Transcript: Episode 0021

WEBVTT

00:00.000 --> 00:10.420
Alright.

00:10.420 --> 00:25.920
Repeat this step again.

00:25.920 --> 00:41.640
Welcome to the Stone Choir podcast, I am Corey J. Mahler.

00:41.640 --> 00:43.800
And I'm Woe.

00:43.800 --> 00:49.240
Today's episode of Stone Choir is going to be discussing the made-up sin of slavery.

00:49.240 --> 00:54.120
As we did a couple weeks ago, one about racism, we're now going to touch on another extremely

00:54.120 --> 00:55.980
hot topic.

00:55.980 --> 00:58.080
This is not a dead issue.

00:58.080 --> 01:02.920
Slavery is something that although it has been eliminated in the West, it still exists

01:02.920 --> 01:04.680
in other parts of the world.

01:04.680 --> 01:10.840
But the reason that it's still controversial is that it is fundamentally rooted in much

01:10.840 --> 01:12.560
of the gospel message itself.

01:12.560 --> 01:18.760
So the theme that we're going to present today is not only is slavery itself not a sin per

01:19.560 --> 01:24.360
But in fact, you can't actually understand scripture if you do not accept slavery qua

01:24.360 --> 01:25.360
slavery.

01:25.360 --> 01:29.360
Before we get into the meat of this, I wanted to issue two brief corrections from last week's

01:29.360 --> 01:30.360
episode.

01:30.360 --> 01:35.240
One, the last two episodes ran about five hours combined.

01:35.240 --> 01:37.800
That's longer than we want these to be.

01:37.800 --> 01:41.960
In both cases, we were working line by line through things that the Missouri Synod Corporation

01:41.960 --> 01:43.040
had issued.

01:43.040 --> 01:47.720
So we really didn't have quite the editorial control over what we had to discuss.

01:47.720 --> 01:51.280
We do have that control today, so we're going to keep this under 90 minutes even if it means

01:51.280 --> 01:52.800
we have to cut our own microphones.

01:52.800 --> 01:56.880
So I'm not sure exactly how long this will be, but I promise you will be a regular length

01:56.880 --> 01:58.760
episode.

01:58.760 --> 02:02.400
As I was listening again to last week's episode, I heard myself say something that really rubbed

02:02.400 --> 02:03.600
me the wrong way.

02:03.600 --> 02:07.200
So I'm sure it bugged some of you and so I'd like to issue a correction of what I said.

02:07.200 --> 02:11.040
I mentioned that I had gone hunting with my dad and I said I didn't really like it and

02:11.040 --> 02:14.200
I said something about clover and bees and when I was listening, I thought, man, that

02:14.200 --> 02:16.680
guy sounds like a complete hippie tree hugger.

02:16.680 --> 02:17.680
That is not me.

02:17.680 --> 02:22.240
I want to clarify for the record, in honor of my father and all of my ancestors and mighty

02:22.240 --> 02:26.640
hunters like Nimrod, I do not think that hunting is a moral wrong.

02:26.640 --> 02:32.320
I think that hunting is a great thing as apex predators, as the pinnacle of creation man

02:32.320 --> 02:37.400
in many places must hunt simply because we have displaced the other apex predators.

02:37.400 --> 02:40.320
So I have no problems with hunting.

02:40.320 --> 02:45.560
What I said and what I meant was that I personally just as an aesthetic choice, when I see a

02:45.560 --> 02:50.880
wild animal out my window or when I'm walking around in nature, my first thought is what

02:50.880 --> 02:57.040
a miracle it is that all these wild creatures live entirely by God's providence, that all

02:57.040 --> 03:01.740
their food, that their shelter, that everything is by their wits and their cunning, and directly

03:01.740 --> 03:03.640
from God's blessings.

03:03.640 --> 03:10.880
And I take that as reassurance because our own lives, particularly mine, are so separated

03:10.880 --> 03:12.760
from the immediacy of God's providence.

03:12.760 --> 03:15.080
So I have a roof over my head.

03:15.080 --> 03:16.240
It's warm in the winter.

03:16.240 --> 03:18.000
It's cool in the summer.

03:18.000 --> 03:21.120
Whenever I get hungry, if I don't have food in the house, I can go to the grocery store

03:21.120 --> 03:22.520
and they have food.

03:22.520 --> 03:24.080
That's life on easy mode.

03:24.080 --> 03:25.660
A wild animal doesn't have that.

03:25.660 --> 03:32.440
So when I see a wild animal, my first thought is that I'm reminded of God's blessings to

03:32.440 --> 03:33.440
all of us.

03:33.440 --> 03:39.040
And I don't want the animal happening across me to be the reason that its own life ended.

03:39.040 --> 03:41.040
But for hunters, God bless you.

03:41.040 --> 03:42.040
I appreciate it.

03:42.320 --> 03:43.680
You kill animals.

03:43.680 --> 03:49.000
I know that those responsible hunters respect and understand that that sacrifice is something

03:49.000 --> 03:50.400
that God is giving to them.

03:50.400 --> 03:52.720
So I have zero moral problems with it.

03:52.720 --> 03:53.720
Hunting is great.

03:53.720 --> 03:55.080
We need more of it, not less.

03:55.080 --> 03:59.060
If kids were spending more time outside doing that, it'd be a better place.

03:59.060 --> 04:02.120
When I was hunting as a kid, it was zero degrees and 4 a.m.

04:02.120 --> 04:05.040
So it was kind of unpleasant for those reasons.

04:05.040 --> 04:11.240
The other thing that I said that I realized wasn't a mistake, but I said something a little

04:11.280 --> 04:12.280
unusual.

04:12.280 --> 04:16.640
When we were talking specifically about slavery, the first two times I referred to the political

04:16.640 --> 04:24.320
events in the United States in the 1800s, I said prohibition twice before correcting

04:24.320 --> 04:25.720
myself to say abolition.

04:25.720 --> 04:28.320
And I was thinking about why I made that mistake.

04:28.320 --> 04:31.440
And I realized that something was happening that was a little bit interesting, at least

04:31.440 --> 04:32.440
to me.

04:32.440 --> 04:34.360
I'm very analytical about my own mistakes.

04:34.360 --> 04:38.160
I always go back over and try to figure out why did I get something wrong.

04:38.160 --> 04:42.360
When I couldn't remember the word abolition the first two times, I said prohibition.

04:42.360 --> 04:45.800
If one thing, prohibition was equally accurate.

04:45.800 --> 04:51.120
We did prohibit slavery, but it's not the precise term that was used at that time for

04:51.120 --> 04:52.840
the political movement.

04:52.840 --> 04:57.440
I think that what my brain was doing was preventing me from saying abolition because it's really

04:57.440 --> 04:59.600
lousy framing.

04:59.600 --> 05:06.000
Abolition is today a very loaded morally tinged word that is the opposite frame of the one

05:06.000 --> 05:07.000
that I hold.

05:07.000 --> 05:09.720
I hold that slavery was prohibited.

05:09.720 --> 05:12.160
It was legal, and then it was made illegal.

05:12.160 --> 05:17.720
And while I think that that is a permissible policy choice for a nation, the anti-slavery

05:17.720 --> 05:24.920
moral positioning that abolition was the stamping out of an ontological evil, and that that

05:24.920 --> 05:31.660
itself was an absolute moral good that justified any manner of evil in its name, I fundamentally

05:31.660 --> 05:34.720
object to that, and that is why we're doing this episode.

05:34.800 --> 05:40.040
I think my brain was protecting me from fumbling into the adversaries framing by calling an

05:40.040 --> 05:41.040
abolition.

05:41.040 --> 05:44.120
Anyway, I noticed that I said that, and I had mentioned in the episode, We Might Do

05:44.120 --> 05:46.040
a Slavery episode in the future.

05:46.040 --> 05:52.080
We decided, let's do it next because it was also one of the made up sins that the LCMS

05:52.080 --> 05:54.400
president condemned explicitly.

05:54.400 --> 05:59.640
He said that we were pro-slavery, which is a lie, but that's a very profound question.

05:59.640 --> 06:04.680
As I promised, today we are going to be going through scripture, not line by line, but we're

06:04.680 --> 06:09.880
going to go through many of the places where slavery is acknowledged, where it is permitted,

06:09.880 --> 06:15.400
where it is in some cases commanded, where it's used, and the fact that it is never explicitly

06:15.400 --> 06:18.160
prohibited, condemned as a sin anyway.

06:18.160 --> 06:22.880
I want to acknowledge up front that because if we were to do the full treatment of this

06:22.880 --> 06:28.400
episode of this topic, the way we did for race, which took five episodes over probably

06:28.400 --> 06:31.960
about 10 hours, this could easily be probably a 30-hour series.

06:31.960 --> 06:32.960
We're not going to do that.

06:32.960 --> 06:33.960
It's 90 minutes.

06:34.080 --> 06:38.400
What we're going to talk about today is specifically what scripture says in favor of slavery.

06:38.400 --> 06:42.600
We're going to almost completely ignore all the arguments that are trotted out principally

06:42.600 --> 06:47.040
from the New Testament to justify abolition.

06:47.040 --> 06:49.640
The reason for that is that it's a case we've made before.

06:49.640 --> 06:54.520
If you are talking about something and you're saying scripture prohibits it, prohibits it,

06:54.520 --> 06:57.680
you must deal with the places where scripture doesn't prohibit it.

06:57.680 --> 07:02.480
We're just going to give you all the places where God says, this is fine, I do not have

07:02.520 --> 07:05.280
a problem with this, and I am the Lord your God.

07:05.280 --> 07:08.760
If somebody else wants to come along and make an argument, the scripture, oh, actually

07:08.760 --> 07:11.920
God says that, they have to deal with everything we're saying.

07:11.920 --> 07:16.320
This is the affirmative case for why slavery itself is not a sin.

07:16.320 --> 07:22.400
We're going to spend the entire 90 minutes minus my intro talking specifically in scripture.

07:22.400 --> 07:28.360
I thought about first starting with Abraham, but I think in fact to go roughly chronologically,

07:28.360 --> 07:30.720
we have to start earlier than Abraham.

07:30.720 --> 07:36.880
We have to start with Job, because Job is almost certainly the oldest book in the Bible,

07:36.880 --> 07:40.880
and the treatment in Job is very brief.

07:40.880 --> 07:48.360
We really only need two verses from Job, three verses from Job, but it makes the point very

07:48.360 --> 07:52.680
succinctly and really it makes the totality of the point, but of course we won't end the

07:52.680 --> 07:54.880
episode there.

07:54.880 --> 08:01.120
Job is described in the opening of the book of Job as a man who is blameless and upright,

08:01.120 --> 08:04.080
one who feared God and turned away from evil.

08:04.080 --> 08:05.720
He is described as a good man.

08:05.720 --> 08:08.640
He is described as righteous throughout the book of Job.

08:08.640 --> 08:09.680
He fears God.

08:09.680 --> 08:14.200
He does not sin with his lips through most of the book of Job.

08:14.200 --> 08:20.560
But what's noteworthy there is scripture notes the wealth of Job.

08:20.560 --> 08:25.080
He possessed sheep, camels, yoke of ox, and female donkeys.

08:25.080 --> 08:28.960
There's a reason they're specified as female donkeys, but that's for another time.

08:28.960 --> 08:32.600
And very many slaves.

08:32.600 --> 08:36.920
Some modern translations will say servants, they weren't servants, they were slaves.

08:36.920 --> 08:38.520
He owned these people.

08:38.520 --> 08:44.040
They depended on him for their livelihood, for their shelter, their bread, their clothing.

08:44.040 --> 08:47.680
He owned these people, they were his property.

08:47.680 --> 08:52.320
And he is commended as being blameless and upright, despite being a slave owner.

08:52.320 --> 08:57.600
Of course that goes against what modern individuals, modern men would tell you.

08:57.600 --> 09:01.600
They'd say that you can't be morally upright if you're a slave owner, because slavery itself

09:01.600 --> 09:02.600
is wicked.

09:02.600 --> 09:04.120
Well, it's not what scripture says.

09:04.120 --> 09:10.360
And then at the end of Job, chapter 42, it says that God restores to him twice as much

09:10.360 --> 09:13.200
as he had before.

09:13.200 --> 09:17.460
That includes twice as many slaves as he had before.

09:17.460 --> 09:19.820
God gave Job slaves.

09:19.820 --> 09:27.180
And so if someone wants to argue that trading in slaves, giving someone slaves, possessing

09:27.180 --> 09:33.300
slaves is sin, well, you've just accused God of sin, and you've said that scripture

09:33.300 --> 09:38.000
is wrong when it calls a man righteous who owns slaves.

09:38.000 --> 09:40.340
And that's just the oldest book in the Bible.

09:40.340 --> 09:46.300
It's throughout the entirety of the Bible that you see this accurate, this correct teaching

09:46.300 --> 09:47.300
on scripture.

09:47.300 --> 09:54.220
So we'll move to Genesis and deal with Abraham, starting, of course, as Abram, since we start

09:54.220 --> 09:59.340
with the call of Abram, which is in Genesis 12.

09:59.340 --> 10:05.540
And in Genesis 12 it is noted that Abram has slaves, that would be Genesis 12.5.

10:05.540 --> 10:10.460
And Abram took Sarai, his wife, and laught his brother's son, and all their possessions

10:10.460 --> 10:15.260
that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Heran, and they set out

10:15.260 --> 10:17.700
to go to the land of Canaan.

10:17.700 --> 10:21.420
Those people they acquired, those are slaves.

10:21.420 --> 10:22.420
They acquired them.

10:22.420 --> 10:24.440
You acquire property.

10:24.440 --> 10:32.820
And so the beginning of God dealing with Abram, who would become Abraham, Abram has slaves.

10:32.820 --> 10:34.460
God doesn't tell him to put away his slaves.

10:34.460 --> 10:40.900
God doesn't tell him to leave his slaves because slavery is not a sin.

10:40.900 --> 10:45.500
God told him to leave the idolatry of the land in which he lived.

10:45.500 --> 10:48.220
To leave those things that were sinned behind.

10:48.220 --> 10:51.940
He did not tell him to leave his slaves.

10:51.940 --> 10:54.140
And then, of course, how does God bless him?

10:54.140 --> 11:01.140
Well, he gives him more slaves, because he acquires more slaves when he sojourns in Egypt,

11:01.140 --> 11:06.180
and that's the same chapter, chapter 12, slightly later on, verse 16.

11:06.180 --> 11:09.620
And for her sake, that is, Sarai, he dealt well with Abram.

11:09.620 --> 11:14.740
And he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys,

11:14.740 --> 11:15.740
and camels.

11:15.740 --> 11:17.340
Of course, those are, again, slaves.

11:17.340 --> 11:22.300
This is, I'm reading from the ESV, which sometimes likes to play little games.

11:22.300 --> 11:25.840
But when it says servants, it means slaves.

