Slave and Free (2)

Sermon Style Sheet

Write that down in your formation Journal

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Sermon Text

Sermon Text: Scripture

Call to Worship

Revelation 5:12 CSB

12 They said with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb who was slaughtered to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing!

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Passage:

Formation Journal Page Number: 2:11-2:50v1:09

1 Peter 2:13–25 CSB

13 Submit to every human authority because of the Lord, whether to the emperor as the supreme authority 14 or to governors as those sent out by him to punish those who do what is evil and to praise those who do what is good. 15 For it is God’s will that you silence the ignorance of foolish people by doing good. 16 Submit as free people, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but as God’s slaves. 17 Honor everyone. Love the brothers and sisters. Fear God. Honor the emperor. 18 Household slaves, submit to your masters with all reverence not only to the good and gentle ones but also to the cruel. 19 For it brings favor if, because of a consciousness of God, someone endures grief from suffering unjustly. 20 For what credit is there if when you do wrong and are beaten, you endure it? But when you do what is good and suffer, if you endure it, this brings favor with God. 21 For you were called to this, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. 22 He did not commit sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth; 23 when he was insulted, he did not insult in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten but entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. 24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree; so that, having died to sins, we might live for righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. 25 For you were like sheep going astray, but you have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.

Opening Illustration:

Oleg Gordievsky seemed like a pretty normal on the outside he was married, he was working with the KGB, he was moving up in the ranks. He became a diplomat, got to wear fun top hats, like this one, and he was raising two daughters. Prague Spring Things couldn’t have been better - except he had a secret - he was a spy. Oleg, had a chance to move and defect, but he chose to stay in Russia, living under the boot of communism. Having to spend his days outwardly loyal in order to continue to topple communism. He became disillusioned with the cold war and he even helped stop a nuclear war.

Most people who live in a dictatorship, submit to that government out of fear or coercion. They are beat down into it. In those societies, the only people who are free the spies. They submit to the government outwardly but not out of fear but in order to subvert it.

What we are going to see today is that God calls us to live as double agents to the world. Now, it’s not the government that is our enemy. We aren’t trying to subvert the government or the president or anything like that, because people are never the enemy.

He just got done telling them how special they were! holy nation.

But we are placed under the temporary submission so that other people can eternal glory.

So when God’s saves us, he doesn’t extract us from the world. Our difficulties don’t go away, in fact, they increase. But what you are invited into, is part of the dangerous life of a christian. That you work to overthrow the devil from the inside.

And sometimes, that requires living under dangerous situations. Living in real difficulty. So let’s take a look at how that looks in this passage.

Our lives are dedicated to overthrowing the enemy at all costs.

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Compelling Lie - Felt/Bible revealed need

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1 Peter 2:13–17 CSB

13 Submit to every human authority because of the Lord, whether to the emperor as the supreme authority 14 or to governors as those sent out by him to punish those who do what is evil and to praise those who do what is good. 15 For it is God’s will that you silence the ignorance of foolish people by doing good. 16 Submit as free people, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but as God’s slaves. 17 Honor everyone. Love the brothers and sisters. Fear God. Honor the emperor.

So here he says something that every American hates - we are called to submit to the government. Actually, we are called to submit to all forms of governments.

Submit to to authority because of the Lord as free people

In Peter’s day the people lived in a dictatorship where leaders and soldiers could do whatever they wanted to you. They could beat you, imprison you. There was some limits for Roman Citizens, but citizenship in Rome was like in modern times. It was exclusive. Most romans weren’t actually citizens and therefore didn’t have rights.

Now, as part of the government in those days, the Emperor was considered a god and good Romans, citizen or not, were expected to worship the emperor. It was a matter of patriotism. Most people knew that he wasn’t actually a god. They understood he was just a dude. But it was considered the moral and right thing to do.

But cities also had local gods, that they thought were really gods, who you would honor through sacrifice. You might have that with families, even with guilds. Think about guilds as professional licensing board. So in order to work as a doctor, you have to be licensed. Some places, interior designers have to be licensed. The idea is that they secure the quality of the work.

That’s what guilds were like. So most jobs had a guild, except on top of just licensing your work you were supposed to also worship the guild god. Not exclusively, but you were supposed to do that.

Virtue signaling

Virtue signaling

One of the ways that Christians ran afoul of the government was that they refused to go along with the worship of the these gods. They wouldn’t do it. So they were accused of being unpatirotic and disloyal. They could get sent to jail, kicked out of their guild, harrased. All that, because they refused to worship the way that the people did.

So what Peter is getting out here is something like this, the christians who were a part of the royal priesthood and the chosen race, were going to have flashpoints in their lives where they were going to be accused of being unpatriotic and disloyal because they wouldn’t participate in the things that culture demanded of them.

