Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / April 28, 2024 | Deuteronomy - Release The Slaves

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April 28, 2024 | Deuteronomy - Release The Slaves · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Morning.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Good to be with you this morning.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Excited to continue our series in Deuteronomy.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: I want to give you a heads up though.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking about some heavy things this morning.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: We'll be in Deuteronomy chapter 15.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's where we'll begin.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: We'll go to a couple different places, but Deuteronomy chapter 15 has to do with how the nation of Israel is supposed to handle and treat their slaves.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're going to talk about that this morning, and we're going to talk about really what it means when God uses the language of master and slave.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because it turns out that is actually one of God's favorite ways to describe our relationship to Him.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: And even as I say that, I recognize how those words for some people might be a really big hurdle to overcome.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: And at the same time, that there is a lot of baggage attached to, it's kind of a mild way to put it, but baggage attached to those words.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yet when we get to the end of the Bible, even Paul, right, it turns out that referring to himself as a slave of Christ is one of his favorite ways to introduce himself.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so what we're going to do this morning is we're going to kind of look at what it meant for Israel briefly, understand that in its context, but then sort of look at how those terms of master and slave are something that God actually redeems.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: And they are things that describe our relationship with him ultimately to the point where we should rejoice that we are able to be called slaves of God.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: And if that's a pretty far shot for you right now, just hold on with us.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: The other sort of caveat I want to introduce, though, is my job is to lead people to life in Christ.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so though there is a whole social, cultural, historical conversation that is relevant around the topic of slavery, especially as we look at our own context and living in America, that's not the main focus of this morning.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: I just don't want you to think that I'm trying to diminish that by instead talking about what the Bible says, but rather what I want to do is take some passages that you might have skipped over or think are uncomfortable or don't like, and instead show you how you can draw closer to Christ through them.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's where we're at in Deuteronomy chapter 15 as we get going this morning.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Moses says, If your fellow Hebrew, a man or woman, is sold to you and serves you six years, you must set him free in the seventh year.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: When you set him free, do not send him away empty-handed.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Give generously to him from your flock, your threshing floor, and your wine press.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: You are to give him whatever the Lord your God has blessed you with.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: That is why I am giving you this command today.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: But if your slave says to you, I don't want to leave you, because he loves you and your family, and is well off with you, take an awl and pierce through his ear into the door, and he will become your slave for life.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Also treat your female slave the same way.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Do not regard it as a hardship when you set him free, because he worked for you for six years, worth twice the wages of a hired worker.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Then the Lord your God will bless you in everything you do.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: So, to make an important but obvious statement, Israel had slaves.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: And when we talk about slavery, um, especially in the Old Testament context, one of the things we have to do is uh look at the truth, which is that it was different than sort of our understanding, you could even say, just in uh the American South of slavery.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: One of the big differences between slavery that we understand and slavery that is presented in Israel is that it was not based on a feeling of superiority for races or racial racial hatred.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Rather, there were two main mechanisms that somebody might become a slave.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: The first was that it was because of war and conquest.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: So a number of the times that Israel goes out to war, like every other nation during that time, um, as they were the conquering group, they would take some of the people that they had conquered to become their slaves.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: The other way that it would happen is through economic hardship.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: So actually, a lot of the language in the Old Testament is of Israelites willingly selling themselves into slavery in order to overcome debts.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so what uh actually the focus of Deuteronomy 15 is, is it's talking about the relationship between a Hebrew to a Hebrew or an Israelite to an Israelite, um, where one owned the other and how they should go about treating them.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: As we look at this here, uh, one of the things that is kind of ironic uh is that part of God's message to Israel and how they're supposed to handle this conversation, how they're supposed to sort of work within this system, is they're to remember that they were slaves in Egypt as well.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, the slavery in Egypt is uh brutal by any standard.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: And uh as the beginning of Exodus shows us, I mean, the way we're introduced to the nation of Egypt in that time period is that they're trying to kill the Israelite babies as sort of an extermination, a genocide.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so it is within that system where they were forced to do hard, brutal labor and beaten for it.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: God says, Remember that you were slaves in that system and let that influence the way that you treat your slaves now.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh having said that, right, there's another important but obvious kind of question that comes about, which is, isn't slavery horrible?
