Luke: 00:04

My name is Luke, and I am honored this morning to get to open the Word of God with you. Today, we're going to be in First Timothy, chapter five. So if you have a Bible, we'd love to invite you to join us there. We have Bibles underneath the pews and Bibles in the back. If you don't have a Bible, we would love to gift you one.

Luke: 00:25

You have plenty in the back corner by the entrance. Grab one and it is yours to have and to keep. You know, one of the things that is reading the Bible is work. You know, sometimes we wish we could just open the Bible, you know, and it would just explain itself to us. At least I sometimes wish it would do that.

Luke: 00:54

Reading the Bible requires work. It's It's an old text. You know? Did anybody struggle to understand Shakespeare when they read Shakespeare? Right?

Luke: 01:06

Right? Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo? You know, like all of that. This is older than that. Right?

Luke: 01:14

This is this is written in ancient Hebrew, ancient Greek, and it's been translated very thankfully into many different translations that allow us to read it in more modern English. But it still comes with a lot of complexity and nuance, and there's a whole lot to it. It's actually the Bible itself is not one singular book. It is a singular book, and we'll talk about that. But it's also comprised of many different shorter books and letters that were written inside of it.

Luke: 01:47

And each of those have its own nuance and author in context. And I think it's really important that we learn to read the Bible well, Because when we read the Bible poorly, we run the danger of misrepresenting God. We run the danger of putting words into God's mouth that were not there and causing harm, of causing hurt, of misusing the Bible in order to control others. These are all things that have and still do happen. And I think it's really important we learn to read the Bible well.

Luke: 02:24

Today, we're going to be dealing with, I guess you could call kind of a tough text, a text of scripture that is, one, it's a little unclear. It did not make sense to me the first time I read it through. Two, it's kind of like, how do we handle that? What does that mean? And so today, we're gonna be tackling a tough text.

Luke: 02:47

And I think it's important that we this is one of the benefits of the type of preaching that we do most of the time, or we do a lot of the time. We do quite a variety of preaching here at Conduit. But when we're going through a book of the Bible or a large section of the text, it forces us to teach through and wrestle with parts of the Bible that maybe we wouldn't pick. Right? Like if I was picking and writing my own sermon series, today's text is probably one that I wouldn't be like, Oh, let's do this one.

Luke: 03:19

And so today we're going be talking about both about widows in chapter five and in the beginning of chapter six, we're going to be talking about a passage that deals with slavery. And so these are difficult texts. There are texts that people will sometimes even use to kind of try and discredit Christianity, say, Well, the Bible teaches about slavery and this, how could you be a Christian if it has a text that says that? And so today, as we deal with this, this is important because, one, we need to understand what it has for us today. What does God's word have for us?

Luke: 03:55

Because I believe even though it's a kind of a strange and difficult text for us to deal with, I think it still has something for us. And then it's also for us to be aware so that we can rightly defend any accusations against a face. The last several weeks, some of us on staff have had the opportunity to kind of go through a class on how to kind of have difficult conversations. And there was this illustration, there was this, like, word picture that was kind of used throughout that that just kind of stuck with me in its own sort of, like, application to preaching. And it's saying, how do you thread a needle?

Luke: 04:39

Right? If you've ever tried to thread a needle, you know, if you try and just take the little piece of thread and jam it into the hole, you're going to kind of fray the end, then you're going to become very frustrated like me. And, you know, and then you're going be trying to wind it back up and lick it and, you know But how do you actually sit and thread a needle? You do it slowly. You do it purposefully.

Luke: 05:02

You stop. You make sure you've got plenty of light. You make sure that it's clear. You kind of focus. That's kind of what today's sermon is.

Luke: 05:11

Today is kind of stopping, slowing down and threading a needle. And so I hope that you can kind of join with me in this as we read through this passage, see what it has for us and continue in our study of First Timothy. Today is our second or the last week in first Timothy. Pastor Cameron will finish it up next week. If you're paying astute attention, you might be like, Luke chapter five of first Timothy is going backwards from where we were last week.

Luke: 05:41

Yes. I know. And that's okay. We just kinda got some things a little bubbled up, and that's fine. But let's dig in and let's thread the needle.

Luke: 05:53

Let's see what this passage has for us. So first Timothy chapter five verses one through two says this. It says, Do not rebuke an older man, but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers and older women as mothers, younger women as sisters in all purity. Now it bears mentioning who is this letter written to? It's written to Timothy, who's a young pastor of a church.

Luke: 06:25

Paul being this older apostle, being one who kind of mentored Timothy in his early years and is encouraging him here, has been for the last couple of chapters giving very practical, pragmatic and direct advice for how to lead the church in Ephesus. And so Paul right here, he says, Timothy, don't rebuke an older man, but encourage him as you would a father. He's saying, Timothy, that one guy, don't be so harsh on him. Rebuke him. Encourage him like you would he was your father.

