Men by Choice!

Lesson Transcript

You can turn your Bibles with me to Titus chapter 1. Titus chapter 1, verse 4, says, "To Titus, mine own son, after the common faith, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Savior. For this cause I left thee in Crete that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting and ordain elders in every city as I had appointed thee. If any be blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children, not accused of riot or unruling.

For a bishop must be blameless, as the steward of God, not self-willed, not soon angry, not given to wine, no striker, not given to filthy lucre, but a lover of hospitality, a lover of good men, sober, just, holy, temperate, holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may be able to by able excuse me, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers.

For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, especially they of the circumcision, whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses teaching things they ought not, for filthy lucre's sake. One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said, "The Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, slow bellies. This witness is true; wherefore, rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith, not giving heed to Jewish fables and commandments of men that turn from the truth.

Unto the pure, all things are pure; but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure, but even their mind and conscience is defiled. They profess that they know God, but in works they deny him, being abominable and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate." Wow. Last time we looked at the introduction here, and we briefly talked about the culture. We briefly talked about the young man Titus and Titus chapter 4, and I'd like to sort of pick up on that part where we left off.

I think it's interesting, and this wasn't planned by me, but today's Father's Day and we noticed in our text this morning that the message here is to men. And as we said before here, on Mother's Day, we sort of spend a lot of time blessing the mothers. We just give them a good little thank you. We sort of highlight them. And then, as somebody said, when Father's Day rolls along, then we give instruction.

And I battled with this sermon this week because I was hoping I could somehow do a Father's Day message by just blessing the fathers. And I could do that. I see enough of faithful men sitting right here this morning. I would just love to do a message on just blessing you and thanking you for your faithfulness and your godly example that you've set and the influence you've been in my life and how I've benefited over the last 20, 30 years from you folks. But this morning, our text lends itself to instruction again.

So, men, we stand a good chance this morning in being instructed again by the word of God. Sorry, it's not my message. In fact, when I think of manhood and the attacks that are on men, we see that Paul is telling Titus that in Crete and we saw the awful culture. We read it. There are some things and I'm sure there's many things that were lacking and missing there. But this morning, the thing we're going to look at is there were men that were missing.

And Titus's job was to go through those cities and through those somewhat established churches and to find men. Just a few thoughts on I will just look at a couple of verses from the first one is from the Old no, from the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 16. This is part of a verse that Paul uses to describe a man. He says, "Watch you, stand fast in the faith. Quit you like men, be strong." Now, that word quit Edso sometimes says this is why we don't have the old King James.

The word there, I just wasn't quite sure what it all how it fits there. But I understand it simply means behave yourself like men. Maybe some of your translations use that word. And then I'll just jump to another verse. And this is David to his son Solomon. When he's giving him the charge, he says to Solomon, "Be strong, therefore, and show thyself a man." So these verses sort of have something in common. Strength, it's talking about quit, as Paul says it in 1 Corinthians 16. Stand fast, that speaks of strength.

And behave yourself like men, be strong. David says to his son Solomon, "Be strong and show yourself a man." And there's many verses in scripture that way and sort of describes a man that way as a man of strength. It defines him as godliness, with godliness as well, standing firm in the faith. When I look at those, I see something going on. Several things, I say, it's almost always equated with strength. But also, the way it's worded in these two verses is we see in it there's a choice.

And the title of the message this morning is Men by Choice. We are males by birth, but we're men by choice. There's a lot of big males walking around that have never really become the Bible definition of a man. And that's what we want to think about. And I feel so disqualified. I'm like Anthony. I say, "When I come up here to speak, I'm saying I'm not going to measure up to this sermon. Not at all." So am I being a hypocrite this morning?

I, especially this week, my manhood was under attack like it hasn't been for a long time. I was battling this headache all week long. And all I wanted to do was go in my little room under my big brown horse blanket and just go under there and do nothing. It just affected my passion, my inspiration, and I felt less like a man this week than I have for a long time. And this sermon was sort of in the forefront. I knew I'm going to preach on manhood coming Sunday.

And I'm like, "I want to go away from this sermon because I am not a man." That's how I felt all week long. So I say this to say, this sermon this morning is for me. And if you men can glean something out of it, I'm preaching to myself this morning. I desire so much to be a man. That is, my deep desire is to be a man. And I feel I'm not there. I feel it's in attack. So I said, "Well, I had a headache." So we'll blame the headache. No, there's more than that. Satan and the world we live in is attacking our manhood.

