Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:05 All right. Good morning. My name is Michael Fueling. I'm the lead pastor here at the Village Church. We are in a series called When Skeptics Challenge the Bible, and we're gonna be teaching on four of the most significant cultural challenges to the goodness of God. And the Bible specifically, we're gonna be addressing is the Bible, anti-women is the Bible, Anti-science is the Bible pro genocide. And this morning we're gonna be answering the question, does the Bible promote slavery? Aren't you all so glad you are not me right now? <laugh>. So we, we come face to face with each of these challenges most often in the form of what we call cultural mantras. If you've been here for a while, I use this all the time, but let's define the phrase a cultural mantra. They are repeatable, sacred statements that feel true most often. They're like a big warm hug to your heart.
Speaker 1 00:01:11 And the design of a cultural mantra is that as you hear it, it suspends critical thinking and your heart just goes, of course. And so every culture, every space and time has these cultural mantras, but they're repeatable, meaning they are memorable and they're portable. So love is, love just feels good, it's memorable, it's portable, it's repeatable. Uh, they're also sacred, meaning they have cultural authority. Inherently, if you are in any culture and you disagree with their mantras, you subject yourselves to very possible loss socially, financially, or otherwise. And number three, they feel true, which means it must be true, right? But today, feelings are the new authority. Cultural mantra is they are the primary means by which bad ideas are propagated in societies. And so you and I, we have to be aware of them, and we try to identify as many of them as we possibly can so that when you hear them, your spitey sense, your theological radar as they go up and you say, That is a cultural mantra that was designed to suspend critical thinking.
Speaker 1 00:02:27 I'm actually going to challenge that thought and that idea, I'm not going to become a leming and just go, I, i cultural mantra. Here's some cultural mantras. We, we all know that the Bible supports slavery. Like you, you, you will hear this as if it's just a fact. And if you disagree with it, then well, you're in trouble. God commands genocide in the Bible like we all know, the God of the Bible is a moral monster because he does this, the, the Bible's anti-science, like it's, it's actually just stated as a fact. The Bible's oppressive to women. We all know this. Look what it's done over generations and millennia. This is fundamentally religion and the Bible, patriarch, et cetera, right? They're just statements that are thrown out there as if they are fact. Or we have three big outcomes for the series. Number one, to strip cultural mantras of their power.
Speaker 1 00:03:18 Uh, uh, I I would just love for you to hear them, for them to become powerless over your mind and your heart, and for you to engage your mind so that they might not control your doctrine. Number two, to equip you with simple biblical responses that undermine cultural mantras, particularly the ones that are not true. And then really, here's the big goal. I want to increase your confidence in God and his word. I want, I want you to think about God when you open up the Bible to have utmost confidence that our God is could and he is holy, and that you shouldn't be afraid to deal with any single subject in the Bible. So from the very beginning of time, Satan has had a ploy to under man and undermine the heart and the mind of God. So if you have a Bible, open up to Genesis chapter three.
Speaker 1 00:04:08 We're gonna be in verse one. I'll put it on the screen as well. And I want you to watch, I want you to just watch Satan's skill at undermining God, his goodness and his word. Genesis three, one, He, Satan said to the woman, Did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? Okay, we know this. Did God say that? No, he didn't. In fact, there was one tree, one singular tree of how many? We don't know one singular tree, Don't eat from this tree. But you'll notice there are some questions that are designed to trick you. They're, they're designed in such a way to even just plant a little tiny subconscious seed of doubt in your heart. Like here, here are examples of some of these questions. So how can God be good if there is evil in the world?
Speaker 1 00:05:10 And he could have stopped it, but he didn't like, Okay, it's a, it's a good question. But do you, do you hear how even the design of the question it's structured to make you beyond the defensive? And now somehow God is a moral monster? The implication puts God in a bad foot. If God was good, wouldn't he want you to be happy? Like, do you hear the trick in the question? Now you're like having to defend God, like God's all of a sudden like a bad guy, Okay, Eve, if God was good, wouldn't he want you to enjoy all of creation? Why is he, why is he holding back something so good from you? Verse two, the woman said, at the serpent, We may eat of the fruit, of the fruit of the trees in the garden. True, But God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden.
