash on all of us. So how many, as you look at this text, how is it that we thrive when our culture is dying around us? Look at verse six. Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled. Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned. Why? So that an opponent may be put to shame having nothing evil to say about us. I want you to look at verse 6 in that word, likewise. He's saying, I don't have anything different than the other groups that I looked at. Each one of them, the truth is supposed to impact their life in a specific way. And the same is true for young Christian men, just as it does the older men, the older women, and the younger women. So notice that second word in verse 6, the word urge. Paul says, this is what your ministry is supposed to look like, Titus. This is how you're gonna pastor the young men. That word urge. You need to know three things about that word. The first one is this. The word urge is a command. Meaning it's not optional for Titus. If things are gonna get straightened out in the churches on this island, then this is what must mark his ministry to young men, urging them. Second, it's a verb in the present tense. And that's just Greek nerd talk for saying this. This is what he's supposed to do all the time. His main ministry to young men in the churches is supposed to have this tone of urging. He must do this all the time repeatedly as his habit in all of the churches he goes to, this is what he's supposed to do. And third, notice the text, what is it that he's supposed to do? He's supposed to urge. That word urge has a range of meaning. So if he goes into a church and the young men are on it and they're solid and they're doing verses six to eight, then the word urge would mean encourage them. Say, keep going, you're doing a great job, keep it up. But if he goes into a church and he finds that the young men there are not doing verses six to eight, that word urge would then carry the idea of exhort or challenge because they're being disobedient. So every time he gets this group of Christian young men together, he's to urge them. He's not to say this once and say these things, you know, I'm mentioning this in passing. Young men being what God wants them to be was to be the constant drumbeat whenever he was around young men. God has a goal for them. He has a plan. You can see that at the end of verse six, I already read it. But before we go there, We have to take a step back and say, does the Bible have a general plan for what a man is supposed to be? And the answer is yes, it does. It has an overarching idea for men. This helped these men on this island thrive in a dying culture. And listen, it will help us thrive in the dying culture called 21st century America. to fulfill God's plan for your life as a young man. Point number one, you need to kill Peter Pan. Kill Peter Pan. Peter Pan never wanted to what? Grow up. You need to kill Peter Pan. You need to plunge a knife into the heart of the idea that you postpone adulthood as long as you can. There's nothing cool about being a moi, a boy in a man's body. Just play every day, goof off, be wild, have as few responsibilities as you can. Now, there's nothing wrong with having fun, but unless fun is what you live for, there's nothing cool or even good about that. Lazy, pleasure-saturated experts in sports, movies, TV, video games, and pornography, no goals, no ambition, barely able to take care of yourself, mooching off of other people, running away from all responsibility. Listen, put all of that to death, all of it. This is what the Bible teaches. 1 Kings 2, King David is about to die. He's been the king for 40 years. He cares deeply about this kingdom that he's gonna give to his son Solomon. Solomon, you're gonna be the king. And so as he's on his deathbed, what is he gonna say? What is it that's gonna be on his mind? 1 Kings 2, verse two, he says, parting advice to his son before death. I'm about to go the way of all the earth. So he knows like, I'm going to die. So quote, this is what he says, quote, be strong and show yourself a man. Be a man, Solomon. Is that how we talk to ourselves, men? Is that how we talk to our sons? Hey, son, I'm getting you ready to be a man. This is what he said, be strong and show yourself a man. And then he explains what that means. Verse three says, quote, keep the charge of the Lord, your God, walking in his ways and keeping his statutes, his commandments, his rules, and his testimony. Showing yourself a man means following the Lord. It's adopting his will for your life as your will for your life. It's doing what he says. And then Paul echoes this, 1 Corinthians 16, 13. He tells Christian men in the city of Corinth, quote, be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. You probably did not hear that from any movie you've ever seen in the past 20 years. Act like a man, be a man. What does it mean to act like a man? I think 1 Timothy chapter six gives us an answer. So turn two books to the left. 1 Timothy chapter six. If you're sitting there right now and you're going, well, I'm a woman and I'm not really sure, like, what is this? Listen, if you're a single woman, you need to know this because you need to wait for and pray for a man like this. You need to not settle. I heard that amen. That's the amen of experience. I think 1 Timothy 6 gives us an answer. So chapter 6 of 1 Timothy starts with Paul's description of false teachers. False teachers running all around where Timothy was as well, and he's describing them, they're spreading air, they're full of pride, they're causing conflict, they're greedy. And he says, but Timothy, God has other plans for you. Look at verse 11. All that being said, but as for you, oh man of God, God has a different plan. As for you, man of God, first flee these things. That word flee is the word that created our English word fugitive. Run as fast as you can, get as far away as you can from error and heresy and pride and sinful conflict and greed. Get away from it. And second notice, Timothy was to quote, pursue righteousness, godliness. Faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. So acting like a man second means following after God's will for our lives. Again, doing what is right, doing what pleases the Lord, trusting Him, loving others, standing firm in our commitments to Jesus, being gentle, considerate of others. What does it mean to act like a man third? It means, verse 12, you're going to see real godly manhood in what he fights for. