Why don't you stand together as we read God's Word this morning. We're going to read from Paul's letter to the Ephesians. We're getting very close to the end of this series of sermons that's taken us all the way through this book. And that just, you know, affirms to us the scriptural truth. Blessed are you. If you persevere to the end, you will be saved. You know, so if you stuck with us, it's almost over. But we're here. Ephesians 6, 5 through 9. And it's also found in your order of worship. Hear the word of the Lord. Slaves obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling with a sincere heart as you would Christ. Not by the way of I service as people pleasers, but as servants of Christ doing the will of God from the heart. Rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man. Knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a slave or free. Masters do the same to them and stop your threatening knowing that he who is both their master and yours is in heaven, and that there is no partiality with him. The Word of the Lord. Thank you, God. Before you sit, let's pray. Father, take these words, your words, and use my frail and very sinful mind and lips and heart. And would you cause me to speak words from this passage that are eminently relevant and even by your grace transforming in this life of the congregation? In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Now be seated, please. I grew up in a home with two few older sisters. I was the little baby boy. Yes, very spoiled. Yes, a tyrant in many ways. And whenever my father would have to come down on the children, I mean I was just expecting, usually I had done something wrong. Oftentimes there would be sort of that family meeting environment. And yet I remember one time sitting there, all gathered and just thinking, okay, I'm just ready for the hammer to drop, turned out that really wasn't my fault. I was speaking about something that one of my sisters had done. And so I'm sitting there just kind of pulling my shoulders back thinking, well I don't really even need to be here. I haven't done anything wrong. Well, many of us, as we read the scripture that I just read, as we look at it, we might be thinking that way. We think, okay, I'm getting ready to hear God's word, I'm ready for the hammer to drop. But then you hear this passage, you think, oh boy, okay, this really don't have anything to do with me. In fact, some of you might be sitting there thinking, does this have anything to do with anything in our day and age? The answer is absolutely. This passage is a great example of how the Bible ventures into areas of human existence that we don't expect the Bible to go. The Bible enters in and challenges us where frankly we either think there is no relevance or it hits so close to home that it makes us swarm. And I would imagine on this subject that those categories reflected in this room. The Bible, in particular, this book Ephesians has covered a great array of areas of human existence that it's held up the gospel and said basically, how is it that the gospel should affect human existence? Now Paul comes in essence to the end of his letter. Really, this is the last of specific subjects. It's my view that when he hits verse 10 at the end of the book of Ephesians, it's really the grand conclusion that sums everything up. So this is the last specific issue and good authors save the most important subject for last. And so for us today standing here in the 21st century where slavery is by all accounts in the past, we are tempted to look at this and think this doesn't have a grand conclusion impact in my life. But I want you to think of it this way that all of us have issues in our life where we are hopeless. I mean what is there in your life where you, frankly, think functionally speaking, there's very little hope there's going to be change. Others of us have issues where we feel caught in a web of personal slavery to maybe the substance, to a way of thinking to a person, and you've lost hope. You've lost any sense that things are going to change. This passage says to you, what could be more hopeless than living as a slave in the ancient world? And yet the bulk of material in this final concluding passage is addressed to the slave. Some of us have a different sort of problem and that may be sort of a propensity to want to be in charge of everything, to be in control, or control freaks. And we frankly don't see any hope of finding our way out of that trap. This passage says, master, there are imminently relevant things that the Bible has to say to you. And as we're going to see, I think this passage has implications for the workplace, how employers and employees treat one another. It has implications for the way that we treat anyone who provides us with some sort of service in life and the way that we treat them. So this is one of those passages that may stretch your categories because Paul is in essence making an argument from the greater to the lesser, saying if Christianity can dare to speak to something as demeaning, something as difficult and complicated and controversial as the relationship between a slave and a master, then guess what? There is nowhere in your life or mine where the Bible cannot speak as well, with equal authority. And that authority may make you squirm, but it also, as I hope you will see, in the context of the whole message of Ephesians, should give you great hope to rejoice at what the Lord by the power of his gospel can do in our life. So we want to look at this passage from Ephesians 6-5-9 and keep your Bibles or orders of worship open to it. And thinking, first of all, at what he is asking us to focus on, what was he asking slaves and masters in the first century to focus on? He was asking them to focus on essentially the same thing. We know it's the same thing because when he comes to the masters in verse 9, he says, masters do the same thing to them, that is the slaves. So we'll get to that in just a minute, but first of all, let's look at slaves. What should slaves focus upon to put it in summary fashion to respectfully and genuinely obey? And that may just freak you out because you might expect Christianity to come in with a bomb right off the bat and say, this institution of slavery which is corrupt and vile and