Scott Wiens: I want to read off some song titles that were popular in their day.
Scott Wiens: And as I raise them, or as I read them, I want you to raise your hand to see if you remember them.
Scott Wiens: And this is the only part of the sermon that's audience participation.
Scott Wiens: Okay, so take advantage of this.
Scott Wiens: So the first one's really easy.
Scott Wiens: Nine to five by Dolly Park.
Scott Wiens: Yeah, everybody's heard that, right?
Scott Wiens: Of course.
Scott Wiens: I won't sing any of these, or it might just depends.
Scott Wiens: Okay, so everybody's one for one.
Scott Wiens: How about this one?
Scott Wiens: Taking care of business.
Scott Wiens: Yeah.
Scott Wiens: My neighbor Sean here, he's like a musical guru.
Scott Wiens: He knows all these.
Scott Wiens: I'm I fully expecting you get seven for seven on this one.
Scott Wiens: That's by the group Bachman Turner Overdrive or BTO, right?
Scott Wiens: How about this one might be a challenge for some of you?
Scott Wiens: Manic Monday by the Bengals.
Scott Wiens: Oh yeah.
Scott Wiens: Just another Manic Monday.
Scott Wiens: Everybody go.
Scott Wiens: Uh yeah, okay.
Scott Wiens: Okay, for the country folks here.
Scott Wiens: Big City by Merle Haggard.
Scott Wiens: Oh yeah.
Scott Wiens: Big City, yep.
Scott Wiens: Um, okay, this one goes back to the early 80s.
Scott Wiens: Working for a Living by Huey Lewis in the news.
Scott Wiens: Yeah.
Scott Wiens: I'm really proud of you guys.
Scott Wiens: Now, this one's gonna be a stretch.
Scott Wiens: You gotta be an old country fan for this one.
Scott Wiens: This was sung by a guy named Tennessee Ernie Ford, 16 Tons.
Scott Wiens: Yeah, Bobby, I told you you'd know this one.
Scott Wiens: You load 16 tons.
Scott Wiens: What do you get?
Scott Wiens: Yeah, a lot of you know that.
Scott Wiens: Man, further in debt.
Scott Wiens: Yeah.
Scott Wiens: Boy, we got some old people in this group.
Scott Wiens: And the last one, I can't say the whole title, or else I'll get corrected by the elders on Tuesday.
Scott Wiens: It's a song by Johnny Paycheck called Take This Job and Don't Fill It Out.
Scott Wiens: Don't finish it out.
Scott Wiens: Yeah.
Scott Wiens: Okay, how many, how many knew all of them?
Scott Wiens: Yeah, that's good.
Scott Wiens: We got some music officiados.
Scott Wiens: Well, listen, why do I list all these songs?
Scott Wiens: Well, if you haven't figured out, all these songs have something very much in common.
Scott Wiens: And they're bemoaning the difficulties that people experience in their jobs, right?
Scott Wiens: I mean, unfair bosses, being underpaid and overworked, right?
Scott Wiens: Long hours, low appreciation, uh companies that have bosses that are taking advantage of you.
Scott Wiens: I mean, it's, you know, people just talking about how much they hate their jobs, right?
Scott Wiens: Now, if you can relate to any of these songs, this message might be for you, okay?
Scott Wiens: In fact, I'll just expand it to everybody.
Scott Wiens: If you've ever had any bad thoughts about your employer or people that worked for you, this message is for you.
Scott Wiens: It sure was for me.
Scott Wiens: So listen, we've been preaching through the Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians since last fall, that we're in the second half of this right now, and we're currently in the middle of chapter six.
Scott Wiens: Now, this section of Paul is addressing Christian bondservants and their masters.
Scott Wiens: Okay, so let's go ahead and read this.
Scott Wiens: We're beginning in verse five of chapter six.
Scott Wiens: Bondservants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart as you would Christ, not by the way of I 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.
Scott Wiens: Whether he is a bondservant or is free.
Scott Wiens: Masters, do the same to them and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their master and yours in heaven, is in heaven, and there is no partiality with him.
Scott Wiens: Father, as we go before the come before you, and as we go through this passage of Scripture, I just pray that you would give us an open mind and an open heart, Father.
Scott Wiens: Father, we know that your word is a lamp to our feet.
Scott Wiens: And we know, Father, that as we look at your word, that there it will reflect back to us and it will show us things we need to change.
Scott Wiens: And I pray that for all of us, myself included, God, that you do that with us this morning.
Scott Wiens: And so we just place this in your hands in Jesus' name.
Scott Wiens: Amen.
Scott Wiens: All right.
Scott Wiens: So over the past two weeks in this mess in this series, we've been talking about Christian households.
Scott Wiens: Paul has been addressing Christian households, and and um, Tyler really preached the last two of these messages, and the first one was on husbands and wives.
Scott Wiens: In fact, I we were gone for that one, but we got to listen to it, and Amy did a great job on that.
Scott Wiens: I think, I think you should have Amy preach more often, previously.
Scott Wiens: No, but it was really good.
Scott Wiens: That was, and that was a long passage of scripture.
Scott Wiens: It was really good.
Scott Wiens: And then last week, um, Tyler talked about parents and children.
Scott Wiens: And so, this whole passage of this letter, this whole section of the letter, Paul is addressing Christian households.
Scott Wiens: Um, so today, what I want to do is I want to talk about two different elements that this passage brings out.
Scott Wiens: The first one is I need to briefly touch on what the Bible says about slavery.
