In the sermon titled 'Message: Stay Sober,' Scott Brown emphasizes the importance of holiness and sober-mindedness in Christian life, particularly for young people. He argues that holiness is essential for all aspects of life, including marriage, as it prepares individuals to be happy and harmonious with others. The sermon draws from Titus 2 and other New Testament passages to explore the concept of sober-mindedness, which Brown defines as the mind of Christ and a crucial quality for self-mastery and self-restraint. He discusses the pivotal season of youth, urging young people to seize this time as a force multiplier for the rest of their lives. The sermon outlines the power of sober-mindedness in protecting against temptation, maintaining hope, keeping active, and fostering clear-minded decision-making. Brown warns against the dangers of distractions and spiritual inebriation, urging young people to focus on eternal perspectives and avoid reckless behaviors. He also highlights the role of grace in cultivating sober-mindedness and the transformative power of turning to Jesus Christ. The sermon concludes by presenting five marks of sober-mindedness: control over thoughts, time, emotions, tongue, and affections, emphasizing that these qualities are grounded in the grace of God and the mind of Christ.

So our Singles Conference always has the same theme. It's holiness to the Lord. And that's because holiness prepares you for everything. And holiness is kind of like the Swiss Army knife of the Christian. It applies to every situation that you'll ever be in your life and frankly a holiness is the chief blessing in the world and it's the chief blessing in a marriage and actually it makes you supremely marriageable.

So it's such a critical thing. It makes you a person who's happy and a person who can get along with other people. So there's no better way to prepare for marriage than to be a person who has desired to be like Jesus Christ and who wants to be holy. So that's why we call this holiness of the Lord and we'll call it that next year I'm sure. So I want to talk about something that really arises out of the book of Titus, Titus chapter two and several other passages that I'll refer to in the New Testament.

And here's what I wanna say. I wanna talk about sober mindedness. I don't know if you saw in the program, it's called, the title of this message is Sober Up. And I wanna speak about several things that I'll work through. First of all, I want to talk about that sober mindedness is the mind of Christ.

The second thing is I want to talk about the season that you're in, that it's a defining season, it's a pivotal season and you should make the most of it. The third point I want to make is the power of sober-mindedness in a person's life. The fourth point I want to make is all about the danger of distractions. And then finally, I'm gonna give you five marks of sober mindedness. So that's where we're headed.

Let's pray. Lord, we need you, we need your word, we need your guidance, and I pray, oh Lord, that you would have mercy on all of us. You would have mercy on me to communicate these wonderful truths from your word, and I pray that you would also make us all impressionable to your holy word, amen. In Titus chapter two, verse six, there's this statement, likewise exhort the young men to be sober-minded. This stands in the midst of many exhortations to be sober-minded.

What's happening here is Titus is charged by the Apostle Paul to go and bring churches into biblical order on the island of Crete. The island of Crete is an out of control culture. It's a beautiful island out in Mediterranean and the culture is a mess. In fact it is true as it says in the book of Titus all cretins are always liars and lazy gluttons. That's the kind of culture that they had And God desires to actually create a culture of sober mindedness among the young people in that island.

And he does that through the church. So I wanna talk about sober mindedness. Now, if your daily habits were put on display, your thoughts, your screen time, your conversations, your priorities, would they reflect a sober minded Christian? By the way, just as an aside, there are a lot of people that believe that as AI develops, everything in your computer and your phone will be accessed by anybody in the world. Any picture you've ever taken, anything you've ever said, that may actually come to pass.

Should be very careful what you do. But how would you describe yourself as a sober-minded person? Would you describe the culture of your church and the young people in that church? Would you describe them as a sober-minded people? Now, the term that's used here in Titus is a really important word and what it means is to restore someone to their senses.

To be sober-minded is to restore someone to their senses. In fact, one of the Greek dictionaries says to restore them from raving. And one commentator says, it's a sobering slap in the face to bring somebody back to their senses. It's like the statement, wise up. That's the meaning of it.

