We have been studying the Book of Titus
these mornings.
We have started with verse 1 in chapter
1, and we have gone through verse following
verse, analyzing, finding out what the Holy Ghost
said.
And in the second chapter we came to
the admonitions concerning older men, older women, younger
women, and younger men.
So I divided that into those four sections.
I didn't create it here, it's here.
Two weeks ago in the morning I talked
on temptations peculiar to older men.
And last Sunday morning I talked on temptations
peculiar to older women.
And it falls in order that I should
speak this morning on temptations peculiar to younger
women.
When I return from council two weeks from
this morning, God willing, that is I'll be
back before that, but I mean when I
preach my next sermon on Titus two weeks
from this morning, I'll speak on temptations peculiar
to younger men.
But let me read what the Holy Ghost
saith in Titus 2, 4, and 5.
It says that the older women should be
teachers of good things, and here's what they
should teach the younger women.
They should teach them to be sober, to
love their husbands, to love their children, to
be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient
to their own husbands, and all this that
the word of God be not dishonored.
Now this is a sort of a Mother's
Day sermon, though I want to frankly say
that it happened this way.
I didn't plan it.
I think there isn't anything quite so completely
beautiful and disarming to the toughest old sinning
than the sight of a young woman with
her baby.
I visit the mother's room with great regularity
back there.
I suppose the mothers are bored with it,
but I love it.
And then I think that one of the
noblest sights to be seen anywhere is a
good older woman with her brood gone from
her, adjusting her glasses, opening the mail, and
reading what her boys and girls write back
to her.
All this is very beautiful, and I'm for
it, but I never preach Mother's Day sermons.
I practice Mother's Day observance.
My wife is in Canada now, and so
she missed her usual corsage, but she receives
cards and gifts, flowers from her numerous brood,
and even I break down sometimes and get
her things.
I'm not against it, but I just say
I don't introduce it into the Church.
I have my orders.
Jesus Christ is the head of the Church,
and he told us what to do in
Church, and he told us how to run
a Church, how to order a Church.
He never said a word about taking one
day a year to eulogize motherhood.
I believe in Boy Scouts, think it's nice,
think it's a fine thing.
The more of that, there'd be less juvenile
delinquency.
I believe in Girl Scouts, and I'm a
sucker for buying cookies.
Whenever the little Girl Scouts come around, they
all look alike in their little uniforms.
I buy cookies.
I enjoy it tremendously.
I don't eat them, but I love to
buy them.
And I believe in George Washington, but I
never celebrate his birthday in Church, never celebrate
Boy Scout Sunday, the Girl Scout Sunday, because
you see those things belong to the nations.
But we're Christians, we're a company, a minority
group within the nations.
So I want to talk to you about
instructions our Lord gives to younger women.
Now let's begin by noting that the New
Testament never gives instructions to non-Christians.
The Bible has something to say to non
-Christians, but what he has to say, what
the Bible has to say is warning and
invitation, called repentance and the proclamation of the
gospel.
Go ye into all the world and make
disciples out of all nations, teaching them to
observe whatever I have commanded.
There's the order.
We go to the world and we proclaim
the gospel to the world.
Few people here and believe form themselves into
a little company, and then that company constitutes
a cell in the body of Christ.
And that group then is taught to observe
whatever Jesus commanded.
But to go out to the world and
try to impose upon the pagan nations of
the world the ethics of Jesus is to
misunderstand the whole New Testament.
Christ's promises and commandments and the apostolic instructions
that make up the rest of the New
Testament are never directed toward the once born.
And the failure to grasp this has brought
a great deal of confusion to the church.
Certain periods of the year the newspapers, the
secular newspapers, come out with editorials about religion.
Senators and presidents make speeches and introduce the
words of Jesus and try to impose them
upon the nations of the world.
We must understand that our Lord never intended
that the pagan nations of the world should
come under the discipleship and teaching of the
head of the church.
They will finally in that great day when
our Lord returns.
But in the meantime, they are the Gentiles
as distinct from the church and the Jews.
And our Lord is not imposing his ethics
upon the Jews either.
He's calling them to repentance and belief.
And when they repent and believe, then the
teachings and commandments and comforts and promises of
Jesus Christ apply to them.
But because we don't understand this, we're trying
to introduce into pagan America the teachings of
our Lord Jesus Christ.
And thus we give false hopes to millions.
And this misunderstanding has led reformers to try
to impose the ethics of Christ upon the
nations and caused unconverted persons to hear the
scripture and believe that the words of Jesus
referred to them.
