If you would please stand with me, let me now hear from God. Thus saith the Lord, beginning in verse 6, likewise, urge the young men to be sensible. In all things, show yourself to be an example of good deeds, with purity and doctrine dignified, sound in speech, which is beyond reproach, so that the opponent will be put to shame, having nothing bad to say about us. May God bless the reading and now the preaching of his word. Amen.

Amen. You may be seated. Well, young men, going to get right to it this morning. I had a longer introduction but the sermon was an hour and a half. So I cut it.

I'm going to give you what you need. Paul gives you five priorities that you must give yourself to if you're not going to grow up to be old babies Number one get self-control Number two act like men number three know your Bibles number four cultivate gravitas Be sober minded to number five tame your tongue I used to tell my middle school students, and I had high school students too when I was a school teacher, I used to tell them all the time, these are formative years young men. You're not gonna get these years back. Cultivate the right habits and the right disciplines now, because if you don't, you're not going to simply coast into manhood. You aren't going to coast into being a good husband.

You don't just coast into being a faithful father. The only thing you'll drift into is being a boy with facial hair. Not a man. So is that what you want to be? A 50 year old boy who wastes his life, who wastes his youth and gets to the end and he realizes that his life counts for nothing.

That the only inheritance that he has left for his offspring is a bad example, a testimony of what it means, of what not to do. A life wasted. Is that what you want? Of course not. I don't want any of you young men in this congregation, young men, listen to me please.

I don't want any one of you in this room, in this congregation, to grow up, but actually never grow up. I want you to be real men, men of whom the world is not worthy. I want you to be men who by the grace of God put foreign armies to flight. Men who conquer kingdoms. Men who perform acts of righteousness.

Who shut the mouths of lions, quench the power of fire, and become mighty in war. Once you become men who fight and triumph over temptation in your life, men who are counted worthy to suffer for the name of Christ. Men who by the example of their lives leave a good and lasting inheritance to their children's children, children. Men who stand against evil. Men who will not tolerate sin in their lives, nor sin in the church, or sin in their home, or sin in the nation.

Men of whom the world is not worthy. Men of spine. Men of conviction, Christian men. Real men. Not whiners, not complainers.

Men. So Little boys, young men, of all the things that Satan doesn't want you to become, that's at the top. Godly men who are described by what I just said. And I got all that I just said from Hebrews chapter 11. Satan does not want you to become godly men with the gospel in your hearts, with the gospel in your mouths, with the gospel coming out of your fingertips, men who can turn the world upside down.

So hear me, Satan will do all that he can to subvert this. He will do all that he can to distract you with shiny objects and silly pleasures and all kinds of folly to turn you away from these priorities that I'm going to talk about this morning. He will actually do all he can for the next 45 minutes to make you not pay attention. Resist Him. Please resist Him.

And submit yourselves to God. Because He who is in you, young men, Jesus the Christ, He is greater than He who is in the world. So give ear to me young men for the next 45 minutes. Give ear to me. Give yourselves wholesale to these priorities.

And by His grace, through faith, God will make you men. Five priorities for young men in the church to mature into biblical manhood. Number one, get self-control. Number two, act like men. Number three, know your Bibles.

Number four, cultivate gravitas. And number five, tame your tongue. Number one's the biggest one. Number one is what the rest flow from. So number one, get self-control.

Get self-control. Be sensible. Paul writes to Titus that he is to urge the young men to be sensible, to use good sense. I think in even better translations, what I have up here is to Get self-control. Titus urged the young men to be self-controlled.

Young men, I'm talking to you. Get self-control. This whole epistle, if you were to look through it, this is an epistle of sensibility or self-control. That word for sensible or self-control is throughout this epistle. Titus chapter one verse eight, pastors are to be sensible, self-controlled.

Older men in Titus chapter two verse two are to be sensible, self-controlled. Older men in Titus chapter 2 verse 2 are to be sensible, self-controlled. Older women and young women in Titus chapter 2 verse 5 are to be sensible, self-controlled. It's throughout the text. And in a few weeks you're going to see Titus chapter 2 verse 12.

The church as a whole is to be sensible, self-controlled. It's all over the place. So it shouldn't be surprising to you that Paul says the same thing to you young men. It shouldn't surprise you. Well, he said it to the older men, he said it to the women, he said it to the pastors, he's saying it to you.

That shouldn't surprise you. But what should surprise you, or at least stand out to you, is that in verse 6 it is the thing that he says to you. It's the thing. He talks to Titus in verses 7 and 8, and Titus was a true child in the common faith of Paulus, who he believed Titus to be a young man, And so the themes in verses seven and eight are priorities for all young men, as they were for Titus. They are for you.

But isn't it interesting, isn't it a little bit surprising that verse six, that's the thing, be self-control. Why is that? Why is being sensible, why is self-control the thing for young men? Why is it young men? In this congregation, Why do you need self-control?