inhumane, let's get rid of it. The Christianity comes in, penetrates culture, it doesn't first bash culture. Neither does it baptize, except if you are a worldly culture. It instead infiltrates it and plants seeds that are in reality time bombs. Waiting to go off. And the first seed here is Paul's instruction to this slave to respectfully and genuinely obey. He says in verse 5, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling. The idea there, he's used this phraseology of fear and trembling already in Ephesians. It has the idea of reverence, of respect, to show the master reverence and respect. Verse 67, do this not only this translation puts it literally with eye service to please people. Don't just do it when they're watching you in other words. So that in effect really what you're doing is manipulating them so that they won't lash out at you with threats and may actually reward you with a little bit better standard of living. He says do it genuinely, don't be afraid. Now why is it? I mean these are pretty bold audacious claims that he's making. Why should they do this? Because there is a real master and a real reward waiting. Now he uses the phraseology here in verse 5 of earthly masters to accentuate what he talks about in a little while about our master, capital M, verse 9, who is in heaven. That is what he's saying here is you may have someone who is over you that has authority over you at a human level. But in reality they're on equal footing with you. They are not really the master. And what he's saying is pretty radical that you should genuinely respectfully humbly fulfill the duties that are placed before you from the heart because you were actually serving the Lord Christ, the master Christ. Paul put it in Colossians, which is a parallel letter. He wrote at the exact same time both from prison in Rome. He said in Colossians 3, 17, whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Everything that you do in life and you're saying this first to the slave, do it as serving the Lord. Do you see the greater to the lesser argument here to all of us? And some of you are in some very difficult life situations right now. It may be in the workplace and you are just waiting for some great new opportunity to arise. It may be in a marriage. You're waiting for something to happen to your spouse. So you can move on to greater pastors. It may be in your relationship with your parent or your child or a good friend. Could your relationship, though it is difficult, couldn't even begin to approach the difficulty, then an ancient slave would have known. And yet the Bible has the boldness to say, do it authentically, reverently. Don't manipulate. Don't just, don't be a hypocrite. Don't just do it when they're watching. But genuinely, fulfill the duties and trust it to you. Why? Because you're not really serving them. You are serving Christ who is the master behind the earthly master. And there's also the issue of the real reward. There are earthly rewards. And for the slave, that might have meant that you just simply weren't beaten. Maybe it meant a little improvement in your living quarters, and you'd die it. The way your family was treated, things like that. He said, but you know what? That's not the real reward. There's a reward beyond the reward. So he puts it this way. He says, verse 8, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord whether he is a slave or free. Now we'll look at it in reference to the master in a few minutes. Because he basically uses the same motivation, but from a different angle. But he's saying here that, look, this existence is not all there is. In fact, if you think of this life in the continuum of eternity, what is this human physical life? Maybe a little dot, if that, on the continuum. I mean, how does our mind begin to grasp hold of eternity? It's a little dot. It's going to be tough. It's going to be difficult. But as you serve under the eyes of your earthly master, recognize that you're really serving under the eyes of the master who sees everything. And injustices will see their day of justice. In equities will be removed. And as the gospel says, Paul saying it to the Galatians Church, in Christ there is now no distinction between, between slave or free, male or female, G or Gentile. These kinds of distinctions have been obliterated by the power of the cross. And there is a reward that awaits those who live in light of that. Whatever work you do, no matter how seemingly menial or base or routine, it appears to be. It can take on eternal value, if you focus upon serving the master, not the employer, not the boss, not fill in the blank. Parent, the master is the one whom you serve. And he lives in heaven and rewards his children. Well, let's look for a second at the way he addresses the masters. He says in essence, masters do the same thing. Now, what is he talking about there? Well, he's saying, look, your focus should be there. If your focus should be to recognize that you, though you may have what appears to be great authority in this life, on a spiritual level, which is what really counts in terms of eternity, you're unequal footing with the slave, Mr. Master. And you should therefore, that should humble you, and that should cause you to live life, with that same sense of fear and trembling that the slave has, because you serve a master as well. And if the slave is to serve with fear and trembling at an earthly master, imagine how you should fear and tremble at the heavenly master. Menus, to professing Christians that the author of Hebrews said, it is a dreadful thing to the fallen with the hands of the living God. Our God is a consuming fire. We don't play around with God. He is holy. And there's none other like Him. I mean, shouldn't that radically affect the way that you think, Mr. Master, Mr. Employer, Mr. Parent, Boss, or whatever? How should it impact things? Doing the same thing, having an attitude that actually corresponds to the attitude that you would expect of the slave of being humble and rolling up the sleeves and serving. One specific thing that he highlights that should be affected is the threatening ways that masters might be prone to. He says, stop your threatening. Again, knowing that you share the same master as the one under your supposed power. So what does this