SPEAKER_00: Well, good afternoon, everyone.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, nothing like a uh a good, simple, straightforward, uncontroversial passage uh as we gather together on a Sunday, particularly if you are new or visiting.
SPEAKER_00: Uh uh if you are new or visiting, my name is Mark.
SPEAKER_00: I'm one of the leaders here at the church, and uh we are coming up on our this is our penultimate week in the book of Colossians.
SPEAKER_00: We'll finish it next week just in time for our uh church weekend away.
SPEAKER_00: Uh more information about that at the end.
SPEAKER_00: Uh clearly uh there are uh some controversial uh things here, and so uh we will uh I will speak for about half an hour, 35 minutes or so, and then we'll have uh questions, any questions that you may have uh either uh from the text or arising from anything that I have uh said, so that we can just uh drill into it a little bit more and clarify some of the uh the things that are going on here.
SPEAKER_00: But why don't I pray uh and ask for God's help?
SPEAKER_00: Our Father, we do ask for the help of your Spirit now as we come to your word to see uh with clarity your truth and to see also in it the goodness of it.
SPEAKER_00: Will we see the goodness of how you have so ordered your world that we might live in a way that pleases uh the Lord Jesus and commends him to a watching world?
SPEAKER_00: We ask these things for his sake.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: This passage is uh one of a couple of passages like it.
SPEAKER_00: It has sister passages uh throughout the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: Ephesians 5 uh might be a uh a common one that some of you may know.
SPEAKER_00: Wives submit to your husbands.
SPEAKER_00: Uh husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her.
SPEAKER_00: 1 Peter 3 as well, and these passages in Colossians uh 3, 18 to uh 4.1 are passages that to our modern hearers just make us uh wince slightly, let's be honest about the kind of bristle.
SPEAKER_00: Uh talk of submission, uh, talk of uh the translation that was read said says bond servitude, but other translations will say slavery, thinking about slavery there.
SPEAKER_00: It's the kind of passage that um you wish wasn't being preached when your non-Christian friend accepts the invite to come to church.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, if that's you this morning, welcome.
SPEAKER_00: Um we just go through books of the Bible, and this just happened to be the next passage.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the thing about this passage and passage like uh passages like it.
SPEAKER_00: It goes to a really uh important issue for us, and that is the question of how is it that we actually relate to one another?
SPEAKER_00: Because that's not altogether clear in our world.
SPEAKER_00: I feel like our parents and grandparents had a uh had a more obvious set of uh rules as to what define rules and how we related, and and and yet they've changed.
SPEAKER_00: They maybe haven't been passed down, or they've changed in a way that isn't immediately perceptible in the world of Me Too and council culture and all of those things.
SPEAKER_00: And so it is worth considering what the Bible's mind is on these questions, even if right now you don't agree with this way of relating, it at least exposes the question of how should we relate?
SPEAKER_00: How am I supposed to function in those relationships that are closest to me, in my marriage, in how I parent or will parent in the future, how I act in the workplace.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna make the case that uh the bond servant, uh, bond servitude or slavery in this case it translates most uh mostly to our our world of work a little bit later on.
SPEAKER_00: And we live in a in a web of interconnected relationships.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us uh occupy uh each of these roles, uh spouse, parent, and either employee or employer.
SPEAKER_00: And we have to kind of uh move through those uh those different uh iterations, through those different relationships.
SPEAKER_00: And so how do we make sense of each of them in the matrix of our lives?
SPEAKER_00: All of them, it is worth saying right at the start, are governed by what Paul has said earlier.
SPEAKER_00: What God has said, uh what Paul has said uh earlier in chapter three about putting off our old self with malice and envy and and self-love and hatred and uh and and competition and put on other person-centered love, put on peaceableness and forgiveness and compassion, that all of those things have to be true for us, or are they governing principles before we even look at the details of husbands and wives and parents and children and work?
SPEAKER_00: I know that the first five words, wives submit to your husbands.
SPEAKER_00: The first five words of this passage might not make you want to know more about this passage.
SPEAKER_00: But I want to make a number of observations before we even get there to help us understand by way of context just how revolutionary what Paul is talking about here really is.
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you a number of surprises.
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you four surprises from this text before we even look at the various dynamics, okay?
SPEAKER_00: First surprise.
SPEAKER_00: Surprise number one is that Paul elevates those who would have had lower status in the ancient world by addressing them first, by giving them priority.
SPEAKER_00: Paul elevates the status of the wife, the child, and the slave, the bondservant, by speaking to them first, with priority.