Therefore, they were supposed to be even more loyal, more submissive, bigger team players when it came to the other areas of their lives. You see, some people would obviously cut corners, they would run black market corrupt deals. All those things behind the back of the government. They would bribe and push their way. All this was acceptable but the one thing that wasn’t acceptable was outwardly making the sacrifice. You have to do that.

Instead, Christians are called to live as loyal and respectful to the government as possible, so that when the flash points happen, people will see the stupidity of the regulation. That’s what he means by silencing the ignorance of the foolish people.

How could you accuse this guy of being against the emperor? He is the best citizen there is - he just refuses to do this one meaningless act!

Why? we have a mission! Don’t compromise your mission on petty dislikes.

Remember, people aren’t the enemy. The enemy is the devil, our sin and the culture. And that’s who we are working against. He wants us to live under the radar, secret agents, so that we can continue to do the work of overthrowing the enemy.

The British didn’t want Oleg joining antigovernment rallies because then the Russians would have kicked him out or arrested him and he wouldn’t have been able to do his job as a spy.

We need to keep the mission of God central.

What makes this hard for us, is that we live in a democracy. We are all part of the political process some more than others. So how do we do that?

There are times in our lives, where we are in forced submission to the government or sometimes to a parent. But we are called to be people of peace. Now this is made a bit more complicated in a democracy than in a dictatorship because we are all a part of the process. We vote. We can run for election. We are invited into the process and the discussion.

But this passage is still true. We are still called to be people of peace and to not let politics disqualify our witness. So how do we do it? Well, it’s not really all that complicated, you just treat political opponents with dignity and respect. You refuse to get drawn into the name calling and hatred of our political climate.

It’s not complicated, but it is difficult.

And it all depends on how we live. Are we living to build our kingdom or God’s kingdom. we are still focused on our mission.

So we alway need to be reminding ourselves what our first mission in. What is our first priority. Who our real enemy is.

Sometimes this actually calls us to endure a lot. Sometimes that’s what the mission requries. Look how he continues

1 Peter 2:18–21 CSB

18 Household slaves, submit to your masters with all reverence not only to the good and gentle ones but also to the cruel. 19 For it brings favor if, because of a consciousness of God, someone endures grief from suffering unjustly. 20 For what credit is there if when you do wrong and are beaten, you endure it? But when you do what is good and suffer, if you endure it, this brings favor with God. 21 For you were called to this, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.

even in their suffering they submit to their masters because they are following the example of Christ and working to overthrow the darkness.

So we do need to address slavery real quick and then we will continue:

1:34

So we are going to jump into it but before we do, I think we need to address an elephant in the room - what about slavery?

This passage is one of those that has caused people a lot of heart burn over the years and it’s not hard to see why. Especially in America and our history of slavery, how are we supposed to understand what’s going on here?

I think there are a few things we need to address and we can’t give enough time to each of them, but I’m going to hit the highlights and if you want to talk more about it, we can.

First, we need to understand that Christianity has been uniquly antislavery to such a degree that there were no anti-slavery movements in the world before christianity.

The fruit of christianity is freedom

I want to say this clearly, the first people to conceptualize that slavery was wrong were Christians and they rooted the evil of slavery in the image of God of all men.

Sparatcus- and other slave revolts were about personal slavery. They were saying “I don’t want to be a slave” they weren’t saying “Slavery is wrong in general.”

The very first people to articulate that, were Christians in the early church. It took a long time for this to become practice, but it only became practice because Christians were convinced of the inherit value and dignity of all humanity.

The second thing we need to address is why isn’t Peter calling for some sort of freedom movement? Why is he telling the slaves to be free?

We need to remember, that 1 Peter, and the rest of the new testament, were letters written to real people facing real difficulty. It changes things.

God’s Smuggler

When I was in Nicaragua and there was infighting, there was a question of what should the pastors do? Should they get involved? I remember there were some who were looking at me for a response.

Things are a lot different when there is real flesh and bones, body and souls that you know by name that are at stake. We might think, why didn’t he tell them - to revolt. But to us the Them is a generic concept of a people who lived back in the day. We assume that they might have had the same success as the American revolution.

But to Peter they weren’t general concept of people, he knew their name. He knew their faces. He knew the weight of what was at stake. He was teaching real people how to survive bad circumstances where they had no hope of victory.

But, and this is the third point, what about the OT? The OT explicitly allows for slavery. And that’s true. But to understand that we have to understand that there were three forms of the law - the ceremonial law (like sacrifices), the moral law (what is always true) and the civil law (what the government should be doing).

To understand the nature of the civil law - consider how Jesus addressed divorce. In those days, divorce had significant negative consequences for women. They would almost certainly end up in poverty and could even be forced into prostitution. It was a big deal.