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, isn't slavery an affront to humanity?
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't it a crime against those who are made in God's image?
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer is unequivocally, yes, it is.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: It is one of the worst sins mankind has ever committed is enslaving one human being to another.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so obviously, then the follow-up becomes well then why does Israel have it?
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: So, in order to answer that question, we actually need to take a quick detour, okay?
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that detour has to do with a less severe but still uh relatable experience where God is providing structure and legislation to human depravity sort of run amok.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: In Matthew 19, the Pharisees are playing their favorite game, which is gotcha, with Jesus, and they are trying to catch him in sort of mistakes or trying to convince him, or not convince him, but to sort of prove that his perspective is wrong, that he is not truly God.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: And when he's doing that, they are responding to one of Jesus' claims in Matthew 19.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: He says, uh, God created marriage to be between a man and a woman, and what God has brought together let no man separate, right?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: And to that response, the Pharisees bring back up something that was in the Old Testament law.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: What they say to Jesus is, why then did Moses command us to give divorce papers and send her away?
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: And what they're referencing there is that there are actually many rules in the Old Testament for how the Israelites were supposed to handle divorce.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that in this one that they're speaking of particularly, they're referring to how if a Hebrew male was going to divorce his wife, instead of just, you know, forcing her to leave and then sort of to her own devices, which in that social structure would have been basically to her ruin, she would have been disgraced and outcast, that he was supposed to give her a certificate of divorce, basically showing that it was sort of his decision and that she might be able to recover from this.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of what they're referencing here in shorthand.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: And to that, Jesus says, Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because of the hardness of your hearts, but it was not like that from the beginning.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: The point that Jesus is making is that divorce is not a good part of God's design.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: But understanding the nature of human hearts and the fact that no matter what, people were going to be divorcing each other for various reasons.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: What God did was bring sort of some structure and boundaries into this system so that those who were vulnerable in this case might be able to at least not experience the furthest ends of abuse.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm not equating divorce with slavery.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Hear me.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: But the principle is the same.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because what we see in the nation of Israel is that God is taking sort of human depravity run wild.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, think about how sad it is, really, that the nation of Israel, as former slaves who were brutally treated and knew those who were killed and had their children murdered, that they would then go on to continue that cycle in their own lives.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so what we see here is that the sort of the bottom, the ends of despair that we find in those who are rebelling against God and not following with God's design for the world.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: That God recognizes there's a matter of realism that creeps into some of the commands in Scripture, where God legislates things that are not part of his good design, yet are preventing the worst forms of abuse.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what is happening here in the nation of Israel.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not trying to make a huge point out of the fact that slavery, the way they treated slaves in Israel, was different than at other points in society.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: I that's not a great point to make.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: But nevertheless, it's true that Israel did have these sort of restrictions.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, in Deuteronomy 23, it says, do not mistreat your slaves, and in fact, if you find a slave that has escaped from their master because of mistreatment, let them live wherever they want.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: They do not need to go back into that environment.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: But having said that, right, we still need to recognize, this is a core to understanding this language, especially as we begin to use it later on in the New Testament, that the master-slave relationship is not something that is ever fully redeemed in the way that it works between humans.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: It is never a dynamic that God says is good.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, every instance where it appears, God is providing restrictions to it or providing direction for how Israel is supposed to be distinguished from the other nations.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is a theme, the idea that wherever we look, we find some examples in history of human sin at its worst, is a theme that William Wilberforce, who is an English abolitionist, picked up on in his only published work.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is what he said wherever we direct our view, we discover the melancholy proofs of our depravity, whether we look to ancient or modern times, to barbarous or civilized nations, to the conduct of the world around us, or to the monitor within the breast, whether we read or hear or act or think or feel, the same humiliating lesson is forced upon us.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: And the humiliating lesson is that humanity, despite all of our sort of claims towards growing and prospering and becoming better than we were, no matter at any point in society, we can look out and see the effects of this fallen world and as we continue to add to it and draw it away from God's good design.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's kind of these two truths that we hold in concert with each other, right?