And actually the comforting words and promises of
Christ refer only to those who are children
of God by faith in Jesus Christ.
It's a kind of liberalism, only it doesn't
pass by that name.
And there are many other evils that have
resulted from not understanding that our Lord's instructions
in the Sermon on the Mount and the
writings of Paul and Peter and Jude and
James are for the church of Christ, for
God's children, not for the nations of the
world.
The only thing the church has to say
to the nations of the world is to
preach repentance and warn of the results of
iniquity and call men back to Jesus Christ,
they might be born again.
This is the message of the church to
the world.
And the church hasn't any other message to
the world.
Now, the Lord here instructs his women disciples.
He doesn't instruct the women of the world.
He warns and pleads and calls to repentance,
but he doesn't instruct them as a teacher,
his disciples.
But here we have instruction laid down by
the Lord through an inspired apostle to his
women disciples, his younger women disciples in this
case.
These women are followers of Christ.
They are another and a new creation.
This woman has repudiated the values of the
fallen world and has chosen Christ and his
cross as the center norm and has
accepted his ideal of womanhood.
And his ideal of womanhood is God's ideal
of womanhood.
And so the Holy Spirit instructs this woman
and she hears, this Christian woman, and she
makes God's will and word the test of
her life.
She doesn't weigh the teachings of the Holy
Ghost against what some or a modern writer
has said, nor against the standards of the
day.
She repudiates the standards of the day so
far as they, or as far as they
are disharmonious with the teachings of Jesus.
And she arrives at an ideal by hearing
what the Lord says about it.
Either she does that or she ought not
to say she's a Christian.
If she is ready to fight the teachings
of Christ, then why should she say that
she's a Christian?
A woman falls overboard and somebody tries to
rescue her and she fights her rescuer.
How can she hope to be rescued if
she's fighting her rescuer?
A woman says, I'm a Christian.
I believe in Christ.
I believe that I have eternal life and
I won't go to hell.
All right, you're being rescued.
You're being pulled out, as they say in
the Valiant Valley.
He pulled me out.
But how can you be pulled out if
you fight your rescuer?
Jesus Christ is your rescuer and he lays
down the instructions and he tells you how
to live, sister, as he tells me how
to live.
And if I fight him, how can I
hope to be saved by him?
Tell you what we need is, oh, I
don't know.
I was going to say somebody ought to
write a book, but I've seen too many
of those books.
What Christian young women ought to know, Pollyanna,
saccharine, licorice stick stuff.
No power in it, no intelligence in it,
no ability in it.
But we do need somebody to come forward
and say, here's the standard of womanhood.
We need a Wesley to say once more
or Simpson to say once more, here's the
way women, here's the ideal women should drive
at.
I think it is not extravagant to say
that 75% of the modern evangelicals take
a modified form, in a modified form, the
ideals of Lana Turner, Jane Russell, as their
ideal of womanhood.
And it's tragic, absolutely tragic.
Now there are particular temptations, as I said
last week, which visit older women.
There are no old women, but I just
say older women.
And then there are particular temptations which visit
older men.
And I arrived at the understanding of that,
not by introspection, but by observation.
And now also there are particular temptations of
younger women.
Somebody will say this is a wholesale denunciation
of younger women.
No, it is just telling the younger women
what could be wrong with you if you
don't watch, the direction you could go if
you don't watch.
To illustrate, as I said before, there are
certain diseases of older men.
They call them degenerative diseases.
I don't like the word, but they're degenerative
diseases.
Now you don't have to have them, but
the doctors say, now watch out.
You could have them.
And so there are certain bends, directions, which
a young woman's likely to run in if
she doesn't watch out.
And if she's a whirling and belongs to
the pagan world, then there's nothing we have
to say, only to plead for her to
come to Christ.
But if she's a Christian woman, then she
will listen to the Lord on this.
And she will say, as a follower of
Christ, this is my ideal of womanhood, and
I want to escape these things and live
right.
Well, now let's name them here.
They're all in the text.
Only I'm going to change it around and
state it otherwise.
It's all here.
And the first thing, particularly now, is true
in Crete, and it's true in America.
One of the first temptations of young womanhood
is love of excitement.
So Paul plainly says, be sober.
Cultivate sober godliness.
Now there are churches who run on such
a high pitch of excitement that they appeal
to these persons who love excitement, and people
run to them because they are a tense,
high-pressure, excited people.
I remember some years back a man called
me and asked me whether I would come
to his home.
