WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:09.919 So I will pray and then we'll spend some time thinking about slavery and then we'll spend 00:00:09.919 --> 00:00:10.919 some time praying together. 00:00:10.919 --> 00:00:11.919 So let's pray. 00:00:11.919 --> 00:00:16.519 Heavenly Father, we thank You for this time together tonight. 00:00:16.519 --> 00:00:22.160 We thank You that You have spoken to us and You've spoken to us not only through prophets 00:00:22.160 --> 00:00:26.760 and priests, but You've spoken to us through Your Son. 00:00:26.760 --> 00:00:31.600 And we praise You for that, we praise You for the gospel, and we pray that this time 00:00:31.600 --> 00:00:35.800 that we spend thinking about Your Word would not be in vain, but that it would remind us 00:00:35.800 --> 00:00:41.880 that we can trust You and that You are good and love Your Son. 00:00:41.880 --> 00:00:44.880 So let me pray. 00:00:44.880 --> 00:00:54.240 Okay, so the series that we're in is Believing the Bible in the Modern World. 00:00:54.240 --> 00:00:59.240 And every week we've looked at a different, David are you okay? 00:00:59.240 --> 00:01:02.240 Just so I know, am I good to get it? 00:01:02.240 --> 00:01:03.240 Okay. 00:01:03.240 --> 00:01:06.760 Every week we've been looking at a different aspect of Scripture, what it means to say to 00:01:06.760 --> 00:01:09.799 be trust Scripture, why we can trust Scripture. 00:01:09.799 --> 00:01:15.320 So we said that the Bible is God-breathed. 00:01:15.320 --> 00:01:18.560 These books are divinely inspired. 00:01:18.560 --> 00:01:24.159 What the Bible said when it was originally written is exactly what God wanted it to say, 00:01:24.159 --> 00:01:27.280 even if it was also written by man. 00:01:27.280 --> 00:01:33.840 The Bible is infallible, so it was originally written without errors. 00:01:33.840 --> 00:01:37.640 We trust that there were no mistakes when it was written down. 00:01:37.640 --> 00:01:43.039 Its theology is true, and its history is true. 00:01:43.039 --> 00:01:50.159 And then we just for last week, we took a break to talk about political issues in Scotland, 00:01:50.159 --> 00:01:56.560 but just before that we talked about how the Bible has a clarity to it, or what is often 00:01:56.560 --> 00:01:58.399 called a perspicuity. 00:01:58.399 --> 00:02:02.120 So we can read the Bible, and we believe that we're able to understand it, and we can interpret 00:02:02.120 --> 00:02:05.439 it together as a church. 00:02:05.439 --> 00:02:09.840 And of course, the Modern World, we're talking about the Holy Scripture in the Modern World, 00:02:09.840 --> 00:02:14.919 because the Modern World would raise challenges to all of those things that I've just said. 00:02:14.919 --> 00:02:20.759 And we're going to shift focus a little bit tonight by talking about just one specific 00:02:20.759 --> 00:02:28.639 ethical issue that deals with Scripture, which is the issue of slavery. 00:02:28.639 --> 00:02:31.279 And this is an issue that's brought against the Bible, the issue of slavery. 00:02:31.279 --> 00:02:40.439 And the question is this, how can we as Christians justify the fact that the Bible at times seems 00:02:40.439 --> 00:02:46.280 to condone or to affirm the institution of slavery? 00:02:46.280 --> 00:02:51.319 And that's a question that is just as valid in the New Testament as it is in the Old, 00:02:51.319 --> 00:02:55.919 because both Testaments speak about slavery. 00:02:55.919 --> 00:03:00.479 So what do we as Christians say that when the criticism is brought that says the Bible 00:03:00.479 --> 00:03:03.879 affirms slavery and isn't that horrible? 00:03:03.879 --> 00:03:08.639 And there's a real dilemma that isn't just about slavery. 00:03:08.639 --> 00:03:10.719 It's about the doctrine of Scripture. 00:03:10.719 --> 00:03:11.719 And here's the dilemma. 00:03:11.719 --> 00:03:16.919 Someone can come to you and say, well, let me feel like this. 00:03:16.919 --> 00:03:24.119 One element of infallibility is what you might call ethical infallibility, which means that 00:03:24.119 --> 00:03:30.719 part of when we say that the Bible is infallible, part of our claim is that if God through the 00:03:30.719 --> 00:03:34.719 Bible says that something is good, it really is good. 00:03:34.719 --> 00:03:41.080 And if through the Bible, God said something is evil, it really is evil. 00:03:41.080 --> 00:03:47.639 Now today in the Western world, there's virtual universal acceptance, even I think among everyone 00:03:47.639 --> 00:03:55.439 in this room, I hope, that slavery, as it was practiced 200 years ago, was very bad. 00:03:55.439 --> 00:03:59.400 That's unambiguous. 00:03:59.400 --> 00:04:06.159 If the scriptures teach that slavery is good, then the Bible cannot be the word of God. 00:04:06.159 --> 00:04:07.159 That would be the logic. 