Sunday Evening Service – July 12, 2020

All right, good evening. Wow, that's hot. So we need to turn that mic down a little bit back there if we can.

But anyway, if you would turn your Bibles to Exodus 21. Exodus 21.

And I want to read a passage of Scripture that will set the stage for what

I want to share with you this evening. Exodus 21.

Read verses 1 to 11. So this is the law given for Israel.

So it would be part of the civil law. And Moses writes,

Now these are the judgments which thou shalt set before them. If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years shall he serve, and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing.

If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself. If he were married, then his wife shall go out with him.

If his master have given him a wife, and she have borne him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by himself.

And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children, I will not go out free.

Then his master shall bring him unto the judges, and he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the doorpost.

And his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall serve him forever.

And if a man sell his daughter to be a maid servant, she shall not go out as the men servants do.

If she please not her master, who hath betrothed her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed, to sell her unto a strange nation he shall have no power, seeing he hath dealt deceitfully with her.

And if he have betrothed her unto his son, he shall deal with her after the manner of daughters.

If he take him another, that is another wife, her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage shall he not diminish.

And if he do not these three unto her, then shall she go out free without money.

Let's pray, and then we'll have a song. Father, I pray that you would meet with us in this time together tonight, and you'd speak to us through your word.

Give us some semblance of understanding and insight into this whole matter of slavery, especially as it applies to the scripture and is found in the scriptures.

We pray in Jesus' name, amen. So I'll sing just one song, number 118.

It's a song, He Knoweth the Way, number 118. And sing the first and the third stanzas.

Number 118, He Knoweth the Way. Can we stand as we sing? Help us sing a little better.

Together. O Lord, Thou art my King, and who am

I to question Thy way? Whatever the loss, whatever the cost, draw me closer to Thee every day.

He knoweth the way that I take, a new heart within He'll create, that I may walk worthy and come forth as gold

He giveth and taketh away. And the third.

O Lord, Thou art my all, and who am

I to walk without Thee? My sin

I forsake, Thy cross I will take, now

Thy servant, dear Lord, make of me. He knoweth the way that I take, a new heart within He'll create, that I may walk worthy and come forth as gold

He giveth and taketh away. Thank you.

You may be seated. Well, tonight what I wanted to do was kind of pick up on the topic that was addressed in this morning's passage in Ephesians chapter 6, where Paul is writing to bondservants and their masters, slaves and their masters.

There were different categories of bondservants and slaves, and we'll see that here tonight.

But needless to say, that topic has been on our mind much in the last several weeks, ever since all of the protests started up again, and the riots, and the

Black Lives Matter stuff that's been going on.

And in many cases you've heard, in the context of all of that, there have been some who have been calling for reparations for slavery in the

United States. So the whole subject of slavery is one that's been on our mind, and no matter how you cut it, it is something, it's a subject, it's an issue, an institution that is part of our nation's history.

But one thing I want us to understand tonight is that as an institution, slavery is a huge part of human history.

This isn't something that was isolated to white men in America enslaving black men.

Slavery is something that's been going on in the world probably since there were different nations, different groups of people and tribes of people that formed their own governing areas.

Slavery has probably been going on for at least that long. We know that it's happened and been going on in all parts of the world, all different cultures, different nations, and we see it in the scriptures.

I want to look at that tonight. In Ephesians 6 that we looked at this morning,

Paul addressed this subject, but he didn't direct his remarks to the institution of slavery.

Instead, he directed his remarks to those who were involved in slavery on a household level.

The household level would be the slaves and their masters. One thing I didn't point out this morning that might be helpful for us to understand is that slaves in the

New Testament time frame were often considered part of the family.

They were part of the household. That's probably why Paul saw fit to include that discussion to slaves and masters right on the heels of the rest of the household.

First talking about husbands and wives, then parents and children, and then slaves and masters. He was just dealing with that which was going on in the household.

But Paul and the New Testament and the scriptures themselves nowhere really address slavery as an institution that has to be dismantled.

But what Paul writes and what the scripture as a whole has to say about slavery undermines slavery from within, which explains why it is that Christianity has been the most aggressive force to do away with the institution of slavery.