11:25.840 --> 11:29.340
Because in this era, you didn't have servants.

11:29.340 --> 11:30.340
You had slaves.

11:30.340 --> 11:36.820
God, men and women, you owned as property, and they performed various tasks for you.

11:36.820 --> 11:40.660
And these were given to Abram by Pharaoh.

11:40.660 --> 11:42.260
So he gave him slaves.

11:42.260 --> 11:46.340
God blessed Abram with these things.

11:46.340 --> 11:50.980
And so, moving on to the next chapter, chapter 13.

11:50.980 --> 11:57.500
Here we get an idea of just how many slaves Abram had.

11:57.500 --> 12:02.900
Because this is where Abram has to separate from Lot, because they cannot dwell together,

12:02.900 --> 12:06.260
because their flocks and the number of people they have to care for those flocks and their

12:06.260 --> 12:10.860
households is so large that they overburden the land.

12:10.860 --> 12:12.860
They have to split.

12:12.860 --> 12:17.440
That's how many slaves God gave Abram as a blessing.

12:17.440 --> 12:24.700
And so here in the beginning of Scripture, we see that having slaves is not a sin, rather,

12:24.700 --> 12:28.420
it is a blessing from God, at least under these circumstances.

12:28.420 --> 12:33.220
It's not saying that slavery is always a blessing from God.

12:33.220 --> 12:37.820
But if it can be a blessing from God, then it cannot be a sin.

12:37.820 --> 12:40.420
And that, of course, is the point.

12:40.420 --> 12:47.260
This is something that comes up explicitly in Genesis 24 when Abram sends out his servant

12:47.260 --> 12:52.260
or his slave, one of his chief slaves, to find a wife for Isaac.

12:52.260 --> 12:58.220
And when he comes to Laban and speaks to him, his Abraham servant says, I am Abraham's

12:58.220 --> 12:59.220
servant.

12:59.220 --> 13:02.180
The Lord has greatly blessed my master, and he has become great.

13:02.180 --> 13:06.580
He has given him flocks and herds, silver and gold, male slaves and female slaves, camels

13:06.580 --> 13:08.020
and donkeys.

13:08.020 --> 13:13.180
So explicitly it says the giving of slaves is a gift from God.

13:13.180 --> 13:20.380
There's no circumstance in which enslavement can possibly be a sin per se when God is saying,

13:20.860 --> 13:23.660
here's a blessing to you, have some slaves.

13:23.660 --> 13:27.900
And I think that one of the problems that we have in our modern minds is that the idea

13:27.900 --> 13:34.700
of being enslaved to us seems so horrific, based on Hollywood portrayals, that we don't

13:34.700 --> 13:43.180
consider whether the transaction of God giving Abraham slaves was not a blessing to both

13:43.180 --> 13:45.060
Abraham and to the slave.

13:45.060 --> 13:51.220
Because imagine if you lived in that time and God gave you into the hand of Abraham

13:51.220 --> 13:55.100
to be his property, is that a curse or is that a blessing?

13:55.100 --> 14:01.100
I think that if you believe what Scripture says about the sort of man that Abraham was,

14:01.100 --> 14:06.660
then the idea that you would belong to that man is a profound honor.

14:06.660 --> 14:12.060
It is something that we don't really understand today because it's alien to our culture, but

14:12.060 --> 14:18.540
to be owned by a man not only is it not inherently morally tinged either way, but it can actually

14:18.540 --> 14:20.340
be a tremendous blessing.

14:20.340 --> 14:25.460
Now indeed, there were certainly slave owners in every era, in every culture who were horrible,

14:25.460 --> 14:30.300
and there are also many who were great men who were kind, who were honest, who treated

14:30.300 --> 14:31.860
their slaves well.

14:31.860 --> 14:37.500
And if one's lot in life was to be a slave, then to be owned by a man who was a good man

14:37.500 --> 14:39.700
was a blessing from God.

14:39.700 --> 14:45.140
So I think it's important that we don't permit the Marxist dialectic approach to these questions

14:45.140 --> 14:49.700
of power dynamics, structure how we think about these relationships.

14:49.700 --> 14:52.340
Because there are two men in that relationship.

14:52.340 --> 14:55.300
There's Abraham the master, and then there's a slave.

14:55.300 --> 14:59.580
Now this was one of his chief slaves that had been sent on this crucial mission.

14:59.580 --> 15:04.340
He was one of his most trusted servants, but he owned him, Abraham owned this man.

15:04.340 --> 15:06.180
This man loved Abraham.

15:06.180 --> 15:12.060
He was sent far away with money and with gifts, and with a profound mission for his master.

15:12.060 --> 15:14.940
And it was his greatest privilege to serve that.

15:14.940 --> 15:18.780
And that's the reason I said at the beginning, that the Christian life can only be understood,

15:18.780 --> 15:25.420
I think in the context of the proper understanding of slavery, because we all have duties.

15:25.420 --> 15:29.900
As Lutherans, we call things vocation, but there are obligations that we have to do certain

15:29.900 --> 15:34.540
things, and sometimes it's just narrowly within your own household.

15:34.540 --> 15:37.100
Sometimes it's within your neighborhood or whatever.

15:37.100 --> 15:41.220
But regardless of the context, we have obligations to do things.

15:41.220 --> 15:44.700
That is not freedom the way Americans want to think about it.

15:44.700 --> 15:46.820
That is a type of slavery.

15:46.820 --> 15:53.620
It is a type of ownership where one's illicit moral choices are bounded by the obligations

15:53.620 --> 15:54.620
we have.

15:54.620 --> 16:00.100
And those obligations are inherited ultimately from God through the headship under which we

16:00.100 --> 16:01.100
are placed.

16:01.180 --> 16:05.980
And in certain times and places throughout most of history, a big part of that was the

16:05.980 --> 16:09.460
institution of men owning other men.

16:09.460 --> 16:15.900
And we also see in the slaves that are transferred to the ownership of Abraham, particularly

16:15.900 --> 16:23.540
the ones from Pharaoh, we see that promise of God to bless all nations in the seed of

16:23.540 --> 16:28.580
Abraham already taking place, because they are coming into the family, the extended family

16:28.580 --> 16:31.420
in this case, of Abraham.

16:31.420 --> 16:34.420
And so they will hear that gospel.

16:34.420 --> 16:36.900
They will hear the Messiah who is to come.

16:36.900 --> 16:42.180
And so we already see God fulfilling his plan for humanity via slavery.

16:42.180 --> 16:46.940
And so it's difficult to say that slavery is an evil when God is using it for the ultimate

16:46.940 --> 16:48.500
good.

16:48.500 --> 16:54.260
And before we move on to Exodus, I think it's worth just pulling out a quick comment from

16:54.260 --> 16:56.380
Genesis 21.

16:56.380 --> 17:03.980
When God addresses the issue of Hagar speaking to Abraham, he says be not displeased because

17:03.980 --> 17:06.500
of the boy and because of your slave woman.

17:06.500 --> 17:09.260
He says slave woman, he doesn't use her name.

17:09.260 --> 17:13.380
Whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for through Isaac shall your offspring

17:13.380 --> 17:14.540
be named.

17:14.540 --> 17:19.420
And I will make a nation of the son of the slave woman also, because he is your offspring.

17:19.420 --> 17:23.900
To most modern ears it's going to sound terrible that God says slave woman.

17:23.900 --> 17:24.900
He doesn't use her name.

17:24.900 --> 17:27.020
God, of course, knows her name.

17:27.020 --> 17:31.380
He addresses her later on in Genesis and does use her name there.

17:31.380 --> 17:35.420
But here he just calls her the slave woman because he's noting that relationship between

17:35.420 --> 17:37.300
Abraham and Hagar.

17:37.300 --> 17:43.260
Abraham, even though Hagar is now his concubine, he still owns her.

17:43.260 --> 17:45.660
She's still his property.

17:45.660 --> 17:50.420
Briefly before we get into Exodus, I just want to point out that not only did Abraham

17:50.420 --> 17:56.380
receive tremendous blessings from God in large part by having numerous slaves, but

17:56.380 --> 17:59.740
Isaac and Jacob were also similarly blessed.

17:59.740 --> 18:05.660
So although we're pointing back to this early period in the Old Testament, it's important

18:05.660 --> 18:09.180
to refute the notion that, oh, well, that was cultural.

18:09.180 --> 18:12.500
On one hand, you have God giving his blessings to his own people.

18:12.500 --> 18:17.500
I mean, at this point, Abraham had become a believer in God and God was richly blessing

18:17.500 --> 18:23.460
him, had promised that he would be the source of the Messiah, that his lineage would be.

18:23.460 --> 18:28.580
But it's not just that it was, oh, old timey, and so they had slaves.

18:28.580 --> 18:32.260
It wasn't that that was then and this is now.

18:32.260 --> 18:36.300
It's one of the things I think Americans in particular, but really everyone in the West

18:36.300 --> 18:41.580
has been just fundamentally brain damaged by the post-enlightenment thinking, as we've

18:41.580 --> 18:46.740
talked about in the last few episodes, about the priors from the Enlightenment, from the

18:46.740 --> 18:54.300
French Revolution in particular, that became our own creed of liberty being a paramount

18:54.300 --> 19:02.220
moral virtue when I hope that we're making the pattern clear that liberty, as it is held

19:02.220 --> 19:05.100
up in the secular world, is nothing of the sort.

19:05.100 --> 19:06.620
It is not a blessing.

19:06.620 --> 19:08.060
It is actually a curse.

19:08.060 --> 19:09.060
It is wickedness.

19:09.060 --> 19:15.820
It is itself rebellion against God and it always follows on the heels of tremendous evil and

19:15.820 --> 19:18.740
evil springs from it.

19:18.740 --> 19:23.620
When slavery existed in these periods, both among believers and among unbelievers, in

19:23.620 --> 19:31.300
myriad forms, for example, the slave that Abraham sent to find Isaac, a wife, was certainly

19:31.300 --> 19:33.300
one of his most senior slaves.

19:33.300 --> 19:40.660
He would have had a higher station in civilization than the slave who was mucking the stalls.

19:40.660 --> 19:43.420
That flies in the face of, oh, we're all created equal.

19:43.420 --> 19:44.420
We all have equality.

19:44.420 --> 19:46.020
No, we don't.

19:46.020 --> 19:49.860
Some men are really only equipped for mucking stalls.

19:49.860 --> 19:52.780
If that is what you were equipped for, that is a blessing.

19:52.780 --> 19:53.780
Do it.

19:53.780 --> 19:54.780
Do it well.

19:54.780 --> 19:57.620
If all you can do is clean toilets, make them the cleanest toilets you can.

19:57.620 --> 20:02.500
That is you blessing your neighbors by being the gift that God wants you to be for those

20:02.500 --> 20:03.700
in your life.

20:03.700 --> 20:10.300
It is not diminishing the value of a man inherently to say he's only good for shoveling cow manure

20:10.300 --> 20:11.940
or cleaning toilets.

20:11.940 --> 20:13.980
It is saying that here's what you can do.

20:13.980 --> 20:14.980
Do it well.

20:14.980 --> 20:22.380
The men who can do better, who can do more lofty and more respected things equally well

20:22.380 --> 20:27.260
are given a higher station, but God also spends a great deal of time in scripture talking

20:27.260 --> 20:31.740
about the fact that the first shall be last and the last shall be first.

20:31.740 --> 20:36.660
Now, it's not only talking about power dynamics, it's not talking about only the rich and the

20:36.660 --> 20:37.660
poor.

20:37.660 --> 20:42.540
Abraham was tremendously wealthy, and he is certainly not the least in heaven, so I don't

20:42.540 --> 20:47.780
want to make it strictly about that, but it's to say that when you have someone who has

20:47.780 --> 20:52.380
a lowly station in life, maybe someone is a slave of slaves.

20:52.380 --> 20:57.660
If they're a faithful believer, God will reward them and the things that they have lacked

20:57.660 --> 21:02.820
in this life, God promises they will receive in the New Earth.

21:02.820 --> 21:11.180
As we deal with these questions of equality and inequality and how men rank hierarchically,

21:11.180 --> 21:16.460
how we perform our duties hierarchically, I think it's important to note, as we always

21:16.460 --> 21:20.360
say, we're not talking about our standing before God.

21:20.360 --> 21:22.260
God shows no partiality.

21:22.260 --> 21:28.300
In this life and in the hierarchy of order that God has instituted, there are differences.

21:28.300 --> 21:32.400
Just as there are differences in the angels, there are angels and there are archangels.

21:32.400 --> 21:35.200
God is a God of hierarchy and order.

21:35.200 --> 21:40.520
The fact that we find these patterns in all times and all places, it's not some historical

21:40.520 --> 21:41.520
aberration.

21:41.520 --> 21:44.200
It's not that, oh, they didn't understand democracy yet.

21:44.200 --> 21:47.040
They didn't understand liberty and freedom and equality.

21:47.040 --> 21:49.440
Now that we have those things, we're better than them.

21:49.440 --> 21:51.360
That's absolutely not the case.

21:51.360 --> 21:56.080
These men were living godly lives and they were blessed by God for it, and that included

21:56.080 --> 21:59.360
the inequality of man before man.

21:59.360 --> 22:08.080
So unlike dealing with slavery in Genesis, the issue is a more general one in Exodus,

22:08.080 --> 22:12.720
and I want to address it more generally instead of pulling out particular verses and highlighting

22:12.720 --> 22:18.800
those because, yes, there are many times that slavery is mentioned, particularly in Genesis

22:18.800 --> 22:23.400
and the following books where it says that God took them out of the house of slavery in

22:23.400 --> 22:29.200
Egypt and that phrase out of the house of slavery is repeated many times.

22:29.200 --> 22:34.200
But I want to highlight something about slavery and Exodus.

22:34.200 --> 22:42.440
Yes, the Israelites are enslaved by the Egyptians in Egypt for centuries, but slavery itself

22:42.440 --> 22:45.680
is never once condemned in Exodus.

22:45.680 --> 22:52.920
In fact, beyond that, Pharaoh and the Egyptians are never condemned for enslaving the Israelites.

22:52.920 --> 22:57.200
There isn't a single verse condemning that in Scripture.

22:57.200 --> 23:00.240
Not one in Exodus, not one anywhere else.

23:00.240 --> 23:05.920
What is noted in passing, and it could be argued that it is condemned, and I think it's

23:05.920 --> 23:10.000
a fair argument, is the oppression and the affliction.

23:10.000 --> 23:16.000
They were mistreating the Israelites as their slaves because there is a standard to which

23:16.000 --> 23:18.720
slave masters are held with regard to their slaves.

23:18.720 --> 23:22.440
That comes later in Scripture, but that is relevant here.

23:22.440 --> 23:26.720
And so when they tell them you don't get hay, but you still have to make bricks, that's

23:26.720 --> 23:30.040
mistreating your slaves, and that's not acceptable.

