The first is self-control. Older men, younger women and younger men are all told to be self-controlled (2:2, 5, 6). In 1:8 elders are to be self-controlled. And look at 2:12: the grace of God ‘teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age.’ Everyone is to be self-controlled.

The second common virtue is submission. Verse 5: young wives are ‘to be subject to their husbands.’ Verse 9: ‘Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them.’ Titus 3:1: ‘Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient …’

This is profoundly counter-cultural. It was counter-cultural in Crete. We’ve already seen that ‘Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons’ (1:12) These are people who didn’t control their speech or their anger or their appetites. And it’s counter-cultural today. Instead of self-control we value self-expression. Instead of self-denial, we value self-fulfilment. Instead of submission, we value independence.

It is profoundly counter-cultural and people don’t like it when they hear Christians talking about self-control and submission. Even now some of your may be bristling.  And yet look at what Paul says in verse 5: younger women are ‘to be subject to their husbands, so that no-one will malign the word of God.’ Or look at verse 10: ‘… so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Saviour attractive.’

People may not like it when we talk about self-control and submission. But when we live it, they find it attractive. It’s a wonderful life. And it commends God our Saviour.

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1. On Facebook I can recreate my world through my words to gain approval

2. On Facebook I can escape the limitations of my body

As we conclude I want to reiterate that for many of people using Facebook is not a problem. For many it is all blessing.

But there are dangers in social networking. And to those who face those dangers the gospel provides a better and richer alternative.

Facebook is the place were I show my face or my image. For some of you it is the place were you recreate your image and your world through your words. The gospel is the place where God turns “his face towards us” (Numbers 6:26). It is the place where he recreates us in his image and recreates his world through his words.

2 Corinthians 3:18: “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”

Through Facebook you can show your face or image to the world. Through the gospel we see the face of God, the glory of God. And when we see it we radiate that glory just as Moses did long ago when he saw God on Mount Sinai. Through the gospel we can reflect the glory of God to the world.

Through Facebook we can recreate ourselves. We can recreate our own identity to win the approval of other people. Through the gospel God recreates us in the image of Jesus. Jesus makes us approved by God. And we are being transformed into the likeness of Jesus with ever-increasing glory. Look at your Facebook page: Do you really want this more than the glory of God?

Remember the medium is the message and Facebook was designed by a teenage nerd. It reduces your life to the preoccupations of a student nerd. You are encouraged to fill in your relationship status because students define you by your “availability”. The medium encourages you to express your personality through lists of books, movies, TV programmes. This is what nerdy students do. You are encouraged to poke people – poking is what teenage boys do who do not know how to talk to girls! The medium is the message. Your life is being squeezed down into these select, nerdy categories. You can give your time to this – or being transformed into Christ’s likeness with ever-increasing glory.

2 Corinthians 4:5: “For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.”

Through Facebook we can promote ourselves. We gain friends. Or we gain followers through Twitter. We engage in self-evangelism. Through the gospel we promote Jesus as Lord. We gain followers for Jesus.

2 Corinthians 4:6: “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”

Through Facebook we recreate our world through our words. Day after day, endless words pouring out, trying to create an image of ourselves that others will approve. And God speaks four words, “Let there be light.” Two words in Hebrews. And there is light. God speaks and the universe comes into being. This physical, substantial, real universe. The kind of universe you can hit with your hand and it hurts because it is really there.

Through Facebook we reveal our “face” and look at the “faces” of other people. Through the gospel we see the face of God. The Bible is the true Facebook, the book in which we see God’s face. Prayer is the ultimate instant messaging. The church is the real social network. The gospel is the place where we see “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”

Think about what you have written and read on your Facebook wall this week. Think about the tweets you have followed this week. Imagine reading them in six months time. I am guessing, but I suspect that most of what is written will be drivel. Trivia. Empty. “Eating egg on toast. Yum.” “On my way to the station.” “Great party last night.” “Jack just fell over. LOL.” “Love the photos. You’re so gorgeous.” Poke. Listen to the prophet Isaiah:

A voice says, “Cry out.”

And I said, “What shall I cry?”

“All men are like grass,

and all their glory is like the flowers of the field.

The grass withers and the flowers fall,

because the breath of the LORD blows on them.

Surely the people are grass.

The grass withers and the flowers fall,

but the word of our God stands for ever.” (Isaiah 40:6-8)

The Facebook comments wither and the tweets fall,  but the word of our God stands for ever.

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Firstly, lets look at Titus 2:1-10 and notice what’s different about these exhortations. There are different instructions to different people categories. They assume different roles and different temptations.

