Am I a Slave? or a Runaway?

Slavery is a very ancient custom. It goes back as far as civilizations have. And one of the most notable times of slavery ran from the 1400s through the 1800s in exploiting the peoples of Africa. The slave trade began, curiously, by the Portuguese who bumped into tribes up in North Africa who themselves were exploiting other tribes and using them in various ways, and began to sort of borrow from that and then buy from that. The Spanish seemed to be very good at reaching beyond their country and finding gold. They almost had a nose for gold. They were positioned on the southern part of Europe, the western part of the Mediterranean, the north part of Africa, and also looking west out to the Caribbean, South America, Central America areas.

And they began to expand their empire. The other nations of Europe began to look at the Spanish with great jealousy and envy. All of this gold, all of this naval supremacy, all of these goods that were coming in from afar. And they began to want to copy them.

Britain, for example, an island nation herself decided, well, we'll go start some colonies, too, and we'll go find some gold, and we'll haul a bunch of stuff home. And they set off and didn't find any gold, and they set up some colonies that didn't really do them anything. One of them was in this country. They didn't get anything from this colony at all. Finally, we're fairly okay with just letting it go, in fact.

It was just costing them. And so, in their greed, they began to look at the Spanish galleons coming home with all the booty. And the British naval superpower grew out of private industry, the privateers that the British government encouraged and helped fund to go out and pirate these Spanish galleons coming back with the gold.

If they couldn't find it themselves, just take it from the Spanish. And that's what they did. And the British navy, quote-unquote, was more of a civilian raiding group of ships. And it finally came to a big head with a great naval battle. But the other nations of Europe also began to say, you know, we want some of these extravagant commodities from afar. Let's go out and colonize. So the Dutch colonized, the French colonized, the Germans colonized. All these colonies really had to be placed in one band around the world, and that was around the equator, in the tropics.

Where there was lots of rain, there was lots of water, there were a lot of resources that could grow any time of year, year-round. The population in Europe was quite low, and the labor-intensive commodities that they were seeking required a lot of manual labor. And so gradually there were more and more relationships with tribes along the coast to actually go in and steal people. Just go in and take them. They didn't care anyway, they were from some other tribe.

And millions upon millions of people were just grabbed from their homes and commandeered and made slaves. In the 1800s alone, six million people were stolen out of that continent. You know, the triangle trade, it was called, became very popular with Europe. You know how even in modern days where you have a trucking company, it might truck something from Los Angeles to New York. That's kind of a nice lucrative route. The only thing is, if you have to drive that truck all the way back to LA for another load, you're going to burn up all your profits in fuel. And so with the triangle trade, what happened was ships would leave England and France full of products from those countries, and they would sail down along the African coast, Morocco, and some of the other important countries all the way down to the center of Africa, and they would sell those goods, emptying their ships.

Then they built what are called half-height decks in their ships. Half-height decks was half the height of a human being. So you had two decks instead of one, and in a good-sized ship, you could put in 400 slaves in a half-height, lying or sitting position, and chain them down, and then go to the next stop, which was Brazil, Central America, the Caribbean Islands, and a very few went up to the New England colonies of England.

There, they unloaded and sold off these people they had stolen, and then filled up their cargo vessels with cotton, with sugar, sugar, and then rum, which is made from sugar as well, and a few other goods that they wanted, and they would sail back to Europe. So the triangle trade was a full ship in every direction, and that mushroomed.

All of the European nations wanted these colonies, wanted things around Northern South America, the Central America area, the island countries. And so, consequently, there was a lot of very, very difficult times for people who lived in Africa in those days.

The United States officially declared war in 1776. It really didn't get its independence from Britain for some time later, and continued really to fight that battle until 1814, in various ways. But in 1807, not long after this country was founded, the British, on behalf of the religious people, the Protestants in Britain, began to really have their conscience stricken over a long period of time, and they petitioned the Parliament, and they petitioned the King so much that finally, in 1807, the importation of slaves from Africa was made illegal in Britain. Two years later, in 1809, the United States also made the Atlantic slave trade illegal. It was a time when those things had to be clamped down on several nations.

Some of the naval operations went to try to interdict and intercede, and try to make this to start happening for people. The only thing was, is the law said nothing about if you already own those slaves. Those millions of people could stay in slavery. You just couldn't bring any more, you see. That was convenient, wasn't it? Helps your conscience to think that we're not doing this anymore, but those who had slaves just continued to use them.