Scott Wiens: Okay?
Scott Wiens: We need to we need to talk about that first.
Scott Wiens: But then, secondly, I want to look at how Paul instructs both bondservants and their masters to approach their relationship with each other, and then we're going to apply that to how we should have an approach towards our employers and our jobs and maybe our employees as well.
Scott Wiens: So let's first talk about what the Bible really teaches about slavery.
Scott Wiens: And I said, really teaches about slavery.
Scott Wiens: You know, this passage of scripture, unfortunately, has been misconstrued and misaligned throughout throughout Christianity.
Scott Wiens: And it's been misaligned by both people in the church and people outside of the church as well.
Scott Wiens: And it's it's been erroneously used to as a proof text that Christianity, and at minimum, the Apostle Paul was in favor of slavery, and that is um not really true.
Scott Wiens: And so what I want to do is dispel this myth because we need to get some context in order to do that.
Scott Wiens: You know, at that at the time that Paul wrote this letter about uh in the slavery during this time when he wrote this, was really a common thing.
Scott Wiens: It was really common.
Scott Wiens: Um back then, you know, countries would go to war, and the victor would take people from the you know the conquered nation and they would enslave them.
Scott Wiens: A lot of times, of course, on the battlefield, they would take the warriors from the other side, the other country, and they would make them fight for them.
Scott Wiens: Okay.
Scott Wiens: And the Rome was really notorious for doing this, right?
Scott Wiens: Some were made into soldiers, some were just called and brought in and enslaved to do manual labor.
Scott Wiens: It happened all the time.
Scott Wiens: And others were really turned into household bondservants, as it's called.
Scott Wiens: And we're going to talk a little bit about what that means.
Scott Wiens: Um, there was also a concept of people placing themselves into a bondservant role in the culture as well.
Scott Wiens: If you were destitute, if you were, and by the way, they didn't have social programs back then.
Scott Wiens: I mean, if if somebody's husband died, for instance, and they had no extended family, they literally would just fall, become destitute.
Scott Wiens: And a lot of these people would place themselves into a bondservant role.
Scott Wiens: Um, it was a reality.
Scott Wiens: And a lot of the people that were in these roles um really had a pretty miserable life.
Scott Wiens: They really did.
Scott Wiens: They had no rights, no rights at all, and they were totally uh at the behest of their masters.
Scott Wiens: So it was a pretty nasty thing that was back then.
Scott Wiens: Now, um, one of the things that when people would place themselves into a bondservant role, a lot of times they could actually earn their freedom back.
Scott Wiens: And there were some rights that these people would have, but not many, but there were some.
Scott Wiens: The bottom line is that it was evil.
Scott Wiens: In fact, even in America today, we've given it a different name, but it happens, of course, it's illegal, but it's happened.
Scott Wiens: It's called human trafficking.
Scott Wiens: And it happens all the time.
Scott Wiens: And uh, you know, our church supports uh, you know, uh causes that actually help people come out of human trafficking.
Scott Wiens: It's really a terrible thing.
Scott Wiens: The bottom line is any type of exploitation of people that were forced to serve against their will is slavery.
Scott Wiens: It's slavery and it's evil, and every principle of the word of God condemns it.
Scott Wiens: Every principle.
Scott Wiens: So, with this as context, I want to look quickly back at this passage.
Scott Wiens: You know, Paul uses the term bondservant, which is often translated, depending on the version of the Bible, the translation of the Bible you're looking at, as slave.
Scott Wiens: But a lot of you already understand that this word is the Greek word doulos.
Scott Wiens: Doulos.
Scott Wiens: It's one of the easier Greek words to pronounce, by the way.
Scott Wiens: I was very proud of it.
Scott Wiens: It's easy to pronounce.
Scott Wiens: Basically, a doulos was a servant that was entirely under their master's authority.
Scott Wiens: Entirely under their master's authority.
Scott Wiens: They had almost no rights and they served at the behest of their of their masters.
Scott Wiens: And as we said already in this culture, that could include anybody who was both voluntarily or involuntarily placed into that role.
Scott Wiens: But Scott, you might say, um, why don't we read anything in the New Testament specifically decrying slavery?
Scott Wiens: Well, to begin with, we need to remind ourselves of something.
Scott Wiens: You don't look at a topic just with one verse, right?
Scott Wiens: That's one of the by the way, you go to YouTube, you see this all the time.
Scott Wiens: Somebody they they mention just a short part of a scripture, and then they rip it out of the context, and then they go ahead and they go off on their soapbox and they talk about how terrible it is.
Scott Wiens: But they don't they ignore the preponderance of scripture.
Scott Wiens: Because if we look honestly at scripture, we can see that Paul does indeed address slavery all through his writings, and some of the other uh authors of the New Testament do as well.
Scott Wiens: I want to read something he wrote Timothy.
Scott Wiens: Timothy was his son in the faith, right?
Scott Wiens: And he wrote in 1 Timothy 1, verse 8 and 9, he says, now we need to know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully.
Scott Wiens: Understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners.
Scott Wiens: And now he starts getting specific.
Scott Wiens: He's saying, This is the law.
Scott Wiens: The law shows these people that these things are wrong.
Scott Wiens: He says, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, hmm, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine.
Scott Wiens: Verse 11, we have to read this.
Scott Wiens: In accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.
Scott Wiens: You know, he's clearly saying that all these actions were contrary to the gospel.
Scott Wiens: Contrary.