Proverbs 29, I'm sorry Proverbs 25 28 Proverbs 25 28 a man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls a Man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls. A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls. You catch that? You don't have self-control is like a city broken down, no walls destroyed. Two ways to think about that.

Two ways to think about that. Number one, men if you don't have self control, you will be destructive. Men are strong. You're strong. Proverbs 20, verse 29, the glory of young men is their strength.

It's biblical. I've seen it. I'm not very muscular looking. But I am way stronger than my wife. Who works out more than me?

Men are strong. They have strength. And when that strength is used for the glory of God and providing and protecting households. It's a glorious strength, the strength that is glorious. But if a man lacks self-control, that strength will be perverted.

It's going to go off the rails and households get destroyed. Entire cities get ruined. Entire nations are given away into chaos. Nations like ours. If there is no self-control in men, there will be no sanity in society.

You hearing that? We've got to step it up, young men. Nations going, do you know what? We've got to stop it. Stop it.

We have all kinds of wickedness in our land today because we're full of boys in America who don't have any self control. It starts with me and you. And This kind of lack of self control comes out in porn use, fornication, the use of illicit substances comes out in laziness. Young men, you don't want to get out of bed in the morning, you're the problem. You open the computer, you click on pornography, you're the reason America is the way it is.

Stop it. You want to know one of the reasons that Charlie Kirk was killed? Because of boys laziness in America. No self-control in men leads not to men building and taking dominion for the glory of God, but instead destroying and knocking down the very things that their glory, their strength was given to them to build up. That's number one reason why self-control matters because men are strong and without self-control that strength is used for destruction.

Reason number two. If you don't have self-control you are defenseless against temptation. You're left defenseless from the schemes of the devil, and you will be paraded around by your own passions rather than bringing your passions under control. Bottom line, no self-control will lead you to being a fool, a fool governed by his passions. Do you know what that sounds like?

A man being governed by his emotions, by his passions? Know what that sounds like? I've had four of them so far. Babies. That's what babies are.

They're governed by their passions and brothers and sisters, babies are adorable. Amen? They are so cute. I mean we are asking that God will give us another. That's how much we love babies.

But they are not cute. When they're 50 and still babies. 16-year-old babies are not cute. 20-year-old babies, 30-year-old babies, they don't protect anybody. They don't provide for anybody.

It's leeches. And they take great societies, once great nations like America, and they flush them down the toilet because that's what toddlers like to do, flush things down the toilet. A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls. And the glory of the young men is their strength. But woe is the city, woe is the nation upon which that strength is not self-controlled.

Marriages torn apart, children growing up in homes that are shattered by unfaithful husbands and unfaithful fathers, women who are made to be the glory of the glory. They are cheapened into an image online consumed by unchecked lust of men who turn women into objects to satisfy their own filthy thirst. A society with men like this, that society is defenseless. A society with men who don't have self-control, who don't have any sensibility, there is no guard to keep evil away. And so you get men in women's restrooms, you get an entire nation's government school system to trans entire generations of children.

You get transing of children. You get an entire nation to go along with abortion for how many years? I mean we chirp and we get all puffed up, you know, we virtue signal with all kinds of, you know, hey we hate the Nazis and how could those Germans do what they did in letting the Holocaust take place in Germany friends They got nothing on what we've done with killing babies and our backyard here in this state let alone our nation Yeah, nothing They weren't training kids because we're a city without walls a city of full of men without self control we get those things so I'm gonna say right now Oh Lord make us new make us men with self-control Grant these young men and this body and these pastors and these people, these young men, self-control. So the question should be, how do you get self-control? If I'm you young men, that's what I want to know.

How do I get it? I hear you. There's only one way to get self-control. There's only one way to have true, abiding, biblical self-control that takes the passions that are within a man and governs the passions and steers the passions rather than having the passions and lusts steer the man. It's only one way.

And that is through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The God-man who endured the passion of His cross so that the power of sin and the power of lust over you men would be severed and undone in your lives. Beloved men and beloved women, you need to hear the good news. He breaks the power of canceled sin. He sets prisoners free.

His blood can make the foulest clean. How do I know? Because His blood availed for me. He was the perfect, unblemished, spotless land of God, who came to take away the sins of the world by hanging on the cross as your substitute and mine. As your substitute, men, in your place, Christian.

And there at the cross, God the Father poured out his wrath upon Christ Jesus his son who was crucified where you should have been. He could have in a moment called down a legion of angels no cross. Talk about self-control. He bore the wrath of God for you and then in exchange for your sin, He credits His very own righteousness to you so that in the Father's eyes you are blameless as He the Son is blameless. But not just His righteousness, the Father does not just stop there.

The righteousness of Jesus is given to you. Your sin is given to the Son, but the Father also. He just lavishes His grace upon you. He gives to you the Spirit of His Son, the Holy Spirit, who then applies this finished work of Jesus on the cross so that you can sing with all of your heart, like we just sang in that old rugged cross, stained with blood so divine, a wondrous beauty. I see.