00:04:07.159 --> 00:04:11.439 That would be the tension that would be created if the Bible part of slavery, and yet we all 00:04:11.439 --> 00:04:13.360 here say slavery is bad. 00:04:13.360 --> 00:04:14.719 So what do we do with that? 00:04:14.719 --> 00:04:19.360 And you see how this can become a wedge issue in the doctrine of Scripture, because if a 00:04:19.360 --> 00:04:26.439 person can point to one area of Scripture where the Bible says something is good, when 00:04:26.439 --> 00:04:31.079 it's actually as bad, then you say, well, if we can't trust the Bible here, how can we 00:04:31.079 --> 00:04:33.199 trust the Bible anywhere? 00:04:33.199 --> 00:04:36.800 So the question of slavery becomes much bigger than the question of slavery itself. 00:04:36.800 --> 00:04:44.639 It becomes, can we really trust what the Bible says about what's right and what's wrong? 00:04:44.639 --> 00:04:49.560 So that's what we're going to talk about tonight in just a few minutes, or just a few minutes. 00:04:49.560 --> 00:04:54.240 This really became a hot issue in the 19th century for obvious reasons. 00:04:54.240 --> 00:05:00.639 You have major slave debates going on in Great Britain and the US, and the debates at that 00:05:00.639 --> 00:05:07.840 time weren't, the debates at that time were about whether the Bible affirmed slavery or 00:05:07.840 --> 00:05:08.960 not. 00:05:08.960 --> 00:05:14.879 Even some theologians during the time period would say, took either position on the issue. 00:05:14.879 --> 00:05:20.079 Some theologians said, the Bible affirms slavery, and therefore in our 19th century 00:05:20.079 --> 00:05:24.719 context we should uphold it, and some theologians said the opposite, that we should not affirm 00:05:24.719 --> 00:05:29.399 slavery because the Bible doesn't affirm slavery. 00:05:29.399 --> 00:05:35.879 What no one debated was that the Bible assumes slavery. 00:05:35.879 --> 00:05:39.399 The Bible talks about slavery often in the Old and New Testaments. 00:05:39.399 --> 00:05:44.839 The Bible assumes slavery, and part of what happens is you can go from saying the Bible 00:05:44.839 --> 00:05:52.919 assumes slavery and say, because the Bible assumes slavery, therefore it is affirmed. 00:05:52.919 --> 00:05:58.759 That seems to be what happened for a lot of theologians who wanted to affirm slavery. 00:05:58.759 --> 00:06:03.639 They would say, well, the Bible talks about it, gives regulations at some points about 00:06:03.639 --> 00:06:06.000 it, therefore slavery is good. 00:06:06.000 --> 00:06:14.359 So one of the most famous US Presbyterian theologians was a man named James Henley Thornwell. 00:06:14.360 --> 00:06:22.800 He said, one of his quote from him, slavery is a good and merciful division of labor which 00:06:22.800 --> 00:06:25.240 God's providence has given us. 00:06:25.240 --> 00:06:30.160 We cherish the institution from principle. 00:06:30.160 --> 00:06:35.120 At the time he was probably one of the two most well respected Presbyterian theologians 00:06:35.120 --> 00:06:38.680 in the United States. 00:06:38.680 --> 00:06:45.720 The very same year another US minister, Henry Warbeacher said slavery is monstrous and evil 00:06:45.720 --> 00:06:46.720 and simple. 00:06:46.720 --> 00:06:51.600 So the question is how do we think about the Bible and slavery? 00:06:51.600 --> 00:06:56.960 And the most obvious claim that I want to make from the outset, which is just a logical 00:06:56.960 --> 00:07:08.560 claim, is just because the Bible, the presence of the institution of slavery in the Bible, 00:07:08.560 --> 00:07:16.639 does not necessarily equate to the affirmation of slavery in the Bible. 00:07:16.639 --> 00:07:25.199 It doesn't necessarily mean that the Bible's making it plain that slavery is good. 00:07:25.199 --> 00:07:27.879 That's certainly the case with other issues in the Bible. 00:07:27.879 --> 00:07:33.759 There's an analogy that could be of like, colligion. 00:07:33.759 --> 00:07:39.639 You won't find, oftentimes you'll find a case in the Bible where a person is involved in 00:07:39.639 --> 00:07:41.839 a polygamist relationship in the Old Testament. 00:07:41.839 --> 00:07:45.039 That's not a surprise, but I read from across that quite often. 00:07:45.039 --> 00:07:49.839 And the Bible doesn't outright say that it's wrong. 00:07:49.839 --> 00:07:55.879 But what you find as you read the Old Testament as a whole is the narrative seems to point 00:07:55.879 --> 00:08:01.480 to this idea that polygamy never ends well. 00:08:01.480 --> 00:08:08.240 So it may not condemn a person every single time that polygamy happens, yet the overall 00:08:08.240 --> 00:08:11.400 narrative of the Old Testament is that it doesn't end well. 00:08:11.400 --> 00:08:17.280 So for example, the first person who commits polygamy in the Old Testament is if I knew 00:08:17.280 --> 00:08:20.360 it is, he's not the most famous person you could think of. 00:08:20.360 --> 00:08:22.840 Genesis 4 is in Lamech. 