Luke: 07:01

He says, younger men, if you have someone younger in your congregation, encourage them like you would a brother. And older women encourage them as you would a mother and younger women as sisters in all purity. Paul's kind of giving some practical advice about how Timothy, this young pastor, should relate to the people in his congregation, how he should treat them not like just average people, but almost or exactly as family. This is a key part or a key way in which we should understand ourselves as a church. I know that it's like if you go to a lot of churches, we say here often, Welcome home.

Luke: 07:46

Right? It's our desire that you would call this place a place that you could call home. There's a reason there's a couch in the front of our door. Right? We put that with intention, hoping that you would feel like this is a place that you could call home.

Luke: 08:01

And now that might be cliche because a lot of churches talk that way, but it's absolutely deeply biblical. It's the way that Paul encourages Timothy and encouraged the church of Ephesus to think of themselves. Like I said, Timothy, he's in the city of Ephesus. He's pastoring in Ephesus. I want to turn to Ephesus chapter two, and we'll see an earlier encouragement to the same church, Ephesus chapter two or Ephesians chapter two, I should say, verse 13.

Luke: 08:34

Paul is talking to this community, and he's saying, this is how you ought to behave, who you are, and this is your identity. Ephesians two chapter 13, he says this, but now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. Verse 14, for he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility. By abolishing the law of the commandments expressed in ordinances that he might create in himself one new man in place of a two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, therefore, killing the hostility. And he came and he preached peace to you who are far off and peace to those who were near.

Luke: 09:35

For through him, we have access in one spirit to who? To the father, to God the father. And so then you are no longer slaves. You're no longer strangers, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. So what's he saying there?

Luke: 09:56

He's saying, you who were once far away from God. He's talking about the Gentiles specifically in Ephesus, the people who were not Jewish. And he's talking to those who were near, the Jews, people who already kind of knew who Yahweh was, knew who God was. He's like, there's this dividing wall, this conflict between the two of you. But because of Jesus, he broke down the dividing wall And you're not two separate people with conflict with each other.

Luke: 10:22

You're now one single person. And each and every single one of us have access to God the Father. And we're part of his household. Were part of his family. Paul's describing the church with familial terms.

Luke: 10:38

He's saying, You guys aren't just people. This isn't just a community gathering. We're not just a social club. We're not just a group of people who happen to live here and like sitting on pews in Sunday mornings. We're a family.

Luke: 10:53

This is important. We become part of the family of God through the cross. We have there is something that changes about our identity when we accept Jesus Christ as our Savior. When we understand that I am no longer who I once was. We've been talking about this in our baptism class that we've been doing the last couple of weeks.

Luke: 11:16

Right? Is that Jesus Christ, He died on the cross for our sins, was buried, and then on the third day He rose again from the dead. When we get baptized, what do we do? We stand in the water as the old self with all of our sin and our brokenness. And then we say, I am crucified with Christ.

Luke: 11:37

And then we go down into the water. We go into the grave and we come back up washed clean, leaving behind the old self and the old identity with a new identity and new resurrection. That's the theology of baptism. That's the theology of the Gospel. And so we once were people who just had nothing together, nothing aligned except for some shared zip codes.

Luke: 12:03

But now because of Jesus Christ, there is a there's a unity in this room that's been bought by the blood of God. Something that we can't formulate, something that we can't make happen. It's something that God has made happen. It's something that is spiritual and real. We have more I have more in common with somebody in in in China who follows Christ than I do with a neighbor who doesn't know Jesus.

Luke: 12:33

We are in strict extrapolated we're we're bound together in a way because of who Jesus is and because of who our savior is. So we become part of the family of God through the cross. And so Paul in First Timothy, we're going to go back there to First Timothy five, is saying, he's like, You need to be treating all of those people in the church like they're family members. Don't be treating them like they're just strangers off the street. The identity, the way that we think about them is as if they were family.

Luke: 13:07

Now we're going to read this next section, verses three through 16, all in one go, and then we'll kind of walk through it and break it down and explain it. So verse three, Paul starts off and he says this, Honor widows who are truly widows. But if a widow has grandchildren or children, let them first learn to show godliness to their own household and to make some return to their parents, for this is pleasing in the sight of God. She who is truly a widow, left all alone, has set her hope on God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day. But she who is self indulgent is dead even while she lives.

Luke: 13:52

Command these things as well so that they may be without reproach. But if anyone does not provide for his relatives and especially for members of his own household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. Let a widow be enrolled if she is not or let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than 60 years of age, having been the wife of one husband, and having a reputation for good works if she has brought up children, has shown hospitality, has washed the feet of the saints, has cared for the afflicted, and has devoted herself to every good work, but refuse to enroll younger widows for when their passions draw them away from Christ they desire to marry, and so incur condemnation for having abandoned their former faith. Besides that, they learned to be idlers going about from house to house, and not only idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying what they should not. So I would have younger widows marry, bear children, manage their households, and give the adversary no occasion for slander, for some have already strayed after Satan.