Speaker 1 00:06:02 True. Neither shall you touch itest you dot. Is that true? God never said a word about touching the tree. And in this moment, Satan is a master and skillful mis interpreter and exploiter of God's word. In this moment, he has her, she's in the trap. Satan knows God never said that. He knows God is good, and he knows what exactly what's gonna happen to this woman if she eats this fruit. He says this in verse four, You will not surely die for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be open to you, will be like God knowing good and evil. Now, here's the deal. Did they die when they ate the fruit immediately? No. Were the eyes of their hearts open? Did they know good and evil immediately? Yes. Was what he said actually to a degree truthful, 100%. Did the partaking of that tree corrupt everything they know in their life and ruin everything for the rest of all of us?
Speaker 1 00:07:13 Absolutely truthful, things can be set out of context in a way that tricks you. And this is where we need to know the schemes of the evil one and how he misinterprets and misapplies God's word. So there is a warning here for every single one of us, the moment you doubt God's word, we are in trouble. The moment we step back and say, I, I don't, I don't know if he's good, I don't know if he's trustworthy. I don't know. This is an in and you are now vulnerable for the very, very masterful traps of the evil one intellectually and in your heart. And, and so this is one of the reasons we wanna deal with really difficult subjects. So when they come up, which they will, we don't want you for a moment to doubt the goodness and the kindness of God. In fact, what we wanna do is we wanna build a muscle in you that every time you open the word of God and you dig into a really difficult subject culturally, and that you see, wow, actually the way culture misrepresented, this was actually abusive.
Speaker 1 00:08:17 It was actually unfair to the human and the divine authors. I actually, I'm gonna be a little more skeptical. Next time somebody opens up the word of God and tries to paint God as a moral monster, or the next time somebody says, Well, look what these religious people did, so then therefore their God must be terrible. Do you want anybody judging the goodness, holiness, and righteousness of our God by your life? No way. And so I want you to be able to pull back and just say, Listen, before I start to doubt God's goodness, when these cultural things come up, we wanna build the muscle in you, in your hearts and your minds that I know when I go to the Bible, I don't have to make it say anything. It doesn't say in its context over and over again. God will be proven to be good and holy and right despite the ridiculous behavior and interpretations of his people or culture.
Speaker 1 00:09:14 All right, Does the Bible actually promote slavery? This will be the uh, um, subject for the rest of this morning. It's actually a trick question. It's sort of like me asking you. So when you beat your child, did you beat your child yesterday morning or yesterday afternoon? And you're like, What? Like it's a, it's a question that implies guilt. It's a question that's implied, that's designed to trick you. It's actually not a fair question. And so there are really two big mistakes that people make when they're interpreting the Bible, particularly on this issue. And it's not just this issue, but for this morning it applies here. The first common mistake that people make is they're projecting modern definitions onto ancient words. Well, let me illustrate. I want you to imagine you are fast forwarded 500 years into the future at the way things are going.
Speaker 1 00:10:15 Do you think it's gonna be better or worse? I like it. <laugh>, after a series of oppressive laws, employers have been given complete legal protection and authority of a brand new class of citizens called employees. Employees are granted legal power. Employers are granted legal power to withhold wages at will abuse employees without recourse, transfer employees to other states, separating families and are not even responsible for employee deaths on the job. The word work and has become synonymous with abuse. Everybody dreams of never having to work again. Work is a curse for every employee in this new dystopian future. There are those who do nothing, employers, and there are those who do everything, employees. And those born into the employee class, they're cursed. Now, one day you go to future 500 year in the Future Church. How's the music? By the way, the pastor reads these passages from the New Testament. He opens up to Ephesians chapter four, verse 28, and he says, and it says this, The Apostle Paul commands you to work hard doing honest work. And every time the word work comes up, what happens in the congregation?
Speaker 1 00:11:51 Shivers work hard doing honest work with your hands so that you may have something to share with anyone in need. And then he turns to second Al along in chapter three, verse 10, He says this, We would give you this command. This is the Apostle Paul. If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. Okay? Is it fair for future 500 years in the future church to take this dystopian definition of work and impose it on the biblical text written 2,500 years earlier? Of course not. Is this what the apostle Paul meant when he used this word? Of course not. But there are certain words because of the cultural moment, they take on an entirely new meaning in the hearts and minds of people that you can't even say the word without transferring to that word, all of your current cultural notions of the word.