And this term isn't just used for young people as it is in Titus 2.6. It's also used for young women in the same chapter, and it's also used for older men to be sober-minded. So it's something that is really important for anyone. He's talking about self-mastery. He's talking about self-restraint.

But I wanna make a point really, really clear. Sober mindedness is the mind of Christ. This exhortation to sober mindedness is not a moralism. It's not the same thing as saying you need to just achieve this moral quality. It's far, far more important than that.

This command reveals to us the mind of Jesus Christ. Every word of the Bible is a word of Jesus Christ. And when you read this command, be sober minded. You are actually reading a command of Jesus Christ. But even more than that, you're also reading a characteristic of Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ was perfectly and supremely sober-minded. So this command, it's not just an ethical principle that you should follow. It is an ethical principle that you should follow, but it's far more than that. It really is a manifestation of the mind of Jesus Christ. Jesus said, my words are spirit and they are life.

And these words are spirit and they are life. And one way that you can see Jesus Christ is through his commands. Every command in the Bible reveals something about Jesus Christ, and that includes this command to sober-mindedness. And all of this so that in everything in our lives demonstrates the preeminence of Jesus Christ in our lives. Colossians 1 19 says and he is before all things and in him all things consist.

And he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he might have the preeminence. And that has everything to do with your mind and having a sober mind. The apostle Paul told the Philippian church, let this mind be in you. That was also in Christ Jesus. So that's the basic principle.

I want us to understand first of all in talking about sober mindedness we're not simply talking about a lifestyle choice. We're talking about the very wisdom of Jesus Christ that's manifested in your life and my life. So sober-mindedness is a manifestation of Christ. So Paul instructs Titus to instruct the young men and the young women and the older men to be sober-minded. And it's really a very relevant command on so many levels.

It's a relevant command When you think about will I ever get married? Am I running out of time? Why has God not brought someone to me yet? Or what should I be doing with my life? How should I handle living at home or outside the home?

Should I move out? Should I marry that person who's interested in me? What should I think about my parents' opinion? All of these things really are, they ought to be affected by this matter of sober mindedness. Something that I want to make very, very clear as well here is that this season of youth that you are in is a defining season in your life.

We cannot ignore the importance of youth in the church. Church history makes it very clear that most revivals begin with young people. Did you know that? The Great Awakening was like that. Many, many of the revivals were actually revivals of young people.

And it's very well documented. And the seeds that are sown in youth, they either become fruit bearing orchards in the future, or they become thorns. The seeds that you're sowing right now, they will come up. They will create landscapes or they're gonna create landmines for you in the future. This is a pivotal moment.

The wisest people, they consecrate themselves to God and they seize the moment of their youth. They do not waste their youth. They discover, and you will discover, that youth is a once in a lifetime force multiplier. Like good habits, good habits that build momentum. A young person who dedicates himself to sober mindedness in his youth, it becomes a force multiplier for the rest of his life because it's that discipline that amplifies everything.

Now what is a force multiplier? A young person's sober mindedness is like a turbocharger in an engine. It forces more usable power out of the same machine. That's what a force multiplier is. It's like a rocket booster.

It's like high octane fuel in a race car. It's like a reinforced chassis in a truck that's able to carry a lot more load. It makes you tougher under stress. It makes you able to navigate more carefully through life and to accept more responsibility without collapsing and always thinking, oh, I'm so stressed out. A force multiplier in your life strengthens you for the things that are ahead.

And this is how a person learns to govern their impulses by becoming sober-minded. To avoid the self-inflicted setbacks that derail many many young people and the reckless habits, the financial mistakes, the addictions, the wasted time, all these things, the energy that might have been spent recovering from preventable errors can be invested in growth and work and family and purpose and having kids and all those kinds of things. Think of it as leverage. I live on a farm and every once in a while there's a there's a big bolt that you can't break. You got to have a bar, a long bar to break that bolt.

