Trinity Evangel Church

This is a great chapter. There's no reason to hurry through it. It's practical at point blank range, though the particulars leave a lot of room for different practices.

In verses 2-10 there are six different demographics: older men, older women, younger women, younger men, younger men who are leaders/teachers in the church like Titus, and then slaves. There are other letters addressed to churches that speak to individual household relationships (husband, wife, father, children, etc.), but this letter has more about the kind of people in the church, though obviously you'd take these virtues home with you, and the women have special obligations in home relations.

It should get our attention in verse 1 that all this accords with sound doctrine. And at the back end, note the “For" in verse 11; the soteriology provides the foundation for how our salvation is adorned in character. Truth accords with godliness (Titus 1:1), doctrine accords with virtues that have some variety depending on one's gender and age.

I'm going to give one sermon for each batch. Not only will it not be boring to hear about the groups you’re not in, it's important to see some of the differences and, even more than that, to promote the different virtues. Other than telling Titus to teach these things (in contrast to some who were upsetting whole households with unhealthy teaching, see Titus 1:11), there isn't actually much particular instruction provided on how to develop these personal things. So in order to encourage these virtues we should promote them, praise them, preach them, and point them out when they're being practiced. Your part will be appreciated, and your part will be blessed when all the parts are healthy.

But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine. (verse 1)

Three brief comments about this before talking about the first group.

This is overseer-level work, which is one reason why there are qualifications for elders, including holding fast to sound doctrine, in contrast to those who make things up for their own gain. That includes, apparently, tickling people's ears when it relates to expectations for godly men and women.

Again, what follows in verses 2-10 accords with sound doctrine, which both means that the following virtues aren't the content of the doctrine but these virtues fit with it, they follow from it.

And I'll repeat this as we go through each group, but Titus was to affirm elders who would oversee all of this, though their methods might be quite flexible. It requires maturity to advance maturity.

Now the first group, and how sound doctrine fits for older men:

Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. (verse 2)

Older men is a similar but different word from "elder" used in 1:5, it’s the plural presbutas here compared to presbuteras there. There is an expected maturity for those in the office of elder, and yet Titus 2:2 is not for those in the office but rather who have more candles on their birthday cake. How old exactly? Without exact years-old numbers, it is at least relative compared to the younger men. And, even if you're not sure if you are an older man yet or not, these virtues are still what you should value.

There are four virtues, the fourth one has three parts. The first few are not exclusively biblical or even religious. We might say they are natural, they fit, whether or not they are frequent. And while Christians have the same Spirit who produces the same fruit (of which self-control is included, and self-control is found explicit to three of the groups), there are some targeted virtues.

Nothing here about his husbanding or fathering, though a man with these virtues would be a blessing as a husband and father. The qualities themselves are not exhaustive, though they do cover a lot. They are less concrete, more abstractly stated, but embodied doctrine for older men.

Older men are to be sober-minded. It comes first (even before the verb in Greek). I don't want to read more into it than is proper, but also, we're limited in pictures of men like this, so looking below the surface isn't necessarily the same as reading between the lines.

The adjective relates to a verb for not being drunk, for avoiding excess. The NASB translates it as "temperate." It's connected to self-control, sure, but that is its own adjective. To be temperate is a moderate position, but moderate in two directions. He must not be extreme in addiction to wine but also not extreme in anxiety about wine. Wine/alcohol is not the only setting to consider on the table of a man's life, so to speak, but it is actually a decent tell about how a man handles good things.

Is he so fearful that he has to make up extra rules? Or is he consumed with wanting more than his share so that he loses clarity and respect, if not actually making a fool of himself? Does he know what things are good, and what things are good for, and how to use/enjoy them for good?

The second adjective is dignified, meaning worthy of respect. What is honorable? However it's defined, demanded dignity is not even close to dignity demonstrated and earned. You don't get respect because of a one-time correct guess. This is to be pursued, it is a “seriousness of purpose” (Mounce), and it's a broad category, with a spectrum from less to more, but possible to not be in it. Man, do you have weight? Do you have godly gravity?

The third adjective is self-controlled. This is the one that's found multiple times in the list. And, may there be more of it.

What I'd like you to marinate in, is that it is better (and maybe harder) to rule yourself and your spirit than it is to rule a city (see Proverbs 16:32). Self-control is both 1) minimal reactivity to others and 2) maximum responsibility for self. Consider the scale from reactivity on one end, where everything else is wrong and provoking your choices, to the other end where you choose and pursue and work. Which side of the scale would you label Maturity? Which is dignified?

The fourth adjective is sound, or healthy, and there are three areas of health.

First is healthy in faith. Older men don't get to start living by sight because they've seen it all. They keep living on unseen things.

Second is healthy in love. Older men don't get to isolate themselves/withdraw because they've been burned or lost loved ones. It is not sentimental or effeminate to abound in affections for your people, it's fitting.

Third is healthy in steadfastness. Paul often plays the chord of faith, love, and hope. Here he chooses a related but different string, a minor one. Older men don't get to quit because they've done their part. Consider how fitting endurance is for older men who have been through the grinder.

So according to sound doctrine, older men should not be drunk, shameful, reactionary, living on the seen, isolated, and justifying their quitting time. They should not be frantic, frivolous/rudderless, or chronically passive/drifting down life’s lazy river. They should avoid reactivity, anxiety, and absenteeism.

Younger men who see older men unsoundly/unhealthily/unfittingly should say something, with respect as they would to their father (see 1 Timothy 5:1).

Maturity. Stamina. Girth and gravity. Weighty, such that pulls toward more than pushes away.

Such men have a tangible presence, a fitting gravity. Older men, first in the list, should be sound doctrine embodied.

Men, if you are out of sound doctrine shape, get to it. Your health, not just at the gym but, in dignity and discipline over the long haul will bless your wife, your children, your grandchildren, your church, and honor your Lord. Be considerable men for Jesus’ sake.

Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.

Just when you think you've finished the difficult thing by finding qualified bishops/elders and gotten them set up, you find that there's no time for them to settle in slowly. "Hello, glad you're here, we've got a bunch of problem people we're going to need you to deal with."

And, alright, there isn’t a local church that doesn’t have some issues. The towns on Crete had Cretans in them, and the Cretans had culture problems.

The adjectives to describe the problem-people are not pretty, not quite as polite/politically correct as modern ears expect. It's bad the whole way through this paragraph, from the start (insubordinate, empty talkers, deceivers in verse 10) in the middle (liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons in verse 12) and to the end (detestable, disobedient, unfit verse 16). It’s also very personal. We’re usually told to criticize ideas, not persons; that has some wisdom. But here the persons (the many, the seven “they”s and those and them/selves and their) need a good rebuke.

In our day we’re bombarded by pastors with “personal brands,” selling the Christian life a special way. Too often these are tainted, contaminated, even if it’s just a trace, and it affects the whole package.

Titus needed to find men who held fast to sound doctrine, who had backbone to rebuke those who contradicted sound doctrine (verse 9), because there are many who need corrected.

For there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party. (verse 10)

The insubordinate are rebellious (which an elder’s kids shouldn’t be per Titus 1:6). Empty talkers have no actual substance to their words; all promo and no product. Deceivers use true-enough-sounding words to mislead. There is a little more in verse 14 about the sort of particulars of these persons were selling, but it's bad that there are many.

Some of the many were of the circumcision party, which is quite a thing to be known for. It’s a reference not just to Jews, but to ritual-loving Jews (and probably not that dissimilar to the dualism pushers in 1 Timothy 4:1-5 who forbid certain foods and marriage). Paul was a Jew (Titus was not), there was nothing wrong with being a Jew. Jews were not the only ones contradicting sound doctrine, but especially those who acted as if circumcision was it, they could make the KEY to the Christian life about something other than Christ.

So the instruction:

They must be silenced, since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach. (verse 11)

"It is necessary" that they be silenced, a word that has the idea of shutting their mouths and so stopping their influence. Yes, take away their microphone, but also use a muzzle. How? Through teaching, exposure, rebuke.

The results and the motivation fill out the rest of the verse. They upset or overthrow whole families/households. It's not a one off, here and there, but pulling the entire train off the tracks. And they're doing it for the money. Tyndale has one of the great translations, even if it has added some baggage; he calls it "fylthy lucre." The money itself is not filthy, but their financial lusts were.

One of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said, 'Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.' This testimony is true. (verses 12-13a)

If a Cretan said that Cretans are always liars, can we believe him? Well, yes. It's a generalization, a prophetic, poetic proverb. It's meant to say that Crete is not the place one would go to learn moral conduct.

The prophet of their own seems to be Epimenides, who lived in the 6th century BC, and was referenced by Plato, Plutarch, and more. We apparently don't have his original work, but he was quoted in writes we do have by Clement of Alexandria (c. AD 200).

The Cretan reputation trio is really no good: liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons. One commentator put it: “Liars ever, men of Crete / Nasty brutes that live to eat” (Jerome Quinn quoted by William Mounce). It sounds like us, bending the truth, acting like animals, wanting others to serve us and make us happy with the least amount of effort on our part. Paul says this is true, apparently not worried about offending his audience of Cretans.

The instruction is repeated:

Therefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith, not devoted themselves to Jewish myths and the commands of people who turn away from the truth. (verses 13b-14)

Rebuke is the same word as in verse 9; disapprove and show what is wrong. Sharply means clearly and to the point, not playing around, severe. Some people need a verbal two-by-four.

Who do we want to be sound in the faith? Are the men who are upsetting whole families in the faith but in a bad way? Or are they not yet in the faith but we want them to be? Or is this a reference to the church people who will be spared if the false teachers are silenced? Anyone can repent, even those held captive by the devil to do his will (see 2 Timothy 2:26).

Jewish myths and the commands of men don't have to be from the same group of the unsound, though they could be. The myths were also extra-biblical stories (some in the Apocrypha), some White Space Specials. The "extra" standards added by some Jews to the Mosaic Law became "law" though they weren't from God. These are things that made people feel more spiritual but didn't actually make them more godly (see also 1 Timothy 1:4).

There are two inescapable principles that can't be denied.

To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; both their minds and their consciences are defiled. (verse 15)

Pure is not only repeated, but being “clean” is the concern. Following the commands of men were thought to make a man pure, but by themselves they never can. What goes into a man is not what ruins him and what a man avoids is not what makes him clean (see Mark 7:14-19; 1 Timothy 4:1-5). What is his heart condition? If his heart is right, then all the (lawful) things are open to him. But if he is still defiled and unbelieving, it doesn't matter what religious “right” things he does. Their minds and their consciences matter most, and pollute/taint everything they touch. Their way of thinking and their moral sense always goes with them.