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. Translation, men fight for the truth. They fight to stay faithful to the truth and faithful to Christ and they're immovable and unshakable. They're there to be the rocks in the midst of the Christian community, committed to the truth for their entire lives. They fight to stand strong against the culture and stand strong against their desires and stand strong against demonic forces. And you see this in verse 13, it says, I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession to keep the commandment unstained, free from reproach until the appearing of our God, our Lord, Jesus Christ. What he's getting at is that Jesus stayed faithful to the very end, even when it cost him his life. And yes, Jesus is our savior, our Lord, he's our God, he's our substitute, he's our king. 1 John 2, 6, he's also our example. So we're to see the way that Jesus stood strong in the midst of intense, specific, personal pain to his own life and stay faithful to the very end. So one author put it this way, a man of God acting like a man, you see this, a man of God is known by what he flees from, what he follows after, what he fights for and what he stays faithful to. Now listen, I've just taken about 20 minutes to go over all of that. Why do you think I would take 20 whole minutes of a message, half the message, to do that? Because other than God's word and God's spirit in your mind, you will never hear any of that from our culture, ever. In the current worldview where everyone is either an oppressor or the oppressed, you, young Christian man, are the worst person in the world. In our culture, we apologize for being men, feel ashamed for being men, try to dress so that we aren't too manly, and we are applauded if we mutilate ourselves so that we can stop being men. If you think that what the Bible says about being a man is toxic masculinity, You know, it's cishet, dominant, misogynistic, bigoted, chauvinistic. Listen, you might be more of a cultural Marxist than a biblical Christian. And you may not even know it. We don't read the Bible through Marxist lenses. The writers of the Bible lived thousands of years before Karl Marx did, and everything they said was a direct assault on his lies. Our culture is at war against men, but listen, the Bible's not. The Bible's not at war with you. The Bible doesn't beat you up for being a man. Think about it, God would never do that. He created manhood. Genesis chapter one, he called manhood very good. And when God left heaven and came to earth that first Christmas, he came here and was born as a man. If that's true, then what do you think the source of this war on men is? You think it's from God? You think it's producing godliness and taking men in the direction that God wants us to go? Or maybe it's from some other source that's seeking to take you away from God's will. The Bible seeks to build men up, listen, and make you like Jesus, the perfect man. All of us, every man has flaws. That man had no flaws at all. And listen, it's not just men. Romans chapter eight, God is taking all Christians, men and women, and making us to look like Christ. And if you're sitting there saying to yourself, you know, I agree with all of that, and I really want all of that, I just don't know how. Show me how to do this. I want to act like a man, but I want to know how. Listen, the answer is Jesus. We see his life, what he loves, his heart, his passions, his decisions, his words, his demeanor, his ways. We see that in the gospels as the perfect man. He's the true manhood. True manhood looks like him. So if you're not doing the Bible reading plan, you should. And if you're like, ah, it's a lot of reading, I'm not a really good reader, then just do the New Testament. And as you read the New Testament, take note of what Jesus says and what he does and go, okay, Jesus, you're showing me what it means to be a man. Go and do likewise. As you go and do likewise, as you follow Jesus and what it means to be a man, you kill Peter Pan. doing God's will was most important to Jesus. Okay, Jesus, then it should be most important to me. He helped people in need, and so I should help people in need. He loved people. Okay, I should love people. He was firm on the truth. I should be firm on the truth. It's really that simple. The reason that we don't know this is we just, we don't approach the Bible that way. But listen, this is easy. This is how it works. We read the gospels. What did Jesus do? 1 John 2, 6, I'm to walk as he walked. I'm to live how he lived. And so Jesus, show me how to live as the perfect man. and that will kill Peter Pan. Now, when I was a new Christian in 1820, I'd hear messages like this and I would think, okay, I agree with what you're saying, preacher, and I'm sufficiently convicted, but now what? What am I supposed to do with this? How can I, I see the, the Moy hood in my heart. And so I, I want to fix this. Tell me what to do. Cause I, I'd hear this and my, my hard drive would freeze and I'd be like, okay, I agree. But like, tell me what to do. Just give me, I mean, this mountain is too high. This manhood mountain is