SPEAKER_00: That would have been completely unheard of in the ancient world.
SPEAKER_00: In the ancient world, there existed things called household codes.
SPEAKER_00: That's what this is.
SPEAKER_00: It's basically how do you manage your house?
SPEAKER_00: And it was written primarily for men.
SPEAKER_00: It was written primarily for husbands, fathers, and masters as to how they would or should run a good and orderly Roman household.
SPEAKER_00: And it was written primarily to them because your wife and your child and your slave were all to varying degrees seen as property to be owned by you.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, Aristotle said that slaves were human tools.
SPEAKER_00: Paul completely explodes that, he completely cuts against it by addressing the wife, the child, and the slave as full human beings with rational faculties who can consider what is being said.
SPEAKER_00: He gives them dignity by saying, this is the kinds of things that you should be doing.
SPEAKER_00: And the very fact that you sit here and that's not revolutionary, you should think, well, of course, women, children, and my employees have dignity.
SPEAKER_00: The very fact that you think that is an indicator that you are swimming in the water, culturally speaking, that Paul has made here in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: Because it would have been revolutionary in the ancient world.
SPEAKER_00: The fact that it's not to our ears now just shows us how steeped in Christian values our culture actually is, that we regard women of equal status and value, children of equal status and value, our employees of equal status and value.
SPEAKER_00: Paul addresses them before he addresses the men.
SPEAKER_00: He is recognizing that they are image bearers of God with wills of their own, that they are in fact part of God's kingdom, and that women and slaves, and I dare say children as well, were being used by God all over the empire.
SPEAKER_00: There are examples of that in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: You have examples of Phoebe, a woman who is sent with the letter to the Romans.
SPEAKER_00: Anesimus, who we'll maybe talk about a little bit later, who was a slave, who was used by God and part of Paul's apostolic band.
SPEAKER_00: That's the first surprise.
SPEAKER_00: Paul elevates them by addressing them first.
SPEAKER_00: The second surprise here, again, contrary to the household codes of the day, is that the men here, the husbands, the children, and the masters, are never told to enforce submission.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see that?
SPEAKER_00: It's not husbands or wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Husbands, make sure that you keep your wife in line.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: Husbands love your wives.
SPEAKER_00: Do not be harsh with them.
SPEAKER_00: This idea of enforced subjugation or servitude is foreign to the mind of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Men are never given a command or a mandate to enforce their power, to enforce their authority over their wives.
SPEAKER_00: In the household codes, it was about keeping people in line, it was about ensuring that people obeyed.
SPEAKER_00: Paul won't have any of that.
SPEAKER_00: He looks to the man of the house and says, Love your wife.
SPEAKER_00: Don't be harsh of them.
SPEAKER_00: Don't provoke your children.
SPEAKER_00: And remember, for one, that you have a master in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Third surprise.
SPEAKER_00: The man is not Lord of the Household, Jesus is.
SPEAKER_00: Again, completely antithetical to the Roman world.
SPEAKER_00: If you were a Roman male, you had an immense amount of freedom to treat people of a lower social status than you, however you wanted.
SPEAKER_00: You could have sex with whoever you wanted if you were a Roman male, regardless of their age or gender, as long as they were of a lower status than you.
SPEAKER_00: You were the Lord of all you surveyed.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says no.
SPEAKER_00: Because in each of these each of these groupings that he addresses, the wife, the child, the slave, and the master, he points out that all of their obligations are ultimately to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see that?
SPEAKER_00: Wives submit to your husbands.
SPEAKER_00: What's the motivation?
SPEAKER_00: As is fitting in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 20, children obey your parents.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: For this pleases the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Slaves are to work with sincerity of heart.
SPEAKER_00: End of verse 22, fearing the Lord, working hardly, verse 23, as for the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And the masters, and I take here the masters are, it's really a catch-all, that they are also fathers and husbands, that they have a master in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Taking these things together, no man, either here or in the first century receiving this letter, can sit and conclude that he is the lord of his own little domestic empire.
SPEAKER_00: With everyone around him living to serve his whims and will.
SPEAKER_00: Christ alone is the ultimate authority over the home.
SPEAKER_00: He is the one who governs the relationships that we find ourselves in.
SPEAKER_00: He is the lord over that entire matrix.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see?
SPEAKER_00: And the fourth and final surprise, before we look at uh the three dynamics particularly, is to just think a little bit further about submission.
SPEAKER_00: Because to our ears, submission means a diminishing or denigration of value.
