This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Hi, this is Pastor Tom and I want to welcome you to day one of Titus chapter 3,
actually the end of our study of the book of Titus, this short book of the
Bible. We've been talking these last three weeks about how you and I can begin
to live an effective life, the kind of life that God wants us to live. Titus
chapter 1 was be selective.

How do you live out the kind of life by living the kind of truth that God wants
us to live? Titus chapter 2 we looked at last week was be attractive. How do you
live out the kind of character that God wants for your life?

And this week we're going to be talking about how do you be devoted, be
selective, be attractive, be devoted. That's how you and I can be effective in
our lives. Titus chapter 3 verse 1 begins with a good number of commands for us
to follow.

And they're not the usual commands we think about in the Bible, love your
neighbor, love God. They're commands that have more to do with how you and I
interact with the community that's around us. Listen to what Titus chapter 3
verses 1 and 2 say to us, "Remind the people to be subject to rulers and
authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good, to slander no
one, to be peaceable and considerate, and to show true humility toward all men.

" Now as you look through these, there are six commands here for how you and I
are to act in our community, toward our neighborhood, be subject to rulers, be
obedient, be ready to do whatever is good, slander no one, be peaceable and
considerate, show true humility. Those six things. And we're just going to walk
through those in these next few minutes together.

How do you do those things? How do you live in that kind of way? Because it's
part of being devoted to who God wants us to be.

How I interact with my community is part of my devotion to God. Very clearly in
these verses. So what does it mean?

First of all, it means that I choose to be subject to rulers. Now what does that
mean? Someone on our research team asked it this way, "I understand that as
Christians we must also be good citizens, but it becomes increasingly more
difficult to have respect for our leaders when so many seem so undeserving.

I wonder if that was the case then also when Titus was written. How does one
reconcile being obedient to civic leaders who are also without integrity? " Well
that question is a great question because it is the very issue they were facing
in the first century when this book was written.

In that day it was the Caesars of Rome whom they were following. And many of
these Caesars actually claimed to be God. They were so prideful.

They were so arrogant that they made claims to be God. And many of them out of
their arrogance, out of their pride, many of them did very destructive things in
that society of that day. And yet inasmuch as they were asking people to do what
was right, inasmuch as they were leading people, the Bible says you need to be
subject to even them.

What does that mean? What does subjection mean? Well, subjection means I realize
that I'm under somebody else's authority.

And you are. You are. And you recognize that truth in your life.

Subjection in our lives is first of all to God. And because of our subjection to
God, because I realize He made me, I'm under His authority, I live life not
based on what I want to do, but based on the fact that I'm His creation. Because
of my subjection to God, God says then be subject to the rulers that are around
you.

Now, of course, you are not subject to a ruler, a human ruler to the point of
disobeying God. That would make no sense at all. Because our subjection to
rulers grows out of our subjection to God, I don't become subject to God.

And then if a ruler tells me, "Hey, I want you to do something that is totally
against your Christian faith," like deny God, like deny Christ, like some of the
first Caesars asked the Christians to do. In that case, they said, "No, we can't
do that. " They refused to do that.

So how does this work in the reality of everyday life? I think there are two
great models in the Bible for us. In the Old Testament, there is Daniel.

And in the New Testament, there is Paul before the leaders in the book of Acts.
And in the Old Testament, you have Daniel and his friends, who you might
remember, without going into the entire story, Israel is captured, and they are
brought into another country. And they are being raised up as leaders.

And these new young leaders, Daniel and his friends, are told to follow all the
rules that are being given to them. And they did as much as they could, but
they're asked to eat foods that are against the Old Testament laws. And so in
deciding to be subject to the rulers, they decide to go to those rulers and say,
"Let's do a test.

You let everybody else eat all these foods you say, and how about if we eat the
foods that we are commanded to eat? And let's see which one of us is stronger.
Let's just do a test.

" Because they believed in God, they knew that God would be faithful to them. So
instead of saying to the rulers, "We cannot do this because we believe in God.
In fact, we're going to become anarchists because of our belief in God," they
went to the rulers, and they expressed their belief in God.

They expressed subjection while still living out their faith. In the New
Testament, you have some of the same thing. You have Paul and others, same thing
happened to Peter, same thing happened to John, who are brought before the
leaders of the synagogue, the Roman leaders in the early days, the leaders of
the courts.

You see this happening again and again in the book of Acts. And every time, they
had an opportunity to express an attitude that was not subject to those who were
their leaders, but they didn't. They didn't.

Now, they didn't bow down. They didn't say when a court brought them in and
said, "You can't talk about Jesus anymore," they didn't say, "Oh, of course, we
won't talk about Jesus anymore. " No, they would say something like this.

They would say, "Whether it's right or not, that's for you to judge, and we are
subject to your judgment. But as for us, we have to follow the command of God. "
So instead of becoming someone who was against the government, they became
people who were for Christ.

That's what it means to be subject. And in those cases where you can obey, in
every one of those cases, you decide to obey. Now these words, these words about
being subject in Titus chapter 3 are written to Crete, remember.

