The Apostle Paul invested his life not just in the churches he planted, but in the men who led those churches. You've got a guy, Paul, a former rabbi, a Pharisee of Pharisees, a Hebrew of Hebrews, impeccable in his Jewish traditions. He's calling an uncircumcised Gentile convert, my son. He's my son. We're in the same family.
We got in the same way. A common faith. The Apostle Paul wrote a letter to a young pastor named Titus. This letter is in your Bible to this day. Paul's goal was to encourage Titus and to spur him on to serve the Lord Jesus Christ with enthusiasm and dedication, regardless of the circumstances he found himself in. But in that letter, Paul also made a profound statement.
He said that even though he considered himself a free man in society, he also considered himself a slave. Why would Paul say that? Welcome to Wisdom for the Heart. This is the Bible teaching ministry of pastor and author Stephen Davey. Stephen is in a series from the opening verses of Titus, and the message you're going to hear today is entitled, From One Slave to Another. Now, here's Stephen with today's lesson from God's Word. In this letter, Paul is going to come to Titus and everybody who wants to know what it truly means to stand up and say, I am a Christian.
Men are so long, Paul. Tell us how to stand and how to live, how to handle the pressure, not only outside of the church, but in a growing way inside the church today. And the first thing that Paul does, which is extremely challenging and convicting, is how he will now refer to himself in this letter. I want you to notice further in verse 1, Paul, a bondservant of God, a bondservant of God. In addition to the name Christian, the Bible calls believers by a number of different names, branches, infants, children, joint heirs, citizens, friends, brothers, saints, and the list goes on and on.
All those titles sort of help nuance for us what Christianity means and what it means to be a Christian. However, the Bible uses one term more frequently than any other. It appears more than 40 times in the New Testament. It refers to the believer. From the original language, the Greek language, it is the word doulos, and it ought to be translated slave.
In fact, I recommend that you take your pencil and write into the margin of your Bible above or somewhere near this translation. Mine says bondservant, the word slave. The overriding description of the Christian's relationship to Jesus Christ is the relationship of a master and a slave. The problem is we'll not read it that way as English readers because going all the way back to the King James translation and before that predating the Geneva Bible, the word doulos was softened in its translation with the word servant or bondservant. In an effort to avoid the negative imagery and the cruelty bound up in the slave trade which we're all aware of that swept through Europe and into the Americas, translators over the centuries chose to translate doulos a little more sensitively by translating it servant. It's interesting to know that the Greek language has several words that can refer to servants.
Doulos is not one of them ever. Although the duties of a servant and a slave might overlap, in the mind of the apostle coming out of the first century and even in a way, you could say even to this day, certainly around the world where the slave trade still exists, but even today you could note this key distinction. Servants in Paul's day were hired. Slaves were owned.
There's a world of difference. Servants had a measure of personal rights and freedoms. They could choose whom they would work for and what they would get involved in and what they would do. Slaves had no freedoms. They had no rights. They were considered in the days of Titus on into the days of our English-speaking world for centuries without any personal rights.
They were possessions rather than persons. But what's lost on us is when we read today this phrase by Paul in Titus chapter 1, you don't immediately suck in your breath and shudder at the gravity of this term. It doesn't offend our sensitivities. It doesn't confront our misconception of autonomy as Christians. See, we prefer to think that we have an option to obey Christ to serve him, to belong entirely to him. So we don't quite get it when the apostle Peter says that every Christian is a slave to God. We would rather believe that we can negotiate with him over the terms of his will, that we can protest a little bit with what he does to our bodies, that we can fuss at him about the inconveniences of the service he's assigned us, or that we can half-heartedly fulfill his commands for our lives, that we can maybe even complain about the lateness of his blessings or even the ill-timing of his burdens. You see, we think we've been hired by God.
We haven't been. We are owned by God. No wonder we complain about the overtime, the long hours of inconvenient service.
Who's in charge of the benefit packages around here? Is my Christianity paying off? See, that's how you get to the idea where the church is really all about you and me, and if it serves me well, I may show up two or three times a month. That's the attitude of a servant, not a slave.
