WEBVTT 00:00:37.120 --> 00:00:39.440 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.440 --> 00:00:40.480 I am Corey J. 00:00:40.480 --> 00:00:42.800 Mahler. And I'm Wo. 00:00:43.280 --> 00:00:47.280 Today's episode of Stone Choir is going to be discussing the made-up 00:00:47.520 --> 00:00:48.880 sin of slavery. 00:00:48.880 --> 00:00:51.360 As we did a couple weeks ago, one about racism. 00:00:51.360 --> 00:00:55.200 We're g now going to touching on another extremely hot topic. 00:00:55.200 --> 00:00:57.520 Uh this is not a debt issue. 00:00:57.520 --> 00:01:02.160 Slavery is something that although it has been eliminated in the West, 00:01:02.160 --> 00:01:04.560 it still exists in other parts of the world. 00:01:04.560 --> 00:01:08.880 But the reason that it's still controversial is that it is fundamentally 00:01:08.880 --> 00:01:12.480 rooted in much of the gospel message itself. 00:01:12.480 --> 00:01:16.080 So the theme that we're going to present today is not only 00:01:16.080 --> 00:01:20.080 is slavery itself not a sin per se, but in fact you 00:01:20.080 --> 00:01:25.200 can't actually understand scripture if you do not accept slavery qua slavery. 00:01:25.200 --> 00:01:27.120 Uh before we get into the meat of this I wanted to 00:01:27.120 --> 00:01:30.320 issue two brief corrections from last week's episode. 00:01:30.320 --> 00:01:34.800 Um one the last two episodes ran about five hours combined. 00:01:34.800 --> 00:01:37.520 That's longer than we want these to be. 00:01:37.520 --> 00:01:40.480 In both cases we were working line by line through things that 00:01:40.480 --> 00:01:42.800 the Missouri Senate Corporation had issued. 00:01:42.800 --> 00:01:46.480 So we really didn't have quite the editorial control over what we 00:01:46.480 --> 00:01:47.440 had to discuss. 00:01:47.440 --> 00:01:49.520 We do have that control today, so we're going to keep this 00:01:49.520 --> 00:01:51.920 under 90 minutes, even if it means we have to cut our 00:01:51.920 --> 00:01:52.720 own microphones. 00:01:52.720 --> 00:01:55.200 So I'm not sure exactly how long this will be, but I 00:01:55.200 --> 00:01:58.320 promise you it will be a regular length episode. 00:01:58.320 --> 00:02:01.120 As I was listening again to last week's episode, I heard myself 00:02:01.120 --> 00:02:03.840 say something that really rubbed me the wrong way, so I'm sure 00:02:03.840 --> 00:02:05.760 it bugged some of you, and so I'd like to issue a 00:02:05.760 --> 00:02:06.880 correction of what I said. 00:02:06.880 --> 00:02:09.200 I mentioned that I had gone hunting with my dad and I 00:02:09.360 --> 00:02:12.000 said I didn't really like it and I said something about clover 00:02:12.080 --> 00:02:14.320 and bees and when I was listening I thought man that guy 00:02:14.320 --> 00:02:16.400 sounds like a complete hippie tree hugger. 00:02:16.400 --> 00:02:17.280 That is not me. 00:02:17.280 --> 00:02:19.840 So I want to clarify for the record in honor of my 00:02:19.840 --> 00:02:22.800 father and all of my ancestors and my and mighty hunters like 00:02:22.800 --> 00:02:26.640 Nimrod, I do not think that hunting is a moral wrong. 00:02:26.640 --> 00:02:28.880 I think that hunting is a great thing. 00:02:28.880 --> 00:02:33.200 As apex predators, as the pinnacle of creation, man in many places 00:02:33.360 --> 00:02:37.600 must hunt simply because we have displaced the other apex predators. 00:02:37.600 --> 00:02:40.080 So I have no problems with hunting. 00:02:40.080 --> 00:02:42.960 What I said and what what I meant was that I personally, 00:02:42.960 --> 00:02:46.640 just as an aesthetic choice, when I see a wide wild animal 00:02:46.640 --> 00:02:49.920 out my window or when I'm walking around in in nature, my 00:02:49.920 --> 00:02:53.280 first thought is what a miracle it is that all these wild 00:02:53.280 --> 00:02:57.840 creatures live entirely by God's providence, that all their food, that their 00:02:58.000 --> 00:03:00.960 shelter, that everything is by Is by their wits and their cunning 00:03:01.040 --> 00:03:03.280 and directly from God's blessings. 00:03:03.280 --> 00:03:07.600 And I take that as a as reassurance because our own lives, 00:03:07.600 --> 00:03:12.800 particularly mine, are is so separated from the immediacy of God's providence. 00:03:12.800 --> 00:03:14.560 So I have a roof over my head. 00:03:14.800 --> 00:03:16.080 It's warm in the winter. 00:03:16.080 --> 00:03:17.520 It's cool in the summer. 00:03:17.520 --> 00:03:19.840 Whenever I get hungry, if I don't have food in the house, 00:03:19.840 --> 00:03:22.160 I can go to the grocery store and they have food. 00:03:22.160 --> 00:03:24.000 That's life on easy mode. 00:03:24.000 --> 00:03:25.600 A wild animal doesn't have that. 00:03:25.600 --> 00:03:28.720 So when I see a wild animal, my first thought is not 00:03:28.720 --> 00:03:32.400 that my first thought is that I I'm reminded of God's blessings 00:03:32.400 --> 00:03:36.240 to all of us and I don't want the animal happening across 00:03:36.240 --> 00:03:38.800 me to be the reason that its own life ended. 00:03:38.800 --> 00:03:40.480 But for hunters, God bless you. 00:03:40.560 --> 00:03:41.760 I I appreciate it. 00:03:41.760 --> 00:03:43.600 You go out, you kill animals. 00:03:43.600 --> 00:03:48.480 I know that those responsible hunters respect and understand that that sacrifice 00:03:48.480 --> 00:03:50.320 is something that God is giving to them. 00:03:50.320 --> 00:03:52.320 So I have zero moral problems with it. 00:03:52.320 --> 00:03:53.200 Hunting is great. 00:03:53.520 --> 00:03:54.720 We need more of it, not less. 00:03:54.880 --> 00:03:57.760 if kids were spending more time outside doing that, it'd be a 00:03:57.760 --> 00:03:58.320 better place. 00:03:58.720 --> 00:04:01.280 when I was hunting as a kid, it was zero degrees and 00:04:01.280 --> 00:04:01.920 four a.m. 00:04:02.000 --> 00:04:04.560 So it was kind of unpleasant for for those reasons. 00:04:04.720 --> 00:04:04.800 The 00:04:04.800 --> 00:04:05.920 other thing that I said 00:04:05.920 --> 00:04:10.320 that I realized um wasn't wasn't a mistake, but w I I 00:04:10.320 --> 00:04:12.080 said something a little unusual. 00:04:12.080 --> 00:04:15.280 When we were talking specifically about slavery, the first two times I 00:04:15.280 --> 00:04:19.920 referred to the political events in the United States in the eighteen 00:04:19.920 --> 00:04:25.920 hundreds, I said prohibition twice before correcting myself to say abolition. 00:04:25.920 --> 00:04:28.400 Yeah, I was thinking about why I made that mistake and I 00:04:28.400 --> 00:04:31.040 realized that something was happening that it was a little bit interesting 00:04:31.120 --> 00:04:31.920 at least to me. 00:04:31.920 --> 00:04:34.320 Um I'm very analytical about my own mistakes. 00:04:34.320 --> 00:04:36.400 I always go back over and try to figure out why I 00:04:36.400 --> 00:04:37.760 get something wrong. 00:04:37.760 --> 00:04:41.440 When I couldn't remember the word abolition the first two times I 00:04:41.440 --> 00:04:45.600 said prohibition, for one thing prohibition was equally accurate. 00:04:45.600 --> 00:04:50.080 We did prohibit slavery, but it's not the precise term that was 00:04:50.080 --> 00:04:52.640 used at that time for the political movement. 00:04:52.640 --> 00:04:55.680 I think that what my brain was doing was preventing me from 00:04:55.680 --> 00:04:58.880 saying abolition because it's really lousy framing. 00:04:58.880 --> 00:05:04.800 Abolition is today a very loaded morally tinged word that is the 00:05:04.800 --> 00:05:06.960 opposite frame of the one that I hold. 00:05:06.960 --> 00:05:09.600 I hold that slavery was prohibited. 00:05:09.600 --> 00:05:11.760 It was legal and then it was made illegal. 00:05:11.760 --> 00:05:14.720 And while I think that that is a permissible policy choice for 00:05:14.720 --> 00:05:21.920 a nation, the anti-slavery moral positioning that abolition was the stamping 00:05:21.920 --> 00:05:26.080 out of an ontological evil and that that itself was an absolute 00:05:26.080 --> 00:05:30.720 moral good that justified any manner of evil in its name. 00:05:30.720 --> 00:05:34.000 I fundamentally object to that, and that is why we're doing this 00:05:34.000 --> 00:05:37.520 episode. And so I think my brain was protecting me from fumbling 00:05:37.520 --> 00:05:40.240 into the adversary's framing by calling it abolition. 00:05:40.240 --> 00:05:42.880 So anyway, I noticed that I I said that and I had 00:05:42.880 --> 00:05:45.280 mentioned in the episode we might do a slavery episode in the 00:05:45.280 --> 00:05:48.960 future. We decided let's do it next because it was also one 00:05:48.960 --> 00:05:54.240 of the made up sins that the LCMS president condemned explicitly. 00:05:54.240 --> 00:05:57.920 He said that we were pro-slavery, which is a lie, but that's 00:05:57.920 --> 00:05:59.280 a very profound question. 00:05:59.280 --> 00:06:02.160 So as I promised, today we are going to be going through 00:06:02.160 --> 00:06:05.520 scripture not line by line, but we're gonna go through many of 00:06:05.520 --> 00:06:10.000 the places where slavery is acknowledged, where it is permitted, where it 00:06:10.000 --> 00:06:13.840 is in some cases commanded, where it's used, and the fact that 00:06:13.840 --> 00:06:17.840 it is never explicitly prohibited condemned as a sin anyway. 00:06:17.840 --> 00:06:21.280 And I wanna acknowledge up front that because you know, if we 00:06:21.280 --> 00:06:24.480 were to do the full treatment of this episode of this topic 00:06:24.640 --> 00:06:28.400 the way we did for race, which took five episodes over probably 00:06:28.400 --> 00:06:29.440 about ten hours. 00:06:29.440 --> 00:06:31.760 This could easily be probably a thirty hour series. 00:06:31.760 --> 00:06:32.480 We're not gonna do that. 00:06:32.480 --> 00:06:33.120 It's ninety minutes. 00:06:33.360 --> 00:06:36.960 What we're gonna talk about today is specifically what scripture says in 00:06:36.960 --> 00:06:38.160 favor of slavery. 00:06:38.160 --> 00:06:42.240 We're gonna almost completely ignore all the arguments that are trotted out, 00:06:42.240 --> 00:06:46.640 principally from the New Testament, to justify abolition. 00:06:46.640 --> 00:06:49.120 The reason for that is that it's a case that we've made 00:06:49.120 --> 00:06:52.800 before. If you are talking about something and you're saying scripture prohibits 00:06:52.800 --> 00:06:56.800 it, prohibits it, you must deal with the places where scripture doesn't 00:06:56.800 --> 00:06:57.440 prohibit it. 00:06:57.440 --> 00:07:00.160 So we're just going to give you all the places where God 00:07:00.160 --> 00:07:01.600 says this is fine. 00:07:01.600 --> 00:07:03.840 I do not have a problem with this, and I am the 00:07:03.840 --> 00:07:04.960 Lord your God. 00:07:04.960 --> 00:07:07.600 If somebody else wants to come along and make an argument the 00:07:07.600 --> 00:07:11.040 scripture, oh actually God says that, they have to deal with everything 00:07:11.040 --> 00:07:11.600 we're saying. 00:07:11.600 --> 00:07:15.440 So this is the affirmative case for why slavery itself is not 00:07:15.440 --> 00:07:15.920 a sin. 00:07:15.920 --> 00:07:19.600 So we're gonna spend the entire ninety minutes minus my intro talking 00:07:19.680 --> 00:07:21.520 about Talking specifically in scripture. 00:07:22.080 --> 00:07:22.240 So 00:07:22.240 --> 00:07:26.240 I thought about first starting with Abraham, but I think in fact, 00:07:26.240 --> 00:07:30.400 to go roughly chronologically, we have to start earlier than Abraham. 00:07:30.400 --> 00:07:34.000 We have to start with Job, because Job is almost certainly the 00:07:34.480 --> 00:07:40.160 oldest book in the Bible, and the treatment in Job is very 00:07:40.160 --> 00:07:44.720 brief. We really only need two verses from Job, three verses from 00:07:44.720 --> 00:07:49.840 Job. But it makes the point very succinctly, and really it makes 00:07:49.840 --> 00:07:52.800 the totality of the point, but of course we won't end the 00:07:52.800 --> 00:07:54.320 episode there. 00:07:54.320 --> 00:07:58.400 Job is described in the opening of the book of Job as 00:07:58.400 --> 00:08:02.240 a man who was blameless and upright, one who feared God and 00:08:02.240 --> 00:08:03.840 turned away from evil. 00:08:03.840 --> 00:08:05.520 He is described as a good man. 00:08:05.520 --> 00:08:08.560 He is described as righteous throughout the Book of Job. 00:08:08.560 --> 00:08:09.520 He fears God. 00:08:09.520 --> 00:08:11.520 He does not sin with his lips. 00:08:11.680 --> 00:08:13.840 Through most of the book of Job. 00:08:13.840 --> 00:08:20.240 But what's noteworthy there is Scripture notes the wealth of Job. 00:08:20.240 --> 00:08:24.640 He possessed sheep, camels, yoke of oxen, female donkeys. 00:08:24.640 --> 00:08:28.000 There's a reason they're specified as female donkeys, but that's for another 00:08:28.000 --> 00:08:32.080 time, and very many slaves. 00:08:32.080 --> 00:08:36.640 Some modern translations will say servants, they weren't servants, they were slaves. 00:08:36.640 --> 00:08:38.240 He owned these people. 00:08:38.240 --> 00:08:42.640 They depended on him for their livelihood, for their shelter, their bread, 00:08:42.640 --> 00:08:43.760 their clothing. 00:08:43.760 --> 00:08:47.200 He owned these people, they were his property. 00:08:47.200 --> 00:08:51.440 And he is commended as being blameless and upright, despite being a 00:08:51.440 --> 00:08:52.160 slave owner. 00:08:52.320 --> 00:08:57.280 Of course that goes against what modern individuals, modern men would tell 00:08:57.280 --> 00:09:00.000 you. They'd say that you can't be morally upright if you're a 00:09:00.000 --> 00:09:01.760 slave owner, because slavery itself is wicked. 00:09:01.760 --> 00:09:03.760 Well it's not what Scripture says. 00:09:03.760 --> 00:09:07.920 And then at the end of Job, chapter forty-two, it says that 00:09:07.920 --> 00:09:12.720 God restores to him twice as much as he had before. 00:09:12.720 --> 00:09:16.240 That includes twice as many slaves as he had before. 00:09:16.960 --> 00:09:19.520 God gave Job slaves. 00:09:19.520 --> 00:09:22.320 And so if someone wants to argue 00:09:23.200 --> 00:09:29.440 that trading in slaves, giving someone slaves, possessing slaves, is sin, well 00:09:29.520 --> 00:09:33.520 you've just accused God of sin, and you've said that Scripture is 00:09:33.520 --> 00:09:37.520 wrong when it calls a man righteous who owns slaves. 00:09:37.520 --> 00:09:40.160 And that's just the oldest book in the Bible. 00:09:40.160 --> 00:09:42.720 It's throughout the entirety of the Bible that you see 00:09:43.600 --> 00:09:46.960 this accurate, this correct teaching on scripture. 00:09:46.960 --> 00:09:51.840 And so we'll move to Genesis and deal with Abraham, starting of 00:09:51.840 --> 00:09:56.720 course as Abram, since we start with the call of Abram, which 00:09:56.720 --> 00:09:58.800 is in Genesis twelve. 00:09:58.800 --> 00:10:03.760 And in Genesis twelve it is noted that Abram has slaves. 00:10:03.760 --> 00:10:07.280 That would be Genesis twelve five, and Abram took Sarai his wife, 00:10:07.280 --> 00:10:10.800 and Lot his brother's son, and all their possessions that they had 00:10:10.800 --> 00:10:14.800 gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they 00:10:14.800 --> 00:10:17.280 set out to go to the land of Canaan. 00:10:17.280 --> 00:10:21.120 Those people they acquired those are slaves. 00:10:21.120 --> 00:10:22.240 They acquired them. 00:10:22.240 --> 00:10:24.160 You acquire property. 00:10:24.160 --> 00:10:28.880 And so the beginning of God dealing with Abram, who would become 00:10:28.880 --> 00:10:32.240 Abraham, Abram has slaves. 00:10:32.240 --> 00:10:34.560 God doesn't tell him to put away his slaves, God doesn't tell 00:10:34.480 --> 00:10:40.320 him to leave his slaves, because slavery is not a sin. 00:10:40.320 --> 00:10:44.320 God told him to leave the idolatry of the land in which 00:10:44.320 --> 00:10:48.000 he lived, to leave those things that were sin behind. 00:10:48.000 --> 00:10:51.520 He did not tell him to leave his slaves. 00:10:51.520 --> 00:10:54.160 And then, of course, how does God bless him? 00:10:54.160 --> 00:10:58.720 Well, he gives him more slaves, because he acquires more slaves when 00:10:58.720 --> 00:10:59.520 he sojourns in 00:11:00.400 --> 00:11:04.960 Egypt, and that's the same chapter, chapter twelve, slightly later on, verse 00:11:04.960 --> 00:11:08.800 sixteen. And for her sake, that is Sarai, he dealt well with 00:11:08.800 --> 00:11:13.600 Abram, and he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, 00:11:13.600 --> 00:11:15.200 female donkeys, and camels. 00:11:15.200 --> 00:11:17.200 Of course those are again slaves. 