Luke: 14:57

If any believing woman has relatives who are widows, let her care for them. Let the church not be burdened so that it may care for those who are truly widows. All right. That was a lot, wasn't it? Right?

Luke: 15:10

There's the widows, and then there's the true widows, and then there's this list. There's a lot going on in the passage, and so it's not exactly immediately clear what exactly Paul is trying to get out. So before we kind of break it down, we'll kind of walk through what Paul is kind of suggesting and what that means for us. Let's just talk about the difference in culture. Right?

Luke: 15:36

Right now, we live in the year 2025, and the way that our culture functions is different than it was in forty, fifty, sixty AD. Right? Pretty different. We've got smartphones now. And in the ancient world and in Ephesus, the plight of widows, women who were no longer married because their husbands had died, was pretty dire.

Luke: 16:03

Women did not have a lot of social power, social equity. And even when a husband died, it was not, it was not a guaranteed or it wasn't assumed that the inheritance would go to his wife. It would often go to the oldest son or be split up among the sons. And so what could conceivably happen and did happen is that maybe a woman, maybe a stepmother, her husband would die. The money would go to the sons, and the sons would be like, too bad for you.

Luke: 16:42

And all of a sudden, you have someone who doesn't have a business, doesn't have a way of earning a living, all out on their own. And so the plight of widows was pretty serious. And there wasn't a there we didn't they didn't have a lot of social programs or anything to kind of pick up the slack. And so widows in the ancient world also, they varied. Right?

Luke: 17:07

It was a very different there there are accounts of widows who were absolutely destitute, and then there were also accounts of widows that absolutely lived in the lap of luxury. There was a wide range of widows, and you kind of will you'll see that here in the passions that Paul's kind of he seems to be kind of juggling between, like, these different type of widows, widows, women who are in different statuses, different places, different places of financial stability in the passage. And so it was a really varied space, but it was also one that needed to be addressed. It's actually one that gets addressed several times throughout scriptures and in the New Testament in particular. It was actually part of one of the first major church fights.

Luke: 17:59

In Acts, the early church, the first major conflict they have is that some of the widows were getting food and some of the other widows were not. And they weren't getting food because they were not pure Jewish. They were they were Samaritans or they were Greek. And so they were not getting the food distribution. And that was one of the first conflicts that the church had to deal with was the care of widows.

Luke: 18:26

So this is a big deal. And Paul here, he's giving some practical advice. He's just like, this is how you should handle it. It's a very practical portion of Scripture. He's just giving Timothy some advice.

Luke: 18:39

He's like, this is how you should do it. Shouldn't do it this way. Should do it that way. So he's kind of giving sort of three sort of options. He's like, Okay, let's imagine we've got you've got a widow.

Luke: 18:52

She's recently widowed, and she's coming and she's saying, I need some help from the church. Paul's saying, Timothy, this is how you should figure out how you should take care of this widow. He has one option. One option of care for this woman is through the family. So he talks about in verse four of chapter five, he says, but if a widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show godliness to their own household and to make some return to their parents for this is pleasing in the sight of God.

Luke: 19:28

Verse eight, he says, similarly, if anyone does not provide for his relatives and especially for members of his own household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. He's saying even unbelievers take care of their widows. You should take care of your widows. And then finally, verse 16, he says, If any believing woman has relatives who are widows, let her care for them. Let the church not be burdened so that it may care for those who are truly widows.

Luke: 20:00

So Paul's first option, we've got a woman who is destitute, is on her own. Paul says the first thing you should do is is make sure that the family is taking care of her. Does she have family? Does she have someone who will take care of her? And he's saying in the church.

Luke: 20:20

He said, you should be encouraging that the families be taking care of one another. So if you just imagine in Ephesus, Timothy, a widow comes to Timothy. She says, my husband is dead. I don't know what I'm going to do. And he's like, oh, well, your your grandkid is here in this church.

Luke: 20:36

He's part of your community. Is he taking care of you? Well, let me go have a conversation with him. Right? That's the that's what Paul is saying.

Luke: 20:45

It says, Encourage and teach and have the families care for their elders, care for their parents. This was a it was a key commandment in the Old Testament to honor your father and mother. And Paul carries it forward. He says, You should care for your father and mother. And so Paul's giving this teaching.

Luke: 21:05

So that's the first kind of option he gives for caring for a widow. The second option is remarriage. He says it might just be that it better for them to not stay a widow. He says this in verses 11 through 14. He says, Refuse to enroll younger widows for when their passions draw them away from Christ, they desire to marry.

