A Christian at work, a Christian in the job, a Christian just being a Christian, submissive, excellent, respectful, honest, loyal, makes God look good, makes Him attractive. Welcome to Grace To You with John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. There's a famous story about Alexander the Great. He decided to pardon a young soldier for fleeing in battle, a rare act of mercy. But then Alexander asked the man his name and was told that it too was Alexander. Alexander the Great then grabbed the soldier, threw him to the ground and said, young man, either change your ways or change your name.
That's a simple story with a powerful point. You represent the one whose name you carry. And if you're a Christian, you bear God's name. So how do you make sure you're honoring God and not hurting his reputation, especially where you work?
Consider that today as John MacArthur continues his series, Revolutionary Living in a Dark Culture. Here's John with the lesson. Take your Bible, if you will, and open it to Titus 2. And we're looking at chapter 2 which deals with the character of a healthy church. I want you to know that unbelievers have been exposed to the hypocrisy of Christianity for a long, long time.
Not just today. Way back in Paul's day, there were people going around saying they knew God and denying Him by their lives. You see, the issue here is evangelistic. The whole point here is summed up in three statements, one at the end of verse 5, that the Word of God may not be dishonored, the second at the end of verse 8, that the opponent may be put to shame having nothing bad to say about us, and the last at the end of verse 10, that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior and ever respect.
All three of them are using the Greek particle hina which indicates a purpose clause. The purpose of your living this way is that the Word of God may not be dishonored, that the opponents may be shamed and silenced, and that those who are watching us may indeed see that we have a saving God, a God who delivers people from sin. Now in the strategy, as it develops in chapter 2, Paul works his way through the family, doesn't he? The older members of the family and the younger members of the family have responsibility to live in ways that are going to have evangelistic impact. And now we come to the last category in the households of ancient times, slaves, verses 9 and 10. And he says, regarding them, urge bond slaves to be subject to their own masters in everything, to be well pleasing, not argumentative, not pilfering, but showing all good faith.
And here's the reason, in order that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in every respect. Families in ancient times were usually comprised of the older and the younger, and that would include very frequently grandparents and sometimes even aunts and uncles. And the younger would be parents, children, cousins, whoever else might have been in a very large and extended household. But also as a part of the ancient household were the slaves, or the servants.
The word is doulois, literally refers to one who is under submission, under bondage. We're all very aware of the fact that the Roman Empire basically depended upon slaves for all of its labor. They were a very essential part of life in ancient times.
They made up the labor force of the Roman world. Now the issue in this passage is not addressing the condition of slavery. It is not discussing what kind of situation the slaves might have been in. It simply says that if you are one, you have an obligation to so live your life as to draw attention to the saving power of God demonstrated through you. And then the Lord and the apostles used slavery as a motif for spiritual instruction by likening the Christian who belongs to Christ and serves Him as a slave, and therefore dignified and elevated and exalted one who serves. And so there is no concern here in this text about revolution or rebellion or equal rights or equal freedoms, but rather the responsibility that if you are an employee and you have someone over you, you are to conduct yourself in such a way that makes very evident that your life has seen the transforming power of God.
Now let's go back to Titus. In this text, there are five character qualities given, five character qualities given that should mark every Christian employee. And they are directly related to your evangelistic impact.
Quality number one, submission...submission. Verse 9, urge bond slaves to be subject to their own masters in everything. Now remember, Ephesians 6 said, be obedient with fear and trembling in the sincerity of your heart, not with eye service as men pleasers, but as slaves doing the will of God. Colossians 3, 22 said the same thing. And here it's summed up, be submissive.
The Greek word is hupotaso, it is often used as a military term. It means to get into rank, to fall in, to get in line, to line up under. It's a reflexive here. Line yourselves up under the authority who's over you.
Get in line, don't be out of line. Submission like this, of course, is the key to the order in all of social structure. Certainly in the matter of marriage you have it, where the wife is to submit herself to her husband as to the Lord. Certainly in the family you have it, where the children are submitting to the authority of their parents.
Certainly in the government you have it, where we as people, citizens, are to honor the King and all those who are in authority over us and to realize the powers that be are ordained of God. And so it is as well in the economic environment that wherever there is work going on, those who are the employees are to be submissive to those who are over them. The term masters here is despotes from which we get despot, usually associated with somebody who has absolute authority and that is its Greek intention.