00:11:17.200 --> 00:11:20.640 This is I'm reading from the ESV, which sometimes liked to play 00:11:20.640 --> 00:11:21.840 little games. 00:11:21.840 --> 00:11:25.360 But when it says servants it means slaves. 00:11:25.360 --> 00:11:30.320 Because in this era, you didn't have servants, you had slaves, you 00:11:30.320 --> 00:11:34.960 had men and women you owned as property, and they performed various 00:11:34.960 --> 00:11:36.400 tasks for you. 00:11:36.400 --> 00:11:39.760 And these were given to Abram by Pharaoh. 00:11:40.400 --> 00:11:42.080 So he gave him slaves. 00:11:42.080 --> 00:11:46.000 God blessed Abram with these things. 00:11:46.000 --> 00:11:50.400 And so moving on to the next chapter, chapter thirteen. 00:11:50.400 --> 00:11:51.280 Here we get an idea of 00:11:52.240 --> 00:11:57.040 just how many slaves Abram had. 00:11:57.040 --> 00:12:00.960 Because this is where Abram has to separate from Lot, because they 00:12:00.960 --> 00:12:04.560 cannot dwell together, because their flocks and the number of people they 00:12:04.560 --> 00:12:08.800 have to care for those flocks and their households is so large 00:12:09.040 --> 00:12:12.240 that they overburden the land, they have to split. 00:12:12.240 --> 00:12:16.800 That's how many slaves God gave Abram as a blessing. 00:12:16.960 --> 00:12:22.160 And so here in the beginning of scripture, we see that having 00:12:22.160 --> 00:12:26.560 slaves is not a sin, rather it is a blessing from God, 00:12:26.560 --> 00:12:28.240 at least under these circumstances. 00:12:28.240 --> 00:12:32.800 It's not saying that slavery is always a blessing from God. 00:12:32.800 --> 00:12:36.320 But if it can be a blessing from God, then it cannot 00:12:36.320 --> 00:12:37.440 be a sin. 00:12:37.440 --> 00:12:39.600 And that, of course, is the point. 00:12:40.080 --> 00:12:44.720 This is something that comes up explicitly in Genesis 24 when A. 00:12:44.720 --> 00:12:48.560 Abram Abraham sends out his servant or his slave, one of his 00:12:48.560 --> 00:12:51.920 chief slaves, to find a wife for Isaac. 00:12:51.920 --> 00:12:56.080 And when he comes to Laban and speaks to him, his Abraham's 00:12:56.080 --> 00:12:58.480 servant says, I am Abraham's servant. 00:12:58.480 --> 00:13:01.840 The Lord has greatly blessed my master, and he has become great. 00:13:01.840 --> 00:13:05.200 He has given him flocks and herds, silver and gold, male slaves 00:13:05.200 --> 00:13:07.840 and female slaves, camels and donkeys. 00:13:07.840 --> 00:13:12.480 So explicitly it says the giving of slaves is a gift from 00:13:12.480 --> 00:13:18.400 God. There's no circumstance in which enslavement can possibly be a sin 00:13:18.560 --> 00:13:21.840 per se when God is saying, hey, here's a blessing to you, 00:13:21.840 --> 00:13:22.480 have some slaves. 00:13:23.280 --> 00:13:25.360 And I think that one of the problems that we have in 00:13:25.360 --> 00:13:29.920 our modern minds is that the idea of being enslaved to us 00:13:29.920 --> 00:13:36.640 seems so horrific based on Hollywood portrayals that we don't consider whether 00:13:37.280 --> 00:13:42.880 the transaction of God giving Abraham slaves was not a blessing to 00:13:42.880 --> 00:13:44.800 both Abraham and to the slave. 00:13:44.800 --> 00:13:48.640 Because imagine if you lived in that time and God gave you 00:13:49.440 --> 00:13:52.640 into the hand of Abraham to be his property. 00:13:52.640 --> 00:13:55.040 Is that a curse or is that a blessing? 00:13:55.040 --> 00:13:58.400 I I think that if you believe what scripture says about the 00:13:58.400 --> 00:14:02.160 sort of man that Abraham was, then the idea that you would 00:14:02.720 --> 00:14:06.480 belong to that man is a profound honor. 00:14:06.480 --> 00:14:10.400 It is something that we don't really understand today because it's alien 00:14:10.400 --> 00:14:13.680 to our culture, but to be owned by a man not only 00:14:13.680 --> 00:14:18.480 is it not inherently morally tinged either way, but it can actually 00:14:18.480 --> 00:14:20.000 be a tremendous blessing. 00:14:20.000 --> 00:14:23.520 Now indeed there were certainly slave owners in every era and every 00:14:23.520 --> 00:14:27.280 culture who were horrible, and there are also many who were great 00:14:27.280 --> 00:14:31.440 men, who were kind, who were honest, who treated their slaves well. 00:14:31.440 --> 00:14:34.880 And if one's lot in life was to be a slave, then 00:14:34.880 --> 00:14:37.760 to be owned by a man who was a good man was 00:14:37.760 --> 00:14:39.200 a blessing from God. 00:14:39.200 --> 00:14:43.680 So I think it's important that we don't permit the Marxist dialectic 00:14:43.680 --> 00:14:48.240 approach to these questions of power dynamics structure how we think about 00:14:48.240 --> 00:14:49.360 these relationships. 00:14:49.360 --> 00:14:52.000 Because there are two men in that relationship. 00:14:52.000 --> 00:14:54.960 There's Abraham the master, and then there's a slave. 00:14:54.960 --> 00:14:57.680 Now this was one of his chief slaves that had been sent 00:14:57.680 --> 00:14:59.280 on this crucial mission. 00:14:59.280 --> 00:15:02.240 He was one of his most trusted servants, but he owned him. 00:15:02.240 --> 00:15:03.920 Abraham owned this man. 00:15:03.920 --> 00:15:05.600 This man loved Abraham. 00:15:05.920 --> 00:15:08.960 He was sent far away with money and with gifts and with 00:15:08.960 --> 00:15:13.360 a profound mission for his master, and it was his greatest privilege 00:15:13.360 --> 00:15:14.480 to serve that. 00:15:14.480 --> 00:15:16.480 And I that's the reason I said at the beginning that the 00:15:16.480 --> 00:15:19.600 Christian life can only be understood I think I think in the 00:15:19.600 --> 00:15:24.880 context of the proper understanding of slavery, because we all have duties. 00:15:24.880 --> 00:15:28.640 You know, as Lutherans we call things vocation, but there are obligations 00:15:28.640 --> 00:15:30.800 that we have to do certain things. 00:15:30.800 --> 00:15:34.800 And sometimes it's just narrowly within your own household, sometimes it's within 00:15:34.800 --> 00:15:36.880 your n within your neighborhood or whatever. 00:15:36.880 --> 00:15:41.040 But regardless of the context, we have obligations to do things. 00:15:41.040 --> 00:15:44.640 That is not freedom the way Americans want to think about it. 00:15:44.640 --> 00:15:46.720 That is a type of slavery. 00:15:46.720 --> 00:15:51.600 It is a type of ownership where one's licit moral choices are 00:15:51.600 --> 00:15:54.080 bounded by the obligations we have. 00:15:54.080 --> 00:15:59.520 And those obligations are inherited ultimately from God through the headship under 00:15:59.520 --> 00:16:00.960 which we are placed. 00:16:00.960 --> 00:16:04.800 And in certain times and places throughout most of history, a big 00:16:04.800 --> 00:16:09.200 part of that was the institution of men owning other men. 00:16:09.200 --> 00:16:13.520 And we also see in the slaves that are transferred to the 00:16:13.520 --> 00:16:18.880 ownership of Abraham, particularly the ones from Pharaoh, we see that promise 00:16:18.880 --> 00:16:24.320 of God to bless all nations in the seed of Abraham already 00:16:24.320 --> 00:16:28.560 taking place because they are coming into the family, the extended family 00:16:28.640 --> 00:16:34.320 in this case, of Abraham, and so they will hear that gospel. 00:16:34.320 --> 00:16:36.720 They will hear the Messiah who is to come. 00:16:36.720 --> 00:16:40.800 And so we already see God fulfilling his plan for humanity via 00:16:40.960 --> 00:16:45.200 slavery. And so it's difficult to say that slavery is an evil 00:16:45.200 --> 00:16:48.000 when God is using it for the ultimate good. 00:16:48.000 --> 00:16:51.520 And before we move on to Exodus, I think it's worth just 00:16:51.520 --> 00:16:56.000 pulling out a quick comment from Genesis twenty one. 00:16:56.000 --> 00:17:00.800 When God addresses Hagar, when God addresses the issue of Hagar speaking 00:17:00.800 --> 00:17:04.720 to Abraham, he says, be not displeased because of the boy and 00:17:04.720 --> 00:17:06.160 because of your slave woman. 00:17:06.160 --> 00:17:08.800 He says slave woman, he doesn't use her name. 00:17:08.800 --> 00:17:11.920 Whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for through 00:17:11.920 --> 00:17:15.280 Isaac shall your offspring be named, and I will make a nation 00:17:15.280 --> 00:17:18.080 of the son of the slave woman also, because he is your 00:17:18.080 --> 00:17:22.240 offspring. To most modern ears it's going to sound terrible that God 00:17:22.240 --> 00:17:23.600 says slave woman. 00:17:23.600 --> 00:17:26.800 He doesn't use her name, God of course knows her name. 00:17:26.800 --> 00:17:30.560 He addresses her later on in Genesis and does use her name 00:17:30.560 --> 00:17:33.840 there, but here he just calls her the slave woman because he's 00:17:33.760 --> 00:17:37.200 noting that relationship between Abraham and Hagar. 00:17:37.200 --> 00:17:42.960 Abraham even though Hagar is now his concubine, he still owns her. 00:17:42.960 --> 00:17:44.880 She's still his property. 00:17:45.040 --> 00:17:47.600 Briefly before we get into Exodus, I just want to point out 00:17:47.600 --> 00:17:53.120 that not only did Abraham receive tremendous blessings from God, in large 00:17:53.120 --> 00:17:58.720 part by having numerous slaves, but Isaac and Jacob were also similarly 00:17:58.720 --> 00:18:03.120 blessed. So although we're pointing back to this early period in the 00:18:03.120 --> 00:18:07.120 Old Testament, it's important to refute the notion that, oh well that 00:18:07.680 --> 00:18:08.800 was cultural. 00:18:08.800 --> 00:18:12.080 On one hand you have God giving his blessings to his own 00:18:12.080 --> 00:18:15.520 people. I mean at this point Abraham had become a believer in 00:18:15.520 --> 00:18:18.720 God and God was richly blessing him, had promised that he would 00:18:18.720 --> 00:18:22.720 be the source of the Messiah, th his lineage would be. 00:18:22.720 --> 00:18:27.200 And but it's not just that it was oh old timey and 00:18:27.200 --> 00:18:28.400 so they had slaves. 00:18:28.400 --> 00:18:30.880 It wasn't that that was then and this is now. 00:18:30.880 --> 00:18:32.880 And that's one of the it's one of the things that I 00:18:32.880 --> 00:18:36.800 think Americans in particular, but really everyone in the West has been 00:18:36.800 --> 00:18:41.840 just fundamentally brain damaged by the post Enlightenment thinking that we've talked 00:18:41.840 --> 00:18:46.160 about in the last few episodes about the priors from the Enlightenment, 00:18:46.160 --> 00:18:50.960 from the French Revolution in particular, that became our own creed of 00:18:51.600 --> 00:18:55.760 liberty being a paramount moral virtue. 00:18:55.760 --> 00:19:00.000 When I I hope that we're making the pattern clear that liberty 00:19:00.640 --> 00:19:04.480 as it is held up in the secular world is nothing of 00:19:04.480 --> 00:19:05.040 the sort. 00:19:05.040 --> 00:19:06.320 It is not a blessing. 00:19:06.320 --> 00:19:07.760 It's actually a curse. 00:19:07.760 --> 00:19:08.720 It is wickedness. 00:19:08.720 --> 00:19:10.720 It is itself rebellion against God. 00:19:10.720 --> 00:19:14.800 And it And it always follows in the on the heels of 00:19:14.800 --> 00:19:17.520 tremendous evil and evil springs from it. 00:19:17.520 --> 00:19:22.320 So when slavery existed in these periods, both among believers and among 00:19:22.320 --> 00:19:28.080 unbelievers in myriad forms, for example, the the slave that Abraham sent 00:19:28.080 --> 00:19:32.480 to find Isaac a wife was certainly one of his most senior 00:19:32.480 --> 00:19:36.560 slaves. He would have had a higher station in s in civilization 00:19:36.880 --> 00:19:39.600 than the slave who was mucking the stalls. 00:19:39.600 --> 00:19:42.400 Now that's that flies in the face of oh we're all created 00:19:42.560 --> 00:19:44.560 equal. We all have equality. 00:19:44.560 --> 00:19:45.680 No, we don't. 00:19:45.680 --> 00:19:49.440 Some men are really only equipped for mucking stalls. 00:19:49.440 --> 00:19:52.080 And if that is what you were equipped for, that is a 00:19:52.080 --> 00:19:53.760 blessing. Do it, do it well. 00:19:53.760 --> 00:19:56.240 If all you can do is clean toilets, make 'em the cleanest 00:19:56.240 --> 00:19:57.360 toilets you can. 00:19:57.360 --> 00:20:01.120 That is you blessing your neighbors by being the gift that God 00:20:01.120 --> 00:20:03.440 wants you to be for your those in your life. 00:20:03.440 --> 00:20:07.520 It is not diminishing the value of a man inherently to say 00:20:07.680 --> 00:20:11.680 he's only good for shoveling cow manure or cleaning toilets. 00:20:11.680 --> 00:20:14.720 It is saying that here's what you can do, do it well. 00:20:14.720 --> 00:20:18.480 The men who can do better, who can do more law lofty 00:20:18.480 --> 00:20:24.720 and more respected things equally well are given higher station, but God 00:20:24.880 --> 00:20:27.600 also spends a great deal of time in Scripture talking about the 00:20:27.600 --> 00:20:30.480 fact that you know the first shall be last and the last 00:20:30.480 --> 00:20:31.440 shall be first. 00:20:31.440 --> 00:20:35.920 Now, it's not only talking about power dynamics, it's not talking about 00:20:35.920 --> 00:20:37.280 only the rich and the poor. 00:20:37.280 --> 00:20:41.200 Abraham was tremendously wealthy, and he is certainly not the least in 00:20:41.200 --> 00:20:44.560 heaven. So I don't want to make it strictly about that, but 00:20:44.560 --> 00:20:48.480 it's to say that When you have someone who has a lowly 00:20:48.480 --> 00:20:52.560 station in life, maybe someone is a slave of slaves, if they're 00:20:52.560 --> 00:20:56.000 a faithful believer, God will reward them. 00:20:56.000 --> 00:20:59.040 And the things that they have lacked in this life, God promises 00:20:59.040 --> 00:21:00.960 they will receive in the new earth. 00:21:00.960 --> 00:21:07.760 And so as we deal with these questions of equality and inequality 00:21:08.000 --> 00:21:13.920 and how men rank hierarchically, how we perform our duties hierarchically. 00:21:13.920 --> 00:21:17.680 I think it's important to note, as we always say, we're not 00:21:17.680 --> 00:21:20.000 talking about our standing before God. 00:21:20.000 --> 00:21:21.920 God shows no partiality. 00:21:21.920 --> 00:21:25.680 In this life and in the hierarchy of order that God has 00:21:25.680 --> 00:21:27.920 instituted, there are differences. 00:21:27.920 --> 00:21:30.480 Just as there are differences in the angels, there are angels and 00:21:30.480 --> 00:21:32.000 there are archangels. 00:21:32.000 --> 00:21:34.640 God is a god of hierarchy and order. 00:21:34.640 --> 00:21:37.840 So the fact that we find these patterns in all times and 00:21:37.840 --> 00:21:41.200 all places, it's not some historical aberration. 00:21:41.200 --> 00:21:44.000 It's not that, oh, they didn't understand democracy yet. 00:21:44.000 --> 00:21:46.640 They didn't understand liberty and freedom and equality. 00:21:46.640 --> 00:21:48.880 And now that we have those things, we're better than them. 00:21:48.880 --> 00:21:50.960 That's absolutely not the case. 00:21:50.960 --> 00:21:54.160 These men were living godly lives and they were blessed by God 00:21:54.160 --> 00:21:58.800 for it, and that included the inequality of man before man. 00:21:58.880 --> 00:22:05.280 And so unlike dealing with slavery in Genesis, the issue is a 00:22:05.280 --> 00:22:09.120 more general one in Exodus, and I want to address it more 00:22:09.120 --> 00:22:14.240 generally instead of pulling out particular verses and highlighting those because yes, 00:22:14.240 --> 00:22:19.200 there are many times that slavery is mentioned, particularly in Genesis, and 00:22:19.280 --> 00:22:22.320 the following books where it says that God took them out of 00:22:22.320 --> 00:22:25.200 the house of slavery in Egypt, and that phrase out of the 00:22:25.200 --> 00:22:30.320 house of slavery is repeated many times, but I want to highlight 00:22:30.320 --> 00:22:34.480 something about slavery and Exodus. 00:22:34.480 --> 00:22:40.880 Yes, the Israelites are enslaved by the Egyptians in Egypt for centuries. 00:22:40.880 --> 00:22:45.280 But slavery itself is never once condemned in Exodus. 00:22:45.280 --> 00:22:50.400 In fact, beyond that, Pharaoh and the Egyptians are never condemned for 00:22:50.400 --> 00:22:52.480 enslaving the Israelites. 00:22:52.480 --> 00:22:56.640 There isn't a single verse condemning that in Scripture. 00:22:56.640 --> 00:22:59.840 Not one in Exodus, not one anywhere else. 00:22:59.840 --> 00:23:00.800 What is 00:23:01.760 --> 00:23:05.280 noted in passing and it could be argued that it is condemned, 00:23:05.280 --> 00:23:08.480 and I think it's a fair argument, is is the oppression and 00:23:08.480 --> 00:23:09.600 the affliction. 