Transcript
Tim Keller (0:00)
You.
Announcer (0:04)
Welcome to Gospel and Life. If you have a job, it's likely that you think about it a lot. But how much have you thought about the biblical approach to your work? Today on Gospel and Life, Tim Keller shows us that the Bible has incredibly helpful and practical wisdom we can apply to the work we do. Wisdom you may find surprising, even life changing.
Scripture Reader (0:32)
The scripture reading is taken From Ephesians, chapter 5, verse 21 and chapter 6, verses 5 through 9. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly as if you were serving the Lord, not men, because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free. And masters treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their master and yours is in heaven and there is no favoritism with him. This is God's word.
Tim Keller (1:31)
The sermons this fall have to do with the gospel in the world. What we're asking is what happens when you take the Gospel out of the private life and out of the church into the world? What happens? And one of the answers which we're looking at last week and this week is that the gospel affects how you do your work, how you do your job, how you pursue your vocation. In this passage we have Paul saying, if you are a believer in Christ, how does that affect your work? How does that affect your work? If you're a worker, how does it affect your work? If you're a manager, how does that affect your work? And that's what we're going to explore tonight. This particular passage is not so much a high lofty preaching, it's more of a down to earth practical teaching. It's not inspirational, it's more practical and as a result it's incredibly useful. But if we're going to understand it, I think we need to do a little background work. Once we do a little bit of background work to understand, to help us, I think put what is being said here into historical context, then we're going to see two principles and a power. In other words, background work, Practical principle one, practical principle two and the power to carry them out. Background, principle, principle, power. Okay, background. Why do we do background? Well, when the modern reader starts a text and it says, slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and sphere that raises a few red flags. And of course, there are plenty of people who look at passages like that today and say, see, the Bible condones slavery. There was just an op ed piece in the New York Times a week or so ago in which he said, well, of course the New Testament condones slavery. Look, it says slaves obey your masters. And even worse than that, back in the mid-1800s in the south, particularly in America, these texts were used to support slavery. They said, well, of course, look, it says slaves are obey your master. So it's okay. There can't be anything wrong with it. So we have to do a little bit of background work really quickly to even read this and get anything out of it. And any commentary you ever read and commentaries are trying to help you understand a text of the Bible and they try to put it in the historical, cultural context of the time so you understand what the whoever was writing it, what that person was saying. And it, it just helps you understand it better. Every commentary says, when you read this passage, you need to keep two things in mind. The first is that Paul. And if you read all of Ephesians, you'll see that Paul wrote this letter to address a group of Christians on Sunday morning when they're gathered for worship and they were gathered in households. In fact, what you have in Ephesians 5, 6 is what is called a household code because it first describes around Ephesians 5:22, it talks about husbands and wives live like this. Then it says parents and children live like this. And now it says slaves and masters live like this. And the reason Paul was doing that was because that was a household. Households were large and they had in them spouses, children and domestic servants who lived in the household. And so what Paul was actually doing was he was addressing households. He was addressing the extended family households of the day. And you can tell by reading the text that Paul was not saying this. He wasn't saying, let's get together as Christians and decide what do we think of 1st century Greco Roman cultural institutions? What do we think of a church as a church about the social structures of society? No, he wasn't doing that. What he was actually saying is tomorrow morning on Monday, how will you live in those institutions in a way that's distinctive because you believe the Gospel? He was here to talk about how do you live in this society? Not, well, what are we going to do about the institutions? That's just not his. That's just not what he's talking about. There's plenty of places in the Bible that Talk about how do we look at social structures and how do we look at injustices of social institutions. But this is one of the places which Paul's not condoning slavery, but he's not criticizing, he's talking to people. How are you going to live tomorrow now that you're Christians? So he's actually just not. He's not condoning slavery. He's really not addressing the institution. But here's the other thing that's very important. One of the questions always comes up. I'm reading a book by a Princeton professor, an African Princeton professor, about moral revolution. And there's a long chapter on the abolition of slavery in the British empire in the 1830s. And he says what is pretty well known that who led the charge for abolition? Quakers and evangelical Christians. The evangelicals out of the Great awakenings of the 18th century. And the Quakers led the way and said, we have to abolish slavery. It's absolutely wrong. We've got to stop it. So the question is, if Christians rose up, you know, the last couple hundred years and said we have to stop slavery, why didn't the early Christians rise up and said, we have to stop all slavery in the Greco