Micah McCormick: Turn to Titus chapter 2.
Micah McCormick: If you're using the Pew Bible, you'll find that on page 1058.
Micah McCormick: Titus chapter 2.
Micah McCormick: We've been working through this epistle together for the last several weeks.
Micah McCormick: We've got some more weeks still to go on this letter that Paul wrote to Titus.
Micah McCormick: And we're coming today to the next two verses, verses 9 and 10.
Micah McCormick: Titus 2, verses 9 and 10.
Micah McCormick: It's a short passage, and this is what God's Word has to say to us.
Micah McCormick: Slaves are to submit to their masters in everything and to be well pleasing, not talking back or stealing, but demonstrating utter faithfulness so that they may adorn the teaching of God our Savior in everything.
Micah McCormick: To give us the Spirit, the same Spirit at work in days past, and who is at work now, in sometimes larger ways and sometimes less obvious invisible ways, but in every possible way would the spirit be at work today, we pray in Christ's name.
Micah McCormick: Amen.
Micah McCormick: And you might say, well, even that guy is kind of lovable.
Micah McCormick: My boss is incompetent and he's nasty on top of that.
Micah McCormick: The world has good bosses.
Micah McCormick: I think most of you would rather like working for Andy Griffith.
Micah McCormick: And there's good bosses in the real world too.
Micah McCormick: We lose sight of that sometimes.
Micah McCormick: But notice in our text today, Paul writes nothing about good supervisors or bad supervisors.
Micah McCormick: He's concerned with our attitude toward our supervisors.
Micah McCormick: Romans 13:7, respect to those who are owed respect.
Micah McCormick: Honor to those who are owed honor.
Micah McCormick: This is a great passage for some of you that are always wanting to know where does the rubber meet the road?
Micah McCormick: What am I going to take with me into work on Monday morning?
Micah McCormick: In this case, Tuesday morning for a lot of you.
Micah McCormick: We just got finished with a series in Isaiah.
Micah McCormick: It was a great series.
Micah McCormick: Some of you might have found yourselves thinking at certain points in that series.
Micah McCormick: All right, we've got the Rab Shaka talking to Tiglath Palizer about the Araman Confederation.
Micah McCormick: My head is already spinning.
Micah McCormick: Where does this meet my workplace tomorrow?
Micah McCormick: There's a lot in Isaiah you could take into the workplace.
Micah McCormick: And I missed that book.
Micah McCormick: But your prayers for simple directness have been answered by the Lord today from our passage.
Micah McCormick: What should you do Tuesday morning?
Micah McCormick: You should submit to your supervisor.
Micah McCormick: You can put one thing in your to-go bag for today.
Micah McCormick: Let it be this.
Micah McCormick: You should submit to your supervisor.
Micah McCormick: I think I take the history lesson.
Micah McCormick: I don't really like that one.
Micah McCormick: You're here.
Micah McCormick: It's too late.
Micah McCormick: You should submit to your supervisor.
Micah McCormick: In this letter, Paul is eager to show Titus how he can show the people on this island the way that embracing the good news of Jesus affects the way that they live.
Micah McCormick: And you see that especially in relationships.
Micah McCormick: You see that in the church, in the home.
Micah McCormick: We've looked at those categories.
Micah McCormick: We're going to be looking about citizens and governments in the next chapter.
Micah McCormick: Today it's more about our life in the public sphere, particularly the workplace.
Micah McCormick: You should submit to your supervisor.
Micah McCormick: Paul here gives us a what.
Micah McCormick: Submit to your supervisor.
Micah McCormick: He also gives us a why, and you can see that at the end of verse 10.
Micah McCormick: So that they may adorn the teaching of God our Savior and everything.
Micah McCormick: There's motivation for us.
Micah McCormick: So we'll look at the what, and then we'll look at the why.
Micah McCormick: But before I get into that, let me just clarify something else.
Micah McCormick: Mikey, bosses, supervisors, you read the passage, heard the passage, it says slaves and masters.
Micah McCormick: Why is Paul so sounding casual about something so serious?
