Extraordinary Ordinary

Welcome Summit Church at our campus locations across the Triangle. And for the first time ever, I'm pleased to be able to welcome the Blue Ridge campus meeting on Sunday morning. They have been meeting in the afternoons up until now, but this is the first weekend that they are in their new place, so to speak, on Sunday morning. And so at all of our campuses, can we put our hands together and welcome them this weekend?

To college students at all of our campuses, let me say that one of the most important parts of your college life is your family. One of the most important parts of your college experience, we believe, is figuring out your role in God's kingdom. And so we have developed these things that we call Go Now initiatives to help acquaint you with really what the mission of God is in the world and how you can discover your part in it, whether you're called to ministry or whether you're called to go into the so-called secular workforce. And so we ask you to give one summer to do types of internships and mission trips and classes, and then the first two years after you graduate to serve on one of our mission projects around the world. It's called the City Project.

It really is an awesome thing. We do seminary level classes in the morning that myself and other pastors and people in the community teach. We have a couple of mission trips that go around the world that you get to be a part of. Plus, you get to lead out in ministry right here in our city, here through the ministries of our church.

If you are a college student, I want to challenge you to give this summer to missions. The reason we are bringing this up now is because the deadline for applications for all of our Go Now opportunities, including the City Project, is February 1st. You say, well, if it's February 1st, why are you just telling us about it now? Because you would not have done anything with it, had we told you a few months ago. We know how you roll. So we're telling you now, you got three or four weeks. If you want an application or you just want to have questions, if on the way out this weekend, you will go by our First Steps, excuse me, our Next Steps area at any of our campuses, they could answer all your questions, or you can just go to summitrdu.com, and get all your information there. To students who are not a part of our church, but listening by podcast, this is not something that we do just for students in our church.

We open it up to really anybody. So there, now you know. If you got your Bible, if you would take it out right now and open it to the book of Titus chapter two. Titus chapter two, we are in the second week of a short series that we're doing through the book of Titus called Everyday Theology. If you missed the first week, it's not like the serial podcast where you will be lost if you didn't hear the first week, but you could go back and you could listen to it.

Online for free, all of our messages are there and resources are there for free. So you should check that out if you want to. As you're turning there, I will tell you that last season I had the opportunity to coach a four and five year old soccer team. You say, why did you coach a four and five year old soccer team? Because God in his sovereignty wanted to teach me more patience.

And that is the means he did that. Plus I wanted to get to know some, I wanted to spend more time with my son. That was the main reason, but I also wanted to be able to interact with people outside of the church.

The church staff is really sick of me sharing the gospel with them. And so they told me to get to know some new people. Anyway, if you have ever been to a three, four, five year old soccer game, and I put that in air quotes, it is a mess.

I mean, an absolute mess. Essentially, you have got a dozen kids swarming around the ball, all kicking frantically like a blender made out of legs or something. There's always the odd kid that is standing in the field somewhere zoning out, counting the clouds or tracking the movements of an ant. That is usually my kid.

The Labrador retrievers happily running around in a pack, all barking and excited about nothing. When you coach four year olds, one of the things if you're going to do that, you've got to resolve yourself to is you're not going to be coming up with plays that they're going to run. You've basically got three things that you're trying to teach them for the whole season, other than don't bite each other.

Why that one is not obvious, I don't know, but somebody has to hear that. But here are the three things you're trying to teach them. Number one, go the right direction. So at the start of each game, and at halftime, I had them point. What goal are we trying to point to? Or what goal are we trying to score in? They all point, and somebody always gets it wrong. And it's usually my kid pointing at the other, near the other goal. And inevitably, this happened three times to us last season, where one of our kids scored in our own goal. And there's this dilemma of what you do in that moment, because they look at you so hopefully after the ball is gone and the goal with like, ah, you know, and so you just, we all cheered.

It's like way to go, you know, but you're just go the right direction. That's number one. Number two, don't walk off the field while the game's going on. I've seen more than one kid just get to the end of the field, see something interesting, and just keep going like Forrest Gump. Or there's my kid who thinks that the greatest thing in his life is that unlike his sisters, he can pee anywhere at any time. And so I'm like, where is Adam on the field?