SPEAKER_00: That if I am the one who is submitting, if I am the one who is following, then I am making myself lesser.
SPEAKER_00: I am acknowledging that I am of lesser value or worth.
SPEAKER_00: That is not how the Bible views submission.
SPEAKER_00: That is not submission in the Bible's mind.
SPEAKER_00: And we know this because of how God is.
SPEAKER_00: Christians believe that our God is one in three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And within that community, there is hierarchy.
SPEAKER_00: The Father sends the Son, and the Son goes.
SPEAKER_00: You read John 5, Jesus says, I speak what the Father has given me to speak.
SPEAKER_00: I do the actions that He, I do the works that He has given me to do.
SPEAKER_00: There is a sending and a going, an authority and a submission.
SPEAKER_00: And yet in Christianity there is no sense that Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, is lesser, of lesser value, lesser in being, lesser in terms of dignity or worth.
SPEAKER_00: And we are made in the image of that God.
SPEAKER_00: We are made in our relationships to reflect something of that sort of God.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul is showing us this here.
SPEAKER_00: There is no denigration or lessening of value in submission.
SPEAKER_00: So what is the Bible's definition of submission?
SPEAKER_00: Let me offer one for you.
SPEAKER_00: Biblical submission is one equal person's voluntary acceptance of the authority of another equal person.
SPEAKER_00: Let me say that again.
SPEAKER_00: Biblical submission is one equal person's voluntary acceptance of the authority of another equal person.
SPEAKER_00: Given all of that, let's make some comments about each of these three pairings, as it were.
SPEAKER_00: Let's think a little bit about wives and husbands.
SPEAKER_00: Verses 18 and 19 wives submit to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.
SPEAKER_00: First, it is important to recognize that here and in all of the other passages that speak to this sort of relationship dynamic, submission and leadership are expressions of what it means to worship God.
SPEAKER_00: The wife voluntarily, joyfully submits to her husband as an act not to make his socks roll up and down and make him happier, but because it pleases the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: It is part of her own discipleship.
SPEAKER_00: In the same way that for the man to lovingly give himself in sacrificial service of his wife is part of what it means for him to worship the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Second in this one.
SPEAKER_00: Where authority is godly and loving, submission is the fitting and appropriate response.
SPEAKER_00: Because you might sit here and you think, well, does that mean that a wife has to do whatever whatever is asked of her?
SPEAKER_00: You really suggesting that?
SPEAKER_00: No, I'm not.
SPEAKER_00: Because again, all of these relationships are governed by what Paul has said before about putting off sin and putting on holiness.
SPEAKER_00: If you are asked as a wife to do something that that rule to act in a way that runs in direct contravention to what God has already explicitly said in his word, you have no obligation to submit.
SPEAKER_00: Because your first obligation is not to your husband, but to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see?
SPEAKER_00: But where your husband seeks to lovingly lead in a sacrificial, humble way, submission is an appropriate response.
SPEAKER_00: It is the right response when a husband is seeking to lovingly lead his wife.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the authority of the husband is a derived authority.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't come from him, it comes from God.
SPEAKER_00: And so a wife's joyful submission is not primarily about him.
SPEAKER_00: It's about how she worships her God.
SPEAKER_00: Does Paul expect that husbands will say jump and wives will respond, hi hi, darling?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, Paul is elevating their status in society.
SPEAKER_00: He is treating them as intelligent human beings with wills of their own who are capable to understand and respond and work out what the dynamic of submitting and following and and uh sorry following and leading uh looks like.
SPEAKER_00: And so I take it that there is an invitation to dialogue here.
SPEAKER_00: Should should couples talk about things?
SPEAKER_00: Talk about decisions that you might make in your life.
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: That husbands uh come in and with some papal edict.
SPEAKER_00: Thus says me, wife, I have so decreed uh that this is the decision that we're taking.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and so a pack of bags, let's go.
SPEAKER_00: No, no.
SPEAKER_00: Should you seek to come to a compromise, to come to an agreement?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, of course.
SPEAKER_00: Can a wife cultivate her own intelligence and still be a submissive wife?
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: Can a wife be a formidable character in the world of work and other spheres and still be a submissive wife?
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: Can a wife pursue excellence in her chosen field and still be a submissive wife?
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: None of these things preclude submission because submission isn't primarily about creating a power imbalance or an intellectual imbalance.
SPEAKER_00: No, leading and following is about love.