It means a Lord, one who has absolute authority. The current trend towards strikes and emphasizing rights, employee rights, non-submission, non-compliance paralyzes society, paralyzes the economy and dishonors God. He says, in all things, in everything, be subject to your own master, even if he happens to be a very difficult person, even if he is a perverse person. First Peter 2.18 says, even if he is unreasonable, we are to be in submission. That submission we learn from Colossians 3.22 and from Ephesians 6 is to be with the right attitude, fear and trembling, with the right devotion, sincerity of heart, with the right diligence as pleasing God and not men.
And so it begins with submission. You want to have an evangelistic impact, you may be saying, well I'm not a very good communicator, I'm not very good at witnessing, I'm not very bold, I don't know how to get my testimony out on my job, they won't let me say much, they won't let me pass out anything. The point is, if you just live the way God asks you to live in your job environment, you will manifest a transformed life which points back to the transformer who is God.
Secondly, the second character quality of an employee is excellence...excellence. In verse 9 he says, you are to be subject to your own masters in everything, and then he adds to be well pleasing...to be well pleasing. In other words, you are seeking to please the one in authority over you. The word for well pleasing is an interesting word, it is used only by Paul in the New Testament with one exception, Hebrews 13 21. And every single time Paul uses it, listen to this, it always means to be well pleasing to God. It always means to be well pleasing to God. So let's assume that that's what it means here. And it's echoing Ephesians 6 5, you do your work as to Christ, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that whatever good thing each one does, you'll receive back from the Lord.
Same thing was in Colossians 3 23. So you do it excellently. You might go to work and attain a certain level of excellence for the sake of your promotion, your income, the security of your job to please your boss, but what kind of work would you do if the Lord Jesus Christ Himself were your employer? Well He is, that's the point. Give Him complete satisfaction. I remember a reporter many years ago saying to me, for whom do you prepare your sermons?
Newspapers are written basically for the eighth grade level. And he was saying, for whom do you prepare your sermons? And I said very honestly, for God. Whatever service I render, whatever duty I have to a board of elders, whatever obligation in my work I have to a church, whatever responsibility I have to the larger body of Christ is very minimal in terms of measuring it against the responsibility I have to God. Paul said in Acts 20, serving the Lord, serving the Lord with all humility.
And you're the same. Your task is no different in the sense that it has as its ultimate goal to be excellent before God. Now your boss may have a, and certainly does have a lot lower standard than God does, and if you begin to operate on a divine standard, you'll overwhelm the guy or lady, whoever it might be. Do you understand what I'm saying in the context of the big picture? What I'm saying to you is that the very purpose of the church in evangelization of the lost is all bound up in this.
There's a third character quality that he notes here. It needs only a brief comment, as do the others. At the end of verse 9, he says, you're not to be argumentative, antilegantas, lego means to speak, anti is against, as it is in the English, often used as a prefix. Speak against, the point being that you're not to speak against, you're not to put it in the vernacular, mouth off, talk back, argue, rebel, oppose any requirement.
You are to be compliant. The word is translated a number of times in its uses in the New Testament, opposed. It is sometimes translated obstinate.
That's what it means. It has the idea of speaking back, resisting, thwarting, rejecting, disobeying, frankly a very common fault among employees. You don't like what they told you to do, so you don't do it. You don't like what they told you to do, so you do it half-heartedly so that it will fail and then they'll agree with you that you shouldn't have done it in the first place. You resist, you talk back. Now if there's a proper forum for discussion, use it. If there's a proper dialogue structure in which you can share your ideas and insights and your wisdom, do it. But once the decision is made and the command is given, you are to comply with that with absolute and complete commitment.
Jude translates a cognate of this word by the word rebellion. There is no place for rebelling against authority. There is no place for questioning it.
There's no place for undermining it. The Christian in the workplace is to be known for respect for authority. And when the authority speaks, you do it. Now obviously if they ask you to do something that goes against the Scriptures and against the Word of God, you cannot do it. But apart from that, you must comply no matter whether you believe it to be wise or foolish or whether it is to be more than you should be responsible to do, more than you can do, make your best effort nonetheless.