For it was on that old cross Jesus suffered and died to pardon and sanctify me. And you sing it and you say that's the most precious news in all the world. In Jesus, in repenting and trusting in Jesus who was crucified, was raised up from the dead triumphant over your sin, In Jesus your chains fall off, your heart gets free just as Jesus was raised up. You are raised up from your spiritual dead and you're made into new creations. You got that?

That's salvation. That's redemption. You're given a new heart, given a new mind, given a new nature, given the Holy Spirit so that you're sanctified. So as you're sanctified, as you're being made holy as God is holy, The Holy Spirit bears out fruit in your life. And what's the final fruit of the Spirit?

Do you know? Galatians chapter 5, what's the final fruit of the Spirit? Self control. Final one. Young men get self control.

How? Clean to the Lord Jesus Christ. Clean to the cross where the Prince of Glory died so that you might have life and have it a little bit abundantly. No gospel, no self-control. So if you want to know the answer to a city without hills, or the city without walls, If you want to know, how do we have a city that's walls aren't broken down?

If you want to know that. Like a nation like America, it's on the brink of destruction for the lack of godly men. The answer to that is the gospel of Jesus Christ. The answer to that is that men must rise up and declare that Jesus is Lord. The answer to that is that men must rise up and declare that Jesus is Lord.

The answer to that is that they must declare that Jesus is the Savior. Men with the gospel in their hearts and in their mouths that declare the good news of Jesus crucified, risen, and reigning. It must come out of their mouths. It must be in their hearts. It must come out of their mouths, and it must come out of their fingertips.

Men who will draw a line in the sand that says, because the gospel of Jesus Christ is true, because the resurrection is legitimate, because of that, here is a line in the sand thus saith the Lord men who say simple things but for some reason We don't have the gumption to say simple things anymore. Like men are men. Women are women. No transgenderism. Marriage is between one man and one woman, period.

No homosexuality. Men who call those things what they are, what God calls them, abominations. Don't know why we can't call them the things that God calls them. Abominations. Men who stop giving their children over to the state, to take responsibility for their households.

Gospel men. Men who govern their passions. Men who take great commission and dominion over the land because why? All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to God their Savior Jesus Christ. Because gospel men, gospel men get self-control.

So men in the power of the Spirit, through the finished work of Christ, by grace through faith in Jesus, put on self-control. Cheers for the take. Philippians 2.12, work out what God has worked in. Work it out. So young men if you are Christian you are not in a straight jacket of your sin anymore.

You are not bound by that sin any longer. You may walk in freedom. Will it require great diligence? You bet. You know anything worth doing is probably going to be excruciatingly hard.

That's why you should do it. Because it's worth doing. When we get to the end of your life, young men, all you have is things that weren't worth doing. So you don't have to be governed by your lusts and your passions any longer. You young men in Christ have the capacity to take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ.

Because you have Christ in you and no passion, let me hear this, no passion, no lust is stronger than the one who overcame all of them 2, 000 years ago. That's who's in you. So one of the greatest areas that lack of self-control manifests itself is sexual immorality, right? Pornography. Men, if that is you, I get it.

But that act that you're doing which makes you feel like you're conquering something, you're the one getting conquered. This sin will kill you. Romans 8, Romans chapter 8 verse 6, for the mind set in The flesh is death. John Owen said it this way, be killing sin or sin will be killing you. I urge you young men and older men and the statistics show I need to be talking to the women too.

Saints, hear this, do not forget the warnings of Proverbs chapter 5. Do not go near the house of the harlot. Do not give yourself to lust. Do not go near that door of her house with internet pornography or some lustful fantasy. For if you do, if you give yourself away to the harlot, be it physically, be it virtually, you will give your youth, you will give your vigor to others, and your years will be wasted away and given away for the cruel one.

And you will groan at your final end when your flesh and your body are consumed. And you will say, and I have heard it said so many times, oh, how I have hated instruction, How my life has been wasted. Don't go there, young man. Be self-controlled. You need to know, young men, that the Bible is very clear.

Sexual immorality does not stay confined to one area of your life. Secret sin, well number one it's not secret, God sees it, But secret sin like pornography, any kind of sexual immorality in your life, or any other secret sin, not just sexual perversion, but any secret sin, it might start out small. But if you keep it a secret, and you never bring it into the light, you never confess, you never deal with it, that secret sin metastasizes. And it spreads to every single area of your life and it will kill you It kills your family it will kill this church that's what secret sin will do That's a big reason we have coveted Eyes software on every device in this building because secret sin will kill us. Do you know this is not not Joe and this is I have done the research do you know how many serial killers, serial killers are people that mass murder, right?

Particularly they murder women most of the time. Do you know how many serial killers have testified that their lust for murder was first born out of giving themselves over to internet pornography? That's a true statement. You might think this is a small sin, just a little guilty pleasure. No it's not!

