When Jesus set us free from sin, He made us His own slaves to serve Him, to worship Him, and also to enjoy Him. But this goes much beyond just the general spiritual notions. As I wrap up this series, I want to look at one more absolutely critical aspect of life: our thought life. Our thought life includes not just the things we think about but also the teachings that guide and direct how we think and operate. If we are to be followers of Christ, then our thinking needs to follow Him as well. Paul puts it this way: we are to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ Jesus.
What do we think about? I can safely say that few of you reading this, including yours truly, do not think about what Christ would have us think about on a regular basis, let alone as much as we know we should. I wish it were more, but we have to be honest. None of us, while we live in sin-cursed bodies, will ever get there. But are we going in that direction?
The next book I am going to write is going to be on Proverbs 3:5. It will be a whole book on that one verse and its applications, and it won’t be a little booklet either. What does this verse teach us? That we are to trust in the Lord with all our heart and lean not on our own understanding. We don’t have the information or the thinking skills on our own to process things correctly. We need God and God’s knowledge, and we need to depend upon Him wholly and only. We rely too much on our own experts and own education and we turn out to be outright fools when we do so.
Many people praise me for the wisdom I show through my writing, but if anyone gets anything of value in my writing, it’s not me. The only way I can describe it is the Holy Spirit bearing witness to my spirit and it just flows out. By no means am I claiming any form of divine inspiration, but it’s simply the truth God has plainly revealed through Scripture. It’s not my wisdom or insight but God showing His truth to those who love Him and follow Him. All it takes is child-like faith and submission to God, and He will show you deeper and deeper truths that have always been there. However, many times, my thought life is not on the Lord, and there are times when what I write and what I think about are not healthy. Many times, I feel like a hypocrite because I know to speak such great truths, but my own private life does not match up. Our thought life can bring life, or it can bring death. The only way it brings life is when it is subjected to the will of Christ.
The classic go-to case when dealing with such topics is pornography. Understand that just watching porn or avoiding it is not enough to deal with this. Where most struggle is adultery in the heart – the thought life of undressing another and being engaged in sexual activity with them or watching them engaged with others. We know that this is a sin, a sin of the heart. But why do so many struggle with it? We have to realize that this foe is bigger and stronger than we are. We know this intellectually, but as I wrote about last week, the slave to Christ has Christ’s power available to drive out and keep out. That truth is not a reality to us yet. But when you listen to those who escaped porn, they don’t talk about how they “beat” porn. They talk about how they were delivered, rescued, freed, etc. It was someone else’s power that did it. That someone is Christ. It will be a battle, and we have to get up every time it knocks and exert that power and authority Christ bestows. How do we do that? We take every thought, every idea, every temptation, and every teaching and force it to submit to the will of Christ.
Most people think this is for the bad thoughts, but it is for the good ones, too. EVERY thought is to be taken captive and submitted to the will of Christ – even every teaching and every doctrine. We must put Word of Faith teachings to submission to the will of Christ. We must put Cessationist teaching to the will of Christ. We must put our eschatology (end times) teachings to the will of Christ. We must submit our politics, our science, our history, our teachings of the Gospel, our social media, our emotional reactions – all of it – to the will of Christ. If that means we have to stop, slow down, and be slow to speak, slow to action, and guarding and checking every thought, then we need to do that.
But I can say this: Jesus is not a bad master. Paul even gave us guidelines on how to think. Philippians 4:8 is a great place to start. When we submit our thought life to Christ and when we submit all teachings to Christ, not only will we see true freedom and we will have true life, but we will be able to tear down the strongholds that hold others captive, too. Again, the life of slavery to Christ is a life of power. By being a slave to Christ, we actually get to rule. Our rule is submitted to Christ, but it is in that submission that we get the power. The centurion understood this. He saw Jesus operating with power, and he knew that the only way he could get that power is by being under authority. The same is true for us. When we submit ourselves to be the slave of Christ, we are equipped with the authority of God’s slave, and the position of God’s slave is far higher than any prince or ruler of this earth. When it is all said and done, let us take the position of the slaves of Luke 17:7-10. After doing all we ought, we say, “We are but unworthy slaves. We have only done that which we ought.”
Let us remember our position as Christians. While we are to rule, that rule only comes by serving and taking the position of a slave. We are to take every thought captive to the will of Christ. We are to do things God’s way. We are not to play God and proclaim to be the arbiter of truth. We are to be loyal slaves, those who submit to our Master, who is a good Master, and let Him take care of us. He will do above and beyond what we could ever imagine, we just have to trust Him. He is worth it, and the life of a slave to Christ is worth it. He will never let us down, and He will take us to places and realms we could never imagine otherwise.
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This statement that we are slaves to Christ is so central to the Gospel message that Paul makes a huge deal of it in Romans 6 in describing the born-again, transformed life. He had just come out of Romans 5 describing how the grace of God overcomes sin, how Jesus died for us while we were still sinners and still slaves to sin, and that by faith we enter salvation. But he paused to address a train of thought that would derail one’s faith: that because God’s grace is so great, we can sin freely and expect God to cover it. Commentaries suggest that Paul’s language in Romans 6:1-2 is so strong that he comes to nearly cussing. This is the only time besides Galatians 1 (when he confronts the false teacher that led them astray) that he goes this hard. The Christian should never enter the thought or notion of being able to continue in sin without fear of judgment or discipline.
From this, Paul goes on to describe how we are to die to sin and how sin is to become repulsive to us. Last week, I wrote about how many people want to come to Christ on their own terms. They want to hold on to certain sins and certain lifestyles and certain teachings. To be a Christian is to die to those things. Jesus said this clearly: “You must deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow Me.” We are not following Him if we follow our own path and do things our own way.
Now to be clear: this is not legalism. I can picture many readers of last week’s post objecting to legalism. If following Christ at the expense of self is legalism, then what you are hearing is not true Christianity but antinomianism. It is the desire to live lawless lives, where they think they are saved but not expected to follow a law. Jesus called those who professed His name and would cast out as “workers of iniquity,” “as lawless ones.” The language is that of “you who live as though I gave you no law to follow.” His yoke is easy, and His burden is light, but there is still a law. I like to boil down this law into two simple commands: believe and obey. That is all there is to it. But obedience requires two things: one is faith; you have to believe Jesus. The second is that you have to submit to the Lordship of Christ. You don’t obey anyone you don’t submit to.