And I noticed over the next to the woods, there's this little bare bottom standing next to the woods, just you know, relieving himself. Don't walk off the field while the game is going on. Number three, you're trying to teach them that there is such a thing as positions. They don't get that, they just want to swarm. But you're trying to explain to the little guys and girls that the game is actually more fun if they play their positions.

Plus, there's a beauty to the game, not that they'll get to that when they're five years old, but there's a beauty to the game when you play your position, and you just might actually win. The reason I share that is because that is essentially what Paul is up to here in Titus chapter two. Paul is like the coach, and in Titus two, he gives a list of specialized instructions to various groups in the church, ranging from retired people to young men, from homemakers to business leaders. And basically, he's trying to get them to do those same three things.

A, all go the same direction, the direction laid out by the gospel, B, to not leave the field early, and C, to play their positions, and to not bite each other too. You'll see that in there as well. Before we go through these instructions, however, I want you to notice how he frames these instructions. The actual specialized instructions are in verses two through nine. In verses one and two, excuse me, two through 10. In verses one and 11, he bookends them with something that is really important. In verse one, he says, you, Titus, however, must teach what is appropriate, or you could read that, a fitting response to, sound doctrine. Now, in this context, when he says sound doctrine, what's he referring to? The gospel.

That's what we talked about last week. When he says, do these things as an appropriate response to the gospel, we talked last week about how the gospel teaches us to look three directions. We look upward at the glory of the God who saved us. We look backwards at the price that he paid for our sin.

We look forward into where he's taking us and what he is making us. He said, you do these things as a response to those three visions. Then at the end of his list, verse 11, he says, for the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people.

That word for, you could read that because. Do all of these things because the grace of God has appeared. Do these things in response to the grace of God.

So on the front end and on the back end, he makes this crystal clear. Everything in our lives is to be reshaped by our experience in the gospel. Your calendar, Christianity from start to finish is essentially a response to God's grace fueled by the upward, backward and forward vision. It's kind of like if you've ever seen those scenes from V-Day, Victory Day, back in the end of World War II. You have total strangers dancing together in the streets. People from different cultures, sometimes different nationalities, hugging and kissing each other because this new victory has given their lives a whole new meaning and reality. That is the way that Paul says the gospel should function in our lives.

We are united in celebration of a great victory and because of that, all of life is going to look different. So how does that translate into everyday living? Let's start reading here in verse 10. Please understand that in giving these specific instructions, I'm not trying to stereotype or as if to say, for example, that all older men struggle with the temptations Paul is identifying here. Just that each age group brings particular temptations and that's what Paul is going after. You say, well who counts as an old man in Paul's book? In the rabbinic literature, young man was classified as anyone between the ages of 18 to 42. Yes, I just made that up and yes, I am 41 years old.

You decide what you want to do with that. What does he say exactly to the older men? Well, a lot of what he says to them, he's going to repeat to the other groups, but there's one instruction that he gives uniquely to the older men and it's there at the end of verse two, it is to endure.

Or some of your translations say be steadfast, to keep going, to not give up. And he's saying that because a temptation for older men in his day and ours is to get to the last third of their lives and start to coast. Many of them feel like they've done enough, they're tired, maybe they have made all the money they feel like they need or maybe they've just given up at this point and think I'm never really going to make a lot more money anyway. And so they start to think only about themselves, pursuing their hobbies and their interests. They're weary of giving themselves to service because they feel like they've earned it. And so they start to get grumpy and cynical, which always happens when you focus on yourself.

Paul tells this group to endure, to stay in the game. He says be self-controlled. In other words, don't think about your needs, second your desires to the needs of the church and the next generation. Your accomplishment in life should not be a pile of money you leave in a bank account. Your accomplishment should be seeing the kingdom of God thrive in the next generation. So don't give the last years of your life to fish or play golf or collect toys.

Give it to the kingdom of God. Be sound in faith, he said. In other words, don't get cynical.

I still understand all the young people, they're just so messed up and they're giving away our country and the world's all going to hell. Paul said God's promises have not ceased to be true. God resurrected Jesus from the dead.