Again, not so much because of an attack on the institution directly, but there was first of all an undermining of that institution from within, which then made the discussion about abolishing the institution altogether something that made for a political possibility.

So what I want to do tonight is just provide a general survey of how the Bible handles this.

There's no question, but much more could be said than what I'm going to say in the next 40 minutes or so, and could make a whole series on the subject, and I'm really not interested in doing that.

But I did want us to get a good survey understanding. So we have to understand that first of all, the

Bible does acknowledge the existence of slavery. And even in the scriptures, we can see that slaves were acquired in a variety of ways.

So get your Bibles ready, and we're just going to flip through a bunch of passages probably.

So in Numbers 31, for example, Numbers 31, verse 7, says the

Israelites warred against the Midianites as the Lord commanded Moses, and they slew all the males.

The Israelites slew all of the male Midianites. They slew the kings of Midian beside the rest of them that were slain and so forth.

Now look at verse 9. Verse 9 says, And the children of Israel took all the women of Midian, captives and their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle and all their flocks and all their goods.

And then look at verse 18. So Moses initially is very upset with the warriors, the army, because they took these women captives, the wives of the men who were slain.

And he chides them and said, Hey, listen, do you not remember that it was the women, the

Midianite women, who seduced the Israelite men and led us into idolatry and got us into trouble?

And so then Moses had them execute those wives.

But then in verse 18 he says, But all the women children that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.

So here is, in a very early place in Israel's history, even before they crossed over the

Jordan and became a nation, that the Israelites conquered the

Midianites and those who were left alive became the captives and the slaves of the

Israelites. Now this may seem, this is horrific on one level, isn't it?

And this is one of the things that's really challenging for us because we are so far removed from the institution of slavery and so distant from the realities of war on a personal level in our lives and even in our lifetime.

The vast majority of us have not experienced the kind of close -up war that was commonplace in these days.

I mean, how far away were the Israelites from the Midianites? They were right next door. This would be like Iowa going to war with Illinois.

And when that war got over, then the next thing you know, Indiana is attacking Illinois. And we're all involved.

Every male that can fight is involved in the militia. We don't know anything like that.

So this all seems so distant to us and so horrific.

But one of the things that we have to keep in mind is that this taking of the slaves was actually a humanitarian gesture.

You say, well, how in the world is that? Well, okay, what were the options? What were the typical options at the time were?

Absolute genocide. So the Israelites won the victory? Okay, then you just kill every single

Midianite. You just exterminate them all. So there are no Midianites left. No men, women, boys, girls, none.

Just completely annihilated. This was typical. So somewhere along the way, they figured out, hey, you know, rather than do that, why don't we just take some of these people captive and we can use them and benefit from them, which is a terrible thing.

But given the alternative. And the other thing to keep in mind, too, is if you have all the men are involved in war and the guys who lose, they all get killed.

Who's left? The women and children. All right, so then what if the victory, the winning army just says, okay, have at it.

See you later. And they just leave. This would create a tremendous, terrible hardship for those trying to pick up the pieces.

So as strange as it sounds to our ears, this was actually, to take people captive in a war, in victory, was actually considered a more humane or humanitarian thing, at least more humane than genocide.

Another way that slaves were acquired was through purchase. So that's how Joseph ended up being in slavery in Egypt, sold by his own brothers to slave traders that ended up selling him in Egypt.

In Israel, foreigners could be purchased from traders.

And even children. We saw in Exodus 21, this passage we read earlier, that a family could sell their child to a form of slavery.

An Israelite family could sell their children to Israelites as slaves.

And this, again, seems terribly, we cannot wrap our heads around that.

How in the world could a parent do this? And the short answer to that, without going into a lot of detail, is it all had to do with economics and survival, a matter of survival.

So better to sell your child, if you will, to a neighbor who could provide for that child, that would allow you to pay off your debts, your child would survive, it wouldn't starve to death, your child would survive and would be cared for, and so forth, and in return for the room and board that the child gets, the child would work, and so on and so forth.

Another thing to keep in mind about that kind of arrangement is, this isn't like the Joseph thing, where the slave traders come to town and the parents need a few extra bucks, so they sell off their kids to the slave traders, then take the kids off to another country somewhere.