And ladies, you just relax this morning. This sermon's not really about you. But don't relax too hard because Titus 2 is coming up. And that has to good instruction for you folks. But bear with us this morning. We're going to talk about being a man. Man by choice, so a little bit of statistics here. And this is from The American. And I don't know how they do these numbers always. They don't always add up to be the same depending where you look at it.

But statistics show 23% of American children are growing up without fathers in their life. That is seven times higher than the global average. So China, it's interesting to find, China studies shows there about 3% of their children have no acting fathers. It takes just several minutes to become a father, but it takes a lifetime to be a dad. That's our challenge, men. So another study shows that 85% of American prisoners grew up without fathers.

Now, you add on top of that all those that are in prison, not all of them, but many of them are also fathers. So they're in prison, and their sons or their children are growing up fatherless. You see the snowball effect that has. That's very sad when I think of it. When I think of the global average and I think of some of the heathen countries, we say maybe China and India have a better track record than America, which is supposed to be a Christian nation, seven times higher.

And I'm here to say this morning that that attack is coming real close home to us men in the church. So my challenge to us today is let's be men of choice. So out of this chapter, out of this passage, we want to think of three things, the man and his faith taken from verse 4. And then number two, if this is the little outline we have, the man and his family, verse number 6. And then the man and his character, verse 7 and 8. And then the man and his influence, verse 9 through the end of the chapter.

So the man and his faith, verse 4. If we look at this, Titus is a young man. And I don't know if we can glean from the Bible exactly how old he is. So young men, stick with us this morning. Titus is it is estimated by some that he's in his lower 20s. That's pretty young. But he has come to the qualification of being the kind of man that is going into this kind of culture, and he's going to look for some more men. That's a tall order for a young man like him. But what qualifies this young man?

We see in verse 4, Paul calls him my own son after the common faith. And that common faith has its roots and connection in his own father. Paul made the God of heaven his father. And young Titus, from a heathen background, came along and made that father his father. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 6:18, he says, "I will be a father unto you, and you shall be my sons and daughters," saith the Lord Almighty. That's not Paul's words. It's God's words written by Paul there, I guess.

So we see from that passage that Paul has made this father his father. So men, this is for us. If we're going to be a faithful father, first of all, we have to be a faithful son. And we must make that father our father. We see that in verse 4. Timothy clearly did that, and that became his life. It became Paul's life when we look at his past. And his commitment he made was to that father.

And then these men had the authority and the qualification to go after and find other men that are like-minded and to build them up. So I'll just read the rest of the verse there from David to Solomon, 1 Kings 2, I believe it's 2 and 3. "I go the way of all the earth." This is David speaking to his son. In other words, I'm just about ready to die. I'm old. I'm worn out. And the charge is given to his son. And he says, "Be thou strong, therefore, and show thyself a man.

And keep the charge of the Lord thy God to walk in his ways, to keep his statues, his commandments, and his judgments and his testimonies, that thou mayest prosper in all that thou doest and whithersoever thou turnest thyself." I love that. That is giving the success future for the son, Solomon. Be a man. And in that context, being a man is taking the heavenly Father and his words into life, living them out, abiding by them. That is making a man out of Solomon. And David was that example for us.

I mean, you just read through the Psalms. David, the father of Solomon, has expressed that so clearly in his writings that he had a daily relationship with his heavenly Father. How am I doing, God? He wanted dialogue. He wanted interaction with his God in the Psalms. And I'm here to say that if we're going to be a successful man and a successful father, we're going to have to somehow get in connection with our heavenly Father and stay connected with him. "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.

And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might," Deuteronomy 6:4 and 5. Jesus picked up on that, and he repeated those words almost word for word in Mark chapter 12. When he was instructing a young Pharisee, I guess it was, and they were talking about the first and the greatest commandment, he repeated that. But there's one word that was changed a little bit.

And I went into the Greek or the original to try to figure out if those words and it seems they mean almost exactly the same. Deuteronomy says, "Your soul, your heart," and then it says, "Your might." And Jesus says, "Your soul, your mind, your strength." Strength and might have the same ideal. Now, we talk a lot about our soul and our heart. The heart is who we are. That is where we love. That is maybe where we make our decisions and our choices.