That means that God has a plan he is pursuing in the world and just as he resurrected Jesus from the dead, he is not going to let his plan falter and it is as alive in this generation and the next generation as it was in the 1950s. Be temperate, he says. Be temperate. Don't give yourself excessively to numbing things like alcohol.

Abusing alcohol is for people who feel no purpose in life but you, you've got something to keep living for. Even if you are lying in a rest home, you are still part of the greatest mission on earth and if nothing else, from your hospital bed, you can be a prayer warrior for that. Don't ever stop, he says. Don't ever let up because the mission goes on.

Look forward. Great example of this is Caleb. Caleb is an old man in the Bible who was one of the original 12 spies that during the exodus, they sent out the spy at the promised land. 10 of the spies come back and say the land's too big. Who cares what God says? The warriors are too mighty. We'll never conquer it. There were two spies, Joshua and Caleb, who said no, I know the giants are big but God is able.

Let's go into the land. Unfortunately, the children of Israel listen to the 10 spies so they wander in the wilderness for 40 years. During that 40 years, every single person in Israel, including Moses, dies. The only two people out of that generation that make it are Joshua and Caleb. So, Joshua and Caleb are the oldest men in Israel. They cross the Jordan River and the first thing they encounter after Jericho is this huge mountain, this huge mountain that has all these mighty warriors living in it and 86 year old Caleb says, that's my mountain right there.

And he takes his walker and he gets his army and he goes up and he conquers that mountain. What you're seeing is a picture of a guy who understands the promises of God have not expired and they are as real at 86 years old as they were when I was 25. And what God is saying to many of us, many of you, listen, is that we have even more of a reason to understand in the steadfastness of God's promise than Caleb did because the resurrection of Jesus ensures us that nothing we do for his kingdom will ever be wasted. We are building a kingdom that is destined to win and one that will last forever.

So, Jesus said every cup of cold water given in my name will have its effect. I will tell you, Summit Church, listen, we need more older men playing that role in this church. Spence Shelton, who is planting our church out of our church, he's planting a church in Charlotte later this year, told me about a man who has joined his team who is 83 years old. The man says, I've been a part of three church plants in my life and I think I got time for a couple more.

That is a modern day Caleb. Or I think of Sam James who preached at our church here last fall. Sam James is 82 years old. He planted this church in 1962 as the only church in the United States. Sam James, after planting the church, went to Vietnam for 40 years where he served as a missionary. The first time that he preached at the church when I was pastor was last fall. And so we have five services.

It looks different than what he did in 1962. So I called him up and said, hey, I understand. I appreciate you being here. Preaching five services is hard. I'm going to tell you, by the time I get to that fourth and fifth service, which is the fourth one, by the way, I pretty much hate everybody.

And I'm just trying to get through it. So why don't you preach once on Saturday, once on Sunday, and then we'll just show videos of the rest. He said to me, young man, I will be preaching all five services.

I said, yes, sir, you will. And so that is a modern day Caleb. And God give us more men that are going to endure and not give up. Judges 5 23. Let me give a special verse to you older men. This verse is hidden in the book of Judges.

Hardly anybody knows about it, but it is so, so haunting to me. This is a family of Morose because they did not come out to help the people of God in battle. There was a family clan that when the battle was going on around them, they said, you know what, it's just we don't really need to be involved.

Our little estate is fine. And they stayed on the sidelines and God cursed them and their family. Older men do not be in the curse of Morose because you sit on the sidelines while other people surge forward. You need to lead in serving. You need to mentor younger men. You need to go on mission trips. It is not the going out of port.

It is the coming in that determines the success of a voyage. So finish strong, older man. Verse three, likewise, teach the older women to be reverent, or you could read that word respectful in the way that they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. My wife and I were in a sermon where he taught this Titus chapter two, and we have never forgotten something that he said about that word reverent or respectful. He said this, and I quote, older women can sometimes quit caring what people think. So they lose their filters about speaking their mind or talking badly about people.