Roman world? And what the commentaries say is, the answer is you have to understand how different slavery was. It was a very different institution. I wasn't saying it was a good institution, but it was very different. And let me just what do you think of when you think of slavery? Let me tell you what the situation was at the time. At that time, the servants that Paul was talking about. Slavery was not based on race. Secondly, it was never permanent. It was about 10 or 15 years long. Thirdly, it wasn't based on kidnapping, systematic going out and capturing people and then having them, you know, slaves for life. It was. Most slaves were captives from the wars. And if your country lost us soldier, you were brought in to be a slave for a number of years and that's the way it was done, or indentured servanthood. So it wasn't race based, it wasn't permanent, it wasn't based on kidnapping. And slaves had rights. Did you know that at the time that Paul was talking, was writing, you could go to court against your master, you could make a complaint against your master for an injustice. Slaves had rights. They actually could own property, they could actually own other slaves. And then you begin to realize that not that it was a great institution, but it was a very different institution. It was really quite more diverse and quite, in some ways not as monolithic or as brutal as the slavery that Christians rose up and said, this has got to end. And as a result, Paul on a Sunday is not saying how do we abolish something which isn't probably what you and I are thinking of when you think of slavery anyway, but he's saying how can you live in it? You got that? And even though that institution, the Greco Roman 1st century slavery, was nowhere near as monolithic and as brutal as the slavery became later, even so, I want to show you what F.F. bruce, the great 20th century Bible scholar, said that when you read what Paul says to masters and to servants in Ephesians, in Colossians, in Philemon and other places, FF Bruce says Paul brings us into an atmosphere in which the institution of slavery could only wilt and die. The attitudes that Paul demands of Christians, the attitudes that the Gospel creates in Christians means even that kind of very different sort of institution of slavery inside the Christian community just couldn't last. Paul set it up for failure. Paul set it up to wilt and die. And by the way, we know that it did. Now having said that, one more thing by way of background. You got to do. I'm sorry, we got to do that. I hate to take five minutes like this, but there we are. Because you can't get anything out of a text like this unless you deal with the, the historical and cultural difference. We're on the other side of the African slave trade and therefore we can't possibly read this text the way the original people read it. But I'm trying to help you. However, what if somebody out there says, and you might say okay, that's helpful, that was helpful. But what relevance is instructions to 1st century Greco Roman slaves? To me, if the distance is that Great, you're right, 2,000 years, a very great distance. But Paul's instructions to first century slaves are not relevant to me. Ah, but I'm here to say that's not true. Paul's instructions are relevant to you because they're to first century slaves. Back in the 70s, a man named Studs Terkel, I like that for a name, wrote a great book called Working. It was a survey of work in America. It's way dated now, but it was really quite a well written book. And in the introduction he just interviewed people and talked about what is it like to work in America. Listen to this. Suz Terkel said this in the introduction. He says this book being about work is by its very nature about violence to the spirit as well as to the body. It's about ulcers and accidents. It's about nervous breakdowns and kicking the dog. It's about above all, daily humiliation to survive the day is triumph enough for the walking wounded among the great many of us, what he's saying there, yeah, we don't have slavery in America and yet some people always experience work as humiliating, grinding drudgery. And so some people, that's all their work is. And all people sometimes experience work as that. Work is still hard. Work is terribly hard. In fact, work is always frustrating to a degree and a lot of work is incredibly frustrating and humiliating and brutalizing. Work is about violence. Work is about accidents and ulcers. It's about frustration and kicking the dog. And we all know that. And you know that work is about overwork and being pressed and not making enough money even though you're working like crazy. It's about humiliation. It's about frustration. Therefore, what is Paul going to say that will help us be have meaningful, satisfying work lives? But here it's a simple fact of history that the early church was filled with, with slaves and servants. They flooded in. Why? Because if what? Because Paul and the Gospel gave them something that enabled in spite them, in spite of their humiliation, in spite of their drudgery, in spite of the grinding, crushing nature of their work, first century slaves, the gospel gave them something that made their work life meaningful and satisfying and, you know, sustainable, bearable. And if he, what he had, if Paul's, you know, if Paul's prescription can help them, why couldn't it help you? Of course it can help you. This, what Paul is saying here is relevant to you because it was originally given to 1st century slaves and it worked. Okay, now what are those two things that Paul gives them? Two incredibly important things that enabled people, even in that kind of work situation, to experience meaningful, satisfying, bearable work lives. And here's the first principle, verse 7. Serve wholeheartedly as serving the Lord. I know the English says serve wholeheartedly as if you were serving the Lord, but actually in the Greek it says serve wholeheartedly when you're serving your masters, when you're