Some of the Cretans were selling “clean living,” but you can't get away from who you are.

They profess to know God, but they deny Him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work. (verse 16)

This is similar to 2 Timothy 3:5. Your talk talks and your walk talks but your walk talks a whole lot louder than your talk talks. It's true.

Another triad of no good finishes out the paragraph. These are detestable stirring up feelings of repugnance (BAGD), disobedient, and disqualified/unfit.

“If one is ‘detestable’ because he judges the work of Christ inadequate for attaining true purity, and ‘disobedient’ because he rejects the good gifts of God’s creation, then that person is also so ‘disqualified’ in God’s sight that his unfitness extends to (πρός) anything and everything (πᾶν) that he does (cf. again v. 15b), with the result that no deed (ἔργον) of his can be good (ἀγαθόν) and acceptable to God.” (George Knight)

Do we have any of these issues today? I would say not in our local body at TEC. Does The Church? Yes.. We certainly have some empty talkers, some filthy lucre lovers, some white space story tellers.

What is the jurisdiction of an elder? What is our responsibility outside this body? How far do we send rebukes?

Remember: the gospel was good for just such an island of creeps.

What does being fit for good works look like, according to sound doctrine? We'll see at the start of Titus 2. In some ways, the rest of the letter is devoted to being fit for good works.

Thank God for fathers who lead and protect their households, thank God for fathers who both profess to know God and who live it out. If you didn’t have one of those, BE one. If you’re a woman, pray that our church would be full of them for the next generation. May we ALL be made fit for good works.

And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God. (Philippians 1:9–11 ESV)

Identifying and installing elders is the first step Paul told to Titus to take, and that's important because elders are to show the first steps in knowing the truth which accords with godliness. It is a noble task, shepherding those that Christ obtained with His own blood (per Acts 20:28). An elders’ work is also full of difficulties and requires daily deaths. So we see that there are ways to identify a man’s fitness for the calling.

The qualifications are as much for the churches on the island of Crete as they were for Titus himself. The whole discussion is public. For that matter, it is possible to recognize and affirm a man who has these qualities even while recognizing that you don’t. Everyone should listen/read, all of you should think, and we all must work with wisdom, especially as we consider how to apply what is specified for all the things that are not.

Under the first banner of being above reproach (verse 6) we look for a man's faithfulness to his marriage vows and the fruitfulness of his fatherhood. He must be a one-woman man, and he must have children who are believers, whose behavior demonstrates that he knows how to disciple. You’re not an elder because you’re a father, but you can tell how a man will elder by how he fathers.

The second banner of above reproach (verses 7-9) introduces two more categories of qualifications. We already considered the health of his family, now we’ll consider second, his personal character and third, his commitment to doctrine.

I mentioned last time that "elder" and "overseer" and "steward" are all titles for the same person. Overseer or "bishop" reminds us that he must be paying attention; it’s supervising (with the super from Latin for “above”; he’s not the BEST visor but the visor-from-above). As God's steward he's working with God's household (as it’s called in 1 Timothy 3:15), and all of this brings to mind Paul's instructions to the Ephesian elders:

Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which He obtained with His own blood. (Acts 20:28)

To be qualified the man must have a pattern of obedience. We see the kinds of character that you should expect, starting with five “nots”.

He must not be arrogant or quick tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain (verse 7)

These are not the only ways a man can be selfish, but all these go with self-serving. Arrogant is “self-willed” (NASB), “overbearing” (NIV), of an autocratic nature—taking no account of other people’s thoughts. Quick tempered is a default emotion/passion of irritation taking it out on other people who aren’t recognizing and responding appropriately to his self-determined preeminence. A drunkard or one “given to wine” (KJV) refers not only to lack of control in physical appetites, but usually includes a desire to numb rather than deal with a problem. Violent is the worldly way of trying to win by physical force, and greedy for gain is money hungry. While it's true that lots of churches don't pay their pastors well, that doesn't stop a lot of pastors from thinking ministry is a way to cash in.

Then we see six positives in verse 8:

but hospitable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined. (verse 8)

These are personal virtues that show the man willing to submit to things outside of him. Hospitiable is serving others, with an emphasis on strangers more than extravagance; as Jonathan defined in his message on hospitality, honoring others as image-bearers, whether or not they show up with distinct external honor. An overseer must be able to see God's glory reflected, however dimly, in others. Lover of good isn't Stoicism, it has high expectations and abounding affections. Self-controlled (a fruit of the Spirit) and disciplined emphasize exercising conscious choice rather than being enslaved or manipulatable, and upright and holy speak to his consistent moral choices and pursuits.

Watch a man's care for his family, his care for personal behavior, and his care for the truth/teaching.

He must hold fast to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it. (verse 9)

There’s actually not a command in Greek at the beginning of verse 9, it’s a participle, and so still filling out how an elder is above reproach. He's got to know the Word, love the Word, cling to the word. He’s holding fast (NASB), refusing to let go.

The trustworthy word as taught reminds us that he is a steward (verse 7), not only of God’s sheep but of God’s Word.

There are two parts of the so that: hold fast 1) to build and 2) to fight.

All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching to make the man of God complete (2 Timothy 3:16-17). Jesus prayed that His people would be sanctified by truth, and then said that the Word is truth (John 17:17). We learn from the Word who we are beholding, we are learning what He is like and what He likes. We are learning His ways, these are what build us up, and build up the body.

Sound doctrine is “healthy” teaching that results in well-being. It includes all the -ologies AND on-the-ground-ies. Yes the teaching about soteriology, and also sanctification. It's about the Trinity and eternity, and it’s also how old ladies are to act at home (Titus 2:3). It’s the nature of Christ and all His commands (Matthew 28:20). It is propositional, and it is evident in practice (“truth that accords with godliness”).

There are also haters, and they were already on Crete, as we'll see in the next paragraph (verses 10-16). It's not just an academic or theoretical exercise to defend the faith delivered to the saints. Those who “speak against” are to be rebuked, corrected so that they quit it. Elders must have doctrinal backbone.

“nothing is more dangerous than that fickleness of which I have spoken, when a pastor does not steadfastly adhere to that doctrine of which he ought to be the unshaken defender.” (—John Calvin)

There are really four options, three of which are wrong.

In Bible loving churches too often the bigger problem is (#3) when elders take themselves too seriously, when they act superior based on their knowledge (puffed up and without love, see 1 Corinthians 8:1, 13:1) rather than as stewards of it.

But in the world and especially in the Word there are things that are true and false, right and wrong. Truth not only has substance, it has shape, it has edges. Knowing and believing the truth saves, being ignorant of let alone denying truth damns. Truth builds the believer, truth edifies and equips the body.

Which doctrines? I'm not trying to be unclear here any more than some took me to be unclear on how old an elders' kids need to be, if he has them, or when you get to stop connecting his kids behavior to his qualifications. There are doctrines that have more or less consequences if one is inconsistent. That said, to the Ephesian elders Paul said he was blameless only because he had told them the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:26-27, then 28 which I’ve already referenced a couple times). How much of the treasure can a steward lose before he’s counted unfaithful?

Overseers care about doctrine, they are committed to it. There are doctrinal contours and it requires courage to keep them. This isn’t to say that saying “I don’t know” is never the right answer, sort of like above reproach doesn’t mean “I never sin.” But elders must minimize disobedience to the Word as well as doubts about what it means.

For that matter, doctrine is intended to divide, true from false, which gets applied to sound and unsound teachers, and the latter need to be rebuked, not invited to present their side.

Holding fast to sound doctrine starts with elders, they take the first steps. But their steps make it so that slaves can adorn the doctrine (2:10). So, it’s fine that some know more, and even that some are more devoted to it, but it's not fine to not grow more.

To whom much has been given, much is required. We’ve got so much more than the Apostles' Creed and the Lord's Prayer.

One of my favorite quotes is by G.K. Chesterton on how doctrine is like walls. (Of course, he didn't believe in sola fide, so, any of us can have week spots.)

“We might fancy some children playing on the flat grassy top of some tall island in the sea. So long as there was a wall round the cliff's edge they could fling themselves into every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of nurseries. But the walls were knocked down, leaving the naked peril of the precipice. They did not fall over; but when their friends returned to them they were all huddled in terror in the centre of the island; and their song had ceased.” (Chesterton, Orthodoxy)

We want godly men building and maintaining walls of sound doctrine, walls that enable and protect joyful fellowship in truth. The church is “a pillar and buttress of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15).

Pastors reap what they sow, by God’s grace. They are to take the first steps, in family and virtues and doctrine, and the church should follow.

Play and sing in the field because the walls are maintained. Don’t despise the walls of truth, they are a great safeguard for your living, for your people, for generations. Love the truth, speak the truth in love, that the whole body will grow up in every way into Christ.

But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen. (2 Peter 3:18 ESV)

This is the second year in a row that I’ve sort of preached on the KuyperDispy subject on/around June 4 (see last year's here). "It’s my birthday and I can preach what I want to” or something like that.

I’m weaving this into our series on the Lord’s Household, related to how our kids have much overlap with all those who live “by faith,” including some Christians outside our local church, which also includes some (but not all) baby-baptizers.

It was provoked by a conversation I was having with Jonathan at the beginning of December (and I should give credit for the Cs to his informal white-boarding).

Kuyperian Dispensationalism is:

You’ve heard, be the kind of single person that the kind of person you’re trying to attract would be attracted to. So, be the kind of jealousable household that the kind of person you want your kids to marry would be drawn to, and you look for the same.

What virtues make a family worth partnering with, as in, what foundations should be in YOUR family and what foundations should you look for in OTHER families, not only for the baseline of shared fellowship but also for multiplied fruitfulness? This is part of the counsel I’m telling my unmarried kids about. Let me commend these five Cs.

Confidence means with faith. The fide is right in the middle.

We confess that Jesus is Lord and believe that God raised Him from the dead (Romans 10:9). So our faith is in the one who rules every thumb's-width in the cosmos (nicknamed as Kuyperian), and the one who is Himself the resurrection and the life (John 11:25).

Need help? Ours is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth (Psalm 124:8).

Feeling weak? We have access to mercy and grace at the throne of grace through our great High Priest that sympathizes with our weakness (Hebrews 4:15).