Do you know anybody like this, by the way? He said, you see, when you were young, did I get an amen on that? When you were young, when you were young, he said, you have two things that you lose over age. He said, one, you have a natural physical beauty, a natural charm, and you have filters because you care about what other people think about you. He said, when those things are gone in your older age, if you have an ugly spirit, there's nothing to mask it anymore. He said, in truth, the ugly spirit was always there. It was just covered up by your physical beauty and charm and the filters you had with a sense of propriety. He said, by contrast, there are always older women who are so sweet that they seem more beautiful in their older age than they did when they were young because their beautiful character shines through. Character, you see, is always more beautiful than physical charms. And so he asked the question, what would it look like if all we could see was your spirit unmasked by your physical beauty, unmasked by your charm, and unfiltered so we saw the real spirit that is inside of you? My wife and I, want to be really sweet, gracious old people. I think Veronica is actually in pretty good shape on this, but I'm in trouble because no one ever describes me as sweet.

But that kind of stuff, it doesn't just happen. It comes by cultivating character in the gospel, and so he tells these older women, keep looking up, keep looking back at the price you paid, keep looking forward, and let those looks create sweetness in you so that you're not slanderers. Can anyone pick out any controversial phrases in that verse? Seriously, whenever someone wants to diss the Bible, this is like one of the verses of their go-to. It's like, your Bible actually says, busy at home and subject to your... It's the idea that the Bible teaches male dominance.

But is that what Paul means here? Teach them to be busy at home does not mean to be busy at home. It does not mean that young women are not to work outside the home, because there are multiple places in Scripture where we see examples of women working outside the home, and they are commended. Probably the clearest one is Proverbs 31, where the ideal woman works outside the home. So it doesn't mean that they're not supposed to work outside the home ever, it just means that, listen, there is a tendency for young women, like young men, to be lured away from God-given responsibilities by the promise of fulfillment elsewhere. God has given the mother a particular responsibility in the home that only she can play, and this often requires that she sacrifice other things she could do in order to fulfill that.

Often she cannot give as much time to her career, maybe she has to give it up altogether. And whenever you do that, there will be a sense of loss. But God says to these younger women in the Gospel, your primary goal should not be to fulfill yourself, your primary goal should be to faithfully serve me. And where that entails sacrifice, embrace it joyfully. Find your fulfillment not in self-actualization, find your fulfillment in serving me.

Look upwards and forwards. You see, this is one of those areas where the values of the world and the values of the kingdom of God stand in absolute and total contrast. A couple of years ago, Linda Hirschman was on Good Morning America, where she said that homemakers are, quote, living lesser lives. The talk show host responded, well, but many of these homemakers find their work valuable. Hirschman responded, well, I would like to see a description of their daily lives that substantiates that. It doesn't sound particularly interesting for a complicated, educated person like me. Now, let me get behind that for a minute, because she's saying it in a way that she believes leads to empowerment.

But let's actually get behind that. In her view, happiness only comes from self-actualization, being all you can be. But just ask yourself this, do you know where that mentality leads? If life and happiness and fulfillment is about self-actualization, then people who stand in the way of you becoming all you think you can be become annoyances that needed to be minimized or managed. You start to, for example, think of kids as accessories to your life, rather than people that you lay down your life for. You should just abort the baby. And if you have kids and they're messing up your career, then you should shirk your responsibilities as a mother or father, and you should just don't pay attention to them. Just kind of manage them.

If your parents in their older age become a hindrance to your career, shove them in a home and forget about them. You never really end up being a very good friend, because you are constantly sizing up how much this person or that person helps you towards your goal. And as soon as they quit helping you towards your goal, you drop that friend. Hirschman's mentality does not lead to empowerment.

It leads to using people rather than loving them. Christians, however, find their fulfillment in serving God and others in the place that he's placed them. They find their fulfillment in faithfulness, not in accomplishment, not in self-actualization, and that often, if not always, involves sacrifice.

You want to model in this? Jesus found fulfillment in washing feet, because that was what the Father had told him to do. Jesus' fulfillment never came from the importance of the task, because washing feet is not that important. Jesus found to prove his fulfillment in the approval of the Father. So if for a time in your life God has assigned you to care for children and establish a home, find your fulfillment in knowing you have been a faithful servant, not in the praise of the world or how high you climbed some ladder. Or you might say it this way, if Jesus found fulfillment in washing feet, you can find fulfillment in wiping butts for a season two, just to put it down on the bottom shelf.