00:23:09.600 --> 00:23:15.040 They were mistreating the Israelites as their slaves, because there is a 00:23:15.040 --> 00:23:18.640 standard to which slave masters are held with regard to their slaves. 00:23:18.640 --> 00:23:22.160 That comes later in Scripture, but that is relevant here. 00:23:22.160 --> 00:23:25.280 And so when they tell them you don't get hay, but you 00:23:25.280 --> 00:23:28.560 still have to make bricks, that's mistreating your slaves, and that's not 00:23:28.560 --> 00:23:33.520 acceptable. But reducing them to slavery and keeping them as slaves is 00:23:33.520 --> 00:23:35.600 not condemned. 00:23:35.600 --> 00:23:41.520 What is condemned, what God makes the point in Exodus is that 00:23:41.520 --> 00:23:45.440 ultimately the Israelites, even though they are for a time slaves to 00:23:45.440 --> 00:23:48.960 the Egyptians, they belong to God. 00:23:48.960 --> 00:23:51.680 They're his slaves, he owns them. 00:23:51.680 --> 00:23:55.760 And so when he tells Pharaoh, give me my property, and Pharaoh 00:23:55.840 --> 00:23:56.000 says 00:23:56.880 --> 00:23:59.520 no, that's the problem. 00:23:59.520 --> 00:24:02.400 The problem is not that they were reduced to slavery, not they 00:24:02.400 --> 00:24:04.960 were kept as slaves, not they were treated as slaves. 00:24:04.960 --> 00:24:08.160 The problem is that they were not given back to God when 00:24:08.160 --> 00:24:11.520 he told Pharaoh, give me back my people that they may go 00:24:11.520 --> 00:24:12.960 and serve me. 00:24:13.200 --> 00:24:13.440 Yeah, 00:24:13.440 --> 00:24:14.400 it's absolutely the case. 00:24:14.400 --> 00:24:17.920 When f when God said let my people go, we ignore the 00:24:17.920 --> 00:24:18.560 my part. 00:24:18.560 --> 00:24:19.760 That's possessive. 00:24:19.760 --> 00:24:22.800 God is saying, These are mine, you've had them, I want them 00:24:22.800 --> 00:24:24.880 back. As you said, Pharaoh said no. 00:24:24.880 --> 00:24:26.800 That was the entire problem. 00:24:26.800 --> 00:24:28.880 There were other slaves in Egypt. 00:24:28.880 --> 00:24:32.240 In fact, as an Egyptian, you belonged to the Pharaoh. 00:24:32.240 --> 00:24:35.600 You had to worship Pharaoh as God, which was another part of 00:24:35.520 --> 00:24:39.840 of the problem God was dealing with was the Egyptians' idolatry. 00:24:39.840 --> 00:24:43.120 But there was no notion that oh no slavery is bad, you 00:24:43.120 --> 00:24:44.960 need to free all the people who are captive. 00:24:44.960 --> 00:24:48.640 Every Egyptian was fundamentally a captive to the Pharaoh. 00:24:48.640 --> 00:24:52.560 God was saying, the Israelites are mine, I want 'em back. 00:24:52.560 --> 00:24:54.800 If you don't do it, these are the consequences. 00:24:54.800 --> 00:24:59.040 And the consequences, as you said last week, included God delivering genocide 00:24:59.040 --> 00:25:04.080 against the Egyptians as judgment for not giving God his property, his 00:25:04.240 --> 00:25:04.880 people. 00:25:04.880 --> 00:25:05.040 And 00:25:05.040 --> 00:25:08.720 when God says let my people go, because it does say that, 00:25:08.720 --> 00:25:13.120 it says in one place, let my son go, that he may 00:25:13.120 --> 00:25:14.720 serve me. 00:25:14.720 --> 00:25:18.320 Let my people go, that they may serve me. 00:25:18.320 --> 00:25:22.480 It's always the point of letting them go so they may serve 00:25:22.480 --> 00:25:25.520 their ultimate master, which of course is God. 00:25:25.520 --> 00:25:31.280 It's not letting them free, it's not liberating them, it is transferring 00:25:31.280 --> 00:25:34.160 them to their rightful master. 00:25:34.160 --> 00:25:38.240 Because as we will get into in the New Testament, certainly, we 00:25:38.240 --> 00:25:41.920 are all slaves of God And that is a fundamental truth of 00:25:41.920 --> 00:25:43.280 the Christian faith. 00:25:43.280 --> 00:25:44.880 You are God's property. 00:25:44.880 --> 00:25:46.880 You cannot be anything else. 00:25:46.880 --> 00:25:50.480 Even if you are in rebellion, you're still God's property. 00:25:50.480 --> 00:25:55.760 You are just rebellious useless property instead of useful property. 00:25:55.760 --> 00:25:58.880 Those terms mean something, and we'll get into that soon enough as 00:25:58.880 --> 00:25:59.280 well. 00:25:59.840 --> 00:26:00.000 I 00:26:00.000 --> 00:26:03.680 want to specifically highlight Exodus twenty-one where it talks about the rules 00:26:03.680 --> 00:26:08.800 for slaves just because it explicitly eliminates several of the claims that 00:26:08.800 --> 00:26:12.080 are made that while ancient slavery was one sort of thing, but 00:26:12.080 --> 00:26:15.840 more modern forms of slavery, particularly as we had in the antebellum 00:26:16.000 --> 00:26:17.600 south, those were evil. 00:26:17.600 --> 00:26:20.560 The stuff before wasn't evil and there are certain patterns that are 00:26:20.560 --> 00:26:22.080 permissible or impermissible. 00:26:22.080 --> 00:26:24.160 I'm going to read this passage and just point out a couple 00:26:24.240 --> 00:26:29.680 things because it's vital to dismissing those arguments against slavery per se. 00:26:30.320 --> 00:26:32.480 Now these are the rules that you shall set before them. 00:26:32.800 --> 00:26:35.840 When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and 00:26:35.840 --> 00:26:38.400 in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. 00:26:38.400 --> 00:26:40.720 If he comes in single, he shall go out single. 00:26:40.720 --> 00:26:43.360 If he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with 00:26:43.360 --> 00:26:46.160 him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him 00:26:46.160 --> 00:26:49.840 sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her masters, 00:26:49.840 --> 00:26:51.360 and he shall go out alone. 00:26:51.360 --> 00:26:54.560 But if the slave plainly says, I love my master, my wife, 00:26:54.560 --> 00:26:57.680 and my children, I will not go out free, then his master 00:26:57.680 --> 00:27:00.480 shall bring him to God, and he shall bring him to the 00:27:00.480 --> 00:27:03.520 door or to the door post, and his master shall bore his 00:27:03.520 --> 00:27:07.120 ear through with an all, and he shall be his slave forever. 00:27:07.120 --> 00:27:08.240 Now two things there. 00:27:08.240 --> 00:27:13.040 One, slavery was permitted for life, two, you could absolutely be born 00:27:13.040 --> 00:27:14.160 into slavery. 00:27:14.160 --> 00:27:17.520 So those are claims that are made elsewhere in history as oh 00:27:17.600 --> 00:27:22.160 well one kind of slavery back in the olden Bible days was 00:27:22.400 --> 00:27:24.880 maybe that was okay for a time, but what they did over 00:27:24.880 --> 00:27:26.160 here was evil. 00:27:26.160 --> 00:27:28.880 Well, two of those specific examples are shown here. 00:27:28.880 --> 00:27:31.200 You can absolutely be born into slavery and you can be owned 00:27:31.200 --> 00:27:32.080 your entire life. 00:27:32.240 --> 00:27:36.720 And as as Corey mentioned earlier, the ESV butchers the word slave 00:27:36.720 --> 00:27:39.520 in most In most places in scripture, it's it's one of the 00:27:39.520 --> 00:27:43.760 few places where modern corrupt thinking is snuck into it. 00:27:43.760 --> 00:27:46.320 In some of the later quotes from the New Testament, I went 00:27:46.320 --> 00:27:48.640 in and just edited it because it was nonsense. 00:27:49.760 --> 00:27:53.760 when you read the term bond servant, just read slave. 00:27:53.760 --> 00:27:58.560 When you t read the word servant, you should usually think slave. 00:27:58.560 --> 00:28:02.160 There may be cases where it was actually closer to a servant 00:28:02.400 --> 00:28:04.480 like Potiphar's servant. 00:28:04.720 --> 00:28:08.560 You know, th they're they're very highly placed men who are 00:28:09.840 --> 00:28:14.880 they're given higher status in l in life, but fundamentally they're still 00:28:14.880 --> 00:28:19.280 slaves, which is to say fundamentally they're still owned by another man, 00:28:19.280 --> 00:28:21.920 which is the definition of a slave. 00:28:21.920 --> 00:28:24.320 It is not social status principally. 00:28:24.320 --> 00:28:26.080 It is not wealth principally. 00:28:26.080 --> 00:28:28.320 It is are you free to go to come and go as 00:28:28.320 --> 00:28:31.840 you please and to do as you please without another other m 00:28:32.000 --> 00:28:34.640 another man saying no, you may not do this. 00:28:34.640 --> 00:28:34.960 So 00:28:36.400 --> 00:28:41.440 in scripture and in time after scripture, that is the fundamental definition 00:28:41.440 --> 00:28:42.240 of slavery. 00:28:42.240 --> 00:28:44.160 If you're owned, even for a time. 00:28:44.160 --> 00:28:47.120 I have ancestors I know, one who came over on the Mayflower, 00:28:47.120 --> 00:28:48.640 who was an indentured servant. 00:28:48.640 --> 00:28:50.480 He was effectively a slave. 00:28:50.480 --> 00:28:53.600 He was a slave for a period of time while he worked 00:28:53.600 --> 00:28:54.560 off a debt. 00:28:55.200 --> 00:28:57.600 But nevertheless he was owned. 00:28:57.600 --> 00:28:59.760 He was not free to come and go as he pleased. 00:28:59.760 --> 00:29:02.720 He had to rack up a certain amount of profit for his 00:29:02.720 --> 00:29:06.160 owner before he could be freed, before the indenture ended. 00:29:06.160 --> 00:29:09.520 And so we play these word games because we get in the 00:29:09.520 --> 00:29:13.440 twenty first century we go so squeamish about the very word slavery, 00:29:13.440 --> 00:29:17.040 but if you look at things just plainly in terms of well, 00:29:17.040 --> 00:29:20.640 m one man owns another man and determines what he can and 00:29:20.640 --> 00:29:25.040 cannot do, that is not inherently a moral question. 00:29:25.040 --> 00:29:27.600 And the second part of the Exodus twenty one passage I just 00:29:27.600 --> 00:29:30.400 want to mention briefly, when a man sells his daughter as a 00:29:30.400 --> 00:29:33.040 slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do. 00:29:33.040 --> 00:29:36.080 If she does not please her master who has designated her for 00:29:36.080 --> 00:29:40.240 himself, then he shall sell her he shall let her be redeemed. 00:29:40.240 --> 00:29:43.040 He shall have no right to sell her to foreign people, since 00:29:43.040 --> 00:29:44.720 he has broken faith with her. 00:29:44.720 --> 00:29:47.760 Now God is literally saying when a man sells his daughter, 00:29:48.640 --> 00:29:54.160 so this also acknowledges that the oranges of slavery are not necessarily 00:29:54.160 --> 00:29:56.160 kidnapping, which we'll get to later. 00:29:56.160 --> 00:29:58.800 There can be conquest, there can be transfer of title. 00:29:58.960 --> 00:30:04.320 And God acknowledges that it is permissible in principle morally for a 00:30:04.320 --> 00:30:07.920 man, for a father, to transfer the title of his daughter to 00:30:07.920 --> 00:30:09.200 someone else as property. 00:30:09.360 --> 00:30:10.880 That's utterly shocking to us. 00:30:10.880 --> 00:30:11.920 I don't like the sound of it. 00:30:11.920 --> 00:30:13.760 I'm not I'm not saying, oh, this is great. 00:30:14.080 --> 00:30:16.560 I'm saying this is what God says and we don't get to 00:30:16.560 --> 00:30:17.920 accuse God of sin. 00:30:17.920 --> 00:30:23.120 So if you hear an argument in favor of abolition that says 00:30:23.120 --> 00:30:26.240 these are sins, just know that the man who's making that argument 00:30:26.240 --> 00:30:27.520 is accusing God of sin. 00:30:27.920 --> 00:30:31.360 That's why I wanted to highlight Exodus twenty-one particularly, because it puts 00:30:31.360 --> 00:30:35.120 to death several notions that say, well, this slavery was okay, but 00:30:35.120 --> 00:30:36.160 this slavery is bad. 00:30:36.160 --> 00:30:39.840 No. The slavery that was seen in the West in the latter 00:30:39.840 --> 00:30:45.440 eighteenth, nineteenth century was itself somewhere in the middle on the scale 00:30:45.440 --> 00:30:48.160 of how bad slavery could get for people. 00:30:48.160 --> 00:30:51.040 We'll get to some examples of what slavery was like in Roman 00:30:51.040 --> 00:30:53.920 days that were far worse than anything that we've ever even heard 00:30:54.240 --> 00:30:55.520 about in our days. 00:30:55.520 --> 00:31:00.080 So don't let someone try to pluck things out of history and 00:31:00.080 --> 00:31:04.560 then misconstrue them in ways that can lead to conclusions that condemn 00:31:04.560 --> 00:31:04.880 God. 00:31:05.200 --> 00:31:05.360 It 00:31:05.360 --> 00:31:09.280 is also worth noting that God permits corporal punishment of your slaves 00:31:09.280 --> 00:31:13.840 here, the only restrictions being that if you kill your slave, you 00:31:13.840 --> 00:31:16.960 are to be punished unless he survives for a day or two 00:31:16.960 --> 00:31:21.760 after you inflict the injury that ultimately causes his death, and if 00:31:21.760 --> 00:31:25.200 you damage his eye or his tooth, he is allowed to go 00:31:25.200 --> 00:31:30.880 free. And so even physically punishing your slaves is permitted in scripture, 00:31:30.880 --> 00:31:33.520 and so those who argue that, well, they whipped them or beat 00:31:33.520 --> 00:31:36.480 them, that's permitted by God. 00:31:36.480 --> 00:31:39.920 You cannot argue that is sin, that is something God says is 00:31:39.920 --> 00:31:45.280 fine. And it is also worth highlighting that God says that you 00:31:45.280 --> 00:31:49.040 are not allowed to sell your women to foreign peoples. 00:31:49.040 --> 00:31:52.640 Perhaps for a future episode on another topic, but it's worth noting 00:31:52.640 --> 00:31:55.840 that is in scripture, that is a restriction here. 00:31:55.840 --> 00:32:00.560 Since Since you brought up the the difference there between servant and 00:32:00.560 --> 00:32:05.280 slave, and yes, the ESV and other modern translations sometimes play games 00:32:05.280 --> 00:32:07.840 with that, which is unfortunate. 00:32:07.840 --> 00:32:13.120 We have several places in Scripture where it's extremely clear that there 00:32:13.120 --> 00:32:17.200 is a difference between these and just what that difference is. 00:32:17.200 --> 00:32:20.880 I will pull up that verse here helps if I'm not typing 00:32:20.880 --> 00:32:21.600 in Greek. 00:32:22.480 --> 00:32:26.800 In Mark ten, you have Christ speaking, but it shall not be 00:32:26.800 --> 00:32:30.160 so among you speaking as those who lord over others amongst the 00:32:30.320 --> 00:32:33.600 the heathen, but whoever would be great among you must be your 00:32:33.600 --> 00:32:36.560 servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of 00:32:37.200 --> 00:32:40.640 all. Well we have the two words right there, both servant and 00:32:40.640 --> 00:32:45.840 slave clearly differentiated, and so it's inexcusable that some of these translations 00:32:45.840 --> 00:32:49.920 play games with the word dulos, which is what slave is there, 00:32:49.920 --> 00:32:52.080 and servant is diaconos. 00:32:52.080 --> 00:32:55.040 So we have both of these terms, and they are different, they're 00:32:55.040 --> 00:33:00.320 used in scripture, they're used in the exact same passages, contrasting. 00:33:00.320 --> 00:33:03.760 So we need We know what these terms mean. 00:33:03.760 --> 00:33:06.720 Modern translations should not get away with the little games they like 00:33:06.720 --> 00:33:07.200 to play. 00:33:07.200 --> 00:33:11.600 I don't mind bondservant because bondservant historically is basically equivalent to slave. 00:33:11.920 --> 00:33:12.080 The 00:33:12.080 --> 00:33:14.640 the problem with bondservant is it's like chattel. 00:33:14.640 --> 00:33:16.960 You mentioned chattel slavery last week. 00:33:17.040 --> 00:33:18.160 Chattel slavery is 00:33:19.040 --> 00:33:19.520 it is. 00:33:19.520 --> 00:33:20.640 It's a redundancy. 00:33:20.640 --> 00:33:25.040 And the the problem is that when modern years hear bondservant, everyone 00:33:25.040 --> 00:33:27.840 wants to like pop in the monocle and nod sagely, oh yes, 00:33:27.840 --> 00:33:29.920 bondservant. Like no, they were slaves. 00:33:29.920 --> 00:33:31.680 They were slaves with a price. 00:33:31.680 --> 00:33:32.640 They were not their own. 00:33:32.640 --> 00:33:33.680 They were bought with a price. 00:33:33.680 --> 00:33:35.120 We're gonna get to that passage. 00:33:35.120 --> 00:33:39.360 It was very clearly understood that regardless of the terms and conditions 00:33:39.920 --> 00:33:41.440 of the slavery. 00:33:41.440 --> 00:33:44.960 Maybe it was ownership, maybe it was a lease, which is basically 00:33:44.960 --> 00:33:46.880 what bond servants are. 00:33:46.880 --> 00:33:47.920 You're still a slave. 