SPEAKER_00: It's about love, first and foremost, to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It's about recognizing that Jesus loves you as a wife or as an aspiring wife, and in that context, recognizing that Jesus doesn't give you commands that aren't for your good.
SPEAKER_00: But it is also recognizing the love that your husband has and should grow in for you.
SPEAKER_00: Is your husband, will your husband be perfect?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: Will he fail you?
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: Will he fail to lead you rightly?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, he probably is will.
SPEAKER_00: But where he is seeking to grow in godliness, where he is seeking to love Jesus more, and as a consequence lay down his life for you.
SPEAKER_00: Where you can say, I know that my husband loves me.
SPEAKER_00: In that context there can be greater trust together and a following, a joyful following of his leadership.
SPEAKER_00: If he's prepared to lay down his life for you, would you not follow him?
SPEAKER_00: Children and parents.
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, verse 20.
SPEAKER_00: Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Again, see the Godward motivation of it.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 21.
SPEAKER_00: Fathers, do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged.
SPEAKER_00: Provoke, you mean can mean embitter?
SPEAKER_00: Do not provoke or embitter your children.
SPEAKER_00: And the motivation, the reason for that is given there.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: So that they might not become discouraged.
SPEAKER_00: So the reason for our uh our unprovoking parenting is that our children mightn't become discouraged.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what does that mean?
SPEAKER_00: Because in the in the day-to-day to and fro of uh of parenting, I can uh I can promise you uh that uh that my children find themselves discouraged from time to time uh when they want to eat cake for breakfast, and I say no, they find themselves discouraged.
SPEAKER_00: I have discouraged them.
SPEAKER_00: So if I contravene Colossians 3.20, uh when I just so should I just give them however much cake they want to eat, right?
SPEAKER_00: I take discouragement here to mean a uh an ongoing spiritual discouragement, a disillusionment with Jesus and the gospel, a loss of hope in the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Again, we could spend a whole sermon series, uh, and we should do at some point, reflecting on uh on what it means not to provoke your children so that they don't become discouraged.
SPEAKER_00: But it's worth reflecting on a few things uh briefly.
SPEAKER_00: I recognize that uh that many, if not most, here, um were not parents yet.
SPEAKER_00: Um yet, let's let's let's file this one away.
SPEAKER_00: Let's let's bed this in so that when we can activate it, it becomes uh uh it becomes useful to know.
SPEAKER_00: The first is to acknowledge that when it says verse 20, you know, uh obey your parents in everything.
SPEAKER_00: You know, this obedience in everything again is tempered by all that Paul has already said in chapter 3 about putting off sin and putting on holiness, turning aside from cruelty and malice and envy and hatred.
SPEAKER_00: And so this is not a license for cruel or abusive parenting that should and must be rooted out and dealt with.
SPEAKER_00: But it is also worth knowing that when we remind our children to obey, and say you find yourself reminding your child to obey, that we remind them not just because it's what makes us happy or what makes our day easier.
SPEAKER_00: We must remind our children that the motivation for their obedience is because it pleases Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It pleases the Lord that they should listen to their mum and dad.
SPEAKER_00: If we don't do that, then we we run the risk of becoming moralists.
SPEAKER_00: Divorcing um uh divorcing uh obedience from any sort of uh love that might exist between children and their God.
SPEAKER_00: They obey because it pleases the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: It's important also to recognize that each parent fails at this and will fail at this.
SPEAKER_00: Can I say if you're a perfectionist, it's gonna be really, really hard for you when you become a parent.
SPEAKER_00: Because you spend your entire life second guessing every decision you've ever made and uh thinking that you're going to ruin your child.
SPEAKER_00: That is why grace is so important.
SPEAKER_00: And grace is important for each of these relationship dynamics.
SPEAKER_00: Husbands and wives, your wife will not follow you the way you the way you would think that she should, and you will not lovingly lead her the way that you should either.
SPEAKER_00: You will not parent perfectly, your children will not obey perfectly, you will not work perfectly, and your boss, in case you hadn't realized it, won't be perfect either.
SPEAKER_00: In the context of the Christian community, it is so good that we remember our need of grace.
SPEAKER_00: If you divorce all of these relationship dynamics from the gospel, what is the gospel?
SPEAKER_00: The gospel is the is the good news that Jesus came to die for our failings, our self-love, and our sin, and has given us grace upon grace, and he's given us a new heart with which to live.
SPEAKER_00: You take that and separate that from submitting and obeying, all you will get is moralism.
SPEAKER_00: Or you will become crushed by your failings.