Speaker 1 00:12:47 And it's the same thing with the word slavery. When you open up the Bible and you see the Bible, particularly, we're gonna focus on the Old Testament because that's where most of the accusations from skeptics come from. And you look at that word, it is almost impossible in our cultural moment to not take the utter pure evils of modern slavery and transfer it to that word so that when we read it, it is almost impossible for us to suspend our objectivity and just allow the word to mean what it meant back in the day. And, and thankfully, and I'll just give you a little teaser, Old Testament law, forbade mostly punishable by death, almost every notion of modern slavery. And so already we know whatever the Bible means, we have to be really, really careful about taking our modern definitions of words. By the way, it's not just slavery.
Speaker 1 00:13:41 It is word after word after word after word. In the New Testament, particularly the word Jesus, we take all of these modern notions of the word and transfer it to the text. And we have to be careful all the time to let the text itself to empathize with the human and the divine author in their context, unless we project and transfer things God never intended or meant. Uh, the second common mistake when addressing slavery in the Bible is this, that we believe that somehow Old Testament law created by God was designed to create utopia. If everybody just followed the laws, it would be a perfect, wonderful world. And we have to understand this about Old Testament law because we're gonna spend most of our time this morning. In Old Testament law, Old Testament law was not created to create designed utopia. It was given to restrain humanity from sin.
Speaker 1 00:14:47 When God created the nation of Israel, roughly 2000 BC through the man Abram, this nation had to survive 2000 years for the Messiah to be born. This is one of the major purposes that God even designed the nation of Israel so that the offspring of Eve and then Abram, who became Abraham, would be the savior, the world, and crushed the head of the serpent. For 2000 years, this nation needed to be preserved. Most tribes don't. Last a century, this tribe of people needed to last two millenniums so that this Messiah could be born. The goal of Old Testament law was not to create U tape utopian society, but to preserve and mitigate evil so this nation could survive so that the Messiah could be born. Skeptics have a tendency, You gotta know this when you're talking. They have a tendency to demand that God created or wanted or should have created utopian society through Old Testament law.
Speaker 1 00:15:50 That was never the design, it was never the intention. And if you take that expectation and you put it onto Old Testament law, you are gonna be very, very disappointed. And, and the Old Testament law, it did explicitly forbid some forms of evil, for example, theft, adultery, murder, and then there were other forms of evil or sin or unrighteousness that it, it ended up regulating, for example, debt, divorce, poverty, slavery. And these are all in these categories of things that are not ideal in a fallen world. But in God's divine economy, these are the, these are the categories that he saw to, to regulate. But again, even as you hear the word, we have to say this over and over again, almost 100% of what we understand to be modern slavery was made illegal and punishable by death in the Old Testament law. So again, even as I say the word, are you tempted not to take modern notions of slavery and import it to the Old Testament word?
Speaker 1 00:16:53 It's gonna be a discipline throughout this entire message and for the rest of your life, whenever you open the Old Testament and you read it to suspend modern notions and let the Bible speak for itself. All right, let's get biblical about Old the Old Testament and slavery. Number one, like many sinful things, God's law regulated. This might be a new word for some indentured servitude and slavery in Israel. When you open up your Old Testament and you see the word slave most often it is referring to indentured servitude. What is indentured servitude? Indentured servitude is an Old Testament legal process by which someone might pay off debt through work with a designated period of time. And the word in your English bibles for this is slave. Now, even as I put that definition up, does that resemble modern evil slave trades? No, it's, it's actually already you're saying there's quite a bit of difference in the definitions of the word.
Speaker 1 00:18:01 The contract an indentured servant would enter into was always entered into voluntarily. And it required, I need you to catch this and I need you to suspend home notions of modern vocabulary. It required the person in debt to become temporary property of the debtor. And this was for everyone's protection in an ancient world. So any Jew who went into debt with another Jew did this. Knowing indentured servitude would likely or possibly be the outcome. So when you go buy a home and you take out a mortgage, who owns the home Trick question, isn't it? You do, They do partially depends how far into the mortgage you are. And if you don't pay it off, there are stipulations in the contract. They can actually take it from you, can they not? And so there are legal, we'll say practices that when you enter into contracts, you enter into this willingly knowing that if you don't fulfill your end of the bargain, there will be consequences.
