Titus 2:9-10 - Gospel Witness in Public Life

Turn to Titus chapter 2.

Titus 2 · chapter mention

If you're using the Pew Bible, you'll find that on page 1058.

Titus chapter 2.

Titus 2 · chapter mention

We've been working through this epistle together for the last several weeks.

We've got some more weeks still to go on this letter that Paul wrote to Titus.

And we're coming today to the next two verses, verses 9 and 10.

Titus 2, verses 9 and 10.

Titus 2:9

It's a short passage, and this is what God's Word has to say to us.

Slaves are to submit to their masters in everything and to be well pleasing, not talking back or stealing, but demonstrating utter faithfulness so that they may adorn the teaching of God our Savior in everything.

To give us the Spirit, the same Spirit at work in days past, and who is at work now, in sometimes larger ways and sometimes less obvious invisible ways, but in every possible way would the spirit be at work today, we pray in Christ's name.

Amen.

And you might say, well, even that guy is kind of lovable.

My boss is incompetent and he's nasty on top of that.

The world has good bosses.

I think most of you would rather like working for Andy Griffith.

And there's good bosses in the real world too.

We lose sight of that sometimes.

But notice in our text today, Paul writes nothing about good supervisors or bad supervisors.

He's concerned with our attitude toward our supervisors.

Romans 13:7, respect to those who are owed respect.

Romans 13:7

Honor to those who are owed honor.

This is a great passage for some of you that are always wanting to know where does the rubber meet the road?

What am I going to take with me into work on Monday morning?

In this case, Tuesday morning for a lot of you.

We just got finished with a series in Isaiah.

It was a great series.

Some of you might have found yourselves thinking at certain points in that series.

All right, we've got the Rab Shaka talking to Tiglath Palizer about the Araman Confederation.

My head is already spinning.

Where does this meet my workplace tomorrow?

There's a lot in Isaiah you could take into the workplace.

And I missed that book.

But your prayers for simple directness have been answered by the Lord today from our passage.

What should you do Tuesday morning?

You should submit to your supervisor.

You can put one thing in your to-go bag for today.

Let it be this.

You should submit to your supervisor.

I think I take the history lesson.

I don't really like that one.

You're here.

It's too late.

You should submit to your supervisor.

In this letter, Paul is eager to show Titus how he can show the people on this island the way that embracing the good news of Jesus affects the way that they live.

And you see that especially in relationships.

You see that in the church, in the home.

We've looked at those categories.

We're going to be looking about citizens and governments in the next chapter.

Today it's more about our life in the public sphere, particularly the workplace.

You should submit to your supervisor.

Paul here gives us a what.

Submit to your supervisor.

He also gives us a why, and you can see that at the end of verse 10.

So that they may adorn the teaching of God our Savior and everything.

There's motivation for us.

So we'll look at the what, and then we'll look at the why.

But before I get into that, let me just clarify something else.

Mikey, bosses, supervisors, you read the passage, heard the passage, it says slaves and masters.

Why is Paul so sounding casual about something so serious?

And as Christians, we believe the Bible is inspired by God.

It's not just Paul's idea.

So what does God think about slavery?

In our context, when we hear that word, we tend to think of one form of slavery.

We think of when people are forcibly kidnapped from their homeland and conscripted to be forced laborers for others for generations.

And the Bible explicitly forbids that kind of behavior.

Exodus 21, 16, 1 Timothy 1.10.

God stands opposed to that practice.

In the Greco-Roman world, there could be a lot of reasons why someone might be a slave.

You might have lost in war and said, please spare our lives, don't take out our civilization, we'll become your slaves.

Sometimes people went into debt and they couldn't pay off their debt.

And you can't just file bankruptcy.

So at times they would go into slavery to help pay off their debt.

Slaves had varying responsibilities.

Some represented their masters in business affairs, some were tutors to their master's children.

Now, I'm not suggesting slaves in this time period had it easy.

Whether your masters were cruel or kind, regardless of whether your responsibilities were economic or agricultural or domestic, even though it was sometimes temporary rather than generational, sometimes former slaves could vote, no matter what the circumstances, at the end of the day, if even for a period of time you were owned by someone else.