Luke: 21:28

And so incur condemnation for having abandoned their former faith. Besides that, they learned to be idlers going about from house to house, and not only idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying what they should not. So I would have the younger widows marry, bear children, manage their households, and give the adversary no occasion for slander. So he's he's saying, he said, if you have a younger widow, someone who's still at an age where they could remarry, encourage that. And this is going to become clear here in a moment when we talk about this final option, because we might be like, what's wrong with the widow becoming this, like, not married and then all of a sudden changing their mind?

Luke: 22:13

What's the issue? Why is Paul so concerned with that? We'll talk about that in just a second. But here he's saying, he says, If they have the opportunity to remarry, they should. One of the things we kind of take for granted with our modern health care system and the way our society runs is that we don't generally have a very high mortality rate.

Luke: 22:34

Generally, most of us live pretty relatively healthy lives. We don't have all of the, like, the sheer amount of death that there was in the ancient world. You were considered well aged if you made it into your forties. You know, like, Okay, you've lived a very full life if you made it that far. That that's that's the way they considered it.

Luke: 22:57

And so that's a kind of different that's a different conception than the way we think about the world today. And because we have we have a lower mortality rate. And so this is sort of what's going on. And then there's finally, Paul says, okay, if the widow doesn't have someone who a family that they can rely on, can be cared for, if they're older and they cannot remarry or they're not going to remarry for some he's giving generalities here. And he's if they're not going to remarry for some reason, you have what he kind of calls true widows.

Luke: 23:36

Now if you are reading out of the NIV, this is this is a good Bible study tip. This is why having multiple copies of the Bible and having different translations and reading out of them can be helpful. Because if you're reading out of the current NIV, I believe it is, verse three in the ESV, which is what we're preaching out of today, honor widows who are truly widows. In the NIV, that's translated honor the widows who are truly in need. Right?

Luke: 24:07

And so instead of just calling them true widows, which is kind of we're like, Well, Luke, aren't they a true widow? I'm like, Yes, it's not that their husband's not dead. Paul here is using this language to try and describe widows who are truly in need, truly destitute, without support, without care, and without help. And he describes their situation in verses five through seven. He said, she who is truly a widow, left all alone, has set her hope on God and continues in supplication and prayers night and day.

Luke: 24:42

And so you see that that's describing someone who has no one else. It goes on to verse six says, but she who is self indulgent is dead even while she lives. So what's that talking about? Remember I said that the plight of widows could be very, very wide. So he's here.

Luke: 25:02

He's making provision, and he's acknowledging there are widows who have a extreme amount of fortune and who could be known for living these extravagant lifestyles. Just kind of and just playing about. There was a historical document that was documenting this one widow who kept, like, a a group of, like I wanna say mimes, but I don't think that was what they were. But a group of essentially, like, performers for her who she would have on call to come and perform for her on a daily basis as a way to just keep her life busy. And so you could have widows who were in excellent financial stability, and you could have widows who were destitute.

Luke: 25:46

And Paul's saying the ones that are just whidling away their hours, spending their money, who have are just indulging in pleasure. He's like, I'm not talking about them. They should figure out how to steward their wealth better. So Paul makes that provision there in verse six. He continues on in verse seven.

Luke: 26:05

He says, command these things as well so that they may not be without reproach. He's saying, like, when you're in this stage of life, there ought to be a way to conduct yourself. Verses nine through 10, he continues. He said, let a widow be enrolled so this is important. He said, be enrolled in this list.

Luke: 26:25

If she is not less than 60 years of age and has been have having been the wife of one husband. She's been a faithful wife is what that means to communicate. And having a good rep reputation for good works. If she has brought up children, has shown hospitality, has washed the feet of the saints, has cared for the afflicted, and has devoted herself for every good work. So what we kind of see implied here in the passage, because the passage doesn't really explain it all, is that there was this list, there was this enrollment of widows that the church cared for.

Luke: 27:04

That the church said, You're over 60 years old. You truly have no other support. And so the church is going to care for you. We're going to be a big, major support of you. And not only that, it seems that there was some level of responsibility that was expected of the widows.

Luke: 27:24

These widows who were going to be cared for exclusively by the church seemed to have been expected to care for others in the church. They were were entrusted with a level of ministry to go about and visit the sick and care for those. They were meant to be honored. And actually, that's this key word. And the key word for our sermon today is this word honor.

Luke: 27:46

It begins in verse three. Honor the widows. And you'll see as we go through the rest of this passage as quickly as I can, that we're that we have to honor and care for. And when we think of honor today, we kind of think of just a simple level of respect. But we'll kind of see in this passage that honor has sort of a number of things attached to it.