As much as the King James Version is perhaps the most respected version in English, they got something wrong. The KJV translated the Greek term doulos, which is commonly translated as “slave,” as “servant” or “bondservant” to lighten the weight of the term and also to avoid the connotation with the slave trading that had been going on in the rest of Europe. They got this one wrong. This mistranslation has carried to most of the English versions until John MacArthur and his team at The Master’s Seminary went to update the NASB and specifically targeted this term among others when giving the “Legacy Standard Bible.”
The born-again believer is to be a slave to Christ. What does that mean? It means our lives, our job descriptions, our hours, and our routines are to be determined by Christ. Most of us don’t live that way. We run our own schedules and our own agendas before consulting our Master. What Jesus lived for, the very essence of His being, was doing the will of His Father. He was controlled by no other thing but His Father’s will. He did not stop doing what He was to do for the sake of family, food, sleep, shelter, annoyance of unbelief, or anything. Jesus had many opportunities to do many different things, but He took the approach of (and I quote Paul Washer on this), “I have no opportunity but the doing of God’s will!” I can’t think of anyone where that truly is their general lifestyle, with perhaps only Rees Howells getting remotely near that point.
To be a slave to Christ is to give up all your rights. Yes, many of us are Americans, and we Americans love our freedom of speech, our right to bear arms, our right to not be illegally searched or arrested, etc. Paul exercised his Roman rights when under trial in Jerusalem under Felix and Festus. So, if we have political rights, there is nothing wrong with exercising them, but they have to be submitted to the will of a much higher authority – Christ. We are not servants of the United States. While we may be citizens, we should not serve the US as our Lord. We serve Christ. Now serving Christ does mean being good citizens and being peaceful with all men, but our primary authority is Christ. Our job is to what Christ says, and He has the right to rule over us.
When you take up your cross and deny yourself, you are denying your rights and submitting them to Christ. I know this sounds hard, but if Jesus is our Master, He is the one who determines what our rights are. But let me also say this: our rights as the slave of Christ are FAR better than what any country could give us. We don’t need a government agency to uphold our rights or a right to block a government agency from doing something corrupt. We have Christ defending us, and that is much better. Don’t hear what I am not saying. I am not saying that we should sit back while corrupt representatives, who do no representing, take things away from us because they think they can play god with our lives, our money, and our resources.
Slaves in Roman times had rights. Slaves in ancient Israel had rights, too. We also have rights with Christ. But these rights are not to prevent God from ruining our fun. These rights are to give us power and authority to go out and proclaim the Gospel. Remember this: God’s logic is backwards and upside down to us. We picture the slave as being the lowest of the low, yet that is precisely whom God uses to exalt above kings and rulers. If Maximus Marcus Aurelius could, as a slave, become more powerful than the Emperor of Rome (in the movie Gladiator), how much more so the Christian? By becoming a slave to Christ, we become His ambassadors, His representative, and His body. That comes with an extraordinary command and extraordinary power. We can change lives, shut down wicked industries, heal the sick, cast out demons, trample snakes and scorpions, and the list goes on. Are you doing that now? Only on a small scale. Why? Because I have not yet fully submitted myself to Christ as a slave. I still have sin in me that wants to rule my life instead.
But the real reason we don’t see the Church out and about living with power enough that would make rulers shake is because we don’t actually believe the Bible as we claim. Queen Elizabeth I said she feared the prayers of Edmund Burke more than she feared the most powerful armada in the world, and she beat them in battle because of prayer warriors. The Allies should have lost many battles in World War II but Rees Howells took the war on his knees. He prayed over strategies and tactics and battles as though he was on the front lines, and while he wasn’t alone, it was his prayers among others that turned the European front against Hitler. How did Howells have such power that if he was looking at a property, the owner knew to get out of the way? He became a slave to Christ even to the point where he would not spend a penny unless God gave him permission.
Next week I will conclude this series with one major application to being a slave to Christ: to submit every thought to the will of Christ Jesus.
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When God rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt, there were two things in particular that needed to be done: the Passover and the Red Sea crossing. The Passover required specific instructions, namely the spreading of lamb’s blood on the doorposts. The Red Sea crossing required arriving at a particular spot so the crossing would be the simplest while also burying Egypt. Both show something that is constantly demonstrated in many ways throughout Scripture: there is one means of salvation. There is only one means of Salvation, and every other means does not work. Here are a few snapshots of this principle in Scripture.
Adam and Eve could not cover themselves with fig leaves just to give a covering. It took a specific covering, one that required the shedding of the blood of an innocent animal. Abel knew this standard and thus offered the best of his flock. Cain didn’t care for God’s standards and threw in just some of his efforts, the product of his work. God accepted Abel but not Cain. In both cases, we see that the only way to please God is to do it God’s way.
God warned Noah of a coming Flood that would wipe out everyone on earth and instructed him to build an ark that would save his family and the animals. This was the only surviving vessel; no one else made it. The Flood didn’t just take out a local group of evil people. Sodom and Gomorrah sufficed for that. The Flood took out everything on earth that was not on the ark. As this is a critical picture of the Gospel, we can’t mess around with these teachings. Our hope and our salvation are to be done God’s way and God’s way only.
When it comes to Christ, it is pretty straightforward that He is the only option. He explicitly stated that no man comes to the Father except through Him. There is no other way. Jesus Himself even prayed three times to go any other route than what He was going to go through. Most Christians will readily agree with this and state this, but very few actually believe it. For most professing Christians this is not reality in their lives. What do I mean by this?
When you listen to most professing Christians today, you don’t hear “Thus says the Lord.” You hear, “This is what I think.” You don’t hear, “The Bible says this, this, and that.” You hear, “That’s not how I see it.” You hear, “That’s just your interpretation.” You hear, “So-and-so preacher says this.” And we wonder why the Church is laughed at, mocked, and not respected in society. It’s not because Young Earth Creationists actually believe what the Bible says, and it goes against modern science. Yes, we get mocked for that, but Christianity as a whole is ridiculed because those who profess the name do not even believe their own book. They have so many interpretations, ideas, models, and programs, all of which God has nothing to do with. It’s all religious practice, religious rhetoric, and false piety. One Scottish minister said, “You Americans’ theology is 3000 miles wide and six inches deep.” He’s right. A Chinese missionary said, “I am amazed at what you Americans can do without God.” He is right. And why is this?
Because man wants to have a say in how his own salvation is to be accomplished. Man wants some input into what God’s message is and how it should be delivered, and all of it is about making themselves look good. They know the Gospel is the true message, but they don’t want to look foolish before their pagan peers. They want freedom from the chains and the whips but not to actually leave Egypt. They want to get out of Hell but not abandon their sin. Oh, they’ll leave some sins, but on their terms and under their control. This is outright tomfoolery, it’s hogwash, and it’s absolute insanity.
