God’s way for women, according to this Mother’s Day message, is laid out in Titus 2:1–5: older women teaching younger women to love their husbands and children and to live by sound doctrine, so that the Word of God is not discredited. The pastor organizes the passage into four parts, a woman’s mandate, motive, manner of life and message, and shows that sound doctrine is what makes a believer truly beautiful.
Below you will find the full video, a structured summary of the sermon, the Scripture behind each point (linked to the New King James Version on Bible Gateway), a timestamped outline, and practical steps drawn from the message.
Sermon at a Glance
This Mother’s Day message from NTC Ministries in Merrill, Wisconsin, was posted on May 17, 2023. The pastor admits that a holiday for mothers has always felt a little generic to him; why not appreciate them every day? Still, the Lord spoke to him about this message, and he says it fits as a transition into the next week’s teaching.
His text is Titus 2:1–5, one of the pastoral epistles Paul wrote to bring correction and structure into the church. He works through the passage under four headings and closes with Paul’s reminder to Timothy about the faith of his grandmother Lois and mother Eunice.
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Speaker | The pastor of NTC Ministries (not named in the recording) |
| Series | Stand-alone Mother’s Day message |
| Main text | Titus 2:1–5 and Titus 2:10 |
| Key theme | Sound doctrine, passed from older women to younger, makes believers beautiful |
| Length | About 58 minutes |
What Mothers Teach Us
The pastor opens with humor. He remembers his mother reaching into the back of the family station wagon, back when nobody wore seat belts, and swatting whichever child was farthest away so her arm caught the other one too: two for one. Then he reads a list of the lessons mothers teach, from foresight (make sure you wear clean underwear in case you have to go to the hospital) to weather (“it looks like a tornado swept through this room”).
Behind the jokes is a serious point. Very few people in the world hold as much influence as a mother, often not only over her own children but over the children of the neighborhood. Football players greet their moms on camera, and he notes that the last words recorded in a plane’s black box are often “I love you, Mom.”
Women, he says, seem to stand at the forefront of the family, and that is biblical. God set it up that way. Even the idea of home economics, he teaches, started in the Bible, where the wife is given the running of the home. But it is to be done according to sound doctrine, which is the heart of God’s way for women in this passage.
Paul wrote Titus alongside 2 Timothy. Timothy, a Jew, pastored the church in Ephesus; Titus was a Gentile from Crete and a spiritual son of Paul. These letters use strong language because they are about leading the church and bringing correction and structure. Titus 2:1–5 begins, “But as for you, speak the things which are proper for sound doctrine.”
Sound Doctrine Makes You Beautiful
Many people today, including Christians, do not want to hear about sound doctrine, the pastor says. They feel it is not grace. But Scripture tells us to speak the same thing so that there are no divisions among us (1 Corinthians 1:10), and he explains that this is about biblical doctrine, not likes and dislikes. He believes the enemy has unleashed attacks on the home unlike anything in two thousand years.
Yet he refuses to be afraid. The prophets of old longed to see this last day, he says, because God’s power and goodness will be manifest in ways no one has imagined. If we abide in Him and His words abide in us, we can ask what we desire and it will be done (John 15:7). God can do exceedingly abundantly above all we ask or think (Ephesians 3:20).
He illustrates it with a story he had been reading to his wife Pam from church history about the woman at the well. Tradition, he says, taught into the fifth century that she became an apostle who planted churches. Under Nero she survived fire, beatings and poison, led Nero’s daughter and a hundred of her servants to Christ, and was finally thrown into a well, meeting Jesus again at a well.
The world lives on feelings, he warns, and feelings are like sand that storms move from place to place. Doctrine is stone. Dig deep and build your house on the rock (Luke 6:48), and speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15). He teaches that the word translated proper in Titus 2:1 is the sense of something that becomes you, like an outfit that looks good on you. Sound doctrine makes you look good.
Titus 2:10 carries the same idea: that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things. The pastor explains that adorn comes from the word that gives us cosmetics. Work on beauty inside, and it shows outside. Sarah stayed in the word of God, he says, and at ninety she was still beautiful enough that a king took her into his harem (Genesis 20:2). He wants every woman to leave with a bag full of spiritual cosmetics.
The Mandate: Older Women Teach the Younger
The first heading is the mandate. Titus 2:3–4 tells the older women to be teachers of good things, that they may admonish the young women. What young women in the church learn about Christian womanhood, the pastor says, mostly does not come from the pulpit. It comes from older women, whether or not they have children of their own.