23:30.040 --> 23:35.960
But reducing them to slavery and keeping them as slaves is not condemned.

23:35.960 --> 23:43.640
What is condemned, what God makes the point in Exodus, is that ultimately the Israelites,

23:43.640 --> 23:49.360
even though they are for a time slaves to the Egyptians, they belong to God.

23:49.360 --> 23:52.080
They're his slaves, he owns them.

23:52.080 --> 23:59.920
And so when he tells Pharaoh, give me my property, and Pharaoh says, no, that's the problem.

23:59.920 --> 24:03.440
The problem is not that they were reduced to slavery, not they were kept as slaves,

24:03.440 --> 24:05.120
not they were treated as slaves.

24:05.120 --> 24:10.440
The problem is that they were not given back to God when he told Pharaoh, give me back my

24:10.440 --> 24:12.880
people that they may go and serve me.

24:12.880 --> 24:15.000
Now, that's absolutely the case.

24:15.000 --> 24:20.120
When God said, let my people go, we ignore them, my part, that's possessive.

24:20.120 --> 24:23.600
Instead of saying, these are mine, you've had them, I want them back.

24:23.600 --> 24:27.240
As you said, Pharaoh said, no, that was the entire problem.

24:27.240 --> 24:29.040
There were other slaves in Egypt.

24:29.040 --> 24:32.480
In fact, as an Egyptian, you belonged to the Pharaoh.

24:32.480 --> 24:37.240
You had to worship Pharaoh as God, which was another part of the problem God was dealing

24:37.240 --> 24:40.000
with, was the Egyptians' idolatry.

24:40.000 --> 24:44.240
But there was no notion that, oh no, slavery is bad, you need to free all the people who

24:44.240 --> 24:45.320
are captive.

24:45.320 --> 24:49.200
Every Egyptian was fundamentally a captive to the Pharaoh.

24:49.200 --> 24:52.880
God was saying, the Israelites are mine, I want them back.

24:52.880 --> 24:55.160
If you don't do it, these are the consequences.

24:55.160 --> 24:59.640
And the consequences, as you said last week, included God delivering genocide against the

24:59.640 --> 25:05.240
Egyptians as judgment for not giving God his property, his people.

25:05.240 --> 25:10.640
And when God says, let my people go, because it does say that, it says in one place, let

25:10.640 --> 25:15.120
my son go, that he may serve me.

25:15.120 --> 25:18.760
Let my people go, that they may serve me.

25:18.760 --> 25:23.880
It's always the point of letting them go so they may serve their ultimate master, which

25:23.880 --> 25:25.960
of course is God.

25:25.960 --> 25:27.600
It's not letting them free.

25:27.600 --> 25:29.840
It's not liberating them.

25:29.840 --> 25:34.720
It is transferring them to their rightful master.

25:34.720 --> 25:40.400
Because as we will get into in the New Testament, certainly, we are all slaves of God.

25:40.400 --> 25:43.540
And that is a fundamental truth of the Christian faith.

25:43.540 --> 25:45.040
You are God's property.

25:45.040 --> 25:47.280
You cannot be anything else.

25:47.280 --> 25:50.760
Even if you are in rebellion, you're still God's property.

25:50.760 --> 25:56.300
You are just rebellious, useless property instead of useful property.

25:56.300 --> 26:00.000
Those terms mean something, and we'll get into that soon enough as well.

26:00.000 --> 26:04.520
I want to specifically highlight Exodus 21, where it talks about the rules for slaves,

26:04.520 --> 26:10.080
just because it explicitly eliminates several of the claims that are made that, well, ancient

26:10.080 --> 26:15.320
slavery was one sort of thing, but more modern forms of slavery, particularly as we had in

26:15.360 --> 26:16.800
the Antebellum South.

26:16.800 --> 26:17.800
Those were evil.

26:17.800 --> 26:21.320
The stuff before wasn't evil, and there are certain patterns that are permissible or

26:21.320 --> 26:22.320
impermissible.

26:22.320 --> 26:25.120
I'm going to read this passage and just point out a couple of things, because it's vital

26:25.120 --> 26:29.880
to dismissing those arguments against slavery, per se.

26:29.880 --> 26:33.080
Now, these are the rules that you shall set before them.

26:33.080 --> 26:37.000
When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh, he shall go

26:37.000 --> 26:38.760
out free for nothing.

26:38.760 --> 26:41.040
If he comes in single, he shall go out single.

26:41.040 --> 26:44.160
If he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him.

26:44.160 --> 26:48.480
If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children

26:48.480 --> 26:51.720
shall be her masters, and he shall go out alone.

26:51.720 --> 26:56.360
But if the slave plainly says, I love my master, my wife and my children, I will not go out

26:56.360 --> 27:01.160
free, then his master shall bring him to God, and he shall bring him to the door or to the

27:01.160 --> 27:06.120
doorpost, and his master shall bore his ear through with and all, and he shall be his

27:06.120 --> 27:07.120
slave forever.

27:07.120 --> 27:08.640
Now, two things there.

27:08.640 --> 27:10.840
One, slavery was permitted for life.

27:10.840 --> 27:14.480
Two, you could absolutely be born into slavery.

27:14.480 --> 27:19.680
So those are claims that are made elsewhere in history as, oh, well, one kind of slavery

27:19.680 --> 27:25.120
back in the olden Bible days was maybe that was okay for a time, but what they did over

27:25.120 --> 27:26.120
here was evil.

27:26.120 --> 27:29.120
Well, two of those specific examples are shown here.

27:29.120 --> 27:33.160
You can absolutely be born into slavery, and you can be owned your entire life.

27:33.160 --> 27:39.160
As Corey mentioned earlier, the ESV butchers the word slave in most places in Scripture.

27:39.360 --> 27:44.160
One of the few places where modern corrupt thinking is snuck into it.

27:44.160 --> 27:47.840
In some of the later quotes from the New Testament, I went in and just edited it because it was

27:47.840 --> 27:50.280
nonsense.

27:50.280 --> 27:54.100
When you read the term bond servant, just read slave.

27:54.100 --> 27:58.840
When you read the word servant, you should usually think slave.

27:58.840 --> 28:05.560
There may be cases where it was actually closer to a servant like Potiphar's servant.

28:05.600 --> 28:14.600
They're very highly placed men who are, they're given higher status in life, but fundamentally,

28:14.600 --> 28:19.560
they're still slaves, which is to say fundamentally, they're still owned by another man, which

28:19.560 --> 28:22.240
is the definition of a slave.

28:22.240 --> 28:24.600
It is not social status principally.

28:24.600 --> 28:26.360
It is not wealth principally.

28:26.360 --> 28:32.360
It is, are you free to come and go as you please and to do as you please without another

28:32.360 --> 28:34.760
man saying, no, you may not do this?

28:34.960 --> 28:42.320
In Scripture and in time after Scripture, that is the fundamental definition of slavery.

28:42.320 --> 28:47.000
If you're owned, even for a time, I have ancestors, I know, one who came over on the Mayflower

28:47.000 --> 28:50.680
who was an indentured servant, he was effectively a slave.

28:50.680 --> 28:56.840
He was a slave for a period of time while he worked off a debt, but nevertheless, he

28:56.840 --> 28:57.840
was owned.

28:57.840 --> 28:59.960
He was not free to come and go as he pleased.

28:59.960 --> 29:04.800
He had to rack up a certain amount of profit for his owner before he could be freed, before

29:04.800 --> 29:06.720
the indenture ended.

29:06.720 --> 29:12.120
We play these word games because in the 21st century, we go so squeamish about the very

29:12.120 --> 29:18.520
word slavery, but if you look at things just plainly in terms of, well, one man owns another

29:18.520 --> 29:25.560
man and determines what he can and cannot do, that is not inherently a moral question.

29:25.560 --> 29:29.040
The second part of the Exodus 21 passage, I just want to mention briefly.

29:29.040 --> 29:33.440
When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do.

29:33.440 --> 29:39.200
If she does not please her master who has designated her for himself, then he shall

29:39.200 --> 29:40.480
let her be redeemed.

29:40.480 --> 29:44.680
He shall have no right to sell her to foreign people since he has broken faith with her.

29:44.680 --> 29:51.240
Now, God is literally saying, when a man sells his daughter, so this also acknowledges that

29:51.240 --> 29:56.440
the oranges of slavery are not necessarily kidnapping, which we'll get to later.

29:56.440 --> 29:59.520
There can be conquest, there can be transfer of title.

29:59.520 --> 30:06.160
God acknowledges that it is permissible, in principle morally, for a man, for a father,

30:06.160 --> 30:09.720
to transfer the title of his daughter to someone else as property.

30:09.720 --> 30:10.880
That's utterly shocking to us.

30:10.880 --> 30:12.440
I don't like the sound of it.

30:12.440 --> 30:14.280
I'm not saying, oh, this is great.

30:14.280 --> 30:18.320
I'm saying this is what God says and we don't get to use God of sin.

30:18.320 --> 30:24.800
If you hear an argument in favor of abolition that says these are sins, just know that the

30:24.800 --> 30:28.240
man who's making that argument is accusing God of sin.

30:28.240 --> 30:32.360
That's why I wanted to highlight Exodus 21 particularly because it puts to death several

30:32.360 --> 30:36.560
notions that say, well, this slavery was okay, but this slavery is bad.

30:36.560 --> 30:37.560
No.

30:37.560 --> 30:43.640
The slavery that was seen in the west in the latter 18th, 19th century was itself somewhere

30:43.640 --> 30:48.120
in the middle on the scale of how bad slavery could get for people.

30:48.120 --> 30:51.640
We'll get to some examples of what slavery is like in Roman days.

30:51.640 --> 30:56.600
They were far worse than anything that we've ever even heard about in our days.

30:56.600 --> 31:01.800
Don't let someone try to pluck things out of history and then misconstrue them in ways

31:01.800 --> 31:05.480
that can lead to conclusions that condemn God.

31:05.480 --> 31:09.960
It is also worth noting that God permits corporal punishment of your slaves here.

31:09.960 --> 31:15.400
The only restrictions being that if you kill your slave, you are to be punished unless

31:15.400 --> 31:21.560
he survives for a day or two after you inflict the injury that ultimately causes his death,

31:21.600 --> 31:26.320
and if you damage his eye or his tooth, he is allowed to go free.

31:26.320 --> 31:31.160
And so even physically punishing your slaves is permitted in Scripture.

31:31.160 --> 31:36.840
And so those who argue that, well, they whipped them or beat them, that's permitted by God.

31:36.840 --> 31:38.360
You cannot argue that is sin.

31:38.360 --> 31:41.360
That is something God says is fine.

31:41.360 --> 31:46.920
And it is also worth highlighting that God says that you are not allowed to sell your

31:46.920 --> 31:49.680
women to foreign peoples.

31:49.680 --> 31:53.880
That's for a future episode on another topic, but it's worth noting that is in Scripture.

31:53.880 --> 31:56.560
That is a restriction here.

31:56.560 --> 32:02.720
Since you brought up the difference there between servant and slave and, yes, the ESV

32:02.720 --> 32:08.240
and other modern translations sometimes play games with that, which is unfortunate.

32:08.240 --> 32:13.920
We have several places in Scripture where is extremely clear that there is a difference

32:13.920 --> 32:17.280
between these and just what that difference is.

32:17.280 --> 32:19.720
I will pull up that verse here.

32:19.720 --> 32:22.880
It helps if I'm not typing in Greek.

32:22.880 --> 32:28.440
In Mark 10, you have Christ speaking, but it shall not be so among you speaking as those

32:28.440 --> 32:31.520
who lord over others amongst the heathen.

32:31.520 --> 32:35.360
But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first

32:35.360 --> 32:37.960
among you must be slave of all.

32:37.960 --> 32:43.400
Well, we have the two words right there, both servant and slave, clearly differentiated.

32:43.400 --> 32:48.440
And so it's inexcusable that some of these translations play games with the word doulos,

32:48.440 --> 32:52.280
which is what slave is there, and servant is diaconos.

32:52.280 --> 32:55.000
So we have both of these terms, and they are different.

32:55.000 --> 32:56.400
They're used in Scripture.

32:56.400 --> 33:00.480
They're used in the exact same passages, contrasting.

33:00.480 --> 33:04.280
So we know what these terms mean.

33:04.280 --> 33:07.280
Modern translations should not get away with the little games they like to play.

33:07.280 --> 33:12.360
I don't mind bondservant because bondservant historically is basically equivalent to slave.

33:12.360 --> 33:14.900
The problem with bondservant is it's like chattel.

33:14.900 --> 33:17.580
You mentioned chattel slavery last week.

33:17.580 --> 33:20.880
Chattel slavery is a redundancy.

33:20.880 --> 33:26.040
And the problem is that when modern years hear bondservant, everyone wants to pop in

33:26.040 --> 33:30.120
the monocle and nod sagely, oh, yes, bondservant, and like, no, they were slaves.

33:30.120 --> 33:31.880
They were slaves with a price.

33:31.880 --> 33:32.880
They were not their own.

33:32.880 --> 33:33.880
They were bought with a price.

33:33.880 --> 33:35.320
We're going to get to that passage.

33:35.320 --> 33:41.880
It was very clearly understood that regardless of the terms and conditions of the slavery,

33:42.160 --> 33:43.160
it was ownership.

33:43.160 --> 33:47.240
Maybe it was a lease, which is basically what bondservants are.

33:47.240 --> 33:48.240
You're still a slave.

33:48.240 --> 33:49.240
You're still owned.

33:49.240 --> 33:54.440
You're still property in the custody of someone who determines what you can and cannot do.

33:54.440 --> 34:00.680
And so when terms like bondservant and chattel get thrown around, our brains check out and

34:00.680 --> 34:05.760
are like, oh, well, yeah, that's a special magical Bible thing, like, no, man.

34:05.760 --> 34:10.040
It's just a basic term for a legal concept.

34:10.040 --> 34:14.080
There's nothing sophisticated about it, but when people are permitted, they permit themselves

34:14.080 --> 34:19.400
to be divorced from what was actually happening, we get lazy and say, well, that doesn't apply

34:19.400 --> 34:20.400
to me.

34:20.400 --> 34:21.400
That doesn't apply to this.

34:21.400 --> 34:22.400
It doesn't apply to that.

34:22.400 --> 34:26.120
You tune out and say, oh, bondservant, whatever that is, I guess they had that, but we don't

34:26.120 --> 34:28.400
have those anymore, so I can ignore that passage.

34:28.400 --> 34:30.960
And that's fundamentally the point that I think we need to make.

34:30.960 --> 34:36.280
Yeah, there are a lot of different historical terms for different types of slavery is really

34:36.280 --> 34:37.800
what it comes down to.

34:37.800 --> 34:44.480
Bond servant is one serfs by and large were slaves, indentured servitude, also slaves.

