House Rule #17 Serve Others With God in Mind (1 Timothy 6:1-2) | Adult Sunday School

You never failed to hear my prayer and if you judged my sin

I'd never stand again But I see mercy in your hands

So more than watchmen for the morning I will wait for you my

God And when my fears come with no warning in your word

I put my trust And when the harvest time is over and I still see no fruit

I will wait The secret mysteries belong to you

We only know what you reveal The questions that are unresolved

Don't change the wisdom of your will In every trial and loss my hope is in the cross

Where your compassion's never failed

So more than watchmen for the morning I will wait for you my

God And when my fears come with no warning in your word

I put my trust And when the harvest time is over and I still see no fruit

And I still see no fruit for you

Wait for you Lord I'll wait for you

I will wait for you Lord Wait for you

For you Lord In every trial and loss my hope is in the cross

Where your compassion's never failed Teach me

O Lord what statutes

And I'll get to the end Give me understanding

That I may keep your law Leave me in your testimonies

And not to selfish gain

Give concern in your promise

That you may be feared Turn away for your rules

Are good Behold I cease

In your righteousness

Give me life In your righteousness

Give me life Good morning everyone.

Good to see each one this morning. We're thankful that you're here. Welcome to Kootenai Community Church Adult Sunday School Bible Study.

We're going to turn back in our Bibles to 1 Timothy chapter 6 this morning and continue our study.

And before we do let's commit our time to our Lord and ask his blessing and on our study this morning as we look at this little short section concerning slaves and slavery.

Let's pray together. Our Father we do know that we are here by your grace and that it is by your grace that we are able to open your word and study together to hear what you have to say to look at how you would define all of reality through your word.

We ask now Father that you would teach us and guide us by your spirit accomplish every divine purpose that you have for us and may you be glorified in it as well.

We just thank you for this time that we have. In Jesus name we ask it. Amen. Well this morning we turn a corner in our study in 1

Timothy arriving at chapter 6. It's somewhat of a change in topic in that Paul is now turning again to address how

Christians are to relate to those outside the church. In part, but it's also going to concern what goes on inside the church as well as we're going to see.

And it's still connected to the previous chapter by the word honor. Honor.

And this is the fourth honor passage dealing with fellow Christians that we've seen in recent weeks.

Chapter 5 verses 1 and 2 started out even though the word is not there certainly the principle is there, the concept is there when

Paul wants Christians to confront one another in a way that honors them as fellow

Christians. But then he does actually use the word down in verses 3 through 14 or actually 16 and 14 verse section, a very extended section on dealing with widows.

Honor widows who are truly widows. And then we saw last time how the church is to honor elders, elders of the church.

So in chapter 6, Paul is concerned once again with Christians honoring someone.

And he uses this word honor also in how believers are to relate to God.

And so basically bracketing this whole section on honoring others is another reference to honoring someone else that we've seen already.

And it's in two different places. We saw it first of all in chapter 1 verse 17.

To the king of ages, he says, immortal, invisible, the only

God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. In what this statement we call a doxology or statement of glory to God.

And then there's another one later on in chapter 6. He says a very similar thing.

It says in verse 15, he who is the blessed and only sovereign, the king of kings and lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see, to him be honor and eternal dominion.

Amen. So Paul uses this word to bracket his exhortations to teach the church how to honor people within the church and as we're going to see also outside the church.

Paul understood that the right honor of God produces the right honor of people.

The right honor of God. Putting God in his proper perspective will produce the right honor of people.

And that first one has to come before the next one. And this is an ancient foundational truth.

It goes clear back into the Old Testament law. In Deuteronomy 6 verses 4 and 5, what became called the great

Shema of Israel based upon the first word, the word to hear or listen, became

Israel's theme verse actually. It says this. And this is from the Legacy Bible.

I like it because they actually use the word Yahweh in there. I mean God gave his name at the burning bush to be used in 6 ,800 plus times in the

Old Testament. The name Yahweh, the covenant name of God is there so it's good to see it in print.

And it says this. Hear, O Israel, Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is one.

You shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

And then coming into the New Testament, a lawyer at one point in his ministry asked Jesus this question.

This is Matthew 22, 36 and following. Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?