It became quite popular to feel bad, like Thomas Jefferson. If you go to his home in Virginia, and other notable individuals, you'll find that they had slaves and their properties, their plantations, and they would talk about releasing them, talk about freeing them. But it was never quite convenient. If you go to Monticello, you can see this. It's never quite convenient, because there's a lot of land, there's a lot to do, not many in your family.

How would you get along, you see? So it became very common for people to, in their will, after I'm dead, you are free to go. In the 1830s, an event took place that began to change things in this country.

There was a small cargo ship, it was actually built in this country, but it was sailing out of Cuba. It wasn't very large for the ships of the day, and it was a normal cargo ship. It had one full-height deck.

And this ship had a captain that was convinced to make an illegal run with about 50 slaves from Cuba, taking slaves that had been brought across the Atlantic, that had gotten through, the Spanish had brought them over, and get them up to the United States, to the southern part of the U.S. So, the plot was hatched, the money got paid, the people were loaded, and the ship sailed. However, the thing about half-height decks was you really couldn't get on your feet. You couldn't really do much. But on a full-height deck, people could really accomplish things. That ship hadn't gotten a mile or two, I guess, until they killed the captain. The 50 people on board, the Africans, just took over the ship and demanded a skipper to sail them home to Africa.

Well, they ended up sailing up to Long Island, New York, and there a U.S. cutter of the U.S. revenue service intercepted that ship and said, this is illegal, this is wrong, we are taking the ship and we are taking the cargo.

Now, what happened here that began to change things is a very interesting thing, because when the U.S. cutter took them captive, they said, we are going to sell these slaves and recover the money and put it into the treasury.

See the mentality here. Well, the Queen of Spain said, oh no, you are not. Those are our slaves. We shipped them over there, they are ours. The attorneys said, ah, did you hear the Queen of Spain? They were brought illegally, therefore they are freemen. And the 50 slaves all said, we demand to go home.

Now, this was quite a paradox for this country. It was a turning point, and it took nine years through the court system for the people on board, Lea Amistad, the ship was named, which meant, ironically, friendship, to work through the system and a decision to be made. Nine years later, this document was written by the U.S. Supreme Court. This is the actual document, a copy of it. And on March 9, 1841, those 50 people were declared to be freemen, and they were all returned home to their country. And that began to really change some things. Nine years later, a lady named Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote a novel.

In 1851, she wrote a novel about a runaway slave. And this woman made it a real passionate novel. She, in a sense, personalized it for everyone who would read it. Put yourself in the shoes of a man named Tom who is running away in this country from his masters.

It was intense. The famous Russian author Tolstoy wrote of the book, This is one of the greatest productions of the human mind. Tom became the first black American hero in the United States. And a real groundswell of appreciation and support grew from that. At the same time, it was very controversial. Because in this country, the Industrial Revolution was really breaking out. And manual labor had been replaced, and was being replaced, in great leaps and bounds by industrialization, but only in the North. Down in the South, where the big fields were, all the crops were being grown, it was again more temperate in climate. Labor was not being done by machine. And so, consequently, this book, named Uncle Tom's Cabin, accelerated U.S. opinion, and also accelerated the division in this country. And as that grew, it eventually led to war. At the beginning of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln happened to bump into Harriet Beecher Stowe. And he said to her, So this is the little lady who made this big war. Here's another book about a runaway slave. Back during the times of the Romans, there was a great thirst and a quest for not only power, but for good things for the Roman citizens. Rome was a small area. They had borrowed a lot of concepts from the Greeks. They had the taste of quality and finery, the taste of good things and food. And as people will be, they just wanted more. And so what the Romans did, being a small nation with a small population, they simply went out and conquered other nations and took many of those people's slaves to build their roads.

And conquered other nations and hauled them home as slaves to build their buildings. To provide them with the things that they wanted. And so the Roman Empire grew and grew and grew. Now, if you ever see a map of the Roman Empire, it stretched far from the west out to the east. It went north, south, down into Africa. It was a very, very large empire.

And yet, the population of the Roman Empire in its heyday was considerably less than the population of Los Angeles, Greater Los Angeles, today. Now, think for a moment how big the land area is of the Roman Empire, and there were fewer people living there, including the slaves, than live in Greater LA today.