Scott Wiens: You know, the word enslavers literally means somebody who kidnaps somebody else and places and sells them into slavery.
Scott Wiens: And if Paul's calling out this type of person specifically, why do we even think that he would condone slavery?
Scott Wiens: He doesn't.
Scott Wiens: The other thing I think that sometimes is overlooked when we look at this passage.
Scott Wiens: Have you ever really wondered why the apostle Paul was writing an instruction to bond servants in a letter to the church?
Scott Wiens: Sometimes we miss this, but the reality is it's because many of these servants were Christians.
Scott Wiens: Remember the context, they didn't have churches like this, right?
Scott Wiens: They had house churches.
Scott Wiens: So what would happen is you would have someone come, and a bunch of them would be meeting, and they would be in somebody's household.
Scott Wiens: And guess who else was there?
Scott Wiens: The children were there, the bondservants were there, and they would begin to preach.
Scott Wiens: Well, they would either preach or they would read letters like this.
Scott Wiens: And guess what?
Scott Wiens: God was calling everybody.
Scott Wiens: And a lot of times the bondservants converted to Christianity.
Scott Wiens: And that's why when he wrote to the church, he's writing directly to the believers who were bondservants at that time.
Scott Wiens: It's pretty pretty obvious that if that's the case, then there's other things we need to understand about this relationship between the bondservants and their masters.
Scott Wiens: You know, Paul never condemned condoned slavery.
Scott Wiens: In fact, he says this in Galatians, and I love this.
Scott Wiens: You know, Paul uses contrasts all the time, right?
Scott Wiens: And he says in Galatians 3, 28 and 29, he says, Therefore there is neither Jew nor Greek.
Scott Wiens: There is neither what?
Scott Wiens: There is no male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Scott Wiens: And if you are Christ, you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise.
Scott Wiens: He didn't have to use that slave or free thing.
Scott Wiens: He didn't have to do that, but he did because he was proving a point.
Scott Wiens: You see, he's saying that for those that are in Christ, there is no partiality in God's eyes, that they're all one.
Scott Wiens: And that's what's so powerful about what we're gonna read.
Scott Wiens: I really believe that the reality is that Paul and all the New Testament writers were addressing slavery through the truth of the gospel.
Scott Wiens: You could not be a Christian and not get this.
Scott Wiens: And even in sections like this, you're gonna see that come out.
Scott Wiens: One of the most prominent examples is the book of Philemon.
Scott Wiens: The book of Philemon is just one chapter, just book of Philemon.
Scott Wiens: And it's really interesting because Paul is writing a specific person, a letter about a runaway slave.
Scott Wiens: And some somehow between when he ran away and when he got to Paul, he converted.
Scott Wiens: He became a Christian.
Scott Wiens: And now Paul's writing Onesimus, or he's writing Philemon about Onesimus, and he says to him, What?
Scott Wiens: He says, I could command you to release him.
Scott Wiens: Remember, by the way, a runaway slave?
Scott Wiens: Most of the time they would be severely punished or even killed.
Scott Wiens: But he's appealing to Philemon, and he's he's appealing to Philemon specifically by saying, You and Anesimus are equal in the eyes of God.
Scott Wiens: And he's saying, you should forgive him, and he's even asking him to release him.
Scott Wiens: Wow.
Scott Wiens: He says, I could command you to do that, but I won't.
Scott Wiens: I want you to do it because you want to do it, because God's working on your heart.
Scott Wiens: They were both the same people, they were both serving the same God.
Scott Wiens: They were on the same level in God's eyes.
Scott Wiens: Doesn't sound like someone who condones slavery to me, does it?
Scott Wiens: And listen, there's a lot of other excellent teachings on this, a lot of great resources.
Scott Wiens: We can share some of that with you.
Scott Wiens: But because of time, I can't spend a lot of time on here, but I own a lot more time, but I just want to say that we all need to understand Paul was most definitely not in favor of slavery.
Scott Wiens: He was planting seeds, in fact, to destroy slavery through passages just like this.
Scott Wiens: And as we go through this, you're gonna see that even more clearly.
Scott Wiens: So let's begin to look at the instruction Paul gives these bondservants and their masters.
Scott Wiens: So he starts by addressing the bondservants directly.
Scott Wiens: In fact, most of this is towards the bondservants, but you're gonna find that even as he's addressing the bondservants, he's actually addressing the masters too, and you'll you'll see how this comes out.
Scott Wiens: So at verse 5, bondservants obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart as you would Christ.
Scott Wiens: I'm sorry, but this is probably the mic drop part of the whole passage.
Scott Wiens: In fact, I almost wanted to grab a mic and drop it.
Scott Wiens: The guys in the booth are like, okay, he's gone.
Scott Wiens: By the way, I was already sabotaged.
Scott Wiens: The batteries in my pack were put in, one was put in backwards.
Scott Wiens: I know what they think of me.
Scott Wiens: I caught you guys, though I fixed it.
Scott Wiens: No, it's a mic drop moment for a very, very specific reason.
Scott Wiens: In one sentence, Paul changes their whole perspective, their whole reality.
Scott Wiens: If, by the way, it hadn't already been changed.
Scott Wiens: Maybe it already was.
Scott Wiens: These were already believers.
Scott Wiens: And as I said before, this letter would have been read in a house church where there's both masters and bondservants listening, right?
Scott Wiens: Okay.
Scott Wiens: So let's just break this down a little bit.
Scott Wiens: Uh, because of course the masters knew that these bondservants were Christians as well.
