4Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. ⁵Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. ⁶These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. ⁷Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. ⁸Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. ⁹Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4-9 –NIV)

How many of us have put such importance on teaching and reminding, not just our children, but each other of God’s commandments. We need the word of God every day!

Now, as I have pointed out for the last two weeks, the first verse of the passage, verse 21, says, “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” Submission is mutual. The rest of the passage gives us three examples submission, wives and husbands, children and parents and slaves and masters.

Two weeks ago before I talked about wives and husbands, I talked about submission in general. Last week I gave a condensed version of what I said about submission two weeks ago. It’s important. Today I’m going review it again.  (...maybe a little more condensed, hopefully. If you want to see the whole thing, it’s on the LHF website. Look under Sunday messages for Submission –Parts 1 and 2. Today’s message is Part 3.)

So, here’s the review. First of all, submission is an attitude of the heart and mind more than it is an out ward action. The attitude of submission results in outward actions. Submission is the opposite of rebellion. Submission comes through humility. Jesus is humble and gentle. He didn’t come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. (Jesus won’t be gentle, by the way, when he comes back to judge his enemies.) Submission comes through humility. Rebellion, on the other hand, comes from pride. Pride is the sin of the devil. We follow Jesus. We don’t follow the devil.

When we have the attitude of submission, we listen to instruction and correction from others.  We don’t have the attitude that says, “You are supposed to submit to me. I’m not supposed to submit to you. I don’t have to listen to you!” or “That’s none of your business!” When we have the attitude of submission, we are humble. (This is not necessarily easy. It was not easy for Jesus to go to the cross either. It was very difficult. But, we are following Jesus.)

The word that’s translated submit in the New Testament is used in both the active and passive senses. When it’s used in the active sense, it means to cause to submit. When it’s used in the passive sense, it simply means to submit—really to cause yourself to submit. It’s something you choose to do rather than something you are forced to do. People can be forced to submit—they can be caused to submit—and sometimes need to be caused to submit. But if someone is forced to do something he doesn’t want to do, it won’t be with the attitude of submission. Jesus did not want to go to the cross. He prayed and sweat blood. But he was not forced to go to the cross. He went voluntarily. Praise the Lord that he did!

Now the point I want again to make is this: When the word translated submit is used in the New Testament about people, it is never used in the active sense, only in the passive sense. We are told to submit—to cause ourselves to submit. But we are never told to cause anyone else to submit. The verb is only used in the active sense in reference to God. (And, by the way, God does and will force various things to happen, but he doesn’t force you to accept his salvation. That’s a decision you have to make for yourself.)

Submission is ultimately to God. You submit to human authority because you submit to God and trust that what he says is good to do really is good to do. You trust in his wisdom and goodness. In learning to submit to human authority—in learning to submit to each other—we are learning to submit to God. We are practicing trusting God.

Finally, God’s authority supercedes human authority—human authority that he has established. (It’s God who establishes human authority.) But, you obey God above men.

Now let’s go on to today’s part of the passage, chapter 6, verses 5 through 9. It’s about slaves and masters—slaves obey your masters...Masters, treat your slaves in the same way...

This is about slavery and slave-masters. I think this passage is hard for us to understand in our present day culture. I’m not sure slavery is legal anywhere in the world. It’s still practiced in some places, but not legally. We hate the very idea of slavery. Slavery was legal at one time in this country. We fought a civil war over it—really, the bloodiest war in the history of this country. We finally outlawed slavery by amending the constitution.

Would you be shocked if I told you that slavery is not inherently evil? It’s not. What God condemns is not slavery, but oppression. I pointed that out two weeks ago when we first started to talk about submission. Let me say it again. What God condemns is not slavery, but oppression.

If you read through the Old Testament you will find out that what God condemns the most is worshipping other gods beside him and oppressing the poor and helpless. Jesus taught that the greatest commandments are to love the Lord our God with all of our hearts and minds and strength and souls and to love our neighbor as ourselves. We think that slavery is automatically oppressing the poor and helpless. But God says that it doesn’t have to be that way. (And, by the way, when Jesus taught the greatest commandments, to love God with all of our beings and to love our neighbor as ourselves, it wasn’t something new to the people he was teaching. They all knew that those were God’s greatest commands. Most of them just didn’t practice them. We know that they are God’s greatest commands, too. Do we practice them? (You don’t have to answer out loud.))

The Law of Moses in the Old Testament, God’s law, made provisions for slavery in Israel. It was regulated and in some ways somewhat closer to what employment is like today than to what we think of as slavery. When Moses instructed the Israelites concerning slavery, he reminded them that they had been slaves in Egypt. In Egypt, they had been severely mistreated. He was giving them an example of how not to treat slaves.

That was Israel. There were rules governing slavery. However, the Ephesians, to whom the apostle Paul’s letter is addressed, were living under Roman rule. They were part of the Roman Empire. In the Roman Empire, according to what I have read, slaves were property. They had no more rights than animals. They were bought and sold and owned for life. Their owners could do whatever they wanted with them, even kill them if they were not pleased with them.

Let me ask you just one question—just something to think about. I think it’s safe to say that everyone here hates slavery—thinks slavery is evil. Do you think slavery is evil because it leads to oppression or simply because you don’t want to think that you would have to submit to anyone? That’s a question to think about.

Now, these days when we try to apply Paul’s teachings (really, God’s teachings) about slaves and masters to our present situation, the closest analogy we can come up with is the relationship between employees and employers. (The army is closer, but there are still rules and restrictions and there are terms of enlistment.) The fact is, the principles that Paul is teaching do apply to the relationship between employers and employees (and to the army), but I think we lose some of the impact if we don’t realize what slavery was like in the Roman Empire (or maybe what it was like in the United States before the Civil War). Paul’s letter is written to Christians, God’s holy people, but some of the masters might not have been Christians and, likewise, some of the slaves might not have been Christians. The principles still apply.

