Titus lesson 7 end

so we are in lesson 7 and I apologize I meant to send out lesson 8 this week and I just went right out of my mind somehow so which lesson 8 is what Miles will be working on next week we're in lesson 7 we're dealing with Titus chapter 2 verses 6 through 10 and Paul's been going along and talking about behavior consistent with what it means to be a believer. I find it interesting that Paul has to tell us what that looks like, otherwise we don't know.

Because we came Every one of us came to Christ out of the world and we live in the world and it's a nasty place and it encroaches on our thinking all the time. So six through 10, six is likewise urge young men to be sensible. We talked about here's the focus on young men.

Sensible in all things show yourself to be an example of good deeds with purity and doctrine and dignified Sound in speech, which is beyond reproach So that the opponents will be put to shame having nothing bad to say about us Those are young men and so today we're going to talk not about 910 urge bond slaves to be subject to their own masters in everything, to be well-pleasing, not argumentative, not pilfering, but showing all good face so that they will adorn the doctrine of God, our Savior, in every respect. So we had, we finished up I think question seven, which had to do, does the New Testament decry slavery? Does it say that slavery is a bad thing and we ought to stop it? No, it doesn't say anything about the validity of it or anything like that. You notice that the Lord through all focuses on changing individuals, not society. so question eight is with the conduct of a slave witness to the world that God's message of salvation to the world will produce positive results so let's let's just use that the world that we live in now for those of you who are I'm looking around the room.

Most of you are somewhere in the chain of command. You not only are, you're a master and sometimes you're a servant, right? You're literally both. So what do you think about being a servant? Well, let me Sometimes I think we look at these verses and we think, well, we don't have slavery in my environment, so we're not talking about slaves. Are we? When this verse says, I urge bond slaves to be subject to their masters and everything. So are we talking about the South in 1850? We're not, are we? So contemporize it.

There's always in our society, in every society, there are those who are masters and those who are slaves. There are those who are employees. There are those who are employers. There's always a chain of command. You know what I mean by a chain of command?

Like in the military, general and a colonel and a captain and a major and a captain it goes down like that so when Paul talks about Titus and we have to keep in mind the island of Crete the Cretans were really nasty people and they were liars and thieves and that kind of thing so here's Paul telling Titus about how the people on Crete should function as Christians which would be a departure from the way that society normally function. So again back to the question with the conduct of a slave or an employee witness to the world that God's message of salvation to the world will produce positive results. What do you think? Is that just a pie-in-the-sky question, or is that serious?

I know a lot of people who complain about their boss. So do I. So do I. Somewhere in the chain of command where people are complaining about them and they're complaining about the people above them. Yeah. That they don't know what they're doing. Mike, isn't this focusing more on what you want on the positive results? It's what Miles says, you know, complainers and everything.

Isn't this like working as unto the Lord that your witness is, whether you have a cruddy boss or a bad work situation, you're working as unto the Lord and being a witness, producing positive results that even in a bad situation, you're not whining, you're not, you know, gossiping, you're not, doing all the things that Cretans did, you're producing a positive result. And then in a bad situation, or a bad... The verses say masters have to be good, bond slaves have to be good, but I don't know if there's a if-then in there. I think it's bond slave, whether you have a cruddy boss or you have a good boss, you're working as under the Lord and that's your witness.

See, I think you've swerved into the real key here. Every single believer is a bond slave to Christ. You agree with that? Which means he decides. Your decision is to do what he decides. The proper relationship between a believer and his Lord is the Lord is Lord, and whatever you would have me do, I'm certainly willing to do it.

Now, Paul has to come along in his epistles and, you know, take old men and old women and young men and that kind of thing and sort of catalog what their behavior patterns should be, but really it starts with, is the Lord Jesus the Lord of my life or isn't he? Or do I just view him as a big screwdriver in the sky that fixes all my problems and I became a Christian so I wouldn't have to go to hell. Do I really understand that every minute of every day he is my Lord and I belong to him and I'm to do what he would have me do no matter what the hurdles look like or the circumstances look like. a better description, you know, and it doesn't matter where you are in the so-called chain of command. I serve the Lord Jesus only.

And in doing so, you fit under these categories without any stress. So the question is, is this swerving into lordship salvation? I'm sorry? Is this swerving into lordship salvation? Oh yeah, right, lordship salvation. Well lordship's a thing, right? It certainly isn't for, it's not the approach to salvation, but I'm curious about in this context of being an employee, let's put it in our terms, bond slave, There's certainly, I mean, when we're talking about Christ being Lord, we're talking about him being sovereign.

