Titus 1:1-4 Indebted Servants with a Message

Introduction

Introduce myself

Explain how I have no authority of my own but am standing here with God’s word as my authority

Express thankfulness to the saints

Contextual Introduction

The passage we will be reading from this morning and seeing how God is revealing himself is Titus 1:1-4.

Paul is the writer of this letter. Paul is an apostle of Christ and a servant of God. Before a radical transformation in his salvation he killed Christians for their faith. Now though, he has been saved by the grace of God from his sins. Instead of discouraging Christians he now encourages and supports them. The letter we are getting to peak into this afternoon is an example of an encouragement Paul gives. He writes to Titus.

Titus has a close relationship with Paul as they have traveled together and been able to spend time together. Paul discipled Timothy. He invested much into him and now he is getting the chance to show if this investment will reap a reward or if it will bottom out.

While Paul is writing to Titus as he is left on a small island called Crete. Paul and Titus visited this island together and Paul left Titus there to continue their ministry. So if we can maybe even put ourselves in the shoes of Titus we can see that this letter would have been so dear to him. He is receiving encouragement from one which he cared so much for.

Even as these are the written words of Paul they are divinely inspired by the Holy Spirit so we can take these words as God’s word. Today a little after 4:00 at Dominion Senior Living we are getting to hear the words of the God of the universe. And in these words God reveals himself and reveals his plan of salvation for sinners like you and I.

Pray for the sermon and that the Holy Spirit would illuminate his scripture.

1. Who Does God Call Us To Be?

How would you answer the question who are you? You would of course give your name, but what after that? Would you say where you were from? You might say your job, something your passionate about. Those are all good things. What about if we looked passed the surface area though. Even though we might be from a particular town and that is apart of our identity, we gave an honest answer. Some might say they are a person who has endured hardships. It seems like the waves of life come over you one after another with no time to go back up to the surface to catch a break. I am not sure how much we all have in common in this room if we all answered the “who are you” question, but I do know that we are all sinners. The God of the universe created us with a standard of perfection and we do not meet this standard. Let’s look in the scripture and see how Paul would answer if we asked him, “hey Paul, who are you?”.

“Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ”. Paul, is a servant of God and he is an apostle or we could say messenger of Jesus Christ.

Paul is these two things because this is who God calls for us to be. As someone who is seeking to fulfill the will of God and who loves God and the things of God, Paul wishes to serve him and carry on his message.

First, God desires for us to be his servant

We see here the first thing out of Paul’s mouth is that he is a servant of God. It is as he is just rushing to say this. He wants to tell Titus that he is a servant of God. He does not spend time talking about himself but rushes to explain that he is a servant of God. What does this mean though? Servant of God? In our time we may have heightened this word in that it does not seem so bad. Let’s spend some time reflecting on this though. Maybe we could use an illustration of a server at a restaurant. This server does everything for you. They bring you your food, they make sure your food is cooked, they take your trash, I’ve even seen a restaurant where the server literally feeds the guests. If you are getting up to do something for yourself at a restaurant it is to use the restroom and that is it! So for us, we are called to be servants of God by doing what he commands us, but more than that. The word Paul uses here explains he has nothing of his own but only wishes to fulfill the desires of God. He wants to be who God calls him to be and God calls us to be his servants. One commentator puts it this way “In every thought, breath, and every effort he was under the mastery of God”. Friends, it is one thing to refill a sweet tea (or just do a command of God like love your neighbor) and it is a completely other thing to have every thought that comes in your mind pleasing to your master. A servant of God has no concern for his own life but only concern for how God calls him to live it.

Why should we want to serve God to diligently that every thought should bring glory to him? Paul not only says he is a servant of God, but an apostle of Jesus Christ. He is a messenger for Christ. Well what message is he bringing about? It is a message from his master. It is a message that the day has finally came that the seed of the Women would crush the head of the servant as we see all the way back in Genesis. When we started we said that in our identity we all have one thing in common when we tell someone who we are, we are all sinners because it is absolutely impossible for us to live up to the standard of God. That is bad news, but the message that Paul is carrying of Christ is good news. God sacrificially gave up his son to take on the sin of the world, thus his wrath, and give man a way to have a direct relationship with God. We can be saved from our sins through faith in Jesus Christ to save us from our sins, that he is God’s son and by repentance from our sins. This is the good news that Paul associates himself with. He explains that he is a servant of God and a messenger of Christ, and he is a servant of God because of this message of Christ.