He asks the congregation who has been married twenty, thirty, forty and fifty years or more. He and Pam were reaching fifty years that year. They had problems, he admits, but by commitment they grew into a love stronger and deeper than the infatuation they felt at the altar, a love like steel that can now encourage someone else.
Then he tells his own story. As a young man he went into the military, did not fare well and became addicted to drugs and alcohol. Even his own parents told his wife to divorce him. But she belonged to a Christian women’s group that kept praying with her and encouraging her, exactly what Paul told Titus to teach. One day he radically committed his life to Jesus, and even that group could hardly believe it.
No one is worse than another, he says. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). He also shares that doctors had warned his mother another pregnancy could cost her life. She carried him anyway and suffered for years afterward, and someone came alongside to support her. That support means a lot, he tells the women. The child they worried over now preaches Jesus Christ in Merrill and around the world.
Passing on sound doctrine is the heart of the mandate. The word aged in Titus 2:3, he explains, is not about silver hair but about experience. Empty nesters and parents of graduates can say: I went through this, here are the Scriptures I used, here is what I prayed. Younger women have a responsibility too, to call on older women and let them speak into their lives.
The Motive: That the Word Is Not Discredited
The motive is stated in verse 5: “that the word of God may not be blasphemed.” The pastor notes that legalistic Christians throw the word blasphemy around, but its meaning here is to discredit, defame or make of no value. Sound doctrine lived out keeps the world from concluding that God’s Word has no value.
The best thing believers can do to improve the church’s influence in Lincoln, Marathon, Langlade and Taylor counties, he says, is to apply this passage. People may not listen to the church much, but they watch. When a family falls apart, it seems to undermine everything the church teaches.
Everyone has a breaking point, he acknowledges. Even Jesus in Gethsemane prayed, “if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will” (Matthew 26:39). That is why we need people who will encourage us to keep standing on the Word. It is not the Word that does not work; it is people who do not work it. Living by sound doctrine is how a family shows the Word works.
The table below summarizes the four headings the pastor draws from the passage.
| Heading | Verse | What he teaches |
|---|---|---|
| Mandate | Titus 2:3–4 | Older, experienced women teach the younger; younger women seek them out |
| Motive | Titus 2:5 | That the Word of God is not discredited or made of no value |
| Manner of life | Titus 2:3 | Reverent behavior, no slander, not under any influence but the Holy Spirit |
| Message | Titus 2:4–5 | Love husbands and children, be discreet, chaste and workers at home |
The Manner of Life: The Fragrance of Holiness
Titus 2:3 says older women should be reverent in behavior; the King James says “as becometh holiness.” The pastor teaches that the word behavior carries the idea of fragrance. When Old Testament priests burned incense in the holy place, the smell clung to their clothes, skin and hair, and people knew they had been with the Lord.
He recalls ministering deliverance to a person who said, through that man, that he could smell the presence of the Lord on the pastor. That is why Jesus is called the Rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley (Song of Solomon 2:1). This, too, is God’s way for women. There is a glow about a godly woman, he says, the beauty of Christ radiating from her. Be renewed in the spirit of your mind (Ephesians 4:23) and let the word of Christ dwell in you richly (Colossians 3:16).
Next, not slanderers, or as the King James has it, not false accusers. Gossip, he says, is a form of insanity: “I don’t gossip, but let me tell you about…” Instead, let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt (Colossians 4:6), building up rather than tearing down.
Then, not given to much wine. The pastor widens it to anything that puts us under its influence. Do not be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit (Ephesians 5:18). The Holy Spirit is the person given to us on earth, and He will teach us all things (John 14:26). When we are influenced by something else, we cannot hear His prompting to call or visit someone before it is too late. If you have missed it, repent and let Him lead you; there is always a way out, a way around or a way through.
The Message: God’s Way for Women at Home
The message itself is in verses 4–5: to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good. Discreet, the pastor teaches, means serious-minded, level-headed and of good judgment. Discretion looks at how a decision affects the people around you now, what its long-term effect will be, and what happened when others made the same choice. It is reasoning, not emotion.
Young people especially need it, he says. Some choices he made in high school still affect him. The virtuous woman of Proverbs 31 makes good decisions, runs her house well and uses her time wisely, and the heart of her husband safely trusts her (Proverbs 31:11). He adds a light story of a new bride who could only make meatloaf and banana pudding, and a husband who asked her to tell him which was which.