Don't mess with this, brothers. Don't mess with it. Flee youthful lust. Get self-control. If you want biblical examples, look at the lives of Samson, David, Solomon.

What'd they do? Men who gave into loss, started small. But they didn't deal with it. They hid it. And that little sin, not little, little to them, it grew into devastating consequences.

It killed Samson. David lost a child. He murdered his best friend. He wrecked his household all because they didn't deal with sexual sin. Because they lacked sensibility, self-control.

Well, Solomon, I mean, look at where lust led him to. He ended up leading an entire nation, the people of God, into idolatry. It's serious. Bishop J.C. Ryle said it this way in his book, Thoughts for Young Men.

Brothers, if you have not read Thoughts for Young Men, read it. It's out there in the library. If it's not out there, I'll give you my own copy. I'll give it to you. You can have it.

Because I'm going to buy another one. Thoughts for young men. He says this. Young men, listen. There are two ways of coming down from the top of the church steeple.

One is to jump down. And the other is to come down by the steps. But both will lead you to the bottom. And so also there are two ways of going to hell. One is to walk into it with your eyes wide open.

Few people do that. The other is to go down by the steps of little sins, and that way, I fear, is too common. Put up with a few little sins and you'll soon want a few more. Even a heathen could say, whoever was content with only one sin. And then your course will be regularly worse and worse every year.

Well, did Jeremy Taylor describe the progress of sin in man? First it startles him, then sin becomes pleasing, then easy, then delightful, then frequent, then habitual, then confirmed. Then the man is impenitent, then obstinate, then resolves never to repent, and then that young man is damned. Young men, if you would not come to this, if you would not come to damnation, recollect this rule I give to you this day, resolve at once to break off every known sin. Break it off.

Young men be killing sin, or sin will be killing you. So read your Bible. Give yourself to the local church. Remember the Sabbath day. Look to Christ.

Look to Christ. Look to Christ. Look to Christ. Confess your sins to Christ. Keep short accounts.

Sing. Memorize scripture. Get accountable to you on your devices. Avail yourselves of the means of grace that God has given you that you might bring passions, your passions that can be used for glorious things that you might bring them under the sovereign lordship of Jesus Christ. Do whatever it takes to stop this madness of walking back into the dungeon of your sin that Christ has already set you free from.

It's madness. I'm trying to put the shackles back on. You know that's the insanity of sin, right? What you're doing when you open the computer, you click on that, or you fantasize, and you don't stop, You are literally walking back into the jail cell that Jesus just released you from and you're saying I want the shackles back off There's a word for that A lot of words for that. It's being fool It's being an idiot It's being stupid be killing sin or sin will be killing you.

Freedom is possible in Christ. For freedom Christ has set you free. So your call brothers, that was number one. Get self control. By the grace of God in Christ.

And as you get self control from that is just a necessary implication. You will start to act like men. You start to act like men. Act like men. Paul says to Titus, get self-control so that you would be an example of good deeds.

And that's priority number two, act like men. 1 Corinthians 16, 13, 1 Corinthians 16, 13 says this, be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, be strong, Act like men. Act like men. Now understand these verses here in Titus 2. I need you to understand this really clearly.

Verse 6 is the main priority for young men. It's the main imperative. And the other four priorities that we have left in our study, and they're going to be smaller, they all flow out of verse 6. I just need you to understand this. If you lack self-control, you can ignore the rest.

But in Christ, the fruit of the Spirit's self-control, you're clinging to Christ, the rest are priorities. The rest are priorities that you can have and Christ will give you fulfillment in them. So be sensible when you do that you start to act like a man. You become an example of good deeds, you have purity of doctrine, you're dignified in your sound and speech. So, when Paul tells Titus he needs to be a good example, an example of good deeds, that makes a lot of sense if you're paying attention to the book of Titus as a whole.

We already mentioned in Titus chapter one that the Cretans, are they particularly good people? Titus chapter one, verse 12, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons, Not exactly a group of model citizens. Not an example of good deeds. So it should make sense to you in chapter 2. Why the exhortation for young men is, hey, you don't have a lot of good examples, But you have a few.

Find the older men that are good examples and cling on to them. Act like men in a world that needs more good examples. So older men, this one is for you, just as much as it is for the younger men. Older men, you set the tone. Be good examples if you have secret sin in your life.

Don't let it be secret anymore. This day, confess it. This day, deal with it. I was a young man coming out of college. I confessed my sin of sexual immorality to my father this first or second year in college.

Changed the game for me when it came to fighting lust. The battle with lust has never been the same. When I took a secret sin and brought it before my own father, and to this day, we talk about pursuing purity. Later that summer, I took my laptop, which I couldn't get accountable software on, and I smashed it to smear the rings with a sledgehammer. Man, that's pretty cool.

You probably should have sold it. What I'm saying is, if I don't have a father, it's a good example of good works. If he hasn't demonstrated any confession, I don't do that. So older men, you too, don't let there be secret sin. Be above reproach so that the young men who see what it means to be real men, they see it.