And that's why the word slave is used for most of your Bibles.

Paul's not endorsing the slavery practices of the American colonies, and he's also not endorsing the institution of slavery as it was practiced in the Roman Empire.

He's got a more particular purpose.

Paul's writing to Titus, but they're writing and sharing with believers who found themselves in a position of slavery, and they're telling them this is what you need to do in the position in which you find yourself.

You need to submit to your masters.

And that brings us to the situation in which we find ourselves today.

None of you are slaves.

You might call your boss a real slave driver, but you could leave work if you have to.

Military is maybe the one category, in one sense, your property of the U.S.

government, and can't just do and leave whenever you want.

But even that's much different than biblical slavery.

So we're we're thankful for that.

But the situation we find ourselves is a situation in which many of you have supervisors.

So we want to take the principle of this passage, even though it's a different day and age, and bring it into our own lives for today.

You should submit to your supervisors.

So again, first we'll look at the what, then we'll look at the why.

The passage here, verses nine and ten, gives us two specific things not to do as we live out this life of submission.

And then it gives us two positive attitudes and approaches to take on.

The first thing it says is not to talk back.

You can find that at the end of verse number nine.

Look there in your Bibles.

Don't talk back.

This word has the idea of speaking against.

The same term has already been used once before in Titus.

If you go back to chapter 1, verse 9, it says, an elder should hold the faithful messages taught, so that he will be able both to encourage with sound teaching and to refute those who contradict it.

There's the term speaking against, talking back.

You've got an elder who's teaching Jesus Christ is truly God, he rose from the dead.

Someone else comes along and says, no, he's just a man, he didn't rise from the dead.

They're speaking against what he's saying.

Or maybe he says, You're saved by grace alone.

Some comes along and says, No, you also have to be circumcised.

They're speaking against what the teacher was saying.

Acts 28, we find many people in that passage speaking against, talking back against Christianity.

In this passage, though, Titus 2, Paul's not talking about other people, unbelievers, speaking against Christianity.

He's telling Christians who find themselves in a position of slavery, don't speak against your masters.

So I have to ask you, in the workplace, are you known as someone who's complaining and talking back?

Or as someone who joyfully submits?

When your coworkers are ripping apart the boss, do you join in that speaking against?

Or do you keep your mouth shut?

That's hard.

But it's God's word, and God's word is always good.

Don't talk back.

Second, don't steal.

That's right at the beginning of verse number 10.

You know the name Rita Crwell?

Probably many of you hadn't heard of her before.

She grew up in a small town in Illinois, and in 1983, she was appointed as the city treasurer of Dixon, Illinois, small little unknown town.

She held that position as the city treasurer for nearly 30 years, and she was praised for her work.

One of the city commissioners said she looks after every tax dollar as if it were her own.

Well, she was looking after the tax dollars so that they could become her own.

Over the course of years, she was siphoning money away from the city bank role into her own personal account.

Decades to the tune of over fifty million dollars.

Largest municipal theft in American history.

Theft can happen on a grand scale.

It can also happen on a smaller scale.

That's stealing money.

It might be commonly accepted in our world, but it shouldn't be named once among the people of God.

Paul doesn't give a lot of wiggle room here.

He doesn't say, well, if you're not really being compensated the way that you should be, it's okay to take supplies, to exaggerate, you're clock in and clock out times.

Don't steal.

And at one point, Paul tells Philemon, if he owes you, charge it to me.

It's possible Onesimus stole from his master and then fled.

But he encountered Paul and he became a Christian.

And when you become a Christian, life changes.

And Paul says, I'm sending him back, Philemon, but don't receive him as a slave.

Receive him more as a dear brother in the Lord.

The gospel changes our relationships and gives us a desire to serve with integrity.

Two things to avoid.

There's others, but this passage highlights two things to avoid.

Don't talk back and don't steal.

You can submit to your supervisors by doing those two things.

Then it gives us two positive attitudes.

We find the first one at the beginning of verse 9.

We're told that they're to be well pleasing.

Let me put that shoe on the other foot.

If you were a supervisor, and some of you are, what would it look like for your employees to be well pleasing?

Just doing the absolute bare minimum.

