In the book of Titus, the little epistle
of Paul to Titus, second chapter, the Holy
Spirit says, Speak thou the things which become
sound doctrine, that the aged men be sober,
grave, temperate, sound in faith, in love, in
patience.
The aged women likewise, that they be in
behavior as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not
given to much wine, teachers of good things,
that they may teach the young women to
be sober, to love their husbands, to love
their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at
home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that
the word of God be not blasphemed.
The young men likewise exhort to be sober
-minded, in all things showing thyself a pattern
of good works, in doctrine showing uncorruptness, gravity,
sincerity, sound speech that cannot be condemned, and
that he that is of the contrary part
may be ashamed, having no evil thing to
say of you.
Now, I have not dragged anything in here
by the feet.
This is what the Holy Spirit says.
The Holy Spirit here instructs four classes, older
men, older women, young women, and young men.
In this aged here, where it says that
aged men be sober, actually the word aged
is very closely related to the word elder,
from which, in the New Testament, the rulers
of the churches were taken.
This hasn't to do with men in their
adult age.
It has to do with responsible men, older
in years, and probably in the faith, same
with older women, women whose families are reared,
and who have a time to go about,
could be a great blessing, but also could
be dangerous and harmful.
Then the young women who have their homes
and their families, and the young men, husbands
and wives, these are the four classes mentioned
here.
Now, I want to point out to you
that in the church, there is no such
thing known as a double standard.
In the New Testament, godliness is for all.
Christ's teaching mentions no classes, if you will
remember the Sermon on the Mount.
So far as I can recall, now, I
didn't read the whole four gospels, to check
on this, but as far as I can
recall, our Lord does not address himself directly
to any one class, but to everybody.
The multitudes came unto him, and he said,
or his disciples came to him, and he
said, he addressed himself to the people without
classes.
Now, this may sound very shocking in the
day in which we live, but I want
you to notice that Christ had no youth
program in his time.
You say then, Mr. Tozer, why does your
church?
The answer is this, that our Lord said,
preach the gospel to everybody.
Go into all the world and give the
gospel to everybody, and set that against the
Old Testament, and the obedience that we see
demonstrated in the New, and we arrive at
this, that people are to be evangelized wherever
they may be found.
If it's old folks in an old folks'
home, sick people in a hospital, prisoners in
a penitentiary, heathen in their blindness, railroad men
or factory men where they gather, people on
the streets, wherever we can reach people, we're
to reach them.
And since young people are gregarious, tend to
run together, it would seem to be a
normal way to fulfill the Lord's command to
give the gospel to everybody, to take advantage
of that gregariousness, and when they bring them
together as young people, to give the word
to them.
That is one thing, but it's quite another
thing to separate a young Christian from an
older Christian, and as the churches are doing,
to divide them from each other.
You know that isn't done in the Old
Testament, it isn't done in the New, and
there was never anything like that heard of
until later times, until the time democracies took
over, when there's a division line between the
old and the young.
In the home there's no such division line,
they live together, they eat together, they die
together, old and young.
And so it is in the church, they
worship together in the church of God, old
and young, up and down the scale, from
the old man or woman to the newest
Christian, youngest Christian, they worship together.
So there was no such thing known as
the problem of the teenager.
That has been whipped up by psychiatrists, psychologists,
social workers, badly and overtrained, and newspapers and
magazines who know that they have a bonanza.
All you have to do is to write
an article on how tough it is to
be between 12 and 20, and you can
sell it, just anything, that there's nothing to
it really, because a teenager is simply a
person who in his development is no longer
12 and hasn't reached 20.
He's in what they call the teens.
And somebody noticed that that particular period there
was a little turbulence, but everybody that's reared
family knows that, and they know that from
the age of little Stevie and even younger
on up into the 20s, there are differences,
but you can take it in your stride
and with a smile, instead of making so
much out of it.
But now we've made so much out of
it that teenagers actually think of themselves as
being people apart.
They feel that when they reach 13, they
resigned from the human race.
And then when they reach 20, they put
in their application for re-entry back into
the human race.
And in the meantime, between 13 and 20,
they are a people unto themselves.
And when you get them converted, they won't
even pray with the old people, and they
don't want to do anything the old people
do, nor sing any songs the old people
sing.
This never grew out of a normal need.
This grew out of pressure by over-educated
eggheads.
And there is nothing in the Bible to
give any basis for it at all.
My brethren, the same blood that cleanses an
old man cleanses a young man.
And the same spirit that brings righteousness to
the heart of an elderly woman brings righteousness
to the heart of a young woman.