Luke: 28:11

Yes, it is respect and deference and a way of treating one person, but it also does have a secondary or additional meaning applied in some contexts of monetary or financial support. And so they are meant to honor these widows. So these true widows seem to have had some position of both receiving generosity but also conducting some level of ministry. And so, okay, what does that all got to do with us? Right?

Luke: 28:45

Okay. I think that this is a great example. First, that the church should both be wise and generous. Paul here is saying, he says, Yes, you absolutely should be generous. We should be caring for the widows.

Luke: 29:00

We should be caring for those without any support or family. But Paul's also here giving some wise discernment. He's saying, Let's let's not just be foolish. The church does not have an infinite amount of money. And so Paul here is giving, how do you kind of deal with this?

Luke: 29:19

How do you deal with this issue? I can imagine that perhaps in Ephesus they had an abundance of widows. And Timothy is like, I don't I don't want to just turn people away, but we're running out of money because we're feeding and caring for so many people. So Paul here gives some wisdom. It was incredibly important.

Luke: 29:38

James one twenty seven, go ahead and put that up on the screen for me, says this. It says, Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained from the world. This was a significant spiritual calling of the Church and of believers to care for those who have no one else. To care for those that society had forgotten about, that society did not care, that society had tossed to the side. Today, our world is a little bit different, but those people still exist.

Luke: 30:19

We still have people who the world does not think about, who does not care about, who have perhaps forgotten about, who perhaps have just shuffled off to the side. And the church ought to be a place where we seek to love those with the love of Christ. Paul says that or not Paul, but Jesus himself says, Do unto these. Do unto these that are the least of these. Do to those as you would do to me.

Luke: 30:48

And so the call of the church is to be generous and to be wise. So there's that. There's the part about widows, and it's encouragement to us and the things that we ought to be doing. We don't just fundraise at Thanksgiving just because it's fun and we like a big thermometer on the stage. Right?

Luke: 31:14

We fundraise and we raise and we give out meals and we do this every single Sunday. We give out hot meals to people in the city. Why? Because we think that's what Christ has called us to do. To love those in our community, to honor those, to care for those that the world has forgotten and does not think about.

Luke: 31:35

This is what it means to be the church. Now, we continue on through the passage. I'm going to skip through most of the rest of chapter five. We kind of covered it in brief when we were talking about elders several weeks ago. But if you notice, it talks about honor in this passage, about honoring the elders.

Luke: 31:57

And verse 17 says, Let the elders who rule be considered worthy of double honor. And so it has, again, this element of respect, but also financial support. We come all the way through this. It talks about the seriousness of establishing elders and pastors in the community. And then we come to verse one of chapter six.

Luke: 32:21

Paul is kind of you if you're tracking with me, the beginning of chapter five, he sort of begins to lay out all of these different relationships. How ought they relate to one another? How do these relationships conduct themselves? Spends a significant amount of time when it comes to widows, spends some significant amount of time when it comes to establishing elders and leadership in the church. And in verse six, he turns his attention to those who were slaves.

Luke: 32:50

He says this in verses one through two. He says, Let all those who are under a yoke as bondservants or slaves regard their own masters as worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and the teaching may not be reviled. Those who have believing masters must not be disrespectful on the ground that they are brothers. Rather, they must serve all the better since those who benefit by their good service are believers and beloved. All right.

Luke: 33:21

Let's deal now with this passage. I have found it's important to sometimes state the obvious. The obvious is that slavery is abhorrent. Slavery is not good in any place or context, And it is an absolute shame that it continues in our modern day and age. I think we, as Christians, should be people who continue to champion that and say that in all forms and in all places.

Luke: 33:52

But this passage and passages like it are often lifted up and people say, Well, Pastor Luke, Christian, how can you be a Christian? How can you be a follower of Jesus and say all these things about the Bible when here Paul's saying what's he saying? What's the general gist of this? Slaves, you should be obedient. This passage has been used by very, very too many to justify ill treatment and the continuation of slavery both here in America and elsewhere.

Luke: 34:27

And so what do we do with this? Does the Bible seem to undergird or undercut what we believe to be true morality and the care for our neighbors and those who we consider are equals in every way? Well, first, we need to understand some, again, some historical context. Right? We're in the year 2025.

Luke: 34:51

This was in fifty AD. What was different then, and what was Paul talking about and addressing here? Depending on your translation, you may have a number of different words fit in here. You may have the word bondservant as the ESV does. You may have the word slave.

Luke: 35:08

You may have the word servant. And it's difficult, right, to try and capture just exactly what this was because of the historical context. But the best word and the word that I'm going to continue to use is either bond servant or slave because I think that's the best and most accurate way to describe it. It's what the word literally translates as. And so the historical context of slaves was very different than what comes to our mind.