Because our fulfillment at whatever stage we are, it's only in hearing, well done, good and faithful servant. Now while he says this to the young women, it applies to dads too, there are a lot of things that I can't do because of some roles that God has assigned to me. Peter Krafft, one of my favorite authors, was once asked, what's your favorite book that you have ever written? Krafft responded, the one I didn't write when my kids were young.

Now I am able to write a good bit, but Veronica and I are very clear that that only gets fitted in at the margins of my calls. And there are a lot of things that would be good for my career that we just don't do right now because of some roles that God has given me to serve. I don't go on a lot of guys trips. I don't go golfing every Saturday.

Why? Because I get one season with my children. You say, well, I'm a dad and I do all those things. You might be a bad dad.

Or at least you should ask your wife that. And I have the realization that my entertainment diet is not what it used to be. But see, that is okay because one day I want to hear by God's grace, well done, good and faithful servant. And so it's okay if for a season I'm not fulfilled by my movie choices because faithfulness is my goal.

One day I'm going to get to heaven and everything I feel like I've accomplished, God's just going to turn it off. Oh, how big was your church? Click.

Nobody cares about that anymore. Oh, how many books did you write? Click. How many people knew who you were? Click.

How much money did you make? Click. And the only lever he's going to leave on is faithfulness to him. When you get to heaven, the only accomplishment you take in there has nothing to do with the importance of the task. It has only to do with whether or not you were faithful in that task. Because moreover, Paul said, what is required of stewards, 1 Corinthians 4, 2, is only that they be found faithful.

All right. As if that phrase was not controversial enough, Paul slips in a little nugget, another nugget here for us. Urged the younger women to be subject to their husbands. Now what does that mean? Marriage is a dance in which both partners, listen to this, reenact a part of the gospel. They both look at the gospel upwards, forwards and backwards and they reenact a part of it.

Remember my analogy about positions at the beginning? They reenact part of the positions of the gospel. The husband does it by loving his wife like Christ loves the church, which means putting her wants and her needs ahead of his own to the point that he would lay down his life for her.

And by the way, if he would lay down his life for her, that certainly includes laying down his preferences about where they go to eat, where they go to vacation and what color the drapes are. She reenacts the gospel by submitting her will to her husbands. It has nothing to do with superiority. It has to do with positions we play that reenact the Trinity and the gospel. And when you do that, it's beautiful.

Why? Because the character of God is beautiful. I love how Matt Chandler says that he said a husband sacrificially loving his wife, a wife submits to her godly husband, creates a relationship that the world would never look at and say, how disgusting and archaic. A lot of people who say they are turned off by the Christian teaching on headship within marriage are attracted by the Christian marriage as they see. You see, my spiritual leadership in our home is not about me dominating my wife. In fact, if anything, if I love my wife like Christ loves the church, I will voluntarily lose nine out of 10 arguments about preference. What it means for her in response to the gospel is to yield to me a decision making responsibility that God has put on me.

I love how Kathy Keller, who is the wife of Tim Keller, who I quote here from time to time, Kathy Keller explains it this way. She says, this means in matters of disagreement, I yield to Tim the deciding vote. She says, I get a vote, he gets a vote. I yield to him the deciding vote.

And she uses this example of when they were, he was a pastor in Hopewell, Virginia, and they were entertaining the idea of planting this church in Manhattan, which would become Redeemer Presbyterian Church. She said, Tim felt like we should do it. So we agreed, I did feel like we shouldn't. So we prayed about it for a month. At the end of that month, he felt like we should. I felt like we shouldn't. He says, so finally, one night over dinner, Tim just put up his hands and said, fine, if you don't want to do it, we're not going to do it.

And she said, I said back to him, Oh, no, you don't. You are not putting this one on me. I've cast my vote, you cast your vote, God's given you the deciding vote, and this one sets on your head. And if you make a wrong decision, God's not holding me accountable for it, he's holding you accountable for it. And they went to New York City and they planted the church that became Redeemer. You see, the man laying down his life, the woman submitting her will to her husband's will, these are ways that we put the gospel on display. We demonstrate the gospel and it is beautiful.

