Transcript: Episode 0021

“Scripture and Slavery”

This transcript:
  1. Was machine generated.
  2. Has not been checked for errors.
  3. May not be entirely accurate.
WEBVTT

00:00:00 – 00:00:10:	Alright.

00:00:10 – 00:00:25:	Repeat this step again.

00:00:25 – 00:00:41:	Welcome to the Stone Choir podcast, I am Corey J. Mahler.

00:00:41 – 00:00:43:	And I'm Woe.

00:00:43 – 00:00:49:	Today's episode of Stone Choir is going to be discussing the made-up sin of slavery.

00:00:49 – 00:00:54:	As we did a couple weeks ago, one about racism, we're now going to touch on another extremely

00:00:54 – 00:00:55:	hot topic.

00:00:55 – 00:00:58:	This is not a dead issue.

00:00:58 – 00:01:02:	Slavery is something that although it has been eliminated in the West, it still exists

00:01:02 – 00:01:04:	in other parts of the world.

00:01:04 – 00:01:10:	But the reason that it's still controversial is that it is fundamentally rooted in much

00:01:10 – 00:01:12:	of the gospel message itself.

00:01:12 – 00:01:18:	So the theme that we're going to present today is not only is slavery itself not a sin per

00:01:19 – 00:01:24:	But in fact, you can't actually understand scripture if you do not accept slavery qua

00:01:24 – 00:01:25:	slavery.

00:01:25 – 00:01:29:	Before we get into the meat of this, I wanted to issue two brief corrections from last week's

00:01:29 – 00:01:30:	episode.

00:01:30 – 00:01:35:	One, the last two episodes ran about five hours combined.

00:01:35 – 00:01:37:	That's longer than we want these to be.

00:01:37 – 00:01:41:	In both cases, we were working line by line through things that the Missouri Synod Corporation

00:01:41 – 00:01:43:	had issued.

00:01:43 – 00:01:47:	So we really didn't have quite the editorial control over what we had to discuss.

00:01:47 – 00:01:51:	We do have that control today, so we're going to keep this under 90 minutes even if it means

00:01:51 – 00:01:52:	we have to cut our own microphones.

00:01:52 – 00:01:56:	So I'm not sure exactly how long this will be, but I promise you will be a regular length

00:01:56 – 00:01:58:	episode.

00:01:58 – 00:02:02:	As I was listening again to last week's episode, I heard myself say something that really rubbed

00:02:02 – 00:02:03:	me the wrong way.

00:02:03 – 00:02:07:	So I'm sure it bugged some of you and so I'd like to issue a correction of what I said.

00:02:07 – 00:02:11:	I mentioned that I had gone hunting with my dad and I said I didn't really like it and

00:02:11 – 00:02:14:	I said something about clover and bees and when I was listening, I thought, man, that

00:02:14 – 00:02:16:	guy sounds like a complete hippie tree hugger.

00:02:16 – 00:02:17:	That is not me.

00:02:17 – 00:02:22:	I want to clarify for the record, in honor of my father and all of my ancestors and mighty

00:02:22 – 00:02:26:	hunters like Nimrod, I do not think that hunting is a moral wrong.

00:02:26 – 00:02:32:	I think that hunting is a great thing as apex predators, as the pinnacle of creation man

00:02:32 – 00:02:37:	in many places must hunt simply because we have displaced the other apex predators.

00:02:37 – 00:02:40:	So I have no problems with hunting.

00:02:40 – 00:02:45:	What I said and what I meant was that I personally just as an aesthetic choice, when I see a

00:02:45 – 00:02:50:	wild animal out my window or when I'm walking around in nature, my first thought is what

00:02:50 – 00:02:57:	a miracle it is that all these wild creatures live entirely by God's providence, that all

00:02:57 – 00:03:01:	their food, that their shelter, that everything is by their wits and their cunning, and directly

00:03:01 – 00:03:03:	from God's blessings.

00:03:03 – 00:03:10:	And I take that as reassurance because our own lives, particularly mine, are so separated

00:03:10 – 00:03:12:	from the immediacy of God's providence.

00:03:12 – 00:03:15:	So I have a roof over my head.

00:03:15 – 00:03:16:	It's warm in the winter.

00:03:16 – 00:03:18:	It's cool in the summer.

00:03:18 – 00:03:21:	Whenever I get hungry, if I don't have food in the house, I can go to the grocery store

00:03:21 – 00:03:22:	and they have food.

00:03:22 – 00:03:24:	That's life on easy mode.

00:03:24 – 00:03:25:	A wild animal doesn't have that.

00:03:25 – 00:03:32:	So when I see a wild animal, my first thought is that I'm reminded of God's blessings to

00:03:32 – 00:03:33:	all of us.

00:03:33 – 00:03:39:	And I don't want the animal happening across me to be the reason that its own life ended.

00:03:39 – 00:03:41:	But for hunters, God bless you.

00:03:41 – 00:03:42:	I appreciate it.

00:03:42 – 00:03:43:	You kill animals.

00:03:43 – 00:03:49:	I know that those responsible hunters respect and understand that that sacrifice is something

00:03:49 – 00:03:50:	that God is giving to them.

00:03:50 – 00:03:52:	So I have zero moral problems with it.

00:03:52 – 00:03:53:	Hunting is great.

00:03:53 – 00:03:55:	We need more of it, not less.

00:03:55 – 00:03:59:	If kids were spending more time outside doing that, it'd be a better place.

00:03:59 – 00:04:02:	When I was hunting as a kid, it was zero degrees and 4 a.m.

00:04:02 – 00:04:05:	So it was kind of unpleasant for those reasons.

00:04:05 – 00:04:11:	The other thing that I said that I realized wasn't a mistake, but I said something a little

00:04:11 – 00:04:12:	unusual.

00:04:12 – 00:04:16:	When we were talking specifically about slavery, the first two times I referred to the political

00:04:16 – 00:04:24:	events in the United States in the 1800s, I said prohibition twice before correcting

00:04:24 – 00:04:25:	myself to say abolition.

00:04:25 – 00:04:28:	And I was thinking about why I made that mistake.

00:04:28 – 00:04:31:	And I realized that something was happening that was a little bit interesting, at least

00:04:31 – 00:04:32:	to me.

00:04:32 – 00:04:34:	I'm very analytical about my own mistakes.

00:04:34 – 00:04:38:	I always go back over and try to figure out why did I get something wrong.

00:04:38 – 00:04:42:	When I couldn't remember the word abolition the first two times, I said prohibition.

00:04:42 – 00:04:45:	If one thing, prohibition was equally accurate.

00:04:45 – 00:04:51:	We did prohibit slavery, but it's not the precise term that was used at that time for

00:04:51 – 00:04:52:	the political movement.

00:04:52 – 00:04:57:	I think that what my brain was doing was preventing me from saying abolition because it's really

00:04:57 – 00:04:59:	lousy framing.

00:04:59 – 00:05:06:	Abolition is today a very loaded morally tinged word that is the opposite frame of the one

00:05:06 – 00:05:07:	that I hold.

00:05:07 – 00:05:09:	I hold that slavery was prohibited.

00:05:09 – 00:05:12:	It was legal, and then it was made illegal.

00:05:12 – 00:05:17:	And while I think that that is a permissible policy choice for a nation, the anti-slavery

00:05:17 – 00:05:24:	moral positioning that abolition was the stamping out of an ontological evil, and that that

00:05:24 – 00:05:31:	itself was an absolute moral good that justified any manner of evil in its name, I fundamentally

00:05:31 – 00:05:34:	object to that, and that is why we're doing this episode.

00:05:34 – 00:05:40:	I think my brain was protecting me from fumbling into the adversaries framing by calling an

00:05:40 – 00:05:41:	abolition.

00:05:41 – 00:05:44:	Anyway, I noticed that I said that, and I had mentioned in the episode, We Might Do

00:05:44 – 00:05:46:	a Slavery episode in the future.

00:05:46 – 00:05:52:	We decided, let's do it next because it was also one of the made up sins that the LCMS

00:05:52 – 00:05:54:	president condemned explicitly.

00:05:54 – 00:05:59:	He said that we were pro-slavery, which is a lie, but that's a very profound question.

00:05:59 – 00:06:04:	As I promised, today we are going to be going through scripture, not line by line, but we're

00:06:04 – 00:06:09:	going to go through many of the places where slavery is acknowledged, where it is permitted,

00:06:09 – 00:06:15:	where it is in some cases commanded, where it's used, and the fact that it is never explicitly

00:06:15 – 00:06:18:	prohibited, condemned as a sin anyway.

00:06:18 – 00:06:22:	I want to acknowledge up front that because if we were to do the full treatment of this

00:06:22 – 00:06:28:	episode of this topic, the way we did for race, which took five episodes over probably

00:06:28 – 00:06:31:	about 10 hours, this could easily be probably a 30-hour series.

00:06:31 – 00:06:32:	We're not going to do that.

00:06:32 – 00:06:33:	It's 90 minutes.

00:06:34 – 00:06:38:	What we're going to talk about today is specifically what scripture says in favor of slavery.

00:06:38 – 00:06:42:	We're going to almost completely ignore all the arguments that are trotted out principally

00:06:42 – 00:06:47:	from the New Testament to justify abolition.

00:06:47 – 00:06:49:	The reason for that is that it's a case we've made before.

00:06:49 – 00:06:54:	If you are talking about something and you're saying scripture prohibits it, prohibits it,

00:06:54 – 00:06:57:	you must deal with the places where scripture doesn't prohibit it.

00:06:57 – 00:07:02:	We're just going to give you all the places where God says, this is fine, I do not have

00:07:02 – 00:07:05:	a problem with this, and I am the Lord your God.

00:07:05 – 00:07:08:	If somebody else wants to come along and make an argument, the scripture, oh, actually

00:07:08 – 00:07:11:	God says that, they have to deal with everything we're saying.

00:07:11 – 00:07:16:	This is the affirmative case for why slavery itself is not a sin.

00:07:16 – 00:07:22:	We're going to spend the entire 90 minutes minus my intro talking specifically in scripture.

00:07:22 – 00:07:28:	I thought about first starting with Abraham, but I think in fact to go roughly chronologically,

00:07:28 – 00:07:30:	we have to start earlier than Abraham.

00:07:30 – 00:07:36:	We have to start with Job, because Job is almost certainly the oldest book in the Bible,

00:07:36 – 00:07:40:	and the treatment in Job is very brief.

00:07:40 – 00:07:48:	We really only need two verses from Job, three verses from Job, but it makes the point very

00:07:48 – 00:07:52:	succinctly and really it makes the totality of the point, but of course we won't end the

00:07:52 – 00:07:54:	episode there.

00:07:54 – 00:08:01:	Job is described in the opening of the book of Job as a man who is blameless and upright,

00:08:01 – 00:08:04:	one who feared God and turned away from evil.

00:08:04 – 00:08:05:	He is described as a good man.

00:08:05 – 00:08:08:	He is described as righteous throughout the book of Job.

00:08:08 – 00:08:09:	He fears God.

00:08:09 – 00:08:14:	He does not sin with his lips through most of the book of Job.

00:08:14 – 00:08:20:	But what's noteworthy there is scripture notes the wealth of Job.

00:08:20 – 00:08:25:	He possessed sheep, camels, yoke of ox, and female donkeys.

00:08:25 – 00:08:28:	There's a reason they're specified as female donkeys, but that's for another time.

00:08:28 – 00:08:32:	And very many slaves.

00:08:32 – 00:08:36:	Some modern translations will say servants, they weren't servants, they were slaves.

00:08:36 – 00:08:38:	He owned these people.

00:08:38 – 00:08:44:	They depended on him for their livelihood, for their shelter, their bread, their clothing.

00:08:44 – 00:08:47:	He owned these people, they were his property.

00:08:47 – 00:08:52:	And he is commended as being blameless and upright, despite being a slave owner.

00:08:52 – 00:08:57:	Of course that goes against what modern individuals, modern men would tell you.

00:08:57 – 00:09:01:	They'd say that you can't be morally upright if you're a slave owner, because slavery itself

00:09:01 – 00:09:02:	is wicked.

00:09:02 – 00:09:04:	Well, it's not what scripture says.

00:09:04 – 00:09:10:	And then at the end of Job, chapter 42, it says that God restores to him twice as much

00:09:10 – 00:09:13:	as he had before.

00:09:13 – 00:09:17:	That includes twice as many slaves as he had before.

00:09:17 – 00:09:19:	God gave Job slaves.

00:09:19 – 00:09:27:	And so if someone wants to argue that trading in slaves, giving someone slaves, possessing

00:09:27 – 00:09:33:	slaves is sin, well, you've just accused God of sin, and you've said that scripture

00:09:33 – 00:09:38:	is wrong when it calls a man righteous who owns slaves.

00:09:38 – 00:09:40:	And that's just the oldest book in the Bible.

00:09:40 – 00:09:46:	It's throughout the entirety of the Bible that you see this accurate, this correct teaching

00:09:46 – 00:09:47:	on scripture.

00:09:47 – 00:09:54:	So we'll move to Genesis and deal with Abraham, starting, of course, as Abram, since we start

00:09:54 – 00:09:59:	with the call of Abram, which is in Genesis 12.

00:09:59 – 00:10:05:	And in Genesis 12 it is noted that Abram has slaves, that would be Genesis 12.5.

00:10:05 – 00:10:10:	And Abram took Sarai, his wife, and laught his brother's son, and all their possessions

00:10:10 – 00:10:15:	that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Heran, and they set out

00:10:15 – 00:10:17:	to go to the land of Canaan.

00:10:17 – 00:10:21:	Those people they acquired, those are slaves.

00:10:21 – 00:10:22:	They acquired them.

00:10:22 – 00:10:24:	You acquire property.

00:10:24 – 00:10:32:	And so the beginning of God dealing with Abram, who would become Abraham, Abram has slaves.

00:10:32 – 00:10:34:	God doesn't tell him to put away his slaves.

00:10:34 – 00:10:40:	God doesn't tell him to leave his slaves because slavery is not a sin.

00:10:40 – 00:10:45:	God told him to leave the idolatry of the land in which he lived.

00:10:45 – 00:10:48:	To leave those things that were sinned behind.

00:10:48 – 00:10:51:	He did not tell him to leave his slaves.