We know the cliché that beggars can’t be choosers, and yet that is exactly what we are seeing here. We have people who will only come to Christianity on their terms. I have seen professing Christians not only say this is okay but evangelize this way. I have watched people evangelize saying, “If such and such teaching is holding you back from accepting Jesus, then understand you can have a Christianity that has a different teaching.” The teachings they are talking about are those that come straight from Scripture, while they boast a particular model that has no relationship to Scripture whatsoever, and they profess their models are Biblical. Frankly, I have no interest in being near them when the earth opens up and swallows them alive on Judgment Day. That is what Korah, Dathan, and Abiram said in Numbers 16: “Who made you the boss? Who made you the standard? We are Christians too. We can hear from God as well. We are going to do things our way.” They gathered 250 leaders to join them and rebelled against Moses. God killed them all by opening the earth under them, swallowing them alive.
You are a slave to sin. You have nothing to offer God except your surrender. You have no right to give God conditions for you to accept Him. Remember the God Complex? Here is it again. Those who take this approach are saying that THEY get to determine if God’s salvation is worth taking or not. They believe in a God that will be a “gentleman” and kindly step aside and let man do what he wants. Well, God will let man do what he wants for a season, and then there will be consequences for those choices, some quick and immediate, some that won’t show up for a generation or two. You can’t tell God what to do. You are the clay; He is the potter. You are the creation; He is the creator. Who do you think you are? One thing is for sure, such a person is not humble, is not repentant, and still wants his sin without its consequences.
Israel kept complaining, whining, and rebelling against the very God who saved them. They wanted salvation on their own terms and with instant gratification. They wanted to be in the Promised Land immediately and not go through the wilderness. They were freed from the whips and from the chains, but they were not freed from Egypt. Egypt still controlled them, and they constantly longed to go back to Egypt. But Egypt would not take them even if they wanted to go back. Since they refused to believe God there was only one place they could go: the wilderness to rot and perish.
When we rebel against God and demand that the process goes our way, we have to wonder if we are saved at all. Why? Because the one who is truly born again has one thing on his mind: to serve, love, and worship God. There will be a lot of sanctification and purification going on through the wilderness, but the believer welcomes it because it makes them closer to God and closer to the final destination. But if we want to do things on our own terms and our own way, God will let us go, and He will curse us as we do so with a reprobate mind and death following everything we do and touch. There is one means of salvation, and that salvation is not to let us do as we want. That salvation is to change us from a slave to sin, by putting sin to death, and making us a slave to Christ, making us alive in Christ. The born-again believer has one thing in mind: to serve, follow, and love Christ. And it will be on His terms, not our terms. It will cost us everything of ourselves and yet it will all be replaced with Christ. We won’t be perfect at it, but we are to be making headway in that direction.
Are you saved? How do you know? Did you go through Christ’s way? Think about The Pilgrim’s Progress. At the City, Christian and Hopeful arrive at the city of paradise, but they are accompanied by another traveler who seeks to get in via the walls instead of the door. He is bound and kicked out, cast into the depths of darkness. You are only saved in Christ, through Christ, on Christ’s terms, and doing it God’s way. The ONLY thing we bring to the table that has any value is our total and complete surrender, not seeking to make a deal with God, not seeking to negotiate terms, but yielding to Christ and letting Him rule. That is what we’ll cover next week: slavery to Christ.
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When God came in and delivered Israel from slavery, the whole thing was to be a major picture of the ultimate salvation from sin. It was so significant in Israel’s history that the Passover and the deliverance from Egypt were forever marked in the history as how to identify God as Savior. Israel did not remember all the times that God saved them from the Philistines, from Moab, from Midian, from Assyria throughout the Judges and the Kings like they did the deliverance from Egypt.
While much can be said about how God delivered Israel regarding the plagues and the Red Sea crossing, I only want to touch on that before getting to the main point. God sent the plagues not merely to showcase His own glory and prove that He was the God over all gods but to showcase that Egypt only had power as long as God let them have power. He demolished the worship of their major gods by sending plagues that would directly attack such idolatrous worship. Then He crushed Egypt’s military by burying them in the Red Sea. Egypt was dead. As a nation, they were left powerless to retain Israel as slaves and powerless to try to kill them so no one else could have them either.
That is a picture of sin. Egypt represents sin, and Pharaoh, while an actual historical person, showcases the hardness of the heart of sin. Sin will utterly defy God until its death because that is what sin is – defiance against God. In Romans 7, Paul uses marriage to showcase the legal bonds here. We are born in sin. That generation of Israel was born in slavery to Egypt. There was no escape. No one had the leadership to bring about a rebellion (though we can be sure some tried) to get anyone out. And if they were to leave, where would they go? It was all desert all around them. It took the death of Egypt to finally get Israel freed, and it takes the death of sin to get us free from sin. And this leads us to the main point that most never pick up on and one I never caught until my pastor mentioned it as he has been going through his series on Exodus: Israel was not delivered from Egypt to be a free people but to be a people that would serve God.
Israel was not delivered so they could go do what they wanted. They were delivered so they could be the people that God would raise, through whom would come the Savior. They would be a people who would teach the world about Him and to serve Him. The common refrain through the Pentateuch is, “I will be their God and they will be My people.” The second half of Exodus, Leviticus, and much of Deuteronomy are about how God is to be worshiped, and He was quite specific. Why? Didn’t Jesus say that one day we would worship in spirit and truth? Be careful with that phrase because Jesus was not saying that the day would come when we would have a free for all in how we worship.
One of the biggest themes throughout the Kings is the handling of idolatry and high places. God did not save Israel so that they could worship in the way of the world, at the venues of the world, or alongside the world’s idols. He saved Israel to worship Him alone and to do it His way. Israel was to worship at the Tabernacle, which would then transfer to the Temple: at the holy place where sin would be removed and the people cleansed. We don’t worship at a physical temple today, but instead we worship at the cross which dealt with our sin and cleansed us.
Israel was saved to serve God. They were to transfer their servitude from a wicked master, Egypt, to the good master, God. They were still slaves, but now they were slaves to a good master. There are good slaves and bad slaves, and there are good masters and bad masters. In Israel, we see the combination of these categories.