It has nothing to do with superiority, it has to do with positions. Be self-controlled. Now, interestingly, this is the only word of exhortation that's given specifically to young men.

Be self-controlled. Ladies, younger women got like seven things. Did you notice that? The guys get one.

Why? Because if you had to boil down the Achilles heel of most young men, it is that they are ruled by their desires. They respond to their desires for pleasure, they are controlled by their desires for recognition. Guys, I'm telling you, if you got this, if you could simply learn to control your passions and desires and lust, you could be somebody that God could transform the world through.

D.L. Moody used to say it like this, the world has yet to see what God could do with one man who was so fully yielded to him that his desires did not control him, only the will of God controlled him. By contrast, the book of Proverbs says, Proverbs 25-28, a man without self-control is like a city whose walls have been broken through. Think of the imagery there.

In the old days, a wall kept out wild animals, it kept out bands of marauding soldiers, it kept out robbers, and if the walls weren't there, then a robber walks in any time they want and takes whatever they want. He says, you are like that city that any time your enemy wants, he just knocks on the door. Because he knows you have never learned to say no to what your body wants, and it becomes a way that your enemy absolutely destroys you.

J.C. Ryle says, being ruled by the desire of your body will murder your soul. We even get secular attestation to this principle. I've told you this before. About 30 years ago, there was something that was called the Stanford Marshmallow Test. You remember this?

If you've been around this church longer than two years, you definitely remember it because I say it every two years, and so this is one for the next two years. About 30 years ago, there was a group of psychologists that got together a group of five-year-olds, and they put them in a room one by one, with a psychologist, who all he did was handed them a marshmallow. And he told them, you can eat this marshmallow now, and you won't be in trouble.

However, if you can wait to eat the marshmallow for an unspecified amount of time, then when I come back, if you haven't eaten the marshmallow, I'll give you two more marshmallows, so instead of having one, you will have three. And so, then they left the room, and they kept the camera on. So, they watched these five-year-olds, and they divided them into two groups. One was, they called the marshmallow grabbers, because these guys and girls immediately, when the psychologist left the room, would pick the marshmallow up and just throw it in their mouth and eat it and be done with it, because a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, right?

Can't trust adults. And so, marshmallow grabbers. Then there were what they called the marshmallow waiters, which waited on eating the marshmallow. The psychologist said what was most interesting is watching the kids develop coping mechanisms to deal with the temptation of the marshmallows. It said that some of them would pick up the marshmallow, and they would throw it like a ball, and bounce it off the wall. They would just walk around the table and stare at the marshmallow. They said one kid actually got down and licked the wood beside the marshmallow, as if the flavor had transmogrified into the wood. They said, but the most fascinating thing was we tracked these kids for 20 years after this, and we have never seen one characteristic that so dramatically determined the success of somebody in life as this one characteristic of whether or not you could wait. They said the kids that were the marshmallow waiters were not only more self-controlled, they were more emotionally adjusted.

They had better relationships, and get this, they scored an average of 210 points higher on the SAT. This one factor, they said, determines the success of a human being. If it's true in the secular world, you understand that with God, if you learn to say no to your desires, that becomes the secret of your success. And how do you do that, Paul says?

You do that, he says, verse 11, by the grace of God. That's what teaches you to say no to ungodliness and worldly lust. Guys, when you have the impulse, the desire, when you start to fantasize about a girl's body, what Paul says is, why don't you think about Jesus' body that was beaten and sliced open for you?

When you think about her naked body, why don't you replace that image with another image, and that is the image of Jesus' naked body hanging on a cross with two-inch nails in his head, so that he could deliver you from worldly lust. And as you behold the grace of God, and as you say yes to the grace of God, you'll learn to say no to the desires of your body. Verse nine, bondservants are to be submissive to their own masters in everything. They are to be well pleasing, not argumentative, not pilfering.

Pilfering means you just take more than you do. But showing all good faith so that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our savior. He's now talking to the working class, you that are in the workforce. He says your work should put your hope in and love for God on display. Now I've told you before, when it comes to being Christian in work, people have all these crazy ideas. What does it mean to be Christian in work? And people think, oh, you know, I have told you, it means you open up a coffee house called Jehovah Java, or Hebrews, you know, or one of my favorites, St. Arbuck's, like, you know, Starbucks, right? That's what it means to be Christian in business. Yeah, if you want to do that, that's fine.