00:33:47.920 --> 00:33:48.880 You're still owned. 00:33:48.880 --> 00:33:52.240 You're still property in the custody of someone who determines what you 00:33:52.240 --> 00:33:54.160 can and cannot do. 00:33:54.160 --> 00:33:59.360 And so when terms like bondservant and chattel get thrown around, our 00:33:59.360 --> 00:34:02.240 brains check out and like, oh well that yeah, that's that's a 00:34:02.400 --> 00:34:04.160 it's that special magical Bible thing. 00:34:04.160 --> 00:34:04.960 Like no man. 00:34:05.440 --> 00:34:09.600 it's just a basic term for a legal concept. 00:34:09.600 --> 00:34:11.520 There's nothing sophisticated about it. 00:34:11.520 --> 00:34:15.600 But when people are permitted they permit themselves to be divorced from 00:34:15.600 --> 00:34:19.280 what was actually happening, we get lazy and say, well that doesn't 00:34:19.200 --> 00:34:19.680 apply to me. 00:34:19.680 --> 00:34:20.480 That doesn't apply to this. 00:34:20.480 --> 00:34:21.600 That doesn't apply to that. 00:34:21.600 --> 00:34:24.080 You just you tune out and say oh bond servant, whatever that 00:34:24.080 --> 00:34:26.480 is, it's I guess they had that, but we don't have those 00:34:26.480 --> 00:34:28.320 anymore, so I can ignore that passage. 00:34:28.320 --> 00:34:30.720 And that's fundamentally the point that I think we need to make. 00:34:31.040 --> 00:34:31.280 Yeah, 00:34:31.280 --> 00:34:34.480 there are a lot of different historical terms for different types of 00:34:34.480 --> 00:34:37.360 slavery. Is really what it comes down to. 00:34:37.360 --> 00:34:42.880 Bond servant is one, serfs, by and large, were slaves, indentured servitude, 00:34:42.880 --> 00:34:47.120 also slaves, slaves for a period of time, often treated actually worse 00:34:47.120 --> 00:34:50.640 than slaves, because obviously if you have a slave for a period 00:34:50.640 --> 00:34:53.840 of time, it can set up a perverse incentive if you're the 00:34:53.840 --> 00:34:56.480 sort of person who is weak to that. 00:34:56.480 --> 00:34:58.800 And that was the case for some of the slave owners in 00:34:58.800 --> 00:35:03.120 the colonies certainly, because they realized the indentured servant they had for 00:35:03.440 --> 00:35:06.960 X number of years, whereas the slave, you have the slave for 00:35:06.960 --> 00:35:08.880 his entire life, you don't need to get as much work out 00:35:08.880 --> 00:35:12.080 of him as possible in this set period of time. 00:35:12.080 --> 00:35:13.200 And we see the same. 00:35:13.200 --> 00:35:16.000 The reason I bring it up is partly because that is our 00:35:16.000 --> 00:35:19.280 own context, but partly that's also the same two-tier system that we 00:35:19.280 --> 00:35:20.960 see in scripture. 00:35:20.960 --> 00:35:28.400 Because God permitted the Israelites to have their fellow Israelites as slaves, 00:35:28.400 --> 00:35:31.120 but they were permitted to have them as slaves only for a 00:35:31.120 --> 00:35:33.280 period of six years, and then they were to go free in 00:35:33.280 --> 00:35:34.240 the seventh year. 00:35:34.240 --> 00:35:36.800 You also have to factor in Jubilee, which makes it a little 00:35:36.800 --> 00:35:40.480 more complicated, but that's the basic rule that God gives them. 00:35:40.480 --> 00:35:46.400 Whereas foreign slaves could be slaves for life, and you owned their 00:35:46.400 --> 00:35:50.640 children and their grandchildren, their great grandchildren, they were your property in 00:35:50.640 --> 00:35:55.600 perpetuity, whereas your own people had to be permitted to go free 00:35:55.600 --> 00:35:56.880 or be redeemed. 00:35:56.880 --> 00:36:01.120 And that's really roughly the same thing we saw in the slavery 00:36:01.120 --> 00:36:04.480 system in the US, the difference between a slave and an indentured 00:36:04.480 --> 00:36:04.960 servant. 00:36:05.440 --> 00:36:10.000 And the crucial point to be highlighted in your nation and other 00:36:10.080 --> 00:36:12.880 nations is that was fundamentally racial slavery. 00:36:12.880 --> 00:36:17.200 God made racial differences in the in the disparate treatment of slaves. 00:36:17.200 --> 00:36:19.760 If they were your own people, you get one set of rules. 00:36:19.760 --> 00:36:23.920 If they're other nations, other races, they get a different, worse set 00:36:23.920 --> 00:36:24.720 of rules. 00:36:24.720 --> 00:36:28.400 You treat foreigners worse than you treat your own race. 00:36:28.400 --> 00:36:33.680 That was codified by God in the law regarding the ownership of 00:36:33.680 --> 00:36:34.640 human beings. 00:36:34.640 --> 00:36:36.160 We don't get to paper that over. 00:36:36.160 --> 00:36:37.600 We don't get to ignore it. 00:36:37.600 --> 00:36:39.520 We don't get to condemn it. 00:36:39.520 --> 00:36:41.520 We have to deal with it head on. 00:36:41.520 --> 00:36:43.280 And it's simple reality. 00:36:43.600 --> 00:36:50.400 God does not condemn certain things that today's post-Enlightenment, post-French Revolution morality 00:36:50.400 --> 00:36:54.160 condemns. And that's why this podcast series exists, is that we're basically 00:36:54.640 --> 00:36:56.320 fighting the Enlightenment in reverse. 00:36:56.320 --> 00:37:01.200 We're trying to undo the damage done by these perverse moralities that 00:37:01.200 --> 00:37:04.480 have been inserted by Satan into our hearts and minds. 00:37:04.480 --> 00:37:08.480 W so we're pointing to scripture because people will make arguments on 00:37:09.040 --> 00:37:12.640 moral grounds that are not in accord with scripture. 00:37:12.640 --> 00:37:14.640 And so I said at the beginning, we're going to ignore some 00:37:14.640 --> 00:37:18.240 of the arguments against slavery that are made from scripture because they're 00:37:18.240 --> 00:37:19.200 proof texting. 00:37:19.200 --> 00:37:24.480 They must necessarily either ignore these passages or condemn them or resort 00:37:24.480 --> 00:37:27.040 to Marcionism where you say, well, that was the demiurge, that was 00:37:27.040 --> 00:37:28.080 the Old Testament God. 00:37:28.080 --> 00:37:29.440 We have a different God now. 00:37:29.440 --> 00:37:32.560 Well, yes, some of those people do have, in fact, have a 00:37:32.560 --> 00:37:35.360 different God, and that is a that's a dangerous thing that we're 00:37:35.280 --> 00:37:36.160 facing today. 00:37:36.560 --> 00:37:40.080 And just to highlight that difference from scripture, I'll read one of 00:37:40.080 --> 00:37:43.600 the passages that deals with that from Leviticus twenty five. 00:37:43.600 --> 00:37:47.200 For they, speaking of the Hebrews, are my servants whom I brought 00:37:47.200 --> 00:37:50.160 out of the land of Egypt, they shall not be sold as 00:37:50.160 --> 00:37:54.240 slaves. You shall not rule over him ruthlessly but shall fear your 00:37:54.240 --> 00:37:58.320 God. As for your male and female slaves, whom you may have, 00:37:58.320 --> 00:38:01.760 you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that 00:38:01.760 --> 00:38:03.040 are around you. 00:38:03.040 --> 00:38:06.560 You may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you, 00:38:06.560 --> 00:38:09.600 and their clans that are with you, who have been born in 00:38:09.600 --> 00:38:11.920 your land, and they may be your property. 00:38:12.480 --> 00:38:15.920 You may bequeath them to your sons after you to inherit as 00:38:15.920 --> 00:38:17.760 a possession for ever. 00:38:17.760 --> 00:38:20.880 You may make slaves of them, but over your brothers the people 00:38:20.880 --> 00:38:26.800 of Israel, you shall not rule, one over another ruthlessly. 00:38:26.800 --> 00:38:30.560 And so that emphasizes what was just said. 00:38:30.560 --> 00:38:35.120 The Israelites were allowed to purchase as slaves and to keep as 00:38:35.120 --> 00:38:40.480 slaves in perpetuity those from other nations. 00:38:40.480 --> 00:38:45.760 God commanded them, required of them that they treat their own race 00:38:45.760 --> 00:38:48.640 differently from those of a foreign race. 00:38:48.720 --> 00:38:51.840 And this is something that shows up in uh first Kings five 00:38:52.640 --> 00:38:55.440 when King Solomon is building the temple. 00:38:55.440 --> 00:38:59.040 Uh he gets help from King Hiram of Tyre, uh who is 00:38:59.040 --> 00:39:02.800 a friend to his father David, and when Solomon was blessed by 00:39:02.800 --> 00:39:06.400 God with peace peace and prosperity he had the the means, the 00:39:06.400 --> 00:39:10.320 motive and the opportunity to build the temple that David had wanted 00:39:10.320 --> 00:39:11.040 to build. 00:39:11.040 --> 00:39:15.440 And so as the temple was being built, first Kings five makes 00:39:15.440 --> 00:39:17.760 clear in the commentaries go into detail to 00:39:18.720 --> 00:39:22.880 bolster the point, there were tens, if not hundreds of thousands of 00:39:22.880 --> 00:39:26.720 slaves who were used in the construction of the temple, and King 00:39:26.720 --> 00:39:34.160 Solomon in particular used Canaanite slaves, conquered alien race of people, 00:39:34.160 --> 00:39:37.760 as slave labor in the construction of the temple. 00:39:37.760 --> 00:39:41.600 Now I highlight this fact because the temple is not just like 00:39:41.600 --> 00:39:42.480 a building. 00:39:42.480 --> 00:39:42.880 The temple 00:39:43.760 --> 00:39:47.040 was God's home on earth. 00:39:47.040 --> 00:39:50.240 It was where the Holy of Holies was built, where the Ark 00:39:50.240 --> 00:39:54.320 of the Covenant was placed, where God had a special presence as 00:39:54.320 --> 00:39:57.520 He has never had at any other point in human history. 00:39:57.520 --> 00:40:00.160 The temple was blessed by God. 00:40:00.160 --> 00:40:02.240 God supervised its construction. 00:40:02.240 --> 00:40:06.000 He was talking to Solomon on a regular basis about his its 00:40:06.000 --> 00:40:12.000 construction. God knew that these racial Canaanite slaves were being forced to 00:40:12.000 --> 00:40:13.440 labor on the temple. 00:40:13.440 --> 00:40:16.880 Now the reason I highlight this is that in 1 Kings 6 00:40:16.960 --> 00:40:20.720 it mentions when the house was built, it was with stone prepared 00:40:20.720 --> 00:40:24.400 at the quarry so that neither hammer nor axe nor any tool 00:40:24.400 --> 00:40:27.920 of iron was heard in the house while it was being built. 00:40:27.920 --> 00:40:31.280 Now this the temple wasn't even complete at that point, it hadn't 00:40:31.200 --> 00:40:34.880 been consecrated, they had not finished it, but it was still such 00:40:34.880 --> 00:40:35.680 a holy important 00:40:36.640 --> 00:40:40.000 place that they banned hammers and tools so that there would be 00:40:40.000 --> 00:40:43.600 no racket, there would be no clatter, the temple was to be 00:40:43.600 --> 00:40:45.760 as quiet and solemn as possible. 00:40:45.760 --> 00:40:49.600 That's how much they cared about the construction of the temple. 00:40:49.600 --> 00:40:54.960 So you cannot ignore the fact that racial slave labor was used 00:40:54.960 --> 00:40:56.640 in the construction of the temple. 00:40:56.640 --> 00:40:58.480 That is not a small point. 00:40:58.480 --> 00:41:02.480 And those slaves were were blessed to be a part of it. 00:41:02.480 --> 00:41:05.440 And again, that's part of those two sides of this equation, regardless 00:41:05.440 --> 00:41:09.760 of what the Canaanites thought about their slave labor for Solomon, they 00:41:09.840 --> 00:41:10.720 were blessed. 00:41:10.720 --> 00:41:14.320 They were blessed to be a part of something that was magnificent, 00:41:14.320 --> 00:41:19.200 that was blessed by God in it in an absolutely unique way. 00:41:19.200 --> 00:41:23.040 And God would not have blessed that if it were not in 00:41:23.200 --> 00:41:24.960 perfect accord with his will. 00:41:24.960 --> 00:41:27.360 He would not have come down to a place that was evil, 00:41:27.360 --> 00:41:32.240 that was tainted by the original sin of racism and slavery because 00:41:32.240 --> 00:41:33.840 slaves helped build it. 00:41:33.840 --> 00:41:36.640 And yet, these are arguments that we hear in the lips of 00:41:36.640 --> 00:41:38.560 some of our own men today. 00:41:38.560 --> 00:41:40.960 This is not Christianity. 00:41:40.960 --> 00:41:44.720 So these small vignettes that we were plucking from Scripture, we're not 00:41:44.720 --> 00:41:46.720 saying that this is the whole point of the Old Testament or 00:41:46.720 --> 00:41:48.640 the or the New Testament for that matter. 00:41:48.640 --> 00:41:51.760 We're saying that when God mentions as an aside, oh, by the 00:41:51.760 --> 00:41:55.920 way, my holy house is built by slave labor who were racially 00:41:55.920 --> 00:41:58.240 chosen to be slaves. 00:41:58.240 --> 00:42:00.720 We don't get to say yeah, but that's sin. 00:42:00.720 --> 00:42:02.080 I don't like that. 00:42:02.080 --> 00:42:07.040 God consecrated it by blessing the temple, we do not get to 00:42:07.040 --> 00:42:09.520 ignore that and we do not get to dispute it. 00:42:09.600 --> 00:42:09.760 I 00:42:09.760 --> 00:42:11.040 was going to go to the same place. 00:42:11.040 --> 00:42:13.600 I was going to go to First Kings 9, though, where it 00:42:13.600 --> 00:42:17.680 is specifically noted that all the people who were left of the 00:42:17.840 --> 00:42:22.240 Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, who were 00:42:22.240 --> 00:42:25.840 not of the people of Israel, their descendants, who were left after 00:42:25.840 --> 00:42:28.720 them in the land, whom the people of Israel were unable to 00:42:28.720 --> 00:42:33.680 devote to destruction, these Solomon drafted to be slaves, and so they 00:42:33.680 --> 00:42:35.200 are to this day. 00:42:35.200 --> 00:42:39.920 But of the people of Israel Solomon made no slaves. 00:42:39.920 --> 00:42:44.320 So not only was slave labor used to build the temple, it 00:42:44.320 --> 00:42:50.640 was exclusively non-Israelite slave labor, exclusively foreign slave labor. 00:42:51.040 --> 00:42:54.000 The first passage in the New Testament that I wanted to highlight 00:42:54.080 --> 00:42:58.400 that is one that also disputes one of the other arguments in 00:42:58.400 --> 00:42:58.880 favor of 00:43:00.240 --> 00:43:04.560 a hypothetical form of freedom that doesn't actually exist. 00:43:04.560 --> 00:43:06.480 So this is from Romans 6. 00:43:06.480 --> 00:43:08.240 Paul writes, What then? 00:43:08.240 --> 00:43:10.960 Are we to sin because we are not under the law but 00:43:10.960 --> 00:43:11.920 under grace? 00:43:11.920 --> 00:43:12.800 By no means. 00:43:13.040 --> 00:43:15.920 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as 00:43:15.920 --> 00:43:20.480 obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either 00:43:20.480 --> 00:43:24.080 of sin which leads to death, or of obedience which leaves to 00:43:24.080 --> 00:43:28.000 righteousness. But thanks be to God, the you who were once slaves 00:43:28.000 --> 00:43:31.680 of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of 00:43:31.680 --> 00:43:35.200 teaching to which you were committed, and having been set free from 00:43:35.200 --> 00:43:38.960 sin, have become slaves of righteousness. 00:43:38.960 --> 00:43:42.640 Now I highlight this because I think this goes back to the 00:43:42.640 --> 00:43:43.920 Garden of Eden. 00:43:43.920 --> 00:43:48.480 What was the proposition that Satan was making to Eve? 00:43:48.480 --> 00:43:52.720 He said, You will not surely die, you will be like God. 00:43:52.720 --> 00:43:56.240 And I think that that is the echo that we hear from 00:43:56.240 --> 00:44:01.360 the Garden of Eden through scripture up through all the recent historical 00:44:01.360 --> 00:44:05.440 events that we mentioned in past episodes through to today. 00:44:05.440 --> 00:44:07.280 There it's not a coincidence. 00:44:07.280 --> 00:44:10.640 We mentioned last week when we were talking about slavery there that 00:44:11.200 --> 00:44:17.520 CFW Walther wrote up in opposition to the abolitionists, and he specifically 00:44:17.520 --> 00:44:23.600 mentioned that the people who were abolitionists were overwhelmingly atheists, they were 00:44:23.920 --> 00:44:29.840 anarchists, all other manner of evil godless people. 00:44:29.840 --> 00:44:35.440 Anarchy in particular is interesting because one of the slogans of anarchy, 00:44:35.440 --> 00:44:40.080 which is itself, it it's an anti-government of sorts, but fundamentally it's 00:44:40.080 --> 00:44:41.760 just pure hatred of God. 00:44:42.000 --> 00:44:47.840 In the 1800s, the slogan that was used among anarchists and is 00:44:47.840 --> 00:44:49.600 used to this day, it's still popular. 00:44:49.600 --> 00:44:53.840 And you've probably heard it: no gods, no masters. 