34:44.480 --> 34:49.260
Slaves were a period of time often treated actually worse than slaves because obviously

34:49.260 --> 34:53.680
if you have a slave for a period of time, it can set up a perverse incentive if you're

34:53.680 --> 34:57.000
the sort of person who is weak to that.

34:57.000 --> 35:00.120
And that was the case for some of the slave owners in the colonies, certainly because

35:00.120 --> 35:06.240
they realized the indentured servant they had for X number of years, whereas the slave

35:06.240 --> 35:09.120
you have the slave for his entire life, you don't need to get as much work out of him

35:09.120 --> 35:12.520
as possible in this set period of time.

35:12.520 --> 35:13.520
And we see the same.

35:13.520 --> 35:17.400
The reason I bring it up is partly because that is our own context, but partly that's

35:17.400 --> 35:24.520
also the same two tier system that we see in scripture, because God permitted the Israelites

35:24.520 --> 35:30.520
to have their fellow Israelites as slaves, but they were permitted to have them as slaves

35:30.520 --> 35:34.680
only for a period of six years, and then they were to go free in the seventh year.

35:34.680 --> 35:38.240
You also have to factor in jubilee, which makes it a little more complicated, but that's

35:38.240 --> 35:45.520
the basic rule that God gives them, whereas foreign slaves could be slaves for life, and

35:45.520 --> 35:49.840
you owned their children and their grandchildren, their great grandchildren, they were your

35:49.840 --> 35:57.240
property in perpetuity, whereas your own people had to be permitted to go free or be redeemed.

35:57.240 --> 36:02.200
And that's really roughly the same thing we saw in the slavery system in the U.S., the

36:02.240 --> 36:05.760
difference between a slave and an indentured servant.

36:05.760 --> 36:11.120
And the crucial point to be highlighted in your nation and other nations is that was

36:11.120 --> 36:13.160
fundamentally racial slavery.

36:13.160 --> 36:17.480
God made racial differences in the disparate treatment of slaves.

36:17.480 --> 36:20.000
If they were your own people, you get one set of rules.

36:20.000 --> 36:25.040
If they're other nations, other races, they get a different, worse set of rules.

36:25.040 --> 36:28.800
You treat foreigners worse than you treat your own race.

36:28.920 --> 36:35.000
That was codified by God in the law regarding the ownership of human beings.

36:35.000 --> 36:36.280
We don't get to paper that over.

36:36.280 --> 36:37.760
We don't get to ignore it.

36:37.760 --> 36:39.720
We don't get to condemn it.

36:39.720 --> 36:43.840
We have to deal with it head-on, and it's simple reality.

36:43.840 --> 36:49.720
God does not condemn certain things that today's post-enlightenment, post-French Revolution

36:49.720 --> 36:51.320
morality condemns.

36:51.320 --> 36:55.720
And that's why this podcast series exists, is that we're basically fighting the Enlightenment

36:55.720 --> 36:56.720
in reverse.

36:56.720 --> 37:02.160
We're trying to undo the damage done by these perverse moralities that have been inserted

37:02.160 --> 37:05.040
by Satan into our hearts and minds.

37:05.040 --> 37:10.120
So we're pointing to scripture because people will make arguments on moral grounds that

37:10.120 --> 37:13.120
are not in accord with scripture.

37:13.120 --> 37:16.720
And so I say at the beginning, we're going to ignore some of the arguments against slavery

37:16.720 --> 37:19.320
that are made from scripture because they're proof texting.

37:19.320 --> 37:25.400
They must necessarily either ignore these passages or condemn them, or resort to Marcianism

37:25.400 --> 37:28.280
where you say, well, that was the Demiurge, that was the Old Testament God.

37:28.280 --> 37:29.920
We have a different God now.

37:29.920 --> 37:34.880
Well, yes, some of those people do in fact have a different God, and that is a dangerous

37:34.880 --> 37:36.800
thing that we're facing today.

37:36.800 --> 37:41.080
And just to highlight that difference from scripture, I'll read one of the passages that

37:41.080 --> 37:43.400
deals with that from Leviticus 25.

37:55.400 --> 38:00.720
As for your male and female slaves whom you may have, you may buy male and female slaves

38:00.720 --> 38:03.280
from among the nations that are around you.

38:03.280 --> 38:07.600
You may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you, and their clans that

38:07.600 --> 38:12.880
are with you, who have been born in your land, and they may be your property.

38:12.880 --> 38:18.040
You may bequeath them to your sons after you to inherit as a possession for ever.

38:18.040 --> 38:22.560
You may make slaves of them, but over your brothers the people of Israel, you shall not

38:22.560 --> 38:27.280
rule one over another ruthlessly.

38:27.280 --> 38:31.000
And so that emphasizes what was just said.

38:31.000 --> 38:37.200
The Israelites were allowed to purchase as slaves and to keep as slaves in perpetuity

38:37.200 --> 38:41.000
those from other nations.

38:41.000 --> 38:47.200
God commanded them, required of them, that they treat their own race differently from

38:47.200 --> 38:49.040
those of a foreign race.

38:49.040 --> 38:55.960
And this is something that shows up in 1 Kings 5 when King Solomon is building the temple.

38:55.960 --> 39:01.240
He gets help from King Hiram of Tyre, who was a friend to his father David.

39:01.240 --> 39:06.880
And when Solomon was blessed by God with peace and prosperity, he had the means, the motive,

39:06.880 --> 39:11.360
and the opportunity to build the temple that David had wanted to build.

39:11.360 --> 39:17.040
And so as the temple was being built, 1 Kings 5 makes clear in the commentary he's going

39:17.040 --> 39:23.320
to detail to bolster the point, there were tens if not hundreds of thousands of slaves

39:23.320 --> 39:26.520
who were used in the construction of the temple.

39:26.520 --> 39:35.000
And King Solomon in particular used Canaanite slaves, conquered alien race of people as slave

39:35.000 --> 39:37.600
labor in the construction of the temple.

39:37.600 --> 39:43.080
Now I highlight this fact because the temple is not just like a building.

39:43.080 --> 39:47.300
The temple was God's home on earth.

39:47.300 --> 39:51.600
It was where the Holy of Holies was built, where the Ark of the Covenant was placed,

39:51.600 --> 39:57.800
where God had a special presence as he has never had at any other point in human history.

39:57.800 --> 40:00.520
The temple was blessed by God.

40:00.520 --> 40:02.400
God supervised its construction.

40:02.400 --> 40:07.360
He was talking to Solomon on a regular basis about its construction.

40:07.360 --> 40:13.800
God knew that these racial Canaanite slaves were being forced to labor on the temple.

40:13.800 --> 40:18.680
Now the reason I highlight this is that in 1 Kings 6 it mentions, when the house was

40:18.680 --> 40:24.360
built it was with stone prepared at the quarry so that neither hammer nor axe nor any tool

40:24.360 --> 40:28.200
of iron was heard in the house while it was being built.

40:28.200 --> 40:30.880
Now the temple wasn't even complete at that point.

40:30.880 --> 40:32.080
It hadn't been consecrated.

40:32.080 --> 40:34.080
They had not finished it.

40:34.080 --> 40:39.760
But it was still such a holy important place that they banned hammers and tools so that

40:39.760 --> 40:42.440
there would be no racket, there would be no clatter.

40:42.440 --> 40:46.200
The temple was to be as quiet and solemn as possible.

40:46.200 --> 40:49.640
That's how much they cared about the construction of the temple.

40:49.640 --> 40:55.960
So you cannot ignore the fact that racial slave labor was used in the construction of

40:55.960 --> 40:56.960
the temple.

40:56.960 --> 40:58.880
That is not a small point.

40:58.880 --> 41:02.640
And those slaves were blessed to be a part of it.

41:02.640 --> 41:06.480
Again, that's part of those two sides of this equation, regardless of what the Canaanites

41:06.480 --> 41:09.840
thought about their slave labor for Solomon.

41:09.840 --> 41:11.000
They were blessed.

41:11.000 --> 41:15.480
They were blessed to be a part of something that was magnificent, that was blessed by

41:15.480 --> 41:19.560
God in an absolutely unique way.

41:19.560 --> 41:25.160
And God would not have blessed that if it were not in perfect accord with his will.

41:25.160 --> 41:29.440
He would not have come down to a place that was evil, that was tainted by the original

41:29.440 --> 41:33.800
sin of racism and slavery, because slaves helped build it.

41:33.800 --> 41:38.760
And yet these are arguments that we hear in the lips of some of our own men today.

41:38.760 --> 41:41.320
This is not Christianity.

41:41.320 --> 41:45.320
So these small vignettes that we were plucking from Scripture, we're not saying that this

41:45.320 --> 41:48.880
is the whole point of the Old Testament or the New Testament, for that matter.

41:48.880 --> 41:53.000
We're saying that when God mentions it as an aside, oh, by the way, my holy house is

41:53.000 --> 41:58.680
built by slave labor who were racially chosen to be slaves.

41:58.680 --> 42:00.800
We don't get to say, yeah, but that's sin.

42:00.800 --> 42:02.400
I don't like that.

42:02.400 --> 42:06.360
God consecrated it by blessing the temple.

42:06.360 --> 42:09.760
We do not get to ignore that and we do not get to dispute it.

42:09.760 --> 42:11.120
I was going to go to the same place.

42:11.120 --> 42:17.160
I was going to go to 1 Kings 9, though, where it is specifically noted that all the people

42:17.160 --> 42:22.040
who were left of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Parasites, the Hivites, the Jebusites,

42:22.040 --> 42:26.200
who were not of the people of Israel, their descendants who were left after them in the

42:26.200 --> 42:31.920
land, whom the people of Israel were unable to devote to destruction, these Solomon drafted

42:31.920 --> 42:35.640
to be slaves, and so they are to this day.

42:35.640 --> 42:40.120
But of the people of Israel, Solomon made no slaves.

42:40.120 --> 42:47.800
So not only was slave labor used to build the temple, it was exclusively non-Israelite

42:47.800 --> 42:51.280
slave labor, exclusively foreign slave labor.

42:51.280 --> 42:56.120
The first passage in the New Testament I wanted to highlight is one that also disputes

42:56.120 --> 43:04.960
one of the other arguments in favor of a hypothetical form of freedom that doesn't actually exist.

43:04.960 --> 43:06.840
So this is from Romans 6.

43:06.840 --> 43:08.520
Paul writes, What then?

43:08.520 --> 43:12.080
Are we to sin because we are not under the law but under grace?

43:12.080 --> 43:13.240
By no means.

43:13.240 --> 43:18.280
Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves

43:18.280 --> 43:23.880
of the one whom you obey, either of sin which leads to death or of obedience which leaves

43:23.880 --> 43:25.240
to righteousness?

43:25.280 --> 43:30.240
But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the

43:30.240 --> 43:34.800
heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and having been set free

43:34.800 --> 43:39.440
from sin have become slaves of righteousness.

43:39.440 --> 43:44.200
I highlight this because I think this goes back to the Garden of Eden.

43:44.200 --> 43:48.680
What was the proposition that Satan was making to Eve?

43:48.680 --> 43:51.000
He said, You will not surely die.

43:51.000 --> 43:53.080
You will be like God.

43:53.080 --> 43:59.600
And I think that that is the echo that we hear from the Garden of Eden through Scripture,

43:59.600 --> 44:03.680
up through all the recent historical events that we mentioned in the past episodes through

44:03.680 --> 44:06.440
to today.

44:06.440 --> 44:07.440
It's not a coincidence.

44:07.440 --> 44:13.760
We mentioned last week when we were talking about slavery there that CFW Walther wrote

44:13.760 --> 44:19.080
in opposition to the abolitionists, and he specifically mentioned that the people who

44:19.080 --> 44:23.160
were abolitionists were overwhelmingly atheists.

44:23.160 --> 44:30.520
They were anarchists, all other manner of evil, godless people.

44:30.520 --> 44:37.760
Anarchy in particular is interesting because one of the slogans of anarchy, which is itself,

44:37.760 --> 44:42.320
it's an anti-government of sorts, but fundamentally it's just pure hatred of God.

44:42.320 --> 44:48.880
In the 1800s, the slogan that was used among anarchists and is used to this day, it's still

44:48.880 --> 44:54.480
popular, and you've probably heard it, no gods, no masters.

44:54.480 --> 44:57.960
That's basically what Satan was trying to sell to Eve.

44:57.960 --> 45:01.640
You will be like God, which is saying, you're going to be on equal footing.

45:01.640 --> 45:02.640
You will have no God.

45:02.640 --> 45:04.080
You will have no master.

45:04.080 --> 45:06.080
You will be your own God.

45:06.080 --> 45:12.280
That's Luther's explanation of the First Commandment, that if we fear, love, and trust nothing

45:12.280 --> 45:18.760
above ourselves, we become our own gods, and every sin is rooted in that disobedience.

45:18.760 --> 45:21.360
Every sin is rooted in, I'm God.

45:21.360 --> 45:23.480
For the next 30 seconds, I'm going to do this thing.

45:23.480 --> 45:25.800
I'm going to do it in opposition to God.

45:25.800 --> 45:26.800
I know what he wants.

45:26.800 --> 45:28.840
I'm going to do something different.

45:28.840 --> 45:30.800
That is saying I am God.

45:30.800 --> 45:32.960
That is a First Commandment violation.

45:32.960 --> 45:38.720
It's the most serious sin you can commit because you are in open defiance.

45:38.720 --> 45:41.560
Anarchy is open defiance of God.

45:41.560 --> 45:47.560
Despising slavery is fundamentally open defiance of God because what does Paul say here?

45:47.560 --> 45:50.840
He doesn't say you've been set free from sin, and so now you're free.

45:50.840 --> 45:54.000
He says you're slaves to righteousness.

45:54.000 --> 45:57.240
We've mentioned in past episodes, and one of the reasons that Corey and I both love

45:57.240 --> 46:02.760
to point to Job is that God is our Creator.

46:02.760 --> 46:10.560
In the Austrian conception of the creation of property, it's mixing your labor with the

46:10.560 --> 46:11.560
soil.

46:11.560 --> 46:16.560
If you go out in the wilderness, you dig a trench, you cut down trees, the act of taking

46:16.560 --> 46:21.720
something that was unclaimed and converting it into something useful, is you making it

46:21.720 --> 46:23.480
your property?

46:23.480 --> 46:29.380
The very first mixing labor with soil was what God did when he created Adam.

46:29.380 --> 46:35.400
He mixed his labor with the soil, and he formed Adam from the ground, from the dirt, from

46:35.400 --> 46:38.120
the clay.

46:38.120 --> 46:40.680
That is why we are God's creature.

46:40.680 --> 46:48.040
He made us, and the creature creator paradigm is fundamentally one of property, and that's

46:48.040 --> 46:50.340
something that Austrian economics gets right.

46:50.340 --> 46:53.840
That property is made yours by your working with it.

46:53.840 --> 46:56.960
You've made something new, now you're claiming it.