And so to that end, to that end, fathers and godly men in this church Take your sons and if not your sons take other young men. I'm imploring you take them through the book that's out there. There's a book out there I want you to take home with you if you'll read it. It's called Call to Action. It's a 30 day devotional.

You could do it in one day, it's a really easy read. You take 30 days, a chapter a day. You work through with a young man in this church. Young men don't wait for the old men to ask you, go ask them. If you don't want to do that, look, Take Them Through Thoughts for Young Men by J.C.

Ryde. Both are awesome. Call to action, become the man God designed you to be. That's the call to you, men. Do that for the younger men.

Younger men, you are also to be examples to your peers and those younger than you. So this is the priority, you're to act like men, you're to be an example of good deeds, and you can do that even as young men right now. I have four girls and you won't believe how much they tell me about the slightly older girls in this church. All of it good. They're watching.

I know the younger men are watching the slightly older younger men in this church. I've seen it. And so I think I've told this story before but I just want you to understand how big it is for you young men to set a good example even now. I was a eighth grader, middle school student, And there was a slightly older young man, he was a senior in high school, named Kevin Bourne. And Kevin was like, you know like there's studs in school?

He was the stud. Like, And he had muscles on top of muscles. In places I didn't even have places. And this is a great guy, Kevin Bourne. Whatever Kevin liked, I liked.

Whatever Kevin did, I normally couldn't do it, but I aspired to do it So one day we're riding in a car together and Kevin he had taken me under his wing for that whole year still a friend to this day and As we drove to the gym. He turned on the radio and he started blaring, you know, we're heading to the gym. He looks over at me, he's got a big smile on his face, he goes, man, Grant, man, I just, I love this song. And I listened for like a split second, I had never heard that song in my life. And I looked right at Kevin, super serious.

And I said, Kevin, I love this song too. And then I went as far as saying it might be one of my favorites. Kevin smiles even bigger. He knew what he was doing. He had to.

He says, Grant, I was just kidding. This is actually like, I hate this song. Without missing a beat, still the same serious face. I hate it too. True story.

What an example he was to me. I wanted to be just like him. What he loved, I loved. Kevin encouraged me to read my Bible. Kevin started Bible study with several of the young men.

He was a young man who was an example of good deeds. He acted like a man. And so I was spurred on to do the same. And what was so cool was that all the while that I was being influenced by Kevin, that same Kevin was meeting with and being discipled by my own father, Charlie Brown. Act like man.

So young people, you need to hear this. You are children of God. Hear this, This is really important. You are children of God. Do you know that you bear the mark of the Almighty?

If you've been baptized, if you partake in the Lord's saving, you bear His mark. That's the mark. He literally, from heaven, He said, in your baptism, this is my beloved Son, in whom I'm well pleased. That happened. I guess visible, it happens when you're converted God makes you his child but how do You see it tangibly when you're baptized.

You get the sign. You see it physically. Something's happening. I think people, they think that this is just something we do. It's not just that.

These signs, I'm pointing over here, this is normally where the baptism starts. What is over there? The signs that we participate in, in baptism in the Lord's table, yes it's something we do in remembrance of him, but it is not just that. It is God the Father declaring to everyone present their mind. I put my mark on them.

They have my name. Young men, are you hearing me? If you have been baptized in the name of the triune God, you bear the mark of the Almighty. You bear his name so you are not your own man. You are not your own.

You are bought with a price so glorify God in your body. Be an example of good deeds and don't, oh I hear this way too much, do not use your youth as an excuse to waste your life. While you have your youth, cultivate habits and cultivate disciplines, cultivate behaviors and virtues that line up with the kind of godly woman you want to marry one day, And the kind of people you want your children and your children's children to be one day. Use the vigor of your youth on those things. And for the rest of your life, you won't have to say like so, so many say, oh how I wasted my youth.

Instead, by the grace of God you can act like real men. And that leads to priority number three, godly men know their Bibles. That's priority number three, purity and doctrine. So I get, when I wrote up there, I get in verse seven, with purity and doctrine. Your doctrine should not be corrupted by worldliness, and neither should your behavior that flows from that doctrine be corrupted.

All of it should be pure. I'm going to say it again. Your doctrine is going to come out of your fingertips. Yes? So what comes out of your fingertips is what you believe.

That belief needs to be informed by this Bible. You need to know this, the Word of God, the perfect, sufficient, and errant Word of God. And as it flows out of your fingertips, that cannot be corrupted. All of it pure. So again, this priority for you young men and I, this priority flows from verse one.

Be self-controlled, be sensible. If you don't have self-control, hear me, if you don't have self-control you won't read this book. If you have no self-control, the devil will have absolutely no problem at all in keeping your sword in its sheath. So you need to wake up, get up, throw off laziness, Read your Bibles and get in the Word. If you can't do it in the morning, do it at night.

Get in the Word. John Bunyan said it this way. This book will keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from this book. So be sensible. Have purity and doctrine.