And he said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

This is the great and foremost commandment. And the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

On these two commandments hang the whole law and the prophets. So these things go together in Scripture.

The right honoring of God produces the right honoring of people.

And even though this little passage we're going to see this morning deals with the attitude of Christian slaves to their masters, the application is broad, broad enough for us to call it house rule number 17, serve others with God in mind.

And if you want to bring out what we've just seen here as far as honoring

God, you could say honor those who you serve with the glory of God in mind because that is what this is all about as we're going to see.

So let's look together at 1 Timothy 6. We're just going to see verses 1 and 2 this morning.

And you have an outline there. And if you don't, I'm sure someone can pass you one. The outline is a little bit different this morning.

I've attached two other pages. You got to love copy -paste, you know, copy -paste.

Back in my day, copy -paste had a totally different meaning, you know. We just actually had literal paste when we were little kids.

But anyway, since Paul deals with this same issue in his letter to Titus, Titus was set to work on the island of Crete and at one point in his letter, he wants him to deal with the teaching of slaves.

So slaves on the island of Crete can have a right attitude in serving their master. So you have two pages from that study here.

We're just going to refer to them, and you can consider that homework, okay, if you want to, or not, either way.

If you consider it homework, it's worth 25 bonus points, okay? Just thought I'd put that out there for you. And if you don't, 20 bonus points.

But that's going to be there just to make some reference to here this morning. But serve others with God in mind.

And we're going to see from these two verses the command, the reason, and then the commands, and then the reasons.

And the reason I put it that way, and there's always more than one way to outline a passage, is because what

Paul really does here, he sort of cycles through the same issue here. And there's really three command verbs in these two verses, as we're going to see.

The first one, regard, there from verse 1. And then two more in verse 2 that we're going to look at.

But it's almost as if he works through verse 1, and then you could almost take verse 2 and sort of overlay it back again on verse 1, because he circles back around.

So down at the bottom there, I just sort of tried to illustrate a little bit by seeing verse 1 is all masters.

You can consider that a circle. And then there's a subset of all masters, and that is believing masters that he deals with in verse 2.

So I just did that to sort of make it a little clearer as to what he's doing here. He wants the

Christians in Ephesus to have an attitude of service to their masters that brings glory to God.

And what is really important here, and we've seen various interpretive issues through our study in 1

Timothy, some of them have to do with the text and the meanings of words and how Paul is using these words.

Really, these two verses have a fairly simple interpretation.

It's pretty plain, pretty clear. But probably the biggest interpretive issue when you come to this topic of slavery is interpreting it from the standpoint of how

Paul is using these words. In other words, it's a big mistake to read back into the

Bible our understanding of slavery, particularly the history of slavery as we know it in this country, and especially the fact that right now this is such a huge issue in the church and outside of the church.

So we have to be very careful not to commit what's called an anachronistic interpretation of a passage, or really, and it's not just this passage, it's everything.

We see a word in our English translation or a phrase or something or even a topic like this, and the tendency is to say, oh,

I know what that is, and then read it back into the passage. We need to be very careful to understand authorial intent and to the best of our ability try to reconstruct what was going on back there.

This is what Paul is dealing with. This is what Timothy is dealing with. So that's probably the biggest interpretive issue as far as I can see that we have to deal with as far as this passage.

We just have to be careful not to make an anachronistic interpretation, anachronism, anachronos, another time to read a definition that we know of back into the text.

It's easy to do that. I've probably done it a lot of times without even realizing it. But it's always important to go back and say, how is

Paul understanding these words and this issue and to the best of our ability reconstruct what was going on there.

So that's probably the biggest issue when it comes to dealing with slaves and slavery as Scripture teaches it.

So we're going to talk a little bit about that this morning. We get a little help from a scholar, a very good

New Testament scholar. His name is Murray Harris. He says, in the first century, slaves were not distinguishable from free persons by race, by speech, or by clothing.

They were sometimes more highly educated than their owners and held responsible professional positions. Some persons sold themselves into slavery for economic or social advantage.

They could reasonably hope to be emancipated after 10 to 20 years of service or by their 30s at the latest.

They were not denied the right of public assembly and were not socially segregated, at least in the cities.