46:56.960 --> 47:01.880
The difference is that God is Creator, literally created from nothing, and so all things belong

47:01.880 --> 47:02.880
to Him.

47:02.880 --> 47:07.160
There's nothing in creation that doesn't belong to God, especially us.

47:07.160 --> 47:15.000
The problem that we face today as Christians when we assume these egalitarian post-enlightenment

47:15.000 --> 47:21.620
anti-slavery priors is that when you set your morality in opposition to slavery, you gloss

47:21.620 --> 47:26.040
over or you ignore or you have to repudiate these very passages that are intended for

47:26.040 --> 47:27.320
our comfort.

47:27.320 --> 47:29.280
We are slaves to Christ.

47:29.280 --> 47:35.120
We are slaves to righteousness because we're owned by God twice over.

47:35.120 --> 47:39.480
Every man is owned by God because we're creators and God is our Creator.

47:39.480 --> 47:44.480
Every Christian is owned twice over by God because God redeemed us.

47:44.480 --> 47:49.280
When he shed his blood for us on the cross, he purchased us with a price, and that was

47:49.280 --> 47:50.280
the price.

47:50.280 --> 47:55.000
It was his precious blood being shed for the remission of our sins.

47:55.000 --> 48:00.840
That purchase price purchased us back from the damnation we have earned by our sin.

48:00.840 --> 48:09.080
We're owned as creatures and we're owned yet again twice over as Christians, as believers

48:09.080 --> 48:11.760
who are covered in Christ's blood.

48:11.760 --> 48:13.120
That is ownership.

48:13.120 --> 48:18.520
When we put on the cloak of Christ's righteousness, that is like a yoke of slavery.

48:18.520 --> 48:23.560
We don't look at it as a burden, which is the whole point of this episode.

48:23.560 --> 48:25.160
Slavery is not a burden.

48:25.160 --> 48:28.920
That is the lie that we have been sold for the last couple of centuries, that if you're

48:28.920 --> 48:30.280
a slave, you're burdened.

48:30.280 --> 48:31.280
You're being mistreated.

48:31.280 --> 48:32.280
You have to flee.

48:32.280 --> 48:35.600
There are some passages we'll get to in a minute where it specifically talks about slaves

48:35.600 --> 48:40.640
being mistreated and burying up underneath it, that you don't flee if you're mistreated.

48:40.640 --> 48:42.480
God certainly doesn't mistreat us.

48:42.480 --> 48:44.920
We are first and foremost his property.

48:44.920 --> 48:51.040
When Paul writes, when the Holy Spirit writes, we have been set free from sin to become slaves

48:51.040 --> 48:54.040
to righteousness, we need to take that seriously.

48:54.040 --> 48:56.760
We must be slaves to righteousness.

48:56.760 --> 48:59.800
The Lutherans get squeamish because that doesn't sound like the gospel.

48:59.800 --> 49:02.120
That sounds like, is that works righteousness?

49:02.120 --> 49:03.120
No.

49:03.120 --> 49:05.600
It's the post-soterological life of the Christian.

49:05.600 --> 49:07.520
You are saved, now what?

49:07.520 --> 49:10.360
Now you are to be slaves to righteousness.

49:10.360 --> 49:16.040
It is a word that we must learn to redeem because we need to redeem it from our lies

49:16.040 --> 49:17.960
and our own wayward hearts.

49:17.960 --> 49:23.480
We need to embrace it because it is God's will for us to be his slaves, again, not to

49:23.480 --> 49:26.320
be slaves to Satan and slaves to sin.

49:26.320 --> 49:31.560
When you mention that slogan of the anarchist that has long been their slogan and still

49:31.560 --> 49:40.080
is today, it also brings to mind two other things, one quote that is frequently used

49:40.080 --> 49:45.240
in this area and one passage of scripture dealing with the same sort of false conception

49:45.240 --> 49:49.760
of freedom, the literally satanic conception of freedom.

49:49.760 --> 49:56.160
The quote is from the French Jesuit-trained philosopher of the Enlightenment, what a

49:56.160 --> 50:02.240
cursed trivia that is, but Diderot, men will never be free until the last king is strangled

50:02.240 --> 50:05.560
with the entrails of the last priest.

50:05.560 --> 50:10.720
And I would hope as Christians, and particularly listeners of this podcast, that people can

50:10.720 --> 50:13.120
see the problem with that.

50:13.120 --> 50:19.960
If you want to subvert the king, then you are attempting to subvert the right rulership

50:19.960 --> 50:21.160
of your nation.

50:21.160 --> 50:25.960
You are attempting to subvert the left-hand kingdom of Christ.

50:25.960 --> 50:31.840
And then, of course, destroying priests is somewhat self-explanatory, I would think.

50:31.840 --> 50:39.080
The passage from scripture is Isaiah 14, of course, it's the statement that is attributed

50:39.080 --> 50:44.640
to Sargon, but really it's Sargon, the second, echoing Satan.

50:44.640 --> 50:49.840
You said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven, above the stars of God, I will set my throne

50:49.840 --> 50:55.080
on high, I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north, I will ascend

50:55.080 --> 51:01.480
above the heights of the clouds, I will make myself like the most high.

51:01.480 --> 51:08.360
And that is the cry of every single person who wants to subvert, hierarchy, order, God's

51:08.560 --> 51:10.920
intended rule in creation.

51:10.920 --> 51:14.240
And it's also the same cry of every man who sins, because that is exactly what you're

51:14.240 --> 51:15.720
doing when you sin.

51:15.720 --> 51:20.520
You're saying, no, I am my own God, I will do whatever I want, regardless of what my

51:20.520 --> 51:26.200
Creator intends for me or says I must do or must not do.

51:26.200 --> 51:33.080
And that is this false conception of freedom or liberty that has become one of the core

51:33.080 --> 51:34.680
idols of the modern world.

51:34.680 --> 51:41.520
And it's why slavery grates so much against the modern mind, because it runs directly

51:41.520 --> 51:49.880
counter to this idea of unbounded freedom as one of the highest goods, which of course

51:49.880 --> 51:54.320
is ridiculous, because one, there's no such thing as unbounded freedom.

51:54.320 --> 52:00.440
And two, it's not a good, even if you approach it, attempt to achieve it.

52:00.440 --> 52:08.360
And even today, just as a purely practical matter, we still have the equivalent of slavery.

52:08.360 --> 52:11.520
We still have actual slavery, but we have the equivalent as well.

52:11.520 --> 52:17.720
Because if you're an employee, your employer owns you to a certain degree.

52:17.720 --> 52:24.480
Yes, it may only be for X number of hours per day, whatever the terms of your contract

52:24.480 --> 52:28.800
are, but also you get less for it.

52:28.800 --> 52:32.200
Because historically at the very least, and we can get into more of the history in a little

52:32.200 --> 52:40.720
bit, the slave master had to provide at least basic necessities for the slave, clothing,

52:40.720 --> 52:48.040
shelter, food, whereas your employer just pays you some lump sum for X amount of your

52:48.040 --> 52:53.880
time and then good luck, deal with everything else yourself.

52:53.880 --> 52:59.480
In some ways, many modern relationships of employee and employer are worse than the historical

52:59.480 --> 53:03.960
relation of serf and lord or master and slave.

53:03.960 --> 53:08.760
The second passage that I referred to a minute ago, but I want to read in its entirety, is

53:08.760 --> 53:11.960
from 1 Corinthians 6.

53:11.960 --> 53:12.960
Paul writes,

53:12.960 --> 53:16.360
Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?

53:16.360 --> 53:20.480
Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute?

53:20.480 --> 53:21.480
Never.

53:21.480 --> 53:26.520
Do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her?

53:26.520 --> 53:30.400
For as it is written, the two will become one flesh.

53:30.400 --> 53:36.280
But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him, flee from sexual immorality.

53:36.280 --> 53:40.840
Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person

53:40.840 --> 53:42.840
sins against his own body.

53:42.840 --> 53:47.560
Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have

53:47.560 --> 53:48.840
from God?

53:48.840 --> 53:56.040
You are not your own for you were bought with a price, so glorify God in your body.

53:56.040 --> 54:00.600
I think the error that we make today is we gloss over that for you were not your own

54:00.600 --> 54:02.840
for you were bought with a price.

54:02.840 --> 54:05.280
We just think of it as flowery language.

54:05.280 --> 54:06.280
It's nice.

54:06.280 --> 54:07.280
It's a sentiment.

54:07.280 --> 54:12.840
When Paul wrote this, the audience of his day knew exactly what he meant because he

54:12.840 --> 54:19.520
was writing to believers of all stripes, of all stations, regardless of their race, regardless

54:19.520 --> 54:25.640
of where they were in the social hierarchy, he was saying, you are not your own.

54:25.640 --> 54:31.240
That was a big counter-cultural thing to be saying to some of the wealthy people who were

54:31.240 --> 54:34.040
his own benefactors.

54:34.040 --> 54:39.520
There were some people who were not slaves, who were rich, independent citizens of Rome

54:39.520 --> 54:41.640
and of other nations.

54:41.640 --> 54:46.360
For him to say, you are not your own, for you were bought with a price, I don't want

54:46.360 --> 54:52.760
to say a stings, but it absolutely would cut to the quick for a man who would own perhaps

54:52.760 --> 54:57.920
hundreds, maybe even thousands of slaves and servants for some of the very wealthy ones.

54:57.920 --> 55:02.280
For him to say, you are not your own either, he would know exactly what that went.

55:02.280 --> 55:08.240
And for the slaves, for the household slaves, for the muck slaves, for the highest or the

55:08.280 --> 55:14.360
lowest who were owned as property, they would hear what I had mentioned earlier, that they

55:14.360 --> 55:19.080
are in fact owned twice over, they are owned by their masters and they are owned by God.

55:19.080 --> 55:25.720
And so this notion of ownership of humans that is so antithetical to our years is not

55:25.720 --> 55:28.280
antithetical to the Christian faith.

55:28.280 --> 55:33.480
So I mentioned up front, this is a really important episode because this is not, we're

55:33.480 --> 55:39.000
not talking about something that's this weird anachronism, it's a historical blip, it's

55:39.000 --> 55:42.000
something we got rid of and I'm glad it's gone.

55:42.000 --> 55:48.560
We're talking about the human condition as it relates to our faith and whether or not

55:48.560 --> 55:53.160
slavery exists today, I don't have a position on whether it should come back or not.

55:53.160 --> 55:54.520
I don't care.

55:54.520 --> 55:59.680
I don't think that what we have today is an improvement over what history has shown in

55:59.680 --> 56:00.680
the past.

56:00.680 --> 56:02.760
I think in many ways it's far worse.

56:02.760 --> 56:09.040
So if you want to start making moral arguments apart from slavery being prevented, I would

56:09.040 --> 56:13.320
suggest you not do that because you might lose strictly on pragmatic grounds.

56:13.320 --> 56:19.480
If the employees of Amazon and Jeff Bezos are not slaves and they're literally working

56:19.480 --> 56:25.880
themselves to death in his robot warehouses, I can show you a system where them being slaves

56:25.880 --> 56:31.480
would give better outcomes in their lives than being almost owned by a man who they

56:31.480 --> 56:37.040
can then just dispose of them in a way that scripture would condemn if they were his property.

56:37.040 --> 56:42.560
And because they're not his property, we pretend that they just fall through the cracks.

56:42.560 --> 56:48.560
These are moral matters that are active today, both in pragmatic terms in our lives and how

56:48.560 --> 56:51.640
our workplaces and our societies are structured.

56:51.640 --> 56:56.720
They're also fundamentally important in terms of how we understand the Christian faith.

56:56.720 --> 57:01.560
Because again, if you are slaves to righteousness and if you are not your own because you were

57:01.560 --> 57:09.240
bought with the price of Christ's blood on the cross, that locks you in.

57:09.240 --> 57:10.680
You are shackled by that.

57:10.680 --> 57:14.240
You are in chains for God's sake.

57:14.240 --> 57:18.640
There are things that you could no longer do that you could do before.

57:18.640 --> 57:21.640
You could do them in ignorance that was sinful, it was wicked.

57:21.640 --> 57:22.640
You didn't know.

57:22.640 --> 57:27.280
Now that you know, now that you are slaves to righteousness, you must stop doing them

57:27.280 --> 57:30.080
because you know that you belong to God.

57:30.080 --> 57:35.600
And so the slavery and this ownership stuff, it is not everything that there is to say

57:35.600 --> 57:37.120
about the Christian life.

57:37.120 --> 57:42.560
We don't want to give that impression because ultimately true Christian freedom is understanding

57:42.560 --> 57:43.560
this.

57:43.560 --> 57:48.960
It's freedom in service to Christ, but the freedom is not an unbounded freedom, as Corey

57:48.960 --> 57:49.960
said.

57:49.960 --> 57:55.120
It is freedom that's imperfect in this life because we're still slaves to sin to some

57:55.120 --> 57:56.120
degree.

57:56.120 --> 57:59.680
We're freed by degrees through sanctification.

57:59.680 --> 58:02.760
I don't know how to say that exactly properly.

58:02.760 --> 58:09.440
We have one foot in both worlds and it's why in Romans 7, Paul laments his own struggle

58:09.440 --> 58:13.160
against his flesh where he doesn't do that, which he wants to do, but he does the sin

58:13.160 --> 58:14.720
that is within him.

58:14.720 --> 58:18.880
We all face that and being Christians doesn't end our sinfulness.

58:19.000 --> 58:22.840
What it does end is our absolute slavery to that sin.

58:22.840 --> 58:28.200
The absolute slavery has ended and we instead become slaves to righteousness where we know

58:28.200 --> 58:31.800
how to obey God as he wishes.

58:31.800 --> 58:34.720
These terms need to make a comeback.

58:34.720 --> 58:41.320
Talking about slavery in favorable terms needs to make a comeback, not necessarily just in

58:41.320 --> 58:47.480
spiritual terms, but the notion that as a husband, you are a slave to your family, even

58:47.480 --> 58:49.680
as you are the head, because what can you do?

58:49.680 --> 58:51.880
You can't just go run off and get drunk.

58:51.880 --> 58:54.160
You can't disappear for days at a time.

58:54.160 --> 58:56.520
You must serve them faithfully.

58:56.520 --> 59:02.240
I think the aspect that's missing from the discussion of master and slave is that the

59:02.240 --> 59:07.080
master is also a slave by degree because the master has obligations.

59:07.080 --> 59:12.520
When you look at the moral obligations in Scripture in joining master's actions, they

59:12.520 --> 59:16.700
become slaves to their slaves, not in the same sense, not in the sense of directing

59:16.700 --> 59:22.860
actions one versus the other, but in the sense that the master has obligations, has

59:22.860 --> 59:30.180
a vocation to preserve the health, the welfare, the spiritual care of those under his household,

59:30.180 --> 59:33.740
those whom he owns.

