Sermon Tone Analysis

! The Commitment, Calling, and Conduct of God’s Slaves - Titus 1:1-3

/Preached by Pastor Phil Layton at Gold Country Baptist Church on April 27, 2008/

/ /

I want to begin by sharing with you a little story that I hope can stimulate our thinking.

It’s called “New in Town” and it’s written in verse:

 

/The first time I worshipped at their church about two months ago \\ I signed the registration card so all of them would know/

/That I had just moved into town and needed a little part \\ Of the loving concern for each other that a Christian has in his heart./

/I checked the proper boxes to indicate my age \\ My marital condition, My sex, my spiritual stage./

/No one smiled or shook my hand when the services were through \\ And Satan whispered in my ear “See, no one noticed you.”/

/But I stayed home each night that week in hopes someone would call \\ It didn’t have to be the Preacher, just any one at all/

/Who cared enough to take the time in our dear Saviour’s Name \\ To bid a stranger welcome ... But no one ever came./

/And then a thought came to my mind that I’d like to share with you \\ Why should I sit and wait for others to do what I could do?/

/So, I joined that church and here I am ... Tonight is “visitation.”

\\ We’re glad you came, We hope you’ll stay and join our congregation./

-         I think that’s a good perspective for those who have the mentality of asking what the church can do /for you/, rather than asking what /you/ can do for the church

-         We as a church do not exist primarily for you, for your preferences and desires and felt needs as a consumer of goods - we exist for the glory of God, including the worship of Him in all His worthiness and greatness; the preaching of His Word which is displaying the supremacy of Him by the exposition of His all-sufficient and all-satisfying Word

-         We do want to glorify Him by meeting the true needs of His people, and we need /your help/ to do that

-         Where we fall short (as all churches fail in various areas) we pray you will help our shortcomings by stepping up as a congregation of /contributors/ rather than mere critics and complainers of a non-constructive nature from a distance

-         Our culture is used to being spectators in sports, music, entertainment, and for many people 20-30 hours a week sitting back watching TV as a couch potato and consumer

-         That culture unfortunately spills over into the church  where we see ourselves as consumers or customers to be pleased, customers who are always right, and too many churchgoers become critical, comfortable, complacent, and calloused to Christ’s church which they see as optional

-         The excuses many give for their lack of commitment to Christ and His church are all too often self-centered and self-revealing

-         This seems to me to be a more recent phenomenon in church history.

Christians used to sing more heartily hymn lyrics like “I love thy church O Lord” and our example in loving the church is as Ephesians 5 says “*Christ loved the church*”, not because it was blameless or beautiful, but in order to make it so, in spite of its sins and shortcomings                  

-         Is Jesus impressed when we say we love Him but we don’t love His bride, when we look down on His bride, talk down on His bride, bring down His wife with our gossip, etc.?

-         It’s not just our bad attitudes and actions that can hurt the church, it can also be our lack of action, our lackadaisical attitude, our lacking fellowship, our laziness, our lethargy

-         If you’re truly saved this morning, I can say for certain that God did not save you just to sit around, to settle in your sin, or to sink too comfortably in your spectator chair, or even just to soak in truth as mere knowledge - you’re not saved to stagnate or to solidify in self-focus

-         God saved you to /serve/, not to be served, but to serve and give your life for others.

I say that on the authority of our Savior Himself who said in Mark 10:45 “*even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many*”

-         And right before Jesus said that in Mark 10, He said “*whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant *[diakonos]*, and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be slave of all *[doulos]*” *(Mark 10:43-44)

-         If you are saved, you are saved to serve as a slave of the Lord.

Not just a /diakonos /(servant) but a /doulos /(slave).

We are saved to serve as slaves of our loving Lord.

That is not only what we are to do, that is fundamentally who we are

 

That all brings us back to the intro of Titus 1: *Paul, a slave of God*

 

This morning I want to apply and pick up where we left off last time by looking in Titus 1:1-3 at Commitments of a Slave of God.

 

*#1 – Committed to God’s Mastery*

 

Those first five words of Paul when understood in their fullness - if we truly seek to think of ourselves the way Paul did – this first truth alone can almost single-handedly remedy so many of the problems in our church mentalities and thinking and personal lives.

The original language Paul uses here is the word of someone who is a slave committed to the mastery of His Lord.

That’s how Paul saw himself, and that’s how we all must see ourselves first and foremost.

Not as autonomous individuals who need to be pleased, but in the words of Luke 17 as merely unworthy slaves simply doing our duty which is to please our Master, not our self.

If your Bible reads “servant” in verse 1, that’s not accurate or as literal or helpful.

This is not any of the six Greek words that can be translated “servant.”

The word is “slave” according to all the ancient Greek authorities and sources as I sought to show you extensively a couple weeks ago.

Unfortunately the lack of this slave concept being clearly conveyed in many of the older English Bibles (as well as many of the new ones) has unwittingly contributed to some of the problems in the church that I have been mentioning.

If we miss this truth, we’ll miss much of what our Lord requires and much of what it means when we call Him Lord.

I’m using the word “Master” for this first point, which is what the word “Lord” means, which to the original readers would immediately bring up the clear concept that He owns us as slaves.

Titus 2:9-10 (NASB95) 9 /Urge /bondslaves [same word as in Titus 1:1] to be subject to their own masters in everything, to be well-pleasing, not argumentative, 10 not pilfering, but showing all good faith so that they will adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in every respect.