too high to climb. Just give me like two things or three things or just give me one thing that's going to get me moving in that direction. Is there one thing that can just fast track me to acting like a man? And the answer is yes. Look at Titus chapter two again. Truth should impact our lives. And for Christian men between the ages of 12 and 50, the truth should impact us in one main specific way. This passage is God's specific will for your life. This is what he wants from us. This is what he desires for us. This is the bottom line. Every other thing God wants us to do will flow from this one thing. Titus chapter two, verse six, likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled. There it is. A life that does not credit your Savior, a life that matches the truth about Jesus, a life that is being produced by God's grace, is a life marked by self-control, self-mastery, self-conquering, self-discipline. And we've seen this before. Look at chapter 1, verse 8. Church leaders are to have self-control. Look at chapter 2, verse 2. Older Christian men. have self-control. Chapter 2, verse 5, younger Christian women, and by implication, the older Christian women mentoring them, are to have self-control. Look at chapter 2, verse 12. God's grace is training us to say no to ungodliness in what? And to live self-controlled lives. Now, the other groups had multiple character traits to strive for. Look at 2-2. Older men, six things. Older women, five things. Young women, six things. Younger men, one thing. Now, why is it just one? I mean, that's what I do when I ask the questions. You know why? I think it's one thing for two reasons. The first one is this. Younger men are particularly prone to be tempted to be out of control. And so that's the first reason. And I think the second reason, because if a man can control himself, all the other things God wants from his life fall into place. So when Titus went around to the churches on Crete and got all the younger men together, this is what he was to urge them to be, self-controlled. As their pastor, this was the tone he was to set in all of his meetings with them, self-control. So for us to thrive in a dying culture, you don't become like the culture, you do God's will for your life, you become like Jesus. And point number two, you discipline yourself for godliness. Discipline yourself for godliness. Now, Throughout my years of preaching, I've probably preached somewhere around 500 to 600 sermons. And no point in no sermon has ever been more powerful, more poignant, more better. I'm Hawaiian, so that's normal language. None of them have been better than this point. You know why? Because this point right here is a quote from Scripture. First Timothy 4.7 says, train yourself or discipline yourself for godliness. It's the only point I've ever had that has been straight quote from scripture. Control yourself, your desires, your thoughts, your decisions. Don't let anything master you except for the master, the Lord Jesus. The word translated self-control in Titus 2.6 is the opposite of being out of control. It's the opposite of frivolous or indulgent or lazy or careless or passive or impulsive. It means to be in command of our minds and emotions. It's in control. So we're rational and composed and attentive and thoughtful and restrained. It's the responsibility of Christian parents with young men in their homes to train them to be self-controlled. It's a responsibility if you are a young Christian man. This is one of the fruit of the Spirit. So God himself is living inside of you if you're saved, and this is what he's working, seeking to work out in your life. This is what he is leading you to do, live a life of self-control. To bring our thoughts, our desires, our decisions, our actions in line with God's will for our life as seen in God's word, the Bible, just like Jesus did. If you look at chapter two, verse seven of Titus, and you see that little phrase, in all respects, I think that phrase is better, should be at the end of verse six. So that verse six should read, urge the younger men to be self-controlled in all respects, in every area of our lives. No areas of our lives that are out of control, no area of our life that is not under the Lordship of Jesus. So this would include our bodies. 1 Corinthians 9, Paul is talking about the Christian life, and he compares the Christian life to athletes. And he says, quote, every athlete exercises self-control in all things. Right? So a good athlete is going to control himself. He's, I've got a goal, I've got a prize, and I got to work towards that, which means I've got to control myself in order to win the prize. He says, they do it to receive a perishable wreath, a trophy, a medal. He says, but we do it. We discipline ourselves. to receive an imperishable wreath, eternal rewards. And so he says, I discipline my body. I keep my body under control, lest after preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified. I'm disciplining myself. I'm instilling self-control. And then he says those words, I keep my body under control. And that phrase, if you were to study it, you would find that what that phrase means is I treat my body like my slave. I tell my body what to do, it doesn't tell me what to do. I control my body so that my body pleases God. 1 Corinthians 6, here's this self-indulgent group of Christians. They're saying, you know, all things are lawful for me. I can do whatever I want. I can live however I want. Paul's like, yeah. He says, but I will not be mastered. I will not be dominated by anything. He says, you're not your own. You were bought with a price. Jesus died for you. He gave his life for you. So he says, 1 Corinthians 6.20, glorify God in your body. Make Jesus look great with your body. Christ is our master, not our bodies, not our emotions. 