Do you really have to teach someone to love a husband? Yes, he says. When the marriage relationship is a priority, husband and wife find the most fulfilling relationship and the children see what a good marriage looks like. Fighting does not cause divorce, he teaches; seduction does, the voice on the other side saying “you deserve better.” Behind every command of God is an omnipotent hand that says, I will get you through.
God’s way for women also means young women must be taught to love their children, and to be chaste, keeping themselves pure before marriage and faithful after it. Homemakers, he explains, comes from two Greek words meaning home and worker. His wife Pam was the favorite student of her high school home economics teacher, who came to their wedding. Many women must work, he says, but work for need, not greed. What does it profit to gain the whole world and lose your soul (Mark 8:36), or to have boats and cabins while your children drift from God?
He closes with 2 Timothy 1:5. When Timothy wanted to quit amid persecution in Ephesus, Paul reminded him of the genuine faith that first lived in his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice, and was in him also. That, the pastor says, is the fruit of older women passing sound doctrine to the next generation, and the clearest picture of God’s way for women.
Living Out Titus 2 This Week
The pastor thanks God for the church’s women’s group, which reaches out to help younger women build strong families, and stresses that none of it works without being born again. Here are practical steps from this message on God’s way for women and sound doctrine:
- Find someone to teach. If you are an experienced woman, reach out to a younger one and share the Scriptures and prayers that carried you.
- Find someone to learn from. If you are a younger woman, call an older believer and invite her to speak into your life.
- Wear spiritual cosmetics. Spend time in the Word and in God’s presence so that His fragrance rests on you.
- Guard your mouth. Replace gossip with words seasoned with grace that build others up.
- Use discretion. Before a big decision, weigh its effect now, its long-term effect and how it went for others.
- Invest in your children. Make sacrifices to train them, as Lois and Eunice did for Timothy.
Timestamped Outline
- 0:00 A Mother’s Day message
- 1:09 The station wagon and what mothers teach
- 3:11 A mother’s influence
- 4:22 Mandate, motive, manner of life and message
- 5:41 Titus 2:1–5: speak sound doctrine
- 6:54 Why doctrine matters
- 10:35 Abide in Me: John 15:7
- 11:44 The legacy of the woman at the well
- 15:03 Emotions are sand, doctrine is rock
- 16:11 Doctrine that becomes you
- 17:24 Titus 2:10: adorn the doctrine
- 18:28 Sarah’s beauty at ninety
- 19:39 The mandate: older women teach the younger
- 22:01 Fifty years of marriage
- 23:37 A praying women’s group and his salvation
- 27:08 His mother’s costly pregnancy
- 30:10 The motive: do not let the Word be discredited
- 32:38 The manner of life: reverent behavior
- 33:50 The fragrance of holiness
- 36:17 Do not be slanderers
- 37:57 Be filled with the Spirit
- 40:25 The message: love husbands and children
- 41:52 What discretion means
- 49:44 Workers at home
- 52:44 Lois, Eunice and Timothy
- 55:16 Invitation to receive Christ
Frequently Asked Questions
Does this teaching apply to women without children?
Yes. The pastor says the command for older women to teach younger women applies whether or not you have children. He explains that the word translated aged speaks of experience rather than gray hair. Any woman who has walked through marriage, parenting or hardship with God can share the Scriptures she used and what she prayed, and younger women are responsible for seeking that wisdom out.
Is the pastor against women working outside the home?
No. He says plainly that he realizes many women have to work. His concern is motive: work for need, not greed. He warns against trading time with children for a bigger lifestyle, and asks what it would profit a family to have boats, cabins and vacations if the children stop communicating with their parents and deny God.
Why does the sermon end with a salvation invitation?
The pastor says none of these principles will work unless a person is born again. Women’s groups, good marriages and godly homes all depend on being found in Christ, the hope of glory. So he closes by inviting anyone who has never given their life to Jesus to pray, ask forgiveness, and receive a new heart and His Spirit, because Jesus is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6).
Scripture References
All passages open in the New King James Version on Bible Gateway:
- Titus 2:1–5 — the older teach the younger
- Titus 2:10 — adorn the doctrine of God our Savior
- John 15:7 — abide in Me and My words in you
- Luke 6:48 — the house built on the rock
- Colossians 4:6 — speech seasoned with salt
- Ephesians 5:18 — be filled with the Spirit
- Proverbs 31:11 — her husband safely trusts her
- 2 Timothy 1:5 — the faith of Lois and Eunice
How this summary was made: written with AI assistance from the sermon’s own transcript and checked against the Scriptures listed above.
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