You begin to see that these big ideas of Rome and the big projects that they had and all this craving and lust that they had, required a lot of slave labor. And so it was. Times were hard on people at that time. A slave's only privilege was considered his or her right to reproduce. That was their only privilege in life.

They were only valued as a human instrument. That was the definition. As you sold or you bought a slave, it wasn't the individual that you were buying, it was the value of that person's human instrument. It was graded on. They were used, they were abused, they were sold, they were killed absolutely freely.

This book about a runaway slave tells the story of Onesimus, who was a church member, like you and me, and he was a runaway slave. If we look in Philemon, Chapter 1, Verses 10 through 13, just before the book of Hebrews, we find this incredible glimpse at an individual, much like Tom, who had been taken involuntarily, who was struggling to get away, and there was some real concern shown for him.

Paul says to the church member Philemon, I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, this runaway slave, the member of the church, the one who had come to help Paul, who Paul felt very appreciative of, whom I have begotten while in my chains. Now, one of the commentaries says of that word chains, that the Greek word implies that Paul's right arm was chained to the left arm of his Roman soldier charge. And that's how Paul spent his life, that's how he spent his days, chained to a Roman soldier who was given charge over him.

Verse 12, I am sending him back. Now, that's got to strike some fear in you. I am sending him back. Verse 16, no longer as a slave, but more than a slave.

If we step back in time a little further, we find a time in Biblical history of other escaped slaves. The kingdom of Israel in the north half under Jeroboam had escaped, as it were, God and the control that God had, and they had found themselves off in Assyria.

There was also a time later when the tribe of Judah, the kingdom of Judah, Judah, Benjamin, and Levi in the south also decided to abandon their, the one who owned them, and they were taken captive by Babylon. We read just a little bit of the story in Ezra chapter 9, verses 8 through 9, as we catch up with them many, many years after their enslavement by the Babylonian Empire.

In Ezra chapter 9 and verse 8, it says, here's Ezra speaking, and notice the perspective that he has as a slave of Babylon, or having been a slave. He says, and now for a little while, grace has been shown from the Lord our God to leave us a remnant to escape. Now under Nehemiah and Ezra, a group was able to escape legally in this sense and go back and rebuild the temple, rebuild the walls. And he talks about this, verse 9, for we were slaves. Yet our God did not forsake us in our bondage, but he extended mercy to us in the sight of the kings of Persia to revive us, to repair the house of our God, to rebuild its ruins, and to give us a wall in Judah and Jerusalem.

If we go back a little bit further, God allowed the Israelites to purchase slaves from the Gentiles. Now God did not support slavery, just like God did not support divorce. But there were certain common customs in the world, and God did not always require the carnal nation of Israel to do everything in just the most perfect or godly way. We see in Leviticus chapter 25 and verse 44 that there was a requirement upon them, but that requirement did not prohibit them from purchasing slaves as their own property. We'll notice that requirement in Leviticus 25 and verse 44. And as for your male and female slaves, whom you may have, from the nations that are around you, from them you may buy male and female slaves.

Verse 45, Moreover, you may buy the children of the strangers who dwell among you, and their families who are with you, which they beget in your land, and they shall become your property.

God, however, was wanting something different for his liberated people. He wanted to start contrast, because slavery was a common concept in the world and has been down through time. In verse 43, notice, For they are my servants. He's talking about his own people. He's jealous for them. He doesn't want anybody else owning the Israelites but him. He bought them. He went to Israel. He brought them out. He says, Nobody is going to own you except me. This is an important lesson for the sermon today. He says, They are my servants whom I brought out of the land of Egypt, and they shall not be sold as slaves. There is yet another book in the Bible about slaves, runaway slaves. There was once severe drought that impacted a family, and that drought required them to move to a large kingdom. And things in that kingdom did not go well for them. It's a foreign country. And it forced this family of 70 to relocate into a semi-hostile land. In time, this family of 70 grew into a large tribe. I've told you about the population of Rome being about 13 million in its heyday. The size of this one tribe was about 3 million. Just one tribe. It's about one-fourth the size of the entire population of the Roman Empire in its heyday. It's a sizable group of people. Let's go to Exodus 1 and read how this tribal group was exploited. Exodus 1 will begin in verse 11. It says, Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh supply cities of Python and Ramses. But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. Now, when you're a million, two, three million people strong, and you're multiplying, and you're in a nation with a relatively small population, you become a significant risk to that nation. Verse 13, So the Egyptians made the children of Israel serve with rigor, and they made their lives bitter with hard bondage and mortar and brick and in all manner of service in the field. All their service in which they made them serve was with rigor. Now let's stop and ask ourselves a personal question. How would you like to be someone's slave? What do you think? Consider that for a moment. How would you like to be someone's slave, owned by someone else? Consider the consequences of that. To submit your life and everything you do to someone else. Here's another question. Have you ever been a slave? Have you been abused and abased and felt shackled, felt trapped, really stuck? If your answer is no, then the Bible says you're either in denial or you're committing spiritual suicide because you know you are or have been a slave and you're choosing not to do anything about it. If your answer is yes, I am a slave or I have been a slave, then you're making good progress. In the sermon today, I'd like to talk to you about this kind of confusing confluence of ideas here. I'd like to sort out with you the biblical topic of slavery and show how slavery applies to your relationship with God, with your fellow man, and with Satan. Let's take a look at this topic of slavery. God's people in the Old Testament were called slaves many times. You see that reference. Slavery, in fact, was a concept that was fundamental to understanding the Passover.