And in the New Testament, there is no
excuse for wrongdoing made for an older man,
because he's older, or a younger woman, because
she's younger.
Righteousness brought by the blood of Christ and
the Holy Ghost enters into the individual, whatever
his age may be, whether it be the
boy Jesus at 12, when the Spirit was
in him, or whether it be, whatever it
may be, and the Spirit was in Jesus,
though he was anointed for his ministry at
30.
He nevertheless grew in faith and in spirit
and physically when he was a boy on
up through every period of his life.
So our Lord Jesus knew every one of
these stages except old age.
He died when he was about 33.
But remember, nothing is excused to a young
Christian because he's a young Christian.
The Bible makes no allowances for a Christian
because he's young in years, and it never
mentions the teenage problem which we've whipped up
and which people are getting rich on now.
So let's get that straight.
We might as well be realistic, and if
everybody else in the whole Christian world want
to think crooked, let's you and me think
straight about things, will you?
Let's think straight.
If everybody wants to think crooked, you can't
help them.
Let them think crooked.
I went through my mail yesterday morning, just
before the preachers had prayer in this study,
and honestly, I had to pray 10 minutes
to get out of the gloom.
I have an envelope full.
It's called a workshop envelope.
I'm going to give it to Mr. Chase.
But brother, I don't know.
I don't know whether all these gadgets they've
given us to serve God with these days
are necessary or not.
One envelope contains, or one envelope is marked,
ideas unlimited.
And in that envelope, there's a fellow.
I don't know who he is or whether
he's a man or whether it's a woman,
but it sounds like a rather feminine man.
And he has cards there which he says
have a touch of humor with a punch
line guaranteed to bring Sunday school people out
to Sunday school.
Well, all this to me is a frightful
and rather frightening thing that we forget that
we're just human beings, you and I, and
we're all more or less alike.
We're afraid of the same things.
We love the same things.
We eat about the same food, and we're
just alike.
And what age we are doesn't matter much,
although the Bible recognizes that there are temptations,
for instance, of a young man of 18
that a man of 80 is not likely
to have.
So the Bible does give us notice these
particular temptations and says now watch out and
here's the way you're to be.
And that's proper and right that it should
be so.
Redemption, my friends, is adequate for all ages.
And if redemption broke down in the life
of somebody 17 or 77 or 49 or
any other age you might imagine, it would
mean that the redemption in Christ Jesus was
inadequate.
But that redemption is 100% perfect.
It includes everybody.
It includes all ages and all colors.
And it includes farmers and carpenters and businessmen
and professional men or artisans or teachers or
whatever people do.
It includes them, includes students and housewives and
nurses and just whatever you happen to be
doing.
The Word of God finds you there just
as the rain falls upon the meadow and
finds every stalk of grass whichever way it
may be bent or however long or short
it may be or whatever color, yellow or
deep green or light green.
The rain falls from heaven and the sun
shines upon it all.
So the grace of God brings salvation and
comes to everybody.
And yet I say the Spirit recognizes varied
temptations and particular dangers facing different ages and
the two sexes and different positions and different
relationships.
So he gives rules for older men and
older women and younger women and younger men,
same gospel, same book, same letter, same sermon,
same everything, but merely applying it to people
in different stages.
So this what I've said up to now
is introductory to a little talk I want
to give called Admonitions to Older Men or
the Particular Temptations of Older Men.
I really should have advertised that and got
that into the newspaper.
We'd have had a lot of old fellows
here, I suppose, to know what their attempted
particular temptations would be.
But I want to name eight that the
older person is particularly likely to fall into,
which a younger man wouldn't.
Now, this is not from introspection.
This is from observation.
I want you to get that, that this
is from observation only.
But here, let me name them for you.
And if any of you old fellows should
incline to not like this, I can still
run fast.
And I don't think you'll dislike it because
I don't say it's true of everybody.
And of course, due to depression, it isn't
true of them.
But I have noticed that there are eight
faults which old fellows are likely to fall
into or older men.
It can start anywhere.
I have met middle-aged people who are
still in their 20s.
And I have met young people who are
in their 70s.
I submit that R.R. Brown is not
one day over 35, except he's physically a
little older.
And I have met people that are 35
that are over 70.
But by and large, these are the faults
that older men tend to fall into.
Next week, ladies, you'll get a little idea
unlimited from me about older women because it
tells us here you saw.
I'm not dragging this in.
It's here.
I have noticed these eight faults, and I'll
name them.
And then I'll take all the time that
I have to talk about them in close.
They are loquacity, that is, talkativeness, gluttony, resentfulness,
stubbornness, fault-finding, churlishness, a propensity to reminisce,
and levity.