And our soul is maybe that emotional part about us, that eternal part about us. But what about our might? What about our strength? That part is what we do. It's where we go. Now, are we giving all of that to our God as well? That's where our abilities are, where our strength is, our might, our energy, just the things we do from day to day. And we're called to love him with all our strength. And it's amazing what we men can do with our strength. I know of a young man in another state that is getting into rodeoing.

In fact, he just left the church for that career. And he's really applying himself in the rodeo world. And I watched a video clip of him on a horse. And he lassoed a calf from the horse, a running calf. He lassoed that thing and tied it up in nine seconds. I work with cattle, and that's impressive to me. It's simply because I work with cattle. And I know their strength. I know their determination, even a young calf. And I couldn't get over being impressed with what man can do with his might.

Now, that might looks very impressive. It's going to be short-lived for that young man at the longest. I use that to say, we men, for the most part, are running about half capacity of what we can do with our might and our strength. A little example of that, here several years ago, I bought another tractor that I needed for my big manure spreader. I thought I would have enough horsepower to run it. This tractor was rated by factory about 150 horsepower.

And it just felt too sluggish to handle this manure spreader, just pull it down, and you're running the gears and so on. Well, I had this tractor to the mechanic for other reasons. And I said, "Well, I'm thinking about getting a size bigger or so for my manure spreader." And he looked at the tractor, and he said, "Well, this tractor has the ability it has the build. It has the engine. It has the turbo and the transmission to be turned up another 100 horsepower." I'm like, "Really?

Without smoke, without ruining anything? What about the transmission? Am I going to ruin the transmission?" He said, "No, it's built for it." He said, "What John Deere did, they had their assembly line. Person would order 150-horsepower tractor all the way up to 250 horsepower. And they basically use the same engine, same turbo, same tractor." Oh, it's very practical. I mean, punch them out on the assembly line, and they adjust the horsepower on the computer.

He said, "All I need to do is go into that computer and get the controller and turn the thing up." "Where do you want it?" he said. "Well," I said, "it has about 130 to 150." I said, "Should we go for 170?" "And yeah, I can put it to 170." And I went home, and it was still at his shop. And this thing kept bugging me. I'm like, "If this thing can do 230 without smoke and without a problem, why not just go up there?" And I just couldn't keep myself still.

I called him finally and said, "Hey, you said we can do 230 without smoke?" "Oh, yeah," he said, "it's designed for it." I said, "Let's go for 230." And you know what? That's a different tractor. That little tractor just swings that manure spreader like cut and butter. And what he told me, he said, "This tractor is just playing the way it's tuned by factory." And I thought of something. We men, we're sort of tuned. The world is tuning us to play. The world is undermining our manhood. We have a lot of potential.

Now, we don't want men smoking. But we can turn ourselves up another horsepower, I think another 50, another 70 without harming ourselves. You get it? We're men. The world is pretty good. Social media is pretty good at just bringing our manhood down. Who's suffering? The church is suffering. In this case, Crete was suffering. Our families are suffering. If we don't step up and crank it up, Jesus says, "With all your strength," that means we turn them up to 230 horsepower just so they don't smoke.

That's what that means, all your strength, all your might. There's a lot of men, or should I say males, that are still playing. They're tuned to play because the world has tuned them. But when God tunes us, Paul said it this way, "When I was a child, I put away " I spoke as a child. Did he say, "I did as a child. I thought as a child. I spake as a child?" But then he says, "When I became a man, I put away childish things." So part of becoming a man, there's a choice what we're going to do with childish things.

And young men, I want you to be tuned in here. This is for young men because Titus was young. And we go on into the book of Titus in chapter 2. We see young men and the pattern and the example they are to set even for older men. John writes it this way. He said, "I have written to young men because they're strong and because the word of God dwells in them, and they have overcome the wicked one." That's young men. And you see there again, it's manhood. It's strength. And John is zeroing in on young men.

That's why I wrote to you. I see a lot of potential in young men. But young men, you're going to have to make a choice at a young age when you're going to put away childish things. I'll just share again about myself. When I was in my mid-teens, there's this thing, and it's going to sound like I'm bragging on myself when I say this, but I say it as an example. But at that age in my life, these Pac-Man machines were coming in. Some of you older men maybe remember when that thing really hit.

Almost every little service station and store and gas station had Pac-Man machines, these little video games. It was Jungle King, I think, and Pac-Man and whatever. And every one of my friends, including several of my older brothers next older to me, just dived into that thing. It was a slot machine. You put 50 cents or a quarter in there. You had these little levers and buttons, and you would shoot things, and you're playing with the machine.