It's fundamental to understanding the lesson of the days of unleavened bread in which we are keeping right now. If we don't understand slavery, it's going to be very, very difficult to appreciate and understand what God has done and why he has these particular holy days. Slavery is a really, really big deal.

The definition of slavery is a form of forced labor in which people are considered to be the property of others. You're forced to do something and you're owned by someone else. It's very important for us to understand why God uses this concept of slavery. The Greek word in the New Testament is duolos, or duolu, depending on which term is being used. God uses this in relationship with his future children, of all things. None of us tend to think of ourselves as slaves or having been slaves, and yet God uses this fundamental concept as he develops children for his family.

One of the key things is that slaves do the will of someone else. There's no focus on a slave bettering his or her life. When you were a slave in Egypt, you didn't have the luxury of maybe a family home, buying a little property, encouraging the family to live better, enhancing your life. No, they would tend to divide people up, send the men off over here, the women off over there. They were just used as labor tools. And there was little or no focus on the bettering of oneself.

If we look in Exodus 5, verses 6-9, we see what this concept was like for them. And it's important for us to grasp this. Ephesians 5-6, So the same day Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people and their officers, saying, You shall no longer give the people straw. You shall no longer think of the people. This isn't about the people. This isn't about for their welfare, their imbedderment.

You shall no longer give them straw to make the brick as before. Let them go and now gather straw for themselves. So as the wheat crop was harvested, the top of the wheat was cut off with the kernels of wheat. That was harvested away. And now the Israelites had to go out into the wheat fields and get the straw and bring it back and chop it up themselves and mix it in the mud for those sun-baked bricks that made up so much of the city of Ramses and the other city that they were building.

Verse 8, You shall lay on them the quota of bricks which they made before. Don't reduce that. For they are idle, and therefore they cry out. The slaves here are crying out, saying, Let us go and sacrifice. They're starting to think about themselves. They're starting to say, It would be better for us to go and sacrifice to our God. Let's knock that out of their heads.

Let's get them back to thinking about Egypt. Let more work be laid on the men that they may labor in it, and let them not regard false words, in other words, words about themselves or thoughts about me and my life. The Keelan Delich commentary says, Pharaoh was determined to keep the Israelites as slaves and to use them as tools for the glorifying of his kingdom. Any thirst for their freedom might become dangerous to his kingdom.

He thought he could extinguish such desires by making them really knuckle down and not having any time to think about anything else. Last night was the night to be much remembered. It is a time to remember the glorious liberty from that predicament of being absolute slaves. Enslaved to something that is detrimental to you, that is no good for you, has nothing that's going to help you in any way. It's a joyous time. It represents Egypt and sin and Pharaoh and Satan. It represents God and Jesus Christ and about people being free to go out with a high hand.

Unleavened bread is a seven-day trek, and as we eat unleavened bread this week, we should be thinking of making way, making progress, getting away from that entrapment, that enslavement, to something that is really bad for us. Deuteronomy 16 says that when your child asks you, why did we do this? You tell them, God came and rescued you. God came and saved you. You need to rejoice in God.

However, we need to notice that the Israelites didn't walk out of Egypt as free men and women. God didn't just say, okay, you're free! Run! Get out of here! Scram! Just go out and have a good life. Bye!