Scott Wiens: The masters may even have been teaching their bondservants about Christ.
Scott Wiens: You know, again, that relationship was there.
Scott Wiens: He says, obey your masters with fear and trembling.
Scott Wiens: Okay, we need to talk about this.
Scott Wiens: Let me ask you guys a question.
Scott Wiens: Do you fear Christ like you would fear somebody who's gonna hurt you?
Scott Wiens: I don't fear Christ that way.
Scott Wiens: But I have a reverent fear of Christ.
Scott Wiens: He is God, he is my Lord and Savior, I am his bondservant.
Scott Wiens: Everything I do is serving to him, but I don't fear him like he's gonna hurt me.
Scott Wiens: In fact, he loved me so much he gave himself for me.
Scott Wiens: So if we understand that Paul's talking to Christian masters and Christian bondservants, it puts this whole fear and trembling into the right perspective.
Scott Wiens: He's not telling these slaves to be fearful of their masters like they're gonna hurt them.
Scott Wiens: He's saying, be fearful and reverent, and he says this as you would Christ.
Scott Wiens: If you didn't have that, it would totally change the meaning of this.
Scott Wiens: He says, as you would Christ.
Scott Wiens: I believe this fear and trembling statement was really meant for the Christian masters.
Scott Wiens: I really do.
Scott Wiens: Can you imagine the person's up there reading this, the master of the households there, or maybe other masters, I mean, because remember, all a bunch of households would come together and he reads this.
Scott Wiens: You imagine what you would think if you were a master and you had bondservants present?
Scott Wiens: He's not so subtly telling the masters that they needed to treat their bondservants the way Christ would treat them.
Scott Wiens: And that would result in fear and trembling in the right context and in the right way.
Scott Wiens: As he tells the bondservants to do this with sincere heart, as you would Christ, because he knows that their masters are being convicted to treat their bondservants with respect and dignity in all the ways that Christians should treat one another.
Scott Wiens: We cannot separate the fact that both of these people, the bondservants and the masters, are believers.
Scott Wiens: They're Christians.
Scott Wiens: It's very important.
Scott Wiens: They're all serving the same master, which we'll see here in just a little bit more.
Scott Wiens: Let's move to verse six.
Scott Wiens: Not by the way of I service as people pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.
Scott Wiens: This is a second mic drop moment, by the way.
Scott Wiens: He's now contrasting this sincere heart he mentioned in the previous verse with this I service people pleaser attitude.
Scott Wiens: Now, I love this phrase and I looked it up and it's it's attributed to Abraham Lincoln, but nobody really knows if it was Abe that said this.
Scott Wiens: He says, You can fool some of the people all of the time, but you can fool all of the people all of the time.
Scott Wiens: And by the way, you can see Timothy said probably, maybe.
Scott Wiens: I like that.
Scott Wiens: He put that on there.
Scott Wiens: Just to prove our our tech people have a sense of humor back there.
Scott Wiens: Listen, what does this mean though?
Scott Wiens: It really what he's saying is you can fool people.
Scott Wiens: You can come here every Sunday, you can fool people, Andy, you can fool people for a couple hours.
Scott Wiens: But he was saying, don't do that.
Scott Wiens: You need to be sincere about that.
Scott Wiens: That's what he's saying.
Scott Wiens: He's telling them not to fake it, but to truly carry out their acts of service as if they were serving Christ Himself.
Scott Wiens: To emphasize this, he makes another mic drop statement and he says, Doing the will of God from the heart.
Scott Wiens: Wait a second.
Scott Wiens: Being a bond servant is doing the will of God.
Scott Wiens: If you've been kicking around the kingdom for any length of time, one of the things you'll understand is you're going to be in all different types of situations.
Scott Wiens: And in every one of those situations, if you believe in the sovereignty of God, guess what?
Scott Wiens: You will believe and trust that God has placed you there at that time.
Scott Wiens: And if he has, it's his will.
Scott Wiens: And if that's the case, That you need to do and follow him through that situation.
Scott Wiens: I've been in some difficult times before, difficult situations.
Scott Wiens: I didn't like it, but I knew that if God brought me there, he was going to bring me through it.
Scott Wiens: He was saying that to these bondservants.
Scott Wiens: He's saying that it's God's will that they serve their masters as if they're serving Christ and to do it from the heart.
Scott Wiens: The reality is Paul is telling them they are serving God when they're serving their masters.
Scott Wiens: They are serving him.
Scott Wiens: And let's just be honest here, this would have to have been a hard thing for the bondservants to listen to.
Scott Wiens: Because remember the culture.
Scott Wiens: Bondservants had no right.
Scott Wiens: Maybe in the house next to them that were not believers, they could hear the bondservants being punished.
Scott Wiens: Maybe they even heard about one of the bondservants down the street that was actually, you know, even killed because of doing something wrong.
Scott Wiens: Because they really didn't have a lot of, they didn't have a lot of rights, right?
Scott Wiens: So there would be easy for them to fall into this whole, be just totally fearful all the time.
Scott Wiens: But the reality is God can change that heart.
Scott Wiens: And especially if he was changing the heart of their masters, right?
Scott Wiens: How would they be able to change their hearts to truly obey this instruction by God?
Scott Wiens: By the way, Tyler's sermon last week on child rearing, it was really good.
Scott Wiens: Um, I love when you talked about the whole thing about your dad saying, Change your attitude.
Scott Wiens: I'll give you five minutes or 15 minutes to change your attitude.
Scott Wiens: I almost wish you'd put your hand up.