Egypt was a bad master. They forced Israel into slavery and didn’t truly care about their well-being. They slaughtered their babies in fear of them (likely in fear of rumors of a deliverer as well) and made their labor brutal. Their purpose was to keep them subdued and under their control. Israel was actually a good slave under Egypt. They did what they were asked, submitted to the authority, and did not think about leaving, even though they cried to God for freedom. They were not rebellious to Egypt. They grew comfortable in Egypt and liked what Egypt let them have.
Then God rescued them. God is the good master. He fed them, gave them water, gave them shelter, never let their clothes wear out, and eventually brought them to the Promised Land. He gave them excessive amounts of mercy despite all their complaints. Israel became a bad slave of God. They constantly defied Him, whined against Him, wanted to go back to their old masters, turned to idols, committed grievous sins against God, and did not want to serve Him. Even after arriving at the Promised Land, they repeatedly sought to do things their own way however they wanted. They still prided themselves in being God’s people, but so few of them actually obeyed God as He commanded them. Israel was not a good slave before God; however, we see how good of a master God is by how He treated His slaves. Anyone less than Him would have destroyed Israel long ago, and there were times where God was about to do that too. God was patient with them and still kept His promises.
Israel is a picture, a type, and an example of Christianity. Israel was rescued from Egypt, but they never got Egypt out of them. They still held on to what Egypt had to offer. God had to make them let go of Egypt entirely, and the only way to do that was to wipe out the generation that grew up attached to Egypt so the children, who were teenagers and younger, would know and learn to depend upon their new master. Likewise, we are currently in the wilderness stage of our deliverance as God is working on getting sin out of us. It won’t be finished until we cross over out of this world, but it is in progress. That said, it is done one way: God’s way. As we go through Scripture, we will see that there is only one means of salvation. In all the times God rescued His people, there was one way and one way only to escape. We’ll examine that next week.
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I have two more topics to hit before addressing freedom from slavery: teachings and demons. Even more than drugs, drinking, or pornography, slavery to false teachings is perhaps the strongest form of slavery, rivaled only by slavery to demons. The two really go hand in hand, so I am going to address them together.
I deal with origins debates quite often, and one thing I have learned in such debates is how strong of a grip that certain teachings have on people. Now there are certain teachings we truly have to have a firm grip on because that is how we survive, so do not hear what I am not saying. However, when a false teaching has a grip of someone, it will not let it go without a hard fight. There are prominent speakers out there where if they are questioned, it is like insulting their guru and prophet. Man has so idolized celebrity preachers and speakers that we make the quarrels of Corinth in which they debated over Peter, Apollos, or Paul look like child’s play. While there is great wisdom that can be learned from those who have gone before us, we need to remember that they are all fallible and every one of them, and yes that includes me, is going to get something wrong.
The New Testament letters speak about being watchful and discerning true and false doctrines/teachers more than any other single topic. Entire letters have been written on this very issue, including both Paul’s and Peter’s last messages before their executions – 2 Timothy and 2 Peter. These were their last message, their last words, and when you know you are dying, you speak about the most important things. For them, the most important thing was doctrine and to stand on and believe Scripture above and beyond anything else. Paul describes Scripture as being God-breathed and useful and sufficient for every good work. Peter describes Scripture as being not from human origins, but from God, and that it was even more sure than the very things they had eye-witnessed as though they were yesterday. Both of those points are to be the ground that their readers are to stand on when they face the false teachings that come from within their own congregations or from outside.
Some false teachings have such a grip on people that you cannot reason with them with logic, nor are you able to showcase the absurdity of them. There may be a few you can get through to, but they are rare. Scripture says that they are blinded by the “god of this age.” They literally cannot see the truth, and the only way to save them is with supernatural weapons to remove the blinders and break the chains. Most of these people cannot see that they are in chains to false teachings, are bound to them, and have been convinced that this is actually freedom. It’s not. And it is worth noting that when people coming out of false teachings, they tend to describe their experience in terms of deliverance, freedom, or a fog being lifted. Those who go into such false teaching tend to describe their conversion in terms of “education” or “enlightenment.” And you can almost see it; you can almost see a fog coming over them, a spirit of deception entering into them by their professors or spiritual mentors.
These teachings are doctrines of demons, and they are far more active than we can possibly imagine. They are not responsible for everything, but when it comes to teachings, they are. Satan and his very well-structured organization of demons do not care what we believe as long as it is not the truth. And if you look at history, you can see all the false teachings like throwing darts at a target at random. Some hit well and some don’t. Satan is not omniscient, and when a false teaching does not hold, he discards it. But when one does, he holds it as long as he can; if it is eventually rejected, he simply repackages it with new cosmetics. He has a limited playbook, but he plays his cards frequently in many shapes or forms.
It is not just teachings the demonic play with; it’s also minds and bodies. When the serial killer does his deeds, some have admitted that a spirit comes upon them and drives them to do it. There was a case of a man who invaded a home in Idaho and killed the parents and eldest son before kidnapping the younger boy and girl. During the ordeal, the kidnapper/killer took the boy to a cabin and raped and tortured him for about four hours. He made this statement: “The little demon didn’t want to do this, but now the Devil is here.” The boy would later be killed, and the girl survived. In another case, two teenage girls lured a friend to the woods where they killed her to appease the “Slender Man,” a fictional character; but it is clear it was a demon posing as one. In another case, an elderly man kidnapped several women and forced them into multiple sex acts on film because people were watching him and were making him do that. Again, that sounds demonic to me.
Read the testimonies of David Wilkerson and Nicky Cruz. It is clear that the demonic is a real thing. Here in El Paso, the occult is a notorious and major sin issue only behind drinking/drugs and the sex industry. Frankly, I think all three are heavily intertwined. Demons don’t just mess with minds, they can control bodies. And I’m not merely talking about “Emily Rose” types of things. There are many physical and psychological cases that we have given labels but in actuality are demonic oppressions and possessions. Jesus healed a woman who was bent over and could not walk erect. Surely there was a physical issue there, but the source was a demon. When Jesus drove out the demon, the physical ailment was healed. This is not a blanket statement as there are cases where there simply is a genuine physical ailment that is purely physical due to the breakdown of the genome due to sin. But that should not make us rule out the demonic as being a factor as well. Let’s not look behind every bush for a demon, but let’s not ignore them either.
There is only way to escape from these false teachings and from the demons: the preaching of the Gospel and the battle with spiritual weapons against the forces of darkness. Over the next few weeks, we will look at how we become free from such things and move from serving a bad master to serving the Good Master.