They could accumulate savings to buy their freedom. Their natural inferiority was not assumed.

That was the slavery that Paul is talking about in his day. So slavery was an important part of the

Greco -Roman world, both economically and socially, and is never condemned in Scripture.

It's not promoted as something that is to be sought out, but one of the things that really causes some people to stumble is they don't quite understand how come, like in a passage like this,

Paul just doesn't outright condemn it. Well, the reason is it's not the same slavery that the people are thinking of that should be condemned as something brutal and horrible as it definitely was.

Certainly there was abuse of slavery, as there is in any system, because of the sinful hearts of men, but not necessarily from the institution as they knew it at that time.

Old Testament slaves were acquired in a variety of ways. They could be prisoners of war.

Some were purchased. Some sold themselves into slavery to pay off personal debt. Some were actually born into slavery.

And in the Old Testament, the rights of the Jewish slaves were protected, remembering that God had saved his people out of the bondage of an evil form of slavery in Egypt.

And in the wilderness of Sinai, once they were freed from that slavery, God included this category of people in his law, recorded in the book of Exodus, the fourth commandment.

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Now, oftentimes that's where people sort of stop.

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. It goes on. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a

Sabbath of Yahweh your God. In it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female slave, or your cattle or your sojourner who is within your gates.

For in the six days Yahweh made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.

Therefore Yahweh blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Now, oftentimes people don't realize that that Sabbath rest also included any slave that was in the household of the

Jewish people. The law goes on to talk about certain protections of slaves.

In Exodus 21, 2 through 11, there's an entire section about this. I'm not going to go through the whole thing.

It says, now these are the judgments which you are to set before them. If you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve for six years, but on the seventh he shall go out as a free man without payment.

And then there's various other parameters as far as how he is to be treated. And then in Exodus 21, 12, later on it says,

He who strikes a man so that he dies shall surely be put to death.

To strike someone to cause their death was a capital crime. Later on, down in verse 16,

He who kidnaps a man, whether he sells him or he is found in his hand, shall surely be put to death.

Now you just apply that to what we know of slavery and the history of slavery, kidnapping people for the purpose of selling them into slavery.

Under the Old Testament, that was a capital crime. You would be put to death for that. And then in the second giving of the law,

Deuteronomy 24, verse 7, If a man is caught kidnapping any of his brothers of the sons of Israel, and he mistreats him or sells him, then that thief shall die, so you shall purge the evil from among you.

It's called evil in the Old Testament, and again, it's a capital crime. And in dealing so, they purge that evil from themselves.

In 1 Timothy chapter 1, and we've seen this, and it's in that list of issues and sins that the law is for that we looked at early on.

One of the things the law was given for was in 1 Timothy chapter 1, verse 10, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, and then the next word in the

ESV, enslavers, people who buy men in order to sell them into slavery.

The law was made, and we just saw it, to prohibit that. And the legacy standard

Bible uses the word kidnappers. Again, ESV, enslavers. New American standard, slave traders.

The actual word, the two words, is man and a word having to do with feet or foot.

Andropodistos. What does the man have to do with the foot, the man foot?

Well, the word pod in Greek is the word, you get podiatrist, it means foot.

But in Latin, it's the word ped. So, you know, pedal, peddler. So really, a man peddler, okay?

A man seller, an enslaver. Somebody who kidnaps somebody with the purpose of selling them for the purpose of enslavement.

It's prohibited in Scripture, the law was made to prohibit that. And then even in Deuteronomy 24, continuing on, verse 20, if a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod and he dies at his hand, he surely shall be punished.

And if a man strikes the eye of his male or female slave and ruins it, he shall let him go free on account of his eye.

And if he knocks out a tooth of his male or female slave, he shall let him go free on account of his tooth, and so on.

And there's several more regulations in the law concerning slavery and how

God views it. Again, you have to be very careful about reading what we understand as slavery and the evil of that back into the

Bible, either Old Testament or New Testament. And so that's really the major interpretive issue of this passage.

And Paul says here, and we'll just walk through these two verses. Paul says in verse 1,

Let all who are under a yoke as slaves regard their own masters as worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and the teaching may not be reviled.

What Paul is here wanting to have happen is that if you are in a situation of slavery, the whole issue is to honor those who are your masters or who is your master.