Scott Wiens: A lot of us have experienced that.
Scott Wiens: I'm punching the clock, and you've got 15 minutes to change your attitude.
Scott Wiens: The reality is, by the way, that changing your attitude, the only way to really do that is to have Christ in you.
Scott Wiens: That's the only way to do it.
Scott Wiens: The reality is that without the transformational power of the Holy Spirit, enabling them to have that genuine heart of spirit and spirit of service, they would not be able to do that.
Scott Wiens: Because it's not the natural behavior for an unsaved person to do this.
Scott Wiens: He is telling them to do something that they've been equipped to do through the Holy Spirit.
Scott Wiens: Because otherwise it doesn't make sense.
Scott Wiens: It was an adversarial relationship in that culture.
Scott Wiens: Bond servants served their masters, but they were served them resentfully because one was evil, one was, you know, the person getting, you know, abused.
Scott Wiens: But in a Christian household, it was different.
Scott Wiens: Now, the next, let's continue on through the next two verses.
Scott Wiens: Verse 7, 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.
Scott Wiens: Now, what's significant about this passage is that Paul's not just repeating what he just said before.
Scott Wiens: Now, he does emphasize once again that the attitude of serving their masters was something that they were doing when they're serving Jesus while they're doing that.
Scott Wiens: He emphasized that again.
Scott Wiens: So he says that twice.
Scott Wiens: But he adds two things.
Scott Wiens: He adds the concept of reward.
Scott Wiens: And that's interesting.
Scott Wiens: He says that when someone serves his master as if he was serving the Lord, the bondservant would receive it back from the Lord.
Scott Wiens: That was the phrase he uses.
Scott Wiens: Receive it back from the Lord.
Scott Wiens: Now, what do you we don't really know specifically what that reward was, but I can I can simply move forward because and kind of postulate forward what that reward was because it's the same reward that we receive, right?
Scott Wiens: There was both a future reward and a present reward.
Scott Wiens: The future reward, obviously, is when he would be rewarded when we stand before God.
Scott Wiens: We're gonna be rewarded for our behaviors and the things we did.
Scott Wiens: By the way, those behaviors don't earn us salvation.
Scott Wiens: Let's make that clear.
Scott Wiens: God didn't have some scale there.
Scott Wiens: And when you die, he's gonna look at the scale and go, ah, you didn't do quite enough.
Scott Wiens: He doesn't do that.
Scott Wiens: We're saved by grace.
Scott Wiens: Totally saved by grace.
Scott Wiens: But we will be rewarded based upon our actions.
Scott Wiens: So I think he's saying that to these same bondservants because they're Christians, right?
Scott Wiens: But he also, I believe, is talking about a present reward.
Scott Wiens: And I do believe that a lot of times that present reward is when they serve their masters as they were served, as if they were serving Christ.
Scott Wiens: I believe that they received what you would expect.
Scott Wiens: They probably received more favor from the masters.
Scott Wiens: And some of them may have even, and again, based upon what we read in Philemon, they probably even were set free from their bonds and their service.
Scott Wiens: I mean, I can only naturally assume that's part of what would happen again.
Scott Wiens: Christian masters, Christian bondservants, right?
Scott Wiens: In addition to this, he also expands the command in a really significant way.
Scott Wiens: And this is pretty powerful.
Scott Wiens: He says that reward will come back to any person who serves a master, or even if they serve others as a free man.
Scott Wiens: He's addressing bondservants, but he's saying to the bondservants, even if you're free, you should have this same attitude, which is what we're going to talk about when it comes to our jobs.
Scott Wiens: The New Living Translation says it this way, and I think it's really well written.
Scott Wiens: Remember that the Lord will reward each of us for the good we do, whether we are slaves or free.
Scott Wiens: Amen.
Scott Wiens: Yeah.
Scott Wiens: He says it right here.
Scott Wiens: How much more are we going to understand that Paul was saying that you're all equal in Christ?
Scott Wiens: You're all equal in Christ.
Scott Wiens: The significance of this is that Paul is saying that having an attitude of service to others, as if one were serving the Lord, wasn't just for bondservants, it was for all.
Scott Wiens: All.
Scott Wiens: And let me just say this: all of us serve somebody.
Scott Wiens: Now we could we're going to talk about our jobs here in a minute, but we all serve somebody.
Scott Wiens: In fact, somewhere in the Bible, I seem to read that we're supposed to submit one to another.
Scott Wiens: You know who came down from heaven and became the suffering servant?
Scott Wiens: We're supposed to be servants.
Scott Wiens: That's one of the things I love about the way Trinity is set up.
Scott Wiens: One of the things is elders, we we serve.
Scott Wiens: We're supposed to serve.
Scott Wiens: Yes, we're responsible for teaching and leading and stuff, but that doesn't mean we don't serve.
Scott Wiens: And frankly, sometimes I love serving.
Scott Wiens: It's just getting there with everybody and just serving alongside.
Scott Wiens: It's a wonderful thing.
Scott Wiens: We're here to serve together.
Scott Wiens: This is yet another way I believe Paul's sowing the seeds to rid the church of slavery.
Scott Wiens: Now, the final verse really builds on this expansion of the service, whether you're a bondservant or a free, because now he's talking to the masters.
Scott Wiens: And by the way, he only has one verse for the masters, but it's really powerful.
Scott Wiens: It's really powerful.
Scott Wiens: He says, Masters, do the same to them and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their master and yours is in heaven and there is no partiality with him.