Luke: 35:36

When we think about slavery, we think of the Transatlantic slave trade. We think of our American history in the Civil War and the plight of African Americans underneath slavery. And while there are similarities to that, to ancient slavery, it was significantly different. Slavery in the ancient world was not primarily determined by race, but it was primarily determined by socioeconomic status or situation in life. Many people would become slaves or what would maybe be a better way of calling it a indentured servant because of debt, because of catastrophic circumstances in life, and they would find themselves it would be better than being destitute to become a slave to someone else.

Luke: 36:26

But it is also still the same in that they lost almost all of their rights. They did not own property. They did not have their own wealth. They were cared for by their masters. And so here is what is similar and what is different.

Luke: 36:41

But then truly, there is also a very wide, wide depth and breadth of what it looked like to be a slave in the ancient world. Many of those who were indentured servants, bondservants, slaves, sometimes even had their own businesses. They were business owners. You would not have known that they were a slave unless you would perhaps ask them or knew that the the business was ultimately owned by someone else. Sometimes slaves even held public office underneath other people.

Luke: 37:11

They could live in great splendor and live very well. And then there was absolutely the other side of the spectrum, those who were absolutely ill treated and beaten and not cared for. And so Paul is speaking into this context. In Ephesus, it is estimated that over 30% of the population in the city that this was written to were slaves. That's a significant percentage.

Luke: 37:40

And so Paul knows that he's talking to and that Timothy is interacting with many who are slaves who have come to know Jesus Christ. And Paul here in this passage, let it be clear that he does not simply by acknowledging it and talking to those who are in slavery, he doesn't say that it's like, oh, cheery. How does he describe it in verse one? He says, Let all those under a yoke. He's describing it with this kind of impassionate and disparaging language saying, It is a hard, difficult place to be a slave in the ancient world.

Luke: 38:20

And so Paul here in his language is not talking about it as if it is inconsequential or morally neutral. He's saying it's not very good. It is not a good thing. So what does this passage then itself say, verses one through two? I think the two passages or the two verses kind of talk about slaves, people who were in the church, who were slaves, finding themselves in two different circumstances.

Luke: 38:50

The first verse is talking to those who were slaves to unbelieving masters. He says, let all those under a yoke as bondservants regard their own masters as worthy of all honor so that the name of God and the teaching may not be reviled. Notice how he even says that. He doesn't necessarily assume that the master is worthy of the regard of honor. He says, but rather, he says, regard their own masters.

Luke: 39:19

Whether they were deserving of it or not, you should treat them with honor, that word that is connecting this whole passage. And so treat them with respect. Why? Not because they necessarily deserve it, but because it points to God. Paul is keenly aware that there are slaves who have come to know Jesus, and Christianity is not like it is today.

Luke: 39:45

The church back then was a small, small group of people who were meeting in houses. People had often not heard of Christianity. Today, you can't spit without hitting a church in this town. And and that was not the way it was back then. Christianity was new.

Luke: 40:02

Christianity was often at danger of being wiped out or exterminated by persecution. And so Paul is saying those who find themselves as slaves should act in a way that doesn't misrepresent who Christians are, doesn't misrepresent who Jesus is and who we are underneath the Gospel. This is what he kind of says. Verse two, he then begins to, he then begins to address those who are underneath believing masters. He says, those who have believing masters must not be disrespectful on the ground that they are brothers.

Luke: 40:44

Rather, they must serve all the better since those who benefit by their good service are believers and beloved. So the first question we have to ask here is, why is there a tendency for the slaves to be disrespectful? Because of the implications of the gospel. The the slaves here are saying, well, they're they're they're upset. They're they have a tendency to be disrespectful to masters, people who own them, who were also Christians.

Luke: 41:14

This church possibly had per people coming to church or to the early church who were both slave and master in the same church. And the slave is like, well, we go to the same church. We worship the same God. We're teaching the same gospel. I'm meant to be underneath this.

Luke: 41:30

There's no slave or free in the gospel that I've been taught. Why am I still a slave? And so Paul's saying, don't let that resentment bubble up underneath of you. So even in Paul's address here to slaves, he's acknowledging that there is this, like, kind of almost legitimate reason. There is an legitimate reason for them to be frustrated because of the expectation of freedom as the gospel affects all of the social constructs around them.

Luke: 42:06

And so then he says what does he say here? It comes back to what we started. He says, why should you respect them? Because they are brothers. Rather, they must serve all the better since those who benefit by their good service are believers and beloved.

Luke: 42:21

He is encouraging them to serve not because they're a fantastic person or a fantastic master, but because of who they are to Jesus. Paul elsewhere says that any service rendered unto others would be rendered unto Christ if they found themselves as slaves. And so the question that kind of sits and stands with us is say, well, well, Pastor Luke, why does this passage not take a clear stance against slavery? It seems that Paul here is kind of being nice to it. He seems like he's kind of like not saying the thing that we wish he would say.