And even this word slave, doulos, in Scripture, it is not necessarily a negative word as it's used in very many contexts.

It essentially is to refer to someone who is in a submissive situation, like an employer -employee relationship, or even like a military officer with a subordinate, and so on.

It's even used of Jesus in Philippians 2 -7 to speak of his relationship to his father.

He is a servant of his father, it says. And the main reason

Paul is giving for this, to regard your masters worthy of honor, is you are a slave.

You are a slave, and your master is worthy. So he's going to later on talk about the purpose of this and how it's so important that you be in submission to those who are in authority over you for mainly the glory of God, the reason.

But the use of this word doulos, it's very important to see, it actually means slave.

It has often been translated as servant or household servant. There is a word for household servant, but this isn't it.

This word, and it's very interesting, there's a very famous dictionary, it's called the

TD &T, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, and in that they take the first, the most prominent terms of the

New Testament and they do exhaustive word studies on them. And some of these word studies are page after page after page because they research the use of these words, clear back into classic

Greek, Attic Greek, and then into the Koine period, and then into patristic studies. So there's a lot of stuff there.

And as you know, the meanings of word change through the centuries. So some of these word studies are very extensive just for a single word.

The word doulos is not like that, it's very interesting. The person that did this study, basically it's very short and very compact, and he tells you why here.

He says, all the words in this group, and there's a group of words, serve either to describe the status of a slave or an attitude corresponding to that of a slave.

The meaning is so unequivocal and self -contained that it is superfluous to give examples of the individual terms or to trace the history of the group, which is what they would usually do.

Distinction from synonymous words and groups, and he lists several other ones, is made possible by the fact that the emphasis here is always on serving as a slave.

Hence, we have a service which is not a matter of choice for the one who renders it, which he has to perform whether he likes it or not, because he is subject as a slave to an alien will, to the will of his owner.

Now the word for household slave they use here, oiketes, is almost exactly synonymous, but in doulos the stress is rather on the slave's dependence on his lord, while oiketes emphasizes the position of the slave in relation to the world outside in human society.

This shows us again how strong is the passive element in doulos and in the whole word group to which it belongs.

It essentially only means one thing, a person who is in absolute dependence and service to their lord.

And now you can understand why believers are called a doulos in scripture. It really only means that.

And some of the English translations, I think, maybe have sort of tried to moderate that dependence and absolute service of the doulos by sometimes translating it as household servant or house servant.

But it's always kind of amusing to me, they always have a footnote down there, it says slave. Well, then it's a slave.

One more reason I think the Legacy Bible has done a really good job is they've, as far as I know, pretty much translate that as slave every time that word occurs.

So again, that's just kind of an interpretive thing and important to know.

It really only means one thing, and that is a slave. And Paul wants the people who are slaves in Ephesus to regard their own masters as worthy of all honor.

And the reason is, and this is Roman numeral 2, the glory of God is at stake. The glory of God is at stake.

And so you see, if your focal point is on you or the person or your boss or your employment situation, you need to understand there's a transcendent, important purpose of all of this, and that is the glory of God.

And that takes place in two parts here, or for two reasons. They're worthy of all honor so that, that's a purpose statement, the name of God and the teaching may not be reviled, okay?

This is what's at stake. It's at stake in Ephesus, and it's at stake right here and right now in our own lives.

Your own master is worthy of all honor, probably not Christian masters at this stage because he deals with Christian masters later on.

Paul's example of how he related to the pagan, godless rulers and leaders of his day is a very good example.

If you read through the book of Acts, whenever Paul comes before a ruler, basically his life is on the line here, but he's always very respectful to them, and he doesn't revile them.

He submits to whatever they have determined was going to be his fate, trusting himself to God and the sovereignty of God.

This word here, to regard, regard your master as worthy of honor, to make an objective determination.

In other words, this is not about emotions or feelings. It's to make an objective determination, to calculate it to be true.

It's not based on feelings, so it is something that it has to be, and you can even predetermine to do this.

Let's say you're going to start a new job or something, and as a believer in Jesus Christ, you can predetermine that you are going to submit to your boss, or if you're joining the military.