00:10:51 – 00:10:54:	And then, of course, how does God bless him?

00:10:54 – 00:11:01:	Well, he gives him more slaves, because he acquires more slaves when he sojourns in Egypt,

00:11:01 – 00:11:06:	and that's the same chapter, chapter 12, slightly later on, verse 16.

00:11:06 – 00:11:09:	And for her sake, that is, Sarai, he dealt well with Abram.

00:11:09 – 00:11:14:	And he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys,

00:11:14 – 00:11:15:	and camels.

00:11:15 – 00:11:17:	Of course, those are, again, slaves.

00:11:17 – 00:11:22:	This is, I'm reading from the ESV, which sometimes likes to play little games.

00:11:22 – 00:11:25:	But when it says servants, it means slaves.

00:11:25 – 00:11:29:	Because in this era, you didn't have servants.

00:11:29 – 00:11:30:	You had slaves.

00:11:30 – 00:11:36:	God, men and women, you owned as property, and they performed various tasks for you.

00:11:36 – 00:11:40:	And these were given to Abram by Pharaoh.

00:11:40 – 00:11:42:	So he gave him slaves.

00:11:42 – 00:11:46:	God blessed Abram with these things.

00:11:46 – 00:11:50:	And so, moving on to the next chapter, chapter 13.

00:11:50 – 00:11:57:	Here we get an idea of just how many slaves Abram had.

00:11:57 – 00:12:02:	Because this is where Abram has to separate from Lot, because they cannot dwell together,

00:12:02 – 00:12:06:	because their flocks and the number of people they have to care for those flocks and their

00:12:06 – 00:12:10:	households is so large that they overburden the land.

00:12:10 – 00:12:12:	They have to split.

00:12:12 – 00:12:17:	That's how many slaves God gave Abram as a blessing.

00:12:17 – 00:12:24:	And so here in the beginning of Scripture, we see that having slaves is not a sin, rather,

00:12:24 – 00:12:28:	it is a blessing from God, at least under these circumstances.

00:12:28 – 00:12:33:	It's not saying that slavery is always a blessing from God.

00:12:33 – 00:12:37:	But if it can be a blessing from God, then it cannot be a sin.

00:12:37 – 00:12:40:	And that, of course, is the point.

00:12:40 – 00:12:47:	This is something that comes up explicitly in Genesis 24 when Abram sends out his servant

00:12:47 – 00:12:52:	or his slave, one of his chief slaves, to find a wife for Isaac.

00:12:52 – 00:12:58:	And when he comes to Laban and speaks to him, his Abraham servant says, I am Abraham's

00:12:58 – 00:12:59:	servant.

00:12:59 – 00:13:02:	The Lord has greatly blessed my master, and he has become great.

00:13:02 – 00:13:06:	He has given him flocks and herds, silver and gold, male slaves and female slaves, camels

00:13:06 – 00:13:08:	and donkeys.

00:13:08 – 00:13:13:	So explicitly it says the giving of slaves is a gift from God.

00:13:13 – 00:13:20:	There's no circumstance in which enslavement can possibly be a sin per se when God is saying,

00:13:20 – 00:13:23:	here's a blessing to you, have some slaves.

00:13:23 – 00:13:27:	And I think that one of the problems that we have in our modern minds is that the idea

00:13:27 – 00:13:34:	of being enslaved to us seems so horrific, based on Hollywood portrayals, that we don't

00:13:34 – 00:13:43:	consider whether the transaction of God giving Abraham slaves was not a blessing to both

00:13:43 – 00:13:45:	Abraham and to the slave.

00:13:45 – 00:13:51:	Because imagine if you lived in that time and God gave you into the hand of Abraham

00:13:51 – 00:13:55:	to be his property, is that a curse or is that a blessing?

00:13:55 – 00:14:01:	I think that if you believe what Scripture says about the sort of man that Abraham was,

00:14:01 – 00:14:06:	then the idea that you would belong to that man is a profound honor.

00:14:06 – 00:14:12:	It is something that we don't really understand today because it's alien to our culture, but

00:14:12 – 00:14:18:	to be owned by a man not only is it not inherently morally tinged either way, but it can actually

00:14:18 – 00:14:20:	be a tremendous blessing.

00:14:20 – 00:14:25:	Now indeed, there were certainly slave owners in every era, in every culture who were horrible,

00:14:25 – 00:14:30:	and there are also many who were great men who were kind, who were honest, who treated

00:14:30 – 00:14:31:	their slaves well.

00:14:31 – 00:14:37:	And if one's lot in life was to be a slave, then to be owned by a man who was a good man

00:14:37 – 00:14:39:	was a blessing from God.

00:14:39 – 00:14:45:	So I think it's important that we don't permit the Marxist dialectic approach to these questions

00:14:45 – 00:14:49:	of power dynamics, structure how we think about these relationships.

00:14:49 – 00:14:52:	Because there are two men in that relationship.

00:14:52 – 00:14:55:	There's Abraham the master, and then there's a slave.

00:14:55 – 00:14:59:	Now this was one of his chief slaves that had been sent on this crucial mission.

00:14:59 – 00:15:04:	He was one of his most trusted servants, but he owned him, Abraham owned this man.

00:15:04 – 00:15:06:	This man loved Abraham.

00:15:06 – 00:15:12:	He was sent far away with money and with gifts, and with a profound mission for his master.

00:15:12 – 00:15:14:	And it was his greatest privilege to serve that.

00:15:14 – 00:15:18:	And that's the reason I said at the beginning, that the Christian life can only be understood,

00:15:18 – 00:15:25:	I think in the context of the proper understanding of slavery, because we all have duties.

00:15:25 – 00:15:29:	As Lutherans, we call things vocation, but there are obligations that we have to do certain

00:15:29 – 00:15:34:	things, and sometimes it's just narrowly within your own household.

00:15:34 – 00:15:37:	Sometimes it's within your neighborhood or whatever.

00:15:37 – 00:15:41:	But regardless of the context, we have obligations to do things.

00:15:41 – 00:15:44:	That is not freedom the way Americans want to think about it.

00:15:44 – 00:15:46:	That is a type of slavery.

00:15:46 – 00:15:53:	It is a type of ownership where one's illicit moral choices are bounded by the obligations

00:15:53 – 00:15:54:	we have.

00:15:54 – 00:16:00:	And those obligations are inherited ultimately from God through the headship under which we

00:16:00 – 00:16:01:	are placed.

00:16:01 – 00:16:05:	And in certain times and places throughout most of history, a big part of that was the

00:16:05 – 00:16:09:	institution of men owning other men.

00:16:09 – 00:16:15:	And we also see in the slaves that are transferred to the ownership of Abraham, particularly

00:16:15 – 00:16:23:	the ones from Pharaoh, we see that promise of God to bless all nations in the seed of

00:16:23 – 00:16:28:	Abraham already taking place, because they are coming into the family, the extended family

00:16:28 – 00:16:31:	in this case, of Abraham.

00:16:31 – 00:16:34:	And so they will hear that gospel.

00:16:34 – 00:16:36:	They will hear the Messiah who is to come.

00:16:36 – 00:16:42:	And so we already see God fulfilling his plan for humanity via slavery.

00:16:42 – 00:16:46:	And so it's difficult to say that slavery is an evil when God is using it for the ultimate

00:16:46 – 00:16:48:	good.

00:16:48 – 00:16:54:	And before we move on to Exodus, I think it's worth just pulling out a quick comment from

00:16:54 – 00:16:56:	Genesis 21.

00:16:56 – 00:17:03:	When God addresses the issue of Hagar speaking to Abraham, he says be not displeased because

00:17:03 – 00:17:06:	of the boy and because of your slave woman.

00:17:06 – 00:17:09:	He says slave woman, he doesn't use her name.

00:17:09 – 00:17:13:	Whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for through Isaac shall your offspring

00:17:13 – 00:17:14:	be named.

00:17:14 – 00:17:19:	And I will make a nation of the son of the slave woman also, because he is your offspring.

00:17:19 – 00:17:23:	To most modern ears it's going to sound terrible that God says slave woman.

00:17:23 – 00:17:24:	He doesn't use her name.

00:17:24 – 00:17:27:	God, of course, knows her name.

00:17:27 – 00:17:31:	He addresses her later on in Genesis and does use her name there.

00:17:31 – 00:17:35:	But here he just calls her the slave woman because he's noting that relationship between

00:17:35 – 00:17:37:	Abraham and Hagar.

00:17:37 – 00:17:43:	Abraham, even though Hagar is now his concubine, he still owns her.

00:17:43 – 00:17:45:	She's still his property.

00:17:45 – 00:17:50:	Briefly before we get into Exodus, I just want to point out that not only did Abraham

00:17:50 – 00:17:56:	receive tremendous blessings from God in large part by having numerous slaves, but

00:17:56 – 00:17:59:	Isaac and Jacob were also similarly blessed.

00:17:59 – 00:18:05:	So although we're pointing back to this early period in the Old Testament, it's important

00:18:05 – 00:18:09:	to refute the notion that, oh, well, that was cultural.

00:18:09 – 00:18:12:	On one hand, you have God giving his blessings to his own people.

00:18:12 – 00:18:17:	I mean, at this point, Abraham had become a believer in God and God was richly blessing

00:18:17 – 00:18:23:	him, had promised that he would be the source of the Messiah, that his lineage would be.

00:18:23 – 00:18:28:	But it's not just that it was, oh, old timey, and so they had slaves.

00:18:28 – 00:18:32:	It wasn't that that was then and this is now.

00:18:32 – 00:18:36:	It's one of the things I think Americans in particular, but really everyone in the West

00:18:36 – 00:18:41:	has been just fundamentally brain damaged by the post-enlightenment thinking, as we've

00:18:41 – 00:18:46:	talked about in the last few episodes, about the priors from the Enlightenment, from the

00:18:46 – 00:18:54:	French Revolution in particular, that became our own creed of liberty being a paramount

00:18:54 – 00:19:02:	moral virtue when I hope that we're making the pattern clear that liberty, as it is held

00:19:02 – 00:19:05:	up in the secular world, is nothing of the sort.

00:19:05 – 00:19:06:	It is not a blessing.

00:19:06 – 00:19:08:	It is actually a curse.

00:19:08 – 00:19:09:	It is wickedness.

00:19:09 – 00:19:15:	It is itself rebellion against God and it always follows on the heels of tremendous evil and

00:19:15 – 00:19:18:	evil springs from it.

00:19:18 – 00:19:23:	When slavery existed in these periods, both among believers and among unbelievers, in

00:19:23 – 00:19:31:	myriad forms, for example, the slave that Abraham sent to find Isaac, a wife, was certainly

00:19:31 – 00:19:33:	one of his most senior slaves.

00:19:33 – 00:19:40:	He would have had a higher station in civilization than the slave who was mucking the stalls.

00:19:40 – 00:19:43:	That flies in the face of, oh, we're all created equal.

00:19:43 – 00:19:44:	We all have equality.

00:19:44 – 00:19:46:	No, we don't.

00:19:46 – 00:19:49:	Some men are really only equipped for mucking stalls.

00:19:49 – 00:19:52:	If that is what you were equipped for, that is a blessing.

00:19:52 – 00:19:53:	Do it.

00:19:53 – 00:19:54:	Do it well.

00:19:54 – 00:19:57:	If all you can do is clean toilets, make them the cleanest toilets you can.

00:19:57 – 00:20:02:	That is you blessing your neighbors by being the gift that God wants you to be for those

00:20:02 – 00:20:03:	in your life.

00:20:03 – 00:20:10:	It is not diminishing the value of a man inherently to say he's only good for shoveling cow manure

00:20:10 – 00:20:11:	or cleaning toilets.

00:20:11 – 00:20:13:	It is saying that here's what you can do.

00:20:13 – 00:20:14:	Do it well.

00:20:14 – 00:20:22:	The men who can do better, who can do more lofty and more respected things equally well

00:20:22 – 00:20:27:	are given a higher station, but God also spends a great deal of time in scripture talking

00:20:27 – 00:20:31:	about the fact that the first shall be last and the last shall be first.

00:20:31 – 00:20:36:	Now, it's not only talking about power dynamics, it's not talking about only the rich and the

00:20:36 – 00:20:37:	poor.

00:20:37 – 00:20:42:	Abraham was tremendously wealthy, and he is certainly not the least in heaven, so I don't

00:20:42 – 00:20:47:	want to make it strictly about that, but it's to say that when you have someone who has

00:20:47 – 00:20:52:	a lowly station in life, maybe someone is a slave of slaves.

00:20:52 – 00:20:57:	If they're a faithful believer, God will reward them and the things that they have lacked

00:20:57 – 00:21:02:	in this life, God promises they will receive in the New Earth.

00:21:02 – 00:21:11:	As we deal with these questions of equality and inequality and how men rank hierarchically,

00:21:11 – 00:21:16:	how we perform our duties hierarchically, I think it's important to note, as we always

00:21:16 – 00:21:20:	say, we're not talking about our standing before God.

00:21:20 – 00:21:22:	God shows no partiality.

00:21:22 – 00:21:28:	In this life and in the hierarchy of order that God has instituted, there are differences.

00:21:28 – 00:21:32:	Just as there are differences in the angels, there are angels and there are archangels.

00:21:32 – 00:21:35:	God is a God of hierarchy and order.

00:21:35 – 00:21:40:	The fact that we find these patterns in all times and all places, it's not some historical

00:21:40 – 00:21:41:	aberration.

00:21:41 – 00:21:44:	It's not that, oh, they didn't understand democracy yet.

00:21:44 – 00:21:47:	They didn't understand liberty and freedom and equality.

00:21:47 – 00:21:49:	Now that we have those things, we're better than them.

00:21:49 – 00:21:51:	That's absolutely not the case.

00:21:51 – 00:21:56:	These men were living godly lives and they were blessed by God for it, and that included

00:21:56 – 00:21:59:	the inequality of man before man.

00:21:59 – 00:22:08:	So unlike dealing with slavery in Genesis, the issue is a more general one in Exodus,

00:22:08 – 00:22:12:	and I want to address it more generally instead of pulling out particular verses and highlighting

00:22:12 – 00:22:18:	those because, yes, there are many times that slavery is mentioned, particularly in Genesis

00:22:18 – 00:22:23:	and the following books where it says that God took them out of the house of slavery in

00:22:23 – 00:22:29:	Egypt and that phrase out of the house of slavery is repeated many times.