Scott Wiens: Now, Paul tells the masters they need to stop threatening their bondservants.
Scott Wiens: By the way, parents, worst thing you can do is threaten your children.
Scott Wiens: Don't threaten your children.
Scott Wiens: I'm gonna, you do that, I'm don't threaten your children.
Scott Wiens: Tell them the consequence of their action, and if their action is that way, give them the consequence.
Scott Wiens: We've seen this all before where people just constantly threaten their children, but the children hear it all the time, so they don't, you know, there's no consequence, it's just a threat.
Scott Wiens: But this obviously was happening a lot.
Scott Wiens: Paul wouldn't have brought it up if it wasn't an issue even in the church.
Scott Wiens: Remember this we're all influenced by our culture.
Scott Wiens: And these masters would be no exception.
Scott Wiens: They came out, most of these were Gentile converts.
Scott Wiens: They came out of a culture where this was the status quo and this was something you did.
Scott Wiens: You threatened your bondservants.
Scott Wiens: And this obviously was a behavior that needed to change.
Scott Wiens: And again, he already was addressing this all the way through, but he says it specifically: stop threatening them.
Scott Wiens: Stop threatening them.
Scott Wiens: And he just doesn't tell them to stop it, or they're gonna get punished by God.
Scott Wiens: He reminds the masters that both they and their Christian bondservants are both bondservants to Christ.
Scott Wiens: Whoa.
Scott Wiens: He literally does this.
Scott Wiens: He just levels it just like that.
Scott Wiens: Because that's what they needed to understand in their mind for them to grasp this whole concept.
Scott Wiens: The concept of being a bondservant of Jesus was used by Paul all through his writings in the New Testament.
Scott Wiens: Um, he actually identified himself as a doulos or a bondservant all through his writings.
Scott Wiens: Um, here's some examples.
Scott Wiens: Romans, he does this a lot of times in the salutations, right?
Scott Wiens: But it's interesting, he's starting the whole letter by saying, I'm a bondservant of Jesus Christ.
Scott Wiens: Look at what he says in Romans.
Scott Wiens: Paul, a servant, bondservant of Christ Jesus.
Scott Wiens: To the Philippians, Timothy and Paul, bondservants of Christ Jesus.
Scott Wiens: Titus, he says, Paul, a bondservant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ.
Scott Wiens: Isn't it interesting?
Scott Wiens: He said, I'm a bondservant first, and I'm an apostle second.
Scott Wiens: He identified as a bondservant.
Scott Wiens: And he also used this doulos term to address who we are in Christ.
Scott Wiens: In Romans 6, beginning in verse 16, he says, Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey?
Scott Wiens: Again, when I say slaves, the word is doolos, bondservant, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness.
Scott Wiens: How many of you were at one time a bondservant to sin?
Scott Wiens: Should be pretty much everybody.
Scott Wiens: We were all enslaved by sin at some time.
Scott Wiens: And we served it.
Scott Wiens: And by the way, the biggest lie Satan is telling you is that, well, I'm not a slave to anybody.
Scott Wiens: I'm just doing my own thing.
Scott Wiens: And well, guess what?
Scott Wiens: You are a servant, you are a slave to sin.
Scott Wiens: But but the enemy tries to fool us to like, no, no, no, no, you're not serving anybody.
Scott Wiens: Yeah, you're serving the wrong master.
Scott Wiens: It's as simple as that.
Scott Wiens: Then he goes on, he says, But thanks be to God, this is the hopeful part, that you were once slaves to sin, have become obedient from the heart, here's that heart thing again, to the standard of teaching by to which you were committed.
Scott Wiens: And verse 18, so powerful he says, and having been set free from sin, you have become slaves again of righteousness.
Scott Wiens: I tell you what, I love being a slave to Jesus Christ.
Scott Wiens: I love it.
Scott Wiens: Marshall, I appreciate what you had to say during the worship service.
Scott Wiens: I'll tell you what, he said is something everybody needs to rehearse.
Scott Wiens: In the mornings when I pray, I spend time thanking God that I am his doulos, that I am his bondservant.
Scott Wiens: It's not chains to me, it's joy.
Scott Wiens: I love Marshall's getting choked up.
Scott Wiens: I was getting choked up because when I talk about this, this is my whole life.
Scott Wiens: I don't have to worry about my life, guys.
Scott Wiens: If I get laid off, I don't have to worry about that.
Scott Wiens: God's got me.
Scott Wiens: If I get a diagnosis from the doctor I don't like, I don't have to worry about God's got me.
Scott Wiens: There's nothing like listening to a saint who's struggling with something physically.
Scott Wiens: Maybe they even got a really bad report.
Scott Wiens: And they just say, that's okay.
Scott Wiens: I'm in God's grace.
Scott Wiens: Because we don't live for this life.
Scott Wiens: We don't live for this life.
Scott Wiens: If we look at the totality of all these things Paul says about being a bondservant to Jesus Christ, we can better understand what he's trying to get across to the masters.
Scott Wiens: In essence, Paul is saying that the faith that both the master and the bondservants have in Christ is that great equalizer.
Scott Wiens: And could you now imagine how that would change the mind of the master?
Scott Wiens: He would go, yeah.
Scott Wiens: Onesimus over there, he and I are going to be in the kingdom of God forever.
Scott Wiens: And by the way, Onesimus might actually be Onesimus' rewards might even be better and greater, right?
Scott Wiens: It's just, it's just so beautiful.