Speaker 1 00:19:13 And in the ancient world, your word, your oath, a contract, they are life and death issues. Few things in this culture are as sacred as your oath, as your word, as your contract, as your covenant. And when these are broken, when treaties are violated, lots of people die. And so there are all of these legal mechanisms in the ancient Near East that are just so far removed from the way we think about life in reality that these are things that they did for the sake of survival. Look at Leviticus chapter 25 with me, verse 39. He says, If your brother becomes poor beside you and sells himself to you, you shall not make him serve as a slave. What's interesting is what did this guy, what was he actually called? He was called a slave. And in all the countries around Israel, slaves were treated what terribly.
Speaker 1 00:20:14 And so even though they're called in their context a slave, he's saying to them, You are not allowed to treat them the way the other nations treat them. Slavery was going to be completely redefined in the nation of Israel. He says this in verse 40, He shall not be with you as a hired worker and as a he shall be with you as a hired worker and as a sojourner, he shall serve with you until the year of Jubilee. Then he should go out from you, he and his children with him and go back to his own clan and return to the possession of his fathers. It's interesting, even how you see the word possession clans have this ownership culturally over people of their own clans. It's an interesting way the word is used that we don't use this word nowadays. You'll see the word possession come up a couple times and not in the demonic sense of possession, but in ownership and, and it's interesting, we do have to learn again and again to suspend current notions of these words and allow the culture of the ancient near East to define them for us.
Speaker 1 00:21:15 Now you need to know this. The Old Testament had its own like social safety net put in place to prevent a person from ever becoming a slave in the first place. There were two really important things that would happen. Number one is that if you were a Jew, you were, it was illegal for you to charge interest to another Jew, meaning you could not extort them. Some of you know the experience personally. You get into credit card debt and it's 18 to 33% interest rates and you can't even pay off the interest, let alone the principle. You understand how this, how this works. And so they made this illegal so that debt could be paid off quickly so that people didn't fall into a debt spiral. So that poverty did not last from generation to generation, that that was number one. Number two, there was also an institution, a person from every tribe and clan called the kinsman redeemer who had personal responsibility to make sure that somebody within their clan, that they never found themselves in this situation.
Speaker 1 00:22:13 And their job was to make sure that a person's debt was paid off before they could ever become an indentured servant. Now think about this. What series of decisions might a Jewish person have made for them to actually end up becoming a slave or an indentured servant? Here's one. Number one, they've made a series of decisions that have left them not just broke, but in debt specifically in large sums to another person that requires likely years to pay off. They are relationally divided and broken from their immediate family and their clan so that no kinsman redeemer can come in and make this right.
Speaker 1 00:22:57 I want you to think about the story of the prodigal son through this lens. You have this person who had no need but found himself spending everything he had going in debt, disconnected from his clan, his family, and then he realizes it's better than for me to go back home and be a servant to my father. So when you see the word slave in the Old Testament, typically almost always, not exclusively, but almost always, this is what it's referring to. This is a second point though. God's law, Old Testament law, made modern notions of slavery 100% illegal. Here's a couple illustrations. First, the Old Testament law made illegal kidnapping. Exodus 21, 16. Whoever steals a man and sells him you, you have to understand like, like you're not allowed to steal or like this is, this is a very bad process. The emphasis here is on the stealing.
Speaker 1 00:23:49 And anyone found in possession of him shall be put to death. Uh, how Christian slave traders read the Bible and justify what they did is insane to me. Second Old Testament law made illegal abuse in all forms. Exodus chapter 21, verse 20, When a man strikes this slave again, willing and dentured servant, male or female with a rod, and the slave dies under his hand, he should be avenged, he's gonna be killed. But if the slave survives a day or two, he's not to be avenged for the slave is his money. Now, does this drive you nuts when you read that sentence, the money is the debt, the value is the debt that that indentured servant owes because he borrowed it and didn't pay it back interest free, by the way. So objectively, if you became an indentured servant, there is value to you and the value is what you went into debt to the person you borrowed money from.