You see, have you forgotten? Paul would write to the Corinthians that you've been bought with a price. The metaphor is you've been bought out of the slave market by Christ. You have been bought out of that, and now you no longer belong to yourself. You belong entirely to the one who bought you, 1 Corinthians chapter 6. Charles Spurgeon, it's interesting we read one quote by him.
Let me give you one more. This British pastor of the 19th century in London commented on this problem in his commentary on Titus, and he wrote this, where our authorized version softly puts it servant, it really is slave. The early saints delighted to count themselves as Christ's absolute property, bought by him, owned by him, holy at his disposal. And Paul even went so far as to rejoice that he had the marks of the master's brand on his body. He cried out, let no man trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.
And that was the end of the debate. He was the Lord's, and the marks of the whips, the rods, and the stones were viewed as the branding of Paul's body, as the property of Jesus the Lord. He ends by saying, now if the saints of old time gloried in this, so should you and I. See, Paul is redefining our freedom.
He's turning it all upside down. It is only the person who becomes the slave of the creator that can begin to experience true freedom. The way to freedom runs through slavery to God. Another author put it this way from the 1800s when he wrote, slavery to God is really the only liberty in life. Liberty, note this, does not mean doing as you like. Liberty means liking what you ought.
Let me read that again. Liberty does not mean doing as you like. Liberty means liking what you ought, and doing that, such slavery to Christ is the only nobility.
See, this confronts the way we think, doesn't it? You find a Christian, by the way, who is arguing with God over the terms of his will, and you'll find a Christian bound up in frustration, hobbled with despair. But you find a young man, young woman of any age who stands and says with Paul, I am a Christian, and by the way, I understand that means I am a slave of God, and you're going to find somebody liberated to serve him with contagious joy. Like the young lady at a Bible conference held on her campus, she stood up before her peers and held up a sheet of paper and explained this page represents my life dedicated to Jesus Christ, and the piece of paper everyone noticed was blank.
She says, I've left it blank for him to fill in, but I want you to know I've already gone ahead and signed it at the bottom. I am a Christian. What does that mean? Well, for starters, it means I am a slave wholly owned by my master, God. Paul goes on to say in verse 1, not only is he a slave of God, he's an apostle of Jesus Christ. Slavery referred to his obligation, apostleship referred to his occupation. The word apostle, apostolos, comes from two words combined mean to be sent forth in its generic translation, to be sent forth. The word was used widely to refer to someone who was authorized to be a messenger, be a common word.
In that way, the apostle is saying that he's a messenger. We could use that term for missionaries or ambassadors. We are ambassadors of Christ. We've been sent on a mission, although we have to redefine in our minds what an ambassador was. We think of the Western world's ambassador.
You get a salary and you go to another country and try to keep things nice. In Paul's day, writing to Titus, an ambassador was one who left the country of a victorious king and went to another country and delivered to them the terms of surrender. So when you are an ambassador of Christ, you're delivering to your world the terms of surrender.
A little different thought, isn't it? The one who was sent, the apostolos, was one who spoke on behalf of Christ with the gospel. Paul would use the word apostle to refer to Timothy and Titus both in his letter to the Corinthians. Paul is using the word apostolos here in its official narrowed sense because he's using it as the basis of authority for what he's going to write. Only a few select men could claim this narrow definition of apostle. They were those who were trained, commissioned, those who had seen the risen Lord. Paul would often go back and remind them that he had seen the risen Christ, the basis of his apostleship and as well his commission from Christ.
This is the reason why Paul would write this here. Titus is going to need some authority. He's a younger man. He's going to show up and appoint elders. He's going to tell a church how to conduct itself.
I want you to track with me. He's going to go to a church and tell it how to operate. I want you to immediately conjure up in your mind nothing but trouble with that thought. He is going to be challenged. He's going to be stood down.
He's going to be argued with. Can you imagine going to churches that existed on that island and saying, okay, I'm here and I've been here now six weeks or so and I'm going to appoint you and you and you as elders of this assembly. Can you imagine somebody coming into this church, spending six weeks with us and then saying, okay, I'm choosing you and you and you. You're elders of the church.