Now let’s look at the passage. Verse 5 says, “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.” Tom would probably point out (and I would agree) that this verse doesn’t mean too much today because most Christians don’t obey Christ very well. But Paul says, “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear...”  That’s God’s command.

So, suppose Jesus came to you (someone who doesn’t obey Christ very well) the way he did to Paul on the Damascus road. Suppose there was a bright light, you fell to the ground and rendered blind and you heard a voice say, “Dean, Dean (or substitute your own name), why are you disobeying me?” and you said, “Who are you?” and the voice said, “I am Jesus whom you are disobeying.”

Or suppose, like the apostle John, you heard a voice speaking to you and you turned and saw someone like a son of man, dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. And his head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. (I’m taking this from Revelation.) And his feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. And in his right hand he held seven stars, and out of his mouth came a sharp double-edged sword. And his face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance. And when you saw him you fell at his feet as though dead.

Suppose Jesus came to you like that. Would you take him more seriously? Probably, but Jesus comes to most of us through what Paul and the apostles and prophets have written and through the power of the Holy Spirit. But he is still the same Jesus who is almighty and scary, but who loves us and sacrificed himself for our sins.

Paul says, “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear and with sincerity of heart...” If Paul could say (or, again, God speaking through Paul) could say, “Obey your masters with sincerity of heart” in the extreme circumstances of Roman slavery—when the master might not have even have been a Christian—how much more should we be sincere about obeying our employers in this day and age.

(By the way, I mentioned something about rights a couple of minutes ago—actually, about the lack of rights. Slaves in the Roman Empire had no rights at all. We talk about Constitutional rights and fuss about them—and they are a good thing—but, as Christians, we have something much better than rights. We have God’s grace.)

Verse 6 says, “Obey them (the masters) not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart.” Paul is continuing to give the example of serving Christ. There is what you might call a “slave mentality” that says, “Do as little as you can get away with. Do nothing at all if you can possibly get away with it.” But we serve Christ because we love him because he loved us and gave himself up for us. (Or, at least we should serve him because we love him because he first loved us. Our enemy the devil regularly tries to persuade us otherwise—that we are slaves and are forced to serve Jesus and should do as little as we can get away with. Positively resist those lies! And by the way, do you complain about your boss to others? Don’t do it! Why should you complain if you are serving out of love with sincerity of heart? And of course God is teaching us to love and serve people in general, not just our employers or our masters.)

Verse 7 and 8 say, “Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free.”

We have a reward when we serve our masters (or bosses) wholeheartedly. And I believe that the reward is not just in heaven, but in this present life also. If we serve our masters (or bosses) wholeheartedly, it’s more likely that we will have a much better relationship with them than otherwise. We will also have the peace that comes with the knowledge that we are following Christ. (I said that the reward is not just in heaven, as though what we have in heaven isn’t too important. It’s in the distant future. But the fact is that anything you receive in heaven far outweighs anything we can receive in this present life. It’s eternal! And that applies not just to rewards but to punishment, also, by the way.)

Verse 9 says, “And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.”

Did you notice that it says, “Do not threaten them”? Do you remember that word translated submit, although it can mean to cause to submit, is never used to instruct a person, a human being, to cause anyone to submit. It is only used in reference to God’s causing submission. (And when Jesus comes back, every knee will bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father—Philippians 2:10, 11.)

A friend of mine said that when he was in the army, he only knew of two people who could get others to do what they wanted them to by any other mean but fear of punishment. He didn’t say how they accomplished this, but I can tell you what God says.  God says it’s the way of love, humility and faith: “Masters treat your slaves in the same way.”

Whether we are masters or slaves, employers or employees, we are serving the same master in heaven, Jesus our Lord. (And incidentally, the word translated as master in the NIV is the same word as the word Lord that’s used to refer to Jesus.)

We all have the same master who is in heaven, Jesus. With him there is no favoritism. We are all sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female and there is neither Scythian nor barbarian. All of us are one in Christ Jesus. (Gal. 26, 28; Col. 3:11) It doesn’t depend on ethnicity, race position or sex. We all have the same standing before God. (That’s sinners saved by grace, by the way.)

And I want to point out one more thing.  With husbands and wives I pointed out that God’s command for wives to submit to their husbands is not conditioned on whether or not their husbands love them as Christ loved the church.  And that God’s command for husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church is not conditioned on whether or not their wives submit to them. Both commands are unconditional.

With slaves and masters, it’s the same. God’s command for slaves to obey their masters is not conditioned on whether or not their masters (or bosses) treat them with humility and respect or whether they are arrogant and overbearing. It’s unconditional. And God’s command for masters to treat their slaves ‘in the same way’, not to threaten them, is also not conditional. It doesn’t depend on whether or not the slaves (or employees) serve wholeheartedly and with sincerity of heart or not.

Isn’t it obvious, though, that if masters obeyed what God has commanded them, slaves would be much more likely to obey what God commanded them? ...and that if slaves obeyed what God commanded them, masters would be more likely to obey what God commanded them?

In the end, it all depends on faith in God—to know that he loves us wants the best for us—that it’s best to do what he says.. Humanly, we don’t want to submit. And if we are in a position of authority, we would rather be served than to serve. But God created us in his own image and he wants us to be like him. Jesus showed us the way. It’s the way of the cross.

You know, it’s a real battle to do the things God has commanded us to do. Next Sunday, the Lord willing, Tom is going to tell us how to go about fighting that battle. So come and find out. I’ll give you a clue. The battle is not against flesh and blood.

[Prayer]