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Which is that Israel had slaves.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: They were allowed to have slaves.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: There were restrictions on what they were able to do, but that doesn't mean that it is good or part of God's good design.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Having said that, and this is where we kind of are going now, we still need to wrestle and understand what it means when God later uses this language of master and slave to describe our relationship to him.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Furthermore, how could Paul seeing these things in his daily life ever get to the point where he says, like, as way of introduction, I am Paul a slave to Jesus Christ.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: That was the way that he would choose to introduce himself.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so, in order to kind of make that um jump, the the final thing that we have to do, though, is understand and just kind of reinforce, right, that just because the Bible has these concepts, just because Israel was allowed to have slaves, does not mean that it was a good thing.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because that will be the foundation for where we go at the very end.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: See, what we have to do in order to look at this, right, is we have to ask ourselves the question, what does the character of God entail?
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like who we know God to be in his revealed word, what does that tell us about what he thinks about this topic?
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: And you don't have to look into historical, cultural, social, you know, sort of any of those environments, any of those arguments to talk about the depravity of slavery, because at its core it is, it undercuts the message that everybody is made in the image of God.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody is created equal in the image of God.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, that God desires for human flourishing.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so those simple concepts, like ask yourself the question in what world is one person able to own somebody else, but in a fallen world, that kind of question encapsulates what we're looking at here.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, this is also the same way that we would say Christianity throughout the centuries, throughout the eons, right, has been on both sides of the slavery argument.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: It is to the shame of Christian history that we have had people advocating for slavery using the Bible over and against other Christians who are advocating for its abolishment from the Bible.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Frederick Douglass, an American abolitionist and former slave himself, said this: between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: So wide that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: To be the friend of the one is of necessity to be the enemy of the other.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: I therefore hate the corrupt slave holding, women whipping, cradle plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: Indeed, I can see no reason but the most deceitful one for calling the religion of this land Christianity.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so that is the space that we press into as we continue to look forward, because what we have here is a Bible that does talk about slavery.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: We have a Bible that does use these words, but how is it that we can overcome and understand?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: What we're gonna see is God taking this language, taking these hard words and redeeming them sort of from the ashes that they are currently in when it comes to the way that human beings have treated each other.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: There are elements of the master and slave relationship that better than anything else describe our relationship with God.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul, absent other language to use, that just uses sort of this describes this power, he will then use it in his own teachings, not only describing himself as a slave, but talking to an entire congregation of people and calling them slaves to Christ as well.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: So as we turn to 1 Corinthians, we're going to see Paul begin to use this language, right?
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where our transformation begins.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: This is where we take the broken and the depraved, and it begins to transform.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: What Paul is doing as he speaks to the Corinthian church, and you might remember this last two falls, we've gone over 1st and 2 Corinthians.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: But Paul is speaking to a church where slaves and masters are worshiping together, which is wild to think about.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: But what he is doing in speaking into this environment is he is recognizing that there is a level of priority that comes to our identity.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: And the priority of that identity is that those who were slaves and those who were free, and those who were Jews, and those who were Greeks, and all the other identifiers that people had was secondary to the fact that they were united in Christ.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: This is what he says.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: Let each of you remain in the situation in which he was called.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Were you called while a slave?
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Don't let it concern you.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: But if you can become free, by all means take the opportunity.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: For he who is called by the Lord as a slave is the Lord's freedman.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: Likewise, he who is called as a free man is Christ's slave.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: You were bought at a price.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: Do not become slaves of people.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: Brothers and sisters, each person is to remain with God in the situation in which he was called.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so what Paul, I mean, imagine, right?