Think of the years of youth like a lever. And it allows you to turn more, turn difficult bolts that are in front of you. It's like a lever. So sober mindedness in youth is the booster rocket of your manhood and your womanhood and it accelerates every strength, it stabilizes every talent, it magnifies every opportunity for the rest of your life. So you're in a pivotal time.

Now I want to talk about the power of sober-mindedness because the Bible speaks of it very very clearly and I'm gonna identify several passages of scripture just very briefly. First of all sober-mindedness protects from temptation That's what 1st Peter 5 8 says, be sober, be vigilant. There's your word sober because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. It protects you from temptation. Here's the second power of it.

It maintains your hope. It maintains your hope. It's easy to lose hope. In 1 Peter 1.13, the apostle says, Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober and rest your hope fully on the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Sober mindedness is so important because it builds hope in your life.

The third, It actually keeps you active. In First Thessalonians 5, 6, you read these words, "'Therefore let us not sleep as others do, "'but let us watch and be sober.'" And this is really a call to live with a sense of spiritual awareness and seriousness, not just drifting through life. And for singles, I think it means being active, being aggressive in the things that you know are good. Not withdrawing from life, not withdrawing from relationships, but looking for opportunities to grow. Sober mindedness really helps you to to be clear-minded about relationships, not sleepy-headed.

Sober-mindedness helps you deal with loneliness. Sober-mindedness helps you to manage infatuation. Sober-mindedness keeps you from getting lost in unrealistic fantasies of which young people are vulnerable to before they're married. A sobriety helps you protect you from running headlong into relationships that are ill-timed or that are unhealthy. The fourth, it keeps you from, it keeps you thinking your way through life instead of feeling your way through life.

You do not wanna make that mistake. In Titus 2.6, the text that I read at the very beginning, likewise, exhort to be sober-minded. This has to do with the mind. Thinking your way through life, through not being driven by your feelings, but to be guided by right thinking about everything. Proper decision-making that's based in self control, especially when you're forming a relationship with somebody of the opposite sex and You know who you decide to marry will have the farthest reaching impact on your life than almost anything that you'll ever do.

And you have to ask, do I feel something? And sobriety asks, is it good? Is it the right time? Is it God honoring? That's what sobriety does to you.

It keeps you from being sucked into every emotional gyration that you might have. When a person feels like they're falling in love, they're very vulnerable to mistakes and often you find people they enter into relationships they've done very little due diligence, they don't understand the daily habits of the person that they have feelings for, they don't understand the spending habits of that person. Is that person gonna spend them into poverty? They don't understand if this person is disciplined. Are they a loafer?

Are they fixated on toys? You know, the reason that the apostle uses the word sober is a double meaning. It has to do with not being drunk, not being drunk in the mind. And There are different ways of being drunk in the mind. On the one hand, you can have unrealistic expectations and not acknowledging you're always gonna marry an imperfect person and that loving someone is a process that goes on over time, and people change over time.

The other danger is just settling for whatever, and ignoring the warning signs. But sober mindedness helps you to stay away from those traps. Some of your preferences won't matter in a few years. You know, what I learned from the mixture that we did here is that if you want to get married in this crowd, you better like Coke, the mountains, and dogs. I mean, that's where the majority is.

So get it together. I mean, you gotta know, you gotta see where the crowd's rolling. But I was telling my wife, you know, I would rather marry somebody that likes coke because I'm the she won't steal my Pepsi. So you have to ask is this person truly converted? As evidenced by a transformed life.

Converted people want holy things. Are they really following Jesus? Do they really think that the word of God is the ultimate guide for everything in their life? Do they believe that God is good? Are they pursuing holiness?

Is this a person that plays the victim in circumstances? How do they handle disagreements? But in many ways, do you enjoy being together? Those are just real sober-minded kind of considerations that we have to have. But sober mindedness is a once in a lifetime force multiplier, it's like a turbocharger, it's like a rocket booster, it's like high octane fuel, and this is used for all the various age categories that are mentioned in Titus, almost all of them.