And so there is a need and a recognition of an employer to understand that God is sovereign over the circumstances, even though it is extremely chaotic. liberal, confusing, frustrating, all the things that they really are. And those things are stressful. And I think you can be stressed. It's a matter of what you do with that stress. It really matters. It can stress you. It certainly does. There's no way around that. mean people stress you out.

But when you start from your relationship to your creator and sovereignty is in you, you recognize that he's at work here and there are things that are outside of your limited capability to control. And when your trust is in him for that sovereignty of situation, Um, and also people, the people that are involved, then your mindset shifts and you become thankful for what you have. Um, you're thankful that even though you're in the midst of a very stressful, frustrating, worldly leadership situation, whatever that might be, you have a basis for understanding what's going on.

It's what he's doing. It's not what's happening at the job ultimately. It's about what God's doing in our lives and maybe doing in the lives of our coworkers at the same time. And that could be for salvation for some, it could be edification for the believers that we work with. But certainly there's a ministry that we have as employees and employers to recognize the sovereignty of God in relationship to the work that we do and maybe the business that we conduct and have privilege to run. Those are of the hand of the Lord. And you mentioned whatever you do, do it heartily. It's for the Lord rather than for men.

That's the Colossians 3.23 passage. And for every worker out there, whether you are working at a retail store selling clothing or you're making the deals at the highest level, you still are working unto the Lord. For the believer, that perspective is key. Otherwise, you will never stop being frustrated, you will never be satisfied, and you will probably ruin a ministry opportunity because you don't understand your relationship to the work that God's given you. Yeah, I think you're right. The ministry is servitude. It is servant leadership, it's servant at every level, from the bottom all the way to the top.

I'm talking to Roger on Tuesday and his son has moved to the west side of Denver and he's started to go to a new church. And he noticed that there weren't any elders in the church. So he went to the pastor and he said, how come you don't have any elders? He said, we don't need elders, you got me. Guess where he's going? Out the door. You know, why? Because he understands the way God sets things up and that's the way it needs to be.

Now, do you think that if you're a husband or a wife or a child in your family, you'd think conducting your role That's not the right word. Living the role that you, God has you in, has an impression on others? Answer, yeah. One of the, when we first started doing, on Wednesday night, we're doing Thessalonians and Thessalonians one, chapter one, Verse 8 says, for the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you, not only in Macedonia but in Achaia, but also in every place your faith towards God has gone forth so that we have no need to say anything. Paul says to the Thessalonians, You don't, I don't have anything to say to you because your faith and the way you live your life has spread over all of Greece and Macedonia and everybody knows what you're about. And it isn't because you published pamphlets and handed them out and knocked on doors and that you just live the life. Donna.

Again, thinking back on Thessalonians and what was said even there, what do you think about the idea that just because we're indwelled by the Holy Spirit, there's a withholding of evil that was left on the earth? Yeah, there's no question that the restrainer of evil is the Holy Spirit, but he does it through each of us in the church. And when the rapture happens, The restrainer goes away because all the people who were involved in the restraining are gone. So when you start with this premise of a sovereign God, like you talked about, and you work your way down to whatever you're doing, and you find out that, well, gee, sovereignty is kind of an interesting thing, and these attributes that my God has, are overwhelming.

He runs everything no matter what it looks like. I don't care what CNN says or Fox News or whoever. I don't really care what it looks like. I have God's word and he is teaching me graciously to function in the role that he has called me to be in. As a member of his body and as a as a son of God. That's what he's doing. And I can be anywhere in the chain of command. I can be a brand new employee starting at the bottom in a company or I can be somewhere up and down the line.

Anybody who's a boss who is a good boss understands that really what his job or her job is, is to serve the people that work for him. That's really their job. If they don't get that, they're not a good boss. You know? Along with serving the people that are above them. Because what are you there for? You have a reason. God puts you there.

And this attitude that the world lays on us that, you know, somehow we need to be over-recognized for the limited capacity we have anyway, then I don't work unto you, but I do because the Lord put me there. If you own your own business, anybody who you sign a contract with, you're the servant. Courtney knows that, he signs contracts all the time. And so my business was I signed contracts.

Will you come and help me find a house? Yeah. I'm your servant. Will you get me to the closing? Yes, I will. That's what I do. I'm a servant to you. So when he comes along and I ask the question, does the witness of a slave witness to the world that God's message of salvation would provide productive, positive results? Yes, it does. And it's because people watch us.

They know. You know, if you walk out of church on Sunday and go home and go right back into the world system like you're walking through a door, nobody knows you belong to the Lord. And you don't have to tell them. You don't have to tell them. They know. Because we're all nosy.