He said he was having trouble with his
wife.
His wife belonged to a certain sect or
a certain church, and she was intensely spiritual,
she thought, and highly emotional.
And I went to see them, and she
sat on the edge of the chair and
looked at me with that sweet, self-possessed,
kindly charitable, heavenly tolerance that a saintly soul
feels for a blind pastor.
And her husband was desperate, and I tried
to take the woman's side.
I tried to take her side.
He threw up his hands, he said, but
pastor, but told her, what would you do
if just any time you woke up in
the middle of the night and your wife
was standing out in the middle of the
floor in her nightgown making a noise like
a vacuum cleaner?
Well, I knew what he meant, you see.
She had been brought into this intensely emotional,
neurotic state so that she'd hiss and make
sucking noises and gurgles, and that was spirituality
to her.
And she'd never know what the Holy Ghost
meant when he said, it's better to cultivate
sober godliness, young lady, better to cultivate sober
godliness.
You'll find ten women who are ready to
live on their high pressure of religious excitement
to one who wants to be sober and
godly and prove their holiness by their lives.
So he says here, be sober, cultivate sober
godliness.
Second, don't neglect your husband.
That's one of the temptations.
And that's, of course, the cause of increasing
divorce rate in our day.
Two things, frumpiness and masculinity on the part
of the younger women.
Frumpiness and masculinity.
If the last sight that a man has
of his wife in the morning is an
unkempt, ill-groomed front, and the first sight
he has when he returns is a tired,
overhauled thing that he's not sure when he
approaches the house whether the male nook man
got in by mistake or whether that is
his wife, you tell me, will you please,
how he's going to keep his romantic feelings
tortured and how he's going to want to
come home.
I remember seeing a cartoon one time that
I thought was, I can't get it out
of my mind.
It showed a man.
He had evidently gotten up and gotten his
own breakfast and he was on his way
to catch the 817 for his office.
And his wife appeared about that time and
stood framed in the door.
Her hair was done up in an infinite
number of funny little curlicues.
And having slept on it all night, some
of them were down and some of them
were up.
And she had on her feet a sloppy
pair of run-down-at-the-heel slippers
and a baggy old housecoat or bathrobe thrown
over a rather ill-shaped frame.
And she was standing there weary and tired
and with rings under her eyes looking at
him.
He was all fixed up ready to go
to the office.
Here's what he said to her, and I've
smiled about this and chuckled over it a
lot of times, but it isn't very funny
really.
He said to her, wait, wait, don't move.
Don't move.
I want to remember you just as you
are.
Stand there and let me drink you in.
Well, my brethren, if you all you got
to remember when you're office all day or
at work all day is that kind of
a sight, not a vision, a sight, when
you leave your house in the morning, you
can't be excused for letting your eyes stray,
but at least people understand why they do.
And then if when you come back home
at night you arrive to see the lady
in overalls, you can't be blamed too much
for not hurrying up the walk.
I told a friend this morning that I
know a little lady and she's not a
Christian.
I think she's not a Christian or at
least she's not what we'd call born again
Christian.
They go to church, but you know what,
no matter what work all day does to
her, she knows the train her husband comes
in on and just about the minute he'll
arrive at the door.
And you know what she does?
She fixes herself up, combs her hair, puts
on a nice fluffy little house dress, and
looks as if she just stepped out of
the magazine hat.
Now, my brethren, let me point out to
you, or my sisters in this case, that
you owe it as a Christian to love
your husband and not take him for granted.
But to work a little bit at looking
as you used to look when you were
going to get.
Now, the next third one is, the temptation
of younger women is resentment toward their children.
Love your children.
Resentment toward children.
Why do women often resent children?
I've been very much encouraged and pleased, I'm
an old sentimentalist as you know, but I've
been very much pleased to see a change
in the attitude of womankind in America toward
children.
They have them and love them now apparently
to some degree, but it's such a thing
as resenting the children.
A woman loves to travel around and loves
to look nice, and so she doesn't want
to sacrifice that to a child having children.
You know, I used to talk about it,
but a woman's once had a child, she's
just exactly not what she was before.
It takes something out of her.
She has two, it takes twice as much.
And there's danger that women be worldly minded
and become resentful.
Well, these children, these children, time I take
care of them and I never have them
in its peace and all the rest.
Well, that's resentfulness.
A Christian woman won't feel about it like
that.
She'll say this life is from God and
I thank him for it.
And I'm going to make the care of
my child a holy sacrifice of love.