00:08:22.840 --> 00:08:29.759 And Lamech was known, he was offered in Scripture as someone who epitomized evil. 00:08:29.759 --> 00:08:35.919 And he brings his wives to him in the Scripture to brag about how violent he is. 00:08:35.919 --> 00:08:36.919 He's the first bling. 00:08:36.919 --> 00:08:43.360 And then you get these other stories like Jacob had two wives and two concubines. 00:08:43.360 --> 00:08:48.840 And so much of Jacob's story is about all the conflict that happens because of that. 00:08:48.840 --> 00:08:54.399 And so the Bible never looks at Jacob and says, it never comes out and says what he 00:08:54.399 --> 00:08:55.399 did was wrong. 00:08:55.399 --> 00:09:00.679 But it clearly points to the negative consequences of his blingless relationship. 00:09:00.679 --> 00:09:01.679 The same with Solomon. 00:09:01.679 --> 00:09:06.799 Solomon had 700 wives, 300 concubines. 00:09:06.799 --> 00:09:10.799 And because of that, the kingdom was torn from his hands because of the concubines and 00:09:10.799 --> 00:09:14.959 the wives led in the strain. 00:09:14.959 --> 00:09:22.240 All that to say, sometimes the Bible won't condemn something outright, and yet the narrative 00:09:22.240 --> 00:09:27.639 makes it clear that it's wrong and that leads to destruction. 00:09:27.639 --> 00:09:32.039 There's a theologian named Lionel Windsor who gives an example to kind of illustrate 00:09:32.039 --> 00:09:35.519 how this could be the case in ways that we understand and talks about how the movie 00:09:35.519 --> 00:09:37.519 Schindler's List. 00:09:37.519 --> 00:09:45.360 When you watch Schindler's List, to make their point, the director of Schindler's List is 00:09:45.360 --> 00:09:46.360 that Steven Spielberg. 00:09:46.360 --> 00:09:56.200 At the end of the movie, he could have in the credit scene put racism is wrong. 00:09:56.200 --> 00:09:58.200 And that would have been totally superfluous. 00:09:58.200 --> 00:10:05.159 Superfluous because the entire movie never outright says that racism is wrong. 00:10:05.159 --> 00:10:07.800 And yet it's the point of the entire movie. 00:10:07.800 --> 00:10:11.680 And you can say that's what a lot of the narratives in the Old Testament do is they may not always 00:10:11.679 --> 00:10:17.919 tell us right from wrong, and yet when you trace them out, they make it clear. 00:10:17.919 --> 00:10:21.679 So all I'm trying to say there is the existence of a practice in the Bible, just because something 00:10:21.679 --> 00:10:28.079 happens in the Bible, doesn't always mean the Bible is saying that it's right. 00:10:28.079 --> 00:10:34.839 So and yet, and this is bringing me to my next point, and yet even on the surface level, 00:10:34.839 --> 00:10:40.919 even a surface level reading of the Bible seems to point sometimes to the idea that 00:10:40.919 --> 00:10:45.159 the Bible really is upholding or affirming slavery. 00:10:45.159 --> 00:10:50.839 Sometimes it appears as if the Bible is doing more than just saying there was slavery. 00:10:50.839 --> 00:10:52.199 It seems to be condoning it. 00:10:52.199 --> 00:10:59.559 So for example, in the Old Testament, Exodus chapter 21, almost the entire chapter is devoted 00:10:59.559 --> 00:11:02.120 to rules about slaves. 00:11:02.120 --> 00:11:09.079 And it begins by saying, when you buy a Hebrew slayer, that seems to go beyond acknowledging 00:11:09.080 --> 00:11:14.400 that something happens, and it's actually God saying, here is how you operate within 00:11:14.400 --> 00:11:18.120 this context of slavery. 00:11:18.120 --> 00:11:20.240 And the same thing happens in the New Testament. 00:11:20.240 --> 00:11:27.520 In Ephesians 6-5, Paul looks at household slaves, household servants, and he says, bond 00:11:27.520 --> 00:11:33.520 servants or slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart 00:11:33.520 --> 00:11:34.520 as you would Christ. 00:11:34.519 --> 00:11:40.319 Now, I don't know about you, but I think to modern years that can make us uncomfortable. 00:11:40.319 --> 00:11:42.679 Paul looks at a slave and says, obey your master. 00:11:42.679 --> 00:11:45.559 This is what you're called to do. 00:11:45.559 --> 00:11:49.360 And you can say, well, maybe that's just the Old Testament or maybe that's just Paul. 00:11:49.360 --> 00:11:55.480 But even Jesus, a lot of his illustrations revolve around slavery in ways that you would 00:11:55.480 --> 00:12:00.600 almost want to say, if slavery so wrong, why would you ever illustrate something with it? 00:12:00.600 --> 00:12:07.279 Why would you ever use a slave as an example of what it's like to be a Christian? 