What are the temptations facing older men? To be grumpy or to pick arguments or to be cynical, perhaps? So Paul says: ‘Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith, in love and in endurance.’ (2:2)

They are to endure. Caleb is 85 and still wants to be in the midst of the action. He’s not retired from serving God. We’re going to talk about younger people following the example of older people. But that’s a two-way street. For that to happen older people need to be ‘worthy of respect’. You want people to look at you and think, ‘I want to be like them’. You don’t want them saying, ‘I hope I don’t lose my radical edge like that.’

What about older women? What are their temptations? Maybe to be a bit rebellious. Or to criticize other people, especially younger women: ‘they’re not the wives or mothers they should be, they don’t serve in the church as they should’. I do hear this from older women! What does Paul say? ‘Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good.’ (2:3)

What about younger women? ‘Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no-one will malign the word of God.’ (2:4-5) It’s not that younger women can’t have a career, but if they are wives and mothers that’s the primary place where they’re to serve – and to be content with that, even in a culture that often despises those activities. Last week in The Guardian there was a review of a new book by former Observer Political Editor and now full-time mother, Gaby Hinsliff. The review said:

If you do as Hinsliff has done, and hang up your working suits in exchange for a Cath Kidston apron, the danger is that the once-dynamic ‘career mother’ can suddenly, and overwhelmingly, be replaced by a woman who feels like a nobody. How very true this is. Hinsliff’s description of mums at the school gate who had once ‘been somebody and are now mainly somebody’s parent’ is spot on.[1]

Younger men? Only one word of exhortation for them: ‘encourage the young men to be self-controlled’ (2:6). But that does cover the temptations young men face! Lust, ambition,and impatience.

Then Paul has a word for Titus himself. Here’s a message for our gospel community leaders: ‘In everything set them an example by doing what is good. In your teaching show integrity, seriousness and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned, so that those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us.’ (2:7-8)

And then a word for slaves or, in our day, employees: ‘Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them, and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted, so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Saviour attractive.’ (2:9-10)

What I want you to notice is that Paul has a different exhortation for different groups. Different people have different roles and face different temptations. Don’t assume other people should be like you. Don’t assume you should be like other people. ‘Act your age,’ really is good advice.

If you’re in your twenties, don’t live like a teenager – on your Xbox all the time. It’s time for you to take responsibility in your home, work and gospel community. If you’re in your forties or fifties don’t spend your time wishing you were still young and fit or young and beautiful. Live life in the present. Enjoy being the age you are.

In your gospel communities, home groups or bible studies you might want to work out what you would say to these different groups. What are the distinctive roles in which each group must be faithful? What are the distinctive temptations they face? How does Titus 2 speaks to these different roles and temptations?

[1] Rosie Millard, review of Half a Wife: The Working Family’s Guide to Getting a Life Back by Gaby Hinsliff, Guardian.co.uk, Friday 6 January 2012.

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Some of you have little time for community and missional life because you are spending too much time on Facebook or watching television or surfing blogs. You are opting for disembodied life over embodied life.

Now disembodied life is easier. But it is less fulfilling, less real and less satisfying.

Embodied life is harder. But it is more fulfilling, more real, more satisfying. It is more substantial – you can touch it, feel it, embrace it!

One study found that over half of young women spend more time talking to people online than face-to-face. Another study found that for every hour we spend on our computers, face-to-face interaction falls by thirty minutes. The more people engage online, the less able they are to engage offline. Real world communication feels more threatening, less natural, less normal.

I was talking to the wife of one of leaders in The Crowded House. She was describing how many people struggle to keep up with old friends. They are often off pulled away from church and mission to visit people elsewhere in the country. And Facebook perpetuates this. The result is stress and thin relationships. In contrast she talked about as a couple they recognised that God has placed them in their city, in a physical place with physical bodies with all the limitations that involves. So their focus is on the people in their Christian community and their neighbourhood. They do not give a lot of time to “keeping up” with past relationships. They focus on their present time and their present place. As a result they have relationships that are deep and significant.

Facebook encourages you to live elsewhere. The gospel encourages you to live life here and now.

•      You can tend your Farmville farm or you can get an allotment.
•      You can catch up with friends on Facebook or you can go out on a cold, dark night to see real friends.
•      You can catch up with “Friends” by watching the latest episode on the television or you can serve your neighbours.
•      You can build a new city on Sims or you can be the city of God set on a hill with your Christian community.

Here is the test: Am I using Facebook to enhance real world friendships or to replace them?

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An invitation to a wonderful life

Cretan culture was characterised by drunkenness and promiscuity – a bit like my city of Sheffield. Paul’s message clearly involved turning from that way of life. But it wasn’t a message of abstinence. He wasn’t trying to persuade people to give up a life of fun for a life without fun.

Look at verse 10: ‘… so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Saviour attractive.’ If Christians live in the way Paul describes then their lives will be attractive.

