Salem Conference 2012 - Pastor John Farley Friday AM

Pastor John

Whose slave are you?

 

<Rebound and opening prayer>

 

“Please turn in your Bibles to 2TI 2:2”

 

Thank you Pastor Joseph Sugrue and the congregation here at Grace and Truth ministries for welcoming us to this conference.

 

I wish to first thank you personally for your gracious gift and other gestures of hospitality to me and to my traveling partner, Deacon Marc Pomeroy.

 

You are blessed to have one of the finest Bible teachers in the United States as your pastor-teacher here in Salem Oregon.

 

I have known Pastor Joe for over 10 years. We were ordained together in 2004 by Pastor Robert McLaughlin of Grace Bible Church in Somerset MA.

 

That means that we went through “basic training” together….and it was anything but basic.

 

2TI 2:2 The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

NASU

Pastor Joe and I would arrive at GBC ready to relax and hear the word of God, not unlike you did today, but as soon as we heard those words 2TI 2:2 we knew it was no longer going to be an ordinary night.

 

We would be put on the spot to teach a message without preparation.

 

It was the best training there was, and I went through it side by side with this man.

 

By the way please continue to keep pastor McLaughlin and those great people at Grace Bible Church in your prayers.

 

Great memories though.

 

I could not have made it without pastor Joe. He showed me the ropes and introduced me to great resources and we even got together with evangelist Scott Grande and the royal family and did several dry runs for the oral exam together;

 

After we were ordained I had the great fortune of teaching tag team with pastor Joe many times. Perhaps most memorably when we used to do the Tuesday night Basics class for several years. Alternating back and forth.

 

There was one Christmas that was pretty memorable too.

 

I was right there many times when pastor Joe was tested and went through different forms of adversity, and what I found remarkable were two things at least:  one was his tenacious ability to go forward in the plan no matter what, and the other was his basic humility.

 

So congratulations to this congregation in Salem for receiving a great man, a real servant - or better yet, slave - of our Lord Jesus Christ, and a fantastic teacher of God’s word.

 

Now,  let me ask you something …

 

Are you a slave to anything or anyone?

 

That is an interesting question to ask a free citizen of the United States of America.

 

Freedom is in our DNA.

 

ROM 1:1 Paul, a bond-servant [slave]  of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God,

 

 

The word for “bond-servant” in your English NAS translation of ROM 1:1 is doulos.

 

In the first century A.D., doulos and its companion Greek words would have generally evoked feelings of repugnance in the hearts of free persons and the vast majority of slaves.

 

The Greek  word for slave, doulos,  would have aroused negative feelings - feelings of dehumanized and unwilling servitude.

 

 

To be made a slave was to be disgraced and undergo social death.

 

If you called somebody a doulos, a slave, you were insulting him.

 

And it is very much the same in our country today.

 

We still have not come to terms with that “peculiar institution” as it was called, the practice of slavery in the American South.

 

 

Now slavery is a taboo subject in the United States.

 

  But the fact is it is all around us.

 

Sometimes you have to confront the taboo, because it is an obstacle to understanding more about the spiritual life.

 

You cannot ignore the fact that slavery and slave imagery is found in the New Testament.

 

As much as we may be shocked by it, the fact is that our Bible refers to slavery to depict one aspect of your relationship to the Lord.

 

 To remove it from our consideration (as some translators have sought to do) is to compromise the message it has for us.

 

In fact, everybody is a slave.  It’s a question of to what?

 

You are a slave.

 

Does that shock you?

 

Slavery and domination are buried deep in the human psyche.

 

Let me shock you some more.

 

Slavery shows up in human romance and sexuality.

 

Lovers pretend that one is the master and the other is the slave.

 

Love slaves.

 

It fulfills a need. There is a need there.

 

Addiction is really slavery. You put yourself in bondage to a substance.

 

So whose slave are you?

 

Some people are slaves to a corporation.  Their entire identity is wrapped up in that.

 

Some people are slaves to money.

 

Money makes a great servant but it is a cruel master.

 

Some people are slaves to tradition.  We’ve always done it that way. That sort of thing.

 

Other people are slaves to their hobby.  It may be a sport. Music.  Dancing.  Theatre. The movies.

 

Others are slaves to an ideal.   Beauty.  Peace. Health.  It could be a fine ideal, but it’s not Christ. And once you become a slave to it, the ideal becomes an idol.

 

 

People are slaves to education.  Or to serving the youth.  Or to stamping out poverty. Lovely, but it’s slavery and it’s not Christ.

 

Some people are slaves to their enemies.

 

They are filled with rage, or jealousy, or revenge.  Their enemies therefore exert complete control over them.