00:22:29 – 00:22:34:	But I want to highlight something about slavery and Exodus.

00:22:34 – 00:22:42:	Yes, the Israelites are enslaved by the Egyptians in Egypt for centuries, but slavery itself

00:22:42 – 00:22:45:	is never once condemned in Exodus.

00:22:45 – 00:22:52:	In fact, beyond that, Pharaoh and the Egyptians are never condemned for enslaving the Israelites.

00:22:52 – 00:22:57:	There isn't a single verse condemning that in Scripture.

00:22:57 – 00:23:00:	Not one in Exodus, not one anywhere else.

00:23:00 – 00:23:05:	What is noted in passing, and it could be argued that it is condemned, and I think it's

00:23:05 – 00:23:10:	a fair argument, is the oppression and the affliction.

00:23:10 – 00:23:16:	They were mistreating the Israelites as their slaves because there is a standard to which

00:23:16 – 00:23:18:	slave masters are held with regard to their slaves.

00:23:18 – 00:23:22:	That comes later in Scripture, but that is relevant here.

00:23:22 – 00:23:26:	And so when they tell them you don't get hay, but you still have to make bricks, that's

00:23:26 – 00:23:30:	mistreating your slaves, and that's not acceptable.

00:23:30 – 00:23:35:	But reducing them to slavery and keeping them as slaves is not condemned.

00:23:35 – 00:23:43:	What is condemned, what God makes the point in Exodus, is that ultimately the Israelites,

00:23:43 – 00:23:49:	even though they are for a time slaves to the Egyptians, they belong to God.

00:23:49 – 00:23:52:	They're his slaves, he owns them.

00:23:52 – 00:23:59:	And so when he tells Pharaoh, give me my property, and Pharaoh says, no, that's the problem.

00:23:59 – 00:24:03:	The problem is not that they were reduced to slavery, not they were kept as slaves,

00:24:03 – 00:24:05:	not they were treated as slaves.

00:24:05 – 00:24:10:	The problem is that they were not given back to God when he told Pharaoh, give me back my

00:24:10 – 00:24:12:	people that they may go and serve me.

00:24:12 – 00:24:15:	Now, that's absolutely the case.

00:24:15 – 00:24:20:	When God said, let my people go, we ignore them, my part, that's possessive.

00:24:20 – 00:24:23:	Instead of saying, these are mine, you've had them, I want them back.

00:24:23 – 00:24:27:	As you said, Pharaoh said, no, that was the entire problem.

00:24:27 – 00:24:29:	There were other slaves in Egypt.

00:24:29 – 00:24:32:	In fact, as an Egyptian, you belonged to the Pharaoh.

00:24:32 – 00:24:37:	You had to worship Pharaoh as God, which was another part of the problem God was dealing

00:24:37 – 00:24:40:	with, was the Egyptians' idolatry.

00:24:40 – 00:24:44:	But there was no notion that, oh no, slavery is bad, you need to free all the people who

00:24:44 – 00:24:45:	are captive.

00:24:45 – 00:24:49:	Every Egyptian was fundamentally a captive to the Pharaoh.

00:24:49 – 00:24:52:	God was saying, the Israelites are mine, I want them back.

00:24:52 – 00:24:55:	If you don't do it, these are the consequences.

00:24:55 – 00:24:59:	And the consequences, as you said last week, included God delivering genocide against the

00:24:59 – 00:25:05:	Egyptians as judgment for not giving God his property, his people.

00:25:05 – 00:25:10:	And when God says, let my people go, because it does say that, it says in one place, let

00:25:10 – 00:25:15:	my son go, that he may serve me.

00:25:15 – 00:25:18:	Let my people go, that they may serve me.

00:25:18 – 00:25:23:	It's always the point of letting them go so they may serve their ultimate master, which

00:25:23 – 00:25:25:	of course is God.

00:25:25 – 00:25:27:	It's not letting them free.

00:25:27 – 00:25:29:	It's not liberating them.

00:25:29 – 00:25:34:	It is transferring them to their rightful master.

00:25:34 – 00:25:40:	Because as we will get into in the New Testament, certainly, we are all slaves of God.

00:25:40 – 00:25:43:	And that is a fundamental truth of the Christian faith.

00:25:43 – 00:25:45:	You are God's property.

00:25:45 – 00:25:47:	You cannot be anything else.

00:25:47 – 00:25:50:	Even if you are in rebellion, you're still God's property.

00:25:50 – 00:25:56:	You are just rebellious, useless property instead of useful property.

00:25:56 – 00:26:00:	Those terms mean something, and we'll get into that soon enough as well.

00:26:00 – 00:26:04:	I want to specifically highlight Exodus 21, where it talks about the rules for slaves,

00:26:04 – 00:26:10:	just because it explicitly eliminates several of the claims that are made that, well, ancient

00:26:10 – 00:26:15:	slavery was one sort of thing, but more modern forms of slavery, particularly as we had in

00:26:15 – 00:26:16:	the Antebellum South.

00:26:16 – 00:26:17:	Those were evil.

00:26:17 – 00:26:21:	The stuff before wasn't evil, and there are certain patterns that are permissible or

00:26:21 – 00:26:22:	impermissible.

00:26:22 – 00:26:25:	I'm going to read this passage and just point out a couple of things, because it's vital

00:26:25 – 00:26:29:	to dismissing those arguments against slavery, per se.

00:26:29 – 00:26:33:	Now, these are the rules that you shall set before them.

00:26:33 – 00:26:37:	When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh, he shall go

00:26:37 – 00:26:38:	out free for nothing.

00:26:38 – 00:26:41:	If he comes in single, he shall go out single.

00:26:41 – 00:26:44:	If he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him.

00:26:44 – 00:26:48:	If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children

00:26:48 – 00:26:51:	shall be her masters, and he shall go out alone.

00:26:51 – 00:26:56:	But if the slave plainly says, I love my master, my wife and my children, I will not go out

00:26:56 – 00:27:01:	free, then his master shall bring him to God, and he shall bring him to the door or to the

00:27:01 – 00:27:06:	doorpost, and his master shall bore his ear through with and all, and he shall be his

00:27:06 – 00:27:07:	slave forever.

00:27:07 – 00:27:08:	Now, two things there.

00:27:08 – 00:27:10:	One, slavery was permitted for life.

00:27:10 – 00:27:14:	Two, you could absolutely be born into slavery.

00:27:14 – 00:27:19:	So those are claims that are made elsewhere in history as, oh, well, one kind of slavery

00:27:19 – 00:27:25:	back in the olden Bible days was maybe that was okay for a time, but what they did over

00:27:25 – 00:27:26:	here was evil.

00:27:26 – 00:27:29:	Well, two of those specific examples are shown here.

00:27:29 – 00:27:33:	You can absolutely be born into slavery, and you can be owned your entire life.

00:27:33 – 00:27:39:	As Corey mentioned earlier, the ESV butchers the word slave in most places in Scripture.

00:27:39 – 00:27:44:	One of the few places where modern corrupt thinking is snuck into it.

00:27:44 – 00:27:47:	In some of the later quotes from the New Testament, I went in and just edited it because it was

00:27:47 – 00:27:50:	nonsense.

00:27:50 – 00:27:54:	When you read the term bond servant, just read slave.

00:27:54 – 00:27:58:	When you read the word servant, you should usually think slave.

00:27:58 – 00:28:05:	There may be cases where it was actually closer to a servant like Potiphar's servant.

00:28:05 – 00:28:14:	They're very highly placed men who are, they're given higher status in life, but fundamentally,

00:28:14 – 00:28:19:	they're still slaves, which is to say fundamentally, they're still owned by another man, which

00:28:19 – 00:28:22:	is the definition of a slave.

00:28:22 – 00:28:24:	It is not social status principally.

00:28:24 – 00:28:26:	It is not wealth principally.

00:28:26 – 00:28:32:	It is, are you free to come and go as you please and to do as you please without another

00:28:32 – 00:28:34:	man saying, no, you may not do this?

00:28:34 – 00:28:42:	In Scripture and in time after Scripture, that is the fundamental definition of slavery.

00:28:42 – 00:28:47:	If you're owned, even for a time, I have ancestors, I know, one who came over on the Mayflower

00:28:47 – 00:28:50:	who was an indentured servant, he was effectively a slave.

00:28:50 – 00:28:56:	He was a slave for a period of time while he worked off a debt, but nevertheless, he

00:28:56 – 00:28:57:	was owned.

00:28:57 – 00:28:59:	He was not free to come and go as he pleased.

00:28:59 – 00:29:04:	He had to rack up a certain amount of profit for his owner before he could be freed, before

00:29:04 – 00:29:06:	the indenture ended.

00:29:06 – 00:29:12:	We play these word games because in the 21st century, we go so squeamish about the very

00:29:12 – 00:29:18:	word slavery, but if you look at things just plainly in terms of, well, one man owns another

00:29:18 – 00:29:25:	man and determines what he can and cannot do, that is not inherently a moral question.

00:29:25 – 00:29:29:	The second part of the Exodus 21 passage, I just want to mention briefly.

00:29:29 – 00:29:33:	When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do.

00:29:33 – 00:29:39:	If she does not please her master who has designated her for himself, then he shall

00:29:39 – 00:29:40:	let her be redeemed.

00:29:40 – 00:29:44:	He shall have no right to sell her to foreign people since he has broken faith with her.

00:29:44 – 00:29:51:	Now, God is literally saying, when a man sells his daughter, so this also acknowledges that

00:29:51 – 00:29:56:	the oranges of slavery are not necessarily kidnapping, which we'll get to later.

00:29:56 – 00:29:59:	There can be conquest, there can be transfer of title.

00:29:59 – 00:30:06:	God acknowledges that it is permissible, in principle morally, for a man, for a father,

00:30:06 – 00:30:09:	to transfer the title of his daughter to someone else as property.

00:30:09 – 00:30:10:	That's utterly shocking to us.

00:30:10 – 00:30:12:	I don't like the sound of it.

00:30:12 – 00:30:14:	I'm not saying, oh, this is great.

00:30:14 – 00:30:18:	I'm saying this is what God says and we don't get to use God of sin.

00:30:18 – 00:30:24:	If you hear an argument in favor of abolition that says these are sins, just know that the

00:30:24 – 00:30:28:	man who's making that argument is accusing God of sin.

00:30:28 – 00:30:32:	That's why I wanted to highlight Exodus 21 particularly because it puts to death several

00:30:32 – 00:30:36:	notions that say, well, this slavery was okay, but this slavery is bad.

00:30:36 – 00:30:37:	No.

00:30:37 – 00:30:43:	The slavery that was seen in the west in the latter 18th, 19th century was itself somewhere

00:30:43 – 00:30:48:	in the middle on the scale of how bad slavery could get for people.

00:30:48 – 00:30:51:	We'll get to some examples of what slavery is like in Roman days.

00:30:51 – 00:30:56:	They were far worse than anything that we've ever even heard about in our days.

00:30:56 – 00:31:01:	Don't let someone try to pluck things out of history and then misconstrue them in ways

00:31:01 – 00:31:05:	that can lead to conclusions that condemn God.

00:31:05 – 00:31:09:	It is also worth noting that God permits corporal punishment of your slaves here.

00:31:09 – 00:31:15:	The only restrictions being that if you kill your slave, you are to be punished unless

00:31:15 – 00:31:21:	he survives for a day or two after you inflict the injury that ultimately causes his death,

00:31:21 – 00:31:26:	and if you damage his eye or his tooth, he is allowed to go free.

00:31:26 – 00:31:31:	And so even physically punishing your slaves is permitted in Scripture.

00:31:31 – 00:31:36:	And so those who argue that, well, they whipped them or beat them, that's permitted by God.

00:31:36 – 00:31:38:	You cannot argue that is sin.

00:31:38 – 00:31:41:	That is something God says is fine.

00:31:41 – 00:31:46:	And it is also worth highlighting that God says that you are not allowed to sell your

00:31:46 – 00:31:49:	women to foreign peoples.

00:31:49 – 00:31:53:	That's for a future episode on another topic, but it's worth noting that is in Scripture.

00:31:53 – 00:31:56:	That is a restriction here.

00:31:56 – 00:32:02:	Since you brought up the difference there between servant and slave and, yes, the ESV

00:32:02 – 00:32:08:	and other modern translations sometimes play games with that, which is unfortunate.

00:32:08 – 00:32:13:	We have several places in Scripture where is extremely clear that there is a difference

00:32:13 – 00:32:17:	between these and just what that difference is.

00:32:17 – 00:32:19:	I will pull up that verse here.

00:32:19 – 00:32:22:	It helps if I'm not typing in Greek.

00:32:22 – 00:32:28:	In Mark 10, you have Christ speaking, but it shall not be so among you speaking as those

00:32:28 – 00:32:31:	who lord over others amongst the heathen.

00:32:31 – 00:32:35:	But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first

00:32:35 – 00:32:37:	among you must be slave of all.

00:32:37 – 00:32:43:	Well, we have the two words right there, both servant and slave, clearly differentiated.

00:32:43 – 00:32:48:	And so it's inexcusable that some of these translations play games with the word doulos,

00:32:48 – 00:32:52:	which is what slave is there, and servant is diaconos.

00:32:52 – 00:32:55:	So we have both of these terms, and they are different.

00:32:55 – 00:32:56:	They're used in Scripture.

00:32:56 – 00:33:00:	They're used in the exact same passages, contrasting.

00:33:00 – 00:33:04:	So we know what these terms mean.

00:33:04 – 00:33:07:	Modern translations should not get away with the little games they like to play.

00:33:07 – 00:33:12:	I don't mind bondservant because bondservant historically is basically equivalent to slave.

00:33:12 – 00:33:14:	The problem with bondservant is it's like chattel.

00:33:14 – 00:33:17:	You mentioned chattel slavery last week.

00:33:17 – 00:33:20:	Chattel slavery is a redundancy.

00:33:20 – 00:33:26:	And the problem is that when modern years hear bondservant, everyone wants to pop in

00:33:26 – 00:33:30:	the monocle and nod sagely, oh, yes, bondservant, and like, no, they were slaves.

00:33:30 – 00:33:31:	They were slaves with a price.

00:33:31 – 00:33:32:	They were not their own.