00:12:07.279 --> 00:12:17.240 So for instance, in at least 13 of Jesus' parables, he uses slaves in the illustration. 00:12:17.240 --> 00:12:23.480 In his most famous moment, the last supper, when he's getting out and he's washing his 00:12:23.480 --> 00:12:32.159 disciples feet, he tells them that they will have to wash each other's feet. 00:12:32.159 --> 00:12:38.720 And the way that he describes it is he says, you've seen what I have done for you. 00:12:38.720 --> 00:12:40.720 Are servants greater than a master? 00:12:40.720 --> 00:12:42.920 And he's using slave language there. 00:12:42.920 --> 00:12:48.240 He's saying, listen, if I am your master and you are the slaves, if I had to sweep down 00:12:48.240 --> 00:12:53.919 to wash feet, will you not also have to wash feet? 00:12:53.919 --> 00:13:00.560 So maybe we run past those, but he is using slave language there that to modern years 00:13:00.560 --> 00:13:02.560 could be deemed as offensive. 00:13:02.560 --> 00:13:04.560 And the question is just what is he doing there? 00:13:04.560 --> 00:13:14.320 How do we understand when all of us would say slavery as we know it is wrong? 00:13:14.320 --> 00:13:24.520 And sometimes in your Bible, the English translation that you hold will often try to diminish, to 00:13:24.520 --> 00:13:29.680 try to subvert your eyes from the tension there by using other words. 00:13:29.680 --> 00:13:35.200 So instead of slave, it will use words like boncer or servant. 00:13:35.200 --> 00:13:41.400 And in the Bible that I was using to prepare for this lesson, basically every time that 00:13:41.399 --> 00:13:45.480 a word could have been translated as slave, there was a footnote that said, please see 00:13:45.480 --> 00:13:47.519 the preface of this whole Bible. 00:13:47.519 --> 00:13:53.360 And in the preface of the Bible, Excel may wrote, we have chosen not to use the word slave 00:13:53.360 --> 00:13:56.079 because we think it's misleading. 00:13:56.079 --> 00:13:58.319 And that's a really interesting claim to make. 00:13:58.319 --> 00:14:04.039 And the reason the word slave is misleading is because, and I think it's a, it's completely 00:14:04.039 --> 00:14:06.199 fair for the translators to do that. 00:14:06.200 --> 00:14:12.480 When you and I hear the word slave, what comes to our mind is the slavery that we know about 00:14:12.480 --> 00:14:17.000 and read about from the 19th century. 00:14:17.000 --> 00:14:22.840 The child slave system where people were taken from their homes in Africa and shipped all 00:14:22.840 --> 00:14:24.879 across the world. 00:14:24.879 --> 00:14:27.160 It was racial and based. 00:14:27.160 --> 00:14:29.320 It was never ending. 00:14:29.320 --> 00:14:32.440 You could never get out of the slave situation that you were in. 00:14:32.440 --> 00:14:37.560 And it was a brutality on a scale that most of us can't comprehend. 00:14:37.560 --> 00:14:42.640 So when we see the word slave, all of those images come to our mind. 00:14:42.640 --> 00:14:51.800 And so I want to make two points as well for the rest of this lesson about how, given that 00:14:51.800 --> 00:14:55.560 that's what we have in our mind when we think about slavery, two points about how to think 00:14:55.560 --> 00:14:56.560 of slavery in the Bible. 00:14:56.559 --> 00:15:03.959 The first is this, when scripture speaks of slavery, it points to a different slavery. 00:15:03.959 --> 00:15:06.199 And I'm not saying it points to a good slavery. 00:15:06.199 --> 00:15:09.959 I'm saying it points to a different slavery. 00:15:09.959 --> 00:15:14.399 Slavery in the ancient Near East, and I want to say ancient Near East, I'm talking about 00:15:14.399 --> 00:15:19.879 the Old Testament, and slavery in the Greco-Roman world, which would be the world of the New 00:15:19.879 --> 00:15:22.239 Testament. 00:15:22.240 --> 00:15:28.480 The systems of slavery that existed in those worlds looked vastly different from the slavery 00:15:28.480 --> 00:15:35.159 that we know of from the 19th century. 00:15:35.159 --> 00:15:39.960 And even though the Old Testament and New Testament slave are so different, they're 00:15:39.960 --> 00:15:47.560 both different in ways that are both different from, that's a confusing sentence I just 00:15:47.560 --> 00:15:49.560 said. 00:15:49.559 --> 00:15:52.759 Slavery and the Old Testament and slavery in the New Testament are different from one 00:15:52.759 --> 00:15:58.719 another, but they're both very different from the slavery that we know from the 19th 00:15:58.719 --> 00:15:59.719 century. 00:15:59.719 --> 00:16:02.879 And so I want to talk about what some of those differences are and what we mean when we talk 00:16:02.879 --> 00:16:06.439 about slavery in the Bible. 