Luke: 43:01

We kind of wish Paul would just say, none of you should have slaves and be done with it. Why is that not what's happening here? There's a couple of different ways we can answer this. First is to say that Paul certainly is not endorsing slavery by simply addressing the people in the church who are slaves and giving them advice does not mean that he endorses it. Right?

Luke: 43:26

If I give you advice because you're suffering, because you're experiencing cancer or because you're experiencing something like that, doesn't mean that I'm saying that that's a good thing. Right? And so similarly, Paul's advice to slaves does not simply mean that he is endorsing it. It's actually the second time in first Timothy that slavery has been mentioned. In verses chapter one verse nine through 10, Paul makes a list of people who he describes as unjust under the law.

Luke: 44:02

Verse nine, he says, Understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and the sinners, for the unholy and the profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, and for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality and enslavers, liars, purgers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine. So Paul here lists those who put people into slavery alongside murderers and also people who had their mothers and fathers. He's he's he's putting this long list of people who are sinners, are doing wrong and evil in this world, and he lists enslavers as one of them. Then we also have to consider that this letter seems to be addressing particular problems. So Paul, when he's writing this letter, knows what's going on in the church of Ephesus.

Luke: 45:00

He's maybe heard from Timothy, and Timothy has said, I've got these things going on. And Paul's saying, this is the advice directly to the things that you've told me are going on. And so Paul seems that there probably was something going on in the church where those who found themselves as slaves were doing things or behaving in such a way that was causing issue. And Paul's saying this ought to be your advice to them in that situation. And then secondly, this is the thing that is key and we need to understand and has been one of the key themes of this entire book is that the concern of the fledgling church was the gospel.

Luke: 45:39

Paul wasn't trying to change the world. He was trying to save it through the gospel of Jesus Christ. We live in a very like it is so hard for me to convey how different the way we think of the world is from the way that they thought of the world back then. You and I, we're Americans. We believe you don't like something in the government, you should go protest.

Luke: 46:06

We believe in freedom of speech. We believe that we ought to go out and have open discourse, and that if there's injustice in the world, we have a right and a responsibility to fix it and do something about it. That's something that is a core principle. Whether or not we've always lived up to that is absolutely up to debate. But that is the core ideal that we strive to.

Luke: 46:29

In the ancient world where you believe that the Roman emperor was assigned by a god and that if you uprise or you make too many noise, you're likely to be killed. And you have the fledgling church, which was just a small like people didn't even think of Christianity as its own religion at the time. They thought of it as there's the Jews and then there's those weird Jews. That's how they thought of Christianity. They weren't like, Oh, there's the Christians and the Jews.

Luke: 47:00

They were like, No, there's the Jews. And then there's that really weird group of Jews that worship that guy called Jesus. It was a small fledgling, like very early. And the Church did not have at this time political power or sway or control over the world. And so what is Paul to do?

Luke: 47:20

He has this kind of developing ethic. And so Paul's ethic throughout the New Testament, and that's also reflected in First Peter, where we also talk about slaves, is can be summarized by this statement. Paul always encourages us to flourish in Christ wherever it is you find yourself. Wherever it is you find yourself. If you find yourself wealthy, if you find yourself poor, if you find yourself enslaved, if you find yourself a widow, married, single, a eunuch, whatever it is you happen to be, wherever your condition is, wherever Jesus finds you, you should find a way to flourish in that place.

Luke: 48:04

Paul makes it very clear. I want to go to one Corinthians chapter seven. First Corinthians chapter seven. He deals more in-depth with this topic here. Chapter seven verse 17, he says this, only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him and to which God has called him.

Luke: 48:37

This is my rule in all churches. Was anyone at the time of his call when they were found and discovered and became a Christian? Were they already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was anyone at this time of his call uncircumcised?

Luke: 48:54

Let him not seek circumcision. For neither circumcision counts nor anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God. Verse 20. Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called. You were a bond servant or a slave when called.

Luke: 49:11

Do not be concerned about it. But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity. Verse 22, for he who called you in the Lord as a bond servant is a freed man of the Lord. Likewise, he who was free when was called is a bond servant of Christ. You were bought with a price.

Luke: 49:32

Do not become bondservants of men. So brothers, in whatever condition each is called, let them remain with God. So Paul very clearly here says and holds both intention. He says, Don't don't don't become slaves to men. If you have any opportunity in the society, in the place in which you find yourself, take advantage of it to become free.

Luke: 49:55

But wherever it is you find yourself, do not neglect to flourish in Christ. And so Paul here is absolutely not extolling or saying that slavery was good. It absolutely was not. But he's saying, but that does not keep you from following Jesus. It does not keep you from flourishing as a Christ follower.

Luke: 50:24

So, two, I just got to finish this. So if you go all the way to a little book that maybe you've never heard of or read, it's one page, two pages maybe, Philemon. If you can find the book of Hebrews, it's in the pages right before Hebrews. Philemon is a short letter that Paul wrote to a slave owner. Paul was in prison at the time, and he met this young man called Onesimus.