Speaker 1 00:24:42 Later in Exodus 21, it says this, When a man strikes the eye of his slave, male or female and destroys it, he should let the slave go because of the eye. If he knocks out the tooth of his slave, male or female, he should let the slave go because of his tooth. The principle here, if you are cynical, is, Oh look, you can beat them, but just don't make sure they lose an eye or a tooth. That is not the principle of God's law. When you take all of the values and all the teaching around how people are to be treated, here's the principle, don't touch them. Cuz if you do, they're gonna be set free. You lose it, all the money they owe you, you're not gonna get. And if they die and you start treating people like the nations, do you get nothing?
Speaker 1 00:25:29 These laws were not designed to permit abuse of the people who were owed money. They were designed to protect the people who were indentured servants in these contexts. Third, the Old Testament law made a legal resus subjecting abuse victims back to their abusive owners. Deuteronomy 23 says this, You shall not give up to his master, a slave, indentured servant or otherwise who is escaped from his master. You. He shall dwell with you in your midst, in the place that he shall choose within one of your towns. Wherever it suits him, you shall not wrong him. What's interesting is that people from foreign nations, slaves were abused and treated like dirt. And where did they look to run to find freedom? They would run to the nation of Israel to find freedom. And if a foreigner shows up, you don't send them back. And even within the nation of Israel, if there is an indentured servant who runs away because they're being treated like dirt by law, you are not allowed to send them back.
Speaker 1 00:26:37 In fact, you are by law to create a space for them within your clan. So they are protected from that. This is subverting the entire notion of slavery around the nation of Israel and in the nation of Israel. This whole system would be structured and set up very different. So God's laws around slavery, indentured servitude, whatever you wanna call it, they are always designed to protect the most vulnerable in society, particularly the most vulnerable are the poor are those in debt? It's women and it is children and especially another subclass of women widows who have no husband to protect them whatsoever. It is unbelievable the amount of real estate. Old Testament law devotes to the protection of the powerless from the powerful. And if you read somehow Old Testament law through the lens of the powerful trying to retain power, you will miss the heartbeat of what God is structuring and setting up an Old Testament law.
Speaker 1 00:27:44 If you understand the heart of God through all of these laws, it's to be the first nation in human history that actually seeks to legally give power to the powerless that seeks to protect them from violence and harm and abuse and extortion and separation from their families and kidnapping. The list goes on and on. You'll be missing the entire point of what God is doing if you don't see the goodness of God and being the first nation and the first set of laws ever to protect the dignity of the poor. If you hear, I want you to hear me. If you have a value for protecting the least and the poor, the only reason you have it is because of Old Testament law. No other nation in history over millennia ever came up with a law like this. If it is infused into your soul culturally, it is the residue of a Judeo-Christian framework everywhere in the world where you see this kind of sensitivity and tenderness and legal protection to the least.
Speaker 1 00:28:56 It only exists because Yahweh through the nation of Israel, instituted in entirely new, subversive different kind of set laws that in a vi, very violent and dangerous ancient world, set out these laws to protect people who had no power, no ability to protect themselves. These were dangerous times. There was not roads in technology like we understand people were killed on a regular basis and the weak were extorted consistently. But in the nation of Israel, within the boundaries of this place, this was a place where the weak and the poor and those in debt and those enslaved would find dignity and refuge. If you miss that lens, if you approach this from the cynic skeptical perspective, you're gonna miss what God was doing, not just here, but the reverberation all throughout history, even today and what you experienced. Now this in mind, I wanna go to the most challenging aspect of Old Testament slavery.
Speaker 1 00:29:57 I don't think it's challenging textually like in context, but it's challenging for modern ears to suspend our modern vocabulary into allow the text to say what it meant in its time. Old Testament law severely regulated purchasing foreign slaves in Israel. I want you to notice, I want you to notice this Old Testament law made it legal to purchase and bring foreign slaves to Israel. And just like the indentured servant, do you know what the word the Bible uses for them? Slaves. It's really annoying how this word can apply to so many different classes of people, if you will. You know what I'm saying? Most of the time you see the word slave, it's referring to indentured servants, Israelites, Jews living in Israel. But there is another class of people and it's really important to know this. So all of the above rules for indentured servants, even more for sojourners, apply to this class of people as they are brought into the nation of Israel.