00:16:06.439 --> 00:16:08.919 Some obvious differences. 00:16:08.919 --> 00:16:13.759 Slavery in the Old and the New Testament, virtually wherever it's practiced in the world, 00:16:13.759 --> 00:16:17.959 was never race-based. 00:16:17.960 --> 00:16:24.400 It was not based on the idea that certain races were inferior to other races, and therefore 00:16:24.400 --> 00:16:34.080 some races had a God-given mandate to be placed lower than others. 00:16:34.080 --> 00:16:40.080 Slaves in the Old and the New Testament, both as it was practiced in Judaism and as it was 00:16:40.080 --> 00:16:46.480 practiced in Greece and Rome in general, slaves were not distinguished by the color of their 00:16:46.480 --> 00:16:51.000 clothes, nor by their clothing or their speech, which is a really interesting point. 00:16:51.000 --> 00:16:55.680 So if you have been walking through the streets of Athens or through the streets of Rome in 00:16:55.680 --> 00:17:01.320 the first century AD, it would not have been obvious to you who was the slave and who was 00:17:01.320 --> 00:17:03.560 the free person. 00:17:03.560 --> 00:17:08.640 So what I'm getting at is this is a totally different system that we're thinking about. 00:17:08.640 --> 00:17:14.839 Slaves and free people in the New Testament, for example, often performed the same tasks, 00:17:14.839 --> 00:17:17.439 so they were often indistinguishable. 00:17:17.439 --> 00:17:23.119 Sometimes a slave had jobs that were far more important than a free person had. 00:17:23.119 --> 00:17:29.759 So for example, the House of Caesar, which was the most powerful house in the first century, 00:17:29.759 --> 00:17:36.959 the House of Caesar had 20,000 slaves in it, and those 20,000 slaves did the bulk of the 00:17:36.959 --> 00:17:40.559 administrative work in the entire Roman Empire. 00:17:40.559 --> 00:17:45.879 So some of those men and women who served as slaves in the House of Caesar had positions 00:17:45.879 --> 00:17:54.559 of authority that far outmatched the majority of people in the Roman Empire. 00:17:54.559 --> 00:17:56.879 I need to say this several times along the way. 00:17:56.879 --> 00:18:01.119 I'm not trying to make an apologetic for slavery, and I'll talk about how bad it could get as 00:18:01.119 --> 00:18:02.119 well. 00:18:02.119 --> 00:18:06.079 I'm just saying you have to realize the system we're talking about is very different than 00:18:06.079 --> 00:18:08.559 the one that many of us know of. 00:18:08.559 --> 00:18:16.079 In the New Testament, especially, household slaves were often very well educated and needed 00:18:16.079 --> 00:18:19.720 to be well educated to perform the duties that were assigned to them. 00:18:19.720 --> 00:18:28.119 So one of the illustrations that Jesus uses in Luke chapter 12 about, he says, always 00:18:28.119 --> 00:18:41.639 be ready, be like the steward who is managing his master's house, be ready when the father 00:18:41.639 --> 00:18:43.919 comes. 00:18:43.919 --> 00:18:50.079 Slaves were often essentially the CEO of large household economies. 00:18:50.079 --> 00:18:53.679 They were well educated sometimes. 00:18:53.680 --> 00:18:59.799 As the Old Testament and the New Testament were often paid, they made wages. 00:18:59.799 --> 00:19:03.080 They entered into slavery for various reasons. 00:19:03.080 --> 00:19:09.840 One of the most common reasons why a person would, what's the word for intentionally, 00:19:09.840 --> 00:19:14.600 enter into slavery is to pay off debts. 00:19:14.600 --> 00:19:19.960 That's why sometimes the Bible would translate slaying as bondservant, because some people 00:19:19.960 --> 00:19:27.200 choose to go into slavery to pay off a debt for a certain period of time after which they're 00:19:27.200 --> 00:19:28.200 freed. 00:19:28.200 --> 00:19:33.920 Of course, some slaves were captives of the war, which would have probably been something 00:19:33.920 --> 00:19:39.200 similar to what happened in the Old Testament when God's people were exiled in places like 00:19:39.200 --> 00:19:40.200 Babylon. 00:19:40.200 --> 00:19:41.799 What do you find happening? 00:19:41.799 --> 00:19:48.240 Some of the smartest Hebrews were ascended to the highest levels of power in Babylon. 00:19:48.240 --> 00:19:53.120 Of course, they were always in some form of slavery. 