Know your Bibles. Young men, when you get married, and especially when you have children, when you get married and especially when you have children, you are going to wish that you knew your Bible is better. You can always get to know your Bible better. I'm not saying when you get married and have children, yeah, done with the Bible. Of course not.

What I am saying, in the blink of an eye, There's going to be your sweet wife being super godly and she's asking her husband at home What to make a first Corinthians chapter 11? What you gonna say in the blink of an eye there's going to be four little girls and that was a blink let me tell you. The blink of an eye is going to be four little girls asking all manner of questions around the dinner table that require all kinds of wisdom to navigate. The time is now brothers. Young men the time is now.

Now is the time to give yourself to the Word. Don't waste right now. And by the way, you cultivate that having in your life, guess what you'll do when time gets crunched and stresses multiply. You've had the discipline, you'll keep it up for more life. So I would encourage you young men, grab a Bible reading plan.

There are a lot of, I know how many I printed. And there are a number of Bible reading plans that are out there that no one's picked up. Now I know that's probably because a lot of you have different reading plans no pressure no emotional sabotage but young men if you have not picked one up you have never done a Bible reading plan I want you I mean I'm just close to saying you have to. Ask your father. And if he says, listen to the pastor, then yes.

Go pick one up and do it with me. Don't worry about catching up. Tomorrow is the 22nd. Get to the 22nd reading, start there, and then come talk to me. Come talk to older men in this church.

Do it. It's awesome Bible reading plan. Read your Bibles. And as you read your Bibles, I have some questions I think you should ask through. So as you're reading through the scriptures, here's some things that have really helped me.

Ask these simple questions. Is there a command to be obeyed in the passage is there a command I just read my Bible is there a command here to be obeyed if there is obeyed typically it's helpful to write it down is there a command to be obeyed obeyed Is there a truth to be believed in this passage? If there is, believe it. Write it down, meditate on it, hide it in your heart. Is there a sin in this passage that I need to confess?

Has this passage revealed to me a sin? If there is, confess it. Keep short accounts. Jesus promises to cleanse you and make you new. Is there a promise in this passage that I can cling to?

Cling to it. Read your Bibles. Think about what you've read. Ask those questions that I just listed. And then pray in response to what you just read.

Read, meditate, pray. And then you get up off your knees and you go, you let it ooze out of your fingertips. You go live faithfully in the world that belongs to the Lord Jesus. Be an example of good deeds. Psalm chapter 1 verses 1 and 2 we're going to sing Psalm 1 in just a moment.

How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked nor stand in the path of sinners nor sit in the seat of scoffers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord. And in his law, he meditates day and night. Priority number four, we're getting close. Priority number four, Cultivate gravitas.

Cultivate gravitas. Be sober minded or dignified. Now that word dignified appears in verse 2 when Paul talks about the older men. Older men are to be dignified. That can be translated sober minded.

It can also be translated gray or gravitas. They have a sense of gravity about themselves. And so too, the young men, here in our verses this morning. So too, you young men, you are to cultivate sober mindedness. You know what that means to be sober minded?

It means when things start to blow around in your life, you stand firm. You're not carried and tossed around by every wind and wave of doctrine or every whim of the culture. No, you got a rot named Christ in his word. You say this is a foundation that is firm. You got your feet planted firmly on Christ in his word and you say with Luther, here I stand, I can do no other.

It's a man with gravitas. Older men and younger men are to be men with gravitas, be dignified. And that really brings us to a very important point in these verses, which I'm wondering if you've noticed. So I just said men are to cultivate gravitas. Did you notice anything about the structure of verses one through eight?

Have you noticed anything about the structure of these verses as we've gone through them? Paul begins with who? Older men. And then he speaks to who? Older women and younger women.

And then he ends with who? Younger men. You know what I like to call that? I call that a sandwich, a bookend. And that's clearly there, it's clearly there.

He starts with older men and he ends with younger men. And in between he has the women. Those bookends are not an accident. Men, you are heads of households. Young men, you will be, Lord willing, the head of a household.

And so you ought to grow and cultivate sober-mindedness and dignity, gravity, right now. So that when you get married, when you're a father, you will be able to protect and to provide for and to lead and to surround your household. You have men, men surrounding the women in this passage. Men, you surround the women in this passage and so it's your calling to do the same in your home and in this church and in this world. I hope you understand the gravity that these priorities should hold in your life.

Proverbs 20 verse 29, the glory of young men is their strength, and the honor of old men is their gray hair. So how do you cultivate gravitas? How do you cultivate gravitas? Well there's two quick answers. Answer number one, you need to find men with gravitas.

Got that young man? Not hard to find them in this body. I could name several to you right now. Find men with gravitas. Find old men with honor and rub shoulders with them as much as you can.

Proverbs 13, 20. He who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm. Find a wise man who loves his wife well. Find a wise man who washes his wife in the word. Who shepherds and disciplines his children faithfully.