Speaker 1 00:31:08 And so if you do not understand the, the legal protection over this class of people, you will not understand why God permitted this practice. So there, there are two kinds of foreign slaves in Israel. Here's the first kind. Uh, they're the ones who lived in other countries and they wanted to live in Israel. They wanted to leave the evil of the land they were in. They heard about the goodness of the nation of Israel and they wanted to live there. And under Jewish law, you could not own land unless you were a Jew. And so the only way for them to legally be in the nation of Israel, raise their family, get a job, is to become a quote unquote slave. Again, you have to suspend at this moment again, all notions of modern slavery because there was an entire class of people who left their countries willingly came and they found legal protection by becoming a slave to a Jewish person who owned land.
Speaker 1 00:32:16 Many of them owned their own businesses, they increased in unbelievable wealth. They were loved and beloved, they would play parts in in Jewish society, they obeyed Jewish law. That was the first group of people. The second group of foreign slaves in Israel were those who were already enslaved by other nations, and then Israel was permitted to bring them in to purchase them and then bring them into the land of Israel. And if you were a foreign slave, this was like winning the jackpot because by law you were no longer allowed to be separated from your family, abused, treated like dirt, like all the nations around Israel did. But you could actually make money. You could create generational wealth, like these are actual real possibilities. For the first time in your entire life, every nation treated people like dirt, particularly slaves except for this class when they were brought into Israel, they were unlike any other nation in the entire world treated with dignity.
Speaker 1 00:33:20 So in Israel, things were just fundamentally different by law. And I wanna reiterate this, so they say, so we're clear, This is Old Testament law. This is a different time, different setting. This is a law we're not under anymore, thankfully. But Old Testament law, the ownership of persons was always for two reasons. And again, if you miss this, you're not going to interpret Old Testament law as it pertains to this accurately. Number one, it is for the protection of the owned in a violent world. In the ancient world, there were two ways to be protected. Number one, you were a man. Number two, you were owned by a man. Again, suspend modern notions of this, they don't apply. The only way for you to be protected was under this category. And you wanted to find somebody who was an Israelite to provide this level of legal and familial protection over you.
Speaker 1 00:34:24 Let's just be honest, If if you saw someone, a child being abused, would you seek legal adoption? And the answer is yes. And and here's the interesting reality about this whole world, because for some of us, we, we get really uncomfortable. We actually have a similar experience. Almost all of you in the room have gone through it where you have been functionally legal property of somebody else. It's called, there's a legal category for this. You ready for it? It's called being a parent. And as a parent, you have legal authority and responsibility. Now, we rightly don't use the word ownership and property because it has connotations of evil in the history of our country. So we do not use those words because they are loaded terms. But a mom and a dad understand that we have legal rights and protections of our children. In fact, some parents, rightly so, are up in arms because the government wants to restrict our rights over our children and make decisions on behalf of us for them, right?
Speaker 1 00:35:34 And this drives us nuts because intuitively we understand this. I am legally, spiritually and personally responsible for the welfare of my children because they are weak, because they're unable to protect themselves. We understand intuitively how all of this works. And so when you think about adoption, you see somebody, and if you saw somebody who was abused and taken advantage of, would you not go spend the money to transfer, transfer legal responsibility from that child's abusive parents into your own name? Would you not? And would this not be considered a great mercy and kindness to do this? This is, this is where thinking people need to be honest. Our issue has never been with the legal ownership or responsibility of persons. That is not it. Our issue is we recoil at abuse as we should. We recoil at evil as we should. And so what you understand is any culture that is built on any semblance of morality always provides legal protections under someone else's name for the most vulnerable and the most weak in that society.
Speaker 1 00:36:48 Always. When, when you are sick, you sign legal rights and responsibility over your future when you can't make decision for yourself. This is ethical and moral. What we recoil against is not the principle, but the abuse of it throughout history, the exploitation of people, the stealing of rights, the treating of anybody, woman, child or otherwise as utter dirt and not with the utmost dignity made in the image of God that they deserve. And so I think when we understand Hebrews slavery, purchasing people from other nations and bringing them in process, this more through the lens of adoption than you would through modern evil slave trades that we're all familiar with in Israel. Ownership of people is always for two reasons. Number one, the protection of the owned in a violent world. Number two, reasonable and respectful accountability for debt payoff. We have a welfare state.