But it's probably not fine. But you know, if you do that, Paul says, no, no, the way that you worship God at work has to do with four attitudes that appear in your work. This is what it means to be Christian at work.

I'm going to use different words than he did, but they're the same things. Letter A, integrity. You don't pilfer.

You don't ever cheat even when you can get away with it because God sees even when nobody else does. You work for a different master than everybody else, not your boss, not your customer. You work for God.

Letter B, excellence. You're not just doing the minimum required to get by. You're trying to bless your employer. You're trying to bless the people you work for. You're trying to bless God.

I've told you, C.S. Lewis had that great thing in Mere Christianity where he talked about discoverers, as they discovered new continents would come into a valley that no human eye had ever seen before. He said there in those valley, they would find the most beautiful flowers never be held by human eyes that had existed for thousands of years, and nobody had ever seen it. He said, was all that beauty wasted? No human eye ever saw that beauty. And Lewis said, no, of course, it wasn't wasted because God saw it. God creates beauty first and foremost for himself.

And even when nobody else sees it, he sees it. And then Lewis says, you apply that to your work. Your work is first and foremost done as beautiful for God, even when nobody else sees it, even when you can get away with it because it's an offering to God. Here's a question for you that are in the workforce.

Are you doing the minimum required to get by? Or are you trying to bless your employers and those you work for and to glorify God? Letter C, servanthood. Servanthood. People who understand faith in the workplace see their work as an act of service toward other people.

All throughout this letter, Paul is going to talk about good works and working for the common good. Christians understand that when they work, they are performing a God-given function to bless other people. You see, God created the world in a raw material state, and he put men and women here as co-creators. We are to take the raw materials of the earth and develop them for the blessing of humans and the glory of God. So when an artist takes raw materials of color and paints, he is taking raw materials and doing things that bless. Same thing for the architect or the teacher or the lawyer. They're taking raw materials and blessing humans. He says, you will see your work as an act of service and you will use it to do good.

Letter D, hope. For a believer, their work does not define them, which leads them not to take themselves too seriously or cheat to get ahead, either themselves or their families. Why? Because their work is just not their identity. Now, absent of you of God, it always becomes your identity, doesn't it? I mean, in our society, it's the second question you ask. What's your name?

What do you do? Is something that important? You figure out a way to phrase it so it sounds important. Because your personal worth is tied to your job. Paul says that's never going to be true for a Christian.

Their worth is not tied. Their identity is not tied to what they do. It's tied to who they belong to, and because they are a servant of God. When you do those four things, you will, verse 10, adorn the doctrine of God our Savior. You want to know how to be a good witness to people in the workplace?

That's it. I saw a list the other day of, quote, ways, 100 ways to share your faith in the workplace. Some of them were okay, but on this list were a lot of things like, number 61, put up a sign that says ask us about our exchange policy. When customers ask, tell them about your exchange policy, but then ask if they would like to hear about the greatest exchange policy on the planet, Jesus' righteousness for your sin. Number 60, when a customer has paid his bill in full, send an invoice that says, paid in full.

These were the same words the bloody Jesus spoke from the cross about your sin. Number 74, on your business card, after your name, list your credentials as AFC, ambassador for Christ. Okay, if you want to do that, fine.

Okay, do not come up and bring up a business card after a few weeks. Okay, fine, it really is. But that's not the main way that you adorn the doctrine of God our Savior. The way you adorn it, he says, is by working with integrity, excellence, servanthood, and hope.

If you work that way, you're not going to have any problem having opportunities to tell people about Jesus. It's going to be so unusual to people, they're going to come and ask you, which leads me to three concluding observations. about this passage. Number one, these behaviors are our best witness. These behaviors are our best witness.

These values are so completely counter-cultural that people will notice. Tim Chester says, people may not like it when we talk about self-control and submission, but they find it attractive when we live it. Unbelievers who are repelled by the Christian message on headship within marriage are attracted by the Christian marriage as they see. The good and virtuous lives of the Christians that they know. When's the last time somebody came and asked you, tell me, what is behind?