1 Timothy 4.7, train yourself, discipline yourself for godliness. Now, in Christian circles, we might use that word godly, but what does that word mean? Do you ask that question? What do these words mean? I'm glad you asked that question, because I'm going to tell you. Godliness is a word that means to be preoccupied with God. That's what it means. Obsessed with God, always thinking about, always pondering, orienting every part of my life around God. He's the center of the spokes and a wheel, and everything in my life jets out from Him. In the book Respectable Sins, Jerry Bridges summarizes what the Bible says about being ungodly, so the opposite of godliness. He says this, quote, ungodliness is living one's everyday life with little or no thought of God, or of God's will, or of God's glory, or of one's dependence on God. God is essentially irrelevant in his or her life, basically living as though God doesn't exist. Now that means that we can be very nice people. We can know a lot about the Bible. We can go to church and serve and give and work hard at our jobs and avoid really bad sins and be ungodly. Godliness is not something that happens to us. It's not something that we kind of just drift into. It's not something that there's this Holy Spirit like bolt of lightning that hits you and you come out of the haze and you're like, oh, I'm godly now. How does godliness happen? First Timothy 4, seven, discipline yourself for godliness. We discipline ourselves, we train ourselves, we control ourselves to ignore lesser things so that we can be preoccupied and obsessed with not sports teams, not celebrities, not royals, not anything, obsessed with what God wants, what He says, what He desires for our lives. That word yourself, It means every area of our lives, our bodies, our minds, our emotions, our desires, everything under the control of Christ. Like an athlete, that means saying no to ourselves constantly when it comes to temptation to sin, to not read the Bible, or pray, or give, or serve, or go to church, or help someone in need. Anything holding us back from Christ, leaving that behind in order to have Him. And like an athlete, we should be saying yes to ourselves constantly when it comes to doing the right thing, standing up for truth, telling someone about Jesus, reading the Bible, praying, giving, going to church, being involved in church, helping people in need. See, in the heart of the Christian, there is this battle going on between what the flesh, what sin wants us to do, and what the Spirit wants us to do. So it's training ourselves, disciplining ourselves to say no to sin and yes to the Spirit, because they're both trying to conform us into their image, to follow their leadership. You've got two forces trying to lead you, and every decision you make, you're saying no to the one and yes to the other. Disciplining yourself for godliness means saying no to sin and yes to the Spirit. Easy to do that? No way. It's not easy to be self-controlled. You know what it is easy to be? Peter Pan. It's easy to be a lifelong teenager. That's why it's discipline yourself for godliness. It takes us making a commitment, being resolved to bring ourselves under the control of the Spirit to be the man God wants us to be. Listen, the last thing our culture wants us to be is self-controlled. It encourages us to be self-centered and self-indulgent. Right? He who dies with the most toys wins. You only live once. Go for it, get all that you can. Live, do everything before you experience everything. I want to experience everything. None of that says self-control, and that is dangerous counsel. Proverbs 25, 28 says, quote, a man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls. If you can't control yourself, you are defenseless to every temptation. Self-control protects you from making a disaster of your life and those closest to you. I don't know what it's like now, but when I was learning how to drive, I'm 15 years old, you know, and I go into driver's ed and you finally get to the car and you're actually going to drive. Do you remember that? And the driver's ed car that I was in sat down in the driver's seat and here I am and I've got the steering wheel and I've got the pedals and I'm ready to go. But then I noticed in the seat next to me, the driver's ed instructor also had a steering wheel and he also had gas and a brake. Like, what's that? Oh, in case I, you know, try to careen us off a bridge, you're able to take over and make sure that we don't do that. Oh, okay. Listen, our bodies, our minds, our emotions are that 15 year old in the driver's seat of the driver's ed car. And Christian, you're the driver's ed instructor in the passenger seat with all the controls to override when sin is trying to take the wheel and crash your life into temptation and burn your life down. I had a former student this past week, just a couple of days ago. I pastored him about 10 years ago and he texted me just one sentence. He said, quote, my life is in disarray because I didn't listen to your warnings. And I reminded him they weren't my warnings. They were God's. See, we read the Bible and we think that God is trying to keep us from joy, keep us from happiness. That's a lie. Everything the Bible says is to maximize our joy and to protect us. He had to learn that the hard way, he said. You don't have to. You don't have to. Are we gonna coddle Peter Pan? Or are we gonna kill Peter Pan? Kill him by being self-controlled, by disciplining every area of your life for the goal of godliness, holiness, being more like Jesus, who is the perfect man. Now, what if while I've been talking just now and you've been listening, you've been thinking, you know, I don't really think about self-control ever. Never really crosses my mind. I know I should, but I really don't want