No, this would be like in the community, within the community, that this would take place.

So it's not like the parent sends the child off and never sees them again for the rest of their life. They're in the same, they're living in the same community.

War captives purchase, a third way that slaves were acquired was through insolvency.

So there was no such thing as bankruptcy court in those days. You incurred a bunch of debts and you couldn't pay your debts, so how do you pay those debts?

Well, you sell yourself to slavery, to a form of bond servant.

So like in Exodus 22, we see an example of this in verses one to three.

If a man steal an ox or a sheep and kill it or sell it, he shall restore five oxen for an ox and four sheep for a sheep.

If a thief be found breaking up and be smitten that he die, there shall no blood be shed for him.

I think I got the wrong verse here. The sun be risen, oh, you know, here it is.

If the sun be risen upon him, there shall be blood shed for him, for he should make full restitution.

But if he can't make restitution, if he have nothing, then he shall be sold for his theft.

So here's another example of how that insolvency comes into play.

Guy steals property, he can't pay restitution for that property, then the only alternative for him is to sell himself into slavery to pay that debt.

A fourth way that slaves were acquired was through acquisition as a gift. Acquisition as a gift.

Again, really odd, isn't it? But Jacob had a couple of wives,

Rachel and Leah, right? So when Jacob married Leah, Leah's father,

Laban, gave to Leah Zilpah as a handmaid.

When we read that in the Bible, in our Bibles, it sounds pretty vanilla, very innocuous, and we just go on.

But what that means is that Zilpah was a slave girl, and she was a slave girl to take care of Leah, and so when

Leah got married, dad gave Zilpah to Leah, which became part of Jacob's household.

So acquisition is a gift. And then a fifth way is by inheritance, by way of inheritance. Non -Hebrew slaves in Israel could be passed on to the next generation.

A sixth way was through the children of slaves. So we saw in Exodus 21, verses 2 through 4, you know, here's a guy who's a

Hebrew servant. He's only allowed to serve for six years, and then he's got to be released.

But if while he becomes the servant, he marries another servant, which would most likely not be an

Israelite woman. So he marries this other woman, and marries this servant, and they have a child.

That other servant, the female servant, and the child becomes, is the property of the owner.

The Hebrew servant is allowed to go free, but the child, that guy's children, belong to the owner of the slaves.

That's one of the ways that you would become a slave, by being born into it from your parents.

Now, when we look at the Old Testament, we read the Old Testament, we find that there were a lot of Old Testament individuals that had slaves of some kind.

For example, Abraham had as his servant,

Eleazar. Remember Eleazar? In Genesis 15, Abraham is complaining to the

Lord, who has promised him an heir, and Abraham says, where am

I going to get an heir? The only heir I have is really this Eleazar, his servant. But then, in chapter 24, and this is an interesting passage to note,

Genesis 24, look at the first four verses of this passage. It says,

Abraham was old and well stricken in age, and the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things. And Abraham said unto his eldest servant of his house, that would have been

Eleazar, that ruled over all that he had, he said,

Put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh, and I will make thee swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and the God of the earth, that thou shalt not take a wife unto my son of the daughters of the

Canaanites among whom I dwell, but thou shalt go unto my country and to my kindred and take a wife unto my son

Isaac. And if you know the rest of that story, that's exactly what Eleazar does. He takes a caravan of property, of goods, with him to, back to Abraham's home territory to look for a wife for Isaac.

And Eleazar is Abraham's servant, his slave. Now, what this whole story does is give us some insight into the relationship that existed between the master and the slave here.

I mean, think about this. Why didn't Eleazar, he's got this caravan full of good wealth.

Why didn't he just take off? I mean, he could have gone anywhere with all of that. But he didn't.

He served the desires of his master. His master had implicit trust in Abraham, had implicit trust in Eleazar.

And Eleazar showed respect and loyalty to his master,

Abraham. So, I think the point to get here is we have a hard time wrapping our heads around the idea that there could be a good relationship between the master and slave dynamic.

And yet, throughout history, there have been many cases, many occasions where that relationship was not necessarily a hostile relationship.