00:19:53.120 --> 00:19:55.000 They couldn't go back home. 00:19:55.000 --> 00:20:00.759 Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, these men had positions of authority, and yet they 00:20:00.759 --> 00:20:05.960 were also under authority and had to stay in Babylon to do the work that was assigned 00:20:05.960 --> 00:20:08.759 to them. 00:20:08.759 --> 00:20:15.599 People often, and this may be more rare, but people often sold themselves into slavery 00:20:15.599 --> 00:20:21.679 to improve their social standing or to improve their economic standing because they were 00:20:21.679 --> 00:20:25.079 so poor before him. 00:20:25.079 --> 00:20:33.399 Rarely was anyone in the Old Testament or in the New Testament a slave for life. 00:20:33.399 --> 00:20:39.159 One theologian said of the Greco-Roman slave that a Greco-Roman slave could reasonably hope 00:20:39.160 --> 00:20:47.519 to be emancipated after 10 to 20 years of service or by their 30s at the latest. 00:20:47.519 --> 00:20:54.200 In Exodus, the general rule for slavery in the book of Exodus is in Exodus 21. 00:20:54.200 --> 00:21:01.640 It opens by saying, when a man or woman is sold into slavery after they have been a slave 00:21:01.640 --> 00:21:05.560 for six years, they shall go free. 00:21:05.559 --> 00:21:11.200 A slave at that point, and this is written in the rules, a slave has the right to remain 00:21:11.200 --> 00:21:18.480 a slave, but if they want to go free after six years, they're obligated by law to be 00:21:18.480 --> 00:21:22.039 freed. 00:21:22.039 --> 00:21:25.839 Slaves could save up money, they could buy themselves freedom. 00:21:25.839 --> 00:21:30.079 All of these things are pointing to this idea that the slavery that we know from the 19th 00:21:30.079 --> 00:21:33.480 century looked very different from the slavery of the Old Testament. 00:21:33.480 --> 00:21:40.480 If for no other reason, then it's far easier to make general claims about slavery in the 00:21:40.480 --> 00:21:44.920 19th century than it was about slavery in the ancient world. 00:21:44.920 --> 00:21:50.480 It looked vastly different across many different situations in the ancient world. 00:21:50.480 --> 00:21:58.480 The slavery of the 19th century systematically brutal, race-based, built on the belief that 00:21:58.480 --> 00:22:02.599 an entire race is inferior to another entire race. 00:22:02.599 --> 00:22:06.240 It's always involuntary. 00:22:06.240 --> 00:22:09.599 A slave is a slave for life. 00:22:09.599 --> 00:22:15.000 Education was rare and discouraged. 00:22:15.000 --> 00:22:20.439 And the African slave trade was built on the idea of kidnapping. 00:22:20.439 --> 00:22:25.359 Those slaves came from something they were forcibly taken from their homes. 00:22:25.359 --> 00:22:31.799 Now slavery in the ancient world could also get very bad, especially if a slave was assigned 00:22:31.799 --> 00:22:35.519 to the mines or to the plantator piece. 00:22:35.519 --> 00:22:40.759 In those situations, it could be just as brutal as the worst slavery that we've heard of. 00:22:40.759 --> 00:22:46.639 But most likely the kind of slaves that Paul would have interacted with would have been 00:22:46.639 --> 00:22:53.799 urban slaves working in household economies, which would have looked very different. 00:22:53.799 --> 00:22:59.720 And so when you read about the Lephesians, he gives rules to husbands and wives, children, 00:22:59.720 --> 00:23:05.000 and then he gives rules to slaves, which is this idea that those slaves are a part of 00:23:05.000 --> 00:23:09.039 a household economy. 00:23:09.039 --> 00:23:14.480 Paul could have been interacting with slaves who were far more educated than he was, performing 00:23:14.480 --> 00:23:21.519 duties that were basically at the height of the economy where they were living. 00:23:21.519 --> 00:23:25.240 So all that to say, and then I'm going to come to my last point, all that to say, scripture 00:23:25.240 --> 00:23:28.319 points to a different slavery. 00:23:28.319 --> 00:23:32.240 Not necessarily a better slavery, and we can still say that that slavery is unjust, but 00:23:32.240 --> 00:23:36.240 it points to a different slavery than the one that we know. 00:23:36.240 --> 00:23:41.919 But we don't want to stop there because, and this is my final point, scripture also points 00:23:41.919 --> 00:23:44.839 to the death of slavery. 00:23:44.839 --> 00:23:47.399 Scripture also points to the death of slavery. 00:23:47.399 --> 00:23:53.839 So when you read the Bible, the Bible assumes slavery in both the Old and the New Testament, 00:23:53.839 --> 00:24:03.039 but the ethic and the logic of the Bible is always a movement towards freedom. 00:24:03.039 --> 00:24:05.720 And there are several ways that we can reason this out. 00:24:05.720 --> 00:24:09.839 One is just the narrative of God's people. 00:24:09.839 --> 00:24:18.119 So what is the most defining event of God's people in the Old Testament, we might argue, 00:24:18.119 --> 00:24:20.480 is the Exodus. 00:24:20.480 --> 00:24:27.360 God's people knew themselves to be slaves who had been abused, who had been mistreated. 