Speaker 1 00:37:47 They have a welfare state. Their welfare state was don't charge interest. Leave the corners of your field, um, unharvested so that the poor can eat and a kinsman redeemer so that your family pays off your debts. So you don't ever have to go to another clan to have your debts paid off. The the whole system was familial and tribal by nature. Again, very different world than what we live in, right? But here, here's what we could say. Like as a church, we would apply maybe similar principles. Like if there's a major problem, you go to your family first and you say, Before something bad happens, we wanna take care of you here. And then you bring in your spiritual family, your clan, if you will. And, and we have all of these mechanisms in place to prevent catastrophe happening in a person's life. And, and Old Testament law had the same thing, but in a very, very different context.
Speaker 1 00:38:32 All right, So in light of all this, let's look at at the most difficult passage, then we'll do some, So what's, And then you can go eat lunch. <laugh> the most challenging passage, Leviticus 25. Now that you have context, you don't have to transfer modern notions of slavery. You can actually interpret this in light of the heart and the goodness and the kindness of God. He says, you may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you in their clans that are with you, who have been born in your land. And they may be your property. Suspend notions of modern property of humans and modern slave trade to be someone's property is to provide protection for them.
Speaker 1 00:39:22 Let me translate what God's saying. You can purchase foreign slaves being abused in other nations, but only, and we need to catch the caveat here in this, if they bring them into your nation, But once you do, sojourners are coming through and they have slaves, right? And you see what's happening. If they're in your nation, you can set them free. Once you do, you're responsible for them. All the other indentured servant laws, sojourner laws, slavery laws, I've read and apply, you are now responsible to ensure they have an incredible life and future as they live in our land. You may never abandon them. You are required to protect them from generation to generation. Look what happens next. You may beque them or give them to your sons after you to inherit as a possession forever, ever. If you read modern slavery into that, you recoil and rightly slow.
Speaker 1 00:40:22 But if you understand the abandonment of a non-Jewish slave is to literally give him over to his death and this culture, you understand that this is actually generational protection for this person and their family and their kids. It's all about your lens. If God is a moral monster, you will find every reason to take modern notions and vocabulary, transfer them to this text and accuse God. But if you will allow the word of God in its cultural context to speak, you will see that our God is the first law creator to ever institute a law that protected the dignity and the image of God and the sanctity for the poor, the vulnerable and the oppressed.
Speaker 1 00:41:14 First Corinthians, our first, our first Chronicles chapter two. This is a really interesting text. This is one of those verses that like you just kinda like read by it and then it's done. It says, Now, Shon, a Jew had no sons, only daughters. Butson had an Egyptian slave whose name is Jarrah. So Shon gave his daughter in marriage to jarrah his slave, and she bore him Atti. It was interesting, the foreign slave was allowed to marry his daughter. And it even appears this foreign slave was given a pathway to full Jewish citizenship, responsible for all of Shan's assets, family, and generations like this is a very different way of understanding how slavery worked. If you're wondering if the New Testament supports this, it does not. There's an entire book written to a Christian who owns a slave saying he's coming back to you, set him free in the name of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1 00:42:04 And it is a very compelling message. Like, if you don't, you are in trouble. And first Timothy Paul writes to Timothy and he says this, and verse chapter one, verse nine, He says, Understanding this, the law is not laid down for the just, but for the lawless and the disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and for the profane. And who is the category of people He's talking about? Now, this is in a first century Roman context. Could we just agree first century Roman slavery was evil, pure evil. Absolutely. He says, For those who strike their fathers and mothers murderers, the sexually immoral men who practice homosexuality and what's the next word in slaves like the discussion should be over at that point. The the people of God have no permission to engage in any kind of human chattel system. In fact, the people of God, wherever you find us, we should be upholding the dignity, the protection of every single person.
Speaker 1 00:43:03 No matter what culture we find ourselves in, we are to be people who raise up the voice of the poor and the oppressed and give them dignity and value always. So what? Number one, Never be afraid of what you're going to find when you research difficult questions. Will it require work? Yes. Don't ever be afraid. God will be proven good, just and true when you interpret the word of God in its context. Number two, you kill superiority before your superiority oppresses others. Why does the Old Testament spent so much real estate on laws protecting those in debt? Women, children, foreigners, sojourners, dentured, servants, slaves, So much real estate, because God knows the heart, the unrestrained heart, all of us is imply, is inclined to superiority. I am better than you. And superiority always gives us the freedom to treat others like dirt. Has anybody ever treated you like dirt?