59:33.740 --> 59:38.300
It's not like you have freedom on one hand and then abject shackled slavery on the other

59:38.300 --> 59:39.300
hand.

59:39.300 --> 59:44.300
There are obligations in every direction because God made us as social creatures.

59:44.300 --> 59:48.140
And a hierarchy is not in opposition to society.

59:48.140 --> 59:51.180
Hierarchy is the way a godly society functions.

59:51.180 --> 59:56.420
In a godly functioning society, hierarchy will have masters and it will have slaves

59:56.420 --> 01:00:05.060
by whatever name, but it is not extraction from the weak and enrichment of the wealthy.

01:00:05.060 --> 01:00:09.220
It's a form of symbiosis, but in a godly fashion.

01:00:09.220 --> 01:00:13.300
These terms are not alien to the Christian faith, but the fact that they become alien

01:00:13.300 --> 01:00:18.020
to our own minds is why we are having so many of these problems today.

01:00:18.020 --> 01:00:25.380
And you started off that section with a quote from 1 Corinthians, but another letter of

01:00:25.380 --> 01:00:27.340
Paul's was making the round same time.

01:00:27.340 --> 01:00:39.100
That's Romans and that of course starts off, the second word is slave, Paul a slave of

01:00:39.100 --> 01:00:40.980
Christ Jesus.

01:00:40.980 --> 01:00:44.660
What is the proper conception of what it means to be a Christian?

01:00:44.660 --> 01:00:50.780
You are a slave of Christ, you are a slave of God because you were bought with a price.

01:00:50.780 --> 01:00:59.980
You belong to God and when you bring up the issue of how employees and others are treated

01:00:59.980 --> 01:01:06.220
under our current system versus slaves, it brings to mind, I don't make it a point of

01:01:06.220 --> 01:01:11.460
necessarily quoting Kipling every episode, but it brings to mind a certain line or call

01:01:11.460 --> 01:01:18.100
too loud on freedom to cloak your weariness because that's really what we're doing.

01:01:18.100 --> 01:01:23.940
Our system allows those who are by virtue of their position and their power, by virtue

01:01:23.940 --> 01:01:29.100
of their authority and means, they are masters and they are masters over slaves.

01:01:29.100 --> 01:01:32.620
You can call them employees, you can call them at will employees, you can call them whatever

01:01:32.620 --> 01:01:38.580
it is you like, but it's just like if you call yourself a president instead of an archbishop

01:01:38.580 --> 01:01:43.020
or a district president instead of a bishop.

01:01:43.020 --> 01:01:46.740
God doesn't care what you call yourself, God cares what your position is, what your duties

01:01:46.740 --> 01:01:54.060
are that flow from that position and so it's going to be the same for these individuals

01:01:54.060 --> 01:01:59.300
who have the role of master in our society, but do not live up to the standard of what

01:01:59.300 --> 01:02:01.620
a master is supposed to do.

01:02:01.620 --> 01:02:06.100
And one of the things a master is supposed to do is see that his slaves, see that those

01:02:06.100 --> 01:02:11.860
under him, those entrusted to his care, see that they are properly instructed in the faith.

01:02:11.860 --> 01:02:17.900
Can you name a single master in the left hand kingdom who does that to any degree?

01:02:17.900 --> 01:02:19.620
It'd be a challenge.

01:02:19.620 --> 01:02:23.180
There may be a few here and there, but it would certainly be a challenge.

01:02:23.180 --> 01:02:27.900
And there's also the consideration that it's largely and quickly becoming illegal in our

01:02:27.900 --> 01:02:33.100
system to do that, but that is a separate issue.

01:02:33.100 --> 01:02:40.300
But I think when you were mentioning the Saint and sinner, the symbol there, what really

01:02:40.300 --> 01:02:44.100
you're touching on is the progressive nature of sanctification.

01:02:44.100 --> 01:02:48.860
We are justified, of course, immediately.

01:02:48.860 --> 01:02:53.340
Justification is a one-time thing, it is immediate, it is not progressive, it is not

01:02:53.340 --> 01:02:58.660
you're justified a little bit now and fully later on, it's not God does a little and then

01:02:58.660 --> 01:03:02.820
you do some or God does a lot and you do some, it's none of that.

01:03:02.820 --> 01:03:08.100
Justification, holy God's work, monogistic, it happens, it's done.

01:03:08.100 --> 01:03:10.300
But sanctification is progressive.

01:03:10.300 --> 01:03:14.420
We get better over time as we remain in the faith.

01:03:14.420 --> 01:03:16.940
No, we're never perfect in this life.

01:03:16.940 --> 01:03:27.380
But as you progress in your faith, you will start to sin less, at least in certain ways.

01:03:27.380 --> 01:03:31.100
There comes with that the recognition of more sins.

01:03:31.100 --> 01:03:34.900
And so you are never going to get at the point where you think, I am the holiest person ever

01:03:34.900 --> 01:03:37.340
to live, I am without sin.

01:03:37.340 --> 01:03:45.060
If you get to that point, you're in a very dangerous place because you've probably apostatized.

01:03:45.060 --> 01:03:50.580
But what you will do is some of those sins that plagued you in the past as you are progressively

01:03:50.580 --> 01:03:55.180
sanctified by the Holy Spirit, those will fall away.

01:03:55.180 --> 01:03:59.660
But the Holy Spirit will point out, well, there's this other thing over here that you're doing.

01:03:59.660 --> 01:04:01.620
And so you'll notice more sins.

01:04:01.620 --> 01:04:09.700
And so the Christian life is, of course, one of constant struggle in this life against

01:04:09.700 --> 01:04:13.900
sin, against the flesh, against the world, against the devil.

01:04:13.900 --> 01:04:16.260
But there is progress.

01:04:16.260 --> 01:04:18.140
It's not a standstill.

01:04:18.140 --> 01:04:19.980
It's not stagnation.

01:04:19.980 --> 01:04:24.540
You are getting better as you live as a Christian.

01:04:24.540 --> 01:04:28.300
The next passage that I want to read is from Ephesians 6.

01:04:28.300 --> 01:04:31.580
And this is one that is mirrored very closely in Colossians 3.

01:04:31.580 --> 01:04:34.820
I'm not going to read both for time, but you should go read both.

01:04:34.820 --> 01:04:39.300
The reason I'm pointing out that it's repeated is that Paul uses some of the same words verbatim,

01:04:39.300 --> 01:04:41.180
some of the same phrases.

01:04:41.180 --> 01:04:45.460
This highlights this passage from Ephesians 6 and Colossians 3.

01:04:45.460 --> 01:04:50.660
It's not just an aside when he says slaves obey your earthly masters here in a second.

01:04:50.660 --> 01:04:54.740
It's not just, I'm thinking about this now, so I'm just going to mention it.

01:04:54.740 --> 01:04:58.780
This was clearly a core part of Paul's preaching.

01:04:58.780 --> 01:05:04.300
It was a core part of his ministry to those to whom he was reaching with the gospel.

01:05:04.300 --> 01:05:09.260
And so the fact that we would see phrases repeated verbatim, I think is significant.

01:05:09.260 --> 01:05:10.580
But there's not a whole lot of them.

01:05:10.580 --> 01:05:15.700
It's almost like you have almost a synoptic epistle here with this passage.

01:05:15.700 --> 01:05:18.060
So in Ephesians 6, Paul writes,

01:05:18.060 --> 01:05:22.660
Slaves obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart as you

01:05:22.660 --> 01:05:27.740
would Christ, not by the way of eye service as people pleasers, but as slaves of Christ

01:05:27.740 --> 01:05:32.940
doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and

01:05:32.940 --> 01:05:38.100
not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, he will receive back from the Lord whether

01:05:38.100 --> 01:05:40.460
he is a slave or is free.

01:05:40.460 --> 01:05:44.820
Masters do the same to them and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their

01:05:44.820 --> 01:05:50.220
master and yours in heaven and that there is no partiality with him.

01:05:50.220 --> 01:05:54.700
So again, Paul is highlighting when I mentioned earlier that you were bought with a price

01:05:54.700 --> 01:05:59.300
will hit both the master and the slave in different ways, but very profoundly.

01:05:59.300 --> 01:06:05.380
And so I think we today, we gloss over this, we don't think in term of master and slave,

01:06:06.380 --> 01:06:10.860
but I think I firmly believe they proper understanding of the Christian faith, which

01:06:10.860 --> 01:06:12.780
again can only come from scripture.

01:06:12.780 --> 01:06:15.620
Like we're not making anything new up here.

01:06:15.620 --> 01:06:18.100
We're going through all of these passages.

01:06:18.100 --> 01:06:24.100
They repeat over and over again, slaves, your slaves, be good slaves, masters, your masters,

01:06:24.100 --> 01:06:25.540
be good masters.

01:06:25.540 --> 01:06:28.420
There's never any commandment for a slave to run away.

01:06:28.420 --> 01:06:32.140
There's never a commandment for a master to free his slaves, and we'll get to Philemon

01:06:32.140 --> 01:06:37.180
here at the end, but we're saving that for last for a reason, but while it is an argument

01:06:37.180 --> 01:06:42.620
from silence, that works when you're talking about God, because if God doesn't condemn

01:06:42.620 --> 01:06:46.940
something as sin, we can't come along later and say, well, God just forgot to mention

01:06:46.940 --> 01:06:47.940
it.

01:06:47.940 --> 01:06:49.540
That's not how the Christian faith works.

01:06:49.540 --> 01:06:52.860
As I said last week, we don't get to discover new sins.

01:06:52.860 --> 01:06:58.220
So we deal with the tax that we're given because scripture is inspired by the Holy Spirit for

01:06:58.220 --> 01:07:00.660
us to receive these things.

01:07:00.660 --> 01:07:05.060
If it's not there, you don't get to believe it, and when God doesn't condemn something,

01:07:05.060 --> 01:07:06.540
you have to assume that's for a reason.

01:07:06.540 --> 01:07:08.540
You must believe that's for a reason.

01:07:08.540 --> 01:07:10.660
That's not a wild assumption.

01:07:10.660 --> 01:07:15.260
That is listening to the voice of God, and when he's silent, you know that you don't

01:07:15.260 --> 01:07:16.820
have to worry about that.

01:07:16.820 --> 01:07:20.540
If it were sin, God would tell you in no uncertain terms.

01:07:20.540 --> 01:07:24.100
So slaves obey your earthly masters all by itself.

01:07:24.100 --> 01:07:30.740
If that were the only passage in scripture, that would be condoning slavery, cross-slavery.

01:07:30.740 --> 01:07:35.100
And so when a Christian sees a modern Christian at least, sees that we're going to discuss

01:07:35.100 --> 01:07:42.700
the topic of slavery, probably the first book that jumps to mind is Philemon, because Philemon

01:07:42.700 --> 01:07:47.020
deals specifically with a runaway slave.

01:07:47.020 --> 01:07:55.300
And so many modern exegetes, really iceegetes in most cases, will use the book of Philemon

01:07:55.300 --> 01:08:03.300
in an attempt to argue that slavery is sinful because reasons.

01:08:03.300 --> 01:08:07.980
The problem is, if you actually read Philemon, and you have no excuse not to read Philemon,

01:08:07.980 --> 01:08:13.100
I'm looking at it right now, open on my computer, it takes up less than my screen.

01:08:13.100 --> 01:08:16.780
It is a very short letter.

01:08:16.780 --> 01:08:23.060
If you read Philemon, there is no condemnation of slavery in it.

01:08:23.060 --> 01:08:28.440
And if you are familiar with scripture, you should of course know that, coming to Philemon,

01:08:28.440 --> 01:08:32.260
because scripture never contradicts scripture.

01:08:32.260 --> 01:08:36.820
God does not change, and so if you are familiar with the Old Testament, you know that God

01:08:36.820 --> 01:08:44.100
not only permitted slavery, but gave slaves to the patriarchs and to others, Job for instance,

01:08:44.100 --> 01:08:45.800
as a reward.

01:08:45.800 --> 01:08:50.840
He blessed individuals with slaves, with that form of property.

01:08:50.840 --> 01:08:57.240
And so Philemon cannot possibly argue against slavery, quaslavery.

01:08:57.240 --> 01:09:04.920
And it doesn't, because if you look at Philemon, the core of the letter is Paul returning the

01:09:04.920 --> 01:09:10.000
runaway slave Onesimus to his master.

01:09:10.000 --> 01:09:13.040
That is the core of what this letter is.

01:09:13.040 --> 01:09:20.440
Now there's more to the letter, to the specifics of how Paul is dealing in the letter with

01:09:20.440 --> 01:09:27.440
Onesimus' master, etc., but the core of the letter is Paul returning a runaway slave.

01:09:27.440 --> 01:09:32.680
There is no way you can conceive of or argue that this letter is a condemnation of the

01:09:32.680 --> 01:09:33.800
practice of slavery.

01:09:33.800 --> 01:09:36.680
It's an absolutely insane position to take.

01:09:36.680 --> 01:09:40.800
And that's why historically, no one has taken that position.

01:09:40.800 --> 01:09:42.840
That is a modern innovation.

01:09:42.840 --> 01:09:49.060
It is seeking for a conclusion that was predetermined and then attempting to shoehorn it into scripture

01:09:49.060 --> 01:09:53.740
instead of reading what is actually on the page.

01:09:53.740 --> 01:09:58.580
One of the things that leapt out to me this past time that I was reading through it was

01:09:58.580 --> 01:10:03.120
in the second to last paragraph, he says, So if you consider me your partner, receive

01:10:03.120 --> 01:10:05.200
him as you would receive me.

01:10:05.200 --> 01:10:10.440
If he has wronged you at all or owes you anything, charge that to my account.

01:10:11.320 --> 01:10:14.920
I found that interesting as I was reading through this in the context of this discussion

01:10:14.920 --> 01:10:20.280
because what Paul is describing there is fundamentally transactional.

01:10:20.280 --> 01:10:23.920
He is saying, Onesimus is your property.

01:10:23.920 --> 01:10:29.320
He is not his own, for he was bought with a price, the price that Philemon paid for him.

01:10:29.320 --> 01:10:33.160
And Philemon, as you mentioned, is a very rich man.

01:10:33.160 --> 01:10:35.800
You can tell from the context of the letter that he has a large household.

01:10:35.800 --> 01:10:39.280
So for one thing, Onesimus would not be his only slave.

01:10:39.280 --> 01:10:43.240
And that is one of the profound arguments from silence we find here.

01:10:43.240 --> 01:10:51.640
If this were Paul just trying to be politely correcting the sin of effectively a parishioner

01:10:51.640 --> 01:10:56.340
slash patron, he would have said, Hey, man, you need to free all of your slaves.

01:10:56.340 --> 01:11:00.040
Don't you know that you're sinning by owning another man?

01:11:00.040 --> 01:11:05.760
Not only does he not do that, but he effectively says in that passage, I'll buy him for you.

01:11:06.720 --> 01:11:10.200
Oh, by the way, you also owe me a great deal.