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The type of slavery the Bible speaks against the most is slavery to self. This is when you put yourself in the “God” position. There are two angles I will hit here today: the narcissist who thinks he is God, and the victim who is being held as a slave to that person. This whole issue comes from the key lie of the serpent that triggered Adam and Eve to eat of the fruit: “And you shall be as God, able to determine what is right and wrong.” The lie of the Serpent is that we as man would be the arbiter of truth and reality.
There are two areas where this is on full display: politics and science and the two are often interlinked. Forty years ago, Jeremy Rifkin made this statement in his book Algeny as a commentary of the mindset of the scientific community back in 1983.
Humanity is abandoning the idea that the universe operates by ironclad truths because it no longer feels the need to be constrained by such fetters. Nature is being made anew, this time by human beings. We no longer feel ourselves to be guests in someone else's home and therefore obliged to make our behavior conform with a set of pre-existing cosmic rules. It is our creation now. We make the rules. We establish the parameters of reality. We create the world, and because we do, we no longer feel beholden to outside forces. We no longer have to justify our behavior, for we are now the architects of the universe. We are responsible to nothing outside ourselves, for we are the kingdom, the power, and the glory for ever and ever.
- Jeremy Rifkin, Algeny (1983) page 244
Take note of the last statement in that quote. That is the mindset of the scientific community. I don’t believe it is Rifkin’s position but that of the scientific community that he is addressing. That is blasphemy, and it is the sinful nature on full display there. This is seeking to rule our own lives without God and to rule everyone else while at it. Understand that this is the attitude that these scientists have toward God and us. They believe that because they are so well educated and have so much scientific knowledge, they not only know what is better for us but that they are better at it than God. If you think about it, this is the attitude that the government and scientists who are paid by them had towards us during the Covid-19 pandemic. They did not believe we could make our own informed choices but that we must submit to them as though they were God Himself. They appear to have believed they had overthrown Him and could rule in His stead. There is only one thing that happens when any person or group of people does this: death.
But how did they get such into such a position? How did these people get such a God complex? The answer is simple: we gave it to them. We as a people have put these people on pedestals and given them the prestige they love, and now they want to exert authority with that prestige. A false teacher depends upon one critical thing: a willing, believing audience. Take away the audience and they have nothing. And those false teachers don’t just stand behind pulpits; they wear white coats and sit at ruler’s desks as well.
It starts at the individual level. The psychological term for this is narcissism. A narcissist is someone who thinks all about self and wants everyone else to think about him. Many accused President Trump of being narcissistic, and I saw validity to that charge. I also saw it in Dr Fauci and many others. Whenever someone makes every statement about themselves, that is narcissism. Bad news folks: EVERY ONE of us are narcissists. We all think about self and want things to be about us. We all have it, because at the root of all sin is self. This is one of the reasons why God listed pride and haughty eyes as the first of the sins he hates. So many times, we direct conversations about our interests and our desires and seek praise for us. Now, there is nothing wrong with enjoying the fruit of your labors, but why are we doing such work to begin with – for God, for others, or for ourselves?
Why did you take your job? Why are you pursuing such and such career? The answer for most is one of two things: money and prestige. They want the income, the title, and the recognition. If you are good at a job, yes, go for it. But what is the motive? The motive is often self. Seeking that prestige is all about self. Wanting that new car or getting the latest cell phone just because it is new – why get it if the current one is working fine? The answer is usually to show off, especially for teens or young men. They want to show off to girls that they got the “goods.” It’s about self and getting others to “worship” them. And once such narcissists exercise such control over people, when someone wants to break out of it, they show their nasty side. It’s all about self and these people are themselves controlled by self. Even if they say or want to serve others, they do so to make themselves look good before others. Some of these people are not only slaves to themselves but they are slaves to others because they depend upon the approval of people and are always seeking someone to please them. Often, this can be a result of parents who never gave them any value and who never taught them that their true value comes from God, not from others.
Every man thinks he is right. No one does what he does because he knows he is wrong, unless they have gone past the point of no longer caring. Look at our movies. Most of the villains actually think they are doing the right thing and have “good motives” for what they do. They usually want the same thing the hero wants, but the hero has that moral line he won’t cross, though the villain will. That is what separates Luke Skywalker from Anakin Skywalker. That is what separates Batman from the Joker. However, in the real word, each of us are the villains. We each think we are doing the right thing, but the end leads to death. This is why Jesus said we have to deny ourselves, take up our cross daily, and follow Him. That is why Proverbs tells us to trust the Lord with all our hearts and lean not on our own understanding.
The world is not about you. All that goes on is not about you. When you try to take God’s place to rule the universe and make everyone’s decisions be about what you think they should make, there are two people who are laughing at you. One is God Himself as He sits on His throne, laughing at us trying to rage at Him. The other is Satan as he watches us follow his lies and make utter fools out of ourselves. There is only one solution to this: we have to take ourselves off the throne and submit to God who actually has the title of God and let Him rule. One way or the other, God is going to show that He is God, and we are not. We will serve someone: either self or God, either sin or God. And the only way to change from one master to the other is through the death of the former. That is what Romans 7 is all about. We were born serving sin, so sin must be put to death before we can serve God, legally and practically. That is where this series is going, but before we get there, I have one more topic to hit: slavery to teachings.
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In 1863, Abraham Lincoln emancipated the slaves in America. They were released from their station of being “owned” and could suddenly make their own choices. However, as I mentioned before, they never were actually saved. They only knew and understood one thing: cotton. So they were forced back to the same plantation owners or started their own plantation to do what? Grow cotton. George Washington Carver, by bringing the peanut into the discussion with 300+ recipes, created an entirely new industry that finally saved the South from slavery to cotton.
Slavery in the South was a necessity because of the industry. Cotton was a big industry, and it was where the money was for plantation owners. Everyone was doing it, and no one knew differently. The cotton gin only makes the industry even bigger, thus requiring more slaves because of needing a bigger workforce. Could the plantation owners have done the same job without people formally being slaves? That was easier said than done as the struggles in the Reconstruction Era showed.
The South was big into slavery because they themselves were slaves to an industry: cotton. Each of those plantation owners was a slave themselves – not to a person but to a thing. Cotton required a workforce, and having slaves work the field was both the cheapest and easiest way to do the job. There were good plantation owners and bad ones, just like there are good employers and bad employers today. But each boss and each job we work are slaves to the industry. We think we have freedom, but do we really? We have to let go of the “American Slave Trade” image to truly understand that slavery is a much bigger thing than just kidnapping, chains, and forced labor. We need to get back to a Biblical mindset because every one of us is a slave. We all serve a master. For the South, it was cotton, which led them to seek labor, which brought in the slaves. Yes, what was done to the Africans was wicked and evil, but the motivation for that was largely due to slavery to cotton.
