1460 - "Q & A, The Willing Servant" I Corinthians 4:1-5; Acts 6; Philippians 1:1

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Each weekday, Dr. Crisp will be discussing biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Tune in daily to start your day right and deepen your understanding of how to better walk the way and enjoy the journey. Here's your host, Dr. Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Welcome to On the Way. This is Tony Crisp, and this is Podcast 1460. It's Friday, so it's question and answer time, and I'm going to answer a question that I've been asked many times, especially as of late, because for some reason all over the world, literally all over the world, in cities on almost every continent, people have been listening to a podcast I did. I believe it is referred to as thirteen hundred and ninety six. It wasn't too long ago I was doing the book of Acts, and I was in Acts chapter twenty and I was talking about Paul at Ephesus, and I did two parts on that, part one and part two. And I believe part two, without referencing it specifically, is thirteen hundred and ninety-six, to the best of my memory. I don't have it before me. I just checked it today and there were seven hundred and thirty-one downloads. I'm just saying it has to do with the subject I want to talk to you about today because I dealt with the concept of elders and deacons. And before we leave the material in Leviticus, I want to deal with the idea of slavery because it is such a hot topic, and this idea of servants and who are to be deacons and who are to be elders that I want to address this the best I can. Because when we're talking about elders and deacons, we're talking about a functional aspect of the words and then the official aspect of the words. The same thing is true for an apostle. The word apostle was first use of ships that were sent on behalf of a king or a country, and apostello first referred to a cargo ship that was being sent. And it was the idea of one sent with a burden, one sent with a message, one sent with a load. It came to be a part of the gospel message. An apostle was one sent with a specific message. And in one sense, we are all apostles since we are sent with a message, but not in the official sense. There's qualifications for the official sense. There is qualifications for a deacon in the official sense. The word deakonos is used of the apostle Paul, it's used of Barnabas, it's used at Phoebe. But yet that doesn't mean that they were ordained, set apart deacons in the sense of First Timothy chapter three or of Acts chapter six, where they were in the incipient form there chosen to deal with the problems that had arisen because of growth and because of a distinction between the Hellenists and the Hebrews, that is the homesteaders and those who would have been considered pioneers coming in from somewhere else with another culture and another thought and mindset. And so there is this aspect in almost all of these servant words of an official capacity where there are qualifications and then just the common usage of the word. And the context is crucial there for understanding that as well. And you have to take everything within the light of the complete revelation of God as we have it, not just one verse and key off on that verse. But in the book of Leviticus, where we were just recently, and we were dealing with the story of the Crimson River, following the redemptive aspects of the Word of God and how that everything points toward God's great salvation story and the story of blood and redemption. And you come to the book of Leviticus and you have the sabbatical year. You have Shabbat, which is a new beginning each week. Then you have the sabbatical year, which is a new beginning. Every seventh year you have rest. The eighth year is the year of new beginning. So eight is consistently looked at as a number of new start, fresh start, new beginning in the Bible. Jesus was resurrected on the eighth day. It was the first day of the week, but it was the eighth day. On and on and on. I could go through that. That's not my purpose here. But what I do want you to understand is that Jubilee, which is not a sabbatical as far as a week as a seventh year, but as a week, a full week, which is seven of anything. And so you have seven sabbatical years. That's forty-nine years, where you have one sabbatical would be seven years, two sabbaticals would be fourteen years, twenty-one years, and so forth. And so as you fill up a full week of sabbatical years, you've got forty-nine years, and the fiftieth year it was proclaimed Jubilee or Yovale in Hebrew. And that was when everything reverted back to its original owner. Because God said, I don't want my people living in slavery. And so everybody gets a fresh start at year fifty, at Yovail, at Jubilee. But he said, I don't want y my people to live as slaves to one another, so every seventh year you've got to set your slaves free. If people have made bad decisions, it's not going to stick with them longer than seven years. By the way, that's still true on our credit reports today and bankruptcies today and bad financial decisions today. Yes, that stigma hangs with you personally and maybe in your family and your acquaintances, but the reality is it's not legal to carry it more than seven years, even a bankruptcy. And so these kinds of principles are within the warp and woof of American culture, these biblical values, and you need to understand that in many areas, but certainly in the area of financial bad decisions that would enslave people. This was a big deal because slavery was a common practice during the days of the Old Testament in countries of more than just Israel. And during the Roman period of the New Testament era, uh the Greco Roman world, the Greco Roman world, the Greek Roman world, you would have encountered on any major thoroughfare in any major city during the Roman period, you would have encountered four out of every five people you would have met would have been in some kind of slavery. And so there are several words that are used in the New Testament for slavery. And so I want to just give those to you. I've done an entire podcast or two on these, but I want to answer questions about this idea of slavery and bondage and how one got out of it or what the slavery was, because sometimes in the New Testament, slavery wasn't actually a bad deal. Some people chose that above everything else simply because the masters were a good to the people and it was a somewhat of an indentured slavery. And so the word diaconos, which we have dealt with, is the word where we get our word deacon. It's just brought right over into our English language, transliterated. And that is a special kind of servant. That was a table waiter, one