at work, when you're working for your boss, it's actually working for the Lord. All work is a calling. All work is a calling from the Lord. All work serves the Lord. Now, a little background again, I told you perhaps, did I just say something about this? That many Greek and Roman writers wrote household codes, I.e. codes of conduct for spouses, for, you know, for husbands and wives, for masters and servants, for parents and children, household codes. And that's what Paul's doing here. He actually has them in Ephesians, he has them in Timothy, he has them in Colossians. They're very well known. But what the commentators will tell you is that most. When the Greek and Roman people addressed members of the household, they didn't even talk to the slaves. They addressed the masters. What's amazing here is Paul addresses the slaves. In fact, he addresses them first. In fact, he talks to them more than he talks to the masters. He's treating them with dignity. He's treating them as if they were responsible agents. See, the other writers said, well, why even talk to slaves? If you want to regulate what happens in the household, you talk to the masters because the slaves just do what they're told. That's not how Paul sees it. Paul treats the slaves with dignity by even addressing them. Secondly, look at what he says to the masters. Do you realize how revolutionary this was? He says, and masters treat your slaves in the same way. In the same way. What do you mean, the same way? Do you know what that means? Most commentators go crazy at that because you go the same way as what? And you go back up into the verses before and what he's trying to say with fear and respect. You must respect them more than that. He says, do not threaten them. You know, the Roman, the great Roman writer Seneca said, always treat your slaves as enemies. That's all they know. Power, fear. Always treat your slaves as enemies. And Paul says, if you're a master and you're a Christian, don't you dare. Never threaten. And then he says, since you know that you are a slave too, and from God's point of view, you are an equal. That's what that all means. Look, it says, and know that he who is both their master and yours. See, that's leveling the playing field. You've got a master and that. And your slave's got a master. And there is no favoritism with him. Literally, it says, he is not a respecter of persons. And that was the Greek, that was an idiom that said, in God's eyes, masters, you are absolute equals with your servants. Now, this is revolutionary. This is crazy. This is the reason why FF Bruce said that the gospel brought people into a situation in which even that kind of moderate form of slavery could only wilt and die. It is so far from Seneca saying, treat your slaves as if they're enemies. It's so far from Aristotle. By the way, who says, some people deserve to be slaves. Some people are born to be slaves. This is absolutely different. But what does it mean? It's not just that people have dignity. It says, when you serve wholeheartedly and don't forget how menial these jobs were, how dirty these jobs were, how humiliating many of these jobs were, the drudgery of them. But you're serving the Lord. All work is a calling from God. Peter o' Brien, a commentator on Ephesians, says this. He says, when Paul says, do your work serving the Lord, this is what the commentator says. Ultimately, then the distinction between the secular and the sacred breaks down. Every task, however, quote, unquote, secular, however, quote, unquote menial looks falls within the sphere of Christ's lordship. Martin Luther got a hold of this, and it was really the other principle of the Reformation. Some of you may have, you know, if you know much about the Reformation, where Martin Luther and some other reformers said, we're going to reform the church. Okay, what was the battle cry of the Reformation? Most of you probably have heard it was, you're saved by faith and grace, not by works, not by good works. But that was only one of the battle cries. You know what the other battle cry was? It's what Luther called the priesthood of all believers. But what he meant was this. Luther was a monk. And for years he'd been told that monks and nuns and priests, you know, people who took holy orders, they had a calling from God, they were called by God. Everybody else was just out there working. Everybody else was just doing profane kind of stuff. We are the ones who have been called by God. And then he read texts like this and he says, wait a minute. This text means Luther said in one of his famous passages, the milkmaid has as honorable a calling as the priest and the preacher. And why would that be? Now, I don't want to redo what we talked about last week, but when you. Last week we had a sermon on faith and work and we looked at the goodness of creation in Genesis 1, and we said this all work, all work is necessary for human flourishing. Sure, some work is lower skilled and doesn't get paid as much. Some work is higher skilled. And of course, in our worldly pecking order, this is good work, this is bad work. But not in God's. There is no favoritism with him. He is not a respecter of persons. And so we said last week, put it another way, unless somebody cleans the countertops in your apartment, you're going to die. It's called hygiene. So either you have to sweep your floor, either you have to make. You have to wash your sheets. Either you have to clean the bathroom and clean. Either you have to do all that nasty, dirty, low skilled domestic work. We have to pay somebody else to do it. But don't you know if it doesn't happen, you're going to die? Why? Because it's necessary for human thriving, for human life, and it doesn't pay very well, but it's crucial. See, all the work is crucial and therefore all work is a calling by God from God because God made this material world and he made the human community and he gave us our different gifts and abilities. And as a result, Luther said all work is God's calling.