00:33:32 – 00:33:33:	They were bought with a price.

00:33:33 – 00:33:35:	We're going to get to that passage.

00:33:35 – 00:33:41:	It was very clearly understood that regardless of the terms and conditions of the slavery,

00:33:42 – 00:33:43:	it was ownership.

00:33:43 – 00:33:47:	Maybe it was a lease, which is basically what bondservants are.

00:33:47 – 00:33:48:	You're still a slave.

00:33:48 – 00:33:49:	You're still owned.

00:33:49 – 00:33:54:	You're still property in the custody of someone who determines what you can and cannot do.

00:33:54 – 00:34:00:	And so when terms like bondservant and chattel get thrown around, our brains check out and

00:34:00 – 00:34:05:	are like, oh, well, yeah, that's a special magical Bible thing, like, no, man.

00:34:05 – 00:34:10:	It's just a basic term for a legal concept.

00:34:10 – 00:34:14:	There's nothing sophisticated about it, but when people are permitted, they permit themselves

00:34:14 – 00:34:19:	to be divorced from what was actually happening, we get lazy and say, well, that doesn't apply

00:34:19 – 00:34:20:	to me.

00:34:20 – 00:34:21:	That doesn't apply to this.

00:34:21 – 00:34:22:	It doesn't apply to that.

00:34:22 – 00:34:26:	You tune out and say, oh, bondservant, whatever that is, I guess they had that, but we don't

00:34:26 – 00:34:28:	have those anymore, so I can ignore that passage.

00:34:28 – 00:34:30:	And that's fundamentally the point that I think we need to make.

00:34:30 – 00:34:36:	Yeah, there are a lot of different historical terms for different types of slavery is really

00:34:36 – 00:34:37:	what it comes down to.

00:34:37 – 00:34:44:	Bond servant is one serfs by and large were slaves, indentured servitude, also slaves.

00:34:44 – 00:34:49:	Slaves were a period of time often treated actually worse than slaves because obviously

00:34:49 – 00:34:53:	if you have a slave for a period of time, it can set up a perverse incentive if you're

00:34:53 – 00:34:57:	the sort of person who is weak to that.

00:34:57 – 00:35:00:	And that was the case for some of the slave owners in the colonies, certainly because

00:35:00 – 00:35:06:	they realized the indentured servant they had for X number of years, whereas the slave

00:35:06 – 00:35:09:	you have the slave for his entire life, you don't need to get as much work out of him

00:35:09 – 00:35:12:	as possible in this set period of time.

00:35:12 – 00:35:13:	And we see the same.

00:35:13 – 00:35:17:	The reason I bring it up is partly because that is our own context, but partly that's

00:35:17 – 00:35:24:	also the same two tier system that we see in scripture, because God permitted the Israelites

00:35:24 – 00:35:30:	to have their fellow Israelites as slaves, but they were permitted to have them as slaves

00:35:30 – 00:35:34:	only for a period of six years, and then they were to go free in the seventh year.

00:35:34 – 00:35:38:	You also have to factor in jubilee, which makes it a little more complicated, but that's

00:35:38 – 00:35:45:	the basic rule that God gives them, whereas foreign slaves could be slaves for life, and

00:35:45 – 00:35:49:	you owned their children and their grandchildren, their great grandchildren, they were your

00:35:49 – 00:35:57:	property in perpetuity, whereas your own people had to be permitted to go free or be redeemed.

00:35:57 – 00:36:02:	And that's really roughly the same thing we saw in the slavery system in the U.S., the

00:36:02 – 00:36:05:	difference between a slave and an indentured servant.

00:36:05 – 00:36:11:	And the crucial point to be highlighted in your nation and other nations is that was

00:36:11 – 00:36:13:	fundamentally racial slavery.

00:36:13 – 00:36:17:	God made racial differences in the disparate treatment of slaves.

00:36:17 – 00:36:20:	If they were your own people, you get one set of rules.

00:36:20 – 00:36:25:	If they're other nations, other races, they get a different, worse set of rules.

00:36:25 – 00:36:28:	You treat foreigners worse than you treat your own race.

00:36:28 – 00:36:35:	That was codified by God in the law regarding the ownership of human beings.

00:36:35 – 00:36:36:	We don't get to paper that over.

00:36:36 – 00:36:37:	We don't get to ignore it.

00:36:37 – 00:36:39:	We don't get to condemn it.

00:36:39 – 00:36:43:	We have to deal with it head-on, and it's simple reality.

00:36:43 – 00:36:49:	God does not condemn certain things that today's post-enlightenment, post-French Revolution

00:36:49 – 00:36:51:	morality condemns.

00:36:51 – 00:36:55:	And that's why this podcast series exists, is that we're basically fighting the Enlightenment

00:36:55 – 00:36:56:	in reverse.

00:36:56 – 00:37:02:	We're trying to undo the damage done by these perverse moralities that have been inserted

00:37:02 – 00:37:05:	by Satan into our hearts and minds.

00:37:05 – 00:37:10:	So we're pointing to scripture because people will make arguments on moral grounds that

00:37:10 – 00:37:13:	are not in accord with scripture.

00:37:13 – 00:37:16:	And so I say at the beginning, we're going to ignore some of the arguments against slavery

00:37:16 – 00:37:19:	that are made from scripture because they're proof texting.

00:37:19 – 00:37:25:	They must necessarily either ignore these passages or condemn them, or resort to Marcianism

00:37:25 – 00:37:28:	where you say, well, that was the Demiurge, that was the Old Testament God.

00:37:28 – 00:37:29:	We have a different God now.

00:37:29 – 00:37:34:	Well, yes, some of those people do in fact have a different God, and that is a dangerous

00:37:34 – 00:37:36:	thing that we're facing today.

00:37:36 – 00:37:41:	And just to highlight that difference from scripture, I'll read one of the passages that

00:37:41 – 00:37:43:	deals with that from Leviticus 25.

00:37:55 – 00:38:00:	As for your male and female slaves whom you may have, you may buy male and female slaves

00:38:00 – 00:38:03:	from among the nations that are around you.

00:38:03 – 00:38:07:	You may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you, and their clans that

00:38:07 – 00:38:12:	are with you, who have been born in your land, and they may be your property.

00:38:12 – 00:38:18:	You may bequeath them to your sons after you to inherit as a possession for ever.

00:38:18 – 00:38:22:	You may make slaves of them, but over your brothers the people of Israel, you shall not

00:38:22 – 00:38:27:	rule one over another ruthlessly.

00:38:27 – 00:38:31:	And so that emphasizes what was just said.

00:38:31 – 00:38:37:	The Israelites were allowed to purchase as slaves and to keep as slaves in perpetuity

00:38:37 – 00:38:41:	those from other nations.

00:38:41 – 00:38:47:	God commanded them, required of them, that they treat their own race differently from

00:38:47 – 00:38:49:	those of a foreign race.

00:38:49 – 00:38:55:	And this is something that shows up in 1 Kings 5 when King Solomon is building the temple.

00:38:55 – 00:39:01:	He gets help from King Hiram of Tyre, who was a friend to his father David.

00:39:01 – 00:39:06:	And when Solomon was blessed by God with peace and prosperity, he had the means, the motive,

00:39:06 – 00:39:11:	and the opportunity to build the temple that David had wanted to build.

00:39:11 – 00:39:17:	And so as the temple was being built, 1 Kings 5 makes clear in the commentary he's going

00:39:17 – 00:39:23:	to detail to bolster the point, there were tens if not hundreds of thousands of slaves

00:39:23 – 00:39:26:	who were used in the construction of the temple.

00:39:26 – 00:39:35:	And King Solomon in particular used Canaanite slaves, conquered alien race of people as slave

00:39:35 – 00:39:37:	labor in the construction of the temple.

00:39:37 – 00:39:43:	Now I highlight this fact because the temple is not just like a building.

00:39:43 – 00:39:47:	The temple was God's home on earth.

00:39:47 – 00:39:51:	It was where the Holy of Holies was built, where the Ark of the Covenant was placed,

00:39:51 – 00:39:57:	where God had a special presence as he has never had at any other point in human history.

00:39:57 – 00:40:00:	The temple was blessed by God.

00:40:00 – 00:40:02:	God supervised its construction.

00:40:02 – 00:40:07:	He was talking to Solomon on a regular basis about its construction.

00:40:07 – 00:40:13:	God knew that these racial Canaanite slaves were being forced to labor on the temple.

00:40:13 – 00:40:18:	Now the reason I highlight this is that in 1 Kings 6 it mentions, when the house was

00:40:18 – 00:40:24:	built it was with stone prepared at the quarry so that neither hammer nor axe nor any tool

00:40:24 – 00:40:28:	of iron was heard in the house while it was being built.

00:40:28 – 00:40:30:	Now the temple wasn't even complete at that point.

00:40:30 – 00:40:32:	It hadn't been consecrated.

00:40:32 – 00:40:34:	They had not finished it.

00:40:34 – 00:40:39:	But it was still such a holy important place that they banned hammers and tools so that

00:40:39 – 00:40:42:	there would be no racket, there would be no clatter.

00:40:42 – 00:40:46:	The temple was to be as quiet and solemn as possible.

00:40:46 – 00:40:49:	That's how much they cared about the construction of the temple.

00:40:49 – 00:40:55:	So you cannot ignore the fact that racial slave labor was used in the construction of

00:40:55 – 00:40:56:	the temple.

00:40:56 – 00:40:58:	That is not a small point.

00:40:58 – 00:41:02:	And those slaves were blessed to be a part of it.

00:41:02 – 00:41:06:	Again, that's part of those two sides of this equation, regardless of what the Canaanites

00:41:06 – 00:41:09:	thought about their slave labor for Solomon.

00:41:09 – 00:41:11:	They were blessed.

00:41:11 – 00:41:15:	They were blessed to be a part of something that was magnificent, that was blessed by

00:41:15 – 00:41:19:	God in an absolutely unique way.

00:41:19 – 00:41:25:	And God would not have blessed that if it were not in perfect accord with his will.

00:41:25 – 00:41:29:	He would not have come down to a place that was evil, that was tainted by the original

00:41:29 – 00:41:33:	sin of racism and slavery, because slaves helped build it.

00:41:33 – 00:41:38:	And yet these are arguments that we hear in the lips of some of our own men today.

00:41:38 – 00:41:41:	This is not Christianity.

00:41:41 – 00:41:45:	So these small vignettes that we were plucking from Scripture, we're not saying that this

00:41:45 – 00:41:48:	is the whole point of the Old Testament or the New Testament, for that matter.

00:41:48 – 00:41:53:	We're saying that when God mentions it as an aside, oh, by the way, my holy house is

00:41:53 – 00:41:58:	built by slave labor who were racially chosen to be slaves.

00:41:58 – 00:42:00:	We don't get to say, yeah, but that's sin.

00:42:00 – 00:42:02:	I don't like that.

00:42:02 – 00:42:06:	God consecrated it by blessing the temple.

00:42:06 – 00:42:09:	We do not get to ignore that and we do not get to dispute it.

00:42:09 – 00:42:11:	I was going to go to the same place.

00:42:11 – 00:42:17:	I was going to go to 1 Kings 9, though, where it is specifically noted that all the people

00:42:17 – 00:42:22:	who were left of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Parasites, the Hivites, the Jebusites,

00:42:22 – 00:42:26:	who were not of the people of Israel, their descendants who were left after them in the

00:42:26 – 00:42:31:	land, whom the people of Israel were unable to devote to destruction, these Solomon drafted

00:42:31 – 00:42:35:	to be slaves, and so they are to this day.

00:42:35 – 00:42:40:	But of the people of Israel, Solomon made no slaves.

00:42:40 – 00:42:47:	So not only was slave labor used to build the temple, it was exclusively non-Israelite

00:42:47 – 00:42:51:	slave labor, exclusively foreign slave labor.

00:42:51 – 00:42:56:	The first passage in the New Testament I wanted to highlight is one that also disputes

00:42:56 – 00:43:04:	one of the other arguments in favor of a hypothetical form of freedom that doesn't actually exist.

00:43:04 – 00:43:06:	So this is from Romans 6.

00:43:06 – 00:43:08:	Paul writes, What then?

00:43:08 – 00:43:12:	Are we to sin because we are not under the law but under grace?

00:43:12 – 00:43:13:	By no means.

00:43:13 – 00:43:18:	Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves

00:43:18 – 00:43:23:	of the one whom you obey, either of sin which leads to death or of obedience which leaves

00:43:23 – 00:43:25:	to righteousness?

00:43:25 – 00:43:30:	But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the

00:43:30 – 00:43:34:	heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and having been set free

00:43:34 – 00:43:39:	from sin have become slaves of righteousness.

00:43:39 – 00:43:44:	I highlight this because I think this goes back to the Garden of Eden.

00:43:44 – 00:43:48:	What was the proposition that Satan was making to Eve?

00:43:48 – 00:43:51:	He said, You will not surely die.

00:43:51 – 00:43:53:	You will be like God.

00:43:53 – 00:43:59:	And I think that that is the echo that we hear from the Garden of Eden through Scripture,

00:43:59 – 00:44:03:	up through all the recent historical events that we mentioned in the past episodes through

00:44:03 – 00:44:06:	to today.

00:44:06 – 00:44:07:	It's not a coincidence.

00:44:07 – 00:44:13:	We mentioned last week when we were talking about slavery there that CFW Walther wrote

00:44:13 – 00:44:19:	in opposition to the abolitionists, and he specifically mentioned that the people who

00:44:19 – 00:44:23:	were abolitionists were overwhelmingly atheists.

00:44:23 – 00:44:30:	They were anarchists, all other manner of evil, godless people.

00:44:30 – 00:44:37:	Anarchy in particular is interesting because one of the slogans of anarchy, which is itself,

00:44:37 – 00:44:42:	it's an anti-government of sorts, but fundamentally it's just pure hatred of God.

00:44:42 – 00:44:48:	In the 1800s, the slogan that was used among anarchists and is used to this day, it's still

00:44:48 – 00:44:54:	popular, and you've probably heard it, no gods, no masters.

00:44:54 – 00:44:57:	That's basically what Satan was trying to sell to Eve.

00:44:57 – 00:45:01:	You will be like God, which is saying, you're going to be on equal footing.

00:45:01 – 00:45:02:	You will have no God.