And there was something about me, and I didn't always make good and right choices. But when it came to that, I said, "I'm just not going to do that." I went with them. I watched because they were my friends. But I chose to never put a dime in that machine, and I never played it. Now, I don't really know for sure why. I just knew that my dad was very strict on how we use our money. And those things ate money by the dozens. And it was a waste of time. And I was trying to put things together.

I don't think my parents would be happy with that. And it's just a waste of money and a waste of time. And I just resisted. I resisted against some of my older brothers. I resisted against all my friends. I'm going to say every one of my friends got hooked on those machines. And it was like into it a while, it was an addiction there. And they kept going back and going back and going back. If we couldn't find them on a weekend, we know which corner to go. They were back in a corner playing Pac-Man.

And as years went on, some of those men got married and got busy with life, and they still snuck off sometimes playing Pac-Man. Now, there was some persecution involved in that. They said, "You've got to get into this. It's fun. This is thrilling. Come on. Why aren't you playing?" I just stuck to my gut. I said, "No, I'm not interested." Yeah, it looked fun. It looked appealing. But I said, "No." I say that to say, young men, there are times in our young life we're going to have to stand alone.

If we want to put away childish things and we want to become a man, there's a transition there. And I don't know exactly when and where that happens, but it has directly to do with what we're going to do about childish things. Men, let's be men. Our time and our energy is very valuable as men. Verse 6, here we have the man and his family. The man and his wife, first of all, we see the husband of one wife. Now, what does this mean?

The marriage relationship is the most sacred relationship between humans on this earth, is it not? And I find it interesting what commentators do with this. So here's a man that's supposed to run a church and be a man in Crete. And he's supposed to be the man of one wife, the husband of one wife. Some say, "Well, it had to do with polygamy. He couldn't be a polygamous." Well, should any man in the church be a polygamous? He shouldn't be divorced and remarried. Well, should any man be divorced and remarried?

Probably not. I sort of rule those out in my mind. And here's what I say I think it means. I could be wrong, but this is how I interpret it for my life. I think it just simply means that a man that is married needs to be married to his wife and be a one-woman man. When on our wedding day, we say, "I will give myself only unto her as long as we both shall meet," that means my attention. It means my thrills. It means my attraction, my interest. And all of that is devoted toward her.

And when a man is loose with other women, he doesn't fall in that category. He might not be remarried. But if he's a womanizer or he's a creep and he gets too close to another woman, he doesn't fit this. We were at a dinner some years ago, and there was just a bunch of us couples. It wasn't anybody from here, so relax. But we're sitting around this meal, and I saw there was something going on with one of the other men and another wife of another person. And here they were it came out.

They were kicking each other under the table. The man was kicking another man's wife under the table. They had something going on. And I'm like, the red flags went up. I'm like, "If this guy would do this to my wife, buddy back off." To me, that's too close. There's a proper reserve that goes on between the sacred marriage relationship. And I think that's what this is talking about. If we're going to be a successful father, we're going to have to be a successful husband.

And the man of the boy, let me say this one, the male, the natural male is going to be the natural married male is going to be trying to seek attention from other women. As Jeremiah says it about Israel, he said, "They're gnawing like a horse every man after his neighbor's wife." And that was considered debauchery. And there's a warning here. Faithful men in our morals, in our marriages, let's be men. The man of God, the husband of God, is going to find his delight in the wife of his youth.

The man and his family continued. Verse 6 there, it talks about faithful children. If we want faithful children, men, we're going to have to be involved in their life. And we must first be a faithful man ourself. Faithful children in a home isn't just automatically happen. A man that's expecting children to be faithful, we need to be the men that lead them in prayer. We lead them in worship. Yes, we lead them. We take them to church. We associate them with good friends. All of that rests again on us as men.

If we expect a faithful future out of our family, then we need to be actively involved. We need to be interested in their life, in their young life. What about teenagers when they're out and about with their friends? I know teenagers get irritated when parents ask too many questions. But fathers, we need to ask them, "Who was there? Where were you? How long did you stay there?

What time was it when you went over here?" We just need to ask those questions to stay involved because he said, "A man's children cannot be blamed of being rioting and unruling," whatever that means, running around, being trouble in the community, being trouble in the church, in the youth gathering. Parents, men, that's a heavy responsibility that many of us have failed in. Bible studies, men, take them to church. Men, take them. Be the stand.