These are the eight sins of older men.
I have observed, and I've been around a
while observing, there's first loquacity, which of course
means talkativeness.
Now, that's not true of all older men
because older men are wonderfully, a lot of
them are wonderfully and blessedly silent.
But loquacity is nevertheless a fault that older
men do tend to have.
It's a habit often found among them, just
endlessly talk.
Loquacity.
Well, let's mark that down.
Second, gluttony.
You smile at this and you say, well,
it's the young men who eat.
Yes, they eat more because they need more.
They're either growing up and needing it or
they're working hard and needing it.
But when a man gets old, one by
one, his pleasures tend to taper off.
The things he used to enjoy, one by
one, he can't enjoy anymore.
But there is usually one left, and that's
eating.
And that's about all that the older man
can enjoy.
Mother Nature's walked out on him on almost
all of his pleasures.
He can't play anymore.
He doesn't have the opportunities anymore for pleasure
that he used to have.
So he just proceeds to eat himself to
death.
I've known older men.
I know a dear old brother.
God bless him.
He's in heaven now.
He's not as high up as he'd have
been if he'd got control of himself sooner.
But he's in heaven by the grace of
God.
But at all the camp meetings, he always
was head to, at least not more than
three from the front at the cafeteria.
I think he had probably left the meeting
early to get there.
And he would bend over and eat as
if it was really something to enjoy.
And he had a reputation of drinking, literally
floating himself in coffee.
Now, I drink coffee and I eat.
And I suppose most of you do that.
But it's one thing to eat.
It's another thing to develop a gluttonous disposition
and take revenge on all of the pleasures
that Mother Nature's taken away from you by
working hard and overworking the one.
Now, we've got a cure for that and
a remedy.
Get a hold of yourself and learn to
miss a meal occasionally that you might get
yourself by the scurf of the neck, Grandpa.
And say, now I'm getting old and I
can't play the way I used to.
And the things that used to interest me
are slowly disappearing.
And there's only one thing I can do
with any success anymore, and that's eat.
But I'm not going to let that beat
me.
I like Tom Harris' fasting.
Down here at the hospital, the Catholics couldn't
get over it that a Protestant fasted.
What a shame that the blessed work of
fasting has to belong to the Catholics and
that they're surprised to hear that a Protestant
ever fasted.
Then there's resentfulness.
And there's a reason for all of this,
you see.
The older man finds himself left out of
so many things.
It's a shocking thing as you get along,
and you find that you're not wanted in
certain circles anymore.
And so we develop self-pity and tend
to get our feelings hurt.
And thus we have resentful.
It's, I've known some dear men of God
who were good men, really good men, tearfully
tender and worshipful.
And yet you had to handle them with
kid gloves.
I've known them.
Some of them have been right in this
church, who are gone now to heaven.
But they soiled their escutcheon.
They soiled their garments in their old age
by their sensitivity and their resentfulness.
And you had to watch them carefully lest
they get their feelings hurt.
Well, that's number three.
Number four is stubbornness.
And there's a good reason back of this.
As we get older, we tend to get
stubborn.
The reason is that we've lost our power
to adopt or adapt, I mean.
And we've been relieved of our command.
Here's the man.
He's 27, 8, 9, 35 years old.
And he's got a family, three or four
children and an obedient wife.
And he may be small at the factory
or at the shop or at the office.
But when he comes home, he expects to
be obeyed.
Then that family grows up.
And one by one, they go away.
And he sits there in the chair.
And he can't get, he's got the psychology
of command with nobody to command.
And so he takes revenge by becoming irrationally
obstinate.
And so that the slightest suggestion he takes
as a personal affront.
Now, that's what I mean by stubbornness.
That's mental and emotional rigidity that comes from
advancing years.
It's a rigor mortis of the disposition, if
you know what I mean.
Then there's fault finding.
That is the result of resistance to change.
And a kind of a forlorn egotism.
Such a man will back only what he
originates.
And give only to that which he personally
has helped to create.
And he'll snipe at other men's ideas, unlimited
or otherwise.
As being a repudiation of his leadership.
Now, that's the older person's weakness.
And the next one is churlishness.
You know, I've discovered why older people tend
to get churlish.
And again, it isn't introspection.
It's observation that has led me to these
conclusions.
You see, it's partly the result of a
low-grade pain that never quite goes away.
The older person has a continual gnawing and
he can't tell where it is.
It isn't bad enough to go to the
doctor and isn't good enough to let him
sleep.
And being cheerful under those circumstances is like
trying to be cheerful when your feet hurt.