So this is self-control. What's sober-minded is not. Sober-mindedness is not the inability to have fun. It's not the person who refuses to laugh. It's not without a sense of humor.

You can have fun. Sober mindedness includes actual having fun. The danger of distractions. Sober mindedness is living with a single minded focus. And that means that it's living with eternity in view.

And it's very easy for young people and old people to get sidetracked. And it's easy to be manipulated by outside influence. And this is why the apostle uses the word sober-minded. There are two words that are used. One of them in the passages that I read about the power of sober-mindedness, some of those passages contain a word that means not drunk, in other words, not inebriated.

You could call a person spiritually inebriated. It's a mental condition of drunkenness that hinders you from readiness. It's immersing yourself in things that dull your discernment. It's cultivating affections that make you spiritually impaired. In other words, your mind is dumb, is numbed, and your mind is inebriated because of all these distractions.

And it could be for money, for comfort, for entertainment, to be famous. There are all kinds of inebriations that we can experience. But these are our spiritual toxins. But he's talking about the mind. He says, be sober minded.

And so the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 10 makes it very clear what you ought to do with your mind. Cast down arguments in every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. And this call to sober-mindedness, it's a call Avoid reckless sexual temptations. Sober mindedness keeps you from doing things that will hold you back. Ecclesiastes speaks about this.

It speaks about people who do things in their youth that follow them for the rest of their life. In Ecclesiastes 10, 1, the imagery is dead flies. Dead flies make the perfumer's ointment give off a stench, and so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor. In other words, foolishness at one point in your life can make another time in your life to stink like dead flies no matter how much perfume you put on them. It's a terrifying thing to consider.

Small choices in your youth can damage your reputation and actually eclipse particular opportunities with particular people. You should be very careful with your life. Proverbs 6 32 makes this terrifyingly clear. He who commits adultery lacks sense. He who does it destroys himself.

He will get wounds and dishonor, but then he ends with this terrifying phrase and his disgrace will not be wiped away. If his, his sin may be wiped away by the shed blood of Jesus Christ, he may be forgiven, but there are always consequences to sinful behavior, particularly in the sexual realm. His disgrace will not be wiped away. He's in in Proverbs 5 8 it says at the end of your life you will groan when your flesh and your body are consumed. So be very careful, be very careful what you do with your sexual impulses.

At the same time, we cannot forget the greatness of the mercy of Jesus Christ. Remember Rahab the harlot, who is mentioned in the line of Christ. Remember Paul, who was a murderer. Remember Moses, who was a murderer. Remember David, who was a murderer and an adulterer.

Remember Mary Magdalene. And by the way, if you, you know, we at Church and Family Life, we record the life stories of all of our speakers. These men over here, we have their life stories on our website. We interview all of our speakers and ask them to tell us their life stories. If you listen to those, you'll realize everything wasn't perfect with many of these men.

Some of them grew up in really wonderful homes and they went astray. Some of them grew up in terrible homes and they went astray and then God saved them by His great mercy. And You see these men standing up here, and you know, they're fantastic. But don't be deceived. God rescued them from many sins, many of them.

And that's why Jesus told the woman caught in adultery, go and sin no more. Now I wanna focus on this whole idea of mindedness, sober mindedness, because all of this begins in your mind, what you feed your mind. In Romans chapter 12, the apostle Paul really talks about the renewing of the mind. The mind that had been dulled, the mind that had been inebriated, and yet it can be renewed. And the apostle Paul tells the Roman church that they could be transformed by the renewing of their mind.

That they might prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. So this happens in the mind. If you want to be sober minded, begin with the things that you meditate on. Begin with the things that you read. Begin with the things that you listen to.