They'll help you do this, by the way, in the military. They'll encourage you to submit to those in leadership, and of course that's what they do, is to help you understand the importance of obeying orders and being part of a group that accomplishes a purpose or a mission.

And so, all honor, and it's very important to understand too, remember we talked about the honor due widows and the honor due elders, and it was a dual honor, both respect and value, but also both of those groups of people,

Paul is exhorting, help them in their material needs, remuneration for their services, help the widows, and then pay the preachers, right?

But here, he doesn't do that. He just simply says honor them so you respect them, and the way you do that is by your obedience and the way you relate to them.

Peter deals with this in 1 Peter 2 .18, and Peter's writing to Christians who are being persecuted, they're scattered all over the place, and in chapter 2, verse 18 through 20,

Peter says this, and he actually uses this word for house slave, servants, be subject to your own masters with all fear, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are crooked, for this finds favor.

If for the sake of conscience toward God, a person bears up under sorrows when suffering unrighteously, for what credit is there if when you sin and are harshly treated, you endure?

But if when you do good and suffer for it, you endure, this finds favor with God.

So you see the two real important concepts are in play here in all of these passages.

Number one, the sovereignty of God. Sovereignty of God is just all over everything Paul writes.

And the second thing, and they're connected, is the glory of God. The sovereignty of God in your situation, but also the glory of God in how you relate in that situation.

Peter's not writing to people who are just out there maybe working for a boss or something like that.

These are Christians that are undergoing terrible persecution in their day. And the whole stress in everything he writes to them is on godly living.

So the reason is the glory of God. God's reputation is at stake here.

And when a Christian doesn't work or serve to the glory of God, God's reputation suffers.

But also, not just that, also God's teaching. God's teaching, or the gospel.

We might say the word of God, and as we've seen repeatedly, the truth or whatever it is that we're teaching or preaching, right?

It comes under rebuke, it comes under blasphemy.

The name of God may be blasphemed, and the teaching of God may be blasphemed.

This is the meaning of that word reviled. That's actually the actual word itself.

Some translations actually use the word blaspheme. King James Version uses blaspheme.

It means to slander, to revile. Young's literal translation said to speak evil of or to profane.

The New American Standard has a rather polite translation. So that the name of God and our doctrine will not be spoken against.

Spoken against. It's the word blaspheme, okay? The legacy translation has changed that.

Will not be slandered. Okay, I kind of like that a little bit better. That's more in keeping with the usage of that word throughout the rest of the

Bible. This is the word used to describe the two false teachers, or the two liars, back in chapter 1, verse 20.

You remember, Paul talked about them. He committed them to Satan so that they would learn not to blaspheme.

This is also the word used in the book of Revelation. Revelation 13, 5 of the beast, okay?

And the beast was given a mouth. This is Revelation 13, 5 and 6.

The beast was given a mouth, uttering haughty and blasphemous words. And it was allowed to exercise authority for 42 months.

It opened its mouth to utter blasphemies against God, blaspheming his name and his dwelling, that is, those who dwell in heaven.

And so you get a sense of what that word actually means. Again, in Revelation 16, verses 8 through 21, this word is used three different times.

This is God pouring out his judgments on the earth and on the people on the earth. And it's late in the judgments.

And John says this, Then I heard a loud voice from the sanctuary, saying to the seven angels,

Go and pour out on the earth the seven bowls of the wrath of God. And the fourth angel poured out his bowl upon the sun, and it was given to it to scorch men with fire.

And men were scorched with fierce heat, and they blasphemed the name of God, who has the authority over these plagues.

And they did not repent so as to give him glory. So you see both the issue of the glory of God there and the blasphemy of these people.

The judgment of God is being poured out on these people on the earth, and they know exactly what it is and who it's coming from.

And they blaspheme God because of his judgment on them, and they refuse to repent.

And then, verse 17, Then the seventh angel poured out his bowl upon the air, and a loud voice came out of the sanctuary.

Well, whoops, I missed verse 10. We need to get all this in here, okay? Then the fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and his kingdom became darkened, and they gnawed their tongues because of pain.

And they blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and they did not repent of their deeds.

And then the third time, down in verse 21, Huge hailstones, about one talent each, came down from heaven upon men, and men blasphemed

God because of the plague of the hail, because its plague was extremely severe.