Feeling fearful? We trust in Jesus who partook of flesh and blood like His brothers, that through death He might destroy the devil and deliver us from fear and slavery (Hebrews 2:14-15).

Our faith is in Christ Jesus the Lord, and this is great confidence.

I don’t prefer to call most of the interpretations I think are wrong heresy. I don’t even find it rhetorically preferable to call them unbiblical. I DO think a lot of interpretation comes from bad Bible reading. A lot of interpretations are inconsistent.

What I’m after is Consistent reading, at least as consistent as possible. I think the grammatical historical hermeneutic, without additional lenses, pushes toward that consistency (labeled as, whether not it’s a great label, Dispensationalism). A text can’t mean what it never meant. Read from left to right, front to back.

For example, I couldn’t agree more with this sentence:

“I have said for years that our cultural battles are over editorial control of the dictionary.” (source)

But that declaration itself was written by a faithful/fruitful Christian who also says he’s a supersessionist (American Milk and Honey, p. 14), that “Israel” means the “Church” and vice versa. That’s changing the dictionary.

Of course typological readers, and Christocentric readers, Redemptive-Historical readers, and even Quadriga readers, argue that they’re being consistent. Yet attempts to call such conclusions consistent require reading something into the Scripture texts, not reading from them. Capital C Covenantal theology, from which paedobaptism and Postmillennialism come, requires consistent disregard of too many details.

I just can’t do it.

A Kuyperian Dispensationalist has a Comprehensive theology/worldview that orients present and future expectations for every interest, celestial and terrestrial.

We can be confident and consistent when we care about all the things Christ cares about, on earth and for eternity.

If the Lord Jesus Christ cares about it, we can care about it. Christ's interests are comprehensive.

His Lordship gives us freedom and responsibility to learn about and to love ALL that He made and maintains.

This includes our general commissions to take dominion over all creatures (Genesis 1:28) and make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:18-20), as well as our specific hope in the fulfillment of His covenant to save a particular people in a particular land. It's near and far, today and the Millennial Kingdom, the work of our hands to the glory of the heavens.

So "may [the Father give us] strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth" of His power and promises (Ephesians 3:18).

To the degree that a Kuyperian Dispensationalist is confident and consistent in his comprehensive worship and work, he has every reason to believe that the Lord will bless him. In fact, a KuyperDispy’s blessings will be Conspicuous.

Faith has fruit, thirty, sixty, a hundredfold (Matthew 13:23). God is not mocked, whatever one sows, that he will reap, so in due season we will reap if we do not give up (Galatians 6:7, 9). While that is a warning about sowing to the flesh, it is also a motivating promise for those who sow to the Spirit. So as we have opportunity, let us do good (Galatians 6:10)! The blessings of the Lord are multiple and manifest.

The salt of the earth is tasty (Matthew 5:13). The light of the world shines before others in good works (Matthew 5:14). Grace extends to more and more people for sake of increasing thanksgiving, to the glory of God (2 Corinthians 4:15).

We live “in the fullness of the blessing of Christ" (Romans 15:29). We are #blessed. Blessings abound. They are obvious and outstanding.

Here’s the fifth (and final) C for KuyperDispies: Compelling

A quick recap. Because we confess that Jesus is Lord, we are full of faith: that’s confident (1).

Because Jesus is Lord, we believe that He will fulfill all His words, including promises made to the Patriarchs about salvation and land and blessing, along with the certainty of new hearts and the indwelling Spirit and inhabited cities and abundant grain: that’s consistent (2) (in acknowledging authorial intent, both OT and NT).

Because Jesus is Lord, we acknowledge His sovereign interests in all history over all the earth, that He calls GOOD what He has made and what He maintains, so that we also can live as image-bearers here and now, not just post-rapture/“in heaven”: that’s comprehensive (3).

Because Jesus is Lord, living according to the above results in Jesus’ blessings on His people: that’s conspicuous (4).

And so KuyperDispies are Compelling (5), that is, we expect that God is causing His blessings on us to be jealously provocative.

Salvation has come to the Gentiles “so as to make Israel jealous” (Romans 11:11). This salvation includes all the spiritual blessings, but also “riches for the world” (Romans 11:12). This is no guarantee of material prosperity, but it is an argument against gnostic/dualistic pietism.

By faith some conquer kingdoms, enforce justice, put foreign armies to flight. Others are tortured, chained, imprisoned, afflicted, and all of them are those “of whom the world was not worthy” (Hebrews 11:35, and see verses 32-38).

And so Paul said, “I magnify my ministry in order to somehow make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them” (Roman 11:13-14).

In God’s plan, the remnant in Israel will be compelled by the blessings of God to the nations (like us) unto repentance and confession in Jesus as the Messiah. And when the fulness of the Gentiles has come in, among the next stages of God’s work there will be a full inclusion of Israel, and “what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?” (Romans 11:15)

This is the Blessed Option, not a bunker mentality. We are not holding back, we are God’s workmanship to show off His grace and the unsearchable riches of Christ. That is compelling, that is jealousable.

Jealousable households love Christ and have parents who love their kids and love these virtues for and into their kids. Those households look for other households to be in the same community to build and battle, they look for similar households when it’s time for the kids to get married.

Note: none of this requires any extra meetings, events, money, but it touches all our fellowship and efforts and pursuits.

I think that one of the reasons we get so much from the “Moscow Mood” is because they have 4 of the 5 of these Cs (lacking consistent reading). That said, I’d rather have their kind of inconsistency most of the time. What you/we find compelling is not their Covenantalism, it’s that they live by faith. (For more discussion on this, check out the All Are Yours podcast Episode 5.)

everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. (1 John 5:4 ESV)

Most of us (over the age of 20) are here because of a fork in our church road driven by bad elders. That is both a brutal and typical reality. Elders go first as examples to the flock—good or bad. Elders are the first examples, they are the first responsible-s, and affirming them in every local church is of first importance for the flock. Paul told Titus to get qualified elders identified as the first step.

Paul greeted Titus and then gave Titus public instructions about installing elders in every city on the island of Crete (Titus 1:5-9). It was the next step for setting things in order. And in a letter that values truth which accords with godliness (Titus 1:1), that values adorning the doctrine (Titus 2:10), there needs be a group of men who are recognizably godly and leading others to grow in godliness.

There are some assumptions in the context of this first-century epistle that are not so assumed in the context of our day. We need a mini apology (in the sense of a defense) of authority. Good authority is good, which is why there are qualifications on how to identify good authority, which does mean that good authority is not impossible. Jesus—the only perfect authority in the flesh—gave men with authority as gifts to His church (Ephesians 4:11).

Good authority is like the dawn (a political context in 2 Samuel 23:3-4, but a principle with application across spheres). That's part of the reason that Paul comes out of the epistolary gates addressing the subject of elders. It’s not exaggeration to say that this paragraph about godly elders was for the good of the whole island. There are titles for authority, recognized offices, and they are given apostolic affirmation in this public, pastoral letter. The authority was to be affirmed by locals in every locality. Paul explicitly exhorted Titus to do his work with authority (2:15).

Good authority is good. Godly authorities model and instruct and stimulate godliness; godly authorities put things in order. It is a high calling, with heavy responsibilities, and so restricted to those who meet the qualifications. It's not for everyone.

These instructions/qualifications are given so that everyone can know what to look for; it's Titus' work to take the first steps, but each local flock would have to participate in some way. It takes wisdom, because you want some men to be elders, but not the wrong men (see verses 10-16). It takes wisdom because current elders should be leading the way in joyful, fruitful, and godly oversight, but it is also a heartbreaking and burdensome work to care about sheep who keep sinning and to watch out for wolves seeking to destroy the sheep.

To shepherd the flock of God is (one of) the most demanding callings among men.

It is a noble task, yet those who do it are often treated as the scum of the earth. Such men live at the breaking points (2 Corinthians 4:7-10), but don't lose heart. The calling is of such a kind that if you can do something else, you should.

So there are public qualifications, yet there is no inspired process. Since every one of the local churches on Crete would have been first-generation Christians (as written to Titus around AD 63), we probably should give consideration for how the same qualifications look after multiple generations of Christians, when a flock doesn't just recognize elders but raises them up. Elders are vital to the health of the body and there is still some necessary flexibility due to what Paul doesn't say.

A couple more things from looking at the passage in its overall context before starting to consider the particulars.

Elder (πρεσβύτερος in Titus 1:5) and overseer (ἐπίσκοπος in Titus 1:7, also translated “bishop”) are used of the same person, elder emphasizes maturity (not just age) and overseer emphasizes the nature of the ministry. Pastor/shepherd (ποιμήν in Ephesians 4:11) is a third term that refers to the same office, and we could add steward (οἰκονόμος in Titus 1:7), preacher (κῆρυξ in 1 Timothy 2:7), and minister (διάκονος of the gospel in Colossians 1:23).

There were to be elders in every town, a plurality in each single church. How many shepherds per number of sheep? No formula. Would there ever be a time when there was just one elder? Maybe, but that's as risky as it might be temporarily necessary. Get a many. While any group of elders may not spend all their time doing the same thing, there is no hierarchy or pastorarchy, no monarch or "senior" or "executive" or "ruling vs. teaching" elder (though some perhaps do more labor in preaching and teaching per 1 Timothy 5:17).

The plurality are all men. Women should teach...other women (Titus 2:4), but not have authority over other men (1 Timothy 2:12). It's good for godly and gifted women to be protected by and provided for by godly men. Related, there are no "elderettes," though that is a fun name. Being a pastor's wife is not a spiritual gift, though it is often a great burden. A godly man will get great insight and help from his wife, but she must not run the church, through her fears or her force.

Two above reproach (verse 6 and 8) and a man's family is the first place to consider his qualifications.

The husband of one wife is a beautiful phrase, and our elders understand it to mean a monogamous man, faithful to his marriage covenant with one woman. He ought not have multiple wives at the same time, let alone visits with a mistress or porn sites. It would go against other Scripture to say that he couldn't lawfully remarry after the death of his wife. For that matter, this does not seem to require that if his wife died, he would immediately lose his qualification. We must apply more wisdom than which checkbox to choose on the census.

The qualifications about his kids stand out, starting with the fact that nothing similar is required about his wife. Could he be an elder if his wife hadn't converted to Christ? Maybe that's more possible in a place where you got married when there were no Christians, then an apostle came through your city and you believed but your spouse didn’t.

The kids, though, give a different kind of evidence of a man's authority. An elder is to have children (who) are believers.