SPEAKER_00: Grace is vital here.
SPEAKER_00: And just finally on this one, just some reflections on how we can avoid uh discouraging our children.
SPEAKER_00: Four quick things that come to mind.
SPEAKER_00: You can avoid discouraging your children when you apologize when you're wrong.
SPEAKER_00: You ever live in that family where uh if there is a problem between two people, umbody says sorry.
SPEAKER_00: What happens is that there is this kind of there's tension, and then there's passive aggression, and then there's just kind of and a slight uneasiness, and then there's just a resolve just to continue on.
SPEAKER_00: And that's how your relationship dynamics just kind of work forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: Where nobody says sorry.
SPEAKER_00: We will fail our children as parents, and we'll won't it commend the gospel of grace to them when you knowing that you have acted wrongly, get down on your honkers, on your haunches, and look at your child in the eye and say, I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_00: I shouldn't have spoken the way that I did.
SPEAKER_00: I flew off the handle.
SPEAKER_00: Would you forgive me?
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just glad that you recognized that it was Ezra, not me.
SPEAKER_00: Apologize when you're wrong, father, mother.
SPEAKER_00: Second, have consistent and clear boundaries.
SPEAKER_00: I know that that's hard because sometimes you just want your children to go away for five minutes.
SPEAKER_00: And so in that in that time, you would happily uh let them do something that otherwise, when you're more engaged, um they uh they shouldn't do, and you wouldn't let them.
SPEAKER_00: And so you move the goalposts and you bend and you flex, but then you're more engaged and you're more awake, you say, No, you can't do that thing.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I just did it like yesterday.
SPEAKER_00: Why did you let me do it then?
SPEAKER_00: And now you're changing the goalposts.
SPEAKER_00: It's a way to exasperate your your children, right?
SPEAKER_00: And like I have two children under the age of four years old.
SPEAKER_00: Like, I understand.
SPEAKER_00: Like sometimes they just need to be outway from me.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but where that leads me to not be consistent and not be clear in my boundaries, that is something for me to repent of.
SPEAKER_00: The third way that you could not provoke your children is be proportional in your level of discipline.
SPEAKER_00: We don't want to use a canon to crack a nut.
SPEAKER_00: There is a concern here later on in this passage for masters, employers to act with justice and fairness.
SPEAKER_00: There should be justice and fairness in how we do discipline as well.
SPEAKER_00: But beyond all of these things, I think that the most important way that you can not discourage your children is if you are happy in God.
SPEAKER_00: If you are delighting in Jesus and in your faith, and your children see it, and they see that you're the same here, then you are at home, and they see that Jesus really is Lord of our house.
SPEAKER_00: And that changes how we live, that changes how mom and dad relate.
SPEAKER_00: Your children will be less discouraged in God if you yourself are happy in him.
SPEAKER_00: Finally, slaves and masters, and then we'll take some questions.
SPEAKER_00: Even mentioning uh the word slavery uh throws up images in our mind.
SPEAKER_00: It throws up images in our mind of the transatlantic slave trade, right?
SPEAKER_00: Of that evil, wicked, racist practice.
SPEAKER_00: That practice of people stealing.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible never condones people stealing.
SPEAKER_00: That is not what is going on here.
SPEAKER_00: Slavery in the ancient world was, first of all, not race-based.
SPEAKER_00: There are plenty of instances in antiquity of uh North African Roman citizens, so black in color, who had Caucasian white slaves.
SPEAKER_00: I know you don't sit there and go, ah, great, well, that's fine then.
SPEAKER_00: You I know that's not a knockdown argument, but at least see that it's not a race-based thing.
SPEAKER_00: Slaves in the ancient world had a standing within society.
SPEAKER_00: They could, at various points, uh, own property.
SPEAKER_00: It was a uh it was also not a permanent estate, but a way of often paying off economic debt, after which time they would have their freedom.
SPEAKER_00: That is not a suggestion.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, therefore, we're all okay with slavery.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what we're saying, and that's not what the New Testament is saying.
SPEAKER_00: It is not that we now suggest that slavery is a positive thing.
SPEAKER_00: Far from it.
SPEAKER_00: We are simply recognizing, one, that it was different to the transatlantic slave trade, and that it was a reality of life in the ancient world.
SPEAKER_00: Might not be a preferable one, but it was a reality of life in the time when Paul was writing.
SPEAKER_00: You might think about it a little bit like this.
SPEAKER_00: Think about fossil fuel.
SPEAKER_00: Our world, your life, is completely dependent upon fossil fuel.