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: You're Paul, you're writing, and what he is saying, the explicit language he has is to those who were enslaved in the Corinthian congregation, he says, I mean, if you can be free, reach your freedom.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: Do not be slaves of people if you have any power over it.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: But the greatest truth here is that that identity as a slave was something that was underneath their identity as a follower of Christ.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it is only within the church, as a reflection of God's kingdom, where equality was to be found, that those who were low in the world outside the walls of the church were brought up.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: He says, You are free in Christ.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: And those who maybe thought of themselves higher in the walls outside of the church as free people were brought a bit lower.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, But understand, you are slaves to Christ.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: And as he is doing this, Paul is sort of revealing this idea that slavery is not just a physical institution, but something that is spiritual as well.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, this is where the phrase ends up moving, is that Paul uses these words of master and slave to describe our spiritual relationship with God.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: He plucks them from the physical and moves them into the spiritual.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: And you say, well, why does he have to use those words?
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: Why not something else?
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: Parent and child, general soldier, president and citizen, emperor, and I mean, like, there are so many words that you could use to describe a relationship that is lopsided in authority.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: But instead he uses master and slave for two reasons, two necessary reasons.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: The first is because no other relationship in human history has ever described a disparity in power the same way as the master and the slave.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: There is nothing that even touches total obedience like that of referring to somebody as a slave.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's language that is only appropriate here to describe the difference in power and obedience between us and God.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: The second reason that Paul uses this language is because no other words, no other human institution would be adequate to introduce the concept that we were bought and that God, in part of his work as a sort of eternal concept, has purchased us and now we are owned by him.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing that translates in the same way than saying master and slave to describe one being bought, as we are all keenly aware.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so as Paul is doing this and he begins to describe us as being slaves in Christ, we have to understand what he is doing here is not sort of comparing that system of being enslaved to Christ and calling him master to what had come before or what is current in Corinth or even what is present today in human slavery, but rather in contrast to the way that the master-slave relationship has always been a product of a fallen and broken world.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: Rather that it is now something that has been redeemed and found new life in Christ, though there are some elements of it that are useful in describing our relationship to him.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing like the power between the two, nothing like being purchased.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we get to that last point there, right, what does it mean to be purchased?
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: We have to understand that there was a cost that was paid for us.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: And you might be able to guess, right, what that cost was.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: But the Bible says that the cost that God paid to redeem us from slavery, spiritual slavery, was the blood of Jesus Christ.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: That it was none other than his son dying on the cross.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Cross.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: That was the purchase price for your soul.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so as Paul begins to draw us deeper into this, right, already we understand that the master and slave relationship is not the same.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: The master that Paul is drawing us towards is one that died so that we could be set free.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: In the book of Romans, Paul draws this home.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it's important to see as we'll go to that passage, that'll be the last thing we look at this morning.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: As we go to that passage, the movement from physical slavery to spiritual slavery is one that communicates both the importance, right, of that transmission, right?
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: That there are those who are physically enslaved.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul says, if you can be free, be free.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: But the greater understanding, because the greater understanding is that they are, we are united in Christ, he says, the greater understanding is that you see your identity as being slaves to Christ, not slaves to human masters.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: But as he moves from one to the other, and as he moves from the sort of the earthly to the heavenly, the other thing that happens is everybody gets included.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody gets drawn into the net.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: Though there are only some of the people in Corinth who are slaves, everybody is a spiritual slave to something.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where Paul goes in Romans 6.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Don't you know that if you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of that one you obey, either of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: But thank God that although you used to be slaves of sin, you obeyed from the heart that pattern of teaching to which you were handed over, and having been set free from sin, you became you became enslaved to righteousness.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: I am using a human analogy because of the weakness of your flesh.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Paul, for the reminder.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: For just as you offered the parts of yourselves as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater lawlessness, so now offer them as slaves to righteousness, which results in sanctification.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about Paul's context, right?