Of course there are arguments about this, starting with, does it mean "faithful" (NET) or “trustworthy” (KJV) instead of “believing”/Christian? The next phrase of the verse certainly shows a way they might not be faithful in conduct.

Other relevant questions: Can a married man without any kids be qualified? Why don't they have kids? How old do his kids need to be? What if he and his wife were only able to have one kid, that’s not “children”? Can kids "age out" of this qualification, so if they aren't living under his roof any more, then this doesn't apply? What if he’s four out of five in faithful kids?

For real, these are good questions that good men disagree about. But what is the point of this qualification? It's that a man does the work of an evangelist with his offspring first; an elder wants others to have faith like him, starting with the people who share his last name. It's that a godly man adorns the doctrine so that the people who live with him think it looks good. It's that he knows how to shepherd and disciple others to renounce ungodliness. A flock can, and are instructed to, evaluate the fruit of a man’s home field.

“Keeping his children submissive” is an appropriate qualification (that is another inspired description in 1 Timothy 3:4), but certainly expects more than showing you can be the boss of a two year-old. Eli was a priest, but his sons would have disqualified him from being an elder (1 Samuel 2:2, 17). Though it’s a parable, the dad of the prodigal son wouldn’t be qualified, until his second son repented of his bad attitude.

The key is: what does the man use his authority for? That’s also how he’ll care for God’s church.

To be a leader, one must both have and embody a vision of where one wants to go. It is not a matter of knowing or believing one is right; it is a matter of taking the first step. (—Friedman, A Failure of Nerve)

What Crete needed were more godly and growing men leading local churches in faith and knowledge of the truth which accords with godliness.

Godly men must take the first step.

I love the Pastoral Epistles; come along and love them with me! Titus is another short book (only 46 verses long) after Habakkuk (56 verses), and we'll consider it together over these next few months. It's a book about the influence of the truth on character/conduct/lifestyle, and then how that behavior influences others, both inside and outside the church.

One of the phrases that has most affected my perspective on truth and worldview is in Titus 2:10: “that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior." There is a way to live that shows the beauty of the teaching. This is the burden of the letter to Titus. Starting in the greeting, the knowledge of truth "accords with godliness" (1:1). The "sound doctrine" that Titus is to teach (2:1) could be taken as a mini-encomium of godly character. And the phrase "good works" peppers the letter six times (1:16, 2:7, 14, 3:1, 8, 14).

Our habits of life matter. Our households need examples, the household of faith needs examples, the world needs examples.

Robert Capon wrote that we have lots of principles but “nobody has been showing me pictures. At least not ones I can identify with.” Edmund Burke wrote, “Example is the school of mankind and they will learn at no other.” Peter wrote that elders were to be templates to the flock (1 Peter 5:3), and the first group Paul addresses are elders in Titus 1:5-9. Men of godliness are to lead the way by showing what truth looks like in the flesh. We adorn the doctrine, we wear it in a way that makes it look good.

This book is a personal letter from the apostle Paul to one of Paul's disciples named Titus, his true child in a common faith (1:4). As usual in first century correspondence, the author identifies himself and greets his reader. This is, certainly, to Titus, but it's got to be for more than Titus; it’s a “church” book.

Paul left Titus as a young man (2:6-8) on the island of Crete to appoint elders for the churches that Paul had just planted with Titus' help (1:5). Titus had been traveling and working with Paul, and was especially successful in some back-and-forths with the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 2:12-13, 7:5-7; 8:6-7).

It'd be a good question just how much of the letter bearing his name would have been new information to Titus. Along with reminders, these instructions were public, like speaking loud enough to one kid so that the whole table hears. The Cretan Christians were apparently unorganized (1:5), upset by false teachers (1:11), living in a culture of liars (1:12) and ungodliness, worldly passions, and lawlessness (2:11, 14). The pre-Christian Cretans themselves had been:

foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. (Titus 3:3 ESV)

To start, here is one of the longest opens in any of Paul's letters.

Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God’s elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness, in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began and at the proper time manifested in his word through the preaching with which I have been entrusted by the command of God our Savior;

There's the author, the addressee, and the greeting, but I'm going to drill in on two themes.

Paul was a slave, doing the will of another. He was an apostle, taking the message of another. So he was a preacher according to the command of God.

There are great statements of Paul's purpose throughout his letters (for example Colossians 1:28 to present every man complete in Christ; Philippians 1:25 for progress and joy in faith). This greeting to Titus has three parts, two for the sake of aims, two objects “to further” (NIV), and then a frame of reference, so: 1) for faith, 2) for knowledge, and 3) in hope.

He was an instrument to bring about the faith of God's elect. There's more about God's sovereign salvation in this paragraph, not least that "Savior" is attributed to both God and Jesus; God saves sinners. It starts with the response of faith; God’s election gifts faith.

Faith is not contentless, not “shapeless” (John Calvin), not feelings-based but based on truth. Along with faith Paul was an instrument to bring about the knowledge of the truth which accords with godliness. What's not to get carried away with in this phrase? There's truth, you can recognize it, and it changes your life! Sound doctrine (2:1), and adorning doctrine (2:10), still have doctrine, the teaching, the truth.

AND it's not merely a mental collection or calisthenics. We're not to be truth-tubes, just raising the level of our biblical or theological facts and outlines and libraries. True truth has a godly-making effect. Godliness is eusebeian (εὐσέβειαν) - piety, reverence and loyalty to deity. “The total commitment of one’s life to God” (Mounce).

This kind of “after” isn’t about sequence, as in before and after. It’s about pursuit. Some chase after money, after a girl. You, Christian, get after godliness. Get knowledge of truth that gets after spoude/zeal that gets after good works.

"Godliness consists in an exact harmony between holy principles and practices." (—Thomas Watson)

Part of that godliness is living in hope. Paul was an instrument to bring about the hope of eternal life. The faith and knowledgeable-godliness has hope, a forward-looking certainty. The eternal part includes later and even forever, but true hope changes present choices.

The rest of verse 2 and all of verse 3 modify "eternal life." Eternal life was promised by God and then revealed by God. There's a contrast between both of God’s activities, one before time and the other at the present time.

The "un-lying God" (ὁ ἀψευδὴς, only here in the NT) promised eternal life before the ages began, “before times eternal.” Some argue that this must be a reference to old times, times of the patriarchs, so back to Abraham (as John Calvin thought), or maybe even back to Adam. The inference is, if the promise was made before Genesis 1:1, then who did God promise?

Around the time I was exposed to the doctrines of godliness/grace I was reading John MacArthur's commentary on Titus like any other book, starting at the start. And that was the first time I considered the Trinitarian option, where God promised God (see also some other passages like John 6:37, 39; 10:11, 26-30). The Father chose a people to give to the Son. The Son would lay down His life for them, the Spirit would cause them to be born again and seal them. Our eternal life is based on God, God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior" (verse 4).

And then at the proper time manifested in His word through the preaching. There were means to the end, there were timing considerations as well as instrumental choices. The command of God brought Paul to his preaching work, and it is a message of salvation because it's a message from God our Savior.

Habakkuk rejoiced in God, “the God of my salvation.” And the message to Titus, some 670 years after Habakkuk, is still faith, still godliness, still salvation.

Be after godliness, get after it. Truth is on a quest for godliness, truth runs after it.

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. (Titus 2:11–14 ESV)

We need godly men (elders, older men and women, younger women and men, servants and citizens) as “a people who are zealous for good works” (2:14), a people who adorn the doctrine of God our Savior.

Christian, you’ve been granted faith. You have knowledge of the truth. You live in hope of eternal life, looking to the God who never lies. Get after godliness. In everything adorn the doctrine of God our Savior.

His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. (2 Peter 1:3–4 ESV)

I love the Pastoral Epistles; come along and love them with me! Titus is another short book (only 46 verses long) after Habakkuk (56 verses), and we'll consider it together over these next few months. It's a book about the influence of the truth on character/conduct/lifestyle, and then how that behavior influences others, both inside and outside the church.

One of the phrases that has most affected my perspective on truth and worldview is in Titus 2:10: “that in everything they may _adorn the doctrine of God our Savior_." There is a way to live that shows the beauty of the teaching. This is the burden of the letter to Titus. Starting in the greeting, the knowledge of truth "accords with godliness" (1:1). The "sound doctrine" that Titus is to teach (2:1) could be taken as a mini-encomium of godly character. And the phrase "good works" peppers the letter six times (1:16, 2:7, 14, 3:1, 8, 14).

Our habits of life _matter_. Our households need examples, the household of faith needs examples, the world needs examples.

Robert Capon wrote that we have lots of principles but “nobody has been showing me pictures. At least not ones I can identify with.” Edmund Burke wrote, “Example is the school of mankind and they will learn at no other.” Peter wrote that elders were to be templates to the flock (1 Peter 5:3), and the first group Paul addresses are elders in Titus 1:5-9. Men of godliness are to lead the way by showing what truth looks like in the flesh. We adorn the doctrine, we wear it in a way that makes it look _good_.

This book is a personal letter from the apostle Paul to one of Paul's disciples named Titus, his **true child in a common faith** (1:4). As usual in first century correspondence, the author identifies himself and greets his reader. This is, certainly, to Titus, but it's got to be _for_ more than Titus; it’s a “church” book.

Paul left Titus as a young man (2:6-8) on the island of Crete to appoint elders for the churches that Paul had just planted with Titus' help (1:5). Titus had been traveling and working with Paul, and was especially successful in some back-and-forths with the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 2:12-13, 7:5-7; 8:6-7).

It'd be a good question just how much of the letter bearing his name would have been new information to Titus. Along with reminders, these instructions were public, like speaking loud enough to one kid so that the whole table hears. The Cretan Christians were apparently unorganized (1:5), upset by false teachers (1:11), living in a culture of liars (1:12) and ungodliness, worldly passions, and lawlessness (2:11, 14). The pre-Christian Cretans themselves had been:

> foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. (Titus 3:3 ESV)

To start, here is one of the longest opens in any of Paul's letters.

> Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God’s elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness, in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began and at the proper time manifested in his word through the preaching with which I have been entrusted by the command of God our Savior;

> To Titus, my true child in a common faith: Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior. (Titus 1:1–4 ESV)

There's the author, the addressee, and the greeting, but I'm going to drill in on two themes.

# The Threefold Aim

Paul was a **slave**, doing the will of another. He was an **apostle**, taking the message of another. So he was a preacher according to the command of God.