No, you want someone who's gonna go above and beyond.

Like David's three mighty men.

I mean, David didn't even give them a command, he just expressed a desire, and they're off, in this case, they're even risking their lives to get in this water from the spring that he wanted.

Say, well, yeah, but I mean, my boss is no David, let me tell you.

Maybe not, but ultimately we're serving a greater David.

We serve a master in heaven.

That's that's the important thing to keep in mind.

This term well-pleasing in the Bible, it's normally used to describe God's assessment of a situation or our desire to be well-pleasing in God's eyes.

So, for example, 2 Corinthians 5 9, therefore we make it our aim to be pleasing to him, that is to God.

And it pleases our heavenly master.

It's well-pleasing in his eyes when we submit to our earthly supervisors.

Last description here of what this looks like in practice.

The end of verse 10 actually mirrors the first part of verse 9.

So it begins by telling us to be well-pleasing, and then it ends by speaking of our need to demonstrate faithfulness, another angle of looking at this.

Only I left out a word.

Look at the end of verse 10.

They're to demonstrate utter faithfulness.

Or if you have the NIV this morning, it says that they're to be fully trusted.

Paul is not setting a low bar.

You shouldn't be generally reliable in your place of work, but utterly reliable.

You've seen those surveys where there's the bubbles and you have to fill it out for someone else, or are they excellent, good, fair, poor, miserable, whatever the last word is?

What would your boss bubble in for you?

Good, reliable, fair, reliable, or excellent.

Fully trustworthy.

In the story of Joseph, Joseph had a lot of reasons to rationalize.

I don't deserve to be here.

My brothers sold me into slavery.

I mean, yeah, Potiphar's giving me some promotions, but I'm still his slave.

I don't deserve this.

Hey, I I didn't approach his wife.

She's the one coming on to me.

I could have an affair and still get my work done.

My private life doesn't really affect my public life.

Lot of ways to rationalize.

But he doesn't do that.

Listen to what he says.

He refuses and says, Look to his master's wife.

With me here, my master does not concern himself with anything in his house.

And he has put all that he owns under my authority.

No one in this house is greater than I am.

Even though he was still a slave at this point, still owned by Pharaoh, he's withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife.

So how could I do this immense evil?

Utter faithfulness.

If that's the what, what about the why?

If God commands it, that's good enough.

We should take that and be ready to go and obey God's command.

But God gives us further motivation.

You find that at the end of verse number 10.

Slays are to submit so that they may adorn the teaching of God, our Savior, in everything.

We have a chance to adorn the gospel in our place of work.

We don't use that word adorn a lot.

It means to make something lovely, to make it more beautiful.

You might adorn a Christmas tree by putting ornaments and tinsel on it.

You might adorn yourself for a nice meal with certain kinds of clothes or jewelry because they want that extra sparkle.

Isaiah 61, 10.

Yes, God is supreme king and ruler.

Yes, he's creator.

Do you know him as your savior?

If you don't, drop whatever you're doing, turn from your sins, repent, and trust in him to be your savior.

Don't worry for now about how you relate to your supervisor.

You worry first about how you relate to God Almighty in heaven.

And he's our savior.

We'll look at these verses in a little more detail the next couple of weeks, but verse 13 and 14 tells us that we're waiting for the blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior.

There's the word again.

And then it describes what he did to save us.

He gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to cleanse himself for a people for his own possession.

We all come into the world as lawbreakers.

Jesus came and kept the law in our place to buy us back from the sinful judgment that we deserved, to cleanse us, to bring us forgiveness of sins.

So if you don't know him as Savior, embrace him as your Savior today.

For those of us who do know the Lord as a savior, this should be very powerful motivation for us.

Submit to your supervisors, not because they're always awesome people, not merely because it'll make life easier on you.

Submit because you want to adorn the teaching of the Savior.

You want to adorn the gospel.

How could we make the gospel more attractive?

You know, we can't improve on the actual content of the gospel, but we can live in such a way that others sit up and take notice.

I want to know more about this savior that you say is at the center of your life.

Do you see?

It can sound anticlimactic, I know, to say you adorn the gospel by submitting to your boss on Monday morning.