In many cases, the master was, the slave owner was very good and generous and faithful to his slaves.

And the slaves were very appreciative of all that their master did for them.

That's not an across -the -board blanket statement, but you see it here with Abraham and Eleazar and it's repeated elsewhere in history.

Sarah, also, Abraham's wife, also had a slave, a servant, a handmaid, and that was

Hagar. You remember the whole story with Hagar. What was that relationship between Sarah and Hagar?

It wasn't her sister. It wasn't a relative. It wasn't even a good buddy from across town.

She was her slave. Solomon had a variety, a bunch of slaves.

We don't have time to look at that. I won't take the time to look at that. Elisha, the prophet, remember

Elisha the prophet had a slave and his name was Gehazi. You remember the account where Gehazi, Naaman, the leper, came to Elisha to be healed of his leprosy.

He was. Naaman said, I want to reward you. What can

I give you? Elisha says, I don't want anything. Go your way. Gehazi, Elisha's servant, ran after Naaman later and said, hey, my master wanted something after all and he got some stuff from Naaman and he came back and Elisha confronted his servant,

Gehazi. What have you done? Why have you done this? Is this a time to get stuff? And he ended up,

Gehazi ended up getting leprosy. But that was the relationship. Elisha was the master. Gehazi was the slave.

And then let me show you another passage that is interesting to show some dynamics here.

Look at Joshua chapter 9. Joshua 9. Joshua 9 is the account of the

Gibeonites and the Israelites. You remember that? The Israelites had just come into the land of Canaan and they already had the success at Jericho.

They had the fiasco at Ai but then eventually defeated Ai. But then you come to chapter 9 and in Joshua 9, the

Gibeonites who lived nearby, they came deceitfully to the

Israelites. They sent some ambassadors who pretended like they had traveled a long distance to get to the camp.

And the Israelites ended up agreeing to a treaty with the

Gibeonites and promised that they would defend them and they wouldn't treat them ill or anything like that.

But what I want you to notice is verses 20 and 21. After it was discovered that the

Gibeonites actually were living close by, they weren't from some far off country, there was some people who were upset.

Let's kill them. Let's get rid of them. They're Canaanites. We need to get rid of them. But Joshua says no.

We made a covenant with them. We're not going to get rid of them. But he says, this is what we'll do. Verse 20. We will even let them live, lest wrath be upon us because of the oath which we swear unto them.

And the princes said unto them, Let them live, but let them be hewers of wood and drawers of water unto all the congregation.

In other words, let's make them servants. Let's make them slaves.

And in verse 27, it says, Joshua made them that day hewers of wood and drawers of water for the congregation and for the altar of the

Lord. Now look at verses 24 and 25. When Joshua comes back to the

Gibeonites and says, alright, you tricked us, this is what we're going to do. We're not going to kill you, but this is what we're going to do.

We're going to make you our servants. So in verse 24, here's how the

Gibeonites responded. They answered Joshua and said, because it was certainly told thy servants how that the

Lord thy God commanded his servant Moses to give you all the land and destroy all the inhabitants of the land from before you, therefore we were so afraid, we were terrified of our lives because of you and have done this thing.

And now behold, we are in your hand. We are in your hand as it seemeth good and right to do unto us.

Do it. In other words, the Gibeonites willingly accepted this role of servanthood to the

Israelites. In fact, you look earlier in the passage, verses 8 and 9, when the

Gibeonites are speaking to Joshua, they said to him, we are your servants.

Verse 9, he said, we've come from a very far country, your servants are come because of the name of the

Lord. And in verse 11, they say, we are your servants, therefore now make a league with us.

So they said, we're your servants. It turns out that's exactly what they became, their servants.

And here's the deal, here's the thing, the Gibeonites preferred that slavery over death.

They would rather be the servants to the Israelites than to be exterminated by the

Israelites. So, I mean, it's there. They're people in the, you know,

God's people, Israelites in the Old Testament had servants or slaves.

And slaves even in the Old Testament, they had some rights. They had some rights.

One was the right of manumission or freedom or release. Male Hebrew slaves,

Hebrew slaves, Israelite slaves, were freed after serving six years. They couldn't serve more than six years.