There are great statements of Paul's purpose throughout his letters (for example Colossians 1:28 to present every man complete in Christ; Philippians 1:25 for progress and joy in faith). This greeting to Titus has three parts, two **for the sake of** aims, two objects “to further” (NIV), and then a frame of reference, so: 1) for faith, 2) for knowledge, and 3) in hope.

He was an instrument to bring about the **faith of God's elect**. There's more about God's sovereign salvation in this paragraph, not least that "Savior" is attributed to both God and Jesus; _God saves sinners_. It starts with the response of faith; God’s election _gifts_ faith.

Faith is not contentless, not “shapeless” (John Calvin), not feelings-based but based on truth. Along with faith Paul was an instrument to bring about **the knowledge of the truth which accords with godliness**. What's not to get carried away with in this phrase? There's truth, you can recognize it, and it changes your life! Sound doctrine (2:1), and adorning doctrine (2:10), still have _doctrine_, the teaching, the truth.

AND it's not merely a mental collection or calisthenics. We're not to be truth-tubes, just raising the level of our biblical or theological facts and outlines and libraries. True truth has a godly-making effect. **Godliness** is _eusebeian_ (εὐσέβειαν) - piety, reverence and loyalty to deity. “The total commitment of one’s life to God” (Mounce).

- “truth which accords with godliness” (ESV)

- “truth that leads to godliness” (NIV)

- “truth that produces godliness” (Mounce)

- “truth which is _after godliness_” (Tyndale, KJV)

This kind of “after” isn’t about sequence, as in before and after. It’s about pursuit. Some chase after money, after a girl. You, Christian, get after godliness. Get knowledge of truth that gets after _spoude_/zeal that gets after good works.

> "Godliness consists in an exact harmony between holy principles and practices." (—Thomas Watson)

Part of that godliness is living in hope. Paul was an instrument to bring about **the hope of eternal life**. The faith and knowledgeable-godliness has hope, a forward-looking certainty. The **eternal** part includes later and even forever, but true hope changes present choices.

# The Trinitarian Promise

The rest of verse 2 and all of verse 3 modify "eternal life." Eternal life was promised by God and then revealed by God. There's a contrast between both of God’s activities, one before time and the other at the present time.

The "un-lying God" (ὁ ἀψευδὴς, only here in the NT) **promised** eternal life **before the ages began**, “before times eternal.” Some argue that this must be a reference to _old_ times, times of the patriarchs, so back to Abraham (as John Calvin thought), or maybe even back to Adam. The inference is, if the promise was made before Genesis 1:1, then who did God promise?

Around the time I was exposed to the doctrines of godliness/grace I was reading John MacArthur's commentary on Titus like any other book, starting at the start. And that was the first time I considered the Trinitarian option, where God promised _God_ (see also some other passages like John 6:37, 39; 10:11, 26-30). The Father chose a people to give to the Son. The Son would lay down His life for them, the Spirit would cause them to be born again and seal them. Our eternal life is based on _God_, God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior" (verse 4).

And then **at the proper time manifested in His word through the preaching**. There were means to the end, there were timing considerations as well as instrumental choices. The **command of God** brought Paul to his preaching work, and it is a message of salvation because it's a message from **God our Savior**.

# Conclusion

Habakkuk rejoiced in God, “the God of my salvation.” And the message to Titus, some 670 years after Habakkuk, is still faith, still godliness, still salvation.

Be _after godliness_, get after it. Truth is on a quest for godliness, truth runs after it.

> For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. (Titus 2:11–14 ESV)

We need _godly_ men (elders, older men and women, younger women and men, servants and citizens) as “a people who are zealous for good works” (2:14), a people who adorn the doctrine of God our Savior.

---

## Charge

Christian, you’ve been granted faith. You have knowledge of the truth. You live in hope of eternal life, looking to the God who never lies. Get after godliness. In everything adorn the doctrine of God our Savior.

## Benediction:

> His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. (2 Peter 1:3–4 ESV)

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

As I was preparing for this talk tonight, I realized what a huge topic it is. I can't say huge quite like Donald Trump does, but you get the idea. Trying to convey what education really entails, and then actually just standing over here as we were singing, an idea popped into my head to try to convey how big this topic is. Imagine that some foreign power has come and invaded our nation. And they've just come through like a scorched earth policy. They have destroyed every written document we've ever created. They've, of course, taken a lot of our wealth, a lot of the things that makes us who we are, all the statues.

Everything's gone. We're basically left with almost nothing. We're ground zero. starting over. And by the way, we're the only ones that survived, and we're left. So congratulations, you're now part of the new Continental Congress. And we're going to get to decide how to start over, how to start the culture over, and jump start it, and get it going again. But remember, we don't have any documents. All the libraries, everything's been cleared out. All we got is what we got between our ears and our faith, if you will. How are we going to go about reconstituting a nation where we live. How are we going to establish those laws and decide where the laws should be?

How are we going to know what makes for good in a just society? All the things that go into making a nation a civilization depends on what we know. That's it. That's all we got. Would we have the collective education in this room? To even begin to make a good stab at that. A lot of our education today is aimed at a very low, low bar. And we actually do a terrible job of even hitting that bar. But anyhow, that was the illustration that came into mind just a few minutes ago to try to get us into it. So let me go ahead and dive into my notes and let's try to start to flesh this out. But I am only going to scratch at it, barely scratch at it, because it is such a huge topic.

So tonight we are continuing on in our topic of the Lord's household, focusing on the topic of education. In many ways, this topic is connected to all of the other emphases that we've had in this series so far. Education, rightly understood, encompasses far more than what it is commonly believed to mean. There's been a lot of criticism of the education system lately and a lot of it is well deserved. Finding faults in modern education is kind of like shooting fish in a barrel. Examples of failure abound. One only has to watch the latest chaos happening on Ivy League colleges campuses to concur with Mark Twain when he said education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.

In other words, the better off you, the more you forget your education, the better off you're going to be. Now Mark Twain's comment can strike some of us as funny because there's a lot of truth in that statement. Modern education models fail because they don't have a classical biblical understanding of what it means to be educated. This includes many private Christian and home schools as well because they often just copy the same school models with a few Bible verses thrown into the mix. At best, these models offer only a part of what education entails. And in the worst case, they are the antithesis of what education is meant to be.

There's a great irony found in academia today that is summed up by a quote I found from G.K. Chesterton. He said this, he said, it's typical of our time that the more doubtful we are about the value of philosophy, the more certain we are about the value of education. That is to say, the more doubtful we are about whether we have any truth, the more certain we are that we can teach it to our children.

Now he wrote that 117 years ago. How much truer that is today. Now, as fun and as easy as it would be to bash on modern education, the goal tonight is to determine what true education entails. What is the aim or the telos? Is it just to prepare a child to get a good job and not be a burden on society? Is it to make sure they don't end up digging ditches for a living or asking customers if they want fries with their order? Is the household's role in education largely just a matter of picking the right school for the children to attend and padding their resumes with the right extracurricular activities so that they can get into the best college?

For a good number of parents, that is the extent of their understanding and effort in educating their children. And to be fair, that is largely what compulsory education in Europe and America has aimed at since its inception. The author of one article I read on the history of modern education wrote this. Quote, the organization of schools in the 18th and 19th century was very similar to that of today. Unlike their counterparts in ancient Greece and ancient Rome, the purpose of these schools was to raise the literacy of the common people to a level suitable for life as a factory worker. In 21st century technological societies, little has changed in terms of educational methods."

End of quote. In this conceptualization, education's main purpose is to prepare citizens to meet society's needs for a competent workforce. In the days of ancient Greece, education was viewed much differently. The goal was to fully enculturate a person so that they would be a good all-around citizen in their adulthood. The intent was to develop a virtuous person who would help advance the culture. It went well beyond learning a trade skill. The term that describes this full orb approach to education is pidea. It's the key word for tonight, pidea. And it's something the apostle Paul commanded fathers to impart to their children.

In Ephesians 6, 4, Paul gives fathers the following command, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and the instruction of the Lord. This verse is commonly interpreted to mean that fathers are to make sure their kids are well behaved and no good Bible stuff, and that's about the extent of it. However, Paul has a much greater goal in mind. The word translated as discipline in this verse is that word, pidea. Pidea was a view of training that was deeply embedded in the ancient classical mind. What we call education today is just a subset of pidea. In his book, The Pidea of God, Doug Wilson wrote this, quote, pidea represented to the ancient Greeks an enormous ideological task.

They were concerned with nothing less than shaping the ideal man who would to be able to take his place in the ideal culture. Further, the point of Pidea was to bring that culture about, end to quote. To raise a person in the Pidea was to thoroughly enculturate them. Enculturation is the process whereby an individual learns their group's culture through experience, observation, and instruction. This includes things like studying great works, both past and present. It includes understanding the philosophical ideas driving the culture along with its expressions in all areas of life. It teaches the individual how to discern from amongst all of those expressions what is true, what is good, what is beautiful, and what makes for a prosperous culture.

If you're familiar with ECS's mission statement, the last part of it says that we seek to train students who will carry and advance Christ-honoring culture. To carry a culture, you must understand its past and its present. To advance a culture, you must know what makes for an ideal one and how to bring it about. Pidea encompasses everything necessary for someone to do the caring and the advancing. Pidea assumes that there are foundational truths each generation must learn and pass on to the next in order for that culture to thrive. This view of education suited early Christians well, who incorporated their understanding that Jesus is the enfleshed word of God into education.

Since Jesus is Lord of all, then teaching the Pidea of the Lord only made sense to them. If Pidea meant imparting all that was necessary to make a good citizen, then Christianity was the perfect avenue to that end. And so Paul charges fathers with the work of raising their children in the pidea of the Lord. You can see how developing marketable skills is only a part of that process. Earlier I said that modern education sometimes is the antithesis of true education. Where this manifests itself most today is in efforts to undermine and question concepts like, true, good, and beautiful. Rather than give the pupils something firm to stand on, they are taught to question everything and to form their own opinions.

A few of us here are old enough to remember when quote unquote values clarification courses became a thing in schools in the late 60s and early 70s. Dave and Jeff, you guys remember that. Here's a definition of values clarification from a book titled A Handbook for Teachers and Students that was published in 1978. So quote, very generally, values clarification is a set of related procedures designed to engage students and teachers in the act of formulation and examination of values. It does not teach a particular set of values. There is no sermonizing, no moralizing. The goal is to involve students in practical experiences, making them aware of their own feelings, their own ideas, their own beliefs, so that the choices and decisions they make are conscious and deliberate, based on their own value system.