If I threw myself in front of a bus and saved some kids' lives, I know how that adorns the gospel, but when my boss comes in on Tuesday and says, I'm gonna need a report on the Johnson file by noon, all right.

So I'm not supposed to say, look, it's the same as what it was two weeks ago.

Why do I have to do that?

Don't talk back.

Don't steal.

Don't pretend like the report took you all morning when it took you 15 minutes.

I spend a lot of time in the church office.

Do I ever in the church office ever watch any Knicks playoff highlights?

That's between me and the Lord.

I'm not saying work yourself to death, ignore your family.

I'm not saying if your boss wants you to do 100 hours a week and kill yourself, but utter failure.

Faithfulness.

How does that adorn the gospel?

Just by getting him the report by noon that he wants, it's the same as the one last week.

I'll get to that question.

But let me address an objection first.

It's a pretty weighty one.

I didn't know where to include this.

Some of you might be visitors here today.

Thank you for coming.

Glad to have you.

Maybe your friend or your relative's been saying, come to church, come to church, and you finally said, All right, all right, I'll come to church.

And this whole time you're thinking, I thought religion was a scam, and now I still think religion is a scam.

How do you please God?

Uh obey your boss.

Oh, very convenient for the bosses.

That's a powerful objection.

But that objection doesn't address Paul.

Paul didn't have any slaves.

He was in no position to gain anything by these instructions.

Paul himself was in chains.

He was treated worse than a slave in many cases.

He's got another goal in mind.

And that objection, as powerful as it can be, that religion in general, or Christianity in particular, it's really just a tool for the oppressors to keep oppressed people under their feet.

That's all that it is.

That doesn't grapple with the cross.

The central symbol of Christianity is not a bullwhip, it's not a bank account, it's a cross.

Jesus, the Lord of glory, made himself low.

He stooped and took the form of a slave in order to save people.

And the cross shows us that we're all level when it comes to how we stand before God.

Rich, poor, everyone in between, black, white, everyone in between, popular, famous, ordinary, everyone in between, we all need a savior.

And God has come to rescue us, not to tell us to work our way back to him.

But that brings us back to that question of how does submitting to my supervisor on Wednesday or Friday, how does that adorn the teaching of the Savior?

How does that adorn the gospel?

Let me give you three ways it does that.

We'll move through these quickly.

You could think of more, I'm sure.

It first, it allows us to display the humility of Christ.

Philippians 2, adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus, who existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited.

Instead, he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity.

And when he had come as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

As the God man, as our mediator, Jesus submitted to his heavenly Father in all things.

He came submitting to his parents as a child.

Jesus lived this life of submission, but he was living it for us to earn our salvation.

Again, that term there in Philippians 2, 7, some places have servant.

That's the same word that's used here in Titus chapter 2.

Titus 2 · chapter mention

Slave.

Jesus Christ became a slave to win us salvation.

And that kind of humility is beautiful.

So don't think when you submit to your supervisor, I guess I have to let myself get run over or I might get fired.

Think instead, I get to follow in the footsteps of my Savior and show the strength of bearing up under whatever this circumstance is because of who he is.

Second, when you submit to your supervisors, you can adorn the teaching of the Savior by showcasing a realistic view of yourself.

This is what I mean by that.

One of the main reasons why people tend to chafe and complain so much against their employer is because they think they deserve a lot more.

So what if someone in your workplace comes to you and says, I don't understand why you're so pleasant.

You're undervalued, you're underpaid, you deserve more.

What if you're able to say to them, truthfully, honestly, the only thing I deserve is hell?

And Jesus rescued me from that.

And that changes everything for me.

Wow, we're all level again at the foot of the cross.

If people don't understand their need apart from Christ, they won't see their need of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Third, last way you can adorn the teaching of the Savior by submitting to your supervisors.

You reveal that your greatest treasure is Christ.

The rat race.

Or their functional God is the title and a claim that they will receive, the power they're going to get.

That's what the world runs after.

But if your greatest treasure is Christ, those aren't your number one goals.

Galatians 6 14.

As for me, I will never boast about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The world has been crucified to me through the cross and I to the world.

Philippians 3, 7 and 8.