Micah McCormick: And as Christians, we believe the Bible is inspired by God.
Micah McCormick: It's not just Paul's idea.
Micah McCormick: So what does God think about slavery?
Micah McCormick: In our context, when we hear that word, we tend to think of one form of slavery.
Micah McCormick: We think of when people are forcibly kidnapped from their homeland and conscripted to be forced laborers for others for generations.
Micah McCormick: And the Bible explicitly forbids that kind of behavior.
Micah McCormick: Exodus 21, 16, 1 Timothy 1.10.
Micah McCormick: God stands opposed to that practice.
Micah McCormick: In the Greco-Roman world, there could be a lot of reasons why someone might be a slave.
Micah McCormick: You might have lost in war and said, please spare our lives, don't take out our civilization, we'll become your slaves.
Micah McCormick: Sometimes people went into debt and they couldn't pay off their debt.
Micah McCormick: And you can't just file bankruptcy.
Micah McCormick: So at times they would go into slavery to help pay off their debt.
Micah McCormick: Slaves had varying responsibilities.
Micah McCormick: Some represented their masters in business affairs, some were tutors to their master's children.
Micah McCormick: Now, I'm not suggesting slaves in this time period had it easy.
Micah McCormick: Whether your masters were cruel or kind, regardless of whether your responsibilities were economic or agricultural or domestic, even though it was sometimes temporary rather than generational, sometimes former slaves could vote, no matter what the circumstances, at the end of the day, if even for a period of time you were owned by someone else.
Micah McCormick: And that's why the word slave is used for most of your Bibles.
Micah McCormick: Paul's not endorsing the slavery practices of the American colonies, and he's also not endorsing the institution of slavery as it was practiced in the Roman Empire.
Micah McCormick: He's got a more particular purpose.
Micah McCormick: Paul's writing to Titus, but they're writing and sharing with believers who found themselves in a position of slavery, and they're telling them this is what you need to do in the position in which you find yourself.
Micah McCormick: You need to submit to your masters.
Micah McCormick: And that brings us to the situation in which we find ourselves today.
Micah McCormick: None of you are slaves.
Micah McCormick: You might call your boss a real slave driver, but you could leave work if you have to.
Micah McCormick: Military is maybe the one category, in one sense, your property of the U.S.
Micah McCormick: government, and can't just do and leave whenever you want.
Micah McCormick: But even that's much different than biblical slavery.
Micah McCormick: So we're we're thankful for that.
Micah McCormick: But the situation we find ourselves is a situation in which many of you have supervisors.
Micah McCormick: So we want to take the principle of this passage, even though it's a different day and age, and bring it into our own lives for today.
Micah McCormick: You should submit to your supervisors.
Micah McCormick: So again, first we'll look at the what, then we'll look at the why.
Micah McCormick: The passage here, verses nine and ten, gives us two specific things not to do as we live out this life of submission.
Micah McCormick: And then it gives us two positive attitudes and approaches to take on.
Micah McCormick: The first thing it says is not to talk back.
Micah McCormick: You can find that at the end of verse number nine.
Micah McCormick: Look there in your Bibles.
Micah McCormick: Don't talk back.
Micah McCormick: This word has the idea of speaking against.
Micah McCormick: The same term has already been used once before in Titus.
Micah McCormick: If you go back to chapter 1, verse 9, it says, an elder should hold the faithful messages taught, so that he will be able both to encourage with sound teaching and to refute those who contradict it.
Micah McCormick: There's the term speaking against, talking back.
Micah McCormick: You've got an elder who's teaching Jesus Christ is truly God, he rose from the dead.
Micah McCormick: Someone else comes along and says, no, he's just a man, he didn't rise from the dead.
Micah McCormick: They're speaking against what he's saying.
Micah McCormick: Or maybe he says, You're saved by grace alone.
Micah McCormick: Some comes along and says, No, you also have to be circumcised.
Micah McCormick: They're speaking against what the teacher was saying.
Micah McCormick: Acts 28, we find many people in that passage speaking against, talking back against Christianity.