01:11:10.200 --> 01:11:13.960
So if we want to talk about money, maybe you want to call it even, but I'll leave that

01:11:13.960 --> 01:11:15.080
up to you.

01:11:15.080 --> 01:11:18.760
So it's very friendly, it's very loving, but it's also very slick.

01:11:18.760 --> 01:11:24.280
And I don't say that in a condemning fashion, but Paul is saying, look, this guy who in

01:11:24.280 --> 01:11:29.040
all likelihood ran away, there are different theories about how Onesimus ended up in the

01:11:29.040 --> 01:11:31.400
same place as Paul.

01:11:31.400 --> 01:11:33.960
There's questions surrounding, did he steal something?

01:11:34.080 --> 01:11:37.480
Did he steal and perhaps the money is part of that?

01:11:37.480 --> 01:11:41.920
I think the one thing that cannot be disputed, the one thing that is clearly in the text

01:11:41.920 --> 01:11:46.840
by necessary inference is that Onesimus stole himself.

01:11:46.840 --> 01:11:49.400
He violated the 10th commandment.

01:11:49.400 --> 01:11:54.000
He stole his master's property by leaving because he was not his own.

01:11:54.000 --> 01:11:57.360
He was bought with a price, the price the philemon paid.

01:11:57.360 --> 01:12:02.640
And so Paul is acknowledging that in the end of this letter saying, if he owes you anything,

01:12:02.640 --> 01:12:07.760
charge it to my account, which by the way has a substantial credit, so maybe I don't

01:12:07.760 --> 01:12:14.480
need to actually pay you any money, but this is fundamentally transactional and not moral.

01:12:14.480 --> 01:12:20.400
A little bit of context is necessary here for most modern readers because most modern

01:12:20.400 --> 01:12:28.480
readers are going to miss some of the subtext here because they don't understand Roman slavery.

01:12:28.480 --> 01:12:35.600
First off, under the system of Roman slavery, a slave was not a person persona in Latin.

01:12:35.600 --> 01:12:41.960
A slave was a race, a thing, a piece of property.

01:12:41.960 --> 01:12:48.800
Legally that was the status of a slave and masters had more or less absolute authority

01:12:48.800 --> 01:12:50.520
over their slaves.

01:12:50.520 --> 01:12:55.960
There were some reforms here and there in the Roman system that required, for instance,

01:12:55.960 --> 01:13:02.000
a reason to beat your slave to death because originally you didn't even need a reason,

01:13:02.000 --> 01:13:06.960
but that was the sort of nature of the reforms that you would have in the Roman system.

01:13:06.960 --> 01:13:13.040
And so the ordinary course of events, if a runaway slave were returned to his master,

01:13:13.040 --> 01:13:18.440
if Onesimas were returned to Philemon, is that Philemon would choose between killing

01:13:18.440 --> 01:13:25.080
him outright or literally branding his forehead with the Latin word for runaway slave from

01:13:25.080 --> 01:13:31.640
which we get fugitive, fugitivus, usually just fvg because Latin used the v instead

01:13:31.640 --> 01:13:33.760
of the u.

01:13:33.760 --> 01:13:36.520
And so those were the two options.

01:13:36.520 --> 01:13:40.800
And if he had been subjected to the latter option, he would have been branded and then

01:13:40.800 --> 01:13:47.800
kept as a menial slave doing manual labor most likely for the rest of his life.

01:13:47.800 --> 01:13:50.120
And so that's the subtext you have here.

01:13:50.120 --> 01:13:55.960
Paul is saying, I recognize the rights that you have under the law to dispense with your

01:13:55.960 --> 01:13:57.480
property.

01:13:57.480 --> 01:14:04.080
I am asking you to forego those because of this man's service to me and my captivity

01:14:04.080 --> 01:14:06.240
because he is now a brother in Christ.

01:14:06.240 --> 01:14:07.960
He's not saying to free him.

01:14:07.960 --> 01:14:13.080
He's saying don't kill him or brand him and make him dig ditches the rest of his life.

01:14:13.080 --> 01:14:17.520
And that's a subtext that a modern reader is going to miss if you are not familiar with

01:14:17.520 --> 01:14:22.480
Roman slavery with the system in which Paul is writing this letter and operating.

01:14:22.480 --> 01:14:26.640
And that was something that if you happen to get your hands on the Philemon commentary

01:14:26.640 --> 01:14:32.400
from Concordia Publishing House for a letter that's basically one page, the commentary

01:14:32.400 --> 01:14:33.400
is hundreds of pages.

01:14:33.400 --> 01:14:39.440
And there's a lot of great historical context for what slavery was like in this period.

01:14:39.440 --> 01:14:44.720
And that's why I said early on when people hear stories about slavery in the Americas,

01:14:44.720 --> 01:14:46.760
they think, oh, that's the worst it could possibly be.

01:14:46.760 --> 01:14:50.960
No, that was many of those slaves were treated quite well.

01:14:50.960 --> 01:14:52.160
Some of them were treated poorly.

01:14:52.160 --> 01:14:55.760
Some were horribly mistreated, which is expressly condemned by scripture.

01:14:55.760 --> 01:14:58.760
No one's okay with that because God says it's sinful.

01:14:58.760 --> 01:15:03.400
And even someone who didn't have faith would know that some treatment is well beyond the

01:15:03.400 --> 01:15:08.200
line of what is permissible to another human being.

01:15:08.200 --> 01:15:15.680
The commentary by Norling from CPH, interestingly, directly contradicts the statement that we

01:15:15.680 --> 01:15:23.880
read last week from the Missouri Senate Corporation discussing pro-slavery being an abomination.

01:15:23.880 --> 01:15:31.040
What the CPH commentary says is that our modern notions are completely anachronistic.

01:15:31.040 --> 01:15:34.160
We don't even understand slavery as itself.

01:15:34.160 --> 01:15:36.240
We understand the Hollywood version of it.

01:15:36.240 --> 01:15:41.640
And when you look at historical slavery, it was fundamental to human civilization.

01:15:41.640 --> 01:15:46.320
And so the book goes into great detail on many different facets of different degrees

01:15:46.320 --> 01:15:48.760
and categories and ranks of slaves.

01:15:48.760 --> 01:15:54.080
There were some slaves who were far richer than anyone who will ever listen to this podcast.

01:15:54.080 --> 01:16:00.000
They're literally millionaires by gray stretches, some more than that perhaps, yet they were

01:16:00.000 --> 01:16:03.880
still slaves, meaning they were still owned by other men.

01:16:03.880 --> 01:16:09.480
So this modern notion that we have been fed that if you're a slave, you're basically

01:16:09.480 --> 01:16:10.480
an animal.

01:16:10.480 --> 01:16:12.120
There's nothing lower than that.

01:16:12.120 --> 01:16:13.840
That's not what slave means.

01:16:13.840 --> 01:16:15.280
That's what mistreatment means.

01:16:15.280 --> 01:16:17.200
That's what dehumanization means.

01:16:17.200 --> 01:16:21.840
There are words for those things, but the word is not slave.

01:16:21.840 --> 01:16:26.480
Enslavement doesn't necessarily mean that a sin has occurred.

01:16:26.480 --> 01:16:31.080
When Solomon took slaves, he was permitted to do that.

01:16:32.000 --> 01:16:35.240
We don't have the legal regime for today, and so it's not a question that we need to

01:16:35.240 --> 01:16:36.240
deal with.

01:16:36.240 --> 01:16:38.280
How might one become a slave today?

01:16:38.280 --> 01:16:42.280
But as Corey mentioned, anyone in prison is functionally a slave.

01:16:42.280 --> 01:16:46.520
If they're doing forced labor, they're getting paid out like 25 cents a day or something,

01:16:46.520 --> 01:16:48.160
like it's nominal.

01:16:48.160 --> 01:16:49.160
They're slaves.

01:16:49.160 --> 01:16:50.160
It's slave labor.

01:16:50.160 --> 01:16:53.720
And the 13th Amendment permits it because we didn't abolish slavery.

01:16:53.720 --> 01:16:56.440
We abolished non-state slavery.

01:16:56.440 --> 01:17:04.680
So these notions have been buried and they, yes, which is the other form of slavery we

01:17:04.680 --> 01:17:07.080
still have.

01:17:07.080 --> 01:17:11.360
This is Sparta in the least cool way possible.

01:17:11.360 --> 01:17:18.600
And so the Philemon commentary goes a great length to describe all the various myriad

01:17:18.600 --> 01:17:23.520
fashions of enslavement and how some of them had very high social status.

01:17:23.680 --> 01:17:30.440
Again, the right-hand man in a household was usually going to be a slave.

01:17:30.440 --> 01:17:32.080
He would have very high station in life.

01:17:32.080 --> 01:17:33.480
He would be paid.

01:17:33.480 --> 01:17:36.400
These were slaves who were not just given quarters in food.

01:17:36.400 --> 01:17:40.720
They were also remunerated, which was something that was done in the West as well.

01:17:40.720 --> 01:17:46.480
It's not alien to the concept of a man owning another man, just as today when Jeff Bezos

01:17:46.480 --> 01:17:48.880
almost owns someone, he pays him something.

01:17:48.880 --> 01:17:51.000
It's not nearly enough.

01:17:51.960 --> 01:17:54.960
Owning a man is not per se sinful.

01:17:54.960 --> 01:17:57.120
Scripture never makes that case.

01:17:57.120 --> 01:18:04.440
And even in the one epistle that is directly dealing with a slave, there's no playing around

01:18:04.440 --> 01:18:08.520
that Onesimus was a bondservant or he was this or that.

01:18:08.520 --> 01:18:09.520
He was a slave.

01:18:09.520 --> 01:18:10.920
He was runaway property.

01:18:10.920 --> 01:18:14.800
He sinned against Philemon by stealing himself.

01:18:14.800 --> 01:18:18.320
And as Corey said, the punishment was death or disfigurement.

01:18:18.320 --> 01:18:22.920
Paul was saying, he was a useless slave to you, but now that he has become Christian,

01:18:22.920 --> 01:18:24.440
I'm getting some use out of him.

01:18:24.440 --> 01:18:31.680
So let's get this useless slave off your books and let's put him to work as a slave to righteousness.

01:18:31.680 --> 01:18:35.280
See, Paul was not asking for Onesimus' freedom.

01:18:35.280 --> 01:18:40.800
He was asking for the slave to righteousness that he had already become in Christ to be

01:18:40.800 --> 01:18:46.000
his sole vocation, so that he was no longer divided between his obligations to God and

01:18:46.080 --> 01:18:51.680
in serving Paul and whatever his master Philemon may have still required of him.

01:18:51.680 --> 01:18:53.200
It was transactional.

01:18:53.200 --> 01:18:59.600
It was for the sake of the church and in no way does it in any fashion condemn the institution

01:18:59.600 --> 01:19:02.680
of slavery itself by any means.

01:19:02.680 --> 01:19:09.400
There was far worse slavery that occurred in those days and Scripture remains silent

01:19:09.400 --> 01:19:14.040
except for saying, masters don't do horrible things to your slaves.

01:19:14.080 --> 01:19:18.920
That's the Christian approach, not abolition, but let's treat them well.

01:19:18.920 --> 01:19:24.760
I want to read briefly just because it's directly related to this from 1 Peter 2.

01:19:24.760 --> 01:19:29.360
Servants, and this is one case where the ESV is not butchering as I left servant here.

01:19:29.360 --> 01:19:33.280
It's using a different word, but basically it's the highest form of slave.

01:19:33.280 --> 01:19:36.840
Servant here basically means the house slave, so it's still not a free man.

01:19:36.840 --> 01:19:39.800
We're not talking about a butler in a tuxedo.

01:19:40.760 --> 01:19:47.080
We're not talking about Alfred in Batman.

01:19:47.080 --> 01:19:49.320
We're talking about someone who's owned by his master.

01:19:49.960 --> 01:19:54.120
Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle,

01:19:54.120 --> 01:19:55.960
but also to the unjust.

01:19:55.960 --> 01:19:58.520
For it is a gracious thing when mindful of God,

01:19:58.520 --> 01:20:01.400
one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly.

01:20:01.400 --> 01:20:05.720
For what credit is it if when you sin, you are beaten for it, you endure?

01:20:05.720 --> 01:20:08.520
But if when you do good and suffer for it, you endure?

01:20:08.520 --> 01:20:10.760
This is a gracious thing in the sight of God.

01:20:10.760 --> 01:20:15.320
For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you,

01:20:15.320 --> 01:20:18.440
leaving you an example so that you might follow in his steps.

01:20:18.440 --> 01:20:21.880
He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth.

01:20:21.880 --> 01:20:24.760
When he was reviled, he did not revile in return.

01:20:24.760 --> 01:20:26.680
When he suffered, he did not threaten,

01:20:26.680 --> 01:20:30.040
but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.

01:20:30.680 --> 01:20:33.880
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree,

01:20:33.880 --> 01:20:36.600
that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

01:20:36.600 --> 01:20:40.680
By his wounds you have been healed, for you were straying like sheep,

01:20:40.680 --> 01:20:43.800
but now have been returned to the shepherd in oversee of your souls.

01:20:44.760 --> 01:20:48.040
The reason I read that whole passage, even though the second half

01:20:48.040 --> 01:20:51.080
doesn't have anything to do with slavery, is that it does.

01:20:51.080 --> 01:20:52.120
That's the gospel.

01:20:52.760 --> 01:20:57.880
Christ was a slave for the sake of our righteousness by imputing his to us.

01:20:59.000 --> 01:21:02.360
The act of sacrifice that God gave on the cross

01:21:03.160 --> 01:21:05.000
was an act of submission.

01:21:07.000 --> 01:21:10.520
When Christ is given as a model of slavery to slaves,

01:21:11.560 --> 01:21:16.120
and we say, ah, slavery is bad, how is that not a condemnation of Christ?

01:21:16.680 --> 01:21:18.680
That's why this is a gospel issue.

01:21:18.680 --> 01:21:21.720
That's why this is how Christians need to return to talking.

01:21:21.720 --> 01:21:24.680
If you were afraid to say that slavery is good,

01:21:25.320 --> 01:21:27.800
how do you deal with passages like this?

01:21:27.800 --> 01:21:31.000
How do you deal with the fact that when Paul is a slave,

01:21:31.000 --> 01:21:35.640
and Christ is described as suffering as an example to slaves,

01:21:37.480 --> 01:21:41.080
the only way a Christian faithfully deal with these passages

01:21:41.080 --> 01:21:45.400
is to set aside the enlightenment priors that condemn these things,

01:21:45.400 --> 01:21:47.720
and to embrace that which is holy,

01:21:47.720 --> 01:21:51.560
and then to condemn that which God condemns as he condemns it.

01:21:51.560 --> 01:21:53.400
God condemns cruelty.

01:21:53.400 --> 01:21:55.560
He condemns being merciless.