And the guy who's up here right now isn't one. That's exactly what Titus is going to do. And the people are going to ask him, who invited you?
Do you think you can waltz onto our island and come into our churches and decide the officers and leaders of our church and suppose that you could somehow tell us how to operate? Who are you again? My name is Titus.
Oh, that's a Latin name. You a gentile? Yes. Well, when you converted, did you get circumcised? No, never did. Were you trained in Jerusalem? No. Did you see the resurrected Christ?
No. Listen, son. The pillars of this church were saved years ago at Pentecost when they went and heard Peter preach.
We've been carrying along just fine. Who sent you here anyway? Well, he pulled out a scroll, a little letter. Well, let me show you. I have a letter from the apostle Paul. Yeah, we know him, but does he know you? Well, just look here at verse four.
I'm not numbered then, but you just, you know, go down to here. Right there, he pointed. To Titus, my true child in the common faith.
Oh. In other words, Titus was led to faith by Paul himself. This is a term of discipleship. He was discipled by Paul personally. In fact, Paul says, you notice that, that the faith of Titus is the same faith as his own. They share a common bond, a common Lord, a common faith.
It's gonna be remarkable for these pillars of the church. You've got a guy, Paul, a former rabbi, a Pharisee of Pharisees, a Hebrew of Hebrews, impeccable in his Jewish traditions. He's calling an uncircumcised Gentile convert, my son. We're in the same family. Titus and I are related. See, we got in the same way. A common faith.
He's my son. Titus probably paused there to let it sink in. Then he might have said, oh, while we're reading, if you'll just notice the next few phrases, verse five. For this reason I, Paul, left you in Crete that you would set in order what remains and appoint elders in every city as I directed you.
Case closed. And by the way, for Titus, this was, he was perfect for the job. We don't know much about this man, one of the most overlooked figures in church history. Only 11 verses in the entire New Testament even refer to him. But we do know that earlier Paul had sent Titus, Titus to Corinth to straighten out that church. Can you imagine that assignment? Titus, you got some time on your hands?
I do. Go to Corinth and straighten them out. It's a divided, divisive, immoral, compromising assembly. And by the way, he did such an excellent job, he succeeded in bringing about unity and he also strengthened the reputation of Paul in their eyes.
Second Corinthians chapter seven. Titus was then sent on another assignment, a tough assignment. He was sent to a province known as Illyricum, or Dalmatia, a difficult culture. According to the Roman historian Polybius, the Illyrians were common enemies of everyone.
They did not get along with anybody. Another contemporary of Titus, a man by the name of Strabo wrote that the people of Illyricum were wild and given to their primary occupation as pirates. Hey, Titus, I got a new church for you. Go straighten it out. Oh, who's there? A bunch of pirates. Okay. And off he went.
All of it was wonderful preparation for the island of Crete. Titus would confront disorderly churches with several years of history. Anybody knows you don't just waltz into a church and change anything. You don't change a bulletin, the color of the carpet, music, nothing.
You leave it alone. When I read the job that Titus was supposed to perform choosing elders, I couldn't imagine the confrontation. I couldn't imagine the hurt feelings. I couldn't imagine the bruised egos.
You just don't do that. I can still remember how I felt the first time I ever decided to bring about a little change in a ministry. I was a college senior. I had accepted one semester in an assistant role at a church on one of the mountains in Tennessee about an hour away from the Bible college where I was attending about 45 miles west, 45 minutes west. The pastor was a seminary student. He was a few years older than me and married.
He'd been serving for about four, five, six months. He preached on Sunday morning to about 30 people, a little bitty clapboard church on that mountain, and I would come on Wednesday night. I'd drive a borrowed car and go up there and preach to about 10 people on Wednesday night. Oh, the name of the mountain was Jump Off Mountain. I don't know the history behind that, but I didn't want to know. I was a little afraid. The name of the church creatively was Jump Off Baptist Church.
That should have been my first sign. Things weren't going to go well. The church looked and smelled old, seated about 75 people, a little one-step platform and a pulpit. Behind the pulpit, you'd bump your knee with one step in, two rows for a choir that I never heard sing.