But if they wanted to, and we saw this earlier, they could choose to remain. Now, when it comes to female

Hebrew slaves, there was a different thing going on here. The presupposition for an

Israelite girl or woman that became a slave was that she would become the wife of the one making the purchase.

Either the purchaser would take her as a wife or he would take her as a wife for one of his sons.

So there was the understanding that she was betrothed in this purchase, the arrangement.

Not exactly an ideal situation if you're the girl, but that's the way it was.

They were also released, these slaves or servants would be released if the owner in any way maimed them.

Maimed them by beating them or something of that nature. There were also distinctions as to types of slaves.

So Hebrews were never slaves in the strict sense of the word. They could be bond servants or they could be hirelings that would be eventually subject to release.

Foreigners, those who were outside of Israel who became slaves were indeed slaves as we think of them and they did not have any opportunity of being released.

So it was the Hebrews that were able to be released. Some had rights to be freed.

There were also religious rights. So the slaves of a household shared in the religious practices of the family.

They celebrated Sabbath together and the Israel feasts together. They had some civil rights.

We'll talk about those in a different section here. They had the right to marriage. Hebrew slaves could marry even as slaves.

We saw that with the guy who becomes a slave and then he gets married. They could acquire personal property.

They were allowed to acquire any kind of property and they could even acquire their own slaves.

In their position as a slave, if they came into money in some way they could buy themselves out of slavery.

They were able to do that as well. They also had the rights of some slaves had the rights of asylum.

If a slave is a slave in a foreign country, let's say a slave is a slave in Egypt and he escapes

Egypt. He escapes slavery from Egypt. He's not a Hebrew. He's an Egyptian or whatever.

He escapes slavery in Egypt and he flees to Israel. He gets asylum there.

The Hebrews would not send that slave back to the foreign country to serve as a slave.

They would be given asylum. The practice of slavery exists in the

Old Testament. You cannot deny it. It's there. It's right there in front of you. It was regulated.

In Exodus 21, the passage we read earlier, a little further down, one of the things that was strictly prohibited in Israel was the practice of slave trade by kidnapping.

In verse 16 it says, He that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.

What Joseph's brothers did to him four centuries earlier is here outlawed in Hebrew civil law.

If anybody tried to do that, they would be put to death. For example, the slave trade that was going on in the

United States, so much of the slaves, for example, that came to America and ended up on the slave blocks in Charleston, South Carolina, many, many, many of those were actually kidnapped by other

Africans. They were kidnapped and taken captive and then taken to a place where they were sold as slaves and put on the slave ships and sent to America or sent to Britain, to Great Britain.

That practice of kidnapping somebody and selling them into slavery was strictly prohibited.

Another thing that was strictly prohibited was extreme cruelty. In verses 26 and 7 here of Exodus 21, it says,

If a man smite the eye of his servant, or the eye of his maid, that it perish, he shall let him go free for his eye's sake.

If he smite out his man's servant's tooth or his maid's servant's tooth, he shall let him go free for his tooth's sake.

You say, well, those slave owners were really cruel people. Well, do you see how this warning, this prohibition is one that is designed to, like Paul said to the

Ephesians, the Ephesian masters, forbear threatening.

It was designed to be a regulation, a restraint against what might be commonly done in the culture of the day, and that is to treat a slave cruelly, with cruelty.

So that extreme cruelty was prohibited. Now, I want us to look at the

New Testament and see how the Bible in the New Testament undermines the institution of slavery, how it undermines the institution.

What it doesn't do, and this causes no little perplexity for our 21st century sensibilities.

The Bible does not call for the dismantling of slavery as an institution.

In other words, when God set up the civil law, the law of Moses, for the nation of Israel, isn't it interesting that he did not totally prohibit slavery altogether?

So, again, in our 21st century, modern American culture and economy, with all of its complexity, that is free in our...

It's sort of free, right? How many of the products that are sold that come from, you know,

China or some of these Asian countries where they use child labor, how many of those products are really made by child slaves and so forth?