Scott Wiens: Masters need to remember that although they hold the culturally given authority over their bondservants, in the eyes of God, the master and the bondservants are equal.
Scott Wiens: And God has no partiality in how he looks at that.
Scott Wiens: This is one of the reasons why, as a pastor, I would rather people just call me Scott.
Scott Wiens: I appreciate when people call me pastor.
Scott Wiens: That's an honoring thing.
Scott Wiens: I appreciate that.
Scott Wiens: But in reality, I'm constantly reminding myself that first and foremost, I am a child of God, just like everybody else.
Scott Wiens: That's who we are.
Scott Wiens: So, with that as the background, what is the application for us today?
Scott Wiens: Now, I'm sure many of you have already been kind of thinking about this and, like, okay, he's gonna come hammer me about my job here in a minute.
Scott Wiens: This is the hammer time.
Scott Wiens: I will not dance, by the way.
Scott Wiens: Because I can't.
Scott Wiens: And I'd hear about that from the elders as well on Tuesday if I knew.
Scott Wiens: Well, listen, I just want to draw out just a really quick few things about the application for us or job.
Scott Wiens: The first point is you cannot separate your work from your faith.
Scott Wiens: You cannot separate your work from your faith.
Scott Wiens: Many people are Sunday morning Christians.
Scott Wiens: The reason I know that is because I used to be one.
Scott Wiens: Sunday morning Christians.
Scott Wiens: When they go to their job, it's like they take off that Christian hat and they put on that other hat.
Scott Wiens: And they're different people.
Scott Wiens: I used to be that way.
Scott Wiens: I was rather adamant.
Scott Wiens: Oh, you can't cross both.
Scott Wiens: God's over here.
Scott Wiens: Wait a second.
Scott Wiens: If you've been transformed from the inside out, guess what?
Scott Wiens: Doesn't that follow you into your job?
Scott Wiens: Yeah, it is, and it should.
Scott Wiens: It's a lie the enemy wants you to believe because it's one of the best ways he can neutralize your testimony.
Scott Wiens: Because when someone finds out you're a Christian, they go, Scott's a Christian?
Scott Wiens: Really?
Scott Wiens: He told the worst joke in the world the other day.
Scott Wiens: I used to do that.
Scott Wiens: I repented of that.
Scott Wiens: It's we are Christians 24-7.
Scott Wiens: 24-7.
Scott Wiens: And by the way, I'm not going to lay the classic guilt trip on you by saying, you know, would you behave like that if Jesus was sitting in the cubicle beside you?
Scott Wiens: Because if I did that, that's just using guilt and manipulation to change your behavior.
Scott Wiens: And that's not what we're talking about.
Scott Wiens: And that is most definitely not what Paul was talking about.
Scott Wiens: You know, maybe you're guilty of acting very unchristian at your work.
Scott Wiens: Maybe you still have this division in your mind.
Scott Wiens: Maybe you're gossiping about others, maybe you're speaking bad about your boss.
Scott Wiens: Maybe you're stealing from your job and justifying it.
Scott Wiens: Well, they never paid me for those overtime hours, so this bucket of nails is coming home with me.
Scott Wiens: It happens.
Scott Wiens: And we can justify anything.
Scott Wiens: And if that describes you, I'm just gonna ask that you take a really prayerful and honest look at that.
Scott Wiens: And hopefully God will lead you to repentance.
Scott Wiens: Because that's where it starts.
Scott Wiens: You have to repent.
Scott Wiens: I know I sure had to.
Scott Wiens: And even that, sometimes I have to care, be careful.
Scott Wiens: There's been times I have not agreed with things my company's doing.
Scott Wiens: I, by the way, I'm not a full-time pastor, I work a full-time job.
Scott Wiens: There's times something in my company does I don't agree with.
Scott Wiens: But how do I then communicate back about that?
Scott Wiens: It's easy for me to get on a Teams chat with somebody and just start.
Scott Wiens: No, I can't do that.
Scott Wiens: I can't do that.
Scott Wiens: A true follower of Jesus cannot help but act like Jesus all the time.
Scott Wiens: And those actions will be evident to all within their workplace.
Scott Wiens: Secondly, when you do your job as if you're working for Jesus Christ, it will transform your work life.
Scott Wiens: Can I get an amen from people who experience that?
Scott Wiens: It really will.
Scott Wiens: You're gonna first experience a sense of peace and contentment that you never experienced before.
Scott Wiens: You'll quit striving.
Scott Wiens: When I say striving, I'm talking about you'll quit striving and playing all the political stuff and whatever.
Scott Wiens: You'll just be filled with joy.
Scott Wiens: You'll be filled with joy.
Scott Wiens: You'll no longer take that adversarial view towards your employer.
Scott Wiens: And by the way, it will reduce stress as well.
Scott Wiens: Here's another old song.
Scott Wiens: I'm an old country soul.
Scott Wiens: So Johnny Cash did a song called Get Rhythm.
Scott Wiens: I could ask Bobby to come over here and grab a guitar, he could sing it.
Scott Wiens: But it really goes, the little shoeshine boy, he never gets slowed down.
Scott Wiens: He's got the dirtiest job in town, bending over at the people's feet on the windy corner of a dirty street.
Scott Wiens: I asked him while he shined my shoes, how do you keep from getting the blues?
Scott Wiens: He grinned and he's raised his little head and popped the shoe shang right.
Scott Wiens: And he said, get rhythm.
Scott Wiens: But I would say he should say, get Jesus.
Scott Wiens: Get Jesus when you get the blues.