And I'm going to do everything that I
can do to bring up this little one
in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
Now that's the Christian woman.
And I would say that most of the
Christian women I know, practically all of them
take that attitude, but the wise old apostle
knew that some of them wouldn't.
He knew that some of them would resent
their children.
And he warned, he said, love your children,
young lady.
He said, you older women teach the young
women, love their children, accept them from God,
accept them as plants around the table and
look after them good because they're God's gift
to you.
And the fourth is indiscretion, indiscretion in thought
and feeling.
I'm deliberately not going to say too much
there, but I'm only going to warn you
that a Christian woman must go to the
Bible to find out her attitudes and not
adopt them from the world.
I think I've lived in the world now
quite a while since the turn of the
century.
And this is to my mind, the crudest
period I've ever lived in the crudest.
One young brother said this was the worst
world he'd ever lived in.
But I would say that this is the
worst and crudest age.
People have no hesitation, men and women, young
or old, discussing things that our grandmothers would
have blushed to have heard discussed.
They'd scarcely have discussed them with grandfather, but
now everybody discusses everything.
I don't watch that, sister.
You're a Christian now.
Remember that indiscretion in thought or feeling a
word or action can bring discredit upon the
name of Christ.
Your Bible under your arm won't make it
any better either.
It'll only make it worse.
It'll reflect badly on that Bible you carry.
Modesty, says the Holy Ghost, be discreet.
I looked that up carefully.
I always look these.
Whenever I give an exposition of the word,
I always go to the Hebrew and Greek
and find out just what the Holy Ghost
said.
And what he said was, be circumspect, temperate,
and moderate.
Circumspect, two words meaning look and around.
Look around.
Don't stumble and fall and walk foolishly.
Then unchastity.
I won't talk much about that because that
happens to be one of the sins that
the whole Church of Christ condemns out of
hand.
But the sixth one is neglect of her
home.
I spoke of the neglect of her husband,
but now I speak of the neglect of
her home.
Keepers at home, says the Holy Ghost.
Christian women should be a keeper at home.
You see, there's an urge in the day
in which we live to be constantly on
the go.
And the idea that a woman's place is
in the home, that her business is to
take care of that home and to have
it a nice place in which she could
live and her husband and family, it's kind
of gone down the drain.
And instead of that, things are quite different.
But let me remind you this.
The adopting of Christianity by any woman will
never make that woman less a woman than
she is.
It'll never make her less feminine.
It will never make her less beautiful.
It will never lead to carelessness in dress,
will never lead to carelessness in her home.
If in her zeal to do the work
of the Lord, she leaves her dishes in
the sink and neglects her home and her
husband jumps on her for it, she runs
to the pastor and says, pray for me,
my husband's persecuting me.
And the chances are very strong that if
she would look after her house, her husband
would have nothing to say.
Maybe certainly instances where that's not true, but
it's also true very often that women have
lain in bed and let their husbands look
after themselves and then gone out at night
and run from one here, one preacher to
the other, take notes and come home and
pray, but forget that God said be keepers
at home.
So dear sister, I haven't anybody in mind
now at all.
This is just thrown out, but if when
you became a Christian, you became frumpy, you
just reverted to type.
Don't blame that on Jesus Christ.
And if when you became a Christian, you
got so busy in the Lord's work that
you can't keep your house clean, don't blame
that on Jesus Christ.
You're just yielding to the old desire not
to keep it clean.
I remember the Quaker one time he made
a call.
I was going to say Quaker pastor, of
course they don't have pastors, but some old
Quaker brother went to visit a woman.
He hadn't seen her around the church house.
So he went to visit her and he
found her there in one of the most
unkempt and worst littered houses he'd ever seen.
He talked with her a while and he
was about to go.
She said, brother John, let us kneel.
I want you to pray for me.
He said, sister Mary, God never called me
to kneel in a pig pen.
If you'll clean up this mess, the next
time I come back, I'll pray.
Goodbye.
And he left.
I think he was on the right side.
I really do believe he was right.
Keepers at home, it says here.
Keepers at home.
Always remember that the voice of the Lord,
rightly heard, never contradicts itself.
And if he calls you to be a
keeper at home, and he calls you also
to sing or travel or do anything you're
supposed to do in the work of the
Lord, cook or whatever you do in the
work of the Lord, he never contradicts himself.
And one will never cancel out the other.
You can be a keeper at home and
do the work of the Lord.
And if you can't, then what you're doing
is not the work of the Lord.
Something else.
For part of the work of the Lord
is to be a keeper at home.