That is an example when I say something working in the antithesis to education. That is straight from the pit, as Dave would say. That is not education. It is a direct opposition to Pidea, let alone the pidea of the Lord. Value clarification stems from the quote unquote science of social studies, which encourages students to develop critical thinking skills, another term I love. The problem of much of this is described in a study titled the Minority Report of the Alberta Royal Commission on Education that was done in Canada in 1959. And this author is no fan of this approach. he says this, in order to criticize something, you have to have something on which to base your criticism.

Proper critical thinking presupposes having had a point of view on which to found a criticism. The progressivist appears to want only that the child develop a critical attitude without the necessary backlog of content. You get that? We don't want them to have actually stuff in their heads when they're being critical, they'll just be critical. We are all too familiar with the common practice of having junior high school students comment on such things as the United Nations equipped with little or no knowledge of the historical, political, and economic background of the nations involved. It's a case of the little angels rushing in where even fools fear to tread.

Critical thinking as an aim in education is essential, but to the progressivist, the concept operates and ignorance of an accumulation of facts." In short, this article is calling out the problem of allowing students to have a confidence of opinion that far outstrips their competence in any given subject. Do the current anti-Israel protests happening on college campuses come to mind when you think about that criticism? Whereas, Pideia involves laying a foundation of facts based on the study of scripture, history, and other resources, this modern approach invites students to pool their ignorance and criticize that which they know nothing of.

It also tends to erode values rather than clarify them. C.S. Lewis made the observation education without values, as useful as it might be, seems rather to make more of a clever devil. Now, I took this rabbit trail on values clarification to provide the example of what education is not supposed to be. It is the antithesis of education. So what does training in the Paedea of the Lord look like? From the New Testament, a Greek lexicon, we get the following definition for Paedea. The whole training of a child's mind, morals, and body through instruction, admonition, proof and chastisement. The goal is to increase the child's virtue. And then if you'll allow me, I found a lengthier wordier description on the ACCS website that I found helpful in wrapping my mind around PIDEA. Hopefully it'll help you too. They say, at its core, PIDEA motivates our decisions and behavior through our affections. And that's a key idea I'm going to come back to. It motivates our decisions and behavior through our affections.

Because it influences each person in the culture, Pidea forms a culture. How do we think? How do we vote? Do we marry? Do we have large families? Small families? Do we do productive things? Do we start a revolution? A million actions lie on the surface. Layers of influence and supposition lie under each decision. Pidea lies at the deepest level. It is the blueprint of thought, affections, and narrative through which every one of us views everything. Your Pidea will derive how you think and interpret what you see out there. Because it is the building block of culture, it determines the future of a people. Pidea is transferred through education in a broad sense.

Formal education plays a part, but so does our family life and the society around us. Pidea is hard to see because it's so deeply set in us. It's molded and childhood and more, most malleable through college age. Pidea is hard to define because it, in many ways, defines who we are. This bootstrapping makes Pidea difficult to fully appreciate. Then just a little bit more here. We live in a world shaped by Pidea, and yet we take it for granted. In fact, most people have never heard the word, and yet this word was foundational to Greek thought and was more commonly used in America up until the 1900s. The stakes are high. Pidea is the primary ingredient in forming culture and thus civilization.

And we've recently seen what it looks like when civilization begins to break down." I told you it was kind of wordy, but I thought it gave a good handle on it. That's a pretty good definition of what pideia means. I want to again emphasize that first sentence in what I just read. At its core, pideia motivates our decisions and behavior through our affections. Training a child to make good decisions and have right behavior flows from them having the right affections. It is something that needs to be trained into them. Pidea training is the transmission of a culture from one generation to the next. It teaches what is true and what is required to thrive in the culture.

It also imparts the facts leading up to how the culture came to be and provides the spiritual, the mental, the physical, the relational, and other tools necessary to advance Christ's honoring culture. That is a lot bigger vision for education than simply getting them a good job and teach them to be a nice human. Without the benefit of being trained in the Pide of the Lord, you end up with something like what the Barna Research Group discovered in a recent study of world views held by Americans. They went out, the Barna Research Group, as you know, they had to go out and do studies, and they went out and surveyed a lot of Americans.

is your worldview through a series of questions. And what they found was that most individuals in America, including many who claim to be Christian, are essentially believe in syncretism, which is where differing worldviews are amalgamated into one weird Frankenview, I call it, my word Frankenview. A little bit of this, a little bit of that. This mashup of worldviews includes biblical theism, Eastern mysticism, Marxism, moralistic therapeutic deism, nihilism, ornalism, postmodernism, and secular humanism. So most Americans are just getting all of these ideas and without having been trained in what is true, I like that, and I like that, and I like that, and I like that. They put together their own worldview and In some cases, those world views don't even go together.

And they don't even know enough to know that their ideas don't go together. This shouldn't be a surprise given the direction modern education's been headed in our nation since the days of men like John Dewey, who was one of the fathers of the modern education in America. In 1933, in a 1933 article titled Soul Searching, ironically called Soul Searching, Dewey wrote, quote, there is no God and there is no soul. Hence, there are no needs for the props of traditional religion. With dogma and creed excluded, immutable truth is also dead and buried. There is no room for fixed natural laws or moral absolutes." And he also said then, if we teach today's students as we taught yesterday's, we rob them of tomorrow.

Very cute little statement, but the reality is it should be abundantly clear to all of us from what I'm saying, that Dewey was profoundly wrong. And again, one of those agents of the antithesis of education, even though his ideas and others like him are the main driver of our modern education system.

Now before we head into our Q&A time, let me offer a few closing thoughts about the household's role in training a child in the Pidea of the Lord. And this is gonna be very barely skimming over the top. There's so much more that could be said, but hopefully it'll spark some thoughts and ideas for you. As stated earlier, it is foundational to training in the piday of the Lord to cultivate right affections. This starts with a love for God and his word because that's going to be the filter through which all understanding of good, true, and beautiful will be processed. Do not believe the lie of this age that these concepts are subjective.

You will teach your children to learn what is true, what is good, and yes, what is beautiful. Even beautiful is not in the eye of the beholder. That's again a false statement. Expose your children to history and good literature that will help them discern between good and evil. Don't try to cloister them in some protective spiritual bubble. Sometimes people will do that. A lot of Christian homeschoolers, well, I'm just gonna keep my kiddies safe, and they're gonna isolate them, and that's a mistake to take that cloistered approach. They need to see the good, the bad, and the ugly, and to be able to differentiate between them.

Now, of course, we're talking about age-appropriate exposure to these kinds of things, so use wisdom.

But work with them to identify and develop their gifts and their talents. Expect them to love work and have consequences for bad attitudes about it. Have them take responsibility when they fail and not make excuses. Require them to show gratitude and thankfulness. Have them think about how they can make their world a better place. And yes, kids, starting with your own bedroom. Guide them in looking for ways to lead and serve at home, school, church, etc., wherever, proactively looking for opportunity to lead in these capacities. Guard against large amounts of non-productive activity while recognizing that some downtime is okay. It's okay periodically for them to get out the digital device and while away some time, but nowhere near to the degree that we typically allowed today. Have lots of conversations about what they are watching, reading, or listening to and who they are hanging out with, making sure that they are applying the biblical filter that you've been teaching them. So you'll have to have those conversations. Don't let

them blow you off and say, ah, nah, nah, we didn't talk about anything. Don't accept those kinds of answers. Get into their heads. And I've mentioned in parenting classes in in the past, sorry to tell your parents, but for your teenagers, that's gonna happen at about two or three o'clock in the morning. That's when they finally get tired enough that they break down and they open up. So you have to stay up late to get your teenagers to talk sometimes. The trick is to give them enough age-appropriate rope that they could trip on it, but not hang themselves. It's okay to make mistakes and learn from them. It's not in their best interest to always prevent them from making a bad decision.

Sometimes it's wise to give them the opportunity to fail. The goal is to train them to love virtue. So be wise in how you work to that end. You have to love the standard first and then lead them to love it. Harshly imposing that standard or feebly holding to it are two ditches that you need to avoid.

So these are just a few things to think about when considering what it means to train a child in the pidea of the Lord. And again, it's so much beyond that. Now, of course, these same things must be true of you. Many of us parents were raised with very low expectations, and we have settled into habits that are incompatible with the pidea of the Lord. All we can do is ask God to reveal those gaps in our own lives and work to make the necessary changes. Living according to the bidet of the Lord will run counter to our culture and likely be met with plenty of resistance. I can guarantee you it'll be met with resistance.

But by faith, we trust that over time, as the haters see the good fruits that comes from it, they will become jealous of the fruit in our lives and gonna start asking us then the right kinds of questions. So that's all I have for you by way of my actual notes. So we're gonna open up to Q and A time, see what are questions and again, this is a huge topic and so let's help each other learn how we are implementing training our kids in the paideia of the Lord. Is that a new word to a lot of you or this paideia of the Lord? No, it just seems like as you've defined paideia, not paieia, that's in Spain. And good. That the other side, the progressives, are trying to educate and transform culture, maybe unknowingly, but using an anti-Hidea of the Lord.

So, like a lot of times we see in the news and other stuff, all these little boxes of bad things going on, but really it falls under one envelope of the dark side of what you've been saying. saying. So I guess I'm just verbalizing that clarity in my mind now. They are also trying to transform culture, but in an anti-God way, whereas that's our spiritual battle with our own children and their children. So, I mean, if that is accurate. And in their case, there is no absolutes. There is no truth to go back and anchor ourselves too. In our culture today, Marxist ideology is really the main driver today. The whole the news and other places, the whole issue of Palestine and all this today, is all coming out of Marxist ideology which is the whole world is explained that there are the oppressed and the oppressors. And so of course in this situation Israel is the oppressors, Palestine is the oppressed.

But you go down, it's whites versus blacks, it's men versus women, it's the capitalist versus the working man. And so it's building to us in our culture today, we're becoming a culture of envy because of that worldview that's dominant today. Jim, I'm a parent who sees what you're talking about. And I want my kids to have it, but I'm busy. I got, you know, I'm just trying to make money to pay for this education for my kids, whether it's at home, you know, buying the curriculum or sending them to a school. So like, I hear you. But like, I'm old. I can't learn new things. I want my kids to have it. What would you tell me as that parent to persuade me to rethink my own thoughts as a parent?