00:45:02 – 00:45:04:	You will have no master.

00:45:04 – 00:45:06:	You will be your own God.

00:45:06 – 00:45:12:	That's Luther's explanation of the First Commandment, that if we fear, love, and trust nothing

00:45:12 – 00:45:18:	above ourselves, we become our own gods, and every sin is rooted in that disobedience.

00:45:18 – 00:45:21:	Every sin is rooted in, I'm God.

00:45:21 – 00:45:23:	For the next 30 seconds, I'm going to do this thing.

00:45:23 – 00:45:25:	I'm going to do it in opposition to God.

00:45:25 – 00:45:26:	I know what he wants.

00:45:26 – 00:45:28:	I'm going to do something different.

00:45:28 – 00:45:30:	That is saying I am God.

00:45:30 – 00:45:32:	That is a First Commandment violation.

00:45:32 – 00:45:38:	It's the most serious sin you can commit because you are in open defiance.

00:45:38 – 00:45:41:	Anarchy is open defiance of God.

00:45:41 – 00:45:47:	Despising slavery is fundamentally open defiance of God because what does Paul say here?

00:45:47 – 00:45:50:	He doesn't say you've been set free from sin, and so now you're free.

00:45:50 – 00:45:54:	He says you're slaves to righteousness.

00:45:54 – 00:45:57:	We've mentioned in past episodes, and one of the reasons that Corey and I both love

00:45:57 – 00:46:02:	to point to Job is that God is our Creator.

00:46:02 – 00:46:10:	In the Austrian conception of the creation of property, it's mixing your labor with the

00:46:10 – 00:46:11:	soil.

00:46:11 – 00:46:16:	If you go out in the wilderness, you dig a trench, you cut down trees, the act of taking

00:46:16 – 00:46:21:	something that was unclaimed and converting it into something useful, is you making it

00:46:21 – 00:46:23:	your property?

00:46:23 – 00:46:29:	The very first mixing labor with soil was what God did when he created Adam.

00:46:29 – 00:46:35:	He mixed his labor with the soil, and he formed Adam from the ground, from the dirt, from

00:46:35 – 00:46:38:	the clay.

00:46:38 – 00:46:40:	That is why we are God's creature.

00:46:40 – 00:46:48:	He made us, and the creature creator paradigm is fundamentally one of property, and that's

00:46:48 – 00:46:50:	something that Austrian economics gets right.

00:46:50 – 00:46:53:	That property is made yours by your working with it.

00:46:53 – 00:46:56:	You've made something new, now you're claiming it.

00:46:56 – 00:47:01:	The difference is that God is Creator, literally created from nothing, and so all things belong

00:47:01 – 00:47:02:	to Him.

00:47:02 – 00:47:07:	There's nothing in creation that doesn't belong to God, especially us.

00:47:07 – 00:47:15:	The problem that we face today as Christians when we assume these egalitarian post-enlightenment

00:47:15 – 00:47:21:	anti-slavery priors is that when you set your morality in opposition to slavery, you gloss

00:47:21 – 00:47:26:	over or you ignore or you have to repudiate these very passages that are intended for

00:47:26 – 00:47:27:	our comfort.

00:47:27 – 00:47:29:	We are slaves to Christ.

00:47:29 – 00:47:35:	We are slaves to righteousness because we're owned by God twice over.

00:47:35 – 00:47:39:	Every man is owned by God because we're creators and God is our Creator.

00:47:39 – 00:47:44:	Every Christian is owned twice over by God because God redeemed us.

00:47:44 – 00:47:49:	When he shed his blood for us on the cross, he purchased us with a price, and that was

00:47:49 – 00:47:50:	the price.

00:47:50 – 00:47:55:	It was his precious blood being shed for the remission of our sins.

00:47:55 – 00:48:00:	That purchase price purchased us back from the damnation we have earned by our sin.

00:48:00 – 00:48:09:	We're owned as creatures and we're owned yet again twice over as Christians, as believers

00:48:09 – 00:48:11:	who are covered in Christ's blood.

00:48:11 – 00:48:13:	That is ownership.

00:48:13 – 00:48:18:	When we put on the cloak of Christ's righteousness, that is like a yoke of slavery.

00:48:18 – 00:48:23:	We don't look at it as a burden, which is the whole point of this episode.

00:48:23 – 00:48:25:	Slavery is not a burden.

00:48:25 – 00:48:28:	That is the lie that we have been sold for the last couple of centuries, that if you're

00:48:28 – 00:48:30:	a slave, you're burdened.

00:48:30 – 00:48:31:	You're being mistreated.

00:48:31 – 00:48:32:	You have to flee.

00:48:32 – 00:48:35:	There are some passages we'll get to in a minute where it specifically talks about slaves

00:48:35 – 00:48:40:	being mistreated and burying up underneath it, that you don't flee if you're mistreated.

00:48:40 – 00:48:42:	God certainly doesn't mistreat us.

00:48:42 – 00:48:44:	We are first and foremost his property.

00:48:44 – 00:48:51:	When Paul writes, when the Holy Spirit writes, we have been set free from sin to become slaves

00:48:51 – 00:48:54:	to righteousness, we need to take that seriously.

00:48:54 – 00:48:56:	We must be slaves to righteousness.

00:48:56 – 00:48:59:	The Lutherans get squeamish because that doesn't sound like the gospel.

00:48:59 – 00:49:02:	That sounds like, is that works righteousness?

00:49:02 – 00:49:03:	No.

00:49:03 – 00:49:05:	It's the post-soterological life of the Christian.

00:49:05 – 00:49:07:	You are saved, now what?

00:49:07 – 00:49:10:	Now you are to be slaves to righteousness.

00:49:10 – 00:49:16:	It is a word that we must learn to redeem because we need to redeem it from our lies

00:49:16 – 00:49:17:	and our own wayward hearts.

00:49:17 – 00:49:23:	We need to embrace it because it is God's will for us to be his slaves, again, not to

00:49:23 – 00:49:26:	be slaves to Satan and slaves to sin.

00:49:26 – 00:49:31:	When you mention that slogan of the anarchist that has long been their slogan and still

00:49:31 – 00:49:40:	is today, it also brings to mind two other things, one quote that is frequently used

00:49:40 – 00:49:45:	in this area and one passage of scripture dealing with the same sort of false conception

00:49:45 – 00:49:49:	of freedom, the literally satanic conception of freedom.

00:49:49 – 00:49:56:	The quote is from the French Jesuit-trained philosopher of the Enlightenment, what a

00:49:56 – 00:50:02:	cursed trivia that is, but Diderot, men will never be free until the last king is strangled

00:50:02 – 00:50:05:	with the entrails of the last priest.

00:50:05 – 00:50:10:	And I would hope as Christians, and particularly listeners of this podcast, that people can

00:50:10 – 00:50:13:	see the problem with that.

00:50:13 – 00:50:19:	If you want to subvert the king, then you are attempting to subvert the right rulership

00:50:19 – 00:50:21:	of your nation.

00:50:21 – 00:50:25:	You are attempting to subvert the left-hand kingdom of Christ.

00:50:25 – 00:50:31:	And then, of course, destroying priests is somewhat self-explanatory, I would think.

00:50:31 – 00:50:39:	The passage from scripture is Isaiah 14, of course, it's the statement that is attributed

00:50:39 – 00:50:44:	to Sargon, but really it's Sargon, the second, echoing Satan.

00:50:44 – 00:50:49:	You said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven, above the stars of God, I will set my throne

00:50:49 – 00:50:55:	on high, I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north, I will ascend

00:50:55 – 00:51:01:	above the heights of the clouds, I will make myself like the most high.

00:51:01 – 00:51:08:	And that is the cry of every single person who wants to subvert, hierarchy, order, God's

00:51:08 – 00:51:10:	intended rule in creation.

00:51:10 – 00:51:14:	And it's also the same cry of every man who sins, because that is exactly what you're

00:51:14 – 00:51:15:	doing when you sin.

00:51:15 – 00:51:20:	You're saying, no, I am my own God, I will do whatever I want, regardless of what my

00:51:20 – 00:51:26:	Creator intends for me or says I must do or must not do.

00:51:26 – 00:51:33:	And that is this false conception of freedom or liberty that has become one of the core

00:51:33 – 00:51:34:	idols of the modern world.

00:51:34 – 00:51:41:	And it's why slavery grates so much against the modern mind, because it runs directly

00:51:41 – 00:51:49:	counter to this idea of unbounded freedom as one of the highest goods, which of course

00:51:49 – 00:51:54:	is ridiculous, because one, there's no such thing as unbounded freedom.

00:51:54 – 00:52:00:	And two, it's not a good, even if you approach it, attempt to achieve it.

00:52:00 – 00:52:08:	And even today, just as a purely practical matter, we still have the equivalent of slavery.

00:52:08 – 00:52:11:	We still have actual slavery, but we have the equivalent as well.

00:52:11 – 00:52:17:	Because if you're an employee, your employer owns you to a certain degree.

00:52:17 – 00:52:24:	Yes, it may only be for X number of hours per day, whatever the terms of your contract

00:52:24 – 00:52:28:	are, but also you get less for it.

00:52:28 – 00:52:32:	Because historically at the very least, and we can get into more of the history in a little

00:52:32 – 00:52:40:	bit, the slave master had to provide at least basic necessities for the slave, clothing,

00:52:40 – 00:52:48:	shelter, food, whereas your employer just pays you some lump sum for X amount of your

00:52:48 – 00:52:53:	time and then good luck, deal with everything else yourself.

00:52:53 – 00:52:59:	In some ways, many modern relationships of employee and employer are worse than the historical

00:52:59 – 00:53:03:	relation of serf and lord or master and slave.

00:53:03 – 00:53:08:	The second passage that I referred to a minute ago, but I want to read in its entirety, is

00:53:08 – 00:53:11:	from 1 Corinthians 6.

00:53:11 – 00:53:12:	Paul writes,

00:53:12 – 00:53:16:	Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?

00:53:16 – 00:53:20:	Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute?

00:53:20 – 00:53:21:	Never.

00:53:21 – 00:53:26:	Do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her?

00:53:26 – 00:53:30:	For as it is written, the two will become one flesh.

00:53:30 – 00:53:36:	But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him, flee from sexual immorality.

00:53:36 – 00:53:40:	Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person

00:53:40 – 00:53:42:	sins against his own body.

00:53:42 – 00:53:47:	Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have

00:53:47 – 00:53:48:	from God?

00:53:48 – 00:53:56:	You are not your own for you were bought with a price, so glorify God in your body.

00:53:56 – 00:54:00:	I think the error that we make today is we gloss over that for you were not your own

00:54:00 – 00:54:02:	for you were bought with a price.

00:54:02 – 00:54:05:	We just think of it as flowery language.

00:54:05 – 00:54:06:	It's nice.

00:54:06 – 00:54:07:	It's a sentiment.

00:54:07 – 00:54:12:	When Paul wrote this, the audience of his day knew exactly what he meant because he

00:54:12 – 00:54:19:	was writing to believers of all stripes, of all stations, regardless of their race, regardless

00:54:19 – 00:54:25:	of where they were in the social hierarchy, he was saying, you are not your own.

00:54:25 – 00:54:31:	That was a big counter-cultural thing to be saying to some of the wealthy people who were

00:54:31 – 00:54:34:	his own benefactors.

00:54:34 – 00:54:39:	There were some people who were not slaves, who were rich, independent citizens of Rome

00:54:39 – 00:54:41:	and of other nations.

00:54:41 – 00:54:46:	For him to say, you are not your own, for you were bought with a price, I don't want

00:54:46 – 00:54:52:	to say a stings, but it absolutely would cut to the quick for a man who would own perhaps

00:54:52 – 00:54:57:	hundreds, maybe even thousands of slaves and servants for some of the very wealthy ones.

00:54:57 – 00:55:02:	For him to say, you are not your own either, he would know exactly what that went.

00:55:02 – 00:55:08:	And for the slaves, for the household slaves, for the muck slaves, for the highest or the

00:55:08 – 00:55:14:	lowest who were owned as property, they would hear what I had mentioned earlier, that they

00:55:14 – 00:55:19:	are in fact owned twice over, they are owned by their masters and they are owned by God.

00:55:19 – 00:55:25:	And so this notion of ownership of humans that is so antithetical to our years is not

00:55:25 – 00:55:28:	antithetical to the Christian faith.

00:55:28 – 00:55:33:	So I mentioned up front, this is a really important episode because this is not, we're

00:55:33 – 00:55:39:	not talking about something that's this weird anachronism, it's a historical blip, it's

00:55:39 – 00:55:42:	something we got rid of and I'm glad it's gone.

00:55:42 – 00:55:48:	We're talking about the human condition as it relates to our faith and whether or not

00:55:48 – 00:55:53:	slavery exists today, I don't have a position on whether it should come back or not.

00:55:53 – 00:55:54:	I don't care.

00:55:54 – 00:55:59:	I don't think that what we have today is an improvement over what history has shown in

00:55:59 – 00:56:00:	the past.

00:56:00 – 00:56:02:	I think in many ways it's far worse.

00:56:02 – 00:56:09:	So if you want to start making moral arguments apart from slavery being prevented, I would

00:56:09 – 00:56:13:	suggest you not do that because you might lose strictly on pragmatic grounds.

00:56:13 – 00:56:19:	If the employees of Amazon and Jeff Bezos are not slaves and they're literally working

00:56:19 – 00:56:25:	themselves to death in his robot warehouses, I can show you a system where them being slaves

00:56:25 – 00:56:31:	would give better outcomes in their lives than being almost owned by a man who they

00:56:31 – 00:56:37:	can then just dispose of them in a way that scripture would condemn if they were his property.

00:56:37 – 00:56:42:	And because they're not his property, we pretend that they just fall through the cracks.

00:56:42 – 00:56:48:	These are moral matters that are active today, both in pragmatic terms in our lives and how

00:56:48 – 00:56:51:	our workplaces and our societies are structured.

00:56:51 – 00:56:56:	They're also fundamentally important in terms of how we understand the Christian faith.

00:56:56 – 00:57:01:	Because again, if you are slaves to righteousness and if you are not your own because you were

00:57:01 – 00:57:09:	bought with the price of Christ's blood on the cross, that locks you in.

00:57:09 – 00:57:10:	You are shackled by that.