Micah McCormick: In this passage, though, Titus 2, Paul's not talking about other people, unbelievers, speaking against Christianity.
Micah McCormick: He's telling Christians who find themselves in a position of slavery, don't speak against your masters.
Micah McCormick: So I have to ask you, in the workplace, are you known as someone who's complaining and talking back?
Micah McCormick: Or as someone who joyfully submits?
Micah McCormick: When your coworkers are ripping apart the boss, do you join in that speaking against?
Micah McCormick: Or do you keep your mouth shut?
Micah McCormick: That's hard.
Micah McCormick: But it's God's word, and God's word is always good.
Micah McCormick: Don't talk back.
Micah McCormick: Second, don't steal.
Micah McCormick: That's right at the beginning of verse number 10.
Micah McCormick: You know the name Rita Crwell?
Micah McCormick: Probably many of you hadn't heard of her before.
Micah McCormick: She grew up in a small town in Illinois, and in 1983, she was appointed as the city treasurer of Dixon, Illinois, small little unknown town.
Micah McCormick: She held that position as the city treasurer for nearly 30 years, and she was praised for her work.
Micah McCormick: One of the city commissioners said she looks after every tax dollar as if it were her own.
Micah McCormick: Well, she was looking after the tax dollars so that they could become her own.
Micah McCormick: Over the course of years, she was siphoning money away from the city bank role into her own personal account.
Micah McCormick: Decades to the tune of over fifty million dollars.
Micah McCormick: Largest municipal theft in American history.
Micah McCormick: Theft can happen on a grand scale.
Micah McCormick: It can also happen on a smaller scale.
Micah McCormick: That's stealing money.
Micah McCormick: It might be commonly accepted in our world, but it shouldn't be named once among the people of God.
Micah McCormick: Paul doesn't give a lot of wiggle room here.
Micah McCormick: He doesn't say, well, if you're not really being compensated the way that you should be, it's okay to take supplies, to exaggerate, you're clock in and clock out times.
Micah McCormick: Don't steal.
Micah McCormick: And at one point, Paul tells Philemon, if he owes you, charge it to me.
Micah McCormick: It's possible Onesimus stole from his master and then fled.
Micah McCormick: But he encountered Paul and he became a Christian.
Micah McCormick: And when you become a Christian, life changes.
Micah McCormick: And Paul says, I'm sending him back, Philemon, but don't receive him as a slave.
Micah McCormick: Receive him more as a dear brother in the Lord.
Micah McCormick: The gospel changes our relationships and gives us a desire to serve with integrity.
Micah McCormick: Two things to avoid.
Micah McCormick: There's others, but this passage highlights two things to avoid.
Micah McCormick: Don't talk back and don't steal.
Micah McCormick: You can submit to your supervisors by doing those two things.
Micah McCormick: Then it gives us two positive attitudes.
Micah McCormick: We find the first one at the beginning of verse 9.
Micah McCormick: We're told that they're to be well pleasing.
Micah McCormick: Let me put that shoe on the other foot.
Micah McCormick: If you were a supervisor, and some of you are, what would it look like for your employees to be well pleasing?
Micah McCormick: Just doing the absolute bare minimum.
Micah McCormick: No, you want someone who's gonna go above and beyond.
Micah McCormick: Like David's three mighty men.
Micah McCormick: I mean, David didn't even give them a command, he just expressed a desire, and they're off, in this case, they're even risking their lives to get in this water from the spring that he wanted.
Micah McCormick: Say, well, yeah, but I mean, my boss is no David, let me tell you.
Micah McCormick: Maybe not, but ultimately we're serving a greater David.
Micah McCormick: We serve a master in heaven.
Micah McCormick: That's that's the important thing to keep in mind.
Micah McCormick: This term well-pleasing in the Bible, it's normally used to describe God's assessment of a situation or our desire to be well-pleasing in God's eyes.
Micah McCormick: So, for example, 2 Corinthians 5 9, therefore we make it our aim to be pleasing to him, that is to God.
Micah McCormick: And it pleases our heavenly master.
Micah McCormick: It's well-pleasing in his eyes when we submit to our earthly supervisors.
