Sunday, March 30, 2025 PM

We'll go ahead and start by praying, and we'll get into the last couple of verses here of Titus 2, 1 -10. Father, we thank You for this day. We thank You that You have given us a day to worship, a beautiful day to worship, to read Your Word, sing Your Word, and pray Your Word.

We thank You today again for the new members, the baptism, which we were all a cloud of witnesses for, and the communion that we get to share with each other. It is a sweet and wonderful thing to share in the body and the blood of Christ that we know our Savior is a living Savior.

He has risen, both bodily and spiritually, and we have hope to follow Him. We ask, Lord, that Your Spirit enriches us and fills us, and that He guides us as we read Your Word, and we communion with You, in Christ's name.

Amen. Okay, so Titus 2, verses 1 -10 is where we have been for four weeks, but we are going to be wrapping it up tonight for this block of text with verses 9 and 10. The first couple of weeks we went through a lot of the P's of this block of text, these principles being perpetual, practical, protective, numerous other ones.

And last week we were going over a lot of the motivation to follow these instructions from Paul to Titus, and Titus to elders and elders to older men and older women. But today we get to a section that may be a little bit more unfamiliar with us as far as the context goes, when we are talking about bondservants.

We live in a place and a period where such things are, there's not a ready analogy for it. We may have examples of types of jobs that are close, but as far as this type of relationship between slave and slave owner, we don't get to experience that on a day-to-day basis.

So we are going to try to understand what Paul is saying here in the text and see how this can apply to us as a people and in our place. So before we get started we will go ahead and read chapters 9 and 10.

The text reads, Exhort bondservants to be obedient to their own masters, to be well-pleasing in all things, not answering back, not pilfering, but showing all good fidelity, that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things.

Again, one of my favorite phrases, in all things, mentioned twice and two verses in a row. I like having to point that out. But what I want to go back to from chapter 1 that we can pull from the text is that what we need to have in the back of our mind during this entire bit here is Paul's titles that we see in the text or that can be inferred from the text.

Paul calls himself an apostle. He's an elder in the faith to Titus. He's a father in the faith to Titus. But he also calls himself a bondservant of God. So these are the working titles that Paul has given himself in this letter to Titus.

And that really gives us a connection to just about every one of these exhortations that we have in chapter 2 here. So Paul's exhortations to bondservants, in short, going back over it again, it's obedience to their own masters, it's being well-pleasing in all things.

And obedience to their own masters is pretty specific, saying that they're obedient just to their specific masters. Not all masters, but their allegiances are to that one master that they are underneath, under his authority.

Now, to be well-pleasing in all things as a bondservant would require constant attention and a constant living before that master. A lot of times the bondservant's relationship to a master is one that is quite dependent, especially in these contexts where they may be providing everyday food, water, and housing for you and your family as a bondservant.

The exhortation did not answer back. This is the Greek antilego. And I think it wrapped up pretty well in the definitions to speak against, or to gainsay or contradict, or to oppose oneself to. So a bondservant is not to what we call in the English a very Germanic term, backtalk.

We do not talk back to. But we also do not set ourselves up in opposition to our masters. They are our masters. We are their bondservants. And to oppose them would be to upend this order, this hierarchy.

And as we have gone through this text, we see constant reiteration and reinforcement of hierarchy and reinforcement of order. Order, order, order is what we see in this text. And after the exhortation of not answering back comes, we get to not be pilfering.

Now pilfering is a word we don't use very often these days, but it's a good English word for this. What we get from the Greek of nasphizo, to be set apart or separate oneself from, is kind of the more general usage.

But we understand it in this context to mean to purloin or embezzle. Now we know what that one is because that's in the news a lot. Embezzlement, it's in the news a lot these days because just about everywhere we look in the government, that's what we've got.

Some form of leeching or setting aside, setting apart coins for oneself rather than that which belongs to the master. And this is what the term means here. We are setting apart, we are pilfering from the master's take, and we're giving ourselves some and setting it aside instead of enriching his household as we should be as a bondservant.