There's a fourth character quality, honesty. Verse 10, this is very interesting, not pilfering, or as the old English word says it, peculating. You never hear that word anymore, try that on your friends, it will amaze them. It basically means to separate. It means to take something from here and lay it over here. It came to mean embezzlement, taking out of the till, the petty cash, something for you. Taking out of the supplies more than you're supposed to use and taking it home.
It means to separate something out and lay it aside. It was a euphemism for quiet, stealthy, thievery. Now remember, all the trades and all the arts and all the professions in ancient times were in the hands of slaves, just like businesses are today.
I mean, they're our bosses, but the bosses are not handling usually the stuff that makes the operation work. And as in ancient times, every conceivable mode of trickery was used. That's where that old expression, he knew the tricks of the trade came from. Those ancient trades developed skilled thieves who knew every angle to steal, to embezzle.
We have it today, the misappropriation of money, petty, theft, falsifying expense reports, stealing goods, juggling records. The same word, by the way, is translated in Acts 5, 2 and 3 in regard to Ananias and Sapphira that they held back. You remember they sold a piece of ground and said, we're going to give it all to the Lord, but they embezzled a little.
They held it back. You're not to do that. You can be in there talking about Jesus all the time and humming hymns during your break and looking spiritual and reading Christian books and if somebody finds out you've been taking money out of the till, or you've been doing your private correspondence at the expense of the company, or you've been raising their phone bill for your own private use, or you've been fooling with the books and stealing money, it won't matter what you said, they will conclude that your God is not a God who transforms sinners into saints. And thus God is dishonored. You see, everywhere we are as Christians, beloved, everywhere we are, we are for the purpose of evangelism.
That's why we're there. Thou shalt not steal is basic as a moral code. But how much more essential is it in the life of one who is there for the very purpose of evangelization?
Christian worker will be useful in making sure the Word of God is not dishonored and that the opponents are put to shame having nothing bad to say about Christians and that the doctrine of God is ordained in every respect when they are submissive, excellent, respectful, honest, and one last one, loyalty. The fifth character, quality, is loyalty, and he says that in verse 10 in these simple words, but showing all good faith. The word faith, piston, is better translated here, faithfulness. That means trustworthiness, reliability, and loyalty. I love the word loyalty and very rarely do I ever hear anybody use it.
You know, we used to talk about that when we were athletes. I participated in athletics in a time when loyalty was everything, in a time when the team was the issue and not the individual. And there was a time when there was loyalty, loyalty to even a company, loyalty to somebody that you worked for or alongside, loyalty to a marriage partner, loyalty to a friend. I don't think anybody talks about loyalty.
I don't think they know what it means anymore with everybody out for himself. That little phrase in verse 10, showing all good faithfulness, needs to be understood. The word showing, the Greek verb endegnome, means to give ample evidence, to give ample evidence. Paul uses this word always in the sense of providing evidence.
Give evidence that you can be trusted, that you are loyal, that you are faithful. What a marvelous virtue that is. How are we going to reach our society? And our society is in deep trouble, isn't it? We need salvation. We need a God-given powerful sweeping of the salvation message across this country. But my fear is, even if it swept across this country, people wouldn't believe it because of what they see in Christians.
Isn't it sad? And then what's going to make anybody believe that ours is a saving God who turns sinners into saints? Now all of these virtues have a noble purpose. As you are submissive, excellent, respectful, honest and loyal, here's what's going to happen at the end of verse 10. You will adorn the doctrine of God our Savior and ever respect.
You're going to make our God who is the saving God attractive. Design is the word cosmeo, we get cosmetics out of it. It's a word basically that means order. It's used of arranging something, putting something in proper order, symmetry, beauty. Cosmetics are designed to make one beautiful.
Here it also could be used in the sense that it was often used in ancient times in the arranging of jewels in a setting, a large brooch or necklace or ring, or a bejeweled crown with beautiful, magnificent jewelry arranged in wonderful symmetry and order so that it became wonderfully attractive. A Christian at work, a Christian in the job, a Christian just being a Christian, submissive, excellent, respectful, honest, loyal makes God look good, makes Him attractive. It's going to confront sinners with the ugliness of who they are, isn't it? By contrast. And when you say our God is a saving God, they're going to say, well, you are different.