Yeah, I mean, well, and others throw more thoughts. I mean, for me personally, because I am old, and I didn't have that kind of education, I continued to read and learn, especially from the ancients and history. This isn't from the ancients, but I just picked up a book today on Kindle I just started reading called Not Stolen. It's by some PhD guy challenging today's narrative that the white male European came and done the native people wrong. And so he's blowing apart all of the narratives we hear about Christopher Columbus and about the Indians and all of that. So those kinds of things to trying to get to get what is true.

So again, specifically as an American and what it means to be an American. Right now if you're a good American you're supposed to be ashamed and embarrassed, especially if you're a white male. And yet it's based on so many lies. And that's why I feel bad for these kids on the college campuses, because they're basically stupid. They're passionate, but they're stupid. They don't understand the history over there. And so lots of passion, but they're shooting in every direction, but they're not hitting anything. I mean, that's one thing, Sean, is continuing to read and learn. And again, obviously, the Word of God is paramount that we fully understand it.

I don't know, other people that are also been working on this help us out what are you doing to develop. Comfort College has classes coming up. That's right. Philip if you keep talking you're gonna need this microphone. Yeah, Sean's gonna be teaching Jealousable Lordship. I mean just the title alone makes me want to go take that class. That's an awesome title and Jonathan's gonna be teaching pedagogy prep for those that want to maybe get involved. If you want to learn better about how to communicate, how to educate, you'll deal with that topic. Grant's gonna be taking us through omni steroids, right? Or, is that right, yeah, okay.

And so, sign up for those. So that's, for us as older people, it's educating ourselves, it's engaging our kids. You said we're tired, we're busy, we sort of farm out the education. We have that mindset that I just want my kid to get a good job. But again, go back to my opening example. You're the Continental Congress, this is it, and we can only build off of what you know. So what do you think you would need to know to help establish a more perfect union that's honoring to the Lord? And if you're thinking, oh, I don't know anything, Well, start there. Pick something up and start learning something that would make you a good member of that Congress.

Yeah, I mean, we live in a culture where we have been taught to think, well, somebody else will take care of that. And weird how nobody else is taking care of that. Or they're taking care of it in ways that we end up realizing we don't like. And yeah, parents who say somebody else is gonna take care of that. I'm not talking about division of labor and like somebody else knows math better than me. And I trade them. I know some Bible stuff better that I could help. They know some math stuff better or, you know, the individual subjects kinds of things. The attitude of somebody else has to do it is more powerful than the Iliad or the Odyssey.

Like I can make my kid read it, but I can't raise their affections. If I am satisfied, you know, you beat the drum a few times on raising and ordering affections, if as a parent, I'm satisfied with my affections level, I don't need it to get any higher. I don't need my affections to get any bigger or broader. Well, my kids are going to learn that. And they're gonna look for the minimal possible way to do that in their assignments at their level. So. Yeah, it's always, all of us should always have that stretching and growing for what's next. You know, you put it in my head now and I can't get rid of it at the fiction festival, the imaginative coordinates talk.

And I keep thinking about this, okay, A, do I even have an idea of where there is? You know, and if I don't, well shame on me, I should have a there in mind, and then what is it gonna take to get there? What can I be doing to move in that direction? All of us all of our life should always be having that idea of this is not it, I'm not done. There's never a hated up time. There's always some opportunity for growth, some area to learn and don't settle for good enough. I'm plenty old enough to retire, but I'm just keep pushing myself. And I'm thankful that we are in a culture in this church that does push themselves and look for what's next.

Developing skills, areas of interest in cultivating them. I got interested in hydroponic gardening, so my first attempt has failed miserably. I've got a few little dinky nubs I think are strawberries, and all of my vegetables are laying flat on the ground. But I'll go figure out what I did wrong and try again. But I'm thinking of guys like Jonathan Edwards. He wrote The Religious Effections, which that alone would have been enough to say, there's my life's work. But he also wrote a book on botany. Why botany, of all things? So it's that kind of growing, developing, learning those skills. because there's a lot of practical things to starting over from scratch and building a culture.

It was the Christians that started the universities. It was the Christians that got the hospitals going. It was the Christians that built a lot of the things that started our society going. And then somewhere along the way, they got taken over and we got pushed into our stained glass aquariums and we still stay there. we don't get out and take that back. Idea is really the whole process and system of child training. The next word after that is new thesa, which means really admonition or confrontation. And both really are necessary. So I guess my question is, how do you see balancing those two? Well, give me a working definition for you, what admonition means.

Admonition means like confrontation. The other side of, you know, one is the system of child training, the other is confronting them when they need to be confronted and disciplining them when they need to be admonished. My wife has to put people's names on the board. Only two people got their names on the board today, right? Right. When I don't see them as, you use the word balance, I don't see that as a balancing. I see that as both. are necessary and frankly in the training of the pidea of the Lord, admonition plays a big part of that. If you haven't read C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man, it's a good read. Find other resources that'll help you understand what you're reading because it's hard to understand abolition of man. But he makes a point in there and the short version is that the idea that a child, he's talking about children or people are looking at a waterfall and are saying, oh, it's so beautiful.

And then this one group goes off like, well, the waterfalls neither beautiful or not beautiful. It's what you between your ears deem it to be. And then Lewis just goes into a whole explanation like, no, it's beautiful. And if you don't think it's beautiful, you're stupid. And you need to be trained to see that that's beautiful and understand. And so that's part of that admonition, I would say, is helping your young people or ourselves learn. Ask yourself, if you ask God, do you have an opinion on what's true, what's good, and what's beautiful, I think he'd have an opinion on all three matters, and if I can discern what those are, then I need to change my thinking to align with whatever he would say is.

That's why I said earlier, I believe it's nonsense to say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. That's how you can get stupid art that we see today, and people are saying, oh, that's awesome, we should pay millions of dollars for it. I like that you said about training the kids' affections. Like that is a lot of what education is, is training affections, what they should love, those ordered loves. In a sense, training behavior is probably easier than training affections. How could, how should parents go about training their kids' affections? Well, certainly exposing them to the right things. In our household, it just so happened that Gail's dad was, actually both parents were really into music.

They had their master's degrees in classical music. And so her dad was always playing operas in the house. So my kids are over at Grandma and Grandpa's. And next thing I know, I'm here running around her house, Yeah, half hooting and half whistling some tune, I don't know. What's that? Oh, well, that's the opera from Magic Flute. And so they're getting exposed to opera at the age of three. They don't know. But so developing taste, what they're hearing, what they're learning. A lot of the entertainment for kids today is so insepited. I mean, even if it's not overtly evil, it's just like, OK, let's draw a square block and put two dots on it and a little squiggly and call it a mouth.

And that's the artwork involved in the cartoon. All those kinds of things, I think, are really dumbing down our culture. So I guess exposure. You just make sure you're having them hear the right things. As soon as they get older when they're using bad judgment, I think I heard Nate Wilson comment that what Doug did with him when he was 16 is he said, he gave Nate the freedom, he said, you can listen to whatever you want, but you're gonna tell me what you listen to, and you're gonna explain to me why you listen to it, and what you think about it. So for an older kid, there's an example of where you can have that conversation.

Our kids, as they were getting into the music, I would take the CDs first and I would listen to them and then I would say, not that song, not that song. You can listen to that song and I would rip the CDs down into their own personal CD. Here's dad's approved list. But hopefully if you expose them at the right age, then they develop the taste. But we're sinners still, so the things of the world are going to appeal and when that then you have to have the conversation with the kid. Why does that appeal to you? And get to the hard issue. I've shared in my parenting seminars before, the one son that wanted the purple hair.

Why do you want purple hair? Well, I just think it would be fun. I said, son, I don't believe that's the motivation. I believe there's something going on in your heart that makes you want to have purple heart. Whether I want to feel cool, I want to be accepted, I want to rebel, there's some other motivation there. It's not just I woke up today and thought purple hair is a good idea. So I would force them to talk about what was driving those desires in them. So I know it might be hard to believe, but I'm not a parent. And I still- Do you want purple hair? No, I do not want purple hair. It neither sounds fun nor interesting.

I know your father well enough to know he'd probably say heck no. Yes. As somebody who has gone and is wrapping up the first part of my education, so I get to have parents which are fantastic, well, who are fantastic, and they're continuing to push me in my affections, and they're also growing in their affections. That is not necessarily the case in the people that I hang out with at school because they don't have the parents that I have. How as a peer do you, because I can't just tell them, hey, don't do what your parents are telling you to do and do what I'm telling you to do. I mean, I could try that, that probably wouldn't go very well.

And I can't necessarily go tell their parents, hey, you should be doing this, because I am also 18 and I don't know everything. But how do you with another peer get them to raise their affections and potentially even change them? because at ECS there are some people's affections that not only need to be upgraded, they need to be flipped is what it feels like, but how do you do that as a peer or to another friend basically? I mean, well, and again, there's probably many answers in that question, but off the top, you love the standard, you love what you've been trained to, and presumably it's bearing fruit, even though you're on the, well, I know you're finished now, but you were on the baseball team and you've got these unbelievers, but they saw something in you.

They wanted to be with you, because they saw something. Whether it was your intact home, or just the way you carry yourself, whatever it was. You exuded a pidea, that they were, that was my closing statement. You were exuding a pidea that they said, I want that, even if at the moment, and given their age, it's not cool to do that. They know in their hearts. They can't escape from their heart at night. They're like, why is Calvin so dain happy? And why does he seem to have his act together better than I do? And at some point then, you're just ready for them to ask the reason. We can't compel them or force them to do it.

But our loves beat their loves any day of the week. And so that's probably the best prominent way you can as a peer, since you can't exercise any other force or influence on them. Just make what you love look really good. I think just to add on to that question, Calvin, is Jim was talking about why do these things appeal to you. And so I think there is not enough people inquiring those kinds of questions. and really providing an opportunity for people to reflect upon why they desire certain things and why things appeal to them and why they want to lean in a certain direction. And I mean, we as the students, parents, whatever, I ask probably way too many questions.

But getting to the heart of the matter is ideally, I mean, that is our responsibility. And so I think peers have a great opportunity to do that. Like, is that honoring the Lord, that choice you're making, whatever the issue is, is just to seek to understand where they're at. And I think that often provides an opportunity to reveal a lot. Yeah, no, I definitely, that's very good. I'm thinking my own son. One of my sons went through a season in his older teen years where he was not making, let's say, the best choices. And he made a particularly bad choice that really crushed his mama and papa's heart. And when he saw the relational damage it did, he was reflecting on it with a buddy of his.