You know, that kind of doctrine doesn't get
followers.
It's not dramatic enough.
It's not colorful enough.
It is not gorgeous enough.
There's not enough drama in it to say
to a young woman, now, Mrs. Jones, you
are to follow Jesus, pray, love your husband,
look after him, don't neglect him, love and
accept your children as gifts from God, keep
your home clean, be chaste, discreet.
That's the kind of life you're to live.
People aren't interested in that.
It isn't colorful enough.
There isn't enough excitement in it.
That's Christianity.
The old Quakers taught that.
Methodists taught that.
And Paul taught that.
And then the seventh is grumpiness.
Where it says here be good, a young
woman should be good, it says good nature
in some translations.
Good nature.
That's all I have to say about that.
Good nature.
You say, till I get my coffee.
Well, if it's coffee you're sanctification, are you
sanctified by Chase and Sanborn?
You get your sanctification out of a pot?
What is it sleeping all night makes you
grumpy?
I ask you, what makes you grumpy?
You just can't help it.
You're not in possession of yourself, not a
follower of Christ in truth and in deed,
giving up to your bad disposition, blending it
on that you didn't have your coffee or
you didn't sleep well.
And then the last of all is bossiness.
Be submissive to your own husband.
The bossy wife is a nuisance.
And I suppose there are Christian women that
just run the shebang.
Just run the whole thing.
Submit yourself to your own husband.
Who said that?
It's what it means, submit.
I wrote it down there, but actually in
the text it says obey.
But I looked it up and I find
out what he's talking about, submissiveness.
Submit yourself to your own husband.
The bossy wife, the grumpy wife, the neglectful,
the woman neglectful of her home, she's not
a good example, that the word of God
be not blasphemy.
Now I want to read in closing a
passage from the Bible, which is going to
take a beating today, believe me, all over
the English speaking world.
I suppose that this will be read more
today than any other passage of scripture in
the whole Bible.
And it properly should be, but I don't
know why we neglect it other times.
Who can find a virtuous woman?
For her price is far above rubies.
She dolloth herself in the latest chemise.
The heart of her husband doth safely trust
in her, so that he shall have no
need of spoil.
She'll do him good, not evil, all the
days of her life.
She seeketh wool and flax, and worketh willingly
with her hands.
She doesn't wear rubber gloves, lest she get
a blister on that delicate patty.
She and her, in like the merchant ship,
that bringeth forth her food from afar.
She riseth also while it yet night, and
doesn't sleep until ten o'clock in the
morning, until her husband has long been at
work.
And giveth meat to her household, and a
portion to her maidens.
She considereth the field, and batheth it, and
with the fruit of her hand she plants
a vineyard.
She girds her loins with strength, and strengtheneth
her arms.
She perceiveth that her merchandise is good, and
her candle goeth not out by night.
She layeth her hands to the spindle, and
her hands hold the distaff, and she stretcheth
out her hands to the poor, yea, she
reacheth forth her hands to the needy.
She's not afraid of the snow for her
household, for all her household are clothed with
scarlet.
Double garments, says, gonna have double garments, so
they're not afraid of cold weather.
She maketh herself coverings of tapestry, and her
clothing is silk and purple.
Her husband is known in the gates, where
he sitteth among the elders of the land.
She makes fine linen, and sells it, and
delivers girdles unto the merchants.
Strength and honor are her clothing, and she
shall rejoice in time to come.
She opens her mouth, and what comes out?
Wisdom, and in her tongue is the law
of kindness.
She looketh well to the ways of her
household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.
Her children rise up, and call her blessed.
Her husband also, he prays of her.
Then he concludes by saying, many daughters have
done virtuously, but thou exceleth them all.
There is the ideal of womanhood.
I wonder how much of this was taught
today.
I suppose very little, mostly there would be
tearful, broken-voiced platitudes and eulogies spoken
about mothers, but the Holy Ghost is more
practical than that.
He said, if you want to be praised,
live so as to be praised.
And if you want your husband to say,
you should know my wife, live so he
can say it.
You want your children to remember you tenderly
when they're older and gone, live so they
can remember you that way.
You want people to believe in your Christianity,
submit yourself to the teachings of the Holy
Ghost by the apostles, and live as a
Christian should live.
Two weeks from this morning, I'm going to
talk about the temptations of young men.
I want all you young men present, and
I want you to bring your friends.
I'm not going to preach a sermon what
young men should know, or to men only,
but I am going to talk about the
temptations of younger men.
All right.