Next, they're exhorted to show all good fidelity, all good faithfulness. The root for this is pistous, for faith. We're supposed to be showing all good faithfulness to this master. Again, hearkening back to the idea of allegiance to a master that a bondservant should have.

And this is all leading up to Paul's connection as a bondservant as well. His title as a bondservant and how he is faithfully dealing with that which is under his care as an overseer and shepherd. And lastly, they are exhorted to adorn the doctrine of God, our Savior, in all things.

Now, this is an interesting bit of Greek here because the word adorn is cosmeo. Now, what does that sound like to us? Cosmos, right? Order, the world, the universe. Adorn here is to put in order or to arrange and make ready, prepare.

What was Titus' job to begin with? He was to put things in order. For this reason, I left you in Crete, that you should set in order the things that are lacking. And in this way, too, these bondservants are to put in order.

They are to adorn the doctrine of God from the top as an apostle down to the bondservant. Everybody who is a part of the church in Crete, they are to be adorning the doctrine of God with good works. And I really was kind of sitting here with this word for a while, cosmeo, because it's not only to make ready and prepare or to adorn, but it can even be embellished with honor or to gain honor for such a thing.

Now, what this made me think of, adornment, is jewelry, right? Like adorning oneself. And that is really kind of the context, or that's what the context brings out of this word. And I got to thinking of how a husband gives a wife jewelry.

Now, these days, when we see a commercial or a pitch made for the husband to get a wife a necklace or a ring or earrings, in those commercials, what's usually the pitch? Well, it's what she wants. It's what she already deserves, right?

She already deserves this. It represents your love, right? It shows her how much you mean, or how much she means to you. It shows her these things. Now, I don't know about you, but I'd love to see commercials that promote giving wives jewelry because their husbands are heaping much-deserved honor upon them.

Now, why wouldn't those commercials work to sell to a mass audience today, to heap much honor on a wife? Why wouldn't we have mass appeal for that? May I posit that's because there aren't enough wives worthy of such extra honor.

And it's a sad thing that that wouldn't sell loads. But this is something that we need to bring back, in my opinion. Wives need to be those who deserve the honor. They need those representations heaped upon them to show how honorable they've been.

This is a good thing. This is not a bad thing. In our minds, in our context, in our American context, we see jewelry, we see those things, and we think vanity, right? We think these are vain things. But if it's a husband gifting these things to a wife because he knows that she deserves this type of thing, how glorious of a representation that is.

How glorious of a representation it is to our sons and daughters to see a husband honoring a wife because of how she has brought honor to herself. And in the same way, the Lord constantly brings honor to himself.

His doctrine constantly brings honor to himself. And we should always be seeking to do good works to adorn that doctrine, which we have so graciously received in his word and by his spirit. So honor, heap honor on the word, heap honor on your wives.

Now, let's go back to Paul's title of bondservant. We already asked the question, what is a bondservant's relationship to his master? And what does that look like? We don't always see how that works in our context.

In other countries, you might still have literal bondservants, literal slaves. But we don't get to see that in everyday life. So the bondservant's relationship to the master is dependent for them in all things.

Including his work, what he's going to be doing that day, the direction of that work, to what ends is he going to be doing it, and what's the purpose of that work? So it's for the master's purposes, right?

That slave doesn't wake up that day and say, I get to do this work and this way for this purpose. No, the master sets the agenda. He sets the work. He sets the time. And you, as the bondservant, are dependent for that.

How strange would it be for Paul the Apostle to act like an entrepreneur, determining the purpose for which the gospel goes out? Sounds a bit like the false teacher we heard about in Chapter 1, right?

It's always for their own purposes and for their own sordid gain. Now, the bondservant is the means by which the master's house is built, how it's set in order, how it's maintained. But the master gives the order.