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: The book, or the letter to the Romans, rather, is written to a group of people who are a minority Christian group in a culture, a hedonistic and sinful culture that worships the self and the body and the desires of the heart above everything else.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: And as these Christians are living in this environment, one of the things that they would respond to most or see most frequently, as Paul is needing to sort of explain this slavery to sin, is he talks about the bodies of those who are engaged in all manner of activities that are rebelling against God.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: He says, as they pursue those things, though they think they are pursuing freedom, though they think they are pursuing the desires of their heart, and they are able to do this without sort of penalty, without any sort of judgment upon them.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: He says, ironically, what they are doing is walking further and further into sin.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: And the sin that Paul sort of communicates is he says there's basically two roads here.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: There is a slavery that leads to sin and a slavery that leads to death ultimately, and there is a slavery that leads to righteousness and a slavery that leads to life.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: And as he is describing the slavery between these two, the point that he is making, one of the many, is he says, people get to choose which one they want to follow.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: The point of people walking into slavery, in slavery to sin, is how foolish that idea sounds to anybody who understands the concept of slavery.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: Who would ever willingly want to become a slave?
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yet, people who are pursuing the flesh, the desires of their heart, sort of these hedonistic things, particularly in Rome, it would be with relation to sex, but we can attach any manner of human depravity to it, right?
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: That when they are doing these things, Paul says they are just adding chains onto their shoulders.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: They are putting on shackles.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: They are going further and deeper into slavery, even though they think that they're free.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so as Paul is describing this to them, he says, right, this is sin leading to death.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: But then he presents the other opportunity.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: He says, But there is still a manner of slavery where you can pursue righteousness instead.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: And everybody has a master.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody's a slave to something, but you can choose which one you follow.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the other one that he presents has life.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: And the life that is found there, as he is going to explain here in a moment, is not just because people are working hard for it, but rather because the master over the pathway to life is far, far different, couldn't be any more different than the master of sin that is over the pathway to death.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: The master of sin, Satan, he is the one who is leading people down this road.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: But the master of life is one who is not truly enslaving in the same way that we think of it, but rather he is the one who dies so that they may be set free, and then within his kingdom adopts them as his children.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is all language in the Bible, that we are adopted as adopted as sons and daughters of the king, and then that they may be able to pursue life and hope and joy and righteousness.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: And the word that Paul uses here, one of those big church words, is sanctification, that as they continue to walk down that road as slaves, willing slaves to that master, that they are transformed more and more into the image that God has for us.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: They look more like Jesus every day, and they are sanctified.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: They are made holy.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: But Paul finishes this statement here by sort of going to the furthest ends, making it the most obvious of what the conclusion of those two pathways are.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: He says, For when you were slaves of sin, you were free with regard to righteousness.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: So what fruit was produced then from the things you are now ashamed of?
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: What good did it do you to pursue slavery to sin?
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: The outcome of those things is death.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: But now, since you have been set free from sin and have become enslaved to God, you have your fruit, which results in sanctification, and the outcome is eternal life.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: When I was a camp counselor at Canakuk, which is a summer Christian camp, they drilled into our heads Romans 3.23 and Romans 6.23.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's not negative, it's a good thing.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: You should drill it into your heads too.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: Romans 3.23, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: Romans 6.23 is the end of our passage here.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's not taking it out of context to just say that phrase, but it is interesting to think that one of the most often used phrases to describe the gift of God through Jesus Christ to find salvation comes at the end of a passage where we're being described as slaves.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yet this is why God is able to redeem this language and change it, is because the master and slave relationship of God to us is nothing like this world has ever seen.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: It is nothing like the human institution of slavery and owning people.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, we are committing to the obedience that is present within that relationship.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: But instead of having a brutal master, a taskmaster, who, as Israel would have been reminded when they were slaves in Egypt, punched them up until the point of death, we have one who instead wants to seek our life and have a personal relationship with us, and he has done it by purchasing us from the other master.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: To drive that home one more time, the reason why the master slave relationship is important language to use, though I understand the hurdle behind hearing it, is because nothing else describes not just the obedience, but the fact that we were bought.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: And in order to think of being bought, you have to understand what we were bought from, and this is why Paul's language becomes so important.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: What were you purchased from?