00:57:10 – 00:57:14:	You are in chains for God's sake.

00:57:14 – 00:57:18:	There are things that you could no longer do that you could do before.

00:57:18 – 00:57:21:	You could do them in ignorance that was sinful, it was wicked.

00:57:21 – 00:57:22:	You didn't know.

00:57:22 – 00:57:27:	Now that you know, now that you are slaves to righteousness, you must stop doing them

00:57:27 – 00:57:30:	because you know that you belong to God.

00:57:30 – 00:57:35:	And so the slavery and this ownership stuff, it is not everything that there is to say

00:57:35 – 00:57:37:	about the Christian life.

00:57:37 – 00:57:42:	We don't want to give that impression because ultimately true Christian freedom is understanding

00:57:42 – 00:57:43:	this.

00:57:43 – 00:57:48:	It's freedom in service to Christ, but the freedom is not an unbounded freedom, as Corey

00:57:48 – 00:57:49:	said.

00:57:49 – 00:57:55:	It is freedom that's imperfect in this life because we're still slaves to sin to some

00:57:55 – 00:57:56:	degree.

00:57:56 – 00:57:59:	We're freed by degrees through sanctification.

00:57:59 – 00:58:02:	I don't know how to say that exactly properly.

00:58:02 – 00:58:09:	We have one foot in both worlds and it's why in Romans 7, Paul laments his own struggle

00:58:09 – 00:58:13:	against his flesh where he doesn't do that, which he wants to do, but he does the sin

00:58:13 – 00:58:14:	that is within him.

00:58:14 – 00:58:18:	We all face that and being Christians doesn't end our sinfulness.

00:58:19 – 00:58:22:	What it does end is our absolute slavery to that sin.

00:58:22 – 00:58:28:	The absolute slavery has ended and we instead become slaves to righteousness where we know

00:58:28 – 00:58:31:	how to obey God as he wishes.

00:58:31 – 00:58:34:	These terms need to make a comeback.

00:58:34 – 00:58:41:	Talking about slavery in favorable terms needs to make a comeback, not necessarily just in

00:58:41 – 00:58:47:	spiritual terms, but the notion that as a husband, you are a slave to your family, even

00:58:47 – 00:58:49:	as you are the head, because what can you do?

00:58:49 – 00:58:51:	You can't just go run off and get drunk.

00:58:51 – 00:58:54:	You can't disappear for days at a time.

00:58:54 – 00:58:56:	You must serve them faithfully.

00:58:56 – 00:59:02:	I think the aspect that's missing from the discussion of master and slave is that the

00:59:02 – 00:59:07:	master is also a slave by degree because the master has obligations.

00:59:07 – 00:59:12:	When you look at the moral obligations in Scripture in joining master's actions, they

00:59:12 – 00:59:16:	become slaves to their slaves, not in the same sense, not in the sense of directing

00:59:16 – 00:59:22:	actions one versus the other, but in the sense that the master has obligations, has

00:59:22 – 00:59:30:	a vocation to preserve the health, the welfare, the spiritual care of those under his household,

00:59:30 – 00:59:33:	those whom he owns.

00:59:33 – 00:59:38:	It's not like you have freedom on one hand and then abject shackled slavery on the other

00:59:38 – 00:59:39:	hand.

00:59:39 – 00:59:44:	There are obligations in every direction because God made us as social creatures.

00:59:44 – 00:59:48:	And a hierarchy is not in opposition to society.

00:59:48 – 00:59:51:	Hierarchy is the way a godly society functions.

00:59:51 – 00:59:56:	In a godly functioning society, hierarchy will have masters and it will have slaves

59:56 – 01:00:05
by whatever name, but it is not extraction from the weak and enrichment of the wealthy.

01:00:05 – 01:00:09:	It's a form of symbiosis, but in a godly fashion.

01:00:09 – 01:00:13:	These terms are not alien to the Christian faith, but the fact that they become alien

01:00:13 – 01:00:18:	to our own minds is why we are having so many of these problems today.

01:00:18 – 01:00:25:	And you started off that section with a quote from 1 Corinthians, but another letter of

01:00:25 – 01:00:27:	Paul's was making the round same time.

01:00:27 – 01:00:39:	That's Romans and that of course starts off, the second word is slave, Paul a slave of

01:00:39 – 01:00:40:	Christ Jesus.

01:00:40 – 01:00:44:	What is the proper conception of what it means to be a Christian?

01:00:44 – 01:00:50:	You are a slave of Christ, you are a slave of God because you were bought with a price.

01:00:50 – 01:00:59:	You belong to God and when you bring up the issue of how employees and others are treated

01:00:59 – 01:01:06:	under our current system versus slaves, it brings to mind, I don't make it a point of

01:01:06 – 01:01:11:	necessarily quoting Kipling every episode, but it brings to mind a certain line or call

01:01:11 – 01:01:18:	too loud on freedom to cloak your weariness because that's really what we're doing.

01:01:18 – 01:01:23:	Our system allows those who are by virtue of their position and their power, by virtue

01:01:23 – 01:01:29:	of their authority and means, they are masters and they are masters over slaves.

01:01:29 – 01:01:32:	You can call them employees, you can call them at will employees, you can call them whatever

01:01:32 – 01:01:38:	it is you like, but it's just like if you call yourself a president instead of an archbishop

01:01:38 – 01:01:43:	or a district president instead of a bishop.

01:01:43 – 01:01:46:	God doesn't care what you call yourself, God cares what your position is, what your duties

01:01:46 – 01:01:54:	are that flow from that position and so it's going to be the same for these individuals

01:01:54 – 01:01:59:	who have the role of master in our society, but do not live up to the standard of what

01:01:59 – 01:02:01:	a master is supposed to do.

01:02:01 – 01:02:06:	And one of the things a master is supposed to do is see that his slaves, see that those

01:02:06 – 01:02:11:	under him, those entrusted to his care, see that they are properly instructed in the faith.

01:02:11 – 01:02:17:	Can you name a single master in the left hand kingdom who does that to any degree?

01:02:17 – 01:02:19:	It'd be a challenge.

01:02:19 – 01:02:23:	There may be a few here and there, but it would certainly be a challenge.

01:02:23 – 01:02:27:	And there's also the consideration that it's largely and quickly becoming illegal in our

01:02:27 – 01:02:33:	system to do that, but that is a separate issue.

01:02:33 – 01:02:40:	But I think when you were mentioning the Saint and sinner, the symbol there, what really

01:02:40 – 01:02:44:	you're touching on is the progressive nature of sanctification.

01:02:44 – 01:02:48:	We are justified, of course, immediately.

01:02:48 – 01:02:53:	Justification is a one-time thing, it is immediate, it is not progressive, it is not

01:02:53 – 01:02:58:	you're justified a little bit now and fully later on, it's not God does a little and then

01:02:58 – 01:03:02:	you do some or God does a lot and you do some, it's none of that.

01:03:02 – 01:03:08:	Justification, holy God's work, monogistic, it happens, it's done.

01:03:08 – 01:03:10:	But sanctification is progressive.

01:03:10 – 01:03:14:	We get better over time as we remain in the faith.

01:03:14 – 01:03:16:	No, we're never perfect in this life.

01:03:16 – 01:03:27:	But as you progress in your faith, you will start to sin less, at least in certain ways.

01:03:27 – 01:03:31:	There comes with that the recognition of more sins.

01:03:31 – 01:03:34:	And so you are never going to get at the point where you think, I am the holiest person ever

01:03:34 – 01:03:37:	to live, I am without sin.

01:03:37 – 01:03:45:	If you get to that point, you're in a very dangerous place because you've probably apostatized.

01:03:45 – 01:03:50:	But what you will do is some of those sins that plagued you in the past as you are progressively

01:03:50 – 01:03:55:	sanctified by the Holy Spirit, those will fall away.

01:03:55 – 01:03:59:	But the Holy Spirit will point out, well, there's this other thing over here that you're doing.

01:03:59 – 01:04:01:	And so you'll notice more sins.

01:04:01 – 01:04:09:	And so the Christian life is, of course, one of constant struggle in this life against

01:04:09 – 01:04:13:	sin, against the flesh, against the world, against the devil.

01:04:13 – 01:04:16:	But there is progress.

01:04:16 – 01:04:18:	It's not a standstill.

01:04:18 – 01:04:19:	It's not stagnation.

01:04:19 – 01:04:24:	You are getting better as you live as a Christian.

01:04:24 – 01:04:28:	The next passage that I want to read is from Ephesians 6.

01:04:28 – 01:04:31:	And this is one that is mirrored very closely in Colossians 3.

01:04:31 – 01:04:34:	I'm not going to read both for time, but you should go read both.

01:04:34 – 01:04:39:	The reason I'm pointing out that it's repeated is that Paul uses some of the same words verbatim,

01:04:39 – 01:04:41:	some of the same phrases.

01:04:41 – 01:04:45:	This highlights this passage from Ephesians 6 and Colossians 3.

01:04:45 – 01:04:50:	It's not just an aside when he says slaves obey your earthly masters here in a second.

01:04:50 – 01:04:54:	It's not just, I'm thinking about this now, so I'm just going to mention it.

01:04:54 – 01:04:58:	This was clearly a core part of Paul's preaching.

01:04:58 – 01:05:04:	It was a core part of his ministry to those to whom he was reaching with the gospel.

01:05:04 – 01:05:09:	And so the fact that we would see phrases repeated verbatim, I think is significant.

01:05:09 – 01:05:10:	But there's not a whole lot of them.

01:05:10 – 01:05:15:	It's almost like you have almost a synoptic epistle here with this passage.

01:05:15 – 01:05:18:	So in Ephesians 6, Paul writes,

01:05:18 – 01:05:22:	Slaves obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart as you

01:05:22 – 01:05:27:	would Christ, not by the way of eye service as people pleasers, but as slaves of Christ

01:05:27 – 01:05:32:	doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and

01:05:32 – 01:05:38:	not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, he will receive back from the Lord whether

01:05:38 – 01:05:40:	he is a slave or is free.

01:05:40 – 01:05:44:	Masters do the same to them and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their

01:05:44 – 01:05:50:	master and yours in heaven and that there is no partiality with him.

01:05:50 – 01:05:54:	So again, Paul is highlighting when I mentioned earlier that you were bought with a price

01:05:54 – 01:05:59:	will hit both the master and the slave in different ways, but very profoundly.

01:05:59 – 01:06:05:	And so I think we today, we gloss over this, we don't think in term of master and slave,

01:06:06 – 01:06:10:	but I think I firmly believe they proper understanding of the Christian faith, which

01:06:10 – 01:06:12:	again can only come from scripture.

01:06:12 – 01:06:15:	Like we're not making anything new up here.

01:06:15 – 01:06:18:	We're going through all of these passages.

01:06:18 – 01:06:24:	They repeat over and over again, slaves, your slaves, be good slaves, masters, your masters,

01:06:24 – 01:06:25:	be good masters.

01:06:25 – 01:06:28:	There's never any commandment for a slave to run away.

01:06:28 – 01:06:32:	There's never a commandment for a master to free his slaves, and we'll get to Philemon

01:06:32 – 01:06:37:	here at the end, but we're saving that for last for a reason, but while it is an argument

01:06:37 – 01:06:42:	from silence, that works when you're talking about God, because if God doesn't condemn

01:06:42 – 01:06:46:	something as sin, we can't come along later and say, well, God just forgot to mention

01:06:46 – 01:06:47:	it.

01:06:47 – 01:06:49:	That's not how the Christian faith works.

01:06:49 – 01:06:52:	As I said last week, we don't get to discover new sins.

01:06:52 – 01:06:58:	So we deal with the tax that we're given because scripture is inspired by the Holy Spirit for

01:06:58 – 01:07:00:	us to receive these things.

01:07:00 – 01:07:05:	If it's not there, you don't get to believe it, and when God doesn't condemn something,

01:07:05 – 01:07:06:	you have to assume that's for a reason.

01:07:06 – 01:07:08:	You must believe that's for a reason.

01:07:08 – 01:07:10:	That's not a wild assumption.

01:07:10 – 01:07:15:	That is listening to the voice of God, and when he's silent, you know that you don't

01:07:15 – 01:07:16:	have to worry about that.

01:07:16 – 01:07:20:	If it were sin, God would tell you in no uncertain terms.

01:07:20 – 01:07:24:	So slaves obey your earthly masters all by itself.

01:07:24 – 01:07:30:	If that were the only passage in scripture, that would be condoning slavery, cross-slavery.

01:07:30 – 01:07:35:	And so when a Christian sees a modern Christian at least, sees that we're going to discuss

01:07:35 – 01:07:42:	the topic of slavery, probably the first book that jumps to mind is Philemon, because Philemon

01:07:42 – 01:07:47:	deals specifically with a runaway slave.

01:07:47 – 01:07:55:	And so many modern exegetes, really iceegetes in most cases, will use the book of Philemon

01:07:55 – 01:08:03:	in an attempt to argue that slavery is sinful because reasons.

01:08:03 – 01:08:07:	The problem is, if you actually read Philemon, and you have no excuse not to read Philemon,

01:08:07 – 01:08:13:	I'm looking at it right now, open on my computer, it takes up less than my screen.

01:08:13 – 01:08:16:	It is a very short letter.

01:08:16 – 01:08:23:	If you read Philemon, there is no condemnation of slavery in it.

01:08:23 – 01:08:28:	And if you are familiar with scripture, you should of course know that, coming to Philemon,

01:08:28 – 01:08:32:	because scripture never contradicts scripture.

01:08:32 – 01:08:36:	God does not change, and so if you are familiar with the Old Testament, you know that God

01:08:36 – 01:08:44:	not only permitted slavery, but gave slaves to the patriarchs and to others, Job for instance,

01:08:44 – 01:08:45:	as a reward.

01:08:45 – 01:08:50:	He blessed individuals with slaves, with that form of property.

01:08:50 – 01:08:57:	And so Philemon cannot possibly argue against slavery, quaslavery.

01:08:57 – 01:09:04:	And it doesn't, because if you look at Philemon, the core of the letter is Paul returning the

01:09:04 – 01:09:10:	runaway slave Onesimus to his master.

01:09:10 – 01:09:13:	That is the core of what this letter is.