Begin with the entertainments. Begin with every input of your mind. Everything you put into your mind has an impact. Isaiah said in Isaiah 26, he said, you will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee. That's thrilling.

In Matthew 22, 37, Jesus said, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is sober mindedness. In Philippians 4, 8, the apostle tells the church there, he tells them to think about what is true, what is noble, what is right, what is pure, what is lovely. If there's anything of good report, let your mind dwell on these things. In other words, meditate on those things.

Linger on those things that are true and lovely and pure. Paul told the Colossian Church, set your mind on things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. So the mind is so critical. But there are so many trap doors in sober mindedness. There are so many things that hinder sober mindedness.

Powerful influences are always swirling around us and they're on an assault against sober-mindedness. Most people think very wrongly about spiritual warfare. They think in terms of these dramatic exorcisms, they think of demons and EBGB weird stuff happening in the room, but spiritual warfare is much more normal than that. Spiritual warfare is happening all the time. It's, you do not want to relegate spiritual warfare to some other kind of weird situation that you're being influenced by.

It has to do with the thoughts of your mind. And it has to do with filling your mind with silliness. And it just, it juvenileizes you. And it is affected by, it's affected your mind share. And I think all of us understand that much of social media is an attack on the mind distracting you, setting your mind on one thing, making you forget other things.

The social media experience is a constant fragmentation of your mind and an interruption. Your Thoughts are broken into bits and divided up in short clips and, you know, hundreds of camera changes in just a few seconds. Images flashing in milliseconds. Short reels. They don't really teach you anything.

They just dull your soul. And people are losing the ability to concentrate. Your generation is losing the ability to concentrate and even to concentrate enough to read sentences in a book. It's very, very well documented. You know, I grew up in the 1960s and the 1970s.

Well, when I would get up and out of bed in the morning, I wasn't faced by texts. I wasn't faced by alerts. I wasn't faced by messages, instant messages, or anything like that. You got out of bed and you went down and you had a cup of coffee and it was just you and the people in your house, the people that you knew and you weren't being distracted, you weren't being pulled away you know by the latest interruption off your phone. And it was a time, it was a season of being more focused and not being transported to places outside of your body all over the world instantaneously.

Today you get up and there's a thousand influencers and news reels and Twitter bombarding you with every possible thought, conspiracy, news story, weird thing. You're constantly bombarded. What it does is it causes you to miss the most important things. It distracts your mind. You know, when Deborah and I got married, the phone was bolted to the wall.

Wasn't that great? That was fantastic. So here's the deal. When we walked out of our house, nobody could find us. They had to somehow track us down, and there was no find my friends, and there was no GPS or anything like that.

And we were able to actually find our way around major cities and complex streets without a GPS. How about that? Try it today. But the most important things are not coming through on your phone. They're not in the news.

They're not on Twitter. They're not on TikTok. They're not on the internet. But they are on the simple life with God and his word and the people who you know, the people that you look at eyeball to eyeball. That kind of world needs to be recovered.

That world is not coming back but you can do damage to that world by taking steps. The most important things are working, strengthening your family, strengthening your church, repentance, putting on the mind of Christ. These are the most important things in life. And this is why sober-mindedness is so critical. And this is why it really is, it's like a rocket booster in your life.

I'm going to give you five marks of sober-mindedness. All of this is really under the heading of self-control. The first mark of sober-mindedness is control over your thoughts. Control over your thoughts. This has to do with being level-headed.

I already quoted Colossians 3.1, keep seeking the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above not on the things on the earth. The second mark of sober mindedness. Control over your time. Control over your time.

In Ephesians, the apostle tells the Ephesian church, he says, redeem the time for the days are evil. In other words, buy up the time for profitable things. Time is your greatest asset, it's your greatest resource, And how you use it will determine the whole course of your life. And if you give your mind to idleness or negligence, all of these things are just, they're just mistresses that are pretending to be pleasure, but they actually are harmful. And What scripture plan do you have?