Scott Wiens: But really, miserable job, miserable job, but he was filled with joy.
Scott Wiens: And that's what we should be doing, by the way.
Scott Wiens: When things get hard, we should be having joy coming out.
Scott Wiens: And it will get noticed by people you work with.
Scott Wiens: They'll notice there's something different.
Scott Wiens: You have genuine care for them.
Scott Wiens: I've had people before in my company that I worked with that were my friends that got let go from my company.
Scott Wiens: I got a hold of them, I talked to them, I encouraged them, I prayed for them, and I asked them if there's anything I could do.
Scott Wiens: And then I kept following up as time went on.
Scott Wiens: I try to do that because that's the way, that's the way Christ would want me to do that, right?
Scott Wiens: You can you can show that.
Scott Wiens: And by the way, sometimes it gets noticed, and unfortunately, it might lead to alienation.
Scott Wiens: It might lead to persecution, even sometimes.
Scott Wiens: I experienced that when I came fully to Christ.
Scott Wiens: Um but that's okay.
Scott Wiens: I'm not out to please man, I'm out to please the Lord.
Scott Wiens: And finally, the most important thing is working as if you're working for the Lord will please the Lord.
Scott Wiens: And that's really what our motivation is as Christians to please God.
Scott Wiens: Don't do it because you have to.
Scott Wiens: If you go through it like you have to do it, welcome to land of the Pharisees.
Scott Wiens: It's just legalism and it's it's it gets you nowhere, and you'll be miserable doing it.
Scott Wiens: Do it because you want to please the Lord.
Scott Wiens: That's the heart that we need to pray God will give.
Scott Wiens: So listen, I'm gonna just finish with a just a quick reality check.
Scott Wiens: You know, some of you are probably doing this already and have been doing this already.
Scott Wiens: You've been believers for a long time.
Scott Wiens: And uh you know, if you've been doing this for a while, you know it's really hard.
Scott Wiens: And you know you're gonna mess up and you're gonna fail.
Scott Wiens: Just like, you know, I consider myself a good husband, but there are times I mess up.
Scott Wiens: We're all gonna mess up and make mistakes, okay?
Scott Wiens: But that shouldn't give you the reason to stop.
Scott Wiens: If you make a mistake, what's the pattern God tells us?
Scott Wiens: You fail, you're convicted, you repent, you're forgiven, and then you move forward.
Scott Wiens: It shouldn't stop you from continuing to work forward.
Scott Wiens: And for those of you that are maybe hearing this for the first time and you're sitting there going and just struggling with this, and maybe you're being convicted that you need to do this.
Scott Wiens: Well, I really am gonna encourage you that your life is gonna change.
Scott Wiens: And your work life especially is gonna change.
Scott Wiens: And your testimony is gonna change.
Scott Wiens: Just know that you're not gonna do it perfectly, but God has grace for that.
Scott Wiens: He has grace for that, and he'll walk you through that.
Scott Wiens: Can you all stand with me, please?
Scott Wiens: We can't do this without being filled with God's Spirit.
Scott Wiens: Can't do this.
Scott Wiens: And so I'm going to pray that God does that for us.
Scott Wiens: That He fills us with a heart that no matter who we serve, whether it's our bosses, whether it's our colleagues, whether it's people our neighbors, whether it's people here at church, whoever, that he gives us that heart.
Scott Wiens: Father, I want to thank you so much for this beautiful passage of scripture.
Scott Wiens: I thank you, Father, that you are not the author of slavery.
Scott Wiens: Rather, you are the offer, offer the author of freedom and you offer us freedom through Christ.
Scott Wiens: Father, I pray that as we walk out of here, each one of us would be convicted of this, God, that we would look for ways that we could really just shine the light of Jesus in our workplace.
Scott Wiens: And as we go forward, Father, I pray that you would give us the power to do that through the transformational work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
Scott Wiens: Because we know God, without that, we can't do it.
Scott Wiens: We can't do it.
Scott Wiens: Fill us with your spirit, Father.
Scott Wiens: Fill us with the heart of a servant.
Scott Wiens: And may we do this to glorify and please you as the first and foremost thing in our lives.
Scott Wiens: And we pray this in Jesus' name.
Scott Wiens: Amen.
Tyler Lynde: Amen.
Scott Wiens: We're gonna have the prayer team up here, by the way, to pray for for about this and anything.
Tyler Lynde: So thank you.
Tyler Lynde: Appreciate it, man.
Tyler Lynde: Yep.
Tyler Lynde: Okay, yeah.
Tyler Lynde: So one thing I just want to just to close out, just to make sure that we've said it out loud.
Tyler Lynde: Um, we as a church, just like Scott said, condemn every form of slavery, especially that which has been experienced here in our nation currently, but also historically.
Tyler Lynde: And we stand in opposition to that.
Tyler Lynde: And we believe the Word of God stands in opposition to that as well.
Tyler Lynde: And we believe that uh we believe in freedom and walking in freedom.
Tyler Lynde: But freedom itself comes with expectations, right?
Tyler Lynde: And that's what really what Scott was sharing with us this morning is when we are free, we get to live as servants of the Most High God.
Tyler Lynde: And sometimes that looks like doing a good job at work.
Tyler Lynde: And even when your boss tells you to do something you don't want to do that's not illegal or immoral, yes, sir, yes, ma'am, I will do that with a smile, right?
Tyler Lynde: So great job, Scott.
Tyler Lynde: I think you handled it extremely well.