01:21:55.560 --> 01:21:57.800
He condemns being unjust and unfair.

01:21:58.440 --> 01:22:03.320
What he does not condemn is that slavery is, per se, any of those things.

01:22:03.320 --> 01:22:05.800
Slavery can be some or all of those things.

01:22:05.800 --> 01:22:08.520
Slavery can also be none of those things.

01:22:08.520 --> 01:22:12.120
And if and when slavery exists as a human institution,

01:22:12.760 --> 01:22:16.680
we are not permitted to say, well, God doesn't want that either.

01:22:16.680 --> 01:22:19.240
That is no longer speaking in God's name,

01:22:19.240 --> 01:22:25.080
and this sort of morality has become the norm among us and is truly destructive.

01:22:25.080 --> 01:22:27.000
Again, that's why stone choir exists.

01:22:27.000 --> 01:22:31.080
We're talking about these things that many pastors are deathly afraid to talk of,

01:22:31.080 --> 01:22:32.280
for good reason.

01:22:32.280 --> 01:22:35.880
There may be people in their parishes and their pews and their congregations

01:22:35.880 --> 01:22:39.800
who will revolt, who either attack them, try to get them fired,

01:22:39.800 --> 01:22:43.080
or just never come back, stop giving money like any matter,

01:22:43.080 --> 01:22:46.440
any number of bad things may happen socially,

01:22:46.440 --> 01:22:51.240
organizationally, when someone in the pews hears what God says about slavery.

01:22:52.440 --> 01:22:54.920
We don't have to deal with those problems immediately,

01:22:54.920 --> 01:22:57.640
so we're free to speak in these terms.

01:22:57.640 --> 01:23:01.480
But we need to get as a church back to the point that all Christians are speaking

01:23:01.480 --> 01:23:03.720
in the same terms that God uses.

01:23:03.720 --> 01:23:06.680
If you can't talk like God, you can't be godly.

01:23:07.400 --> 01:23:13.240
And so I think we'll close out this episode by refuting one salient argument,

01:23:14.520 --> 01:23:17.880
not sound but salient argument from the other side.

01:23:18.840 --> 01:23:26.200
And that is the hyper-focus on one Greek word in 1 Timothy 110.

01:23:27.560 --> 01:23:31.000
And the word is mistranslated in the ESV as enslavers.

01:23:32.520 --> 01:23:36.920
Now, it is worth noting first, this is a hapax legomenon.

01:23:36.920 --> 01:23:40.600
It appears once in Scripture, and that's right here.

01:23:41.560 --> 01:23:45.800
There are some other places where the equivalent concept appears,

01:23:45.800 --> 01:23:51.000
but it is obvious that it is the equivalent concept only if you know what the term means.

01:23:51.880 --> 01:23:56.520
And so in this case, to figure out what the term means,

01:23:56.520 --> 01:24:01.160
it is entirely proper to turn to extra biblical materials,

01:24:01.160 --> 01:24:05.560
because this word appears once again, appears one time in Scripture.

01:24:06.680 --> 01:24:08.280
The term is andropodistase.

01:24:09.080 --> 01:24:12.920
But I went ahead and looked this term up in various Greek writings.

01:24:13.000 --> 01:24:17.560
I looked it up in Plato, Polybius, and Philo, and the term means kidnapper.

01:24:19.000 --> 01:24:27.320
And it is worth noting that actually the Lutheran Study Bible gets this one absolutely correct.

01:24:27.960 --> 01:24:32.920
In the footnote for 1 Timothy 110, the Lutheran Study Bible,

01:24:32.920 --> 01:24:35.880
unlike the leadership of Synod right now,

01:24:36.520 --> 01:24:42.120
notes that this term actually means kidnappers involved in illegal slave trade.

01:24:42.680 --> 01:24:44.040
And that's absolutely what it means.

01:24:45.320 --> 01:24:48.760
It does not mean enslavers, it does not mean slave dealers,

01:24:49.720 --> 01:24:54.440
because obviously if Scripture permits slavery, slave dealing can't be a sin.

01:24:55.320 --> 01:24:57.320
That would be a wildly incoherent argument.

01:24:58.680 --> 01:25:02.680
And so what this is saying is you cannot set upon your neighbor in the dead of night,

01:25:03.480 --> 01:25:05.400
bind him and sell him into slavery,

01:25:05.960 --> 01:25:08.600
because that was something that happened in the ancient world.

01:25:09.160 --> 01:25:11.960
That is a sin, you are not permitted to do that.

01:25:11.960 --> 01:25:15.800
That is what is being banned here in 1 Timothy 110.

01:25:15.800 --> 01:25:18.600
And so when someone tries to make the argument that,

01:25:18.600 --> 01:25:20.680
well, Scripture says you can't be an enslaver,

01:25:20.680 --> 01:25:23.400
and so you can't have slavery because you can't have slave dealing,

01:25:24.520 --> 01:25:27.160
point out the actual sense of this term,

01:25:28.040 --> 01:25:29.960
and the fact that it appears once in Scripture,

01:25:30.920 --> 01:25:35.960
you cannot make an argument about a doctrine from Scripture,

01:25:35.960 --> 01:25:40.760
about a fact from Scripture that relies on a term that appears once.

01:25:41.720 --> 01:25:46.120
If that argument that you are making is contrary to the balance of Scripture,

01:25:46.680 --> 01:25:48.280
you know that obviously you are wrong.

01:25:48.280 --> 01:25:50.920
As stated earlier, Scripture does not contradict Scripture.

01:25:51.480 --> 01:25:56.520
So Scripture permits slavery, as we very clearly demonstrated it does in many places,

01:25:56.520 --> 01:25:57.800
does not condemn slavery.

01:25:58.360 --> 01:26:01.080
This one word, this Greek word that appears once,

01:26:01.080 --> 01:26:05.160
cannot possibly be an argument for condemning slavery qua slavery.

01:26:05.720 --> 01:26:10.280
It condemns kidnapping and selling into slavery in an improper way.

01:26:10.280 --> 01:26:13.720
This is not a condemnation of taking captives in war,

01:26:13.720 --> 01:26:15.800
that is permitted in the Old Testament.

01:26:15.800 --> 01:26:19.720
It is arguing against this one specific ancient practice

01:26:20.360 --> 01:26:22.360
that still does occur in some parts of the world,

01:26:23.000 --> 01:26:25.240
not as much of a problem in the Western world,

01:26:25.240 --> 01:26:26.840
but it still occurs in some places.

01:26:28.040 --> 01:26:30.840
That is what is mentioned here in 1 Timothy.

01:26:30.840 --> 01:26:33.640
And so that is how you respond to that particular argument

01:26:33.720 --> 01:26:37.880
that does unfortunately get raised by some who have

01:26:38.920 --> 01:26:43.400
will a mercenary approach to Scripture in order to seek the end they want.

01:26:44.040 --> 01:26:46.440
And that's exactly what we see when these questions come up.

01:26:46.440 --> 01:26:49.160
We've criticized repeatedly in past episodes,

01:26:50.200 --> 01:26:52.040
men will take modern morality,

01:26:52.040 --> 01:26:54.440
they will cherry pick one or two proof texts,

01:26:54.440 --> 01:26:57.000
and nullify the entire history of the Christian faith.

01:26:57.560 --> 01:27:00.520
The reason that this term only shows up once in Scripture

01:27:00.520 --> 01:27:02.280
is that it wasn't that common.

01:27:02.360 --> 01:27:07.160
In an environment where slavery of all kinds was universal.

01:27:07.800 --> 01:27:11.480
So on its face, the notion that what they are saying

01:27:11.480 --> 01:27:15.080
is the origin of all slavery condemns all slavery,

01:27:15.080 --> 01:27:19.240
just mathematically, it's a blatant lie.

01:27:19.240 --> 01:27:21.640
And that's the only response that's necessary to such a claim.

01:27:23.080 --> 01:27:25.240
I think to wrap up here, I just want to reiterate that

01:27:26.440 --> 01:27:29.480
this is a more important subject than some of the others.

01:27:29.480 --> 01:27:31.320
It's more important than the racism subject,

01:27:31.320 --> 01:27:33.640
which was also talking about a made-up sin,

01:27:33.640 --> 01:27:35.960
because this is a much more fundamental one

01:27:35.960 --> 01:27:38.440
in terms of the direct attack on the faith.

01:27:39.240 --> 01:27:43.240
As we said at the beginning, this could have been a 20-hour episode.

01:27:43.240 --> 01:27:46.600
We could have done a marathon just on the verses dealing with it.

01:27:46.600 --> 01:27:48.440
We barely scratched the surface,

01:27:48.440 --> 01:27:51.400
and we really rushed through dealing with the text we talked about,

01:27:51.400 --> 01:27:53.080
because we wanted to keep it under 90 minutes,

01:27:53.080 --> 01:27:54.680
which we're right at at this point.

01:27:54.680 --> 01:27:55.560
So I'm just going to say,

01:27:56.520 --> 01:27:59.240
there's no way for a Christian to read the Bible

01:27:59.240 --> 01:28:01.320
and come away thinking of the slavery sin.

01:28:01.320 --> 01:28:02.280
Full stop.

01:28:02.280 --> 01:28:04.920
If someone comes to you and says that slavery is a sin,

01:28:04.920 --> 01:28:07.800
either they haven't read the Bible or they despise it.

01:28:07.800 --> 01:28:09.560
Those are the only two options.

01:28:09.560 --> 01:28:11.400
And when it's a Christian who has a collar,

01:28:11.400 --> 01:28:12.760
you know they've read the Bible,

01:28:12.760 --> 01:28:15.400
which means that the only option is they despise it.

01:28:15.400 --> 01:28:21.080
And that is a crucial emergency for us facing all of our denominations today,

01:28:21.080 --> 01:28:24.280
because, again, we're importing this evil from the world.

01:28:24.280 --> 01:28:25.800
Stonkware exists to point out,

01:28:25.800 --> 01:28:28.280
hey, maybe we believe Scripture,

01:28:28.280 --> 01:28:31.000
and if our modern institutions disagree with it,

01:28:31.000 --> 01:28:33.400
we figure out what problem we need to solve there.

01:28:33.400 --> 01:28:35.400
But we begin and end in Scripture,

01:28:35.400 --> 01:28:39.080
because that is what God has given to us for the preservation of the faith.

01:28:39.720 --> 01:28:42.120
And if you want a one word, not a one word,

01:28:42.120 --> 01:28:47.800
but a one-line response to anyone who tells you that slavery is a sin,

01:28:49.400 --> 01:28:51.400
Jesus Christ is a slave master.

01:28:51.640 --> 01:28:55.080
And if you want to follow up,

01:28:55.640 --> 01:28:59.640
the thing that you want to hear from him when you get to the judgment room,

01:28:59.640 --> 01:29:04.520
when you get to the throne, is well done, good and faithful slave.

01:29:05.320 --> 01:29:07.080
I do want to mention one last thing.

01:29:07.080 --> 01:29:08.840
I forgot to mention this earlier.

01:29:08.840 --> 01:29:10.840
Lord is synonym with master.

01:29:11.480 --> 01:29:14.120
Every time you read Lord in Scripture,

01:29:14.120 --> 01:29:18.440
if you replace that in your head with master, it is a synonym.

01:29:18.520 --> 01:29:22.360
When you pray the Lord's prayer, you're praying the master's prayer.

01:29:22.360 --> 01:29:24.280
It means exactly the same thing.

01:29:24.280 --> 01:29:25.640
We are owned by God.

01:29:25.640 --> 01:29:26.840
We have a master.

01:29:27.400 --> 01:29:29.960
Just as unbelievers have a master,

01:29:29.960 --> 01:29:31.480
their master is Satan.

01:29:31.480 --> 01:29:32.920
Our master is Christ.

01:29:32.920 --> 01:29:34.200
Our master is God.

01:29:34.760 --> 01:29:37.400
So when you say Lord, Lord,

01:29:37.400 --> 01:29:39.080
and you mean it faithfully,

01:29:39.080 --> 01:29:42.120
you are saying master, master as someone who is above you.

01:29:42.760 --> 01:29:46.840
It's not, you know, we've criticized neighbors being this nebulous thing.

01:29:46.840 --> 01:29:48.920
Lord is not a nebulous thing.

01:29:48.920 --> 01:29:51.480
It is not just a cozy relationship.

01:29:51.480 --> 01:29:53.960
We have a loving relationship with God

01:29:53.960 --> 01:29:56.040
because we are adopted as sons of Christ,

01:29:56.040 --> 01:29:58.200
as sons of God through Christ's blood.

01:29:59.000 --> 01:30:01.880
However, Lord remains a master

01:30:01.880 --> 01:30:07.160
and that relationship is the reason for the loving relationship that we had.

01:30:07.800 --> 01:30:09.960
He owns us and he loves us.

01:30:09.960 --> 01:30:11.800
He could own us and hate us.

01:30:11.800 --> 01:30:14.600
And he hates our sin and he hates the evildoers

01:30:14.600 --> 01:30:16.840
who will not repent of their sin.

01:30:16.840 --> 01:30:21.640
He wishes simultaneous that they become believers through the gospel.

01:30:22.280 --> 01:30:24.680
If we cannot speak clearly in these terms,

01:30:24.680 --> 01:30:28.200
if we cannot call a Lord, Lord, any master, master,

01:30:28.200 --> 01:30:29.560
and realize that they're the same,

01:30:30.280 --> 01:30:33.080
we're losing sight of the God that we claim to confess.

01:30:33.720 --> 01:30:35.720
Because you can use all the words,

01:30:35.720 --> 01:30:38.440
you can quote the Bible passages,

01:30:38.440 --> 01:30:40.360
and you cannot believe in your heart.

01:30:40.360 --> 01:30:42.040
That's what we're facing in our churches.

01:30:42.040 --> 01:30:44.440
People who say the words, they mouth them.

01:30:45.000 --> 01:30:46.760
But when you say God is your master,

01:30:47.480 --> 01:30:48.600
they rebel and they say,

01:30:48.600 --> 01:30:50.360
I have no gods, I have no masters.

01:30:52.520 --> 01:30:53.480
It's one or the other.

01:30:54.200 --> 01:30:57.400
We all have a master and either it's sin in the devil

01:30:57.400 --> 01:30:59.400
or it is God in his righteousness.

01:30:59.400 --> 01:31:01.480
And as Christians, we are blessed to be able

01:31:01.480 --> 01:31:03.800
to continue to choose God's righteousness

01:31:03.800 --> 01:31:06.760
because that is a gift that comes solely from God,

01:31:06.760 --> 01:31:09.000
not through any merit or worthiness in ourselves.

01:31:09.000 --> 01:31:10.520
It is given to us freely

01:31:10.600 --> 01:31:14.040
and as our duty to share that gospel with others

01:31:14.040 --> 01:31:17.640
so that they too can become slaves to God's righteousness.