mean? That although the master has apparent power, they're not going to abuse it. An employer will not abuse their power by heavy-handed threats of punishment. Treating their slaves or employees as property that whom they can arbitrarily work out their frustrations upon. And we've all, we've ever had a boss, probably since that, to one degree or another, where that person, I mean, something was going on in their life. It's a bad day, and you know, you've heard the expression about home life, if my mom ain't happy. Ain't so out. Ain't nobody happy. How true is that in a master's slave relationship or the employer-employee relationship? The propensity to live out those frustrations is there. But what he's saying is, look, it's kind of interesting. He says, don't issue threats. Don't be a threatening individual, but then what does God turn around and do? He in essence issues a threat to the master, doesn't he? And he says, look, there is a reality that is far more real than what appears to be real before you now. You are an equal footing before the slave, Mr. Master, Mr. Employer, fathers, husbands, fill in the blank. Therefore, do the same thing. Have a corresponding attitude of humility. Let's apply this in a couple of different realms. First in the employee-employer relationship. It is tempting, particularly in our country, that tends to exalt sort of the rich and powerful to admire that kind of persona, to want to emulate that even in subtle ways in our life. The kind of person who exercises great authority and wheels, great influence over many individuals. And so we spotlight people like this in the corporate arena. Maybe a Jack Welch type of figure that's spotlighted. Certainly there's similar figures like that that have fallen from their heights in Houston in the last couple of years. This curious thing that came out in this book I've mentioned it before by Jim Collins, good to great bestseller out right now, where he analyzed the Fortune 500 companies and tried to distinguish between companies that were already good and companies that went from good to being really great. Some three different guidelines to distinguish between these companies, only 11 out of 500 companies emerged. Then he delineated some principles that were common to each one of these 11 companies. And the first one that Collins highlights very curiously is what he calls level 5 leadership. Have you heard about this? He says, with about fail in all of these 11 companies, the CEO demonstrate level 5 leadership. And level 5 leadership in a nutshell is exactly opposite of sort of what it is. This star or holly would figure CEO. It's sort of the type that walks into my office and everyone cowers wondering if you're going to be one of the bottom 10% that's cut this year. This person is constantly deflecting attention to others. They're taking responsibility when things go wrong, but when things go well, they're pushing it off and others. They're not looking for the spotlight. In fact, you probably wouldn't be able to name any or many of these CEOs that you just don't know them. And Collins says this about these individuals. He says, those who worked with or wrote about the good to great leaders continually used words like quiet, humble, modest, reserved, shy, gracious, mild mannered, self-effacing, understated, did not believe their own clippings and so forth. And how many bosses, let alone CEOs of Fortune 500 companies do you know that are described by those words? But isn't it interesting that God's way actually works? It's not highlighted very often, but it's this picture that you can be a very successful individual in this world. In fact, you will tend to be even more successful in your job. If you don't see yourself up on a perch exercising authority and power over others, but that you see yourself on equal footing as a servant as well as those around you. So that's to the employer. But let's think of situations that fall into less official employer employee categories. I'm thinking about people who perform services for us. You might not tend to think of them this way. You may be in a position where you have someone that helps clean your home. You might have someone that helps take care of your yard work. What about the person that you know is taking care of your little baby in the nursery on Sunday mornings here at Christ the King? Think about it right now. A lot of times these are immigrants. And what is the propensity, if we're honest, many of us. We view these, we depersonalize these people. We view them as rendering a service unto us, but we just, we kind of look beyond them. At best, if not, sadly some of us taking advantage of these individuals, chewing them out when we've had a bad day or things haven't gone just right.
I want you to think about the whole array of your life, the kinds of people that you come in contact with daily. You know, oftentimes people ask me, Leo, I just don't know Christ the King's growing and see all these other people involved. I don't know where I can be involved, where there's a place for me to serve. The word ministry, you may know this, actually, is the same word for service in the Greek of the New Testament. If you want to have a ministry, start right where you are. Look around you and make a list of the people that you come in contact with on a regular basis and ask yourself, how am I treating them? What have I done to encourage them to better their place in life? And some of you do such a magnificent job of this. It is beautiful to see some of you that are investing your lives in people, maybe helping with English as a second language. Any number of ways that may we not simply depersonalize people because they provide us with a service, may we see that we are no better than they are, that we are an equal footing before the Lord. And we are called, actually, providentially, to engage in ministry to these people. I guess a different way of saying this is, if we really understand the Bible, what it's saying is there is now no one in our life that we can simply blow off disregard. Everyone becomes a ministry service opportunity for us. Now, these are the kind of things that he wants us to focus on. And frankly, these are not easy. Right now you should be feeling convicted, frustrated, maybe even irritated. The Bible