to. What God wants isn't really important to me. I live for fun and pleasure and live to please myself. And I rarely ever tell myself, no, I don't flee youthful lust. In fact, if I'm honest, my life is filled with these things and I really can't get enough of it. I mean, why are so many Christian men, why are so many men, even in churches, failing to be self-controlled in all things? If you've been finding that what I've been saying today is completely foreign to your life, it's probably because you don't know the Lord. You may not even know that you don't know the Lord. You may think you know the Lord, but your complete lack of self-control, your being given over to pleasures and disobedience is a symptom of a huge problem. That problem is this. You are not saved. You don't know the Lord. So you can't say no to sin because you don't have power to say no to sin. God's spirit is not in you, influencing you, causing you to walk in God's ways. Instead, you live to please your own desires and not his. And you enjoy that. There's no enjoyment in the Bible or prayer or church. That's like needles in your eyes right now. You're like, no, this is awful. It's like trying to enjoy seafood. When you hate seafood, you have no appetite for it. Oh, you'll shove it down to be nice. You'll go through the motions. Oh, I got to make someone so happy. So I got to go to this church thing. There's really nothing in you that likes it, wants it, cares about it. There's no real wrestling with the things God doesn't want you to do. There's no fight against sin because you're a slave to sin. There's no curbing of your desires to do God's will because you're captured by Satan to do his will. You can grow up in church. You can know a lot about the Bible, raise your hand, pray the prayer, walk the aisle, serve in ministry. And listen, you can even be a pastor and not saved. And the solution at this moment, okay, you kind of exposed me. Solution right now is not, okay, I got to change. I just got to try harder. I got to do better this time. I'm going to get my act together. I'm going to get some accountability in my life. I'm going to finally take this stuff seriously. No, good works, being nice, doing things people admire that will not, cannot, does not save you. But listen, when you're saved, you begin to please God. You do good works. I was talking to a lady after the first service today. She pulled me over, she's like, I need to talk to you. And as she's talking to me, She goes, I used to not understand what you were saying. I'd read the Bible and I wouldn't get it. And it was just like, ah, what is all this nonsense? She said, but I get it now. Like my eyes are open and she tears in her eyes. She's going, I can't believe that God would give us these beautiful letters in this, in this book. And I, I'm listening to the Bible all day and I'm, I'm, I'm reading it and I'm listening to sermons. I just can't get enough of it. And she's just weeping. Like, why would God be so kind to us to give us his word? It's so beautiful. I'm like, that's it. That's not you. You can't create that. You gotta cry out to God. Like, I don't have to convince my one-year-old to crave and love milk. Right? Like, she is on that one. She is obsessed. Listen, no one will have to convince you to love and serve God. Christian sin, yeah, we sin all the time, but we're aware of our sin. We feel it. We hate it. We do battle against it. We don't do that to earn God's favor. We can't earn God's favor. We do that because we already have God's favor. We can't believe that God of the universe would show us mercy. And it is that mercy, chapter two, verse 12, that motivates us and trains us to deny ungodliness and worldly passions and to live upright, self-controlled, godly lives in the present age. It's from there that then we resolve, we commit, then we man up and we discipline our bodies and our minds and our emotions and our desires to make them our slaves, to be controlled in all things so that we can please God. And as I said before, while this passage is specifically directed to young men, as you've been hearing this, it's really directed at all of us. And so let's put the truth of Titus 2-6 into practice. While I've been speaking, I know that God in His grace has been saying, hey, yeah, here's an area where you can apply this specifically. And here's an area, here's something you can do to apply this specifically. Here's what I would say to you right now. Don't push against that. You will be tempted to push against that, forget it, not take it seriously, and just go on with your life. No, that is God graciously, kindly coming to you and going, here's how you can apply this specifically in your life to get more self-control over the areas that are out of control. And though you will still sin, the direction of your life over time will be more and more like Jesus, be thriving while the culture is dying. This is what's happening in the life of the Christian. Jesus is at the right hand of the Father. And the Father through the Spirit is taking you and he's looking at Jesus and he's chiseling the image of Jesus onto our lives. So in how we speak and how we act and interact and the things that we love and the things we believe and the things we care about, he's chiseling us away and the things that matter most to us and he's replacing it by what Jesus cares about and how Jesus acts. That takes the entire life of the Christian. That takes, you're never gonna arrive. But over time, the direction, the trajectory of your life will be more like Christ, the perfect man, the perfectly self-controlled man. That yes, like I said, He is our Savior, He's our Lord, He's our God, He's our King, and He's also our example of self-control. So let's be people, let's be a community of people like our Savior who control ourselves.