Things have not changed today, except we don’t call slavery to a thing “slavery;” we merely call it an addiction or give it some other euphemism. Slavery requires a master, and each of us is controlled by something or someone. Jesus Himself called us “slaves” when He said that we cannot serve two masters; we would serve one or the other. He specifically said we cannot serve both God and money. Why did cotton control the South so dominantly? The love of money. Cotton was the money maker and what the plantation owners could be certain about. Planting anything else was too much of a risk, and it was about making money. Now, there is nothing wrong with making money. What is wrong is when money controls you, not you controlling the money. Today, many people go for the jobs they want not because they are good at the job, not because they have a skill they can use to help people, but because of the prestige and money that comes with the title. As a result, they are slaves to that job and slaves to that lifestyle.
Debt is one of the clearest forms of slavery today. It was why many ended up as slaves in ancient history and it’s no different today. Those who are in debt are owned by the banks from which they took the loans. How can I say that? Because if you default on your loans and don’t pay them back, they take your house, your car, and your stuff. They own you. That is why Scripture says multiple times to not be in debt whenever possible, and it gives instructions on how to handle those who need to borrow from you. Yet stats have shown that the average American lives on 125% of their income. This means that for many of us, the lifestyle we prefer is more expensive than our means to maintain it. The government is even worse and doesn’t even know what the word “budget” means anymore. It’s no longer mere blacks that are slaves in America; the vast majority of the country is enslaved to debt.
We have other slave masters in this country as well. We simply call those addictions. Drugs, alcohol, and pornography are the big three. Why do so many drugs come across our border? The answer is very simple: our demand and appetite for them call for it. Smokers are constantly craving that next joint, and those who are on the “harder” stuff are incapable of walking away from it. Heroin in particular is a drug the body literally cannot break free of. Why are beers and bars so popular? Because they are sought to dull the pain of life and to make us oblivious to what is going on around us. People seem to love the high of being drunk but always seem to forget the barfing and unconscious thinking and the risks from those around them. Pedophiles will often get teens or pre-teens to parties where they will get drunk enough to be incapacitated, get them to a bed, and all it takes is a few seconds to get a few pictures and that victim will be on display on the dark web forever. And then there is pornography itself. It’s truly a drug that has a vicious grip. And don’t think just controlling your ability to resist watching and looking at the junk is going to help. Once you have looked, those images are in your head, and it is very difficult to get them out. It gets worse when the mind goes into “fantasy porn,” when one just pictures the deeds in their heads. These are slave masters and you can’t just say “no” to them. You need a greater master to free you, and only one Master can do that, Jesus Christ. Then instead of answering the door when they knock, let your Master answer the door.
Those are merely the common bad things. What about the good things? Yes, we can be enslaved to those too. Can we put away video games for a season? Or hunting? Or stamps? Or LEGOs? Or cross-stitch? Or sports? None of these things are sinful. But, just to use sports for example, some are so addicted to a team they follow that they actually think they are part of that team, part of that experience when they win or lose. I personally root for the Denver teams because that is where I was born and raised. But when my team is basically out of things, I don’t follow them so closely. I am still loyal to my teams, but I’m not watching what is going on as closely. But when they are doing well, I am often checking to see what the latest statements are. Last year, the Colorado Avalanche won the Stanley Cup. I was watching them tightly. Once they got eliminated this year, I have basically only followed hockey from a distance. While the Denver Nuggets made their run to the NBA Finals (which results played out between when I wrote this post and today when you are reading it) I was watching. I can find myself following sports too closely and potentially at the expense of greater spiritual things I could be doing. Whatever your thing is, the real question is: does it control me?
Slavery is everywhere, and there are many masters. Most masters don’t require chains or whips to control you. All they have to do is offer you something you desire, and they control you. This is why Scripture tells us that we must not be controlled by the lusts of the flesh, but we must master them and submit those lusts to the will of Christ. Before I go that direction though, there is one more sinful slave master I need to address: the self. And I’m not just talking about doing what the self wants; I am also going to talk about the self-desire to rule all others, to take the God position and have a “God Complex.” That’s for next week.
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There is only one tale of slavery that depicts the brutality of man upon another greater than our typical image of the US/European slave trades: the slavery of Israel in Egypt. The account of Israel’s slavery in Egypt is one that stands out above all others. It is the primary account of a nation who came and blessed another nation, only for the host to turn on them and enslave the whole without conquest or a fight. It is also the only account of an entire nation being delivered from slavery without conquest or a fight. The history of Israel going to Egypt (the most powerful nation on earth at the time), being enslaved, being miraculously delivered by God, and then their journey from slavery into the Promised Land is meant to be a picture of the Christian life. Only instead of being enslaved by a nation, our slavery is to sin. I’ll deal with that as the series goes, but today, we’ll focus on Israel.
Israel came to Egypt through Joseph. Joseph was kidnapped by his brothers, sold into slavery, arrived in Egypt where he served Potiphar, was falsely accused of rape and imprisoned, and then interpreted several dreams, the latter of which was Pharaoh’s and brought him into the Prime Minister position. When the famine hit, Joseph’s father Jacob (whose name was changed to Israel) sent his sons to Egypt to get food. After testing their hearts for a while, Joseph could not restrain himself any further and revealed himself. He brought his whole family to Egypt where they were given the best land, Goshen. Through Joseph, Egypt was made a powerful nation and survived the famine.
Yet, Israel got comfortable in Egypt and did not return to Canaan. They grew and multiplied and made Egypt afraid. So Egypt, who refused to remember what Joseph did for them many years earlier, captured Israel and enslaved the nation with brutal force. Israel lacked the strength of man or the leadership to leave. Again, they were comfortable in Egypt. Goshen was lush, and they had all the food they wanted. There were hardships from slavery, but they tolerated the slavery, having little clue of what was waiting for them in the Promised Land. There was something else that happened while in Egypt: they began adopting the Egyptian culture and the Egyptian gods. This is why they turned to create a golden calf just months after leaving Egypt at Mt Sinai. They had even taken altars and images of Molech through the wilderness.
When the time was right, God raised Moses to be educated in Egypt so he would learn leadership skills, language, law, etc. God sent him to the wilderness for 40 years to teach him true humility, and then God called him to deliver Israel from Egypt and lead them right up to the entrance to the Promised Land. In performing many miraculous signs, Moses proved he was God’s spokesperson and eventually Pharaoh finally broke. Through the account of the Ten Plagues, we see several things about Pharaoh, who represents sin.