It didn't happen. Leviticus chapter 26, verse 13, shows something that perhaps we don't focus on as much as we ought to, because the Israelites, just like you and me, were bought. They were bought with a price. Leviticus 26, verse 13, God now tells this group of people who were freed from slavery to Egypt, He says, I am now the Lord your God. There's no higher authority. There's no higher person who owns you than me. And I brought you out of the land of Egypt, that you should not be their slaves.

I have broken the bands of your yoke and made you walk upright, that which you were shackled so that you couldn't get in trouble. Now you can walk upright. Verse 14, but, now listen to me, your new owner, if you do not obey me, if you do not observe all these commandments, if you despise my statutes, if your life abhors my judgments so that you do not perform all my commandments, but break my covenant, I will also do this to you. Verse 17, I'll set my face against you, and you shall be defeated by your enemies, and those who hate you shall reign over you.

What he's telling the Israelites is, you will always be someone's slave. And this is the lesson for you and me, brethren. We, as God's called ones at this time, need to understand we are always slaves. Not to think that we have some sort of USA-style freedom that now we're unshackled in so we can just run away and do whatever we want. But God has called us out of slavery to sin and Satan into obeying him, and him being our Lord and Master.

These are terms that God uses. We'll see a little bit more about this in a minute. In 1 Corinthians 10, verse 11-12, Paul tells us that these Old Testament events were actually done as examples for you and me. The real value in them is so that you and I can see them, we can learn lessons from them. The people back then really didn't grasp a whole lot that was going on. 1 Corinthians 10, verse 11-12, Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.

And here we are. Verse 12, Therefore, let him who thinks he stands take heed, lest he fall. That statement is made in the context of, here's what was done in the past for our example, therefore, be very careful. Are you doing God's will? Are you obeying your Lord and Master? Or are you trying to run away? Are you trying to be like most everybody else who has lived on this planet, trying to be self-directed? That's a good question that I ask myself, and I'm sharing that with you today.

Human nature refuses to submit. It's difficult for us to submit. It's hard for us to obey anyone. People have long taken pride when they have some sort of independence. We want freedom, and that freedom spells my way. That's how we would define freedom. I get to do it my way. It's kind of like the leavened bread, you know? We have this stuff. Let me put my piece back together here. This is whole wheat matzos.

No salt. It doesn't smell like anything edible. I headed at the house and tried to convince somebody to have some with me, some cheese on it, and they said, ooh, and got out the egg and onion matzos, and kind of looked at me. This stuff, who would want this stuff? Really and truly. We would want the warm, smelly nakias you come into the mall kind of bread that looks great and wonderful.

We want to run from this. This is the week that tells us this is what you want to be. This is what you want. This is good for you. You know, that other stuff really isn't good for you, but this is good for you. There's no salt. Inflate your blood pressure. There's no fat to give you a lot of good taste. I mean, to put fat on you or, you know, hurt your heart. This is just solid, good stuff.

It's really good. You put it in there, your body absorbs it, runs like a fine-tuned engine. It's good for us. But we say, I want what's good for us. I want what I like. I want what I like. Well, it's important for us this week to not want freedom my way, to actually come to desire to fulfill the will of the one who owns you. That is so, so important. Some Israelites didn't like their new master right off the bat.

They weren't making those bricks anymore, but they didn't like the new guy. And they said, we are out of here. We are going to be runaway slaves, and we're going to take off to an area that will be better for us. Eventually, all of Israel came up with that idea. The northern and the southern kingdom said, you know what? We don't like our master. We don't like this God. We are going off to other religions and other places that would be better for us. It's very similar that the church also is a place where people come, and they hear, and they sense, and they're excited at first, but then after where they say, this Lord and Master, I don't know.

This just isn't a fit. I want to go do it my way. I want to run away and be a runaway slave. Christians are always declaring their liberty, their freedom. And if we're not careful, you and I can fall into that trap. Because it says in 2 Peter 2 and verse 19, while they promise them liberty, the Greek word there translates with one definition, freedom. Runaway slaves, while they promise you freedom, Peter says, they themselves are slaves, duolos.

Let's get used to that Greek term, duolos. They are slaves of corruption. Corruption means decay. It's referring to the decay of the human body. In other words, while you think, I don't like God as my taskmaster, I'm going to go for freedom, your slavery to God may end, but now you're a slave of your own rotting body.