Micah McCormick: Last description here of what this looks like in practice.
Micah McCormick: The end of verse 10 actually mirrors the first part of verse 9.
Micah McCormick: So it begins by telling us to be well-pleasing, and then it ends by speaking of our need to demonstrate faithfulness, another angle of looking at this.
Micah McCormick: Only I left out a word.
Micah McCormick: Look at the end of verse 10.
Micah McCormick: They're to demonstrate utter faithfulness.
Micah McCormick: Or if you have the NIV this morning, it says that they're to be fully trusted.
Micah McCormick: Paul is not setting a low bar.
Micah McCormick: You shouldn't be generally reliable in your place of work, but utterly reliable.
Micah McCormick: You've seen those surveys where there's the bubbles and you have to fill it out for someone else, or are they excellent, good, fair, poor, miserable, whatever the last word is?
Micah McCormick: What would your boss bubble in for you?
Micah McCormick: Good, reliable, fair, reliable, or excellent.
Micah McCormick: Fully trustworthy.
Micah McCormick: In the story of Joseph, Joseph had a lot of reasons to rationalize.
Micah McCormick: I don't deserve to be here.
Micah McCormick: My brothers sold me into slavery.
Micah McCormick: I mean, yeah, Potiphar's giving me some promotions, but I'm still his slave.
Micah McCormick: I don't deserve this.
Micah McCormick: Hey, I I didn't approach his wife.
Micah McCormick: She's the one coming on to me.
Micah McCormick: I could have an affair and still get my work done.
Micah McCormick: My private life doesn't really affect my public life.
Micah McCormick: Lot of ways to rationalize.
Micah McCormick: But he doesn't do that.
Micah McCormick: Listen to what he says.
Micah McCormick: He refuses and says, Look to his master's wife.
Micah McCormick: With me here, my master does not concern himself with anything in his house.
Micah McCormick: And he has put all that he owns under my authority.
Micah McCormick: No one in this house is greater than I am.
Micah McCormick: Even though he was still a slave at this point, still owned by Pharaoh, he's withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife.
Micah McCormick: So how could I do this immense evil?
Micah McCormick: Utter faithfulness.
Micah McCormick: If that's the what, what about the why?
Micah McCormick: If God commands it, that's good enough.
Micah McCormick: We should take that and be ready to go and obey God's command.
Micah McCormick: But God gives us further motivation.
Micah McCormick: You find that at the end of verse number 10.
Micah McCormick: Slays are to submit so that they may adorn the teaching of God, our Savior, in everything.
Micah McCormick: We have a chance to adorn the gospel in our place of work.
Micah McCormick: We don't use that word adorn a lot.
Micah McCormick: It means to make something lovely, to make it more beautiful.
Micah McCormick: You might adorn a Christmas tree by putting ornaments and tinsel on it.
Micah McCormick: You might adorn yourself for a nice meal with certain kinds of clothes or jewelry because they want that extra sparkle.
Micah McCormick: Isaiah 61, 10.
Micah McCormick: Yes, God is supreme king and ruler.
Micah McCormick: Yes, he's creator.
Micah McCormick: Do you know him as your savior?
Micah McCormick: If you don't, drop whatever you're doing, turn from your sins, repent, and trust in him to be your savior.
Micah McCormick: Don't worry for now about how you relate to your supervisor.
Micah McCormick: You worry first about how you relate to God Almighty in heaven.
Micah McCormick: And he's our savior.
Micah McCormick: We'll look at these verses in a little more detail the next couple of weeks, but verse 13 and 14 tells us that we're waiting for the blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior.
Micah McCormick: There's the word again.
Micah McCormick: And then it describes what he did to save us.
Micah McCormick: He gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to cleanse himself for a people for his own possession.
Micah McCormick: We all come into the world as lawbreakers.
Micah McCormick: Jesus came and kept the law in our place to buy us back from the sinful judgment that we deserved, to cleanse us, to bring us forgiveness of sins.
Micah McCormick: So if you don't know him as Savior, embrace him as your Savior today.