This is what's at stake if you disobey Paul's command here, is to risk the glory of God, and that God's name may be blasphemed, and that the teaching of God may also be blasphemed.

So there's a lot at stake here, and the most important thing, and you notice the focus is not on the individual

Christian, we're important, Paul knows we're important, but the most important thing is the glory of God is at stake in obedience to this command.

So I thought I'd just stop right there real quick and see if you have any thoughts or questions so far from this verse.

Okay, verse 2, the commands, and here we have two more imperatives, two more commands in verse 2.

Those who have believing masters must not be disrespectful on the ground that they are brothers.

Rather, they must serve all the better, since those who benefit by their good service are believers and beloved.

Now he deals with the circle within the circle. Whether if your masters are unbelievers, you have to treat them with respect, they're worthy of honor, and if your masters happen to be believing masters, now he's going to deal with them.

Don't disrespect them. Up to this point, the first command is sort of in the positive, regard your masters.

This is a command that's put in the negative. Don't disrespect your believing masters.

Oftentimes, if a command like that is put in the negative, depending on the grammar, and this is one of those cases, it's a command to stop doing something.

So probably what's going on in Ephesus there is you have some slaves coming to know

Christ, their masters are believers, and for some reason they're disregarding or disrespecting their

Christian masters. Maybe they think now that they're believers, they get some special privileges.

Maybe they think, well, maybe I don't need to work quite as hard or do quite as good a job at what I do. We're not really told what it is.

He just captures the whole thing. Don't disrespect them. It's a compound word, kata phrenetosan.

Kata, down, phreneto is the word for to think. Don't think down on them. Don't be disrespectful.

Don't think slightly of your Christian masters. And then he gives you the three reasons.

They are brothers. They're fellow believers. And now, if you're saved now, you have a transcendent relationship that goes above and beyond the fact that you're in a master -slave relationship.

In other words, you Christian slaves, stop disrespecting, stop thinking down on, stop thinking with contempt toward your saved masters.

He's basically indicating, because this is now a brother in Christ, and you have a responsibility to him that transcends your responsibility to him as if he was not your brother in Christ, just an unregenerate, unsaved master.

And the third command, rather serve them better.

And he uses the verb form of the word slave. Be a better slave. I guess we could say, slave them better if they're your brother in Christ.

This is the reason why Paul sent Onesimus back to Philemon.

Read Philemon sometime. What's going on there? Paul wrote this to Philemon who was at Colossae.

Colossae is one of the three churches in the Lycus Valley. There was Colossae and Hierapolis and then Laodicea. They're just right close to each other there.

Paul's writing his letter from Rome. He's in prison. And Onesimus was the slave of the

Christian master Philemon who was a member of the church of Colossae. And he, at some point, comes and finds

Paul in Rome. Paul leads him to Christ. And then he sends him back to Philemon.

He doesn't say, wow, now you're a Christian. You're free. You're so free now that you're a Christian.

Go, go, be free, live your life. Kind of like a free willy kind of deal, you know. Go, go, be free.

He doesn't do that. He says, now you have a responsibility to your brother who is Philemon, and you need to go back there.

This is like 800 miles, you know, back to Colossae. He writes him that letter and sends it with him back there.

He needs to go back and get things straightened out with his brother in Christ who's also his master, okay, before anything else.

That's his top priority. And Philemon has to forgive him and accept him back in.

So both those things go together. The masters have responsibilities as well, and Paul brings that out in some of his other passages.

When Paul deals with, let's say, to this same group of people, in Ephesians chapter 6, verses 5 through 9,

Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart as you would

Christ, not by way of eye service as people pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the

Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the

Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free. Masters, do the same to them and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their master and yours is in heaven and that there is no partiality.

Masters have a responsibility too in this whole thing. And again, in Colossians, and you know

Ephesians and Colossians are sort of like sister letters, but again, Philemon was part of the

Colossian church here. He says, Slaves, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye service as people pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the

Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the

Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ, for the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done and there is no partiality.

And in chapter 4 verse 1 of Colossians, Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, knowing that you too also have a master in heaven.

And then in Titus chapter 2, which you have there as part of the page 2 and 3 there,

Titus on the island of Crete is doing very much similar work that Timothy is doing in Ephesus.