When you're tired, prayer meetings going on tonight, take your little children to the prayer meeting. Teach them from little up what it means to associate with God's people and involve themselves. Man, that falls on us. Always say, "We're tired tonight." I think everybody else is too. Should we cancel prayer meeting? Should we cancel our evening service because we're all tired? Should we cancel communion?

Yeah, finally, the world and its system and social media is trying to shut down the man of God and his interactions with God's people. That's what it's trying to do. I don't find it automatic. Any of you, men? Takes a little energy and turning that thing up again a notch to 230 horsepower. Without smoke, we can do it. Verse 7 and 8, the man and his character. Here, the man is to be blameless in his character. That's a tall order. Not self-willed, not self-centered.

Years ago, we had a group of Bible school students at our house during Bible school here. We had a young man staying for the week, and he was really good at playing an instrument. I forget what it was now, violin, guitar, whatever part it was. But he did quite well with that thing. And we watched him, and we cheered him on, and we gave him that attention. And then on the weekend, we had a number of other people there as other youth there.

And there happened to be another young man or two that also played the instrument. And he was maybe a touch better yet. And so we gave him attention and cheered him on. Well, the first boy went into a pouting fit, and he went up in his room and flopped on his bed and didn't show his face hardly the rest of the evening. He was upset, self-willed. He was being a male, not yet a man. See that? If we don't conquer our character as young men, the older we get, I think it even gets a little bit harder.

A challenge, folks. Let's learn the self-willed, the self-centered. If I'm not getting my way, I'm not the center of attention, that's okay. The man of God says, "I'm going to delight and rejoice in another man's success." That's not always easy, is it? Rejoice with those that rejoice. When one does well, we rejoice with them, the man of God. What about anger? He talks here about not soon angry or quick-tempered. When a man is quick-tempered and soon angry and he doesn't conquer that, he's a dangerous person.

He becomes violent. The prisons are sitting full with men that are quick-tempered and got no control of that character and that emotion. And they're sitting there for 20 years saying, "Oh, why did I do that one thing, that one thing out of the emotion of my anger?" Paul says, "This man can't be that kind of person." The anger, the lust, and all those passions that we as humans have as appetites, I just say use three words I pull out of here. It's sensible self-control and sober. Let's get a hold of our character.

And then he says, "To be given to wine, not to be given to wine." This is part of this character building. There's a lot of males that instead of working on their character, they turn to things. And here we see them turning to wine. Have you ever associated with a person that was intoxicated that got any help with his character? The experiences I had, they act more like pigs than humans. To be sober-minded or to be intoxicated with wine. What about filthy lucre?

Has filthy lucre or money ever helped a person with his character in a good way? What other things do men, males, should I say, turn to? Hobbies, sports, bodybuilding. I had a tool salesman call me here a while ago and wanted to sell me some shop tools and so on. And in the conversation, he asked if I was in shape and what I do to stay in shape, if I work out, and what shape my body is in. I'm like, "Do you work out?" "Well, no, I work." I mean, I work in, I guess.

My work is within, hopefully, the kingdom and within the family. I don't work out. I don't know what that means. Does it mean we go away from home and we work and we sweat and we build our body? Maybe that all has its place. But men, to me, that's a waste of time. I mean, today, that's the hot word. Every city has to have every town has to have a gym for people, I guess, to leave their family and to go and work out and build their body and keep their body in really good shape.

I'm here to tell us, men, that when we lay this body in the coffin, where it's going to go, you can choose. You can go into your coffin maybe with a well-built body, but it's going to deteriorate right with the other body that's a little bit flabby. They're going to come out the same in the ground. And I'm here to say, whether I go to my coffin with a well-built body, it's going to do nothing for me when I meet Jesus.

But when I meet Jesus and I have a well-built character, it's going to make all the difference in eternity. You get it? Let's be men and put away childish things. Life is too short to build our body. Life is way too short to miss out in building our character. The man and his influence, 9 through 16. I don't know about you, men, but when I think of the tall order that is given to this young man, when I look at the culture that he's going in, these are awful people.

There's educated, religious people in here that it says they have the ability to go into households and influence the whole household by their lies and their false religious teaching. And Titus, at early 20s, is supposed to go in there and find men that are able to walk in the midst and shut their mouth. That is huge. I would be so intimidated when I would come into a culture like that, and it's made up of a bunch of slow bellies and gluttonous liars, intimidating people that know their culture.