I mean, I look, I got, I can tell you about, well, I got this neighbor over here are renters and there's whatever. And then I got the one across the street who I think they're smoking too much marijuana. And then I got one over here who are getting a divorce and we can't, we don't ever see them. And then we got the ones next door and then we got these next door and the one behind us. Do I know what's going on with them? Well, not intimately, but, but I know enough and they know enough about me. What am I about? What is Donna about? That's what I said.

I think the witness is the world, man. I think that other song, that Bruce Carroll song, I'd rather see a sermon than hear one any day, I think comes into play. You're the witness by just your life. And I get that all the time on the drill rig. The drilling community is, very worldly and you get down to the lowest form of life I think at some point, if they don't show up. I had one in Idaho, the driller got totally drunk the night before, came in and he passed out in his truck for half the morning. but I don't, you know, I don't moralize or anything, but what I've gotten more because I just don't engage in what they do. And I, and I don't, you know, overtly, you know, have Christian symbols or anything, but I've gotten more people asking me because there's something different about me. And that's what they, you know, I've gotten more opportunities to witness the people on the drill rig just because it's different.

You're not like the world. Yeah. And that's, that's the thing here that, I think he's saying is you're a slave. You're different because the rest of the slaves are murmuring and complaining and doing all this. You're working as under the Lord. That's noticeable.

And that's, you know, like I said, I've just had more opportunities. my business on the drilling world and all those worldly people, not by, you know, carrying my Bible or shortly being on the truck or anything, you know, it's just, you don't engage in it and you're different and they notice it. And that's, that's, then they ask, what's different about you? You know, why don't you have the opportunities there? It's, it's interesting in my, uh, uh, tour in the Marine Corps, they have certain things that are, in concrete.

One is you never leave anybody behind. I don't care what it costs to get him. You bring him out. And they start teaching you that at boot camp. If a guy in front of you falls down, you pick him up and carry him. You and a guy, depending how big he is, you and another guy.

But if you all go in, you're all coming out, dead or alive, doesn't matter. And so you find over time that's built into the system, and you begin to think, well, the guys that I'm with here in this environment, you know, you have to be a servant, otherwise you wouldn't do it. And the guy in your platoon who doesn't have that attitude pretty soon goes somewhere else. Because these guys are way more effective when when they all understand their role as a servant and as, you know, I mean, little things like back when everybody smoked cigarettes, if two guys have, if you're in a foxhole and you have to stay awake, one of you has got to stay awake all night because you don't know what's going to happen.

So you descend, you're not supposed to smoke, so you light up, right? And the sniper over there can see the light. Guess what? He shoots you dead, your buddy is there and he's taking a nap while you're supposed to be watching. And so when he wakes up and you're dead, what does he think? You didn't do your job. You didn't serve me. And so that kind of thing permeates in all of society and especially believers. in a work environment. We all have a, well, most of us have a work environment that we're in in some capacity. And how you do your job is really, really shows who you are and what kind of a person you are. Not that you have to have, and there are people that really, really, really work hard because their motivation is they want to be rich.

I'm reminded of 2 Corinthians 4, because I think being a servant is not an easy thing, it's a difficult thing, it's a suffering thing to some degree. And Paul talks about there in verse 11, for we are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifest in our mortal flesh. And it's just that simple. As a servant, as a slave, as an employee, the life of Jesus is manifest through the way that you carry out your work.

Yeah. You know, it's interesting. One last story. Any of you ever see Matt Malloy's introductory speech to new people that showed up when he was the commander of that base in Japan? It's really interesting. Once a week, he had all the people that were new, and I think there were 18,000 people on this space.

He would have a meeting with them, and he would tell them what he expected. But he always, somewhere in the context, would say, now listen, you have to understand that I belong to the Lord Jesus, and I do everything based on what he says I should do. And that's what I expect you to do.

I don't know why they didn't march him right to the gate and kick him out of the Air Force. But I mean, just bold as brass, he did that. And people, he was a good commander. His soldiers, his airmen loved him. You know, they thought, because he was a servant and they knew it, even though he had two stars on his shoulder. Okay. Lists the responsibilities of a slave. What's the first one? Subjection. He said to submit to his master. That's number one. It means to submit himself, he has to be subject to, not because he's forced, because he chooses to do it.

How many employees do you know that think, well, my boss is going to have to prove whether he's worthy of my loyalty or not? Well, if he was the end of the chain of command, maybe. But the Lord Jesus has proven himself already, so he doesn't have to prove anything. It means, this word is despostos, English despot, it refers to absolute master. That's pretty tough in our society to have. Because we always have, well I'll go so far but I won't go beyond A, B or C. Don't ask me to work on Saturday. The second thing a slave is supposed to do is to please his master. Pleasing your master tells you what about a slave? I was looking at this and I thought, well, how do they get AI robots to be pleasing? Well, they get that. They'll just be wound up like toys to do what they're supposed to do, I guess. They won't have any emotion in it.