And that's all you get. There's nothing more there. It's a real bad idea. For by whom a person is overcome, whether it's God or Satan, by him he is also brought into slavery. The Greek word there, duolos. So here we are. We're going to be somebody's slaves.

You're a slave of God, Paul says in Romans, you try to run away. But tonight you're a slave of your own death. For by whom a person is either God you're going to follow or Satan you're going to follow. By which everyone you follow, he says, you are brought into slavery. The story of the Old Testament passover, the night to be much observed, and their departure and the seven-day trek out of Egypt began when the firstborn died. Israel was freed from slavery to Egypt, and they were purchased by a new owner, and now they were slaves of God.

And they had to do God's will with very strict regulations instead of Pharaoh's will. The story of the New Testament passover, the night to be much observed, and the days of unleavened bread begins with the firstborn dying, Jesus the Christ. The church was freed from slavery to Satan, a type of Pharaoh, freed from bondage to sin, a type of Egypt.

Our rescue was wonderful, was important, but we were purchased by the blood of a new owner. Look at what all our new owner went into to take us as slaves and make us his slaves. He really owns you and me. He really invested everything he had into your purchase to get you away from Satan.

That's a shock to some, but Jesus talks about this himself in John 8, 32. Let's hear it from his own words. John 8, 32, 36. And he says, And you shall know the truth, the truth.

Jesus and the Father are the truth, the way. They are the life. And in fact, if you want to think about it, our new master, our new owner, is really a flip from the previous one. See, slavery, as you go back, and all of those concepts of slavery, was all about embellishing the owner, who was all about making the country better, the owners better. Nothing about the slave. In fact, you better be serving me full time, or you're dead.

The new owner has got it in reverse. He's all about serving you. He's all about enriching your life. His whole focus is on making your life as good as it can be, and then making it last forever. That's a pretty cool new owner, isn't it? In a total reverse concept of slavery. So he says, the truth will make you free. Now, the Jews in verse 33 said, We are Abraham's descendants, and have never been in bondage to anyone.

Did you notice that in verse 33? We have never been in bondage to anyone. That's how humans think. That's how we all think. Free and proud. Jesus answered, Most assuredly I say to you, Whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. And a slave does not live in the house forever.

A slave may work in the house. He's there for a purpose. Short term. A slave does not live in the house forever. But a son lives there forever. Verse 36, Therefore, If the son makes you free, you shall be free indeed. And you will live in the house forever.

That's the lesson. God's got this mansion. He's got this big house. There's rooms for you. And if you are freed from being a slave to sin, verse 34, then you will get to live in the house forever. Slavery by Satan's terms is just awful. It is just the worst thing that could happen to anybody. It uses up. Just exhausts and takes and uses up and then disposes of a human life. No concern whatsoever.

And yet, our new master happens to be love. That's his name. God is love. That's his definition. God is serve. God is give. God is love. God is build up. God is help. God is enhance. God is bring you joy, bring you happiness. This is the new master. And his focus is on the lives of his slaves. He rescues. He cleans. And then he makes family. Look in Galatians 4, verses 4-7. Galatians 4, beginning in verse 4. But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law.

He's talking about to redeem those who were under the death penalty of the law. Those who were slaves to sin and who were therefore going to die eternally. And he came to redeem those, to take them out of their slavery position and redeem them by buying them. That's how you redeem something. You want to go redeem a TV set at the store. What do you use? I'm here to redeem that TV. Okay. Give me some money. We had to be purchased. But we were redeemed that we might receive adoption as sons.

And because you are sons, God has sent forth the spirit of his son into your hearts, crying out, Abba, Father! Therefore, verse 7, you are no longer a slave, but a son. And if a son, then an heir of God through Christ. You see how we come to God? It is through the process of slavery. First, being entangled in something that is horribly awful for us, has no benefit for us whatsoever. And at the end, when we can do no more, we are extinguished and just tossed aside.

Then we get redeemed, we get purchased, we get a real hero comes along and saves us. That's where the name Savior comes from. Saves us. And he's a really neat guy. And then we become his slave. And eventually, the goal here is family. Now, that's another question. How do you feel about your liberation? Stop and think about that. Last night, we celebrated with some really good food, and a nice beautiful moon was out, and people around us, whether you were with two or three, or ten or twenty, it was a great, great celebration.

How do you feel about this liberation? If you put it in terms of me, oh yeah, I think this is good for me, I think it's working well for me, I think my salvation is good, I think it's, you know, well, unfortunately, Passover and Unleavened Bread, they're not about you in that sense. Passover was not about you. Your liberation was not about you.