He sets the work rate, the end date. He sets the budget, and the slave must work within it without pilfering or embezzling. Now, that is maybe too much of a bridge to gap there for me, to go from Paul the bondservant to his exhortations to bondservants.

But the correlation is pretty interesting when we think about Paul's role and how he does act as a bondservant to Christ. He's not pilfering. He's doing exactly as the master says. He tries to be well-pleasing to Christ in all things.

He tells us to follow him in being well-pleasing to Christ in all things. He asks us and exhorts us to show all good faith and all good fidelity to our Lord and Savior. And in this way, we have a pretty good understanding of how we are, even though we don't see the bondservant and the slave and master relationship today, we know it in our Lord.

And we can use it and apply it in our lives in this way. So in doing so, we do have modern-day examples of maybe the closest thing to the analog or the analogy that we can draw is a wage servant. Now, you may be aware of a more tighter correlation between a different job to bondservant and master, but the one I could come up with in our current context is just a wage-earning job to an individual boss or a small business with clear leaders.

But we now have a considerable amount of choice versus the day that Titus was living in, the day that Paul was living in. When it comes to the masters, in an economic sense, we have a greater choice. We can telecommute for our masters.

We can produce vast amounts or very little without having ever met our masters. We can work for ever-changing masters where the only permanent thing about those that hold the titles of CEO or CFO in the company is that their faces will be different next year.

We can work for our masters that don't speak our language and would not care to know that we exist. But the company has an internal memo or slogan that is passed around that reads something like, a family for the good of the global household.

Paul's exhortation for slaves on Crete whose masters may be believers or unbelievers, but they are not unknown men. They are men who we either live with or are close to. We may go to church with. We may be under their leadership as elders.

They're local and they're men of the community. Whether they're believers or unbelievers, they're to be obeyed. They're to be obeyed by, pleased by, increased by, and shown faithfulness by their Christian slaves.

And as I was about my work this week driving around, I thought about my position as a wage earner, especially over the years and the different wage earning jobs that I've had to very specific men. I've had good bosses.

The Lord has blessed me in many ways. Not necessarily as much as I've earned, but the men that I have worked for, they've been great blessings to work for. Each one of them that I know are professing Christians.

They profess the Lord as their Savior. And this is the time since I've been a Christian and began work as a wage.

Earner.

Every boss I've had has been this way. So I was considering applications not only to myself but in our current time and place as a body of believers. I was asking myself some of these questions. The first one I asked was, if by the Lord's providence we have a choice from whom we earn our wages, if we get to choose and pick who we earn our wages from as the bond servant to the master, should we not choose someone from the household of faith?

Is that not better? If we can find that, if the Lord blesses us with that, we have that opportunity, should we not put ourselves underneath another believer? We are much more protected in that position.

I think the master that you put yourself under is much more protected as well, is he not? To have other Christians working for him, to have other Christians building up his.

Household.

And if we choose someone from the household of faith, should not these exhortations that Paul gives come easier to us as we share a common Lord and a common bond servanthood to him? So crazy, right? Like a double bond servanthood for the guy who's working underneath the master.

Here.

But we know that that master as well is a bond servant of the Lord. And in such a position, we know mutually the standard to which we're both held, the exhortations which we're both given in the text, the submission that we should give to our Lord and Savior, and by which we work day in and day out, working as unto him.

But also understanding the added benefits that we'll talk about here in a second that we can give to one another as master and bond servant. Currently, I have bosses that love me, and I love my bosses.

I want to enrich their household. I want to build their businesses and force them to expand, whether they want to or not. I want to see responsibility and honor added to them and their family. I want their children's children to have their inheritances grow because of what I do with my hands under their guidance and under their authority.

I know the only reason that I want these things is because of our common master, the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It is because of Christ. It is because of his doctrine, his teaching, his way, that I wish to adorn the work of my earthly masters in these ways.