SPEAKER_00: Our economy is completely dependent upon fossil fuel.
SPEAKER_00: But most of us here would like to lessen our dependence upon fossil fuel.
SPEAKER_00: We think that that would be a good thing over the long term for the world and the planet.
SPEAKER_00: And yet most of us also recognize that it's not something that we can just end like that, that it's something that we must work towards and continue to subvert.
SPEAKER_00: In the ancient world, slavery was a little like that.
SPEAKER_00: To have an ancient society without slavery would have been unthinkable and impossible to achieve overnight.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, the New Testament, in Paul's writings in particular, he so subverts the culture of how slaves and masters interact that it sows the seeds of abolitionism.
SPEAKER_00: It sows the seeds of the end of slavery.
SPEAKER_00: I would encourage you to, uh, at some point, uh, maybe this afternoon, you might take 10 minutes, to sit and read Paul's letter to a guy called Philemon.
SPEAKER_00: It's one page long.
SPEAKER_00: And Philemon was a master, he was a slave owner, and he had a slave whose name was Onesimus.
SPEAKER_00: And Onesimus ran away.
SPEAKER_00: They were both Christians, but for a slave to run away carried with it a capital offense.
SPEAKER_00: You could be put to death if you were a runaway slave in the ancient world.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul writes to Philemon, he says, So you imagine it.
SPEAKER_00: Anesimus ends up in Paul's troop.
SPEAKER_00: He says, You need to go back to your master.
SPEAKER_00: And so he pens a letter and he puts it in Anesimus' hand and says, Go home.
SPEAKER_00: Go home to your master.
SPEAKER_00: And in that letter, he says, Receive Anesimus back like a brother.
SPEAKER_00: Don't exact any sort of retribution.
SPEAKER_00: Receive him like a brother.
SPEAKER_00: Any debt, charge it to my account.
SPEAKER_00: I think the way that this uh translates most readily for us is how we interact within our employment.
SPEAKER_00: You might uh consider your employment as some form of indentured servitude, especially if you work for some government organization.
SPEAKER_00: It and in this context, Paul encourages the Christian worker in a number of ways.
SPEAKER_00: What is it he says?
SPEAKER_00: Verse 22.
SPEAKER_00: Slaves obey uh obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye service as people pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive an inheritance as your reward.
SPEAKER_00: You are serving the Lord Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You, in your work as an employee, are not just working for your boss.
SPEAKER_00: You are working for the Lord Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You are working for Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Second, you are not just working for your own career advancement, but for the reward that you will receive on the last day.
SPEAKER_00: With that in mind, therefore, you should work even when your boss isn't looking.
SPEAKER_00: You should work with excellence even when your boss isn't looking.
SPEAKER_00: Not simply so that you might get a promotion quicker.
SPEAKER_00: Because that would to do that simply for that reason would be to work by way of eye service as a as a person pleaser.
SPEAKER_00: It can be a great consequence of hard work, but to work simply for that is to lose sight of the greater Christian motivation to work with excellence because you are working for God.
SPEAKER_00: It is part of what it means for you to worship in the workplace.
SPEAKER_00: And where you are an employer, where you have people on your team over whom you have authority, justice and fairness are key.
SPEAKER_00: How often can those who are in authority, perhaps even also those who are in authority in leadership positions within the church become merciless?
SPEAKER_00: We must all recognize that we have a master in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: In all of these things, and with this we conclude, in all of these things, whether it's leadership, loving, submission, parenting, obedience, work, management, all of these things, what we see is a call for us as Christians to integrate the message of Christianity, the gospel, into every into every area of our life.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel affects how you live, how you love, how you work, how you manage your household, how you bring up your children, what you do with your money.
SPEAKER_00: It is so easy just to see Christianity as your ticket to ride when you die, your insurance policy for a better and eternity.
SPEAKER_00: But to think of it that way would be a misunderstanding of what the gospel is.
SPEAKER_00: In the gospel, Jesus is making a new society, he is making a kingdom where we live differently, we love differently to the world around us.
SPEAKER_00: And when we do that, we show the beauty of the gospel and the God who is God of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Our Lord Jesus is the one who willingly went, submitted himself to the Father's will, even when that meant death for us.
SPEAKER_00: He is the one who loves his bride, the church.
SPEAKER_00: He never abuses his power.
SPEAKER_00: He is never unjust, he is never unfair.
SPEAKER_00: And when we live in these sort of ways, we show his character and his beauty.