Pharoah, when challenged, set his foot down and went on a power trip. He took away the straw from Israel but would not reduce their workload in making bricks. He refused to even acknowledge God, let alone obey Him. No matter how much damage he took, he was not going to let go of his slave work force. Sin does not care what the loss is; it is determined to keep its grip on you. When sin has a person, you can discipline them until you are blue in the face, but they won’t budge. Pharaoh’s own officials recognized it early and quickly, but Pharaoh would not quit. The plagues were also a judgment upon the gods of Egypt. Each plague was a blow against the major deities of nature that Egypt worshiped, including the frogs, the bugs, the sun, the crops, and the animals. God wasn’t just judging Egypt for enslaving His people; He was taking down the idols to prove that He was God and none other.
Then upon leaving Egypt, God destroyed the Egyptian military by burying them in the Red Sea miracle. Israel was saved from the physical nation of Egypt, but they weren’t totally saved. God had pulled Israel out of Egypt, but then He would need to take Egypt out of Israel. Through the wilderness for 40 years, God would use the desert to strip Egypt from Israel. Israel constantly complained about the wilderness and wanted to get back to Egypt. Why? Because there was food and comfort there. It sure is amazing how selective our memory is about past times. Just ask a parent. They love to talk about when the kids were younger kids, relishing the fun things, but they selectively don’t remember all the battles of the terrible twos, the tantrums, the messy, smelly diapers, the rebellion, etc. The same is true about Israel. They remembered the dates, the figs, and the onions, but they forgot the left the whips, the chains, and the deaths. They also forgot what was promised but not yet realized. They wanted instant gratification, much like our current generation.
Because Israel refused to let God work Egypt out of their system, because they refused to let go of their sin and refused to serve God, God forced that generation to die in the wilderness. And the children, all of whom were under 20 and still alive and understood what was happening, were forced to endure 40 years in the wilderness while their unbelieving parents died off. One thing we can learn from Israel: many rescued slaves actually don’t want to be rescued. They would rather continue in their slavery because they know and understand it. A journey with God is scarier than facing the wrath of their masters. Can you believe it? Israel cried out to God to be rescued from the bondage of Egypt, and when they got it, after witnessing many miracles and God’s goodness, they preferred Egypt to the temporary journey towards the Promised Land. In hindsight it is easy to see, but how are we any different?
Israel’s time of slavery was meant to be a clear physical picture of our slavery to sin. The deliverance of Israel in the Passover and the crossing of the Red Sea are pictures of what Jesus did on the cross and the baptism into the new life. Yet many of us still have “Egypt” left in our systems, and many of us are not willing to let go of the former master that “fed” us all the while beating and torturing us. It was said that people once asked Joseph Stalin how he kept the people in line. He grabbed a chicken and violently ripped out its feathers, leaving it scarred and bloodied. He then began to toss some food to it, and it soon began eating the food and following Stalin. Stalin said that all he had to do was feed the people just enough and house them just enough to get them to think he was their source, and no matter what he did to them, they would still follow him. The same is true about Egypt, and the same is true today for many people who follow the government no matter what they say just so they can get a tiny morsel of food from them. Next week, we’ll start looking at modern slavery – a slavery without chains but with much stronger bonds.
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What is slavery? What does it look like? How does it operate? Why do people engage in it? Why do people despise it? I will explore that today.
Most of our images of slavery come from the Civil War and Colonial days. We tend to think of putting black men in chains, sailing them across the Atlantic, and forcing them into manual labor on plantations in the southern United States. The historical account of The Amistad, and the movie that was made to showcase it, dealt with the Spanish ship of the story’s namesake, which was transporting illegally acquired slaves when the slaves escaped and had a revolution. The ship ended up in New England, and an intense trial took place as to what to do with them. This is the image we often have of slavery.
This was a great blight in American history, a blight that was paid for with the lives of 650,000 American men. The US Civil War was the price we paid for slavery. Many textbooks say the issue was about states’ rights, but in reality, the very right the states were arguing over was slavery. Why? In one word: cotton. It wasn’t just the selling and trading slaves that was the issue; it was the demand for slaves that kept calling for more slaves to be brought in. What created the demand? Cotton. The South didn’t merely want slaves; they were slaves themselves to cotton. The product was in high demand in England and the North, and it was the only thing the plantations owners knew how to grow. Yet cotton was sucking away the land’s nutrients making the crops weaker and weaker each year, thus requiring more cotton, more fields, and more labor.
When President Lincoln freed the slaves, it left some devastating side effects. The slaves couldn’t go anywhere because all they knew how to do was to grow cotton. The plantation owners now had to pay their former slaves wages to grow the only crop they knew how to grow: cotton. They had no other ideas, until George Washington Carver entered the scene and introduced the peanut, which wasn’t even in the almanac as a potential crop. He not only showed the south the crop but created well over 300 recipes and products from the peanut plant to produce an industry that was not cotton. The South was finally freed from slavery to slaves and ultimately slavery to cotton. (For further details and a spiritual application to this history, see Eric Ludy’s sermon “The Power of the Peanut.”) Keep this image in your mind during this series as I will keep referring to the issue of slavery to things throughout this series.
But this kind of slavery, in which people were stolen from their lands to produce a labor force, has only been around for about 1000 years when the Ottoman Turks found the blacks of Africa “available” to use as slave labor. I don’t have the details to cover this heavily, but prior to the Ottoman Turks, there was not much widespread kidnapping and selling of slaves across the nations. Sure, it happened, but it was not whole nations involved. The only time whole nations were involved was during a conquest.
In ancient times, slavery was a major part of the economic system, but it wasn’t the evil system that we tend to picture. In those days, the slave owner actually took care of his slaves. He provided clothing, housing, food, and education and gave them rights. There were many slaves that were actually better off than their masters and more educated than their masters. Look at Joseph. Joseph was a victim of kidnapping and trafficking by his own brothers. Yet when under Potiphar, Joseph thrived and ultimately ran Potiphar’s house as a slave. There were many slaves who could earn their own money and eventually buy their own freedom, though this never happened with Joseph. Some slaves were actually better off as a slave under their master than they would have been under their own, so of their own free will, they chose to stay under their master.