00:44:53.840 --> 00:44:57.680 Well, that's basically what Satan was trying to sell to Eve. 00:44:57.680 --> 00:45:00.240 You will be like God, which is saying you're going to be 00:45:00.240 --> 00:45:01.440 on equal footing. 00:45:01.440 --> 00:45:02.560 You will have no God. 00:45:02.560 --> 00:45:03.920 You will have no master. 00:45:03.920 --> 00:45:05.680 You will be your own God. 00:45:05.680 --> 00:45:09.680 That is that's Luther's explanation of the first commandment that if we 00:45:09.680 --> 00:45:16.000 fear, love, and trust nothing above ourselves, we become our own gods. 00:45:16.000 --> 00:45:18.560 And every sin is rooted in that disobedience. 00:45:18.560 --> 00:45:22.080 Every sin is rooted in I'm God for for the next thirty 00:45:22.080 --> 00:45:25.120 seconds I'm gonna do this thing, I'm gonna do it in opposition 00:45:25.120 --> 00:45:25.760 to God. 00:45:25.760 --> 00:45:28.400 I know what he wants, I'm gonna do something different. 00:45:28.400 --> 00:45:30.480 That is saying I am God. 00:45:30.480 --> 00:45:32.720 That is a first commandment violation. 00:45:32.720 --> 00:45:36.720 It's the most serious sin you can commit because you are in 00:45:36.720 --> 00:45:38.080 open defiance. 00:45:38.080 --> 00:45:40.800 Anarchy is open defiance of God. 00:45:40.800 --> 00:45:45.600 Despising slavery is fundamentally open defiance of God God. 00:45:45.600 --> 00:45:47.200 Because what does Paul say here? 00:45:47.200 --> 00:45:49.840 He doesn't say you've been set free from sin, and so now 00:45:49.840 --> 00:45:50.640 you're free. 00:45:50.640 --> 00:45:53.440 He says you're slaves to righteousness. 00:45:53.440 --> 00:45:56.560 We've mentioned in past episodes, and one of the reasons that Corey 00:45:56.560 --> 00:46:00.400 and I both love to point to Job is that God is 00:46:00.400 --> 00:46:02.000 our creator. 00:46:02.000 --> 00:46:07.040 And in the the libertarian or the uh Austrian conception of the 00:46:07.040 --> 00:46:11.040 creation of property, it's mixing your labor with the soil. 00:46:11.040 --> 00:46:13.520 So if you go down out in the wilderness, you dig a 00:46:13.520 --> 00:46:15.200 trench, you cut down trees. 00:46:15.440 --> 00:46:19.280 The act of taking something that was unclaimed and converting it into 00:46:19.280 --> 00:46:22.960 something useful is you making it your property. 00:46:22.960 --> 00:46:27.440 Well the very first mixing labor with soil was what God did 00:46:27.440 --> 00:46:29.200 when he created Adam. 00:46:29.200 --> 00:46:33.600 He mixed his labor with the soil and he formed Adam from 00:46:33.600 --> 00:46:36.480 the ground, from the dirt, from the clay. 00:46:36.480 --> 00:46:40.640 And so that is why we are God's creature. 00:46:40.640 --> 00:46:41.840 He made us. 00:46:41.840 --> 00:46:47.360 And the creature creator paradigm is fundamentally one of property. 00:46:47.360 --> 00:46:50.080 And that's something that Austrian economics gets right. 00:46:50.080 --> 00:46:53.520 That property is made yours by your working with it. 00:46:53.520 --> 00:46:55.280 You've made something new. 00:46:55.280 --> 00:46:56.720 Now you're claiming it. 00:46:56.720 --> 00:47:00.560 The difference is that God is creator, literally created from nothing. 00:47:00.560 --> 00:47:02.240 And so all things belong to him. 00:47:02.240 --> 00:47:04.320 There's nothing in creation that doesn't belong to God. 00:47:04.720 --> 00:47:06.400 Especially us. 00:47:06.400 --> 00:47:11.120 And the problem that we face today as Christians when we assume 00:47:11.120 --> 00:47:18.480 these egalitarian post-Enlightenment anti-slavery priors is that when you set your morality 00:47:18.480 --> 00:47:23.120 in opposition to slavery, you gloss over or you ignore or you 00:47:23.120 --> 00:47:27.200 have to repudiate these very passages that are intended for our comfort. 00:47:27.200 --> 00:47:28.800 We are slaves to Christ. 00:47:28.800 --> 00:47:34.160 We We are slaves to righteousness because we're owned by God twice 00:47:34.160 --> 00:47:37.760 over. Every man is owned by God because we're creatures and God 00:47:37.760 --> 00:47:39.120 is our creator. 00:47:39.120 --> 00:47:44.160 Every Christian is owned twice over by God because God redeemed us. 00:47:44.160 --> 00:47:47.680 When he shed his blood for us on the cross, he purchased 00:47:47.680 --> 00:47:48.640 us with a price. 00:47:48.640 --> 00:47:49.680 And that was the price. 00:47:49.680 --> 00:47:53.440 It was his precious blood being shed for the remission of our 00:47:53.440 --> 00:47:58.880 sins. That purchase price purchased us back from the damnation we have 00:47:58.880 --> 00:48:00.320 earned by our sin. 00:48:00.320 --> 00:48:04.160 So we're owned as creatures and we're owned secondarily, well not secondarily, 00:48:04.160 --> 00:48:08.880 but we are owned yet again, twice over as Christians, as believers 00:48:09.200 --> 00:48:12.800 who are covered in Christ's blood, that is ownership. 00:48:12.800 --> 00:48:16.560 When we put put on the cloak of Christ's righteousness, that is 00:48:16.560 --> 00:48:18.160 like a yoke of slavery. 00:48:18.160 --> 00:48:21.120 Now we don't look at it as a burden, which is the 00:48:21.120 --> 00:48:22.960 whole point of this episode. 00:48:22.960 --> 00:48:24.880 Slavery is not a burden. 00:48:24.880 --> 00:48:27.280 That is the lie that we have been sold for the last 00:48:27.280 --> 00:48:28.240 couple of centuries. 00:48:28.240 --> 00:48:30.000 That oh if you're a slave, you're burdened. 00:48:30.000 --> 00:48:31.920 You're being mistreated, you have to flee. 00:48:31.920 --> 00:48:34.160 There's some passages we'll get to in a minute where it specifically 00:48:34.320 --> 00:48:38.480 talks about slaves being mistreated and bearing up underneath it, that you 00:48:38.480 --> 00:48:42.240 don't flee if you're mistreated, and God certainly doesn't mistreat us. 00:48:42.240 --> 00:48:44.640 We are first and foremost his property. 00:48:44.640 --> 00:48:48.320 So when Paul writes, when the Holy Spirit writes, we have been 00:48:48.320 --> 00:48:52.640 set free from sin to become slaves to righteousness, we need to 00:48:52.640 --> 00:48:56.240 take that seriously, and we must be slaves to righteousness. 00:48:56.240 --> 00:48:59.200 Now Lutherans get squeamish 'cause well that that doesn't sound like the 00:48:59.200 --> 00:49:02.000 gospel. That sounds like is that works righteousness? 00:49:02.000 --> 00:49:05.360 No. It's the post soteriological life of the Christian. 00:49:05.360 --> 00:49:07.280 You are saved now what? 00:49:07.280 --> 00:49:10.080 Now you are to be slaves to righteousness. 00:49:10.080 --> 00:49:14.240 It is a word that we must learn to redeem because we 00:49:14.480 --> 00:49:16.480 we need to redeem it from our own lies and our own 00:49:16.480 --> 00:49:17.600 wayward hearts. 00:49:17.600 --> 00:49:20.400 And we need to embrace it because it is God's will for 00:49:20.400 --> 00:49:24.240 us to be his slaves again, not to be slaves to Satan 00:49:24.320 --> 00:49:25.440 and slaves to sin. 00:49:25.840 --> 00:49:26.000 And 00:49:26.000 --> 00:49:30.480 when you mentioned that slogan of the anarchist that has long been 00:49:30.480 --> 00:49:35.040 their slogan and still is today, it also brings to mind two 00:49:35.360 --> 00:49:36.560 other things. 00:49:36.560 --> 00:49:37.200 One 00:49:38.400 --> 00:49:41.520 quote that is frequently used in this area in one passage of 00:49:41.520 --> 00:49:46.080 scripture dealing with the same sort of false conception of freedom, the 00:49:46.080 --> 00:49:49.600 literally satanic conception of freedom. 00:49:49.600 --> 00:49:54.960 The quote is from the French French Jesuit trained philosopher of the 00:49:54.960 --> 00:49:59.840 Enlightenment, what a cursed trivium that is, but Diderot Men will never 00:49:59.840 --> 00:50:03.280 be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of 00:50:03.280 --> 00:50:05.040 the last priest. 00:50:05.040 --> 00:50:09.920 And I would hope, as Christians, and particularly listeners of this podcast, 00:50:09.920 --> 00:50:12.800 that people can see the problem with that. 00:50:12.800 --> 00:50:16.880 If you want to subvert the king, then you are attempting to 00:50:16.880 --> 00:50:19.520 subvert the right rulership. 00:50:19.760 --> 00:50:24.240 of your nation, you are attempting to subvert the left hand kingdom 00:50:24.240 --> 00:50:30.160 of Christ, and then of course destroying priests is somewhat self-explanatory, I 00:50:30.160 --> 00:50:31.440 would think. 00:50:31.440 --> 00:50:36.000 The passage from scripture is Isaiah fourteen, of course, it's the 00:50:37.680 --> 00:50:42.320 statement that is attributed to Sargon, but really it's Sargon the second, 00:50:42.320 --> 00:50:44.240 echoing Satan. 00:50:44.240 --> 00:50:47.440 You said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven above the 00:50:47.440 --> 00:50:50.960 stars of God, I will set my throne on high, I will 00:50:50.960 --> 00:50:53.600 sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the 00:50:53.600 --> 00:50:57.200 north, I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will 00:50:57.200 --> 00:51:01.040 make myself like the most high. 00:51:01.040 --> 00:51:04.560 And that is the cry of every single person who wants to 00:51:04.560 --> 00:51:11.280 subvert hierarchy, order, God's intended rule and creation, and it's also the 00:51:11.280 --> 00:51:14.000 same cry of every man who sins, because that is exactly what 00:51:14.000 --> 00:51:15.360 you're doing when you sin. 00:51:15.360 --> 00:51:17.520 You're saying, no, I am my own God. 00:51:17.520 --> 00:51:22.080 I will do whatever I want, regardless of what my creator intends 00:51:22.080 --> 00:51:25.840 for me or says I must do or must not do. 00:51:25.840 --> 00:51:31.520 And that is this false conception of freedom or liberty that has 00:51:31.520 --> 00:51:34.560 become one of the core idols of the modern world. 00:51:34.560 --> 00:51:40.400 And it's why slavery grates so much against the modern mind, because 00:51:40.400 --> 00:51:46.480 it runs directly counter to this idea of unbounded freedom as one 00:51:46.480 --> 00:51:48.160 of the highest goods. 00:51:48.960 --> 00:51:52.400 Which, of course, is ridiculous because one, there's no such thing as 00:51:52.400 --> 00:51:56.960 unbounded freedom, and two, it's not a good, even if you approach 00:51:56.960 --> 00:52:00.000 it, attempt to achieve it. 00:52:00.000 --> 00:52:05.920 And even today, just as a purely practical matter, we still have 00:52:05.920 --> 00:52:08.240 the equivalent of slavery. 00:52:08.240 --> 00:52:11.280 We still have actual slavery, but we have the equivalent as well, 00:52:11.280 --> 00:52:16.560 because if you're an employee, your employer owns you to a certain 00:52:16.560 --> 00:52:21.440 degree. Yes, it may only be for X number of hours per 00:52:21.440 --> 00:52:27.040 day, whatever the terms of your contract are, but also you get 00:52:27.040 --> 00:52:30.800 less for it, because historically at the very least, and we can 00:52:30.800 --> 00:52:35.200 get into more of the history in a little bit, the slave 00:52:35.200 --> 00:52:40.240 master had to provide at least basic necessities for the slave clothing, 00:52:40.240 --> 00:52:46.640 shelter, food, whereas your employer just pays you some lump sum for 00:52:46.960 --> 00:52:51.520 X amount of your time and then good luck deal with everything 00:52:51.520 --> 00:52:53.440 else yourself. 00:52:53.440 --> 00:52:58.480 In some ways, many modern relationships of employee and employer are worse 00:52:58.480 --> 00:53:03.600 than the historical relation of serf and lord or master and slave. 00:53:03.760 --> 00:53:06.560 The second passage that I referred to a minute ago, but I 00:53:06.560 --> 00:53:11.520 want to read in its entirety is from first Corinthians six. 00:53:11.520 --> 00:53:15.360 Paul writes, Do you not know that your bodies are members of 00:53:15.360 --> 00:53:18.640 Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them 00:53:18.640 --> 00:53:20.240 members of a prostitute? 00:53:20.240 --> 00:53:23.440 Never. Or do you not know that he who is joined to 00:53:23.440 --> 00:53:26.240 a prostitute becomes one body with her? 00:53:26.240 --> 00:53:30.080 For as it is written, the two will become one flesh. 00:53:30.080 --> 00:53:33.360 But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with 00:53:33.360 --> 00:53:35.920 him, flee from sexual immorality. 00:53:35.920 --> 00:53:39.440 Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the 00:53:39.440 --> 00:53:42.560 sexually immoral person sins against his own body. 00:53:42.560 --> 00:53:45.280 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of 00:53:45.280 --> 00:53:48.560 the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God. 00:53:48.560 --> 00:53:51.920 You are not your own, for you were bought with a price, 00:53:51.920 --> 00:53:54.720 so glorify God in your body. 00:53:54.720 --> 00:53:58.400 Now I think the error that we make today is we kind 00:53:58.400 --> 00:54:00.800 of gloss over that for you were not your own, for you 00:54:00.800 --> 00:54:02.400 were bought with a price. 00:54:02.400 --> 00:54:04.480 And we just think of it as kind of you know flowery 00:54:04.480 --> 00:54:06.880 language or it's it's nice, it's a sentiment. 00:54:06.880 --> 00:54:10.560 When Paul wrote this, the audience of his day knew exactly what 00:54:10.640 --> 00:54:14.960 Exactly what he meant because he was writing to believers of all 00:54:14.960 --> 00:54:19.120 stripes, of all stations, of all, you know, regardless of their race, 00:54:19.120 --> 00:54:23.600 regardless of their where they were in the social hierarchy, he was 00:54:23.600 --> 00:54:24.960 saying, you are not your own. 00:54:25.200 --> 00:54:28.880 Now that was a a big countercultural thing to be saying to 00:54:28.880 --> 00:54:33.760 some of the wealthy people who were his own uh benefactors. 00:54:33.760 --> 00:54:37.040 There were some people who were not slaves, who were were rich, 00:54:37.040 --> 00:54:40.960 independent citizens of Rome and of other nations. 00:54:40.960 --> 00:54:43.520 And so for him to say you are not your own, for 00:54:43.520 --> 00:54:46.640 you were bought with the price, I don't want to say it 00:54:46.640 --> 00:54:51.360 stings, but it actually would cut to the quick for a man 00:54:51.360 --> 00:54:55.120 who would own perhaps hundreds, even maybe even thousands of slaves and 00:54:55.120 --> 00:54:58.240 servants, for some of the very wealthy ones, for him to say 00:54:58.400 --> 00:55:01.280 you are not your own either, he would know exactly what that 00:55:01.280 --> 00:55:06.480 meant. And for the slaves, for the the household slaves for the 00:55:06.480 --> 00:55:10.160 muck slaves for the highest or the lowest who were owned as 00:55:10.160 --> 00:55:14.480 property, they would hear what I had mentioned earlier, that they are 00:55:14.480 --> 00:55:15.920 in fact owned twice over. 00:55:15.920 --> 00:55:18.720 They're owned by their masters and they're owned by God. 00:55:18.720 --> 00:55:24.000 And so this notion of ownership of humans that is so antithetical 00:55:24.000 --> 00:55:27.840 to our ears is not antithetical to the Christian faith. 00:55:27.840 --> 00:55:31.920 So I mentioned up front, this is a really important episode because 00:55:31.920 --> 00:55:36.480 this is not we're not talking about something that's this weird anachronism. 00:55:36.720 --> 00:55:38.640 it's it's a historical blip. 00:55:38.640 --> 00:55:41.600 It's something we got rid of, and I'm glad it's gone. 00:55:41.600 --> 00:55:42.480 We're talking about 00:55:44.160 --> 00:55:48.400 the human condition as it relates to our faith and whether or 00:55:48.400 --> 00:55:50.160 not slavery exists today. 00:55:50.160 --> 00:55:52.800 I don't have a position on whether it should come back or 00:55:52.800 --> 00:55:54.400 not. I don't care. 00:55:54.400 --> 00:55:58.080 I don't think that what we have today is an improvement over 00:55:58.160 --> 00:56:00.320 what history has shown in the past. 00:56:00.320 --> 00:56:02.480 I think in many ways it's far worse. 00:56:02.480 --> 00:56:06.080 So if you want to m start making moral arguments apart from 00:56:06.400 --> 00:56:10.000 slavery being prevented, I would suggest you not do that because you 00:56:10.000 --> 00:56:13.040 might lose strictly on pragmatic grounds. 00:56:13.040 --> 00:56:17.600 If the employees of Amazon of Amazon and Jeff Bezos are not 00:56:17.600 --> 00:56:22.640 slaves and they're literally working themselves to death in his robot warehouses, 00:56:22.640 --> 00:56:26.400 I can show you a system where them being slaves would give 00:56:26.400 --> 00:56:31.120 better outcomes in their lives than being almost owned by a man 00:56:31.120 --> 00:56:34.560 who can then just dispose of them in a way that scripture 00:56:34.560 --> 00:56:37.360 would would condemn if they were his property and yet because they're 00:56:37.280 --> 00:56:41.520 not his property, we pretend that they just fall through the cracks. 