Titus 2, 9 through 10, Slaves are to be submissive to their own masters in everything.

They are to be well -pleasing, not argumentative, not pilfering, that's probably what Onesimus did, he probably ripped off Philemon as he was going out the door, okay?

Not pilfering, but showing all good faith so that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our

Savior. Exact same concept there. What's the purpose there? The purpose is that God won't be reviled or blasphemed and that the teaching or the doctrine won't be reviled, but in the case he puts it positively in Titus, it will be adorned.

It will be adorned by your behavior. So, we hear the sovereignty of God all through this.

God is sovereign. And one of the great teachings that came out of the Reformation was they got back to this teaching from Scripture, that the sovereignty of God over all things, and whether it's employment whether it's marriage, whether it's everything that we do in life, it is under the hegemony of the sovereignty of God.

And along with that as well, they brought back an important concept and that is everything you do, do it to the glory of God.

It's all through these passages. And the Reformers did a great service to the church by calling the church back to both of these concepts.

And so, from our perspective, do you view your work that way? Do you work in the workplace for the glory of God?

And that's the reason slaves are to regard their masters as worthy of all honor, even unbelieving ones, because we are to do all that we do to the glory of God.

And so, this is what's at stake here. This is what Paul wants to see go on in Ephesus in these churches.

He wants them to regard their unbelieving masters with honor, but especially their believing masters.

Don't be disrespectful on the ground that they are brothers. Don't take advantage of that.

Rather, they must serve all the better, since those who benefit by their good service are believers and beloved.

The reason they're brothers, they're believers, and they are beloved. They're beloved by God, and they should be beloved by you.

And they also benefit by your service to them to the glory of God.

Our focus is to be on that which is eternal. All of these categories, whether it's slave, master, employer, employee, all are temporary, and they're going to pass away when the world passes away as well.

But what will remain is our eternal relationship to God and the glory that we bring to him through our obedience to his word.

And then there, at the very end of verse 2, Paul says, teach and urge these things.

Teach and urge. Both command verbs, teach and urge these things. This is very important. We've also seen this little statement before.

Some of your Bibles may have sort of a paragraph break there and even a chapter title, and they want to put that statement with what follows.

And other commentators say, well, no, when he says teach and urge these things, it goes with what came before.

Not something I'm going to arm wrestle over, because Paul wants him to teach and urge everything he's saying in this letter, right?

This is part of the purpose statement. I am writing these things to you so that if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God.

That's chapter 3, verse 14 and 15. And then in chapter 4, verse 11, he says, command and teach these things.

A couple verses later, practice these things. Immerse yourself in them, and so on.

And so whether you take it to be referring to what he's just said or what follows, the point is he wants him to teach and urge these things.

And so we'll probably start with that next time, but know that it can go either way, because it's something

Paul wants him to do as far as every single part of this letter. So, do you have any thoughts or questions on what we've seen in these two verses?

Nobody wants to talk about your employer -employee relationships? Some Christian contractors or bosses and have had some

Christians working for them? Or maybe the Christian employees work for a Christian boss. That's okay,

I know, I get it, I understand. The principles are still there, right, for all of us to see, and it's not necessarily, and again, back to this concept of slavery.

Slavery is still going on in the world today, and it's an evil. And we hear it in the news, we see it all the time.

Trafficking, that type of thing, that is slavery. They have gotten ahold of people, and they're using them for evil purposes.

But Paul's focus here is on the kind of slavery that they had, and the important thing is how the slaves relate to their masters, how the masters relate to their slaves, and that they do it for the glory of God.

Okay? Alright? Well, let's pray together. There's no questions. Father, thank you for your word today.

Thank you for your guidance through what can be a difficult concept, difficult passage.

But we know what comes through in your word is the fact that we are to do all things to the glory of God.

And what we do, how we relate to other people, even in the workplace, whether we are a boss, a master, a leader, or whether we are an employee of any kind, we are to do all things to your glory so that your doctrine, your word, may not be blasphemed.

Help us to be obedient to this, Father, wherever we find ourselves in this world.

Cause us always to think in terms of how we relate to people, because it's important then how they see you and your truth.