Sermon Tone Analysis

Welcome...

Introduce self...

Pray...

Recap story:

(very fast version)

Recap the law:

The law demonstrates God’s righteousness

It’s summed up in “Love God, love others”

The law is more than a code, it’s a narrative

Christians are not under the law.

God’s covenant (relationship, with its terms, conditions, and expectations) with Israel is different than his covenant with us.

The arrangement is different.

Jesus came:

Not to abolish (God doesn’t change)

But to fulfill (to finish the story, to make everything make sense, to show us what LOVE actually looks like)

Critics of the Bible love to say that Christians “pick and choose” what they want to believe out of the old testament.

Christians are not under the Old Testament law, we are under the “Law of Christ” which is:

Love God, love others

Does this mean God changed?

Or that God has changed his mind about what is righteous?

Not at all.

Different people that have lived in different times and contexts have fallen under different manifestations of what it means to love God and love others.

Laws About Slaves

So now we look at laws about slaves.

This would be a text that critics of the Bible might use to try and say Christians have changed their position on slavery.

Christians have also looked at passages such as this to justify slavery.

The Hebrew word for slave is “ebed” and could mean servant; the Hebrew term ‘ebed designates a range of social and economic roles.

Slavery was so different from what we think of in the past few hundred years...

Is there a way to have society with different social classes and still be loving to others?

Apparently the answer to that question is “yes.”

This form of slavery could be loving because it could save a persons life.

It could actually pull a person out of poverty and give them a second chance.

There are ways we relate together: employee/employer, husband/wife, governor/governed.

In all those relationships, you can be loving or unloving, but the fact that you can be under the authority of someone who is unloving doesn’t negate that as a possible social structure.

Here we see provisions for slave/servant/ebed to be able to live with their purchaser forever.

Again, this sounds so foreign to our culture.

There were certainly abusive ways to do this and loving ways to do this.

What do you think was pleasing to the Lord?

This is a repeat of “thou shall not murder” a more detailed explanation.

God’s heart in the matter of course runs so much deeper than the letter of the law.

Who deserves to die and for what?

Romans tells us the wages of sin is death.

But remember, this is an unfolding story.

He brought this on himself.

The punishment was not impulsive.

The punishment was designed to preserve the nation.

Rebellion against one’s parents is direct rebellion against God.

(5th commandment)

I point all this out to again say that these laws and these stories are not given to us (US today) to be followed by the letter.

They are given to us to teach us God’s character and holiness.

Deuteronomy folds back into Leviticus, Leviticus folds back into Exodus, Exodus folds into the 10 commandments, the 10 commandments fold into Love God and Love others (The law of Christ).

We can’t follow or understand the law of Christ unless it’s written on our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

We don’t have time to cover all these laws and trace them through in detail.

But that would be worth while to study.

This is a direct condemnation of the way slave-trade worked in early American history and it was absolutely evil.

Fredrick Douglass--explain life under Christian slaveowners was often worse than non-Christian slave owners.

[[SLIDE]]

“I assert most unhesitantly that the religion of the south is the most covering of the most horrid crimes–a justifier of the most appalling barbarity,–a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds,–and a dark shelter under, which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protection.”

Fredrick Douglass

[[SLIDE]]

“What I have said respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the slaveholding religion of this land, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference — so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked.

To be the friend of the one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other.

I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.

Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity.”

Appendix to The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Jesus as the example:

According to Christian teaching, Jesus went from the supreme position of privilege and power, that of being divine, to a place of surrendering that privilege and power, setting it side to become the ultimate servant for humanity.

A king become a servant.

“We deeply regret all instances of people who have claimed the name of Jesus, have claimed to be his follower, and yet effectively reject everything he teaches.”

It’s intellectually dishonest to somehow imagine that the world has been largely devoid of slavery.

Every major culture and society has had some form of slavery until recent years.

Aristotle wrote, “That some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary, but expedient; from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule.”

Gregory of Nissa

The first documented stand against slavery as an institution comes from Gregory of Nissa.

4th Century.

He was a Christian minister who took such a stand in a sermon to a group who likely included many slave owners as well as slaves.

A couple of quotes from that (SERMON):

[[SLIDE]]

“When someone turns the property of God into his own property and arrogates dominion to his own kind, so as to think himself the owner of men and women, what is he doing but overstepping his own nature through pride, regarding himself as something different from his subordinates?”

[[SLIDE]]

“What did you find in existence worth as much as this human nature?

What price did you put on rationality?

How many obols did you reckon the equivalent of the likeness of God? How many staters did you get for selling the being shaped by God?”

More SPECIFIC laws.

Is the OT comprehensive in such examples?

NO!

LOVE GOD, LOVE OTHERS

This is reasonable.

This establishes personal responsibility.

This establishes just consequences.

You must look at the Bible in its entire context.

CHRISTIANS ARE ACCUSED OF TAKING VERSES OUT OF CONTEXT OR PICKING AND CHOOSING.

CHRISTIANS ARE THE ONES BEING FAITHFUL TO LOOK AT THE ENTIRE PICTURE.

This doesn’t apply today.

We are not under this law.

We live as extensions of Jesus.

Church discipline is in place.

Both were for love, but it looks different now then it did in the past.

Israel was a theocracy, which means God was their ruler, not a king or government

Any law that’s not repeated in the NT doesn’t apply...