By Jesus’ day, there were people who were flippant about divoce and so when Jesus confronted them on it, he said that divorce existed because of the hardness of the men’s hearts. God knew that they were going to get divorce. That sometimes, divorce is good. Sometimes it’s needed.

Three types - Moral - which taught right and wrong

Ceremonial - how to be right with God

Civil - how the government of Old Testament Israel should restrain sin.

So he put into place a restraint on the excessess and that’s true for slavery in the OT. God never condones it as morally good, but he is dealing with real people and the reality of their sin, and so within the civil law, God restrains the excessess of their sin by, for example, forbidding you from harshly beating your slave and by shielding runaway slaves. It is the only culture to have those types of laws.

So how do we make sense of it? I think it’s safe to say that slavery is a sin and was always a sin. The people in the past, even christians who owned slaves were sinning when they did so and they should have known better.

You know a lot of people say, “Well, he was a man of his times.” and that could work for an unbeliever, but Christians ought to have known better. We aren’t called to be people of our times, which is why Christians were the first people to formulate and articulate the idea that slavery is wrong.

We are called to live radically different lives than the world around us. That’s what Peter is saying today. We live in the world, in our time, but our allegiance is to Christ and His kingdom - even when it causes us pain and suffering. - Our lives are dedicated to overthrowing the enemy at all costs.

There is a famous case study of two moravian missionaries who attempted to sell themselves into slavery in order to try to reach the slaves in the west indies. They weren’t allowed to do it, but they actually tried.

And as they were sailing for the west indies, in those people would wave goodby at the docks, they yelled out what became their motto: “May the Lamb that was slain receive the reward of His suffering!” Revelation

The reward of His suffering are the lost people Jesus came to save and the lamb of course is christ. They were giving their lives so that the lamb could receive his reward. This is the radical life we are called too.

But maybe you aren’t called to live in some country out there. Often times, it’s the regular pattern of our lives.

There will come a time in your life, where you are in a position without power being ruled by someone who is unrighteous and unreasonable. Sometimes that can be when you are a teenager, either at home or in a classroom, with a teacher. I remember being in school and there were unpopular dictatorial teachers. What did kids do? They would try to subvert the teacher from behind their back. They were trying to make him or her look bad, throw them off. But we are called not to join in on that. We are called to keep to our mission and if we are tied into that type of behavior, getting in trouble and making enemies of people - we will fail in our mission.

Something at work. I’ve had bad bosses that were mean and vindictive. And just like in school, people would go behind their back. They would find ways to slack off. Find ways to get little bits of passive aggressive revenge. But we are called to live so that if we suffer, its because we are living for God.

talk bad about the boss - you want to join in

Sometimes, it could be the actual government. The government can have bad rules and people form black markets and bribe systems. They work behind the scenes undermining the government.

what is your mission?

But the only one we are to undermine is the devil. That’s the point.

But what he is saying is to remember our mission. We are called to push back the rule of the devil in the world. We are to be so committed to that cause that we are willing to make sacrifices, radical sacrifices for it.

You are following in Christ’s footsteps!

Does this mean that you shouldn’t have boundaries and that you should just be a punching bag?

No! - Paul even encouraged people to get their freedom if they could.

It’s not that you should stay in a bad situation, it’s that not everyone has the freedom to leave bad situations. How do you handle that?

how do you live out your faith when you can’t escape your bad situation - live free as a secret agent of God undermining the enemy. Our lives are dedicated to overthrowing the enemy at all costs - because that’s what Jesus was dedicated to!

You have to remember that you are a part of something bigger. You are connected to the sufferings of Christ!

1 Peter 2:21–25 CSB

. 22 He did not commit sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth; 23 when he was insulted, he did not insult in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten but entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. 24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree; so that, having died to sins, we might live for righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. 25 For you were like sheep going astray, but you have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.

Christ submitted himself to unrighteous and unreasonable to overthrow Satan’s rule of your life.

He was the first one to submit temporarily for us to have eternal glory.

We are called to live like Oleg. We are called to live in a way that the lamb who was slain gets the reward of his suffering.

But we don’t and we can’t do that alone. Safe House - free from the rule of enemy

Mercy Hill is your safe house as you oppose the enemy.

We’ll support each other and live it out together. Praying for each other. Engaged with each other. because the only way we can live to overthrow the enemy is empowered by Christ and living in community togehter.

Telling the story

Hadden Robertson - The Big Idea of Biblical Preaching

Chapter Markers:

What Type of Story (different plates)

What is your City?

What is your Dragon?

What is worth defending in the old city?

What's yous best line of attack?

Defining the Enemy

test

time

Hitting the Wall (why we fail)

test

time

Victory in Jesus

test

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Text:

Lord’s Supper:

On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 

Benediction:

The LORD bless you and keep you;

the LORD makes his face shine upon you and be gracious to you:

The LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.