It was an island that had been subjugated by Rome in 67 BC, and since then, it
had had the reputation for being continually rebellious. So Paul is writing and
saying, "You need to work, you need to live, you need to act in a different way
because of who you are now in Christ. " How about, just going into this a little
bit deeper, how about those of us who live in a democracy like in America?

In a democracy, you can be subject to the government while still seeking to
change the government because we have the right to do that. We get to vote.
Democracy though does not mean anarchy.

Democracy does not mean every person gets to do what they think is right. That
is anarchy. It means that we are a government of the people.

And submitting in America means that I submit to the vote of the majority. I may
not agree with the vote that happened in the last election, but our government
is, that is what carries, that is what is done. So I must then submit to that
vote.

Now I might also be working for a different vote next time as I do that, but I
submit to that vote. Now, once again, this is not in areas of morality. In areas
of morality, as a believer, I can recognize that in our country we might submit
to one morality and others might feel fine about following that, but I must
choose to follow Christ.

And that might mean sometimes I have to pay some consequences for that. And I
find many times we get more caught up in the consequences side of this than in
the unselfish submitting side of this. If I'm not willing to unselfishly submit
at those points where I can obey, then I need to be very, very careful about
saying I'm willing to suffer the consequences when I don't obey.

You see, it takes both. I need to be submissive, and out of that humility, out
of that humility, then in Christ I must choose those places where I will make a
stand based on my character. There are exceptions to following the commands of a
human government, but it is challenging to me that our minds often first go to
the exceptions, and the reason is we don't want to be subject.

The reason is we all struggle with our selfishness, but in order for a
government to work, in order for a church to work, in order for a marriage to
work, in order for any relationship to work, you have to be subject to one
another to the point of being unselfish for the sake of other people. Now,
that's a long look at the first of these, these six commands. The first thing
I've got to do is be subject to rulers, and then the others all work out of
that.

I have to then be obedient. Government leads to action. Being submissive to
somebody else isn't just having a good feeling towards them, it's not having
just a good feeling towards government, it's obeying the laws, being obedient.

The third is I'm ready to do whatever is good. I do good things in our
community. In fact, I'm ready to do that for a neighbor who needs help, for a
community project that needs to be done.

William Barclay once said, "Boredom is a direct act, direct result of
selfishness. " The interest of life always lies in service. If you're bored with
life, find someone to serve, find something to serve.

Now, the fourth thing that he says is very interesting to me in this decision to
act towards my community in the right way. He says, "Slander no one. " Oh, it's
easy to slander people.

How about politics? How about what's happening in the local government? How
about what's happening in your local school?

Isn't it easy to slander a teacher or a mayor or a president? It's very easy to
slander. Slander no one.

From neighbor to president, all the way in between, make sure that slander is
not a part of our lives. Slander is telling a lie, an easy lie. It gets a good
result.

It gets a lot of attention, but you know somewhere that it's not true. You want
to have a good attitude towards the community around you? Paul goes on to say
the next step is, the fifth thing you do is be peaceable, be considerate with
rudeness in our communities at an all-time high.

Just being polite can often bless people. You want to have the right attitude
towards your community? The last thing that he says is you do this, you show
true humility.

You make sure that gentleness marks everything you do, biblical kind of
gentleness, which is humility towards others. In the Bible, it's not I'd better
deal with this situation gently. It's I'd better deal with every situation
gently, because true gentleness is this decision that I'm going to regard
others' needs, even others' opinions, as important.

I'm going to regard the needs of others as even more important than mine. I'm
going to regard the opinions of others as important enough to listen to. This is
how we're to act toward our community.

If you've read some of the New Testament, you know that we are citizens of
heaven. The Bible says that in the New Testament. We're citizens of heaven, and
yet these verses tell us that citizens of heaven are responsible for the way
that they act towards the countries and the communities and the counties and the
cities that they live in on this earth.

We're to live with this attitude of humility and subjection. Why? Because it
shows what Jesus Christ has done in our lives.

It shows unselfishness. To the core of our being, only Jesus Christ can really
deal with this issue of selfishness in our lives. Only Jesus Christ can really
change us at this point.

So how do I act towards my community? I do all these things with unselfishness.
Back to the first word in this third chapter, remind the people to be subject to
this.

I don't know about you, I need to be reminded to be unselfish throughout the
day, every day. And it's my prayer that God's word will remind me, remind you to
do that today. Let's pray together.

Jesus remind us, remind us that we don't have to choose the selfish road that
everybody else around us is choosing, that we can choose not to gossip, we can
choose to be humble, we can choose to serve someone else, we can choose to obey
even when we don't want to. We can choose unselfishness, not because we are such
good people, but because you are such a good God and you're willing to be at
work in our lives. So God help us to depend on you today.

Help us to depend on you as we interact with those in our community. We ask this
in Jesus name, amen. Join us tomorrow, we're going to talk about the great story
of your life.