Everything that was gained to me, I have considered to be a loss because of Christ.

More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord.

Because of him I've suffered the loss of all things, and consider them as dung that I might gain Christ and be found in him.

What if you had that same conversation with the co-worker?

And they said, You're undervalued.

And you're able to say, Well, I have what I value most, the love of God in Christ.

Whether or not I get that extra cheese on my taco, that's not what it's all about.

It's about loving Jesus Christ.

We sing a song called Jesus Messiah.

It includes these lines: He became sin who knew no sin, that we might become his righteousness.

He humbled himself and carried the cross.

All our hope is in you.

All glory to you, God.

Let's go back to Joseph.

He demonstrated utter faithfulness.

But it wasn't merely out of duty, wasn't merely in hopes of keeping his position or getting a further promotion.

Remember what he said?

How can I do this immense evil and sin against God?

That was the horizon of his vision.

It was focused on God.

And that changed everything about the circumstances of his workplace and his life.

We can do that too.

What should you do at work this week?

Submit to your supervisors.

Why?

Well, because in doing that, you adorn the teaching of the Savior.

Are there exceptions?

Yes.

The Bible gives exceptions.

Daniel didn't refrain from worshiping God.

The Hebrew midwives didn't kill the babies.

So we can think of exceptions.

Some of you are in places of work where your supervisor actually wants you to steal from other people, not from him, but from others.

False billing, reporting things that aren't needed to be done, that are done.

And you're going to have to be someone of integrity and say no in those difficult circumstances, only because you value the glory of God and don't want to do anything that's going to detract from the glory of God.

But with those exceptions, Paul was inspired to write in verse 9 people are to submit in everything.

In everything.

But what about those other Bible exceptions?

Notice the end of verse 10 says that our passion should be to adorn the teaching of our Savior in everything.

So there's a correlation there.

Christ should transform all of our lives in every way all of the time.

So we submit as much as possible, not as little as possible.

God knows the human heart.

He knows we're prone to looking for all the exceptions more and more and more.

And so he says, submit in everything.

And that's where this message hits on a category that applies to all of us, whether you're in the paid workforce or not.

So if you've been sleeping through this whole message because you don't have a supervisor, wake up for these last couple of minutes.

Slaves and masters, as we've applied it today, employees and employers, that's one example of this broader category of authority.

And the Bible cares deeply how we respond to authority.

Children, parents, wives, husbands, church members, elders, citizens, magistrates.

We've seen it before in Titus.

We'll see it more before we finish the series.

Not all of us fit into all those categories.

Not all of us are married.

For many of you, your parents have passed away.

So you can't show them the kind of honor now that you could while they were alive.

But most of us do fit into many of these categories.

And it's a way for us to show in our spheres of life how we honor the Lord who is our supreme authority.

Take care how you submit.

We submit because there's a deeper spiritual reality.

Jesus Himself said, You can't serve two masters.

Ultimately, you are going to be someone's slave at a spiritual level.

Jesus says in John chapter 8 that we come into the world as slaves of sin, slaves of the evil one.

John 8 · chapter mention

Ah, but if the Son sets you free, then you will be free indeed.

And when we come to the Lord Jesus Christ, he's a master that couldn't be any more loving, any more gracious, any more diligent to want our good.

And because Christ is our perfectly loving Master, because we belong body and soul to Him, we can submit to our earthly supervisors.

Let's pray.

Lord, we need this worked into our hearts.

We do pray today, Father, for those who find themselves in a place of supervision.

Even though our passage didn't touch on that responsibility in the same way, we pray that those in places of supervision would exercise that care and authority, not grudgingly, but lovingly and carefully.

And we pray for all of us, Lord, in every sphere of life that you've called us to, in the home, in the church, in the world, in the government, and even in the places of work, that we'd want to honor you in every way, because we are not our own.

We're bought with the price, therefore we glorify you in all that we do.

Give us glory and joy today as we contemplate the glory of our Jesus, who became a slave for us.

Give us gratitude, give us an ever growing love and affection.

Give us tongues to sing now of your sovereignty over all things, and our prayer that our eyes would continue to be fixed on you at all times.

In Jesus' name, Amen.