00:56:41.520 --> 00:56:46.000 No, this these are moral matters that are active today, both in 00:56:46.000 --> 00:56:49.760 pragmatic terms in our our lives and how our our workplaces and 00:56:49.760 --> 00:56:54.720 our societies are structured, they're also fundamentally important in terms of how 00:56:54.720 --> 00:56:56.320 we understand the Christian faith. 00:56:56.320 --> 00:57:00.240 Because again, if you are slaves to righteousness, and if you are 00:57:00.240 --> 00:57:03.680 not your own because you were bought with the price of Christ's 00:57:03.680 --> 00:57:05.920 blood on the cross, that 00:57:07.840 --> 00:57:09.040 locks you in. 00:57:09.040 --> 00:57:10.640 You are shackled by that. 00:57:10.640 --> 00:57:13.920 You are in chains for God's sake. 00:57:13.920 --> 00:57:17.360 There are things that you can no longer do that you could 00:57:17.360 --> 00:57:18.320 do before. 00:57:18.320 --> 00:57:19.920 You could do them in ignorance. 00:57:19.920 --> 00:57:20.560 It was sinful. 00:57:20.560 --> 00:57:21.440 It was wicked. 00:57:21.440 --> 00:57:22.400 You didn't know. 00:57:22.400 --> 00:57:25.760 Now that you know, now that you are slaves to righteousness, you 00:57:25.760 --> 00:57:29.760 must stop doing them because you know that you belong to God. 00:57:29.760 --> 00:57:34.320 And so, this the slavery in this ownership stuff, it is not 00:57:34.320 --> 00:57:36.880 everything that there is to say about the Christian life. 00:57:36.880 --> 00:57:41.520 We don't want to give that impression because ultimately true Christian freedom 00:57:41.520 --> 00:57:42.800 is understanding this. 00:57:42.800 --> 00:57:45.680 It's freedom in service to Christ. 00:57:45.680 --> 00:57:49.520 But the freedom is not an unbounded freedom, as Corey said. 00:57:49.520 --> 00:57:54.240 It is freedom that's imperfect in this life because we're still slaves 00:57:54.240 --> 00:57:55.920 to sin to some degree. 00:57:56.320 --> 00:57:59.520 we're freed by degrees through sanctification. 00:57:59.520 --> 00:58:01.280 I don't know how to say that exactly properly. 00:58:01.280 --> 00:58:02.560 It's we're both. 00:58:02.560 --> 00:58:05.760 We have one foot in both worlds, and it's why in Romans 00:58:05.840 --> 00:58:10.880 7, Paul laments his own struggle against this flesh, where he doesn't 00:58:10.800 --> 00:58:12.960 do that which he wants to do, but he does the sin 00:58:12.960 --> 00:58:14.400 that is within him. 00:58:14.400 --> 00:58:18.560 We all face that, and being Christians doesn't end our sinfulness. 00:58:18.560 --> 00:58:22.560 But what it does end is our absolute slavery to that sin. 00:58:22.560 --> 00:58:26.960 The absolute slavery is ended, and we instead become slaves to righteousness 00:58:27.120 --> 00:58:30.800 where we know how to obey God as He wishes. 00:58:30.800 --> 00:58:34.160 And so these terms need to make a comeback. 00:58:34.160 --> 00:58:38.960 Talking about slavery in favorable terms needs to make a comeback. 00:58:38.960 --> 00:58:44.160 Not necessarily just in spiritual terms, but the notion that as a 00:58:44.160 --> 00:58:47.840 husband, you are a slave to your family, even as you are 00:58:47.840 --> 00:58:49.600 the head, because what can you do? 00:58:49.600 --> 00:58:51.680 You can't just go run off and get drunk. 00:58:51.680 --> 00:58:53.920 You can't disappear for days at a time. 00:58:53.920 --> 00:58:56.400 You must serve them faithfully. 00:58:56.400 --> 00:59:00.560 I think the the aspect that's missing from the discussion of master 00:59:00.560 --> 00:59:04.400 and slave is that the master is also a slave by degree, 00:59:04.400 --> 00:59:06.560 because the master has obligations. 00:59:06.560 --> 00:59:10.080 And when you look at the moral obligations in scripture in joining 00:59:10.160 --> 00:59:15.040 master's actions, they become slaves to their slaves, not in the same 00:59:15.040 --> 00:59:18.560 sense, not in the sense of directing actions one versus the other, 00:59:18.560 --> 00:59:23.760 but in the sense that the master has obligations, has a vocation 00:59:23.760 --> 00:59:29.200 to preserve the health, the welfare, the spiritual care of those under 00:59:29.200 --> 00:59:32.080 his household, those whom he owns. 00:59:32.080 --> 00:59:36.000 And so it's not like you have freedom on one hand and 00:59:36.000 --> 00:59:38.880 then abject shackled slavery on the other hand. 00:59:38.880 --> 00:59:43.600 There are obligations in every direction because God made us as social 00:59:43.600 --> 00:59:47.360 creatures and a hierarchy is not in opposition to society. 00:59:47.360 --> 00:59:50.880 Hierarchy is the way a godly society functions. 00:59:50.880 --> 00:59:55.840 In a godly functioning society, hierarchy will have masters and it will 00:59:55.840 --> 01:00:00.720 have slaves by whatever name, but it is not extraction from the 01:00:00.720 --> 01:00:05.520 weak and enrichment of the wealthy, it is it's a form of 01:00:05.520 --> 01:00:08.560 symbiosis, but in a godly fashion. 01:00:08.560 --> 01:00:12.000 And so these terms are not alien to the Christian faith, but 01:00:12.000 --> 01:00:15.040 the fact that they become alien to our own minds is why 01:00:15.040 --> 01:00:17.360 we are having so many of these problems today. 01:00:17.760 --> 01:00:23.120 And you started off that section with a quote from First Corinthians, 01:00:23.120 --> 01:00:27.440 but another letter of Paul's was making the round same time, that's 01:00:27.440 --> 01:00:29.440 Romans. And that of course starts off 01:00:30.880 --> 01:00:38.400 the second word is slave Paulas Dulas Christiesu, Paul a slave 01:00:38.720 --> 01:00:40.560 of Christ Jesus. 01:00:40.560 --> 01:00:43.920 That is the proper conception of what it means to be a 01:00:43.920 --> 01:00:46.160 Christian. You are a slave of Christ. 01:00:46.160 --> 01:00:48.640 You are a slave of God because you were bought with a 01:00:48.640 --> 01:00:54.080 price. You belong to God. 01:00:54.080 --> 01:00:59.280 And And when you bring up the issue of how employees and 01:00:59.280 --> 01:01:04.400 others are treated under our current system versus slaves, it it brings 01:01:04.400 --> 01:01:08.240 to mind, I don't make it a point of necessarily quoting Kipling 01:01:08.320 --> 01:01:11.440 every episode, but it brings to mind a certain line nor call 01:01:11.440 --> 01:01:15.760 too loud on freedom to cloak your weariness because that's really what 01:01:15.760 --> 01:01:17.680 we're doing. 01:01:17.680 --> 01:01:22.400 Our system allows those who are, by virtue of their position and 01:01:22.400 --> 01:01:26.800 their power, by virtue of their authority and means, they are masters, 01:01:26.800 --> 01:01:28.800 and they are masters over slaves. 01:01:28.800 --> 01:01:31.920 You can call them employees, you can call them at will employees, 01:01:31.920 --> 01:01:34.960 you can call them whatever it is you like, but it's just 01:01:34.960 --> 01:01:39.200 like if you call yourself a president instead of an archbishop or 01:01:39.600 --> 01:01:42.640 a district president instead of a bishop. 01:01:42.640 --> 01:01:45.520 God doesn't care what you call yourself, God cares what your position 01:01:45.520 --> 01:01:49.040 is, what your duties are that flow from that position. 01:01:49.040 --> 01:01:49.680 And so 01:01:50.800 --> 01:01:54.800 it's going to be the same for these individuals who have the 01:01:54.800 --> 01:01:58.480 role of master in our society, but do not live up to 01:01:58.480 --> 01:02:01.200 the standard of what a master is supposed to do. 01:02:01.200 --> 01:02:03.600 And one of the things a master is supposed to do is 01:02:03.600 --> 01:02:07.520 see that his slaves, see that those under him, those entrusted to 01:02:07.520 --> 01:02:11.200 his care, see that they are properly instructed in the faith. 01:02:11.200 --> 01:02:15.840 Can you name a single master in the left hand kingdom who 01:02:15.840 --> 01:02:17.600 does that to any degree? 01:02:17.600 --> 01:02:18.960 It'd be a challenge. 01:02:19.360 --> 01:02:21.840 there may be a few here and there, but it would certainly 01:02:21.840 --> 01:02:22.800 be a challenge. 01:02:22.800 --> 01:02:27.520 And there's also the consideration that it's largely and quickly becoming illegal 01:02:27.520 --> 01:02:30.800 in our system to do that, but that is a a separate 01:02:30.800 --> 01:02:36.160 issue. But I think the when you were mentioning the saint and 01:02:36.320 --> 01:02:38.080 sinner the symbol there 01:02:39.360 --> 01:02:44.080 What really you're you're touching on is the progressive nature of sanctification. 01:02:44.080 --> 01:02:47.920 We are justified, of course, immediately. 01:02:47.920 --> 01:02:52.640 Justification is a one-time thing, it is immediate, it is not progressive, 01:02:52.640 --> 01:02:56.240 it is not you're justified a little bit now and fully later 01:02:56.240 --> 01:02:59.600 on. It's not God does a little and then you do some 01:02:59.680 --> 01:03:01.200 or God does a lot and you do some. 01:03:01.200 --> 01:03:01.840 It's none of that. 01:03:01.840 --> 01:03:04.720 Justification, holy God's work, monergistic 01:03:05.680 --> 01:03:07.760 it happens, it's done. 01:03:07.760 --> 01:03:10.240 But sanctification is progressive. 01:03:10.240 --> 01:03:14.160 We get better over time as we remain in the faith. 01:03:14.160 --> 01:03:19.440 No, we're never perfect in this life, but as you progress in 01:03:19.600 --> 01:03:22.400 your faith, you will 01:03:23.360 --> 01:03:26.960 start to sin less, at least in certain ways. 01:03:26.960 --> 01:03:30.640 There comes with that the recognition of more sins. 01:03:30.640 --> 01:03:32.720 And so you are never going to get to the point where 01:03:32.720 --> 01:03:35.520 you think, I am the holiest person ever to live. 01:03:35.520 --> 01:03:37.040 I am without sin. 01:03:37.040 --> 01:03:40.880 If you get to that point, you're in a very dangerous place 01:03:40.960 --> 01:03:44.560 because you've probably apostatized. 01:03:44.560 --> 01:03:47.680 But what you will do is some of those sins that plagued 01:03:47.760 --> 01:03:51.840 you in the past, as you are progressively sanctified by the Holy 01:03:51.840 --> 01:03:53.920 Spirit, those will fall away. 01:03:54.720 --> 01:03:57.920 But the Holy Spirit will point out, well, there's this other thing 01:03:57.920 --> 01:03:59.280 over here that you're doing. 01:03:59.280 --> 01:04:01.360 And so you'll notice more sins. 01:04:01.360 --> 01:04:07.120 And so the Christian life is, of course, one of constant struggle 01:04:07.120 --> 01:04:12.400 in this life against sin, against the flesh, against the world, against 01:04:12.400 --> 01:04:13.520 the devil. 01:04:13.520 --> 01:04:15.600 But there is progress. 01:04:16.000 --> 01:04:17.840 it's not a standstill. 01:04:18.080 --> 01:04:22.640 It's not stagnation You are getting better as you live as a 01:04:22.640 --> 01:04:24.160 Christian. 01:04:24.160 --> 01:04:27.920 The next passage that I want to read is from Ephesians 6, 01:04:27.920 --> 01:04:31.520 and this is one that is mirrored very closely in Colossians 3. 01:04:31.520 --> 01:04:33.200 I'm not going to read both for time, but you should go 01:04:33.200 --> 01:04:33.840 read both. 01:04:33.840 --> 01:04:37.200 Uh The reason I'm pointing out that it's repeated is that Paul 01:04:37.200 --> 01:04:40.800 uses some of the same words verbatim, some of the same phrases. 01:04:40.800 --> 01:04:45.520 This highlights that this passage from Ephesians 6 and Colossians 3, it's 01:04:45.440 --> 01:04:46.720 not just an aside. 01:04:46.720 --> 01:04:50.320 When he says, slaves obey your earthly masters here in a second, 01:04:50.320 --> 01:04:53.280 it's not just oh I I'm I'm thinking about this now, so 01:04:53.280 --> 01:04:54.560 I'm just gonna mention it. 01:04:54.560 --> 01:04:58.560 This was clearly a core part of Paul's preaching. 01:04:58.560 --> 01:05:02.080 It was a core part of his ministry to those to whom 01:05:02.080 --> 01:05:03.920 he was reaching with the gospel. 01:05:03.920 --> 01:05:08.240 And so the fact that we would see phrases repeated verbatim, I 01:05:08.240 --> 01:05:09.200 think is significant. 01:05:09.200 --> 01:05:10.160 There's not a whole lot of that. 01:05:10.240 --> 01:05:13.680 I mean it's almost like you have almost a a synoptic epistle 01:05:13.680 --> 01:05:15.280 here, with this passage. 01:05:15.280 --> 01:05:19.840 So in Ephesians six, Paul writes, Slaves obey your earthly masters with 01:05:19.840 --> 01:05:23.760 fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ, not 01:05:23.760 --> 01:05:27.120 by the way of eye service as people pleasers, but as slaves 01:05:27.120 --> 01:05:30.640 of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service 01:05:30.640 --> 01:05:33.760 with a good will, as to the Lord and not to man, 01:05:33.760 --> 01:05:37.120 knowing that whatever good anyone does, he will receive back from the 01:05:37.120 --> 01:05:39.840 Lord, whether he is a slave or is free. 01:05:39.840 --> 01:05:43.760 Masters do the same to them, and stop your threatening, knowing that 01:05:43.760 --> 01:05:47.040 he who is both their master and yours in heaven, and that 01:05:47.040 --> 01:05:49.760 there is no partiality with him. 01:05:49.760 --> 01:05:53.120 So again, Pa Paul is highlighting what I mentioned earlier, the you 01:05:53.120 --> 01:05:56.160 were Bob of the Price will hit both the master and the 01:05:56.160 --> 01:05:58.960 slave in different ways, but very profoundly. 01:05:58.960 --> 01:06:02.640 And so I think we today we gloss over this. 01:06:02.640 --> 01:06:07.040 We don't think in terms of master and slave, but I think 01:06:07.200 --> 01:06:10.800 I firmly believe that a proper understanding of the Christian faith, which 01:06:10.800 --> 01:06:12.640 again can only come from scripture. 01:06:12.640 --> 01:06:15.040 Like we're not making anything new up here. 01:06:15.360 --> 01:06:17.680 we're going through all of these passages. 01:06:17.680 --> 01:06:20.000 They're repeat over and over again. 01:06:20.000 --> 01:06:22.720 Slaves, your slaves, be good slaves. 01:06:22.720 --> 01:06:25.200 Masters, your masters, be good masters. 01:06:25.200 --> 01:06:28.080 There's never any commandment for a slave to run away. 01:06:28.080 --> 01:06:31.360 There's never commandment for a master to free his slaves, and we'll 01:06:31.280 --> 01:06:34.000 get to Philemon here at the end, but we're saving that for 01:06:34.000 --> 01:06:35.200 last for a reason. 01:06:35.200 --> 01:06:40.080 But while it is an argument from silence, that works when you're 01:06:40.080 --> 01:06:43.920 talking about God, because if God doesn't condemn something as sin, we 01:06:43.920 --> 01:06:46.880 can't come along later and say, Well, God just forgot to mention 01:06:46.880 --> 01:06:49.200 it. That's not how the Christian faith works. 01:06:49.200 --> 01:06:52.560 As I said last week, we don't get to discover new sins. 01:06:52.560 --> 01:06:55.760 So we deal with the text that we're given because Scripture is 01:06:56.240 --> 01:07:00.240 inspired by the Holy Spirit for us to receive these things. 01:07:00.240 --> 01:07:02.640 If it's not there, you don't get to believe it. 01:07:02.640 --> 01:07:06.000 And when God doesn't condemn something, you have to assume that's for 01:07:06.000 --> 01:07:06.400 a reason. 01:07:06.400 --> 01:07:08.160 You must believe that's for a reason. 01:07:08.160 --> 01:07:09.920 That's not a wild of something. 01:07:10.560 --> 01:07:12.880 That is listening to the voice of God. 01:07:12.880 --> 01:07:15.920 And when he's silent, you know that you don't have to worry 01:07:15.920 --> 01:07:16.560 about that. 01:07:16.560 --> 01:07:20.240 If it were sin, God would tell you in no uncertain terms. 01:07:20.240 --> 01:07:23.760 So slaves obey your earthly masters all by itself. 01:07:24.000 --> 01:07:28.080 If that were the only passage in scripture, that would be condoning 01:07:28.080 --> 01:07:30.320 slavery qua slavery. 01:07:30.400 --> 01:07:30.560 And 01:07:30.560 --> 01:07:34.000 so when a Christian sees, a modern Christian at least, sees that 01:07:34.000 --> 01:07:38.480 we're going to discuss the topic of slavery, probably the first book 01:07:38.480 --> 01:07:41.600 that jumps to mind is Philemon. 01:07:41.600 --> 01:07:46.640 Because Philemon deals specifically with a runaway slave. 01:07:46.640 --> 01:07:47.200 And so 01:07:48.480 --> 01:07:54.240 Many modern exegetes, really Isegetes in most cases, will use the book 01:07:54.240 --> 01:08:00.080 of Philemon in an attempt to argue that slavery is sinful because 01:08:01.200 --> 01:08:06.160 reasons. The problem is, if you actually read Philemon and you have 01:08:06.160 --> 01:08:08.960 no excuse not to read Philemon, I'm looking at it right now 01:08:08.960 --> 01:08:12.800 open on my computer, it takes up less than my screen. 