Let me just have us evaluate our own hearts, are we servants of God? If you answer yes, why are you a servant of God? If it is for any other reason other than the good news of Christ let me just encourage you that you may be an image barer of God, but you are not his servant. In this upside down kingdom of God, the highest place we can have on this earth is to actually be a servant of God. It is not because being a servant is so great, but it is because our master is great. Back to our server in a restaurant analogy, if you got to serve someone you love you would delight in doing so. Maybe you can even relate to this as you have cooked a meal for a loved one or you invite others that you care about into your house and serve them. You love to do this because you love who you are serving. How much more though should we love to serve the one who brought us good news through Christ? Today, do you love to serve him? Or does following his commands simply seem like something you have to do. We must delight brothers and sisters in the Lord to serve him because of who he is and what he has done for us. Without his grace we would be left in our sins which we all have in common. Be his servant in every single aspect of your life because he has brought you good news in saving you from your sins. If you have not became his servant because you have not accepted his great news, I beg of you to do so. If you are a professing Christian, continue to serve him every day.

2. Servants Through Faith and Truth

“For the sake of the faith of God’s elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords to godliness”

Paul is informing Timothy he is writing the letter so that those who God has chosen before the foundation of the world will come to a saving faith in Christ. Knowing God has chosen people should encourage us to share the gospel as it does for Paul. God did not create a path for salvation without a purpose. Through this path of salvation we spoke of through Christ, he wishes to save people through it. So talk about the gospel. Bring up the gospel as naturally as the whether because God has elected to save sinners. If you are here this afternoon and are saved from your sins through the death and resurrection of Christ then God has chosen you before he even created the world. We serve a God who has loved us before creation and has known we would sin against him. When Adam and Eve sinned in the garden he was not surprised. He is not surprised when we sin against him today. But, even in knowing all of this he chose us and saved us. May we grow in our faith knowing this.

He then says “knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness”. As we learn more truths about who God is we should trust in him more. As you grow closer with someone, even maybe a friend, you get to know who they are better. Are they really who they seemed to be when I first met them? All we learn about God are good truths. As we get to know him more through how he works in our life and primarily through his word we learn how loving he is and deserving of our servitude. This phrase would be especially helpful to Titus because the place where he is planting churches and serving in is caught up in a lot of falsehoods. This should come to us as no surprise though. The world has no truths to offer. No matter the time or location any truth the world is proposing is not going to accord to godliness like the truths we see in scripture do. So Paul desires for Titus to teach these people he is with the truths of God. We are in the same place today as Titus was and all Christians are in this place. I had a pastor tell me something that will always stick with me. Something extremely hard in my life just happened and he told me “Stay the course. Be a student of the word, because what else do we have to offer the world” and that has always just been sitting in the front of my mind. We have no truths of our own to offer the world but only the truths of God. So are we giving this gift to others? If the truth which accords to godliness is the only thing we have to offer this world are we offering it to the world? Because if not, we are not serving them and by not serving them we are not serving God.

3. Encouraged by Eternal Life

“in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began and at the proper time manifested in his word through the preaching with which I have been entrusted by the command of our savior”

1. How are you encouraged in your walk with the Lord? Many things discourage us but what encourages you? If someone were to ask me that question the first thing that would come to my mind is my brothers and sisters in the Lord. The Lord has just displayed his grace so clearly in my life through the friends he has given me to encourage me in my walk. I have a friend back in Missouri where I’m from that sends me a video every morning with what he read in God’s word and an encouragement to me for the day. I have another friend here in Louisville that is just about the most selfless person I’ve ever met. If I needed to talk to him about something at two in the morning I could keep him awake and he’d be glad to serve me in that way and he has done that. What an encouragement they are and so many in my life and I pray that the Lord gives you close brothers and sisters in the Lord to encourage you as well. The reason they encourage me so well is that they encourage me in the hope of eternal life, the same hope that Paul mentions here.