00:24:27.360 --> 00:24:31.960 And the story of salvation in the Old Testament, the foreshad of God's salvation in the New 00:24:31.960 --> 00:24:36.799 Testament, is God takes these people who are slaves and he gives them their freedom. 00:24:36.799 --> 00:24:40.960 He rescues them from bondage. 00:24:40.960 --> 00:24:45.599 And what's interesting is when you read the rules that are given to God's people in Exodus 00:24:45.599 --> 00:24:52.240 and in Deuteronomy, as they're coming out of that slavery is, God will often remind them 00:24:52.240 --> 00:24:57.679 never to forget that they were slaves, never forget to forget that they were oppressed 00:24:57.679 --> 00:24:59.480 people once. 00:24:59.480 --> 00:25:12.679 So in Deuteronomy 15, when Moses is giving the rules about slavery, he also tells them, 00:25:12.680 --> 00:25:18.279 he says, remember that you were slaves in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed him. 00:25:18.279 --> 00:25:24.640 And the context is he's saying, this is when he says, once a person has been a slave for 00:25:24.640 --> 00:25:26.640 six years, you must set them free. 00:25:26.640 --> 00:25:30.840 And then he goes on to say, when you set them free, you must give them everything that they 00:25:30.840 --> 00:25:34.440 need to go free. 00:25:34.440 --> 00:25:40.640 And so what you often find is rather than affirming slavery as an institution and calling 00:25:40.640 --> 00:25:44.320 for its perpetuation, maybe a better way to think of what's happening in the Old Testament 00:25:44.320 --> 00:25:50.040 is God is actually limiting the extent of slavery. 00:25:50.040 --> 00:25:53.960 And he's saying, you can't hold a person longer than this. 00:25:53.960 --> 00:26:01.800 There's limits that you must put on the way that you engage in slavery, which would have 00:26:01.800 --> 00:26:05.640 been a common practice in the ancient Near East. 00:26:05.640 --> 00:26:13.720 Secondly, the Bible in the Old Testament and the New Testament unconditionally condemns 00:26:13.720 --> 00:26:18.600 kidnapping of human beings, always and forever. 00:26:18.600 --> 00:26:24.320 First Timothy 9, Paul gives this list of sins that are unholy or unrighteous. 00:26:24.320 --> 00:26:26.800 And one of them that he mentions is the unslaver. 00:26:26.800 --> 00:26:32.200 He says the unslaver is someone who is unholy and profane, the unslaver. 00:26:32.200 --> 00:26:37.680 And if you're familiar with the, this is fun trivia for tonight, the Westminster larger 00:26:37.680 --> 00:26:47.960 catechism definition of stealing in the 8th command says that one of the sins of the 8th 00:26:47.960 --> 00:26:53.240 commandment is what they call man stealing. 00:26:53.240 --> 00:26:58.640 So even the Westminster Confession says that it puts in writing that one of the ways that 00:26:58.640 --> 00:27:03.320 you can break the 8th commandment is by man stealing. 00:27:03.320 --> 00:27:05.480 But this goes back to the Old Testament as well. 00:27:05.480 --> 00:27:14.240 Deuteronomy 24-7, if someone is caught kidnapping a fellow Israelite, or, and this is a quote, 00:27:14.240 --> 00:27:20.080 Deuteronomy 24-7, if someone is caught kidnapping a fellow Israelite and selling them as a slave, 00:27:20.080 --> 00:27:22.160 the kidnapper must die. 00:27:22.160 --> 00:27:24.600 You must purge the evil from among. 00:27:24.599 --> 00:27:29.839 So stealing other people is so serious that it invites the death and will be in the Old 00:27:29.839 --> 00:27:30.839 Testament. 00:27:30.839 --> 00:27:35.639 And then I need to come to a close very quickly here, but in the New Testament, price created 00:27:35.639 --> 00:27:41.000 an environment where all people are equal. 00:27:41.000 --> 00:27:47.000 So that as Paul says in Galatians 328, there is neither Jew nor Greek. 00:27:47.000 --> 00:27:49.000 There's neither slave nor free. 00:27:49.000 --> 00:27:51.439 There's neither male or female. 00:27:51.439 --> 00:27:53.639 We're all one in Christ. 00:27:53.640 --> 00:27:57.920 So the argument that you'll hear most theologians make about what is the Bible actually saying 00:27:57.920 --> 00:28:05.360 about slavery is they're saying, even if Paul never came out and said slavery as an institution 00:28:05.360 --> 00:28:11.360 must go today, what the New Testament does, and especially what Paul does in his letters 00:28:11.360 --> 00:28:20.200 is he lays the groundwork for an understanding of interhuman relationships that such that 00:28:20.200 --> 00:28:24.440 slavery cannot serve withers and dies. 00:28:24.440 --> 00:28:29.160 Because if you really begin to accept the idea that all humans are made an image of God, 00:28:29.160 --> 00:28:35.880 and not only that, but all humans are equal, that God made them equal and there's no inferiority, 00:28:35.880 --> 00:28:41.720 then it's hard to imagine how a system like slavery can perpetuate itself. 