01:09:13 – 01:09:20:	Now there's more to the letter, to the specifics of how Paul is dealing in the letter with

01:09:20 – 01:09:27:	Onesimus' master, etc., but the core of the letter is Paul returning a runaway slave.

01:09:27 – 01:09:32:	There is no way you can conceive of or argue that this letter is a condemnation of the

01:09:32 – 01:09:33:	practice of slavery.

01:09:33 – 01:09:36:	It's an absolutely insane position to take.

01:09:36 – 01:09:40:	And that's why historically, no one has taken that position.

01:09:40 – 01:09:42:	That is a modern innovation.

01:09:42 – 01:09:49:	It is seeking for a conclusion that was predetermined and then attempting to shoehorn it into scripture

01:09:49 – 01:09:53:	instead of reading what is actually on the page.

01:09:53 – 01:09:58:	One of the things that leapt out to me this past time that I was reading through it was

01:09:58 – 01:10:03:	in the second to last paragraph, he says, So if you consider me your partner, receive

01:10:03 – 01:10:05:	him as you would receive me.

01:10:05 – 01:10:10:	If he has wronged you at all or owes you anything, charge that to my account.

01:10:11 – 01:10:14:	I found that interesting as I was reading through this in the context of this discussion

01:10:14 – 01:10:20:	because what Paul is describing there is fundamentally transactional.

01:10:20 – 01:10:23:	He is saying, Onesimus is your property.

01:10:23 – 01:10:29:	He is not his own, for he was bought with a price, the price that Philemon paid for him.

01:10:29 – 01:10:33:	And Philemon, as you mentioned, is a very rich man.

01:10:33 – 01:10:35:	You can tell from the context of the letter that he has a large household.

01:10:35 – 01:10:39:	So for one thing, Onesimus would not be his only slave.

01:10:39 – 01:10:43:	And that is one of the profound arguments from silence we find here.

01:10:43 – 01:10:51:	If this were Paul just trying to be politely correcting the sin of effectively a parishioner

01:10:51 – 01:10:56:	slash patron, he would have said, Hey, man, you need to free all of your slaves.

01:10:56 – 01:11:00:	Don't you know that you're sinning by owning another man?

01:11:00 – 01:11:05:	Not only does he not do that, but he effectively says in that passage, I'll buy him for you.

01:11:06 – 01:11:10:	Oh, by the way, you also owe me a great deal.

01:11:10 – 01:11:13:	So if we want to talk about money, maybe you want to call it even, but I'll leave that

01:11:13 – 01:11:15:	up to you.

01:11:15 – 01:11:18:	So it's very friendly, it's very loving, but it's also very slick.

01:11:18 – 01:11:24:	And I don't say that in a condemning fashion, but Paul is saying, look, this guy who in

01:11:24 – 01:11:29:	all likelihood ran away, there are different theories about how Onesimus ended up in the

01:11:29 – 01:11:31:	same place as Paul.

01:11:31 – 01:11:33:	There's questions surrounding, did he steal something?

01:11:34 – 01:11:37:	Did he steal and perhaps the money is part of that?

01:11:37 – 01:11:41:	I think the one thing that cannot be disputed, the one thing that is clearly in the text

01:11:41 – 01:11:46:	by necessary inference is that Onesimus stole himself.

01:11:46 – 01:11:49:	He violated the 10th commandment.

01:11:49 – 01:11:54:	He stole his master's property by leaving because he was not his own.

01:11:54 – 01:11:57:	He was bought with a price, the price the philemon paid.

01:11:57 – 01:12:02:	And so Paul is acknowledging that in the end of this letter saying, if he owes you anything,

01:12:02 – 01:12:07:	charge it to my account, which by the way has a substantial credit, so maybe I don't

01:12:07 – 01:12:14:	need to actually pay you any money, but this is fundamentally transactional and not moral.

01:12:14 – 01:12:20:	A little bit of context is necessary here for most modern readers because most modern

01:12:20 – 01:12:28:	readers are going to miss some of the subtext here because they don't understand Roman slavery.

01:12:28 – 01:12:35:	First off, under the system of Roman slavery, a slave was not a person persona in Latin.

01:12:35 – 01:12:41:	A slave was a race, a thing, a piece of property.

01:12:41 – 01:12:48:	Legally that was the status of a slave and masters had more or less absolute authority

01:12:48 – 01:12:50:	over their slaves.

01:12:50 – 01:12:55:	There were some reforms here and there in the Roman system that required, for instance,

01:12:55 – 01:13:02:	a reason to beat your slave to death because originally you didn't even need a reason,

01:13:02 – 01:13:06:	but that was the sort of nature of the reforms that you would have in the Roman system.

01:13:06 – 01:13:13:	And so the ordinary course of events, if a runaway slave were returned to his master,

01:13:13 – 01:13:18:	if Onesimas were returned to Philemon, is that Philemon would choose between killing

01:13:18 – 01:13:25:	him outright or literally branding his forehead with the Latin word for runaway slave from

01:13:25 – 01:13:31:	which we get fugitive, fugitivus, usually just fvg because Latin used the v instead

01:13:31 – 01:13:33:	of the u.

01:13:33 – 01:13:36:	And so those were the two options.

01:13:36 – 01:13:40:	And if he had been subjected to the latter option, he would have been branded and then

01:13:40 – 01:13:47:	kept as a menial slave doing manual labor most likely for the rest of his life.

01:13:47 – 01:13:50:	And so that's the subtext you have here.

01:13:50 – 01:13:55:	Paul is saying, I recognize the rights that you have under the law to dispense with your

01:13:55 – 01:13:57:	property.

01:13:57 – 01:14:04:	I am asking you to forego those because of this man's service to me and my captivity

01:14:04 – 01:14:06:	because he is now a brother in Christ.

01:14:06 – 01:14:07:	He's not saying to free him.

01:14:07 – 01:14:13:	He's saying don't kill him or brand him and make him dig ditches the rest of his life.

01:14:13 – 01:14:17:	And that's a subtext that a modern reader is going to miss if you are not familiar with

01:14:17 – 01:14:22:	Roman slavery with the system in which Paul is writing this letter and operating.

01:14:22 – 01:14:26:	And that was something that if you happen to get your hands on the Philemon commentary

01:14:26 – 01:14:32:	from Concordia Publishing House for a letter that's basically one page, the commentary

01:14:32 – 01:14:33:	is hundreds of pages.

01:14:33 – 01:14:39:	And there's a lot of great historical context for what slavery was like in this period.

01:14:39 – 01:14:44:	And that's why I said early on when people hear stories about slavery in the Americas,

01:14:44 – 01:14:46:	they think, oh, that's the worst it could possibly be.

01:14:46 – 01:14:50:	No, that was many of those slaves were treated quite well.

01:14:50 – 01:14:52:	Some of them were treated poorly.

01:14:52 – 01:14:55:	Some were horribly mistreated, which is expressly condemned by scripture.

01:14:55 – 01:14:58:	No one's okay with that because God says it's sinful.

01:14:58 – 01:15:03:	And even someone who didn't have faith would know that some treatment is well beyond the

01:15:03 – 01:15:08:	line of what is permissible to another human being.

01:15:08 – 01:15:15:	The commentary by Norling from CPH, interestingly, directly contradicts the statement that we

01:15:15 – 01:15:23:	read last week from the Missouri Senate Corporation discussing pro-slavery being an abomination.

01:15:23 – 01:15:31:	What the CPH commentary says is that our modern notions are completely anachronistic.

01:15:31 – 01:15:34:	We don't even understand slavery as itself.

01:15:34 – 01:15:36:	We understand the Hollywood version of it.

01:15:36 – 01:15:41:	And when you look at historical slavery, it was fundamental to human civilization.

01:15:41 – 01:15:46:	And so the book goes into great detail on many different facets of different degrees

01:15:46 – 01:15:48:	and categories and ranks of slaves.

01:15:48 – 01:15:54:	There were some slaves who were far richer than anyone who will ever listen to this podcast.

01:15:54 – 01:16:00:	They're literally millionaires by gray stretches, some more than that perhaps, yet they were

01:16:00 – 01:16:03:	still slaves, meaning they were still owned by other men.

01:16:03 – 01:16:09:	So this modern notion that we have been fed that if you're a slave, you're basically

01:16:09 – 01:16:10:	an animal.

01:16:10 – 01:16:12:	There's nothing lower than that.

01:16:12 – 01:16:13:	That's not what slave means.

01:16:13 – 01:16:15:	That's what mistreatment means.

01:16:15 – 01:16:17:	That's what dehumanization means.

01:16:17 – 01:16:21:	There are words for those things, but the word is not slave.

01:16:21 – 01:16:26:	Enslavement doesn't necessarily mean that a sin has occurred.

01:16:26 – 01:16:31:	When Solomon took slaves, he was permitted to do that.

01:16:32 – 01:16:35:	We don't have the legal regime for today, and so it's not a question that we need to

01:16:35 – 01:16:36:	deal with.

01:16:36 – 01:16:38:	How might one become a slave today?

01:16:38 – 01:16:42:	But as Corey mentioned, anyone in prison is functionally a slave.

01:16:42 – 01:16:46:	If they're doing forced labor, they're getting paid out like 25 cents a day or something,

01:16:46 – 01:16:48:	like it's nominal.

01:16:48 – 01:16:49:	They're slaves.

01:16:49 – 01:16:50:	It's slave labor.

01:16:50 – 01:16:53:	And the 13th Amendment permits it because we didn't abolish slavery.

01:16:53 – 01:16:56:	We abolished non-state slavery.

01:16:56 – 01:17:04:	So these notions have been buried and they, yes, which is the other form of slavery we

01:17:04 – 01:17:07:	still have.

01:17:07 – 01:17:11:	This is Sparta in the least cool way possible.

01:17:11 – 01:17:18:	And so the Philemon commentary goes a great length to describe all the various myriad

01:17:18 – 01:17:23:	fashions of enslavement and how some of them had very high social status.

01:17:23 – 01:17:30:	Again, the right-hand man in a household was usually going to be a slave.

01:17:30 – 01:17:32:	He would have very high station in life.

01:17:32 – 01:17:33:	He would be paid.

01:17:33 – 01:17:36:	These were slaves who were not just given quarters in food.

01:17:36 – 01:17:40:	They were also remunerated, which was something that was done in the West as well.

01:17:40 – 01:17:46:	It's not alien to the concept of a man owning another man, just as today when Jeff Bezos

01:17:46 – 01:17:48:	almost owns someone, he pays him something.

01:17:48 – 01:17:51:	It's not nearly enough.

01:17:51 – 01:17:54:	Owning a man is not per se sinful.

01:17:54 – 01:17:57:	Scripture never makes that case.

01:17:57 – 01:18:04:	And even in the one epistle that is directly dealing with a slave, there's no playing around

01:18:04 – 01:18:08:	that Onesimus was a bondservant or he was this or that.

01:18:08 – 01:18:09:	He was a slave.

01:18:09 – 01:18:10:	He was runaway property.

01:18:10 – 01:18:14:	He sinned against Philemon by stealing himself.

01:18:14 – 01:18:18:	And as Corey said, the punishment was death or disfigurement.

01:18:18 – 01:18:22:	Paul was saying, he was a useless slave to you, but now that he has become Christian,

01:18:22 – 01:18:24:	I'm getting some use out of him.

01:18:24 – 01:18:31:	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 – 01:18:35:	See, Paul was not asking for Onesimus' freedom.

01:18:35 – 01:18:40:	He was asking for the slave to righteousness that he had already become in Christ to be

01:18:40 – 01:18:46:	his sole vocation, so that he was no longer divided between his obligations to God and

01:18:46 – 01:18:51:	in serving Paul and whatever his master Philemon may have still required of him.

01:18:51 – 01:18:53:	It was transactional.

01:18:53 – 01:18:59:	It was for the sake of the church and in no way does it in any fashion condemn the institution

01:18:59 – 01:19:02:	of slavery itself by any means.

01:19:02 – 01:19:09:	There was far worse slavery that occurred in those days and Scripture remains silent

01:19:09 – 01:19:14:	except for saying, masters don't do horrible things to your slaves.

01:19:14 – 01:19:18:	That's the Christian approach, not abolition, but let's treat them well.

01:19:18 – 01:19:24:	I want to read briefly just because it's directly related to this from 1 Peter 2.

01:19:24 – 01:19:29:	Servants, and this is one case where the ESV is not butchering as I left servant here.

01:19:29 – 01:19:33:	It's using a different word, but basically it's the highest form of slave.

01:19:33 – 01:19:36:	Servant here basically means the house slave, so it's still not a free man.

01:19:36 – 01:19:39:	We're not talking about a butler in a tuxedo.

01:19:40 – 01:19:47:	We're not talking about Alfred in Batman.

01:19:47 – 01:19:49:	We're talking about someone who's owned by his master.

01:19:49 – 01:19:54:	Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle,

01:19:54 – 01:19:55:	but also to the unjust.

01:19:55 – 01:19:58:	For it is a gracious thing when mindful of God,

01:19:58 – 01:20:01:	one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly.

01:20:01 – 01:20:05:	For what credit is it if when you sin, you are beaten for it, you endure?

01:20:05 – 01:20:08:	But if when you do good and suffer for it, you endure?

01:20:08 – 01:20:10:	This is a gracious thing in the sight of God.

01:20:10 – 01:20:15:	For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you,

01:20:15 – 01:20:18:	leaving you an example so that you might follow in his steps.

01:20:18 – 01:20:21:	He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth.

01:20:21 – 01:20:24:	When he was reviled, he did not revile in return.

01:20:24 – 01:20:26:	When he suffered, he did not threaten,

01:20:26 – 01:20:30:	but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.

01:20:30 – 01:20:33:	He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree,

01:20:33 – 01:20:36:	that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

01:20:36 – 01:20:40:	By his wounds you have been healed, for you were straying like sheep,

01:20:40 – 01:20:43:	but now have been returned to the shepherd in oversee of your souls.

01:20:44 – 01:20:48:	The reason I read that whole passage, even though the second half

01:20:48 – 01:20:51:	doesn't have anything to do with slavery, is that it does.

01:20:51 – 01:20:52:	That's the gospel.

01:20:52 – 01:20:57:	Christ was a slave for the sake of our righteousness by imputing his to us.

01:20:59 – 01:21:02:	The act of sacrifice that God gave on the cross

01:21:03 – 01:21:05:	was an act of submission.