Micah McCormick: For those of us who do know the Lord as a savior, this should be very powerful motivation for us.
Micah McCormick: Submit to your supervisors, not because they're always awesome people, not merely because it'll make life easier on you.
Micah McCormick: Submit because you want to adorn the teaching of the Savior.
Micah McCormick: You want to adorn the gospel.
Micah McCormick: How could we make the gospel more attractive?
Micah McCormick: You know, we can't improve on the actual content of the gospel, but we can live in such a way that others sit up and take notice.
Micah McCormick: I want to know more about this savior that you say is at the center of your life.
Micah McCormick: Do you see?
Micah McCormick: It can sound anticlimactic, I know, to say you adorn the gospel by submitting to your boss on Monday morning.
Micah McCormick: If I threw myself in front of a bus and saved some kids' lives, I know how that adorns the gospel, but when my boss comes in on Tuesday and says, I'm gonna need a report on the Johnson file by noon, all right.
Micah McCormick: So I'm not supposed to say, look, it's the same as what it was two weeks ago.
Micah McCormick: Why do I have to do that?
Micah McCormick: Don't talk back.
Micah McCormick: Don't steal.
Micah McCormick: Don't pretend like the report took you all morning when it took you 15 minutes.
Micah McCormick: I spend a lot of time in the church office.
Micah McCormick: Do I ever in the church office ever watch any Knicks playoff highlights?
Micah McCormick: That's between me and the Lord.
Micah McCormick: I'm not saying work yourself to death, ignore your family.
Micah McCormick: I'm not saying if your boss wants you to do 100 hours a week and kill yourself, but utter failure.
Micah McCormick: Faithfulness.
Micah McCormick: How does that adorn the gospel?
Micah McCormick: Just by getting him the report by noon that he wants, it's the same as the one last week.
Micah McCormick: I'll get to that question.
Micah McCormick: But let me address an objection first.
Micah McCormick: It's a pretty weighty one.
Micah McCormick: I didn't know where to include this.
Micah McCormick: Some of you might be visitors here today.
Micah McCormick: Thank you for coming.
Micah McCormick: Glad to have you.
Micah McCormick: Maybe your friend or your relative's been saying, come to church, come to church, and you finally said, All right, all right, I'll come to church.
Micah McCormick: And this whole time you're thinking, I thought religion was a scam, and now I still think religion is a scam.
Micah McCormick: How do you please God?
Micah McCormick: Uh obey your boss.
Micah McCormick: Oh, very convenient for the bosses.
Micah McCormick: That's a powerful objection.
Micah McCormick: But that objection doesn't address Paul.
Micah McCormick: Paul didn't have any slaves.
Micah McCormick: He was in no position to gain anything by these instructions.
Micah McCormick: Paul himself was in chains.
Micah McCormick: He was treated worse than a slave in many cases.
Micah McCormick: He's got another goal in mind.
Micah McCormick: And that objection, as powerful as it can be, that religion in general, or Christianity in particular, it's really just a tool for the oppressors to keep oppressed people under their feet.
Micah McCormick: That's all that it is.
Micah McCormick: That doesn't grapple with the cross.
Micah McCormick: The central symbol of Christianity is not a bullwhip, it's not a bank account, it's a cross.
Micah McCormick: Jesus, the Lord of glory, made himself low.
Micah McCormick: He stooped and took the form of a slave in order to save people.
Micah McCormick: And the cross shows us that we're all level when it comes to how we stand before God.
Micah McCormick: Rich, poor, everyone in between, black, white, everyone in between, popular, famous, ordinary, everyone in between, we all need a savior.
Micah McCormick: And God has come to rescue us, not to tell us to work our way back to him.
Micah McCormick: But that brings us back to that question of how does submitting to my supervisor on Wednesday or Friday, how does that adorn the teaching of the Savior?
Micah McCormick: How does that adorn the gospel?
Micah McCormick: Let me give you three ways it does that.
Micah McCormick: We'll move through these quickly.
Micah McCormick: You could think of more, I'm sure.