00:28:41.720 --> 00:28:51.200 So one of the best examples is the book of Philemon where Paul tells Philemon, Onesimus 00:28:51.200 --> 00:28:53.680 has run away from Philemon, right? 00:28:53.680 --> 00:29:00.400 And Paul sends Onesimus back and Paul tells Philemon to treat Onesimus. 00:29:00.400 --> 00:29:03.680 He says, don't treat him as a slave. 00:29:03.680 --> 00:29:05.839 Treat him as more than a slave. 00:29:05.839 --> 00:29:09.120 Treat him as a brother. 00:29:09.119 --> 00:29:13.199 And to be honest, it's not clear what he actually means by that. 00:29:13.199 --> 00:29:14.399 Does he mean to free him? 00:29:14.399 --> 00:29:17.399 Like, what is he actually asking him to do? 00:29:17.399 --> 00:29:22.639 But regardless, he's calling for a radical change in the way that Philemon understands 00:29:22.639 --> 00:29:25.039 that relationship. 00:29:25.039 --> 00:29:31.559 So that in the centuries that come afterwards, many Christian theologians begin stepping forward 00:29:31.559 --> 00:29:36.199 and saying slavery as an institution is a sin. 00:29:36.200 --> 00:29:43.960 And there's this great, often the first place you would see that finding expression is in 00:29:43.960 --> 00:29:45.720 the church itself. 00:29:45.720 --> 00:29:50.880 So Craig Keener, who's a philogen that studies the book of Acts, he says that at least in 00:29:50.880 --> 00:29:56.519 later Christianity, and by later he means like first, second, third, fourth century, 00:29:56.519 --> 00:30:05.960 at least by later Christianity, a slave's status in the external society did not 00:30:05.960 --> 00:30:09.120 dictate their status in God's church. 00:30:09.120 --> 00:30:12.799 Slaves could rise to the office of the bishop. 00:30:12.799 --> 00:30:16.960 Now I know that some of you think that's awful because you think the church should not have 00:30:16.960 --> 00:30:20.200 bishops. 00:30:20.200 --> 00:30:25.000 But there's a wonderful plan being made there that even if a slave was forced to continue 00:30:25.000 --> 00:30:30.960 in this situation to the outside world, inside the church, he couldn't become a bishop. 00:30:30.960 --> 00:30:37.759 And that's a powerful testimony to the way that Christianity transforms society first 00:30:37.759 --> 00:30:39.000 inside the church. 00:30:39.000 --> 00:30:43.440 And then you see people like William Wilbur Ford, who begins to push itself outward into 00:30:43.440 --> 00:30:46.000 society. 00:30:46.000 --> 00:30:49.160 So I have a lot more to say, but I think I'm just going to stop there. 00:30:49.160 --> 00:30:53.000 And I'm going to say that's good news. 00:30:53.000 --> 00:31:00.920 The only thing I'll add is, I think this topic of slavery is an example of a kind of church 00:31:00.920 --> 00:31:03.160 challenge that can be made against scripture. 00:31:03.160 --> 00:31:08.080 If a person's new in their faith, they can feel really shaken by it because they don't 00:31:08.080 --> 00:31:11.840 have the tools to know how to reason through it. 00:31:11.840 --> 00:31:16.920 And I suppose maybe the only thing I'll say about that is I'm thankful. 00:31:16.920 --> 00:31:21.759 And I know that many of you are thankful that as we've grown up, and I'm sure the oldest 00:31:21.759 --> 00:31:28.840 people here know far more than I do, sometimes we come to scriptures and we can hear the 00:31:28.839 --> 00:31:31.879 world telling us, this part doesn't make sense. 00:31:31.879 --> 00:31:35.319 And we look at it and we don't quite know how to make sense of it. 00:31:35.319 --> 00:31:42.959 And as we grow in our faith, we begin to trust Jesus more and more. 00:31:42.959 --> 00:31:47.039 So as you come across these things and you work your way through it, when you come to 00:31:47.039 --> 00:31:53.319 the next problem, we say, I know that Jesus was faithful to me as I was to that last piece. 00:31:53.319 --> 00:31:57.679 So even if I can't understand what he's doing here, I can trust him. 00:31:57.680 --> 00:32:03.960 So that's my hope is we may not always have the answers like I've claimed to have about 00:32:03.960 --> 00:32:09.080 this topic of slavery, but praise God that we can trust Jesus even when we don't have 00:32:09.080 --> 00:32:10.080 all the answers. 00:32:10.080 --> 00:32:11.080 So let me pray. 00:32:11.080 --> 00:32:16.120 Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word tonight. 00:32:16.120 --> 00:32:23.440 And we pray that we can trust you even when we don't have all the technical answers to 00:32:23.440 --> 00:32:26.960 the questions that we're going to come up with, even in our daily Bible reading. 00:32:26.960 --> 00:32:31.799 But would you help us to never stop searching for your truth and loving in your seismic 00:32:31.799 --> 00:32:59.619 pride?