And he says, "You can go right in there, and you can make a difference, and you can change this." What's his secret? I think the secret is found in verse 9, holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught. There's the weapon, the faithful word, holding fast and by sound doctrine. So men, all we need is to hold on to the word as we've been taught and the soundness that comes out of it. This idea here of this holding on. We had guests at our house Friday night, the Orion. Are they here? Yes.

Michelle, their little daughter, Berea. Berea, am I saying that right? Every time she's, what, six months old? 11 months. 11 months. Sorry. Anyway, every time I look at little Berea, I guess I was intimidating. She just went like this with her thumb, and she stuck it in her mouth and, I mean, just hung on to it. And the parents said she does that on several occasions, I guess when she's tired, when she's half scared. That is her go-to when she's insecure, when she's a little bit intimidated.

And she hangs on to that thing for dear life. That's the idea of this term here, is holding fast. So I walk into this culture, and these men look intimidating. What is my weapon? Going back to the sound doctrine of the word of God is my defense. And I hold on. That's my security. That's why I love being a preacher because when I preach the word of God, guess what I have going for myself? The truth, the truth. And I have yet to find a man that can argue with the truth of God's word when he's honest.

I had a man at my house some time ago, and he said, "Hey, what do you believe about divorce and remarriage?" And he wondered if it would be okay for him to get remarried. His wife had divorced him. I said, "Well, if you want to do a Bible study sometime on the subject, I'd be happy to do that." I said, "It doesn't matter so much what I believe about it, but it does matter what the Bible says about it." And he said, "Well, I'll be there." We sat in my living room. I said, "Here's the passage.

You read it, and you tell me." And he said, "Well, it's just what you said it means. It means I can't get remarried." See the weapon? The weapons of our warfare, Paul says another place, in our war, in our intimidation, maybe Crete or in America today with all the falseness that we're faced with, the war that we're in, he said, "Though we walk in the flesh," that means though we walk in our humanity, we don't war after the flesh or in and our weapons are not carnal. What's a carnal weapon, folks?

Let's hear some things. A gun? Sword? I thought of a baseball bat. I thought of a machete. In some countries, I think they use a machete as their weapon, their protection. And we could go down a list of earthly weapons that we men can grab a hold of to protect and to guard. And Paul makes it very clear. We have something much mightier than that. It's the word and the truth of God. And he's going to fight our battles.

What our job is is to familiarize ourselves with the sound doctrine and with the word of God and that we're full of it, as John says, as young men. Folks, young men, I urge you. I urge you. You're living in a time of your life where you have all this media pressure coming in to take your manhood away. Be a man at a young age. Use your phone and your devices as a tool and not as a toy. When you use it as a toy, I can tell you your future. It's going to destroy your manhood. It really is.

It's going to cause you to be male figures in your older years, not yet men. Does that make sense? Choices that we make today. We skipped the part of being a lover of hospitality in verse 8, part of character building. And I say Jesus came to this world as a very hospitable person. He only came because we were here as humans. And when we don't put away our toys and our things we like to play with and we ignore the command of hospitality that's given for men in this passage, we're losing out.

It says, "A lover of good men and a lover of hospitality." Timothy, I think, says, "Given to hospitality." Here it says, "Lover of hospitality." Timothy, given to hospitality. So that becomes a part of our life. And that is character building when we are given to hospitality. And he says then, "A lover of good men." Someone said it this way, "Show me your friends, and I will show you your future." Isn't that sobering? That we are made by those we associate with. We are influenced.

Our life is given direction by those we love and interact with, whether good or bad. Character building involves us getting involved in good men and loving to be in the presence of good men. And I trust that the church is filled with good men. That means we need to be in the church. Surround it with good men. That builds us up. It builds our character. We build off of each other. See that? In closing, I just want to bless you.

And I want to thank you again, men, for the example in so many ways that you've been in my life of faithfulness. And I guess I sometimes am proud to say, when I talk with those outside, sometimes you hear all this negative stuff. And I talk with other church people sometimes that say, "Well, we needed to have an ordination in our church, and there was only one brother voted in." And I'm like, "That's interesting.

Well, there was only one brother that was eligible or qualified." And the good news that we've experienced, I can say, we've had a number voted in. And that tells me there's a number of men that have qualified themselves by God's grace to be the man. And I want to bless you. I want to encourage that. Stand up to faithfulness. Stand up to be the man. Boys by birth, men by choice. God bless you. Any thoughts before we pray?