01:08:12.800 --> 01:08:15.760 It is a very short letter. 01:08:16.240 --> 01:08:22.560 If you read Philemon, there is no condemnation of slavery in it. 01:08:22.560 --> 01:08:25.760 And if you are familiar with Scripture, you should of course know 01:08:25.760 --> 01:08:31.760 that coming to Philemon, because Scripture never contradicts Scripture. 01:08:31.760 --> 01:08:35.040 God does not change, and so if you are familiar with the 01:08:35.040 --> 01:08:39.440 Old Testament, you know that God not only permitted slavery, but gave 01:08:39.440 --> 01:08:44.400 slaves to the patriarchs, and to others, Job, for instance, as a 01:08:44.400 --> 01:08:50.720 reward, he blessed individuals with slaves, with that form of property, and 01:08:50.720 --> 01:08:56.880 so Philemon cannot possibly argue against slavery qua slavery. 01:08:56.880 --> 01:08:58.560 And it doesn't. 01:08:58.560 --> 01:09:03.040 Because if you look at Philemon, the core of the letter is 01:09:03.040 --> 01:09:09.600 Paul returning the runaway slave Onesimus to his master. 01:09:09.600 --> 01:09:12.720 That is the core of what this letter is. 01:09:12.720 --> 01:09:17.600 Now there's more to the letter, to the specifics of how Paul 01:09:17.600 --> 01:09:23.200 is dealing in the letter with Onesimus' master, etc, but the core 01:09:23.200 --> 01:09:27.040 of the letter is Paul returning a runaway slave. 01:09:27.040 --> 01:09:30.560 There is no way you can conceive of or argue that this 01:09:30.560 --> 01:09:33.680 letter is a condemnation of the practice of slavery. 01:09:33.680 --> 01:09:36.320 It's an absolutely insane position to take. 01:09:36.320 --> 01:09:40.400 And that's why historically, no one has taken that position. 01:09:40.400 --> 01:09:42.640 That is a modern innovation. 01:09:42.640 --> 01:09:47.440 It is seeking for a conclusion that was predetermined and then attempting 01:09:47.440 --> 01:09:51.680 to shoehorn it into scripture instead of reading what is actually on 01:09:51.680 --> 01:09:52.800 the page. 01:09:53.280 --> 01:09:55.840 One of the things that leapt out to me this past time 01:09:55.840 --> 01:10:00.560 that I was reading through was in the second to last paragraph, 01:10:00.560 --> 01:10:03.520 he says, So if you consider me your partner, receive him as 01:10:03.520 --> 01:10:04.880 you re would receive me. 01:10:04.880 --> 01:10:08.160 If he has wronged you at all or owes you anything, charge 01:10:08.160 --> 01:10:10.080 that to my account. 01:10:10.160 --> 01:10:13.360 Now I think I found that interesting as I was reading through 01:10:13.360 --> 01:10:17.680 this in the context of this discussion because what Paul is describing 01:10:17.680 --> 01:10:20.000 there is fundamentally transactional. 01:10:20.000 --> 01:10:23.760 He is saying, Onesimus is your property. 01:10:23.760 --> 01:10:26.720 He is not his own, for he was Bob with the price, 01:10:26.720 --> 01:10:30.320 the price that Philemon paid for him, and Philemon, as you as 01:10:30.320 --> 01:10:32.880 you mentioned, is a is a very rich man. 01:10:32.880 --> 01:10:34.880 You can tell from the context of the letter that he has 01:10:34.880 --> 01:10:35.680 a large household. 01:10:35.680 --> 01:10:38.960 So for one thing, Onesimus would not be his only slave. 01:10:38.960 --> 01:10:42.560 And that is one of the profound arguments from silence we find 01:10:42.560 --> 01:10:48.880 here. If this were Paul just trying to be politely correcting the 01:10:48.880 --> 01:10:53.920 sin of effectively a parishioner slash patron, he would have said, Hey 01:10:54.000 --> 01:10:56.000 man, you need to free all of your slaves. 01:10:56.000 --> 01:10:59.280 Don't you know that you're sinning by owning another man? 01:10:59.600 --> 01:11:03.520 Not only does he not do that but he effectively says in 01:11:03.520 --> 01:11:06.400 that in that passage, I'll buy him from you. 01:11:06.400 --> 01:11:09.840 Oh, by the way, you also owe me a great deal. 01:11:09.840 --> 01:11:12.720 So if we want to talk about money, maybe you want to 01:11:12.720 --> 01:11:14.800 call it even, but I'll leave that up to you. 01:11:14.800 --> 01:11:18.080 So it it's very friendly, it's very loving, but it's also very 01:11:18.080 --> 01:11:20.880 slick, and I I don't say that in a in a condemning 01:11:20.880 --> 01:11:24.880 fashion, but Paul's saying, like, look, this guy who in all likelihood 01:11:24.880 --> 01:11:28.720 ran away, there are different theories about how Onesimus ended up in 01:11:28.720 --> 01:11:30.880 the same place as Paul. 01:11:30.880 --> 01:11:34.800 There's questions surrounding did he steal something, what did he steal, and 01:11:34.800 --> 01:11:37.280 perhaps the money is part of that. 01:11:37.280 --> 01:11:40.080 I think the one thing that cannot be disputed, the one thing 01:11:40.080 --> 01:11:45.120 that is clearly in the text by necessary inference is that Onesimus 01:11:45.120 --> 01:11:46.640 stole himself. 01:11:46.640 --> 01:11:49.280 He violated the tenth commandment. 01:11:49.280 --> 01:11:53.600 He stole his master's property by leaving because he was not his 01:11:53.600 --> 01:11:56.880 own. He was bought with a price, the price the Philemon paid. 01:11:57.120 --> 01:12:00.320 And so Paul is acknowledging that in the end of this letter, 01:12:00.320 --> 01:12:03.840 saying, if he owes you anything, charge it to my account, which 01:12:03.920 --> 01:12:07.120 by the way has a substantial credit, so you know, maybe you 01:12:07.120 --> 01:12:09.600 don't I don't need to actually pay you any money. 01:12:09.600 --> 01:12:13.920 But this isn't fundamentally transactional and not moral. 01:12:14.320 --> 01:12:19.440 A little bit of context is necessary here for most modern readers, 01:12:19.440 --> 01:12:23.280 because most modern readers are going to miss some of the subtext 01:12:23.280 --> 01:12:28.000 here because they don't understand Roman slavery. 01:12:28.000 --> 01:12:33.120 First off, under the system of Roman slavery, a slave was not 01:12:33.120 --> 01:12:35.600 a person, persona in Latin. 01:12:35.600 --> 01:12:40.320 A slave was a race, R E S, a thing, a piece 01:12:40.320 --> 01:12:41.360 of property. 01:12:41.360 --> 01:12:44.560 Legally that was the status of a slave. 01:12:44.560 --> 01:12:46.720 And masters had more or less 01:12:47.760 --> 01:12:50.160 absolute authority over their slaves. 01:12:50.160 --> 01:12:54.640 There were some reforms here and there in the Roman system that 01:12:54.640 --> 01:12:59.360 required, for instance, a reason to beat your slave to death because 01:12:59.360 --> 01:13:02.800 originally you didn't even need a reason, but that was the sort 01:13:02.800 --> 01:13:06.000 of nature of the reforms that you would have in the Roman 01:13:06.000 --> 01:13:10.720 system. And so the ordinary course of events, if a runaway slave 01:13:10.720 --> 01:13:16.080 were returned to his master, if Onesimus were returned to Philemon, is 01:13:16.080 --> 01:13:21.520 that Philemon would choose between killing him outright or literally branding his 01:13:21.520 --> 01:13:25.440 forehead with the Latin word for runaway slave from which we get 01:13:25.440 --> 01:13:31.360 fugitive fugitivus, usually just F V G, because Latin used the V 01:13:31.360 --> 01:13:33.360 instead of the U. 01:13:33.360 --> 01:13:36.000 And so those were the two options. 01:13:36.000 --> 01:13:39.600 And if he had been subjected to the latter option, he would 01:13:39.600 --> 01:13:43.760 have been branded and then kept as a menial slave, doing manual 01:13:44.000 --> 01:13:47.360 labor, most likely, for the rest of his life. 01:13:47.360 --> 01:13:49.680 And so that's the subtext you have here. 01:13:49.680 --> 01:13:53.920 Paul is saying, I recognize the rights that you have under the 01:13:53.920 --> 01:13:57.200 law to dispense with your property. 01:13:57.200 --> 01:14:02.320 I am asking you to forego those because of this man's service 01:14:02.320 --> 01:14:05.440 to me in my captivity, because he is now a brother in 01:14:05.440 --> 01:14:08.960 Christ. He's not saying to free him, he's saying don't kill him 01:14:08.960 --> 01:14:11.760 or brand him and make him dig ditches the rest of his 01:14:11.760 --> 01:14:15.440 life. And that's a subtext that a modern reader is going to 01:14:15.440 --> 01:14:18.480 miss if you are not familiar with Roman slavery, with the system 01:14:19.200 --> 01:14:21.920 in which Paul is writing this letter and operating. 01:14:22.240 --> 01:14:24.720 And that was something that uh if you happen to get your 01:14:24.720 --> 01:14:30.000 hands on the Philemon commentary from Concordia Publishing House for a letter 01:14:30.000 --> 01:14:33.600 that's basically one page, the the commentary is hundreds of pages and 01:14:33.600 --> 01:14:37.840 there's a lot of great historical context for what slavery was like 01:14:37.840 --> 01:14:38.960 in this period. 01:14:38.960 --> 01:14:42.560 And that's why I said early on, when people hear stories about 01:14:42.720 --> 01:14:46.000 slavery in the Americas, they think, oh, that's the worst it could 01:14:46.000 --> 01:14:46.640 possibly be. 01:14:46.640 --> 01:14:50.560 No, that was many of those slaves were treated quite well. 01:14:50.560 --> 01:14:53.680 Some of them were treated poorly, some were horribly mistreated, which is 01:14:53.680 --> 01:14:55.520 expressly condemned by scripture. 01:14:55.520 --> 01:14:58.480 No one's okay with that because God says it's sinful. 01:14:58.480 --> 01:15:02.400 And even someone who didn't have faith would know that some treatment 01:15:02.400 --> 01:15:06.000 is well beyond the line of what is permissible to another human 01:15:06.000 --> 01:15:13.760 being. The commentary by Norling from CPH interestingly directly 01:15:13.760 --> 01:15:17.840 contradicts the statement that we re read last week from the Missouri 01:15:17.840 --> 01:15:23.440 Senate Corporation discussing pro-slavery being an abomination. 01:15:23.440 --> 01:15:28.480 What the CPH commentary says is that our modern notions have are 01:15:28.960 --> 01:15:30.800 completely anachronistic. 01:15:30.800 --> 01:15:34.000 We don't even understand slavery as itself. 01:15:34.000 --> 01:15:35.920 We understand the Hollywood version of it. 01:15:35.920 --> 01:15:40.160 And when you look at historical slavery, it was fundamental to human 01:15:40.160 --> 01:15:44.080 civilization. And so the book goes into great detail on many different 01:15:44.080 --> 01:15:49.040 facets of different degrees and categories and ranks of slaves, there were 01:15:49.040 --> 01:15:52.720 some slaves who were far richer than anyone who will ever listen 01:15:52.800 --> 01:15:53.840 to this podcast. 01:15:53.840 --> 01:15:59.200 They're literally millionaires, by by gray stretches, some more than that perhaps. 01:15:59.200 --> 01:16:02.880 Yet they were still slaves, meaning they were still owned by other 01:16:02.880 --> 01:16:07.360 men. So this modern notion that we have been fed that if 01:16:07.360 --> 01:16:11.680 you're a slave, you're basically an animal, there's nothing lower than that. 01:16:11.680 --> 01:16:13.280 That's not what slave means. 01:16:13.280 --> 01:16:15.040 That's what mistreatment means. 01:16:15.040 --> 01:16:16.960 That's what dehumanization means. 01:16:16.960 --> 01:16:20.880 There are words for those things, but the word is not slave. 01:16:20.880 --> 01:16:26.160 Enslavement doesn't necessarily mean that a sin has occurred. 01:16:26.160 --> 01:16:30.880 When Solomon took slaves, he was permitted to do that. 01:16:30.880 --> 01:16:33.920 Now, we don't have the legal regime for it today, and so 01:16:33.920 --> 01:16:36.480 it's not a question that we need to deal with how might 01:16:36.480 --> 01:16:38.000 one become a slave today. 01:16:38.000 --> 01:16:42.000 But as Corey mentioned, anyone in prison is functionally a slave. 01:16:42.000 --> 01:16:44.960 If they're doing forced labor, they're getting paid I don't know like 01:16:45.040 --> 01:16:47.840 twenty five cents a day or something, like it's nominal. 01:16:47.840 --> 01:16:48.720 They're slaves. 01:16:48.720 --> 01:16:49.840 It's slave labor. 01:16:49.840 --> 01:16:53.520 And the thirteenth Amendment permits it because we didn't abolish slavery. 01:16:53.520 --> 01:16:56.560 We abolished non-state slavery. 01:16:56.560 --> 01:16:56.880 So 01:16:58.560 --> 01:17:00.960 these notions had all buried and they 01:17:02.160 --> 01:17:06.080 Yes. Which is the are form of slavery we still have. 01:17:06.640 --> 01:17:10.080 This is Sparta and the least cool way possible. 01:17:10.560 --> 01:17:13.520 Um and so the like the the Philemon book goes or sorry, 01:17:13.520 --> 01:17:17.120 I'm the Philemon commentary goes to great lengths to describe all the 01:17:17.120 --> 01:17:22.240 various myriad fashions of enslavement and how some of them had very 01:17:22.240 --> 01:17:23.520 high social status. 01:17:23.520 --> 01:17:28.720 Again, there were the right-hand man in a household mate was usually 01:17:28.720 --> 01:17:29.760 going to be a slave. 01:17:29.760 --> 01:17:32.000 He would be he would have very high station in life. 01:17:32.000 --> 01:17:32.800 He would be paid. 01:17:32.800 --> 01:17:36.080 Like these were slaves who were not just given quarters and food, 01:17:36.080 --> 01:17:38.960 they were also remunerated, which was something that was done in the 01:17:38.960 --> 01:17:39.600 West as well. 01:17:39.600 --> 01:17:42.720 Like it's not it's not alien to the concept of a man 01:17:42.720 --> 01:17:44.080 owning another man. 01:17:44.080 --> 01:17:48.400 Just as today when Jeff Bezos almost owns someone, he pays him 01:17:48.400 --> 01:17:50.800 something. It's not nearly enough. 01:17:50.800 --> 01:17:54.800 But owning a man is not per se sinful. 01:17:54.800 --> 01:17:56.880 Scripture never makes that case. 01:17:56.880 --> 01:18:01.280 And even in this in the one epistle that is directly dealing 01:18:01.280 --> 01:18:05.680 with a slave, like there's no there's no playing around that Onesimus 01:18:05.680 --> 01:18:08.320 was a bond servant or he was this or that. 01:18:08.320 --> 01:18:10.640 He was a slave, he was runaway property. 01:18:10.640 --> 01:18:14.400 He sinned against Philemon by stealing himself. 01:18:14.400 --> 01:18:18.080 And as Cory said, the punishment was death or disfigurement. 01:18:18.080 --> 01:18:21.360 Paul was saying he was a useless slave to you, but now 01:18:21.360 --> 01:18:24.320 that he has become Christian, I'm getting some use out of him. 01:18:24.320 --> 01:18:28.480 So let's get get this useless slave off your books and let's 01:18:28.480 --> 01:18:31.760 put him to work as a slave to righteousness. 01:18:31.760 --> 01:18:34.960 See, Paul was not asking for a Nesimus' freedom. 01:18:34.960 --> 01:18:35.680 He was asking for 01:18:36.560 --> 01:18:40.640 the slave to righteousness that he had already become in Christ to 01:18:40.640 --> 01:18:44.560 be his sole vocation, so that he was no longer divided between 01:18:44.560 --> 01:18:48.480 his obligations to God and in serving Paul and whatever his master 01:18:48.640 --> 01:18:51.360 Philemon may have still required of him. 01:18:51.360 --> 01:18:55.200 It was transactional, it was for the sake of the church, and 01:18:55.200 --> 01:18:59.680 in no way does it in any fashion condemn the institution of 01:18:59.680 --> 01:19:02.320 slavery itself, by any means. 01:19:02.320 --> 01:19:06.880 There was far worse slavery that occurred in those days, and scripture 01:19:06.880 --> 01:19:09.040 remained silent. 01:19:09.040 --> 01:19:13.680 Except for saying, Masters, don't do horrible things to your slaves. 01:19:13.680 --> 01:19:18.560 Like that's the Christian approach, not abolition, but let's treat them well. 01:19:18.560 --> 01:19:22.240 I want to read briefly just because it's directly related to this 01:19:22.240 --> 01:19:24.560 from first Peter 2. 01:19:24.560 --> 01:19:27.760 Servants. And this is one case where the ESV is not butchering 01:19:27.840 --> 01:19:29.040 us, so I left servant here. 01:19:29.040 --> 01:19:32.080 It's using a different word, but basically it's the highest form of 01:19:32.080 --> 01:19:35.920 slave. Servant here basically means the house slave, so it's still not 01:19:35.920 --> 01:19:36.720 a free man. 01:19:36.720 --> 01:19:39.520 We're not talking about a butler in a tuxedo. 01:19:39.520 --> 01:19:42.480 We're not talking about someone who, you know, is has a savings 01:19:42.480 --> 01:19:46.320 account of in his you know we're not talking about Alfred in 01:19:46.320 --> 01:19:49.840 Batman. We're talking about someone who's owned by his master. 