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: A life of death.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: That was your destiny, that is my destiny, absent Jesus Christ.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: But as we now have Christ and we have been redeemed by God, and we are now in his kingdom, and we have accepted Jesus as our Savior, we are still willingly calling ourselves slaves, but it is not to a master who is brutal, but it is one who gives life.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think Tony Evans has a great sort of phrase or comment on this as he talks about this decision that is present between these two things.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: He says, unfortunately, today, in most of our lives, Jesus has too many other masters with whom he has to compete.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: But the important thing to remember is that Jesus is not willing to be one among many.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: He is not willing to be part of an association or club, neither is he willing to be relegated as a personal assistant.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus as Lord means that Jesus is to be the one and only supreme ruler and master in your life.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: He calls the shots and he is to be acknowledged in everything that is done.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so my question for you is everyone has a master, who will you follow?
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: You have the freedom here.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: Ironically, in this whole conversation about masters and slaves, you have the freedom.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: But you are a slave to something.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody is.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: Bob Dylan said it in Gotta Serve Somebody.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you're gonna have to serve somebody.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody's a slave to something.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody has a master.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: You get to choose who your master is and what you are a slave to.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: But don't think that you can avoid these words, right?
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so as we sort of put a bow on this message, what I what I hope you are drawing from it is that slavery within Scripture, particularly when it is between humans, is not something that is good.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, it reveals the depravity of mankind.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: But in a sadly fitting way, the human institution of slavery is a sign that we are all slaves to sin spiritually.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: And because we are all slaves to sin spiritually, we need somebody to redeem us, to save us, so that we might be set free.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the hope of Jesus Christ is that you can be set free for an eternity.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: And like Paul speaking to the Corinthians, I think with great grace he recognizes that though our circumstances in this life might not always be the way that we would ultimately desire, or in fact the way that God would desire for us, yet we live in a fallen world.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: The redemption and the hope is just as our identity is found in Christ, so is our freedom.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: So that is why he is able to say to the slaves in Corinth, you are set free in Christ.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: You need to understand that you can overcome what is present in your life right now.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then he says to the free man, he says, You need to understand a little bit more about what it means to have complete obedience to the true master.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because the true master has paid a precious price for your soul.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it would be a disservice to turn away from that and instead choose to put on the chains that Satan wants us to have about lives dedicated to sin, and instead that we would recognize that God is the worthy and loving Master, and we would choose to follow Him instead.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that relationship does not have chains on it, He sets us free in His kingdom.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we come before you.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, you used heavy language to describe our relationship to you.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: There is nothing quite like the obedience that you require from us.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: But Lord, it is worthy to be given because you are a righteous and loving master who sets us free.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: God, I pray for anyone here who, first of all, um is struggling with this language.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because God, we do, especially here in America, we wear heavy baggage because of this topic, as we should.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: But Lord, moreover, just as Paul said to the Corinthians, that you might help us to see how you redeem this, how you take this language and make it good.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: And God, that if anybody here, by the power of your Spirit, wishes to follow you as their master, Lord, that they would trust in you, Jesus Christ, as their Savior.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: They would know that your blood has purchased them from the master of sin who is destined for hell.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: And Lord, that you have brought them into the kingdom of righteousness to be slaves.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we thank you for this, and God, we ask that you would help us to just sort of rest in this understanding, to not shy away from some of the language that you use, God, because you are perfect and good and you redeem all of the broken things.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it's in Jesus' name we pray.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: Love you.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great week.