There is one big difference between the slavery of the ancient world and the slave trades beyond these things. Slavery was just a station, and it was independent of race, people group, or culture. The Ottoman Turks were the first to see that the Africans were valuable and expendable. Then the Portuguese and Spanish did the same. But prior to that, slavery was merely a station in life. The servants we see serving nobility in Europe were slaves in this regard. They just called them “servants” rather than slaves. And this is part of why the King James and New King James versions us the word “servant” instead of “slave” for the Greek word doulos. When John MacArthur and his team went to update the New American Standard Bible, to get even more accuracy to the original text and to get the original author’s intent, this term was one of the key points they made for doing The Legacy Standard Bible. The language that Jesus used for many of His parables involves a master/slave relationship, and Paul used the master/slave stations to showcase the Christian life as well. I’ll hit those points later in this series.
Now the key question everyone wants to ask: We abolished the illegal slave trading that plagued the US and Europe about 150 years ago. Based on how Scripture tells us how to treat other people and other races, we realized that this kind of slavery is an abomination. Yet, what about the slavery during Israel and Greece and Rome in the 1st century? Was that evil? Did the Bible miss it in not explicitly condemning slavery? It is interesting how the economic system is never challenged. How to work within it is addressed, but the system itself is never questioned. The Bible explicitly calls out kidnapping for slavery purposes as an abomination. But it does not question the institution in which “indentured servants” and other kinds of slaves were a key part of the system. It does tell masters how to treat them, and it tells servants how to serve. It even allows for man in his sinful heart some leash, much like how Moses allowed for divorce when it never should have been an option.
What I will say is slavery never went away. We abolished the station, but we never got rid of slavery. It just no longer has chains and whips attached to it. I can argue that God allowed slavery to remain intact through Israel’s history to teach us a lesson that is still here today and few of us realize it. Over the next few weeks, I’ll examine the slavery of Israel in Egypt and then examine the slavery systems of today. They are far more common and severe and rampant than chained slavery ever was.
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This is a topic I have been chewing on for several months, and I believe it is now time to address it: slavery. Slavery is like sin, a topic that most of us would rather just avoid talking about it because we cannot contemplate a good image of it. Why would we? Slavery is forced labor under a master who has no right to your body, right? Mostly yes but not always. Hear me out before you dismiss the rest of this post and this series.
Whether we want to realize it or not, every one of us is a slave. Every one of us serves something. There is not a single person who is truly free. As I go through this series, I will explain precisely what I mean by that. For now, I am declaring as a premise that each of us are slaves, including myself.
A slave is either a good slave or a bad slave. A good slave is someone who does what he is told, is obedient, and never questions or challenges his master or his authority. A bad slave is someone who always seeks to break free from his bonds and those who have authority over him. Again, these are premises that require clarification and unpacking, which I will do throughout this series. I am just laying down these down on the table and will put them all together shortly.
A slave has a master. A master is either a good master or a bad master. A good master will take care of his slave, provide for all his needs, give him everything he needs to do his job, and reward him for his loyalty and dedicated service, while also administering proper judgment upon bad slaves. A bad master will domineer over his slave just to showcase his power and to make the slave feel weak compared to him. He will give only the minimal supports for his survival, does not care for his well-being, and often sees his slaves as expendable and easily replaceable. If one dies, he can always replace him with another one. Again, these are mere premises to be put on the table.
A person becomes a slave for various reasons. The primary reason is through debts. Someone owes another something, and so he becomes that person’s servant or slave until that debt is paid. This will be something I am going to focus on throughout the series. The debt could be paid for by another, thus “buying the slave.” For example, if you have student loans, you are a “slave” to the bank who lent you the money until you pay it off. Another bank can buy that loan, and thus you own that bank your money instead. This is one of the reasons why the Bible teaches to do everything you can to pay off your loans as quickly as possible and to never get in debt if at all possible. It is dangerous to be in debt to someone.
Other reasons why people get into slavery include conquest and kidnapping. A nation conquers another nation, and the people are made subject to the conquering nation. But the one we all tend to picture is kidnapping and slave trading via illegal acquisition. We try to lesson the sting of the issue with words like “trafficking,” but it’s the same issue. Some are kidnapped by force, while others are kidnapped through deception and luring. All types of slave trading and kidnapping are forbidden in Scripture. So, before you let a skeptic throw you off your game and say that the Bible endorses slavery, do note that they are likely thinking of the American Slave Trade, which is explicitly condemned in Scripture.
There are two major types of trafficking: labor and sex. Labor trafficking is the transportation of people to a “master” to do manual labor for them. Often these are women or girls for cleaning, cooking, and being a maid for the house. A much more sinister type of trafficking is sex trafficking, where the person is moved and sold to pimps who uses the victim for sexual favors, either for them or for anyone to whom they offer them. Many prostitutes are slaves in this regard where they are forced to use their bodies for money, and most of that money goes their masters. While young are often the focal point, there are a large number of boys who are held as sex slaves, too. There is no gender, age group, or nationality that is not represented as victims.
But there are other types of slavery as well. I already mentioned debts. Addictions are another major type of slavery. This is slavery to drugs, drinking, sex, pornography, gambling, work, social media, etc. We don’t like to say it’s slavery, but it actually is. You are controlled by it. You cannot get away from it. When you try to, it keeps nagging you. And the master, be it sentient or not, is always calling you to serve it. The craving for the drug can be just as compelling as checking your phone every 30 seconds to see what the latest trends are. Students have reported that if you miss the chat for about one hour, you are truly left behind in what is going on, and the pressure is that big to stay in the loop. It’s truly addicting.
We all tend to picture all these slavery issues as negative things, and each example I gave here probably should be considered as such. However, God’s wisdom turns everything that man thinks upside down and uses slavery as a good thing. When man is on his own, he is a slave to his desires, dreams, and addictions. But when God saves him from his sin, he becomes a slave to God instead. And unlike sin who is a cruel master, giving only death as its wages, God is a good master.
God’s timing is perfect because the very day I sat down to write this post, my church’s preaching elder preached about slavery and how we are unworthy slaves who only do what we are expected to do. It was a good sermon and quite convicting with how we handle work-life in particular. Man is made to serve someone or something. We always seek someone or something to serve. Those who work tirelessly to rule their own lives are still serving someone or something. Someone is telling them what to do. We as Christians have a Master – Jesus Christ. We call Him “Lord” and “King of Kings” and “Sovereign,” but we don’t like calling Him “Master” because that puts us into the “slave” position. In reality, we Christians are His slaves, but that is actually a good thing. I will flesh that out in greater detail as the series progresses.
Next week, I will compare and contrast the types of slavery history has known. It may surprise you that the slave trading that we tend to picture in US history was not part of normal human society until 1000 years ago. More on that next week.
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