01:19:49.840 --> 01:19:52.880 Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to 01:19:52.880 --> 01:19:55.920 the good and gentle, but also to the unjust. 01:19:55.920 --> 01:19:59.120 For it is a gracious thing when mindful of God, one endures 01:19:59.280 --> 01:20:01.360 sorrows while suffering unjustly. 01:20:01.360 --> 01:20:04.320 For what credit is it if when you sin you are beaten 01:20:04.320 --> 01:20:05.680 for it you endure? 01:20:05.680 --> 01:20:08.560 But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, 01:20:08.560 --> 01:20:11.280 this is a gracious thing in the sight of God, for to 01:20:11.280 --> 01:20:15.680 this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving 01:20:15.680 --> 01:20:18.400 you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. 01:20:18.400 --> 01:20:21.920 He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. 01:20:21.920 --> 01:20:25.120 When he was reviled he did not revile in return, when he 01:20:25.120 --> 01:20:28.720 suffered he did not threaten, but continued in trusting himself to him 01:20:28.880 --> 01:20:30.640 who judges justly. 01:20:30.640 --> 01:20:34.080 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that 01:20:34.080 --> 01:20:36.560 we might die to sin and live to righteousness. 01:20:36.560 --> 01:20:40.160 By his wounds you have been healed, for you were straying like 01:20:40.160 --> 01:20:43.360 sheep, but now have been returned to the shepherd and overseer of 01:20:43.360 --> 01:20:44.480 your souls. 01:20:44.480 --> 01:20:47.920 The reason I read that whole passage, even though the second half 01:20:47.920 --> 01:20:51.120 doesn't have anything to do with slavery, is that it does. 01:20:51.120 --> 01:20:52.720 That's the gospel. 01:20:52.720 --> 01:20:57.040 Christ was a slave for the sake of our righteousness by imputing 01:20:57.040 --> 01:21:01.920 his to us the act the of sacrifice that God gave on 01:21:01.920 --> 01:21:05.760 the cross was an act of submission. 01:21:05.760 --> 01:21:10.080 And so when Christ is given as a model of slavery to 01:21:10.080 --> 01:21:14.880 slaves, and we say, ah, slavery's bad, how is that not a 01:21:14.880 --> 01:21:16.560 condemnation of Christ? 01:21:16.560 --> 01:21:18.640 That's why this is a gospel issue. 01:21:18.640 --> 01:21:21.680 That's why this is how Christians need to return to talking. 01:21:21.680 --> 01:21:25.520 If you are afraid to say that slavery is good, how do 01:21:25.520 --> 01:21:27.600 you deal with passages like this? 01:21:27.600 --> 01:21:30.400 How do you deal with the fact that when Paul is a 01:21:30.400 --> 01:21:34.800 slave and Christ is described as in as suffering as an example 01:21:34.960 --> 01:21:37.280 to slaves? 01:21:37.280 --> 01:21:41.680 The only way a Christian faithfully deal with these passages is to 01:21:41.680 --> 01:21:46.400 set aside the enlightenment priors that condemn these things and to embrace 01:21:46.400 --> 01:21:50.320 that which is holy and then to condemn that which God condemns 01:21:50.320 --> 01:21:51.360 as He condemns it. 01:21:51.360 --> 01:21:57.360 God condemns cruelty, he condemns being merciless, he condemns being unjust and 01:21:57.360 --> 01:22:01.840 unfair. What he does not condemn is that slavery is per se 01:22:02.000 --> 01:22:03.280 any of those things. 01:22:03.280 --> 01:22:06.960 Slavery can be some or all of those things, slavery can also 01:22:06.720 --> 01:22:08.400 be none of those things. 01:22:08.400 --> 01:22:13.360 And if and when slavery exists as a human institution, we are 01:22:13.360 --> 01:22:16.640 not permitted to say well God doesn't want that either. 01:22:16.640 --> 01:22:19.360 That is no longer speaking in God's name. 01:22:19.360 --> 01:22:23.440 And this sort of morality has become the norm among us and 01:22:23.440 --> 01:22:24.960 is truly destructive. 01:22:24.960 --> 01:22:26.960 Again, that's why Stone Choir exists. 01:22:26.960 --> 01:22:30.640 We're talking about these things that many pastors are deathly afraid to 01:22:30.640 --> 01:22:32.240 talk of for good reason. 01:22:32.240 --> 01:22:34.960 There may be people in their parishes, in their pews, in their 01:22:34.960 --> 01:22:39.200 congregations who will revolt, who either attack them, try to get them 01:22:39.200 --> 01:22:40.960 fired, or just never come back. 01:22:40.960 --> 01:22:41.840 Stop giving money. 01:22:41.840 --> 01:22:45.280 Like any matter, uh any number of bad things may happen so 01:22:45.680 --> 01:22:50.800 socially, organizationally, when someone in the pews hears what God says about 01:22:50.800 --> 01:22:55.520 slavery. We don't have to deal with those problems immediately, so we're 01:22:55.520 --> 01:22:57.680 free to speak in these terms. 01:22:57.680 --> 01:22:59.760 But we need to get as a church back to the point 01:22:59.760 --> 01:23:03.680 that all Christians are speaking in the same terms that God uses. 01:23:03.680 --> 01:23:07.120 If you can't talk like God, you can't be godly. 01:23:07.280 --> 01:23:07.520 And 01:23:07.520 --> 01:23:12.880 so I think we'll close out this episode by refuting one salient 01:23:12.880 --> 01:23:13.520 argument 01:23:14.400 --> 01:23:18.960 not sound but salient argument from the other side. 01:23:18.960 --> 01:23:21.840 And that is the hyperfocus on 01:23:22.880 --> 01:23:27.360 one Greek word in 1st Timothy 110. 01:23:27.360 --> 01:23:31.840 And the word is mistranslated in the ESV as enslavers. 01:23:32.400 --> 01:23:33.440 Now it is worth noting 01:23:34.320 --> 01:23:37.120 first, this is a hapax legomanon. 01:23:37.120 --> 01:23:41.440 It appears once in scripture, and that's right here. 01:23:41.440 --> 01:23:46.400 There are some other places where the equivalent concept appears, but it 01:23:46.400 --> 01:23:50.080 is obvious that it is the equivalent concept only if you know 01:23:50.080 --> 01:23:51.840 what the term means. 01:23:51.840 --> 01:23:56.560 And so in this case, to figure out what the term means, 01:23:56.560 --> 01:24:01.360 it is entirely proper to turn to extra biblical materials because this 01:24:01.360 --> 01:24:06.480 would because this word appears once, again, appears one time in scripture. 01:24:06.480 --> 01:24:11.120 The term is anthropodistes, but I went ahead and looked this term 01:24:11.120 --> 01:24:12.880 up in various Greek writings. 01:24:12.880 --> 01:24:15.040 I looked it up in Plato, Polybius, and Philo 01:24:15.920 --> 01:24:18.960 And the term means kidnapper. 01:24:18.960 --> 01:24:22.320 And it is worth noting that actually the 01:24:23.920 --> 01:24:27.760 Lutheran study bible gets this one absolutely correct. 01:24:27.760 --> 01:24:33.920 In the footnote for Timothy one, the Lutheran Study Bible, unlike the 01:24:33.920 --> 01:24:39.760 leadership of Synod right now, notes that this term actually means kidnappers, 01:24:39.760 --> 01:24:42.560 involved in illegal slave trade. 01:24:42.560 --> 01:24:45.120 And that's absolutely what it means. 01:24:45.120 --> 01:24:49.920 It does not mean enslavers, it does not mean slave dealers, because 01:24:50.000 --> 01:24:55.360 obviously if scripture permits slavery, slave dealing can't be a sin, that 01:24:55.360 --> 01:24:58.400 would be a wildly incoherent argument. 01:24:58.400 --> 01:25:01.280 And so what this is saying is you cannot set upon your 01:25:01.280 --> 01:25:04.960 neighbor in the dead of night, bind him and sell him into 01:25:04.960 --> 01:25:09.120 slavery. Because that was something that happened in the ancient world. 01:25:09.120 --> 01:25:10.080 That is a sin. 01:25:10.080 --> 01:25:11.840 You are not permitted to do that. 01:25:11.840 --> 01:25:15.760 That is what is being banned here in first Timothy one ten. 01:25:15.760 --> 01:25:19.280 And so when someone tries to make the argument that, well, Scripture 01:25:19.280 --> 01:25:22.000 says you can't be an enslaver, and so you can't have slavery 01:25:22.080 --> 01:25:26.720 because you can't have slave dealing, point out the actual sense of 01:25:26.720 --> 01:25:30.400 this term and the fact that it appears once in Scripture. 01:25:30.720 --> 01:25:33.040 You cannot make an argument 01:25:34.000 --> 01:25:38.560 about a doctrine from scripture, about a fact from scripture that relies 01:25:38.560 --> 01:25:43.200 on a term that appears once, if that argument that you are 01:25:43.200 --> 01:25:47.760 making is contrary to the balance of Scripture, you know that obviously 01:25:47.760 --> 01:25:51.440 you are wrong, as stated earlier, Scripture does not contradict Scripture. 01:25:51.440 --> 01:25:55.440 So Scripture permits slavery, as we very clearly demonstrated it does in 01:25:55.440 --> 01:25:58.320 many places, to Does not condemn slavery. 01:25:58.320 --> 01:26:02.320 This one word, this Greek word that appears once, cannot possibly be 01:26:02.320 --> 01:26:05.680 an argument for condemning slavery qua slavery. 01:26:05.680 --> 01:26:10.160 It condemns kidnapping and selling into slavery in an improper way. 01:26:10.160 --> 01:26:14.080 This is not a condemnation of taking captives in war that is 01:26:14.080 --> 01:26:15.760 permitted in the Old Testament. 01:26:15.760 --> 01:26:21.040 It is arguing against this one specific ancient practice that still does 01:26:21.040 --> 01:26:23.680 occur in some parts of the world, not as much of a 01:26:24.160 --> 01:26:27.920 problem in the Western world, but it still occurs in some places. 01:26:27.920 --> 01:26:31.360 That is what is mentioned here in First Timothy, and so that 01:26:31.360 --> 01:26:35.600 is how you respond to that particular argument that does unfortunately get 01:26:35.600 --> 01:26:41.600 raised by some who have well a mercenary approach to scripture in 01:26:41.600 --> 01:26:43.520 order to seek the end they want. 01:26:43.920 --> 01:26:46.480 And that's exactly what we see when these questions come up. 01:26:46.480 --> 01:26:49.920 We've criticized repeatedly in past episodes. 01:26:49.920 --> 01:26:53.520 Men will take modern morality, they will cherry pick one or two 01:26:53.520 --> 01:26:57.440 proof texts and nullify the entire history of the Christian faith. 01:26:57.440 --> 01:27:00.640 The reason that this term only shows up once in scripture is 01:27:00.640 --> 01:27:02.240 that it wasn't that common. 01:27:02.240 --> 01:27:07.840 In an environment where s slavery of all kinds was universal. 01:27:07.840 --> 01:27:11.600 So on its face, the notion that what they are saying is 01:27:11.600 --> 01:27:17.680 the origin of all slavery condemns all slavery just mathematically is it 01:27:17.840 --> 01:27:21.040 it's a blatant lie and that's the only response that's necessary to 01:27:21.040 --> 01:27:22.800 such a claim. 01:27:22.800 --> 01:27:25.680 I think to wrap up here I just want to reiterate that 01:27:26.240 --> 01:27:29.520 this is a more important subject than than some of the others. 01:27:29.520 --> 01:27:32.480 It's more important than the racism subject, which was also talking about 01:27:32.480 --> 01:27:36.160 a made-up sin, because this is a much more fundamental one in 01:27:36.160 --> 01:27:39.120 terms of the direct attack on the faith. 01:27:39.120 --> 01:27:41.520 We as we say at the beginning, this could have been a 01:27:41.520 --> 01:27:43.200 a 20-hour episode. 01:27:43.200 --> 01:27:46.480 We could have done a marathon just on the verses dealing with 01:27:46.480 --> 01:27:50.000 it. We barely scratched the surface and we really rushed through dealing 01:27:50.000 --> 01:27:52.320 with the text we talked about because we wanted want to keep 01:27:52.320 --> 01:27:54.640 it under 90 minutes, which we're right at it this time. 01:27:54.640 --> 01:27:58.240 So I'm just gonna say there's no way for a Christian to 01:27:58.240 --> 01:28:01.280 read the Bible and come away thinking that slavery's sin. 01:28:01.280 --> 01:28:02.240 Full stop. 01:28:02.240 --> 01:28:04.880 If someone comes to you and says that slavery is a sin, 01:28:04.880 --> 01:28:07.840 either they haven't read the Bible or they despise it. 01:28:07.840 --> 01:28:09.440 Those are the only two options. 01:28:09.440 --> 01:28:12.000 And when it's a Christian who has a collar, you know they've 01:28:12.000 --> 01:28:15.040 read the Bible, which means that the only option is they despise 01:28:15.040 --> 01:28:19.920 it. And that is a crucial emergency for us facing all of 01:28:19.920 --> 01:28:24.080 our denominations today because again we're importing this evil from the world. 01:28:24.080 --> 01:28:28.640 Stonequire exists to point out, hey, maybe we believe scripture and if 01:28:28.640 --> 01:28:32.080 our modern institutions disagree with it, we figure out what problem we 01:28:32.080 --> 01:28:33.440 need to solve there. 01:28:33.440 --> 01:28:36.800 But we begin and end in scripture because that is what God 01:28:36.800 --> 01:28:39.360 has given to us for the preservation of the faith. 01:28:39.680 --> 01:28:39.840 And 01:28:39.840 --> 01:28:42.560 if you want a one word not a one word, but a 01:28:42.560 --> 01:28:47.680 one line response to anyone who tells you that slavery is a 01:28:47.680 --> 01:28:53.760 sin. Jesus Christ is a slave master. 01:28:53.760 --> 01:28:56.560 And if you want to follow up, the thing that you want 01:28:56.560 --> 01:28:59.520 to hear from him when you get to the judgment room, when 01:28:59.520 --> 01:29:05.200 you get to the throne, is well done, good and faithful slave. 01:29:05.280 --> 01:29:07.040 I do want to mention one last thing. 01:29:07.040 --> 01:29:08.880 I forgot to mention this earlier. 01:29:08.880 --> 01:29:11.360 Lord is synonym with master. 01:29:11.360 --> 01:29:15.520 Every time you read Lord in Scripture, if you replace that in 01:29:15.520 --> 01:29:18.400 your head with Master, it is a synonym. 01:29:18.400 --> 01:29:22.320 When you pray the Lord's Prayer, you're praying the Master's Prayer. 01:29:22.320 --> 01:29:24.240 It means exactly the same thing. 01:29:24.240 --> 01:29:25.520 We are owned by God. 01:29:25.520 --> 01:29:27.360 We have a master. 01:29:27.360 --> 01:29:29.840 Just as unbelievers have a master. 01:29:29.840 --> 01:29:31.520 Their master is Satan. 01:29:31.520 --> 01:29:32.960 Our master is Christ. 01:29:32.960 --> 01:29:34.880 Our master is God. 01:29:34.880 --> 01:29:39.200 So when you say Lord, Lord and you mean it faithfully, you 01:29:39.200 --> 01:29:42.640 are saying master, master as someone who is above you. 01:29:42.640 --> 01:29:46.800 It's not, you know, we've criticized neighbor as being this nebulous thing. 01:29:46.800 --> 01:29:48.720 Lord is not a nebulous thing. 01:29:48.720 --> 01:29:51.520 It is not just a cozy relationship. 01:29:51.520 --> 01:29:55.200 We have a loving relationship with God because we are adopted as 01:29:55.200 --> 01:29:58.880 sons of Christ, as sons of God through Christ's blood. 01:29:58.880 --> 01:30:05.280 However, Lord remains master, and that relationship is the reason for the 01:30:05.280 --> 01:30:07.680 loving relationship that we had. 01:30:07.680 --> 01:30:09.920 He owns us and he loves us. 01:30:09.920 --> 01:30:11.680 He could own us and hate us. 01:30:11.680 --> 01:30:15.200 And he hates our sin and he hates the evildoers who will 01:30:15.200 --> 01:30:16.720 not repent of their sin. 01:30:16.720 --> 01:30:22.160 He wishes simultaneously that they become believers through the gospel. 01:30:22.160 --> 01:30:25.680 If we cannot speak clearly in these terms, if we cannot call 01:30:25.680 --> 01:30:29.120 a Lord Lord and a master, master, and realize that they're the 01:30:29.120 --> 01:30:33.680 same, we're losing sight of the God that we claim to confess. 01:30:33.680 --> 01:30:37.120 Because you can use all the words, you can quote this the 01:30:37.120 --> 01:30:40.240 Bible passages, and you cannot believe in your heart. 01:30:40.240 --> 01:30:42.160 That's what we're facing in our churches. 01:30:42.160 --> 01:30:44.880 People who say the words, they mouth them. 01:30:44.880 --> 01:30:48.400 But when you say God is your master, they rebel and they 01:30:48.400 --> 01:30:51.840 say, I have no gods, I have no masters. 01:30:52.240 --> 01:30:54.080 It's one or the other. 01:30:54.080 --> 01:30:57.200 We all have a master, and either it's sin in the devil 01:30:57.360 --> 01:30:59.360 or it is God and his righteousness. 01:30:59.360 --> 01:31:02.400 And as Christians, we are blessed to be able to continue to 01:31:02.400 --> 01:31:06.160 choose God's righteousness, because that is a gift that comes solely from 01:31:06.160 --> 01:31:09.680 God, not through any merit or worthiness in ourselves, it is given 01:31:09.680 --> 01:31:13.440 to us freely, and is our duty to share that gospel with 01:31:13.440 --> 01:31:21.600 others so that they too can become slaves to God's righteousness.