And so he grunts and barks and snarls
at people.
He doesn't mean it.
He loves people, but his feet hurt.
In his case, his feet hurt all over
him.
So that he's not in real pain or
they take him to the hospital.
But he just feels it enough all over
that it's kind of like your feet hurting.
And that's a churlishness.
I know that a lot of churlish old
people don't hate you.
And they're not so bad.
And their lifetime has proved they're not so
bad.
But they just can't relax and be charitable
and friendly because their feet hurt all over
them.
And then there is the seventh one.
And that is a propensity to reminisce.
And not everybody like that.
Not every old man's churlish.
I know some very sweet old men.
Not every old man finds fault.
Some dear old Christian brothers are quick to
pull a blanket of love over everybody's faults.
Not every old man is stubborn.
Some of the tenderest, kindest old men, Christian
men.
Not every old man's resentful.
But some have learned to smile and roll
with the blow.
I'm not saying you're not making a blanket
indictment.
I'm only pointing out that just as high
blood pressure is a disease of advancing years,
so these are dispositional flaws that may be
present in advancing years.
And yet not all men who are getting
older have high blood pressure.
I don't, for instance, believe it or not.
I take mine out in nervous twitching.
And the result is I haven't any high
blood pressure.
It's normal.
And hardening of the arteries is a disease
of older men.
But I don't have that.
They say your arteries are soft as if
they were made of rubber.
So I haven't got those two things wrong
with me.
And there are Christians that don't have all
these.
And I think there are some that don't
have any of them.
But the Holy Ghost simply warns us that
we are to look out for these natural
weaknesses of advancing years.
It could happen in your 40s or earlier
either.
Now, this propensity to reminisce.
That's one reason I don't usually enjoy the
company.
When I go away, like last week over
to Houghton College or in three or four
weeks up to Canada to council, you never
see me sitting around with the old man.
The reason is that they reminisce all the
time.
And talk sharp about a generation that's long
gone, their inhabitants of a little world that
is no more.
Nothing interesting is happening now.
Every interesting thing already happened.
They are the faithful historian of trivialities and
the chroniclers of the insignificant and the inane.
And I don't like it.
I don't like it.
I remember once I got into a taxi
cab with a famous and celebrated preacher.
He and I were preaching at the same
convention in a certain city in one of
the great halls where they were meeting.
And we were at the same hotel and
we happened to be getting the same taxi
cab to go together to the hallway where
one of us was to preach.
Very likely he, because I don't think he
came when I was preaching.
But you know, we talked all the way
over, but it was a one-way conversation.
It was what they call unilateral.
Now, that's what they call it over the
radio.
It was unilateral.
I sat and listened while he gave me
a running description of how great he was
and where all he'd served and where he'd
been.
And I didn't like it because partly, I
suppose, I wanted to talk about myself a
little too.
But I just remember that, that he bothered
me.
Now he's far better known than I am.
And I think he's done a far bigger
job than I've ever done.
But he's got this disease of reminiscence.
Yes, I served so-and-so in so
many years.
Yes, I was there.
I knew so-and-so and I, my
dear Lord.
And I didn't care one little thing about
it particularly because I knew most of it,
common knowledge.
But he was the historian of the trivial
and the chronicler of the things that don't
matter.
And that's one reason I go around with
young fellas usually when I get to these
conferences.
Now, honestly, truly, if I were as honest
as I ought to be, I would suppose
that apart from the spirituality of it, if
there's any there, another reason I go around
with younger men is because they listen.
And I can't get a word in over
the old fellas.
No, I suppose honesty would compel me to
make that admission.
Pray for me.
And I'm not fooling.
But this propensity to reminisce, what a bore
it can become.
And then one more is levity.
Now, a bit of dry humor, I repeat,
I don't mind.
I enjoy it.
I think it's a blessing to be able
sometimes to relax with a smile when things
are getting tough and you're not feeling good
all over.
And to see some bit of humor in
the world is all right.
I believe I find it in the book
of Proverbs.
And I think one of the funniest thing
ever happened to is when David got into
a tight spot and drooled down his beard
and scratched the wall, made little animal sounds
in order to make the king think he
was insane.
The king said, take that mad man out
of here.
And I can imagine David grabbing himself, bending
over and roaring with laughter and everybody else
the same.
The Bible isn't a book wholly devoid of
laughter.
And I think there will be laughter in
the world to come.
There will be the relaxed joy of a
happy people.
For the scripture tells us of the bridegroom
and the bride and the joy of the
wedding feast and the laughter and shouting of
the happy people at the wedding feast.
That's one thing.