Find a man with gravitas like that. Faithful shepherd, faithful man, and walk in his shadow. Walk in his shadow. Just ask him, can I come spend some evening at your house watching you do family worship? Can I do that?

Can you walk me through how to disciple your wife? He who walks with men with gravitas will gain gravitas. Answer number two. How can you cultivate gravitas? Don't neglect the Lord's day.

Don't neglect the Lord's Day. Don't neglect the Sabbath. Sunday. That is the day when the people of God gather, when dignified men lead the church. Now you've got to hear this.

Sunday is the day when the men of church, when the men of God preach and they pray and they sing and they read scripture there is no better day in all the days than the first day of the week the Lord's Day to cultivate gravitas. I need you to listen young men once more to J.C. Ryle's exhortation on Don't Neglect, the Gathering Together on the Sabbath. Listen to this, young men, be regular in the going to the house of God whenever it is open for prayer and preaching as it is in your power to attend. Be regular in keeping the Lord's day holy and determine that God's day out of the seven shall henceforth always be given to its rightful owner.

Every young man should regularly hear the preaching of Christ's gospel. There is a certain kind of power in it, faithful preaching, to hear sin cried down and holiness cried up, to hear Christ exalted and the works of the devil denounced, To hear the Kingdom of Heaven and its blessedness described. To hear about the world and its emptiness exposed. To hear this week after week, Sunday after Sunday is seldom without awesome effect on the soul. It makes it far harder afterwards to run into any sin.

So young men, let nothing ever tempt you to become a Sabbath breaker. Begin with not honoring God's day and you will soon not honor God's house. Cease to honor God's house, and you will soon cease to honor God's book. Cease to honor God's book, and by and by you will give God no honor at all. See how that leads?

Cease to honor the Sabbath. You'll cease to honor the house of God. Cease to honor the house of God. You'll cease to honor His book. You'll cease to honor His book.

J.C. Rowell says, let a man lay the foundation of having no Sabbath, and I'm not surprised at all if he finishes with the top of that foundation with a stone called no God. He thinks the Sabbath is really important. Do you know who else thinks the Sabbath is really important? Starts with a G, ends with an O-D.

God, he made it. And Jesus said specifically to you in Mark's Gospel, he made it for you. Young men, you're to get self-control, act like men, know your Bibles, cultivate gravitas, and now finally and very shortly, you must learn to tame your tongue. Tame your tongue. Verse 8 Be sound in speech which is beyond reproach so that the opponent will be put to shame having nothing bad to say about us Well here this what comes out of the mouth what you say as a man of God Should make it very hard for the enemies of Christ to say evil things about the people of God.

What comes out of here should make it very difficult for enemies of Christ to have substance by which to accuse you of. Now if you get accused of a sin, if you get accused of a wrongdoing, what's the first thing you should always do? Never just write it off. Always check. Is it true?

Does God say that that's a sin? If it is, confess, repent. Reconcile with the brother. Reconcile with the enemy. But if it's not, keep going.

But what comes out of your mouth should make it very hard for the enemies of Christ to say anything bad about Christ's church. So Paul is no doubt comparing Titus and the young men of the church to the false teachers in chapter 1. The language is way too similar for it not to connect. What did Paul say about the false teachers in Titus chapter 1 verse 11? False teachers must be silenced because they're upsetting whole families teaching things which they should not teach for the sake of sordid gain.

What's coming out of here is destroyed. And everyone's like, well, clearly your doctrine is evil. Clearly I have more reason to deny the truth of the church. The opposite for Christians. You're to teach sound doctrine.

Young men you believe sound doctrine so that what comes out of you demonstrate that the doctrine that you believe is sound. So what did Jesus say in Matthew chapter 12? What comes out of your mouth is an indication of what's in your heart. And so this of course includes vulgarity, obscene language, sure, but those are whining. We all know that, right?

You know what's way more tolerated in this body? Whining and complaining. It's almost like a respectable sin. Bulgarian obscene language, of course, is not good. Just as much it's not, maybe it's even worse, whining and complaining.

So young men, I need you to hear me. I need you to stop whining and complaining if you are. I'm talking to myself too. Stop having bad attitudes. It's ridiculous.

In my household we spank people from whining and complaining. Because God doesn't like it. It's rampant in our day and we'll go out somewhere with our little girls and my little girls, they're six, the oldest is six, and they are literally in the van asking me on the way home from a store, Why do people whine so much? I'm looking at my 6 year old, sometimes my 5 year old, and she's saying, Don't you think they should get a spanking? This just happened yesterday.

We left the store and there was a hula hoop man and yeah just look at my girls that boy needs a spanking dad man you bet so sometimes my daughters will ask why was that old man complaining? And I will typically answer, because sweetie, he doesn't know how to be a man. You don't know how to be a man. So young men, what does whining and complaining communicate about the doctrine that you believe? Just think about what your whining and complaining communicates about the doctrine that you believe.