They didn't have one. Then on that back wall, I was struck the first time I'd arrived with this banner stretched about six feet across, a banner with some inspirational phrase on it. It was faded and a text of Scripture completely worn out. The pages had curled and crinkled.
They were yellowed, brown with age. It was really pitiful. You couldn't avoid it whenever you came into the chapel. So I talked with a seminary student who was a pastor about an idea. I decided that, hey, what we need to do is let's create a new logo and a brand new inspirational phrase. It was time to give this church some fresh momentum and vision, and I was so excited about it.
I'm pretty sure everybody else would be, too. I contacted an artist at school, and we began working on it. The next Sunday morning, I was filled with excitement. I had that new banner rolled up underneath my arm, came to church, got there a little early. I would leave the music, and the other pastor would preach.
So I was there getting things prepared. There was one man in the church that had kind of run everything. He'd been there for 25 years. His wife played the piano.
He taught the only adult Sunday school class in the church. But at any rate, I beat everybody there that morning, went in, and I, as carefully as I could, took down that old banner. It had been cracked at different places, and I, as carefully as I could, took it down and rolled it up, and it crackled and broke as I did it, set it aside, and I began to put up that brand new banner, new vision, fresh momentum, new church, new life, new ministry, all that. I tacked in about three of those tacks with a hammer, heard the door open, heard footsteps that stopped, and then I heard this man, this leader bellow, what are you doing? And I kind of stopped halfway on my third tack, and I said, well, I'm putting up a new banner, and I could tell this wasn't going to go over well. And he said to me, he was livid, his face red, he pointed his finger at me, and he said, I want you to know that banner has been up there for 22 years.
And I was thinking, is that a good thing or a bad thing? He turned on his heel, and he stomped out of that church and slammed the door. The seminary pastor who came a few minutes later had to go out and try to settle him down, so he'd teach that class, and I'll never forget, with one knee on one of those pews, taking that new banner down, unrolling that old one, and putting it back up. When I read Paul asking Titus to go into an established church and decide which men will be elders, I imagine going to jump off Baptist church and saying to that man, I've been here three weeks, two men are going to be elders, and you're not one of them, and then running. Paul, you got any encouragement for a brave young man like Titus? Or for us today, a congregation of people committed to Christ who need a redefinition of what it means when you stand up and out there and say, I am a Christian. That means I'm a slave of God, and I'm sent with a message that to many people is going to sound like the terms of surrender, and they're not going to like that very much.
So can you encourage us? Paul writes at the end of verse 4, grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior. Those aren't just words thrown in there to make a nice ending to his introduction. Now, Titus, listen, you have grace to strengthen you, grace to pray, grace to forgive, grace to serve, grace to endure, grace to persevere. You have peace.
You're not going to feel much peace, but you've got it, peace for reassurance, peace in the midst of struggles, peace when everything else is chaotic. This is all sourced out of God the Father. Titus, I'm your father in that I led you to faith in Christ, but you have a perfect Father.
It's God, and you have this peace as well. I think that the letter of Paul is a letter from one slave to another. I think of an old battle-scarred slave writing to a younger slave to all of us. He tells him with the wisdom of both truth and experience in his own life.
Titus, when you take your stand and you say, I'm a Christian, when you effectively say, I am a slave of God, I'm one of God's messenger boys, don't forget to draw from the divine reservoir of grace and peace. And for you today, there's just enough, just enough. And it's backed up by this limitless supply of God the Father and Christ Jesus, our Savior. Every new day, as you awaken, go through your day, God's grace is new, and His mercy is new. There's a limitless supply from Jesus Christ.
Isn't that great news? You're listening to Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey. Stephen is in a series from the book of Titus called Slavery. He talks about how God's grace is new, and His mercy is new.
Stephen is in a series from the book of Titus called Slave Traits, and he entitled this message, From One Slave to Another. If you'd like to learn more about us and explore our resources, I encourage you to visit our website at wisdomonline.org. There, you can access Stephen's entire Bible teaching library, which includes every broadcast and hundreds of sermons from over four decades of teaching. One of the key features of our site is the daily broadcast. We post each day's lesson right on the homepage, so if you ever miss a broadcast, you can easily catch up.
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