It's quite another thing to have developed a
habit of never seeing anything serious in life.
But you say, Mr. Tozer, that is the
young man's fault.
You'd be surprised how serious minded young people
get.
You'd be surprised how seriously they take life.
Now they hold you off with a quip.
I'll admit that.
They tend to want to do that.
But if you can get past that to
them, you'll find them very serious, most of
them.
So that instead of levity being the fault
of youth, it's the fault of older people.
Because they've developed a cynical attitude toward life
and everything has become funny.
And I don't think that there's anything else
that I know quite so disgusting as the
funny old fellow that you never can talk
seriously with.
Who wants to remind you of a story
he heard.
Now one story is enough.
When I get with preachers, I'll allow one
or two.
But beyond that, it bores me and I'm
finished.
I want to talk about something serious.
But I get with men who sit around
a table and just roar from the time
they sit down and tuck their napkin in
their collar till they leave.
And I admit, I just plain don't like
it.
There are plenty of serious things to talk
about.
And it's still more repulsive when it gets
a little bit shady in color.
So my brethren, remember these are the faults
that we're likely to get when we get
out of our twenties.
When I said older men, you thought I
meant old men up in their seventies.
No, not necessarily.
It's just whenever that thing catches up with
you, wherever you are.
Now, those are the faults of older men.
Now let's get to our text.
Hear what the Holy Spirit says.
You older men, says the Holy Ghost, here's
the way you're to be.
You're to be sober and grave and temperate,
sound in faith and in love.
And in patience, there's the cure for all
these diseases.
There's the way to head off these flaws
and faults that are beginning to show like
cracks in China.
Sobriety, what a beautiful thing sobriety is, if
it's pleasant.
Sobriety and gravity are two beautiful words.
Sober doesn't mean not getting drunk.
I've looked that up very carefully in the
Greek lexicon, and it doesn't have to do
with drunkenness by wine only, but any kind
of drunkenness, anything that makes your head untrustworthy,
sobriety.
And then there's gravity.
Of course, that we've talked about in levity.
Here's the opposite of gravity.
Then there's temperance.
There's the control of your appetite.
A great many of the old English people
used to die of gout.
Gout came from overeating.
One of the most celebrated preachers of his
generation died of gout.
He was over fat and died of gout.
He's one of God's greatest men.
He missed this, evidently, in all of his
careful Bible study, he missed this.
Sound in faith and in love and in
patience.
There's the old brother.
His family may have gone now.
A lot of things might have happened to
him that could have crimped him and hardened
him and given him emotional rigidity, made him
stubborn and churlish, but it didn't.
Patience and love and faith and temperance and
gravity and sobriety.
He got them all because he started early
enough and he learned to cultivate sober-mindedness
and love and patience.
Thus, the older Christian man comes to the
end of his life relaxed and peaceful and
cheerful resignation and with no regrets like dear
old Joseph, no, Jacob.
Jacob said of Jacob that he pulled his
feet into bed with him and he leaned
on the top of his staff.
Oh, Jacob, those old feet that took him
so far astray when he was younger.
He'd gotten him in control.
He'd gotten himself in control.
He'd had his name changed.
Well, I'll honestly say to you, brethren, that
I have not preached my sermon here sneakingly
describing any one man in this congregation or
any two or ten.
There's a minimum of this kind of thing
present in our church.
But to head off any of it, I've
preached this with the thought that we who
are older, not any longer young men, can
take this seriously and go to the Lord
with the open Bible and pray, surrender, and
see whether we can't get delivered from the
natural faults of older men.
Just as you might go to a doctor,
say, now, doctor, I'm past 55 and I
understand that things begin to set in about
that time.
Look me over.
What am I doing that I shouldn't do?
How am I eating that I shouldn't be?
So a man can come to the Lord
Jesus Christ and say, now, Lord, thou has
blessed me up through my youth.
And now I'm older and the scriptures warn
about certain faults of older men.
And I come to thee, Lord, and ask
thee to help me so that I won't
fall into these snares and my disposition won't
become soured or hardened, but that I'll become
like a beautiful day as the sun goes
down, the sky goes pink and rose-colored,
that there will be a mellowness all over
my life, that my grandchildren, my children, my
neighbors, my friends will know that my Christian
life hasn't been an empty profession, but it's
been real.
Now, you can't possibly be offended, can you,
you older men?
You can't possibly brush this aside, either, nor
shrug it off.
This is serious.
For the Holy Ghost says, speak thou that
the aged men be sober, or the older
men, for that's what the word means, be
sober, be grave, be temperate, sound in faith
and in love and in patience.
May God grant that to us.
Amen.