So, what's the faults of a slave? What's the first one? Is he argumentative? Yes or no? Yeah, there's a difference between talking with and talking back. Yeah. Oh, that's a good point. Yeah. This word is antilego, which verb means lego means to speak and preposition ante meaning against.

This is the same characteristic as spoken of in Titus 1.9 translated contradict. There are, I'm sure we've all been in environments where we're employees of some and there's always one person or two people that their whole point in life is to belittle their boss or to somehow point out every Decision that he or she made is wasn't a worthy decision and they could do it better and they're also the ones that are Late coming back from break and not showing not being there when the bell rings in the morning And the second characteristic I love this one they shouldn't be pilfering I Filtering is interesting. They shouldn't misappropriate.

I mean, my first job out of college was working at Sears and it was amazing how many employees stole from the company, you know, all the time. I had a commission salesman working for me one time and there was a departments around me kept missing money out of their cash register and Finally they caught this guy and he was one of my sales guys It was a commissioned salesman and he'd go over to help out another department just because they thought needed help But he was always you know ten in the till and ten in my pocket And it's a little things like not I you know, like overusing the three things that are the things that you need for your business just because you want a new and shiny one, stuff like that. You're saying I can't eat all those snacks I've been given? I ate one too many? Yeah. It was supposed to be free for the employees?

No, but there's a definitely, you know, I think the believer, it's not to mention, We're not talking about law here. We're talking about the nature of taking what is not yours. And that's in time. That's in, you know, obviously in your case, you know, it was money. Time is money. So ultimately, you know, when you.

I mean, you've done a lot for what you do and maybe you don't even, maybe you still breaks and like long, you know, you go for the long walk and, but believers have to kind of work through that, right? Because, um, each, each instance is a little bit different, but you have that not pilfering, not stealing from this guy or this gal, you know, because not because they don't deserve it. You might rightfully think that in your flesh, like, Oh, they deserve to, I deserve this break. I really can't stand this. And maybe you do, but your heart starts to get heavy. You know, as a believer, the Holy Spirit convicts you about where you're taking what is not yours in time or, um, usually it's time.

That's the easiest way to still and kind of play situation. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's the most important one is time or like in Courtney's case, he signs a contract, he's made a commitment and at some point it doesn't feel like going the extra mile today. Did he cheat the customer? Would I be cheating the customer by doing it? I think it's more than that.

I'm a consultant. I do it by hours. Did I work for four hours or did I work for six hours? Five hours and 15 minutes. Let's just round it up. I have the worst of all contracts, time and materials. Not a lump sum, but a time and materials. If I'm adding hours or doing something like that, that's pilferage.

You tell me whether you think this is a proper attitude. I used to own some rental houses and sometimes the tenant couldn't pay or they'd give me a check and the check wouldn't clear. So I learned a trick that if I went down to their bank with a check in hand, let's say the check was $400, I'd walk up to the counter and I'd say, I'd present a check and they'd say, well, it won't clear. And I would say, well, how much money do I need to deposit in that account in order to get it to clear? And sometimes they'd say, well, $50 will do it. So I'd deposit $50 and take my $400.

That's funny. Am I cheating them? Yeah, you think I am. Let me think about that one. Yeah. No, cause they gave you, they gave you a check, which is their word for $400. Yeah. Give you your word for their word for 400 bucks. That's right. You decided to take a cut on it to make it happen right then. Yeah. To your benefit. No, that's not. But I've, I've not, not conversely, I've had tenants call me and say, look, the rent's 400 and I've only got 375 and I say, send me to 375 and a 25 when you can.

I'm happy to do that. But it's amazing how many people, either they're really bad at math and they don't know what their balance is. They're writing checks. I didn't know you could make a deposit in someone else's account. I don't know if you can do it anymore.

I used to do it all the time. depending on the client. I don't want to know this trick. That's all. I mean, just in case. Just in case. I'll give you my bank account for the money. Yeah, sure. So don't write me any short checks. I know how to deal with them. So in 210b, let's look at the characteristics of a slave. How much time we got? Oh, we're over.

The characteristics are good faith, adorning the doctrine of God, our Savior in every respect. So as believers, people say, well, I don't have a ministry. Yeah, you do. Yeah, you do. Are you an employee or an employer? You got a ministry. your reputation and how you conduct your life so that it redounds to the glory of God. And oh, by the way, salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ really does make changes in your life. So, let's close. Father, how we thank you for your word, how we thank you for how careful you are to, as we'll find out next week, instruct us in grace and we thank you for you and we pray in your precious name. Amen.