comes to us and says, here is a difficult area, maybe a controversial area. Now, deal with it, but the Bible never leaves us there. Because what the Bible says is, I'm going to have you focus on this in such a way that it becomes inescapable for you to reach the conclusion that you cannot fulfill the requirements the Bible is making of you. How is it specifically that he calls us to focus? Did you notice that? He focuses on the heart. Verse 5, he says, to obey with a sincere heart. Verse 6, doing the will of God from the heart. If the slave is honest, this passage at first glance should make them, maybe laugh, but then it should make them spitting mad. And to the master, it should make them mad too, and maybe it should, frankly, simply cause them to say, I hear you. You just want me to be better to people. What the Bible is saying here is saying, our hearts, our motivation must be so in tune with the Lord's will at this point that we see ourselves as a servant 24-7, and frankly none of us are there. So the gospel pushes us into a corner so we must cry out for help from somewhere else, and that's where the gospel comes into place. Only the gospel that makes my heart ready and willing and able to do something as difficult as this passage requires. And we forget sometimes, when we look at a passage like this, that it comes in a larger context, namely the whole book of Ephesians and the whole Bible, where the main message is the gospel. In fact, in the very next verse, which we'll look at next week, notice these words. Paul says, finally, in other words, here's the conclusion of the matter to sum it all up, be strong in the master. You're saying, no, Leo, it says in the Lord. Well, that's how it's translated in English, but do you know in the Greek it's the same word. Be strong in the master and in the strength of his might. And of course that phrase theology in Paul's writings of in the Lord is code language for the gospel must be that which strengthens you, which gives you the ability to do all that God requires. And God requires and even more delightfully so. Well, what is the gospel to the slave and to the master, to the bigot, to the one who's prejudiced, to the one who powers and doesn't have hope? What is the gospel to you this day? It's remembering that Paul wrote this as a slave himself in prison and called himself twice in this letter a slave of Christ. As he wrote of the unsearchable riches of Christ. It's the same gospel that Isaiah talked about in the Old Testament where he in dramatic conclusion described the coming Messiah as a suffering servant. It's the same gospel that Paul would write from the same prison to the Philippian church, whereas he described Jesus as one who took the very nature of a servant and humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of view. And to the point of death, even death on a cross is the same gospel that Paul affirmed to the prone to the proud Corinthians. You are not your own. You have been bought with a price and friends, that is the same gospel to us today. We are not our own. We have been bought with a price, the price of the precious blood of the suffering servant, the Lamb of God, the master who humbled himself, taking the very nature of a servant, becoming obedient to death, even the most humiliating form of death in the ancient world, death upon the cross. It's that kind of a savior, that kind of a gospel that, as it intersects with the selfish earthly motives of my own heart, begin to break me and melt me and cause me to see things in more clear focus than ever before and cause me to actually want to serve you. To serve the one that I would otherwise perhaps disregard. The gospel doesn't leave us there, though. As I said at the outset, what Paul is doing here unmistakably is planting seeds that really are more like a time bomb. How radical for him to address a slave directly? I mean the point here is, Paul said, I expect there to be slaves worshiping together with masters in the same congregation, radical in the first century. Paul would later write a letter to a master named Philemon. Philemon's slave, Onesimus, had escaped and luckily, providentially, came in contact with Paul in Rome while Paul was in prison. How ironic the slave who's now become free finds the free man, Paul, who was enslaved, and there Onesimus becomes a believer in Jesus Christ. And Paul sends Onesimus back to Philemon, basically saying to Philemon, if I read the gospel correctly, it doesn't say that I have to overturn this institution single-handedly at the outset. But rather if you really understand the gospel, you will set your prisoner free and set a shock wave going throughout Christendom that will unleash prisoners everywhere. Paul said to Philemon, for this perhaps is why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave, but more than a slave as a beloved brother. Friends, that's the gospel. There are no more slaves. There are no more divisions in the body of Christ. We are brothers and sisters, slaves and brothers and sisters at the same time because of our conservative savior, Christ, who loved us enough to die for us. This type of impact should lead us towards radical transformation in our own worlds, just as it led William Wilberforce back in the 19th century to labor in England for 45 years in Parliament, resisting 11 navy votes over those years to finally see three days before he died, the abolition of slavery. Wilberforce wrote these words, the main distinction between real Christianity and the system of the bulk of nominal Christians cheaply consists in the differing place given to the gospel. To the latter, the truths of the gospel are like distant stars that twinkle with a vein and idle lustre, but to the real Christian, these distinctive doctrines constitute the center in which he gravitates like the sun of his system and the source of his light, warmth and life. The gospel, if it lives in the center of my heart, will not only transform me from a selfish bigot, but will also through me lead to the transformation of all of life. As 71 of you join this church today and as all of us huddle back around the gospel together, may we never lack hope at changing our own life and at the possibilities of the Lord through us transforming all of life. May God reign forever. Amen.