We're kind of shielded from that, but as far as we know and as far as we see, the institution of slavery doesn't exist, and so we have a hard time understanding, well, why didn't

God just, when he set up the nation of Israel, why didn't he just flat out prohibit slavery altogether?

I don't have a short answer to that question, and I think the answer to it would be more complex than I want to take the time with, but I think a lot of it has to do with the radical difference between the radical economic difference between our world and the world of the ancient

Near East. We cannot grasp putting ourselves back in that world and understanding how that world would function.

We don't get that. But the point I want us to get is that even in the

New Testament, there is no call for the dismantling of slavery as an institution.

Jesus never mentioned the subject at all. He never even brought up the subject.

And the New Testament, interestingly, let's look beyond the subject of slavery.

The New Testament really never calls for the overthrow of any institutional evil.

In other words, the New Testament does not call Christians to civil rebellion to overthrow some kind of institutional evil that the government of the nation, whatever nation you might happen to live in, sanctions.

So, I mean, think about being a Christian in China. The Bible does not tell the

Chinese, the church in China, to take up arms and start a revolt against the government because of its two -child policy or because of its demand for all churches to be registered.

It doesn't call for that. Again, that perplexes us sometimes, but it has more to do with the approach that the

New Testament actually takes. And we're going to work toward understanding what that approach is. In helping us understand a little bit about why this

New Testament might not call for the dismantling of slavery as an institution, right off the bat,

William Hendrickson in his commentary on Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon.

Philemon, of course, Paul dealing with Philemon, the slave owner, and his runaway slave,

Onesimus. Hendrickson writes this, he says, such a sudden upheaval of the entire

Roman economy, like calling for the dismantling of slavery, such a sudden upheaval of the entire

Roman economy, the large percentage of which, the large percentage of which were slaves, would have resulted in indescribable misery for many a bondman who depended on his master for a living and would have placed an insurmountable obstacle in the way of the propagation of the

Christian faith. And I would suggest further, it would have intensified the persecution of the

Christian church and would have brought it on even earlier. So, if Christians, slaves, if slaves, for example, became

Christians and Paul said, we need to overthrow slavery, we need to dismantle slavery, slavery should be abolished in the empire and called for that, you would find intense persecution of the

Christian message right away, immediately. And not only that, but even if it were successful, and never would have been, it never would have been accepted, that message, that even if it were, there are hundreds of thousands of people who would have been left with nothing to eat, nowhere to live, and no way to get anything.

Any clothing, shelter, no way whatsoever. This is a concept we don't understand.

But it is something that was also found to be true in our own nation. There's an essay in the book

The Heritage of America, Susan Dabney wrote this essay, and it concerns the aftermath of the

Civil War, and this is what she writes. She says that, even long after Lincoln had issued his Emancipation Proclamation, quote, no apparent change took place among the burly

Negroes. Those who worked in the fields went out as usual and cultivated and gathered in the crops.

In the house they went about their customary duties. We expected them to go away or to demand wages or at least to give some sign that they knew they were free, but except that they were very quiet and serious and more obedient and kind than they had ever been known to be for more than a few weeks at a time of sickness or other affliction, we saw no change in them.

At Christmas such compensation was made them for their services as seemed just. Afterward, fixed wages were offered and accepted.

Thomas, the owner, called them up now and told them that as they no longer belonged to him, they must discontinue calling him master.

Yes, master. Yes, master, was their answer to this. So the point is that it seems very simplistic to say, well, why doesn't the

Bible just demand that slavery be done with? And the answer is it's a whole lot more complex for that.

So it doesn't do that. The Bible also does not, in the New Testament, also does not call for slaves to revolt.

In fact, look at 1 Corinthians 7. 1 Corinthians 7 and verses 21 through 24.

Now Paul is writing to believers in the church in Corinth, so Corinth was a city in Greece, Macedonia, and would have been, had a large population as anywhere in the

Roman Empire, a large population of slaves. And he writes in verse 21, are you called being a servant or a slave?

Care not for it. In other words, don't be anxious about it. But if you may be made free, use it rather.

If you have the opportunity for freedom, go ahead and take the opportunity for freedom. But then it goes on to say, for he that is called in the

Lord being a slave is the Lord's freedman. Likewise, also, he that is called being free is

Christ's slave. Same word. It's that word doulos. I mentioned it this morning.