And he was like, wow, I mean, I really messed up. I can see how it wounded that relationship. And then the friend was smart enough to say, well, yeah. And he also thought about what it did with your relationship with God. and he still cared enough about his relationship with God that that was, to me, that was probably a turning point for him, and now he's upper 30s and loves the Lord and doing great. So that was a peer-to-peer interaction, getting him to be honest and get real with where he was at, so.

I was just gonna add too, Calvin, that I think it's the perfect open door to share the gospel, because aside from Christ, we would be thinking just like them. I've been reading through 1 Corinthians in just one verse here, 1 Corinthians 2, 12. Now, we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. So through the Holy Spirit in Christ, we have eyes to see the good, the true, and the beautiful. And others will not. they might see an external beauty of something, but not the creator behind it. So it's an open door to the gospel too.

Exactly, and I would say a hearty amen. And then also on top of that, just let your light shine before men in such a way that they see a good works and give glory to God. Or another verse that talks about them asking you what is the reason for the hope that's in you?

So following Christ and living out the pide of the Lord works, it's beautiful, it's attractive. I mean the caveat is there are those people who are not being, who will not be saved, who are not the elect. So there will always be those haters, but even the haters I think will still say, I really like the fruit you guys have, I just don't want to submit to the God you submit to. I have a nephew like that, he's a very devout atheist, but I keep telling him, I say, you're doing a pretty good job aping what a Christian is, you know, you just reject the God, you know, you're, you're, you keep stealing from our categories, you know, trying to live a, the kind of life that the Christian life offers. So I was trying to think of how to ask this question, but it's a conversation that's happened a few times at school in passing, but so we tend to, as young people, and I'm sure that adults would do this to some degree.

But for young people, we like to put ourselves in categories, and that when we start thinking about, okay, I'm almost done with my schooling. What am I going to do? I don't like reading that much, so I guess I won't really go to college. Maybe I'll work at Mod Pizza or something, like just do something to fill the time. Which, I mean, like you could glorify God with doing anything that you're doing. But in terms of responsibility for learning and types of people, do we need to make any distinctions in...

So like people function differently naturally, but do we need that... Is that any hindrance as to your responsibility to learn as much as you can? And you're saying because some people just don't like reading or are good at reading or? Just if because it is a temptation because hopefully by the time that you get done with schooling like at UCSD You'd be like okay. Yeah, whatever hard it was worth it like it was it was good But sometimes that doesn't happen and sometimes they're like oh, okay. I'm I'm done and now just I I'm done with that education stuff so So, like, should we be thinking of it in terms of kinds of people or does kinds of people not even matter for our responsibility in learning?

And if I'm not, if I'm missing your question, let me know. But some people aren't. Yeah, like, yeah, that will come up a lot. Yeah. Yeah, obviously not everybody's gonna be a bookworm or, you know, read all, you know, read all of the ancients, the Odyssey, you know, once a week because it's fun, you know. But everybody still is a learner. They can always be growing and developing gifts and talents in some capacity. Nobody can ever say, I've arrived. I'm done. Now again, that may not translate into reading a bunch of other heavy duty books, although I would challenge people, they should just develop that work at it.

I'm thinking of a young man right now who told me all of his life, I just don't read and he would literally struggle to read one page. Well God's put him in a situation where he doesn't have a lot of options. His freedoms have been limited and all of a sudden he's reading about four books a week because he's got nothing else he can do. So you can learn if you need to. But that said, again, what motivated Edwards to want to learn botany? What motivated me to want to learn how to do the kind of gardening I'm doing? What motivates anybody to do anything? But it's a big world that Jesus is Lord of, and we're supposed to take dominion of it.

So there's just nobody that I've ever met that doesn't have some area that they can more dominion of, even if it's again just a person working the farm or whatever, how can we make it more productive? What can we do to expand? And of course then just personal growth spiritually. Who's ever done with that? for myself, you know, I'm 68 this year. So I've been with this church 13 years, so do whatever the math was, however old I was. I had probably only, besides the Bible, I'd probably only read in 20 previous years, I probably had only read, I don't know, maybe 20 books, and most of those were technical manuals related to my job.

you know, since I've been a part of this church, you know, I'm getting a kick in the behind. Yeah, I'm up to two or 300 books, you know, that I've read in all kinds of stuff. So, you know, old dogs, you know, old dogs, young kitties, everybody can learn, grow. Yeah, without saying that everybody has to participate in it, maybe one of the best signs of the fact that this is happening among us is momnibus. because there's no, that's a fun name. And obviously voluntary in every possible way.

So the omnibus curriculum at ECS or the great book stuff that has happened at Comfort and as we look at omnistairoids, those parts are great and especially on the graduating from a K to 12 kind of program and then wanting to read more or do more, that's great. But like Mauna Bus has volunteered. The only thing I could think of that could be better than that is like if a group of guys were like, we're gonna do the Patrobus, the patriarchy bus, you know, where the guys got together and read Jane Austen and talked about how everybody's emotions were doing. Now maybe not that, maybe it'll look a little bit different but again, that is gonna, that Monovus group in terms of like going first, being an example, showing that we're not done, we want more.

And we'll even wear our fancy dresses or have finger sandwiches or whatever. But that part is such a huge example to their kids that is a great sign of progress. And I have to believe that a bunch of those ladies are like, well, I'm not a reader. And that's okay. So also the ability we have today until, you know, that the Chaldeans come and ruin all of our stuff and take all of our resources. Like audio books are an amazing resource. And especially for people who don't like reading, like who cares if you listen, listen. That's a thousand times better than doing nothing. So like we can all watch TV. So we can all listen to a book and so many resources are available there to do something more than maybe we were comfortable with before.

As I'm taking Dominion to my yard, pulling all the weeds, I'm listening to the history of the Crusades. I thought, well, I'm familiar with the Crusades, but I really don't know all the ins and outs. As a book, it's probably, I don't know, 1,200 pages, but I'd probably never make it through reading it, but pop it on. Maybe I'm only picking up 10 or 15%, but 10 or 15% more than I had. Do you ever take your scythe to the weeds and you're like, you heathen, be gone. This isn't exactly a question. It's more of an observation. But it's easy as a temptation for me to think, because I'm having this education, which out of all the things that I'm thankful for, first my salvation, second my family and my community, and number three is my education.

And I think it's easy for me to think that, oh, because I'm having this, then that automatically means the only thing I could ever beat is a mom that has 42 chickens, 15 kids, and bakes her own sourdough bread every day, which that whole thing is excellent. God loves that. But also, if you love God and you are doing to the best of your ability being a plumber, like God still loves that too. And so it's freeing for me to think that this education is actually letting you, like what God says is okay to do is actually extremely wide and extremely big. And it's interesting and ironic that the world tells you you can be whatever you want to be, but they actually want you to be a very specific thing, like a cog in a machine with a desk job.

Like it's a very, very small window of what they want you to do actually, but it's very freeing to know that this education is just giving you like a launch pad or trampoline to do whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might. Any lady in this room pulled off everything Proverbs 31 woman does?

Just that list alone. You know, it's, you know, back to this idea of the antithesis of education. You've probably seen in the news recently the Kansas City Chiefs kicker who spoke at a Catholic graduation. And he made a few comments related to just, he gave a shout out to the women and said, you know, I don't know what you're gonna do with your careers, but I want you to tell you, My wife would stand up here and tell you that as a mom and as a wife, there'll be no greater calling, no greater thing you'll do with your life than that. Well, the world has lost its mind over that. And we're like, I like to say mom and apple pie.

I mean, that was like mom and apple pie 50 years ago. And yet today, the world has gone bonkers over this comment. I mean, he's speaking to Catholic students who supposedly actually believe. And actually, he got a standing ovation. And thankfully, the wife of the owner of the Kansas City Chiefs came out and said, he's right on what he said. It was good. But that's an example of how weird and goofy our world is today, the antithesis to where, how dare you suggest to these women that that's all they can do, is be moms and wives, and that they're so capable of so much more, but they don't understand the Pidea and the Lord, and they don't understand the richness and the beauty and the power that is in just those roles in life.

I just want to, I'm thankful for Calvin's comment about his education. He's like, I'm coming to the end of the first part of my education. So implying that this is just the beginning, not the end. where a lot of kids are like, oh, I can't wait to graduate from high school and I'll be done and I'll, but to establish the love of learning and then for them to have the tools to go out and pursue whatever it is that they want to do after that, they have the skills and the grit and the ability to go after whatever it is, they have that skill set. And so I was just thankful, again, for the school. I'm thankful for the kids and their attitudes about, good job, Calvin, keep learning.

Yeah. Amen. It wasn't. Yeah. And people, if your mindset is I'm going to get out of high school or maybe college, and then I'm educated, and I'll go do my factory job or whatever, you will be among the least educated of our population. It never stops. It never grows. And again, it goes way beyond what you've learned, a set of skills to go put food on the table. Again, no one of us, if the Chaldeans came through and wiped everything out, no one of us has enough knowledge in of ourselves to rebuild a culture. But what gaps are in your knowledge today and in your skills to rebuild a culture. And so get, and mix into that, your gifts and talents, your interests, and what can you grow in so that you are better prepared to contribute to that effort to rebuild the culture.

But if we all settle for that lowest level, I know how to put the screw in on the left wing on the Boeing airplane, or I know how to write codes, lines of code, if we say that's enough, because that feeds me. We are choosing to be uneducated, that's what I want you to get across. We should always be increasing our education. Friend to apathy, right? All right, shall we wrap it up?

Okay, let me pray. Father, boy, this topic is so big, the Pi Day of the Lord. But we confess that in of ourselves, We are woefully inadequate to begin to scratch the hem of the garment as they say. All of the things that we need to know, should know. We confess that there's times we're just lazy. We'd rather choose the distractions this world has to offer than to get our rearing gear and make the effort. So Father quicken us, eliven us, make us eager to discover all that you have for us to know we're going to spend eternity continually to increase in our knowledge of you and all of the marbles of your creation. And so why not start now?

So Father, just change our minds, change our hearts. We do pray for this nation, Father, while it prides itself in thinking that it has a largely educated populace, the reality is, Father, every day gives abundant evidence that we are becoming dumber and dumber as time goes on. And so please reverse that trend and bring mercy upon this nation that your truth and your righteousness would begin to have increasing foothold in our culture and begin to turn the tide. We just pray this all in your son, Jesus name, amen.