Micah McCormick: It first, it allows us to display the humility of Christ.
Micah McCormick: Philippians 2, adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus, who existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited.
Micah McCormick: Instead, he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity.
Micah McCormick: And when he had come as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Micah McCormick: As the God man, as our mediator, Jesus submitted to his heavenly Father in all things.
Micah McCormick: He came submitting to his parents as a child.
Micah McCormick: Jesus lived this life of submission, but he was living it for us to earn our salvation.
Micah McCormick: Again, that term there in Philippians 2, 7, some places have servant.
Micah McCormick: That's the same word that's used here in Titus chapter 2.
Micah McCormick: Slave.
Micah McCormick: Jesus Christ became a slave to win us salvation.
Micah McCormick: And that kind of humility is beautiful.
Micah McCormick: So don't think when you submit to your supervisor, I guess I have to let myself get run over or I might get fired.
Micah McCormick: Think instead, I get to follow in the footsteps of my Savior and show the strength of bearing up under whatever this circumstance is because of who he is.
Micah McCormick: Second, when you submit to your supervisors, you can adorn the teaching of the Savior by showcasing a realistic view of yourself.
Micah McCormick: This is what I mean by that.
Micah McCormick: One of the main reasons why people tend to chafe and complain so much against their employer is because they think they deserve a lot more.
Micah McCormick: So what if someone in your workplace comes to you and says, I don't understand why you're so pleasant.
Micah McCormick: You're undervalued, you're underpaid, you deserve more.
Micah McCormick: What if you're able to say to them, truthfully, honestly, the only thing I deserve is hell?
Micah McCormick: And Jesus rescued me from that.
Micah McCormick: And that changes everything for me.
Micah McCormick: Wow, we're all level again at the foot of the cross.
Micah McCormick: If people don't understand their need apart from Christ, they won't see their need of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Micah McCormick: Third, last way you can adorn the teaching of the Savior by submitting to your supervisors.
Micah McCormick: You reveal that your greatest treasure is Christ.
Micah McCormick: The rat race.
Micah McCormick: Or their functional God is the title and a claim that they will receive, the power they're going to get.
Micah McCormick: That's what the world runs after.
Micah McCormick: But if your greatest treasure is Christ, those aren't your number one goals.
Micah McCormick: Galatians 6 14.
Micah McCormick: As for me, I will never boast about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Micah McCormick: The world has been crucified to me through the cross and I to the world.
Micah McCormick: Philippians 3, 7 and 8.
Micah McCormick: Everything that was gained to me, I have considered to be a loss because of Christ.
Micah McCormick: More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord.
Micah McCormick: Because of him I've suffered the loss of all things, and consider them as dung that I might gain Christ and be found in him.
Micah McCormick: What if you had that same conversation with the co-worker?
Micah McCormick: And they said, You're undervalued.
Micah McCormick: And you're able to say, Well, I have what I value most, the love of God in Christ.
Micah McCormick: Whether or not I get that extra cheese on my taco, that's not what it's all about.
Micah McCormick: It's about loving Jesus Christ.
Micah McCormick: We sing a song called Jesus Messiah.
Micah McCormick: It includes these lines: He became sin who knew no sin, that we might become his righteousness.
Micah McCormick: He humbled himself and carried the cross.
Micah McCormick: All our hope is in you.
Micah McCormick: All glory to you, God.
Micah McCormick: Let's go back to Joseph.
Micah McCormick: He demonstrated utter faithfulness.
Micah McCormick: But it wasn't merely out of duty, wasn't merely in hopes of keeping his position or getting a further promotion.
Micah McCormick: Remember what he said?
Micah McCormick: How can I do this immense evil and sin against God?
Micah McCormick: That was the horizon of his vision.
Micah McCormick: It was focused on God.
Micah McCormick: And that changed everything about the circumstances of his workplace and his life.
Micah McCormick: We can do that too.
Micah McCormick: What should you do at work this week?
Micah McCormick: Submit to your supervisors.
Micah McCormick: Why?
Micah McCormick: Well, because in doing that, you adorn the teaching of the Savior.