There is no question that Paul is addressing literal “slaves” here in the Roman economy of slavery, and most of the modern translations accurately translate it here as slave.

Notice what Paul says is the duty of slaves to their master in light of how Paul refers to himself in verse 1 under his Master, his loving Lord.

If you weren’t here 2 weeks ago, you need to get the copy of that CD and listen to it, because that may be one of the most important messages and truths that will ever come from this pulpit for our generation.

Just to summarize and remind you – this word in Titus 1:1 is:

-         NOT a servant who is a volunteer or an employee or someone who works as a matter of option or choice

-         NOT someone who is paid, but someone /paid for, owned by a Master whom he calls “Lord”/

-         As a result, the NT says we are not our own, we have been bought with a price, we were ransomed from the slave market of sin, not so that we are free from authority to do our own thing, but so that we can be free to live for Christ as God intended, living as a bond-slave of the loving Lord who purchased us with His own precious blood

-         As a result of this price being paid and our new owner, our body is not ours, we are not free to do whatever we want, we must do what our Master wants

-         We are exclusively owned, no rights of our own

-         No independent living apart from the Master’s direction

-         Constantly available to the Master’s will, not our own

-         We are to be singularly devoted in obedience

-         completely dependent upon their Master for everything (provision, protection, etc.)

-         knowing that discipline and reward come from Him

-         and your only goal in life is to please your Master

-         PTL we have a wonderful Master, but He’s still our Master

 

That’s all review but look back at Titus 1:1 as Paul continues: *“Paul a slave of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ”*

* *

A commitment to God’s mastery involves whatever God calls us to do, and in Paul’s case that was to be an apostle, which literally means “a sent one.”

If “slave” indicates Paul’s /humility/, we might say that “apostle” emphasizes his /responsibility/ and the calling given to him by authority of the Master.

As both slave and apostle, Paul identifies himself with a lowly servile term but also with a high calling and responsibility as a representative or ambassador or messenger for his King.

The word “apostle” referred to the authorized representatives or spokesmen of Christ for His church.

This was not a term used of every Christian like “slave” was, this was one of the gifts or offices God gave along with NT prophets to be the foundation of the early church (Eph.

2:20)[1]

There is an authority that comes when an apostle speaks for His King, but the authority is not in the representative, it comes from whom he represents.

The authority comes from the sender, not the sent one who is simply a lowly slave obeying His master.

St.

Paul would never want churches named after him, or schools, or hospitals, or a city in Minnesota, or cathedrals, basilicas in Rome.

He called himself “the least of all the saints” (Eph.

3:8)

Listen to what he says in 1 Corinthians 15:9 “For I am the least of the apostles, and not fit [ESV ‘unworthy’] to be called an apostle”

 

1 Corinthians 3:4-7 (NASB95) \\ 4 For when one says, “I am of Paul,” and another, “I am of Apollos,” are you not /mere /men? 5 What then is Apollos?

And what is Paul?

Servants through whom you believed, even as the Lord gave /opportunity /to each one.

6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth.

7 So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth.

 

1 Corinthians 3:23-4:1 (NASB95) \\ 23 and *you belong to Christ* [*that’s slave language]*; and Christ belongs to God. 1 Let a man regard us in this manner, as *servants* of Christ

 

That word translated “servant” there in some of your Bibles or “ministers” in the KJV is not the word normally translated “minister” or “servant” but was actually a more specific word for a type of slave, as my former pastor helped me see:

* *

*‘Servants* (/hupēretēs/) means literally, “under rowers,” originally indicating the lowest galley slaves, the ones rowing on the bottom tier of a ship.

They were the most menial, unenvied, and despised of slaves.

From that meaning the term came to refer to subordinates of any sort, to those under the authority of another.

Christian ministers are first and above all else *servants of Christ*.

In everything they are subordinate and subject to Him.

They are called to serve men in Christ’s name; but they cannot serve men rightly unless they serve their Lord rightly.

And they cannot serve Him rightly unless they see themselves rightly: as His under-slaves, His menial servants … [Paul used the verb form of /doulos /when he says we like slaves are to be “serving” - /douleo/] “the Lord with all humility” (Acts 20:19).

Then, and only then, can he best serve people.

Paul, though an apostle, considered himself to be a /hupēretēs/, a galley slave, of his Lord, and he wanted everyone else to consider him, and all of God’s ministers, as that.

Galley slaves were not exalted one above the other.

They had a common rank, the lowest.

They had the hardest labor, the cruelest punishment, the least appreciation, and in general the most hopeless existence of all slaves.[2]

And Paul says “let a man regard us in that manner” – using this word for the lowest level galley slave under-rower at the very bottom of the slave ship.

If that doesn’t do much for your self-esteem – good, because it’s not supposed to.

We are to see ourselves as the lowest of the low, yet servants of the Most High God.

There’s a dignity in Christ, but it’s not anything inherent in us – the nobility and honor is only for the One we serve, who is not like the abusive or harsh human slave-owners.

Our Lord is a loving Lord, and a merciful Master who graciously keeps our pride down with this image for our good and His glory.

We’re lowly unworthy third-level galley slaves just pulling our oar in service of the Lord of Lords in wherever He calls us to serve, whether it’s a high public calling like Paul or not.

Whatever our merciful Master calls us to do, the only question is whether or not we will be good and faithful slaves, but we are His slaves, beloved.