What is this hope? Why are you so different in your marriage, in your work? Learn to see your marriage and your work as a theater for the gospel.

Learn to see it as the primary place. God wants to bring glory to himself and to demonstrate what the gospel looks like in your marriage and in your work and your other relationships. Number two, the best testimony to the gospel happens in the mundane. The best testimony to the gospel happens in the mundane.

Did you notice how normal all these relationships are? There were no stories in that list of missionaries dying as martyrs in Afghanistan. Those stories are important, but when Paul wants to talk about where Christianity best shows itself, he goes to the home. Your Christianity is best measured by your relationships at home, at work, and in your private life. If you want to know the health of your faith, don't look at what you're doing here.

Don't look at what you're doing on a mission trip. Look at your relationship with your spouse. Look at how you respond to your parents.

Look at how you relate to your dorm roommates or your suitemates. That's where the health of your faith is tested. It's kind of like when you take a temperature. In somebody's temperature, there's only three or four places in the body where you can get an accurate read. The mouth, the forehead in some places, the ear, a couple other places I won't mention. If you do it somewhere else, you're not going to get an accurate read.

So when my mom was trying to figure out if I was sick to go to school, once you leave the room, you take it out of your mouth and you put it in your armpit and you rub it back and forth because you are raising the temperature. It's not an accurate read. Paul says you want to get an accurate read in your faith. Don't look at how many verses you know or what you act like at church. You look at how you are in the home. How would we evaluate your faith if we measured its temperature by your relationships at home? It is the mark of a hypocrite to be a Christian everywhere, about home.

Don't just hear that, by the way, as a negative rebuke. See these ordinary things as theaters, as labs for God's extraordinary power. God took David to the pasture to teach him the skills to fight Goliath. What God does is He puts you in a pasture like your home. The home is your pasture. That's where God works miracles in you.

Maybe you write it down this way. For the believer, miraculous power comes through mundane faithfulness. Heroic Christianity is never born on the mission field. Heroic Christianity is born in the home. It's born in the dorm room.

It shows itself on the mission field, but it starts in the lab of normal relationships. Number three, and finally, these behaviors flow directly out of the gospel. These behaviors flow directly out of the gospel. You see, I'll end on this, is that you should not look at these things, please, as another to-do list. All these verses now I gotta figure out how to implement in my life.

Paul says, no, these things come from looking upward and forward and backward in the gospel. When you do that, they'll just begin to grow in you. If you diagnose yourself as having a problem, that's where you look. I've used this illustration with you. I'll use it real quick. I've told you that there are two ways that you can get roses on a bush. If it's not a rose bush or it's a dead bush, then you could go out and you could buy a few dozen roses and clip them and duct tape them to the bush. People driving by your house would think that it's a rose bush, but you'd have to do it every week because those roses would fade and they'd look nasty and every week you'd have to go buy several dozen flowers and you'd have to do it again. The other way is you just plant a healthy rose bush, you water it, you make sure it gets sun, and then roses will come up on their own. I've told you that many of you try to change your lives by the first method. That's how you try to fix your marriage. Every week you come in and you get another dozen roses for me. Try to staple them to your bush of your life. Paul says, yeah, there's a better way.

There's actually a real way because that's artificial. The way that you do it is look upwards and forwards and backwards and soak yourself in the grace of God, for the grace of God teaches us to deny ungodliness and worldly lust and live soberly, righteously in godliness for as an age because our eyes are so fixed on the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior that we are so grateful for what he gave. We are so excited about what he's making us. We are so in awe of who he is that these relationships begin to blossom.

In all these habits begin to blossom in all of our relationships. So why don't we bow our heads if we would and let's end this time at all of our campuses just soaking in the gospel. In just a minute our worship teams, our campus pastors are going to come and they're going to lead us in the taking of the Lord's table. As you prepare for that, why don't you look upward? Look upward in your heart. Look upward to the glory of the God who saved you. Look backward to the price you paid for your sin. Look forward in anticipation. Listen to what he saved you unto. Our worship teams will come.