Micah McCormick: Are there exceptions?
Micah McCormick: Yes.
Micah McCormick: The Bible gives exceptions.
Micah McCormick: Daniel didn't refrain from worshiping God.
Micah McCormick: The Hebrew midwives didn't kill the babies.
Micah McCormick: So we can think of exceptions.
Micah McCormick: Some of you are in places of work where your supervisor actually wants you to steal from other people, not from him, but from others.
Micah McCormick: False billing, reporting things that aren't needed to be done, that are done.
Micah McCormick: And you're going to have to be someone of integrity and say no in those difficult circumstances, only because you value the glory of God and don't want to do anything that's going to detract from the glory of God.
Micah McCormick: But with those exceptions, Paul was inspired to write in verse 9 people are to submit in everything.
Micah McCormick: In everything.
Micah McCormick: But what about those other Bible exceptions?
Micah McCormick: Notice the end of verse 10 says that our passion should be to adorn the teaching of our Savior in everything.
Micah McCormick: So there's a correlation there.
Micah McCormick: Christ should transform all of our lives in every way all of the time.
Micah McCormick: So we submit as much as possible, not as little as possible.
Micah McCormick: God knows the human heart.
Micah McCormick: He knows we're prone to looking for all the exceptions more and more and more.
Micah McCormick: And so he says, submit in everything.
Micah McCormick: And that's where this message hits on a category that applies to all of us, whether you're in the paid workforce or not.
Micah McCormick: So if you've been sleeping through this whole message because you don't have a supervisor, wake up for these last couple of minutes.
Micah McCormick: Slaves and masters, as we've applied it today, employees and employers, that's one example of this broader category of authority.
Micah McCormick: And the Bible cares deeply how we respond to authority.
Micah McCormick: Children, parents, wives, husbands, church members, elders, citizens, magistrates.
Micah McCormick: We've seen it before in Titus.
Micah McCormick: We'll see it more before we finish the series.
Micah McCormick: Not all of us fit into all those categories.
Micah McCormick: Not all of us are married.
Micah McCormick: For many of you, your parents have passed away.
Micah McCormick: So you can't show them the kind of honor now that you could while they were alive.
Micah McCormick: But most of us do fit into many of these categories.
Micah McCormick: And it's a way for us to show in our spheres of life how we honor the Lord who is our supreme authority.
Micah McCormick: Take care how you submit.
Micah McCormick: We submit because there's a deeper spiritual reality.
Micah McCormick: Jesus Himself said, You can't serve two masters.
Micah McCormick: Ultimately, you are going to be someone's slave at a spiritual level.
Micah McCormick: Jesus says in John chapter 8 that we come into the world as slaves of sin, slaves of the evil one.
Micah McCormick: Ah, but if the Son sets you free, then you will be free indeed.
Micah McCormick: And when we come to the Lord Jesus Christ, he's a master that couldn't be any more loving, any more gracious, any more diligent to want our good.
Micah McCormick: And because Christ is our perfectly loving Master, because we belong body and soul to Him, we can submit to our earthly supervisors.
Micah McCormick: Let's pray.
Micah McCormick: Lord, we need this worked into our hearts.
Micah McCormick: We do pray today, Father, for those who find themselves in a place of supervision.
Micah McCormick: Even though our passage didn't touch on that responsibility in the same way, we pray that those in places of supervision would exercise that care and authority, not grudgingly, but lovingly and carefully.
Micah McCormick: And we pray for all of us, Lord, in every sphere of life that you've called us to, in the home, in the church, in the world, in the government, and even in the places of work, that we'd want to honor you in every way, because we are not our own.
Micah McCormick: We're bought with the price, therefore we glorify you in all that we do.
Micah McCormick: Give us glory and joy today as we contemplate the glory of our Jesus, who became a slave for us.
Micah McCormick: Give us gratitude, give us an ever growing love and affection.
Micah McCormick: Give us tongues to sing now of your sovereignty over all things, and our prayer that our eyes would continue to be fixed on you at all times.
Micah McCormick: In Jesus' name, Amen.