What books will you read? What mentors will you gravitate toward? Who will you ask the most important questions of your life? Will it be your peers or will it be wise men and women who are around you? What places will you go?

What tangible things will you build? What are the things that you will refuse to do? You know, how will you handle spending habits? How do you plan to make money? All of these things have to do with control over time.

All of us are equally rich with time. What matters is how we spend it and whether we spend it on profitable things at return. The third mark of sober-mindedness. Control over emotions. Control over emotions.

It's easy to fall into harmful emotions. Some emotions are actually sinful. The Bible says that they're sinful. Did you know that anxiety is a sin? There's a direct command, do not be anxious for anything.

Don't confuse the Holy Spirit with your feelings. The word of God interprets your feelings. Don't let your feelings interpret God. The Bible really is the library of the Holy Spirit. And the Bible is the infallible intelligence that stands above your fallible emotions.

And it judges, The word of God judges all the artificial intelligence of your emotions. I'm not saying all emotions are bad, but they often are. The fourth mark of sober-mindedness. Control over your tongue. Control over your tongue.

There are many sins of the tongue. Rash speech, impulsive speech, profane speech, bearing false witness, lying, backbiting, blaspheming, gossip, flattery, reviling, unwholesome speech, quarreling, complaining, mocking. These are all sins of the tongue. The Apostle Paul told the Ephesian church, let no corrupt words proceed out of your mouth. We live, we live in a day where everybody's gotten so used to profanity.

I don't know if you realize that it was probably only 20 years ago, you never heard profanity in the public square in media. And now it seems like you hear it every day. We've gotten desensitized to profanity, to profane speech. The fifth mark of sober-mindedness is control over affections. Control over affections.

This really is the heart of self-control. It's wrong affections that make you unreliable. It makes you a procrastinator because your affections are drawn in the wrong direction. It makes you putter away at things that don't matter. It makes you waste your time on the things that don't make you successful in life.

Now the apostle makes it very clear how all of this can happen. In Titus, It's the fruit of the grace of God. It's the fruit of a person being born again. When a person's affections have changed, they want to be sober-minded. Titus 2.11 says it like this, for the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for himself his own special people, zealous for good works." All of this talk about sober-mindedness, it rests on the grace of God.

It's only the grace of God that can create a desire for sober-mindedness. In other words, you must be born again. You must repent of your sins and turn to Jesus Christ if you ever hope to live sober-mindedly in this world. And it is the grace of God that teaches you to deny ungodliness and to begin to think soberly. And all of this happens as a result of what the Apostle Paul said, it's the truth which accords with godliness in hope of eternal life.

There's the truth that changes your thinking about everything. And the word of God is the instrument for all of that. Now, I've seen this many times repeated. I've seen a young person turn to Jesus Christ and they consecrate themselves to Christ. And everything changes.

And you wouldn't recognize them from the old person. And they begin to walk with God, and they begin to hunger for God, and every day afterward is different. And that young person becomes a source of truth, and encouragement, and inspiration, and sober mindedness. So all of this to say, you have something before you that really, it'll be like rocket fuel in your life. And it's the same thing as putting on the mind of Christ.

It's the same thing as becoming like Jesus Christ. And setting that as your greatest desire in life is to become a disciple, a follower of Jesus Christ, because you were born again. So my appeal really tonight is as you think about getting married, and I know you wouldn't have come to this if you didn't want to meet people and get married. I'm really glad for that. But the truth is there's a key to your success in all of this and It really is sober mindedness as a result of the mind of Christ.

So don't think about sober mindedness as some moralistic, ethical concept. Think of it as it is. It is the mind of Jesus Christ. So put on the mind of Christ. Would you pray with me?

Lord, Lord we thank you for your word. We thank you for Your kindness to us to teach us the ways in which we should go. Your ways are pleasant ways. All your paths are peace. Oh Lord, give us great hunger and desire for you and to put on the mind of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Amen.