that would that would serve tables of their masters, and that was an elite position, actually. It was one that got them in the house, out of the weather, they were looked upon favorably by the family. Yes, they were slaves, but they were treated very well, and that's uh diakonats, and that's where we get our word deacon, because uh the primary task to begin with in Acts chapter six, part of it was taking care of the poor among them and making sure everyone had uh something. It wasn't serving communion. And now I'm not criticizing that, I'm just telling you that's not what deacons were doing, were just serving communion in the early church. There was far more than that, far more involved in that. And uh they handled uh the taking care of that, but also keeping down uh dissension among the people and taking care of those who had no one to take care of themselves, and they were also preachers and teachers. Stephen, a great apologist, Philip, the preaching deacon, and so forth. So Diochanos was what we would call a deacon because they were serving in a special way. The word for probably the lowest of the slaves was Hooper Retes. Hooper Retes. It's spelled H-U-P-E-R, R E T T A S or H U P E R E T A S. Hooperetes. Hooper is the word for under. Retase comes from the word which means to row, like a galley slave. Uh hooperetes was one who was on the bottom of a ship, like with Ben Hur. If you've ever seen that movie, he was a galley slave. He was an under rower. He was under that ship, he was chained, he was keeping the ship, they had no engines or anything like that, the sails were not catching the wind, then they had to row to wherever they were going, and there were uh many hooperates. They were under there uh rowing. So that's a galley slave. That's about as low of a slave as you get. And and many times they in early years were condemned to death in some way or another, or they had a long prison sentence and they were put in as galley slaves because they were just like chattel. And then you have the word oikonomos. Oikos is the word for house, gnomos is the word for law in Greek. So the two words together is oikonomos. That's where we get our word economy. And it had to do with management, it had to do with ruling a house, taking care of a house, being over other slaves, and holding them accountable and being the steward. That's the word. It's the idea of taking charge. And uh when we study economy in our English language, it always relates to money and the management of money. But economas is how anything's managed. You talk about the economy of God, that's how he managed his revelation to various time periods. Don't get the word dispensation in your mind. It's just the idea of an epoch, an era. God worked in a certain way. There are periods when great miracles were done. The period of Moses and the children of Israel coming out of Egyptian bondage, the period of Elijah and Elisha, those were great periods of miracles. During the days of the apostles and the Lord Jesus, that was a great period of miracles. That didn't happen through all the centuries, but there were times when God supernaturally moved, and so we talk about the economy of God and the economy of God's salvation. That's how you managed the story of the crimson river. So an economy is a way a thing is managed. And so that speaks of the law of the house, not the house lawyer, but the law of the house, the one who really ruled the home and managed the home for their master. And then there's the word that is very commonly used by the apostle Paul's, the word doulos, and that relates to this concept of the sabbatical year and Yovel, the Jubilee. And the reason is when a person would find themselves enslaved, when the seventh year came for the Jewish people, many times those people who had mismanaged and gotten themselves in trouble, they were better off under the house rule of someone else because they couldn't manage their homes well. They couldn't manage their families well, and provision was taken care of, and housing was taken care of, and they were provided for. And so many times when the masters were very good to their slaves, when it came time for them to go free, they would say to their master, You've been so good to me. I I want to serve you the rest of my life. My family wants to serve you the rest of their lives. And and so we want to be your slaves. We we want to come under your rulership. And so if that was the case, there was a procedure they went through to make sure that's what they wanted to do because this was a forever decision, a lifetime decision. And so if indeed they said, Yes, I want to serve you rather than going free and being on my own, I want to be under you, you're my lord, you're my guide, you're my master, then they would take them to the doorpost, they would have an awl or what we would call a punch, and they would pierce their ear, and that was a certain kind of piercing that showed that they were a dulos, a bond slave, someone who willingly is serving their master. There were many bond slaves in the Greek world and in the Roman world. And it's amazing that when someone would walk down the street and they would see that mark in their ear of a bond slave, they wouldn't say, Oh, what a wonderful servant that person must be. They would say, Oh, what a wonderful master they must have, that they are willing to serve them. And that is Paul's designation, more often than not in his opening greetings, Paul and he would call himself a doulos, that he was indentured service, willing service. He has been set free, but he wants to serve the Lord Jesus as his master. So it's not that he is doing this against his will, he's doing this because he wants to do it. And that's the concept that is most used in the New Testament in relationship to discipleship. The word do los. We are do loi. We are all together servants of Jesus, and we do that willingly. As you work through these concepts of Old Testament slavery, just understand that some were slaves willingly, and they wanted to because they loved their master. And that is the imagery that you and I have as children of God and followers of Jesus. We willingly do that. We willingly give our lives to him because he gave his life for us. I hope that helps as you walk on the way. This is Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_00 14:47

Thanks for listening to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Tune in every weekday for information on biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Fridays are for your questions. Email your questions to questions at TonyCrisp.org. Then just listen for your question to be answered on Friday's podcast. That's Questions at TonyC R I S P dot org. Thanks for listening and have a blessed day on the way.