What comes out of here is communicating something about what you believe. Whining and complaining communicates that God doesn't care well for you. It communicates that you don't have self-control. It communicates that the Gospel really isn't that special because even with Christ you're still discontent and envious of what the rest of the world has. How on earth does that put the enemies of Christ to shame?

What does the exact opposite? That's what I get if I come to Christ? A bad attitude? No thank you, I got plenty of that at my workplace. I got plenty of that in my own house.

No thanks, I can get something a lot better than whining and complaining with my friends at the bar and at the nightclub. Nobody's complaining there. They've got a different kind of spirit. Is that the gospel that you believe? Well, if it is, then it's not the true gospel.

It's not Christ. Because in Christ there's fullness of joy. In Christ you have all that you need for life and Godliness. Young men, tame your tongues. Deal with the sin in your heart that comes out through your mouth.

Beware the untamed tongue for by it the course of your life is set on fire and can defile the entire body. James chapter 3. Young men, be sensible. Paul writes, in all things, show yourself to be an example of good deeds, with purity and doctrine, dignified, sound, and speech, which is beyond reproach, so that the opponent will be put to shame, having nothing bad to say about us. But what if you're not?

As I end here, what if you're not? What if your opponents, what if our opponents, do have something bad to say about you? What if they do have something shameful to say about you because you've acted like a man that lacks self-control? If that is you this morning, young or old, I need you to remember the grace of God. Even towards a man named King Manasseh in 2 Kings 21 and 2 Chronicles 33, are you familiar with that story?

That story was written so that you right now who say I have failed wouldn't go home to spare it. King Manasseh was one of the most, if not the most Wicked King of Judah. King Manasseh made his own son pass through the fire. So he murdered his own son as an act of molech worship. I mean this is an evil guy.

A failure of a man. He led the people of Israel in heinous sin. Just read the narrative of sin after sin after sin. He just leads the people of God that were once under Hezekiah, Manasseh's Hezekiah's son. Just leads them away from Yahweh.

And God brought judgment. The Assyrians, they come, they take him captive, they leave him bound in chains away to Babylon and then something amazing happens. God tells us in 2 Chronicles 33, this evil failure of a man. In 2 Chronicles 33, he cries out in his distress. He's literally being led away with chains, some even around his nose.

He cries out to the Lord and the Lord hears him and the Lord restores him to Jerusalem. He freed Manasseh from captivity in Babylon. He brings him back home and then it says in the text and Manasseh knew that the Lord was God And then this happened immediately Manasseh removed the foreign gods and all the idols from the house of the Lord, as well as the altars which we had built on the mountain of the house of the Lord and in Jerusalem. And he threw all of them outside the city. And he set up the altar of the Lord, and he sacrificed peace offerings there, and thank offerings on it, and he ordered Judah to serve the Lord God of Israel.

What happened there? Manasseh, a failure of a man, cried out. He repented and God made him new into a new man. So men do not despair this morning. There is more righteousness, there is more power in the God-man Jesus than there is sin and failure in you.

So cling to Christ, trust Him, and your labor will not be in vain. Let me finish. My final thing I'll say. Let me close with a final exhortation from none other than once more, J.C. Ryan.

Young man, if you have dozed off and you're like, what is going on, right now, hear this. Right now, listen to me for one more minute. Satan knows well that you will make up the next generation. And therefore he employs every art of the times to make you his own. I would not have you ignorant of his devices.

You young men are those on whom he plays off his choicest temptations. He spreads his net with the most watchful of carefulness to entangle your hearts. He baits his traps with the sweetest morsels to get you into his power. He displays his wares before your eyes with his utmost ingenuity in order to make you buy his sugared poisons and eat his accursed dainties. You are the grand object of his attack.

May the Lord rebuke him and deliver you out of his hands. Young men, beware of being taken by his snares. He will try to throw dust in your eyes and to prevent you from seeing anything in its true colors. He would fain to make you think evil good and good evil. He will paint and gild and dress up sin to make it lovely and in order to make you fall in love with it.

He will deform and misrepresent a caricature true religion in order to make you dislike it. He will exalt the pleasures of wickedness, but He will hide you from the scene. He will lift up before your eyes the cross and all of the painfulness. But He will keep out of your sight the eternal crown. He will promise you everything as He did to Christ if you will only serve him.

He will even help you to wear a form of religion if you will only neglect the power. He will tell you at the beginning of your lives, he will tell you at the beginning of your lives, it is too soon to serve God. It is too soon to be serious about God and He will tell you at the beginning of your lives, it is too soon to serve God. It is too soon to be serious about God. And He will tell you at the end of your life, it is too late.

O young men, do not be deceived. Let's pray. Oh Father, out of an abundance of words, grab a hold of the young men, grab a hold of the older men and all the saints in this room and get it deep into their bones. You have spoken and it is good. And if we listen and obey, our labor will not be in vain.

Make us a people of self-control for Jesus' sake and in his name we pray, Amen.