He says, you are bought with a price, be ye not the slaves of men. In other words, don't look at yourself, even if you are a slave, don't look at yourself as being a slave to a man.

It's like what Paul said to the Ephesians. Serve your master as if you are serving Christ.

Don't look at yourself as a servant or a slave to that master. Look at yourself as a slave to Christ.

Now look at what he says. In verse 24, he says,

Brethren, let every man wherein he is called therein abide with God.

In other words, learn, learn to be content in that place where you find yourself right now.

Again, Paul is not saying if you're a slave and you have the opportunity to be free, don't take it.

No, just the opposite. He says if you have that opportunity, take it. Not in rebellion, not in revolution, not in running, but you have the economic freedom to gain your freedom from slavery, take it.

The Bible also does not, the New Testament does not call for slave owners to release their slaves.

So we saw that in Ephesians 6, right? He addresses the masters. He doesn't say to the masters, let your slaves go.

And when Paul is dealing with Philemon, in that one chapter book,

Philemon is the owner of the slave Onesimus. Onesimus has run from his slave position and in his escape, after he escaped, he came to Christ.

He came to faith in Christ. Paul led him to the Lord. And then Paul learns that Onesimus is a slave owned by Philemon.

And what does Paul do? He sends Onesimus back to Philemon. Now he doesn't do so to support the institution of slavery.

What he does is he sends Onesimus back to Philemon and he tells Philemon, I'm sending him back to you, not as a slave, but as a what?

As your brother. So treat him as your brother in Christ. So what he does there is he undermines that slave master relationship in the way he distinguishes them now.

You're not slave and master. You are brother and brother in Christ. Which changes the dynamic considerably in that case.

So what does the New Testament do? What the New Testament does in 1

Timothy 1 verses 9 and 10 is it condemns the practice of slave trading that was the kind where a person is kidnapped and traded off.

So 1 Timothy 1 verses 9 and 10 Paul writes knowing that the law is not made for a righteous man but for lawless and disobedient, for ungodly and for sinners, unholy and profane, for fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, whoremongers, them that defile themselves of mankind, for men stealers.

For men stealers. What's a man stealer? It's exactly this very thing.

The kidnapping of someone and then selling them into slavery. This kind of thing is happening in the sex trafficking industry today, right?

Stealing children and then putting them into bondage in that trade.

Well this was a common occurrence even in the first century. The Bible condemns it, condemns slave traders.

What the Bible in the New Testament also does is it treats everyone everyone as equal in Christ.

Every believer is equal in Christ. So Galatians 3 28 for example, Paul says there is neither

Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, slave or free.

For there is neither male or female, you are all one in Christ Jesus. So what this does, this statement right here, it absolutely dashes the underlying notions that were held by many

Americans in slavery and in their racist views.

And what I mean by that is, and again, I lived in the South long enough to hear this and to see it with my own eyes,

I heard the notion that black people are an inherently inferior species to white.

They are inferior to white. Paul says there is no such notion.

You are one in Christ, black or white, it doesn't matter. This is why Spurgeon got in trouble in the

South when he wanted to come to America and preach. He was invited to come to America and preach and was invited by some southern churches.

But Spurgeon said, if I'm going to come and preach in your churches, you're going to have blacks and whites in that church together and they're not going to be sitting in different places.

And they got furious with him for that kind of a notion.

Well, Paul would have told them the same thing. And the other notion that is undermined in this is that black people are the cursed descendants of Ham and Canaan.

And I heard that taught from the classroom lectern that they are the cursed descendants of Canaan and therefore they can be treated as second class individuals.

Paul says no, no. There is neither

Jew nor Greek, bond or free, male or female. You are all one in Christ.

And this, what Paul is saying here, actually reinforces what he also said in Athens at Mars Hill.

When he said in Acts 17, look at this with me. Acts 17 verses 24 and following.