Luke: 50:51

Onesimus seems to have been a runaway slave. He seems to have run away from his owner, Philemon. And he seems to have done something, whether that was stole money or did something in his fleeing that has caused significant problems to Philemon. And Paul meets Onesimus, and Onesimus becomes a believer. And this is Paul's personal plea to Philemon.

Luke: 51:17

Now, Paul, if you were to go, and I would encourage you to read this whole letter, it won't take you more than ten minutes, not even. Paul is this very you want to talk about, like, indirect, like, mother-in-law level of guilt. Like, Paul here is, like, being very, very, like, precise in his language and is saying, I am asking you to do a thing, but I'm not telling you to do it. And I'm guessing you know what that thing is. And so he's being somewhat indirect, but I want to read the part where he is most direct about what he is saying in this passage.

Luke: 52:00

It's verses 12 through 16 because there is no chapter. He says this, I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart. He's sending Onesimus back to Philemon. I would have been very glad to have keep him with me in order that he might serve me on your behalf during my imprisonment for the gospel. But I preferred to do nothing without your consent in order that your goodness might not be by compulsion but of your own accord.

Luke: 52:28

See the kind of the guilt and the politeness going on there? He says, for perhaps for this perhaps is why he was parted from you for a while that he might you might have him back forever. Verse 16. No longer as a bondservant or slave, but more than a bondservant, as a beloved brother, especially to me, but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord. Philemon is a application of the gospel to the situation of slaves.

Luke: 53:04

Paul's teaching absolutely was that the Gospel implications of who Jesus was and who we have now all become in Christ is that there is no differentiation between you and I. Let me make it absolutely a 100% crystal clear that there is no room for prejudice in the church, that there is no room to call someone because they have an accent or they talk different or they eat different type of food or their skin is a different shade to give any level of hatred, disrespect, or disregard to anyone. We as Christians ought to understand that the Bible teaches all of humanity, every single person you encounter is made in the image of God. Whether you like them or not, God loves them. And we ought to embody that love as Christians.

Luke: 53:58

And it is absolutely a shame that the Christian church did not sooner and faster allow the tide of the gospel to rise faster and abolish slavery faster than it did. But thankfully, it did. And unfortunately, slavery still continues in our modern age, even though it's not in the ways that we often think about it. So does the Bible support slavery? No.

Luke: 54:28

Does the Bible have advice for those who found themselves to be slaves? Absolutely, yes. What does all of this, this very long sermon that you've been very patient to sit through, What does all of this have to do with you and I today? First is to say, how do we know where somebody is from? How do we know somebody's from here?

Luke: 54:54

I was thinking about this because I'm not from here. I know somebody's from here if they're wearing a Bill shirt, if they're walking around with some Tim Hortons, if they have an opinion on Johnny's versus AJ's. I know that they're from here if they think it's been a light winter if we've only gotten snowed in once. Right? How do we know that someone's for the other way that I know that you guys are all from here is the way you guys say elementary school.

Luke: 55:23

You guys say elementary? Never heard that before before I came here. Right? It's elementary where I came from. Elementary.

Luke: 55:33

I don't know. But, anyways, how do you know you're from here? We can find a whole bunch of different ways. The question that is important for us to know and to be able to answer as Christians is how do we know we belong to God? How do we below know that we're Christians?

Luke: 55:50

How does How does the world know that you and I go to church? Or not even that. How do they know that we belong to Christ? It's not that we go to church. It's not that we post things on Instagram.

Luke: 56:03

It's that we love people. Christ has always said that they will know you not by their your theology, not by your your political stance, not by the things you post on social media, not by the way you dress or conduct yourself, but by how you love people. That is what we ought to be known by. So how are we to know? How is the world to know who we belong to?

Luke: 56:28

One is how we treat one another. Absolute that's what this whole passage is all about. How do we treat one another in the family of God? Do we support for one another? Do we care for one another?

Luke: 56:39

Do we show honor and respect to one another? That is how we know we belong to the family of God. And then finally, how do we conduct ourselves in circumstances that we cannot control? You want to see what comes out of someone's heart? You want to see what's in the inner man?

Luke: 56:57

Put them in a place where they feel powerless and they feel out of control. And out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth will speak. Our actions will show what is truly there. Christ Paul here is saying that when you are in a situation, whether you find yourself as a slave or you find yourself as a widow, the way in which you conduct yourself will indicate to the world that there is something different. We ought to not look like the world, Church.

Luke: 57:26

We ought to feel and look and be different than everyone else because we're loved by God. Because Jesus's salvation and his power and work in our life has changed us so dramatically that the way we live our lives looks and feels different to all those around us.