How much more should I desire these things for the kingdom of my Savior? If I want this for the distribution company that I work for, the husband and wife team, how much more should I want that for my Lord, the one who they spend money on me every year so I can work for him?

The Lord spent his blood so that I may work for him, be cleansed, and do good works for his people on a daily basis. We are bondservants of Christ. He is our heavenly master, and we should seek to adorn his doctrine with righteous works, each and every one of us.

We should not look upon a wage-earning life, a bondservant life with any sort or form of disdain. That does not determine our status in the kingdom of heaven. But we see it as an opportunity to build up the household of a brother, a sister.

And if we are blessed with the opportunity, even a household of a brother of the local body that we love and cherish deeply. I'm thankful that I get to work for somebody who professes Christ, somebody who knows Christ.

I would much rather work for one of you all if I had the chance. It's not that way right now. It could be someday. But I'd rather build up a household here. I'd rather see a household in this body, enriched by the things that I do with my hands.

And I have had young men who have worked for me in the same manner, and they've shown great faithfulness. They've shown great diligence, good work. They are a product of a household of faith. And they've shown it to be so.

And I'm very, very thankful for that, and their families. The position of a bondservant is one of great humility. And Paul identifies with it at the very beginning of the text. He also exhorts it here at the end of this section in chapter 2.

That level of humility and submission is the one that we all take as believers in all that we do, whether we work or whether we come here and worship together. We are bondservants of the Lord Christ. And so I'm very thankful that that's the way that this text here wraps up, is an address to the bondservant of the household.

And where we see the end of exhortations to order, because I know I find myself here in many ways. I find myself here in the household of faith. I find myself here where I work and what I do. And it's good.

It's all good.

So some final observations before I end this portion and we get Chris here to work on his section. When we are given these exhortations that should accompany good works or should accompany sound doctrine, we never pass out of needing to uphold sound doctrine or needing to uphold this type of principle in our lives, whether we're young or whether we're old, whether we're a bondservant or whether we are an elder.

We can pass from one of those to another. But whatever realm we're in, whatever category we're in here, responsibility is never set aside. There's always new responsibility to be picked up. And with that new responsibility comes a new wave of humility, which must be placed upon our heads, our shoulders.

But changed, and in many cases, it adds responsibility. It adds humility even and doesn't take any away. If we abdicate on that responsibility as an older man or a younger man or an older woman or a younger woman or an elder, it is of great shame to us.

With this work comes lasting responsibility, a type of legacy of responsibility that transcends our personal ails and losses. These responsibilities that Titus is to exhort the Cretans toward, they don't end if you have sickness.

They don't end if you lose a wife or a child. They don't end if your fortunes are lost. This is something we don't turn away from because we are bondservants. We're not entrepreneurs in Christ. We are bondservants in Christ.

They continue because the grace to carry them out is always abundantly supplied, always abundantly supplied. And you have brothers and sisters that need you. Your work is not finished. Elders have a weighty duty to exhort you in these ways.

Make their burden lighter and their work a delight. Lastly, I am extremely thankful for this book, this text. I'm extremely thankful for Michael and elders pushing us as younger men to study and take the opportunity to teach and share what the Lord has given us, an edifying time of reading and study and prayer, meditation.

But specifically this book from Paul, this letter from Paul to Titus, in this time in our church's life where, for some reason, everybody's talking about elders all the time. Every time somebody gets up to teach or preach or there's a sermon, we've had talk of elders consistently, and I'm so thankful for the text that the Lord gives us to find qualified elders, pray for our elders, be thankful for our elders.

These texts are of immense—they bring about loads of joy, loads of worship, and they make you quite doxological in the end. You don't think you're going to be, but you praise the Lord for this type of stuff, just as you do every bit of his word, everything that's breathed out.

So, very thankful for you all. I've enjoyed getting to go through this portion of Titus, and we'll go ahead and close by singing the doxology.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise him, all creatures, here below. Praise him above ye, heavenly. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.