Speaker 1 00:44:24 It's because they think they're better than you. And in the people of God, there is no superiority. We are not better or worse than someone else. In fact, there's this series of commands in the New Testament that I, I love there. It's about partiality. The leaders of the church don't show partiality because someone's a certain skin color or they have a certain amount of money or political power or whatever. We treat all people equally, always all the time because that is what God says to do. We don't give people special treatment because they provide special things or because they look a certain way amongst God's. People all are to be treated equally. What's interesting, even in the church, because they were Christians who were slaves and they were owned by Roman citizens, they'd come to Christ and they'd go to church. And Paul says in Galatians three, Listen amongst us, we don't treat people differently because they're Jew or Greek or because they're slave or free or a male or female.
Speaker 1 00:45:21 You're one in Jesus. When you come into this room, people don't get special treatment because of their class or status. You all get treated the same. Partiality is something we kill. Finally, number three, become a willing slave to Jesus by faith. I find this interesting. The subtext of much of the Bible's language about you and me trusting in Christ is indentured servitude. And, and, and here's, here's kind of this, You know, we always say the law at the end of the day, it's a big fat arrow that points to Jesus. Even the systems and structures that they make are to draw our hearts to Christ. And because of your sin and my sin, we are an unbelievable debt to God. And there is nobody, there is nobody in our family that has the ability to pay off the debt. We cannot pay off our sin debt.
Speaker 1 00:46:14 And yet Jesus is our kinsman redeemer who pays off our sin, debt by his blood in our place. Jesus gives anybody willing to come to him the privilege of having their sin paid off and being adopted into his family. Jesus is our brother and our savior reconciling us. The Father and any indentured servant who comes into the house of God, the Father is adopted and treated as a son. He to all of the inheritance of what is his that is mind numbing. And so it's interesting, this entire dialogue about slavery, one of the reasons it's so important because there is a gospel principle here, which is that we are in debt and we need a redeemer. And Jesus is the only one. And so how weird would it be if you're here today and you have never trusted in Christ, and some pastor preaches a sermon on slavery and shares the gospel, and for the first time you realize you are a slave to your sin.
Speaker 1 00:47:18 And God is here to set you free through faith in Jesus Christ. And so the free gift of salvation is for you. It is for anybody who is willing to acknowledge that they are in debt and they are willing to come home and let their kinsmen redeemer Jesus, pay the price for their sins and be adopted back into the family of God the Father. Like what a gift. And so if you're here today and you have never made the decision, I wanna ask you a question. Do you believe that you're a sinner and that you are in debt to God? Do you believe that Jesus Christ died in the cross of your sins and was raised again from the dead and he can pay off your debt? Do do you believe that? That you are never gonna be saved by being good enough, by the way, Like nobody could ever be good enough?
Speaker 1 00:48:02 Like this is not the point. Do you believe that you could never be good enough to earn your salvation? That's how much debt you have. Sin. Debt. And if you believe that, all you have to do is ask God to forgive you of your sins, Tell him you believe in him. Ask him to save you. And if you've never made that decision, I wanna give you an opportunity to do that now. I'm gonna pray for all of us. We're gonna celebrate communion and, and worship one with one last pal together. But I wanna encourage you today, would you trust in Christ? Would you become a slave, an indentured servant to the only good kind master? Would you be transferred out of the domain of darkness under the legal protection of Jesus Christ? Let's pray together. Father, I love you. I'm thankful for your word. I'm thank.
Speaker 1 00:48:47 I'm just thankful that there, every time we dig in, you just become better. You become more holy, you become more of a genius. And we just, we just confess, it's really hard to lay aside modern vocabulary and let your words speak. But would you, by the power of your Holy Spirit, help us? Would you also not allow us to be enslaved to cultural mantras? Lord, may our hearts just go, Mm, I think maybe God's better than that. Would you protect our minds and our hearts? And Lord, as we celebrate communion now, I pray you would draw our hearts and our minds to unbelievable gratitude that you have set us free from the evil, tyrannical slave, master of sin, Satan, Death and Hell, we love you. Thank you for Christ in the gospel. We pray all this and celebrate in Jesus name. Amen. Amen.