So first, encourage yourself by the hope of eternal life so you are able to serve the Lord more faithfully. Knowing that no matter where our service takes us in this world we have a sure future in Christ. Remember once again how Paul first calls himself a servant. We are indebted servants to God and we are indebted because of the eternal life that we have. Why would we not want to serve a God that has given us eternal life even though we deserve death because of our sins. We also want to be encouraged in eternal life so that we grow in our relationship with him. If the God of the universe has given me salvation then I want to get to know this kind savior. I want to read his word to see how he desires me to live, I want to talk to him and submit my will to his will.

Second, encourage others as Paul does with the hope of eternal life. As I talked about my friends who encouraged me earlier, the reason they are so encouraging is because they encourage me with this hope of eternal life. So as you have friends, kids, grandkids, or just anyone you are around if they are in a struggling time and are a believer encourage them in the truths of God and ultimately in the truth that we will one day be with God face to face. If they are not a Christian, what a wonderful opportunity to share the gospel. If they are not a believer unfountely they have no hope but they can! As we saw in the beginning of the passage God has chosen a people to save so pray that God would save this person and share the sweet truths of the gospel to them! For the believer though, Paul tells us in another letter that the sufferings of this present time are not to be compared to the glory that is to be revealed to us. So encourage your friend in that they can endure these difficult times because in a little while Christ is going to return and they are not even able to comprehend the glory that awaits them.

2. Paul seems to make a point to that this hope of eternal life was promised before time began but then at the proper time was revealed. Another grace this afternoon is that we have heard the gospel. Today, if you have not heard it before I explained it and I will once more. We forget sometimes that some people will go their entire lives and not hear the name of of Christ. So what a grace it is that we were chosen to be in this room today to hear God’s plan of salvation. And even more, what a grace it is if we are in Christ. Not only are we undeserving of hearing the gospel but we are undeserving of actually being saved from our sins and having God look at us as if we had Christ’s righteousness.

So as Paul explains he has been entrusted with the gospel so have we. All believers have been entrusted with this mystery that not all people have had the grace of knowing. So as Paul says in the beginning he is a messenger of Christ we are too. We are called to share this good news we have been entrusted with. It is time brothers and sisters to reveal the gospel to others. God in his sovereignty kept it hidden but he has now given this truth for us to share. God also allows us to serve him in this way by sharing his truths.

I have maybe a peculiar question for you: Have you ever wondered why when we accept Christ and repent from our sins that at that moment God does not just bring us into heaven? There are multiple reasons throughout scripture but perhaps the biggest is that he wants us to serve him by sharing his truth. God has chosen for us to be the people which carry this very special gift to give to others. God could have used other means to reveal himself, but friends, often times God simply uses a random unforeseen conversation to reveal his gospel. Or even a relationship that has been developing for many years, you have been showing this person love and serving them, and finally the Lord makes it overwhelmingly obvious that you need to share the gospel with them. This is often how the Lord uses us to spread his word and simply because it is common does not mean it is not amazing. It is actually just shows God’s grace in our life even more that we are able to reveal these truths to others.

4. Brothers and Sisters in a Common Faith

“To Titus, my true child in a common faith: Grace and peace from God the father and Christ Jesus our savior”.

From this sentence you can maybe see Paul writing this, smiling, being thankful for Titus who seems to have put the advancement of God’s kingdom above all else. What an absolute blessing it is that they shared a common faith. I have to remind myself often that this is not common. It is not common, to have a common faith with someone else. A majority of the world has a faith that is totally opposite to what we are proclaiming here this morning. So for all of you in this room that share in the a common faith that God is our father and Christ is our savior, and that the Holy Spirit is the one who God gives to us so he helps us live out the commands of God, I am thankful for you. I urge you though to keep pressing on in your life goal to glorify God.

So today, the main application I want us to mediate on is we are called as servants of God to serve him because of the gospel and to serve him by sharing the gospel with others. What a glorious task he has entrusted us with. May we fulfill this task through his grace and providence.

Pray.