Remember he sees all the idols and the idol to the unknown God. When he sees that idol to the unknown

God, he speaks of it in verse 23 and then he talks about the one God that they didn't know. And he says,

God, in verse 24, that made the world and all things therein, seeing that He is

Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands. Neither is worship with men's hands, as though He needed anything, seeing

He giveth to all life and breath and all things. And here, verse 26, and hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on a face, on all the face of the earth.

There is one race and it is the human race.

And it is actually bad nomenclature to talk about the races.

What race are you? Somebody asks you, what race are you? Say, human. Human. You want to color my skin?

Caucasian. But I'm human. I'm of the human race. Somebody who is, what's the little children's song?

Jesus loves the little children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight. Why? Because they're all part of the human race.

There's one race. And Paul understands that. That's why he says what he does in Acts 17.

It's why he says what he does in Galatians 3, 28. And then what else the

New Testament does, and we saw this this morning, is it condemns the abuses of slavery, the abuses of slavery, by both the slave and the master.

He tells the slave to obey with a good attitude, and he tells the master to treat with kindness and with dignity and respect.

He tells the master to treat the slave like you would want the slave to work for you.

So he condemns the abuses of it. And then, and I mentioned this earlier, but in Philemon, verses 15 and 16, he calls for the receiving of one another as brothers in Christ.

So in Philemon 15, he says to Philemon, for perhaps he,

Onesimus, therefore departed for a season that thou shouldest receive him forever.

Not now as a servant or slave, but above a slave, a brother beloved, especially to me.

But how much more unto thee, both in the flesh and in the Lord.

Both in the flesh and in the Lord. Now here's the thing. If you are relating to that person as a brother, what is the underlying what is the underlying dynamic in that relationship?

It's love. It's love. Brotherly love is that natural affinity that those of the same blood have for one another.

And what Paul is calling for Philemon to do here is to recognize you are both of the same blood, the blood of Christ.

And therefore you are to love one another as brothers love one another. So again,

Hendrickson, let me quote William Hendrickson. He says the true solution to the slavery problem is what

Paul teaches, that love coming from both sides, masters and slaves, is the only solution.

This love is the response to God's love for His child. Whether that child be black or white, bond or free, makes no difference.

It is this love of God which melts cruelty into kindness and in so doing changes despots into kind employers, slaves into willing servants, and all who accept it into brothers in Christ.

The kingship or rule of God works from within outward, not from without inward.

And that idea is contained in Jesus' parable in Matthew 13 verses 31 to 33 where He says,

The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took and sowed at his field, which indeed is the least of all seeds, but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in it, and the branches thereof.

And then He said another parable unto them, The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till the whole was leavened.

So what the New Testament does with this whole issue of slavery is it introduces the leaven of love in the relationship between people, introduces that leaven into the mix, and that leaven feeds into the whole institution until it ends up being dissolved.

And that's really what happened. William Wilberforce was the one of the leading instigators in the destruction of the abolition of slavery in England.

And what motivated him? What motivated him? It was love for people who were so enslaved.

This works both ways, doesn't it? You think about the hateful condemnation that we're seeing of presumed racists.

You're seeing it played out on your videos and all the rest of this stuff. I saw this afternoon the video of an 8 or 9 year old boy standing in front of a police line with both of his hands up and all of his fingers down but one.

And using that expression to the cops. What in the world are his parents teaching him?

They're teaching him hate. They're teaching him hate. Well, what in the world should

Christian parents be teaching their children? We teach them love.

We teach them that look, just because a person's skin is a different color, it doesn't make any difference. We love them because they're human beings.

We love them because they're made in the image of God, just as you are, just as I am. You remember that song from South Pacific?

Maybe you do, maybe you don't. You've got to be carefully taught. And I left my phone down there but I pulled up the lyrics this afternoon.

It says you have to be carefully taught to hate somebody because of the color of their skin or the shape of their eyes and you've got to be carefully taught from childhood.

And that's true. It's also true the other way. And it's the other thing, it's the other way that the

New Testament calls the Christian to do. We teach love.

We teach love for fellow human beings just because they're fellow human beings.

And it doesn't matter the shape of their eyes, it doesn't matter the accent of their voice, it doesn't matter the color of their skin.

And that dynamic, that is the powerful impetus that undermines the whole institution of slavery.