Paul isn’t even trying to persuade Christians to see their new life as attractive. He’s saying that unbelievers will be attracted to this new life in Christ. It’s not some con-trick. It’s not Paul saying, ‘Pagan life might look like fun, but really they’re all miserable while we Christians have deep joy – so deep you can’t it see most of the time!’ No, Paul is saying unbelievers will find life in Christ attractive. This is the attractive life, the beautiful life – to us and to unbelievers. People will look at our lives as say, ‘I want to live like that,’ ‘I want to grow old like that’.

In the next few posts we’ll be answering the question ‘what does this wonderful life look like?’

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It is the same with porn and online role play games by the way. They offer liberation from the body. You compensate for your real world inadequacies, fears, struggles with a fantasy world in which you are potent and successful with endless beautiful people offer themselves to you.

Cyberspace offers an escape from the limitations of the body. And this version of “salvation by Facebook” is the latest embodiment (pun intended) of the ancient heresy of Gnosticism. Gnosticism saw the spiritual or mental as good and the body as evil and limiting. So salvation was an escape from the constraints of the body.

Tim Challies talks about “digital disincarnation”.[1] The incarnation is the word we use to describe the event of God becoming man, of God taking on human flesh. But now in cyberspace we are trying to “disincarnate”, to throw off the limitations of human flesh. Challies says: “Here is the cyberworld I can be popular. I can be powerful. I can be somebody. And yet I do it all at the expense of who I really am.”[2]

In contrast, the gospel affirms the body. The gospel says that human beings were made by God with a body and God declared that to be good. We were made with bodies in his image to reflect his image in the world. More than that, God himself takes on human flesh when Jesus becomes a man. Christ “appeared in a body [and] was vindicated by the Spirit.” (1 Timothy 3:16) And more than that, the body of Jesus was physically raised from the dead. The resurrection of Jesus was not an escape from the body, but the redemption of the body. So the gospel encourages us to engage in embodied life and embodied relationships.

So Paul says to the Christian community in Thessalonica: “We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us.” (2:8)  “But since we were torn away from you, brothers, for a short time, in person not in heart, we endeavoured the more eagerly and with great desire to see you face to face.” (2:17 ESV) Not just words, but a shared life. Not just words, but face to face.

Professor Barry Wellman of Toronto University talks of “networked individualism”.[3] We can move from one online community to another. We can drop, forget, invite or ignore Facebook “friends” at will without consequences. We build our own worlds.

God has placed you together with the people in your congregation. You did not chose them; God chose them. And that diversity of personalities, backgrounds, social class, ethnicities is used by God to make you grow in Christ and to display the unifying power of the cross.

But in cyberspace you are god. You chose who will be in community with you. You create your own communities of convenience that mean you are never challenged. Or if you are challenged or relationships become costly you can just scuttle off to new relationships. As a result we never grow. We are permanently immature.

In cyberspace no relationship is meaningful and every relationship is expendable. The result is loneliness in the midst of many Facebook “friends”. I know people for whom Facebook is a place to hide. You can think of yourself surrounded by friends without ever having to engage with the challenges of real world relationships. You have a lot of friends, a “loose electronic Diaspora”,[4] without ever really being known. Your idolatries, your selfishness, your struggles are never seen. Instead a lot of people get the sanitised version of you. Moreover most of us praise in public and rebuke in private. So, because Facebook is a public medium, people are going to positive comments. Challenges to our behaviour are left unsaid. Facebook is a safe place to hide from real relationships.

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• Ascension or incarnation: Which shapes a biblical approach to mission?
• Reaching Muslims through gospel communities
• Reaching families through gospel communities
• Reaching rural areas  through gospel communities
• Reaching the world through gospel communities
• Reaching the needy through gospel communities

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Let me tell you about John Miller. John led the church plant in London with which we were involved before we came to Sheffield. He was converted in his twenties after being in the merchant navy.

He played a huge role in my development as a leader, as a Christian, and as a man. I’d only been married three years and we’d just bought a house. So I went to John for advice on DIY, on cars, on life. One of the first things we did together was replace the guttering on our house.

He and I co-led the church, but he was ten years older than me and it was clearly a relationship in which he was the senior partner. When we disagreed I followed his lead. I trusted his wisdom more than my own.

He was a big influence on my preaching. He knew how to make an impact in a sermon. I learned from him a willingness to try new things and to change what we were doing for the sake of mission. We were both working full-time and saw him pouring himself into ministry. He used to prepare sermons on the train to and from work. He had a big vision for world mission. More than anything, he taught me how to pray. Prayer for John wasn’t a duty. He prayed as if everything depended on God.

I thank God for his influence on my life.

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