Remind The People Series

INTRO.- Remind the people. Remind the teenagers.

ILL.- A teenager is:

- A person who can't remember to walk the dog but never forgets a phone number.

- A weight watcher who goes on a diet by giving up candy bars before breakfast.

- A youngster who receives his/her allowance on Monday, spends it on Tuesday, and borrows from his/her best friend on Wednesday.

- Someone who can hear a song by Lady Gaga played three blocks away but not his/her mother calling from the next room.

- A whiz who can operate the latest computer or Iphone without a lesson but can't make a bed.

- A youngster who is well informed about anything he doesn't have to study.

- A connoisseur of two kinds of fine music: Loud and Very Loud.

- A person who is always late for dinner but always on time for a rock concert.

- A boy who can sleep until noon on any Saturday when he suspects the lawn needs mowing.

Why define a teenager? Because we’ve all had them and tried to raise them. And to raise them we had to constantly REMIND them about life and things to do! We’ve had to remind them to clean their rooms, carry out the trash, pick up their dirty clothing, do their homework, be careful in driving the car, etc.

Reminding is a part of life. It’s a bosses’ job to remind their employees to do their work. And it’s a part of a preacher’s job to remind his people of what the scriptures teach and their Christian responsibilities in this world. This is why Paul said: II Timothy 4:2 "Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction."

I believe in preaching but I have discovered that I still need to refresh my memory over and over in order to do a good job of preaching.

I have one preacher friend who tells me that he’ll get his Sunday morning sermon done by Thursday then he says he will put it on his desk. He said, “I won’t look at it again until I get in the pulpit on Sunday morning.” All I can say is, he must have a better memory than I have!

I have to go over my sermon at least twice on Sunday morning before I ever preach it from the pulpit. And I do the same thing for the evening sermon. I want to get it in my head the best I can. I want to saturate my mind with my message so that I can preach it the best I can! I WANT TO REMIND ME SO I CAN REMIND YOU!

PROP.- Paul tells Titus what he should remind the people.

1- Remind them to be in subjection

2- Remind them to do good work

3- Remind them to be humble

I. REMIND THEM TO BE IN SUBJECTION

1 Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient...

ILL.- Do you remember Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid as played by Paul Newman (Cassisdy) and Robert Redford (Sundance Kid) in that 1969 movie? Well, here’s the real Butch Cassidy. “Butch” Cassidy and his Wild Bunch comprised the last of the outlaw gangs in the West. His real name was Robert Leroy Parker, and his father was a devout Mormon who owned a ranch in Utah.

Unfortunately, young “Butch” hero-worshipped one of the ranch hands, a gunman named Mike Cassidy. When Cassidy was killed in a gunfight, young Parker took the name of “Butch” Cassidy, and soon he was learning the outlaw trade as a member of the Tom McCarty gang.

As a train robber, “Butch” relied on trickery rather than blazing guns to get the job done. In a typical case, several of his outlaws would buy tickets and board the train. Then, at some lonely spot along the way, other members of the gang would flag down the train on the pretext that the track up ahead was blocked by a rock slide or a loose rail.

When the train stopped, the outlaws who were already aboard would surprise and overpower the guards in the express car, haul out the safe, and blast it open with a stick of dynamite. Within minutes, the Wild Bunch would grab the loot and be gone.

By 1901, dozens of railroad detectives and lawmen were hunting Cassidy’s Wild Bunch. So “Butch” decided to clear out. He fled to South America with the Sundance Kid and the Kid’s girlfriend, Etta Place. There, it was said, they robbed banks and mines in Peru, Chile and Bolivia until 1911, when they were ambushed and killed by Bolivian soldiers.

Butch Cassidy was a rebel! He rebelled against man and God! But we’re all guilty. (Rom. 3:23) Some people are just worse than others in their rebellion. We think nothing of rebelling against authority in this life. I worked in the grocery business for 9 years, early in life and I saw rebellion all the time.