You...you're sure different. That's how we have to live if we're going to be effective because people are watching us and they're concluding that there's something wonderfully attractive about us, or that we say we know God, but we deny it. And that allows them to dishonor the Bible by discrediting it, to speak against us and be justified in doing it, and to look at God and say, I don't see anything particularly attractive about Him. God is so continually dishonored, is He not? How can we counter it? Not by what we say, but by what we are. Our Father, our prayer is that we might adorn the teaching about You.
In every respect with the lowliest of our duties and the loftiest, that sinners might know that You're a saving God who saves people from sin and makes them into saints. We're so grieved that Your name has been so dishonored. There's no way that we can capture the media somehow and reverse the impact. It's too widespread.
Wouldn't do any good to buy billboards. We have to live the life and to demonstrate what true Christianity is. We have to show everyone around us at work that You're a saving, transforming God. We have to let our light shine so that men in seeing our good works will glorify You. We have to be lights holding forth the Word of life in a crooked and perverse and dark generation. We have to so live in the front of the pagans that when they see our good works, they're going to glorify You in the day when Your Son comes. Help us, Lord, tomorrow when we go to work to live this way. We know that if the older men and the older women and the younger women and the younger men and all the employees are what they ought to be in this world, the power of the gospel will be undeniable. May we never, ever be described as those who say they know God, but deny Him by their deeds and are detestable and worthless. Lord God, help us to be what You want us to be, that we might reach many who will see how beautiful, how magnificent You are and be drawn to You because they see You in us. We ask this for every life, in Christ's name, amen.
That's John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. The title of his study here on Grace to You is Revolutionary Living in a Dark Culture. In the closing minutes, John, you said that we as Christians need to live in such a way that critics of Christianity are disgraced when they attack us, because their attacks are exposed as lies.
In other words, don't give the critics any legitimate ammunition. That's a word of counsel that the average Christian ought to take more seriously. Our testimony to a hostile world is vital, isn't it?
It is vital, obviously. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. That's a biblical command from the Lord Himself. But when we live in a hostile society, we can be caught sort of returning that hostility. We can be caught rather than treating the hostile rejectors of the gospel as the mission field to be reached, to treat them as the enemy to be attacked. That's the danger of mixing politics with theology.
As we close this series, I hope you have found it practical, its title has been Revolutionary Living in a Dark Culture, and it's come out of Titus chapter 2. Without a doubt, it's during the darkest of times that truly Christian living shines brightest. And no matter how much the culture offends us, assaults us, attacks us, we never are permitted to have hostility toward them. They're hostile toward us. We're compassionate, patient, loving, and faithful to live Christlike lives before them and present the saving truth of the gospel. Even in the most hostile environment, our light, the light of Christ, should shine brightly, and we should return to our enemies love.
You remember Jesus said, if you love your enemies, you're like God, your Father. This series has provided encouragement for older believers, young believers, an in-depth look at feminism's ancient roots, its attack on God's plan for the family. We've talked about a lot of things, principles in this study that will strengthen your testimony before unbelievers, and really develop the kind of revolutionary life God has called you to live.
The series again, Revolutionary Living in a Dark Culture. And whether you want the MP3s or the transcripts or both, they're available free of charge. So take advantage and download this free material and really own these biblical truths about living unashamedly for Christ in this vital role He has designed for all believers. Yes, friend, if you've wondered what it means to be in the world but not of it, be sure to download John's study, Revolutionary Living in a Dark Culture, when you contact us today. Our web address is gty.org.
And keep in mind that the Revolutionary Living in a Dark Culture series contains material that we don't have time to air on the radio. So download all six messages from this study for free at gty.org. Transcripts of those sermons are also available free of charge. And I encourage you to let us know how you're benefiting from John's verse-by-verse teaching if a specific radio study has encouraged you or perhaps it's the study John just wrapped up.
We'd love to hear about that. Email is a great way to reach us. Our address is letters at gty.org. Once more, that's letters at gty.org. And if you prefer regular mail, you can write to Grace to You, P.O.
Box 4000, Panorama City, California, 91412. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for making this broadcast part of your day. Be back tomorrow for a time of Bible questions and answers with John and his church family in Southern California. Perhaps he'll answer a question you've wondered about as you've studied God's Word. Take another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time, on Grace to You.