 

 

 Others are slaves to their friends.

 

When their friends come calling they have to go do whatever the friends are doing. Young people fall into this trap a lot.  We call it peer pressure. But it’s slavery.

 

We want to be slaves. And we want to be masters.  We want to be abused, and then we want to dominate.

 

And we’re weird.  People fall in love with their captors.

 

People are slaves to a lust pattern they have.  Power.  Approbation.  Sex.

 

Sometimes the Bible calls our master an idol.

 

It could be an institution like a political party, or a social club, or an extended family.

 

It could be the government.   Dependence on welfare is slavery.

 

It could be your spouse.

 

Some people are quite literally slaves.  Someone could be held in a relationship against their will. Or in prison. Or in a country where the government or military literally makes you a slave.

 

 

It could be an object.  A house, or a car, or the local bar. Food.

 

Whatever it is, or whoever it is, this one has a total hold over you.  It holds the power. You bow to it.

 

You are a slave.

 

The question is only  - Whose slave are you?

 

 

ROM 1:1 Paul, a bond-servant [slave]  of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God,

 

In ROM 1:1, Paul declares himself to be the slave of Christ Jesus.

 

 

Paul, the free Roman citizen, writing to a community of Christians in Rome that included slaves, describes himself as a slave to Christ.

 

 

The Greek word doulos means “slave”.

 

That’s what it means, it does not mean anything else, we’re going to see this, it does not mean servant or even bond-servant, it means slave.

 

That word is offensive in some respects, I know, but that’s what it means.

 

Paul calls himself - no he brags about this, it is the first thing he wants the Romans to know about him -

He is a slave of Christ Jesus.

 

When introducing himself to these Roman Christians, the first and most important thing Paul wants them to know is that he is a slave of Christ Jesus.

 

Slavery in the ancient world was a brutal and shameful thing.

 

Slaves were the exclusive property of their masters, and they had no control over their lives.

 

Now we don’t often to stop the consider these things, but the fact is that

 

This notion of a slave is very important in the Christian way of life.

Very important.

 

 

 The slave concept is rather fundamental to the whole idea of the Gospel, the good news.

 

So what do I mean by that?

 

Well, I am going to have recall some things that I think many of you already know.

 

Now the Gospel, the good news, includes something called Redemption.

 

OK, so what is redemption?

 

Redemption refers to the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ paid the price for the sins of the world by His substitutionary spiritual death on the cross.

 

EPH 1:7  In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace

 

He bought us.

 

Where were we when He bought us?

 

C’mon all you Col. Thieme students!

The - what? - slave market of sin!

 

What kind of market did He purchase us out of?

 

The SLAVE market.

 

He bought us out of the slave market of sin.

 

Today we consider ourselves to be free.  But the Bible tells us differently. 

 

The Bible tells us that we are born into an inescapable slavery - spiritual bondage.

 

We are born slaves to sin.

 

As members of the human race, we exist in a slave market of sin.

 

We are helpless to redeem ourselves.

 

We enter the world with a sin nature, separated from God and powerless to establish a relationship with Him.

 

 

We have no way to emancipate ourselves from the captivity of our inherited depravity.

 

But the gracious plan of God for mankind calls for a Savior, a redeemer - the Lord Jesus Christ - to purchase our freedom from the slave market of sin.

 

 

Through the saving work of Jesus Christ on the cross, God opened a way to provide freedom from the slave market of sin.

 

This is the Gospel - very good news!

OK so that is the beginning of the plan of salvation.

 

Now how about the end?

 

When you think about your spiritual life, when you think about the ultimate, when you think about what it is that you want to hear when you appear before the Judgment Seat of Christ,..

 

What words do you want to hear?

 

C’mon, say them:

 

“Well done, good and faithful servant.”

 

Hmmmm.

 

That’s what we are hoping to hear. That is the end game so to speak that we all are striving to attain.

 

 

“Well done, good and faithful servant.”

 

Those words are found in three places:  MAT 25:21, MAT 25:23, and LUK 19:17.

 

 

All three times, guess what the Greek word is for “servant”?

You got it!  Doulos.

 

Based on our study of the Greek, it should read:

 

“Well done, good and faithful slave.”

 

 

Because in all three places, the Greek word is for “servant” is doulos.

And the NAS actually has it right!

 

For example,

 

MAT 25:21 "His master said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful slave. You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.'

 

 

So we celebrate the fact that we are rescued from the slave market…

 

So that means we are glad we aren’t slaves anymore…

 

….Yet we are striving to hear the words “well done good and faithful slave” - which means we want to be a slave!