01:21:07 – 01:21:10:	When Christ is given as a model of slavery to slaves,

01:21:11 – 01:21:16:	and we say, ah, slavery is bad, how is that not a condemnation of Christ?

01:21:16 – 01:21:18:	That's why this is a gospel issue.

01:21:18 – 01:21:21:	That's why this is how Christians need to return to talking.

01:21:21 – 01:21:24:	If you were afraid to say that slavery is good,

01:21:25 – 01:21:27:	how do you deal with passages like this?

01:21:27 – 01:21:31:	How do you deal with the fact that when Paul is a slave,

01:21:31 – 01:21:35:	and Christ is described as suffering as an example to slaves,

01:21:37 – 01:21:41:	the only way a Christian faithfully deal with these passages

01:21:41 – 01:21:45:	is to set aside the enlightenment priors that condemn these things,

01:21:45 – 01:21:47:	and to embrace that which is holy,

01:21:47 – 01:21:51:	and then to condemn that which God condemns as he condemns it.

01:21:51 – 01:21:53:	God condemns cruelty.

01:21:53 – 01:21:55:	He condemns being merciless.

01:21:55 – 01:21:57:	He condemns being unjust and unfair.

01:21:58 – 01:22:03:	What he does not condemn is that slavery is, per se, any of those things.

01:22:03 – 01:22:05:	Slavery can be some or all of those things.

01:22:05 – 01:22:08:	Slavery can also be none of those things.

01:22:08 – 01:22:12:	And if and when slavery exists as a human institution,

01:22:12 – 01:22:16:	we are not permitted to say, well, God doesn't want that either.

01:22:16 – 01:22:19:	That is no longer speaking in God's name,

01:22:19 – 01:22:25:	and this sort of morality has become the norm among us and is truly destructive.

01:22:25 – 01:22:27:	Again, that's why stone choir exists.

01:22:27 – 01:22:31:	We're talking about these things that many pastors are deathly afraid to talk of,

01:22:31 – 01:22:32:	for good reason.

01:22:32 – 01:22:35:	There may be people in their parishes and their pews and their congregations

01:22:35 – 01:22:39:	who will revolt, who either attack them, try to get them fired,

01:22:39 – 01:22:43:	or just never come back, stop giving money like any matter,

01:22:43 – 01:22:46:	any number of bad things may happen socially,

01:22:46 – 01:22:51:	organizationally, when someone in the pews hears what God says about slavery.

01:22:52 – 01:22:54:	We don't have to deal with those problems immediately,

01:22:54 – 01:22:57:	so we're free to speak in these terms.

01:22:57 – 01:23:01:	But we need to get as a church back to the point that all Christians are speaking

01:23:01 – 01:23:03:	in the same terms that God uses.

01:23:03 – 01:23:06:	If you can't talk like God, you can't be godly.

01:23:07 – 01:23:13:	And so I think we'll close out this episode by refuting one salient argument,

01:23:14 – 01:23:17:	not sound but salient argument from the other side.

01:23:18 – 01:23:26:	And that is the hyper-focus on one Greek word in 1 Timothy 110.

01:23:27 – 01:23:31:	And the word is mistranslated in the ESV as enslavers.

01:23:32 – 01:23:36:	Now, it is worth noting first, this is a hapax legomenon.

01:23:36 – 01:23:40:	It appears once in Scripture, and that's right here.

01:23:41 – 01:23:45:	There are some other places where the equivalent concept appears,

01:23:45 – 01:23:51:	but it is obvious that it is the equivalent concept only if you know what the term means.

01:23:51 – 01:23:56:	And so in this case, to figure out what the term means,

01:23:56 – 01:24:01:	it is entirely proper to turn to extra biblical materials,

01:24:01 – 01:24:05:	because this word appears once again, appears one time in Scripture.

01:24:06 – 01:24:08:	The term is andropodistase.

01:24:09 – 01:24:12:	But I went ahead and looked this term up in various Greek writings.

01:24:13 – 01:24:17:	I looked it up in Plato, Polybius, and Philo, and the term means kidnapper.

01:24:19 – 01:24:27:	And it is worth noting that actually the Lutheran Study Bible gets this one absolutely correct.

01:24:27 – 01:24:32:	In the footnote for 1 Timothy 110, the Lutheran Study Bible,

01:24:32 – 01:24:35:	unlike the leadership of Synod right now,

01:24:36 – 01:24:42:	notes that this term actually means kidnappers involved in illegal slave trade.

01:24:42 – 01:24:44:	And that's absolutely what it means.

01:24:45 – 01:24:48:	It does not mean enslavers, it does not mean slave dealers,

01:24:49 – 01:24:54:	because obviously if Scripture permits slavery, slave dealing can't be a sin.

01:24:55 – 01:24:57:	That would be a wildly incoherent argument.

01:24:58 – 01:25:02:	And so what this is saying is you cannot set upon your neighbor in the dead of night,

01:25:03 – 01:25:05:	bind him and sell him into slavery,

01:25:05 – 01:25:08:	because that was something that happened in the ancient world.

01:25:09 – 01:25:11:	That is a sin, you are not permitted to do that.

01:25:11 – 01:25:15:	That is what is being banned here in 1 Timothy 110.

01:25:15 – 01:25:18:	And so when someone tries to make the argument that,

01:25:18 – 01:25:20:	well, Scripture says you can't be an enslaver,

01:25:20 – 01:25:23:	and so you can't have slavery because you can't have slave dealing,

01:25:24 – 01:25:27:	point out the actual sense of this term,

01:25:28 – 01:25:29:	and the fact that it appears once in Scripture,

01:25:30 – 01:25:35:	you cannot make an argument about a doctrine from Scripture,

01:25:35 – 01:25:40:	about a fact from Scripture that relies on a term that appears once.

01:25:41 – 01:25:46:	If that argument that you are making is contrary to the balance of Scripture,

01:25:46 – 01:25:48:	you know that obviously you are wrong.

01:25:48 – 01:25:50:	As stated earlier, Scripture does not contradict Scripture.

01:25:51 – 01:25:56:	So Scripture permits slavery, as we very clearly demonstrated it does in many places,

01:25:56 – 01:25:57:	does not condemn slavery.

01:25:58 – 01:26:01:	This one word, this Greek word that appears once,

01:26:01 – 01:26:05:	cannot possibly be an argument for condemning slavery qua slavery.

01:26:05 – 01:26:10:	It condemns kidnapping and selling into slavery in an improper way.

01:26:10 – 01:26:13:	This is not a condemnation of taking captives in war,

01:26:13 – 01:26:15:	that is permitted in the Old Testament.

01:26:15 – 01:26:19:	It is arguing against this one specific ancient practice

01:26:20 – 01:26:22:	that still does occur in some parts of the world,

01:26:23 – 01:26:25:	not as much of a problem in the Western world,

01:26:25 – 01:26:26:	but it still occurs in some places.

01:26:28 – 01:26:30:	That is what is mentioned here in 1 Timothy.

01:26:30 – 01:26:33:	And so that is how you respond to that particular argument

01:26:33 – 01:26:37:	that does unfortunately get raised by some who have

01:26:38 – 01:26:43:	will a mercenary approach to Scripture in order to seek the end they want.

01:26:44 – 01:26:46:	And that's exactly what we see when these questions come up.

01:26:46 – 01:26:49:	We've criticized repeatedly in past episodes,

01:26:50 – 01:26:52:	men will take modern morality,

01:26:52 – 01:26:54:	they will cherry pick one or two proof texts,

01:26:54 – 01:26:57:	and nullify the entire history of the Christian faith.

01:26:57 – 01:27:00:	The reason that this term only shows up once in Scripture

01:27:00 – 01:27:02:	is that it wasn't that common.

01:27:02 – 01:27:07:	In an environment where slavery of all kinds was universal.

01:27:07 – 01:27:11:	So on its face, the notion that what they are saying

01:27:11 – 01:27:15:	is the origin of all slavery condemns all slavery,

01:27:15 – 01:27:19:	just mathematically, it's a blatant lie.

01:27:19 – 01:27:21:	And that's the only response that's necessary to such a claim.

01:27:23 – 01:27:25:	I think to wrap up here, I just want to reiterate that

01:27:26 – 01:27:29:	this is a more important subject than some of the others.

01:27:29 – 01:27:31:	It's more important than the racism subject,

01:27:31 – 01:27:33:	which was also talking about a made-up sin,

01:27:33 – 01:27:35:	because this is a much more fundamental one

01:27:35 – 01:27:38:	in terms of the direct attack on the faith.

01:27:39 – 01:27:43:	As we said at the beginning, this could have been a 20-hour episode.

01:27:43 – 01:27:46:	We could have done a marathon just on the verses dealing with it.

01:27:46 – 01:27:48:	We barely scratched the surface,

01:27:48 – 01:27:51:	and we really rushed through dealing with the text we talked about,

01:27:51 – 01:27:53:	because we wanted to keep it under 90 minutes,

01:27:53 – 01:27:54:	which we're right at at this point.

01:27:54 – 01:27:55:	So I'm just going to say,

01:27:56 – 01:27:59:	there's no way for a Christian to read the Bible

01:27:59 – 01:28:01:	and come away thinking of the slavery sin.

01:28:01 – 01:28:02:	Full stop.

01:28:02 – 01:28:04:	If someone comes to you and says that slavery is a sin,

01:28:04 – 01:28:07:	either they haven't read the Bible or they despise it.

01:28:07 – 01:28:09:	Those are the only two options.

01:28:09 – 01:28:11:	And when it's a Christian who has a collar,

01:28:11 – 01:28:12:	you know they've read the Bible,

01:28:12 – 01:28:15:	which means that the only option is they despise it.

01:28:15 – 01:28:21:	And that is a crucial emergency for us facing all of our denominations today,

01:28:21 – 01:28:24:	because, again, we're importing this evil from the world.

01:28:24 – 01:28:25:	Stonkware exists to point out,

01:28:25 – 01:28:28:	hey, maybe we believe Scripture,

01:28:28 – 01:28:31:	and if our modern institutions disagree with it,

01:28:31 – 01:28:33:	we figure out what problem we need to solve there.

01:28:33 – 01:28:35:	But we begin and end in Scripture,

01:28:35 – 01:28:39:	because that is what God has given to us for the preservation of the faith.

01:28:39 – 01:28:42:	And if you want a one word, not a one word,

01:28:42 – 01:28:47:	but a one-line response to anyone who tells you that slavery is a sin,

01:28:49 – 01:28:51:	Jesus Christ is a slave master.

01:28:51 – 01:28:55:	And if you want to follow up,

01:28:55 – 01:28:59:	the thing that you want to hear from him when you get to the judgment room,

01:28:59 – 01:29:04:	when you get to the throne, is well done, good and faithful slave.

01:29:05 – 01:29:07:	I do want to mention one last thing.

01:29:07 – 01:29:08:	I forgot to mention this earlier.

01:29:08 – 01:29:10:	Lord is synonym with master.

01:29:11 – 01:29:14:	Every time you read Lord in Scripture,

01:29:14 – 01:29:18:	if you replace that in your head with master, it is a synonym.

01:29:18 – 01:29:22:	When you pray the Lord's prayer, you're praying the master's prayer.

01:29:22 – 01:29:24:	It means exactly the same thing.

01:29:24 – 01:29:25:	We are owned by God.

01:29:25 – 01:29:26:	We have a master.

01:29:27 – 01:29:29:	Just as unbelievers have a master,

01:29:29 – 01:29:31:	their master is Satan.

01:29:31 – 01:29:32:	Our master is Christ.

01:29:32 – 01:29:34:	Our master is God.

01:29:34 – 01:29:37:	So when you say Lord, Lord,

01:29:37 – 01:29:39:	and you mean it faithfully,

01:29:39 – 01:29:42:	you are saying master, master as someone who is above you.

01:29:42 – 01:29:46:	It's not, you know, we've criticized neighbors being this nebulous thing.

01:29:46 – 01:29:48:	Lord is not a nebulous thing.

01:29:48 – 01:29:51:	It is not just a cozy relationship.

01:29:51 – 01:29:53:	We have a loving relationship with God

01:29:53 – 01:29:56:	because we are adopted as sons of Christ,

01:29:56 – 01:29:58:	as sons of God through Christ's blood.

01:29:59 – 01:30:01:	However, Lord remains a master

01:30:01 – 01:30:07:	and that relationship is the reason for the loving relationship that we had.

01:30:07 – 01:30:09:	He owns us and he loves us.

01:30:09 – 01:30:11:	He could own us and hate us.

01:30:11 – 01:30:14:	And he hates our sin and he hates the evildoers

01:30:14 – 01:30:16:	who will not repent of their sin.

01:30:16 – 01:30:21:	He wishes simultaneous that they become believers through the gospel.

01:30:22 – 01:30:24:	If we cannot speak clearly in these terms,

01:30:24 – 01:30:28:	if we cannot call a Lord, Lord, any master, master,

01:30:28 – 01:30:29:	and realize that they're the same,

01:30:30 – 01:30:33:	we're losing sight of the God that we claim to confess.

01:30:33 – 01:30:35:	Because you can use all the words,

01:30:35 – 01:30:38:	you can quote the Bible passages,

01:30:38 – 01:30:40:	and you cannot believe in your heart.

01:30:40 – 01:30:42:	That's what we're facing in our churches.

01:30:42 – 01:30:44:	People who say the words, they mouth them.

01:30:45 – 01:30:46:	But when you say God is your master,

01:30:47 – 01:30:48:	they rebel and they say,

01:30:48 – 01:30:50:	I have no gods, I have no masters.

01:30:52 – 01:30:53:	It's one or the other.

01:30:54 – 01:30:57:	We all have a master and either it's sin in the devil

01:30:57 – 01:30:59:	or it is God in his righteousness.

01:30:59 – 01:31:01:	And as Christians, we are blessed to be able

01:31:01 – 01:31:03:	to continue to choose God's righteousness

01:31:03 – 01:31:06:	because that is a gift that comes solely from God,

01:31:06 – 01:31:09:	not through any merit or worthiness in ourselves.

01:31:09 – 01:31:10:	It is given to us freely

01:31:10 – 01:31:14:	and as our duty to share that gospel with others

01:31:14 – 01:31:17:	so that they too can become slaves to God's righteousness.