It was about what our great hero, our great savior did. It was us to take the time, as he said, this, do in remembrance of me. Not about you. Do it in remembrance of me when you eat bread. Do it in remembrance of me when you drink wine. How do you feel about your liberation now, you see? Well, when we stop and think about it like that, we think, wow, that's really something that the God of the universe created all this, then created me, and then came down and showed me what love is, and then he died for me so that I could be freed of that negative slavery and come to then follow a new master.

It's about him. It's about God. It's awesome. It's just unbelievable. I mean, you should just walk around and think, numb! Wow! Who could imagine such a thing? Who could imagine such a thing? What do you owe your savior? What do you owe the one who did all of that for you? Well, you owe him submission. You owe him to do his will. He is now your new master, and you owe him to do what he wants you to. The lesson of Unleavened Bread is, am I a good slave? Am I trying to do the will of my master, or am I running away? The title of the sermon is, am I a slave or a runaway?

And that's really what it comes down to, brethren. Those are the two choices we have right now. Am I a slave of God to do his will, to do everything he commands, just like Jesus gave us the example, I'm not here doing my own will, I'm trying to do the will of my Father in heaven.

Or am I a runaway? I'm not going to do that will. I want out of here. I want to go pursue my own life. I want to go do what I think is whatever I feel like. It's a tough thing to think about, isn't it? Let's go to Romans 6. Begin in verse 16. You think I'm making this up? This is really what the New Testament role of a Christian is. We can sometimes get a freedom notion in our mind and start thinking that, oh, we're liberated and all we've got to do is jump around and place Jesus and be good people and kind of do whatever we want.

And yet Jesus said, not everyone's going to be in the kingdom, only the ones that do the will of my Father. He says here, Romans 6, verse 16, Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one slave whom you obey? No, we really don't know that. It's not really right there in the forefront of our mind.

Whether of sin, this one slavery that's not good for us, that's all about sucking us dry, which leads to death, he says, or of obedience. I thought it was just having good thoughts or being spiritual. No, obedience leading to righteousness. He says in verse 17, But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered.

Delivered. You were delivered to a form of doctrine, verse 18, and having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. We don't have the prerogative to do what we want. We do have the choice to do what's very, very good for us. It's very good for everyone else around us. It's very good for God. It's a wonderful thing to become love like the family of God is.

It's really good for everybody. That love creates joy in everybody. That joy creates a harmony, a peace, a harmony. When you have harmony, you are long suffering about the love so that the joy and the harmony can continue. It's really a wonderful thing. But we do not have the option of doing anything else under our new master.

In other words, we will eat our vegetables. We need to realize, as it says in verse 22, that we are indebted to this Savior. We have a responsibility here. Our lives are not our own. It's vital that we submit to His will. We are chosen to serve Him. Notice verse 22.

But now, having been set free from sin and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness and the end everlasting life. Is that such a bad thing? Is it a bad thing to be as happy as anybody can possibly be, to be fulfilled more than any other possible means of fulfillment, and then get to have eternal life in a much higher plane in the God family? Is that bad? Is it bad when a parent tells a child, you may not play in the street during rush hour? Is that a bad thing? Are those things really good for us? We need to realize that we are still someone's slave. It's just that now we have a choice. There's two masters and two sets of consequences. We've got to choose one. Verse 23.

And slaves only have one role, and that's to serve the master. And so a good question for me is, am I a good slave or am I a runaway? And all too often I find myself thinking about running away. Instead of doing God's will of loving Him with my heart, soul, and might, and loving my neighbor of myself 24-7, there's pockets of time in there where I say, okay, I've done enough of that now for a while. Let's run away. Let's have a break. Let's do something else. Do something good for me. We've seen that we've been purchased by Christ's blood. We're owned by a jealous God. We're called to do His will. Okay, but when does that end? I mean, enough already. Okay, when do I get to do it my way? If I'm really, really, really, really good, when do I finally get to be free? Let's go to the last chapter of the last book of the Bible, Revelation 22, and learn a very, very important lesson. Here John the Apostle is writing last words in the Bible. He's been taken by vision into the future time when all things will be spiritual in the kingdom of God. New Jerusalem is on the new earth, and it says, and there shall be, Revelation 22, verse 3, there shall be no more curse. Nothing bad is happening for anyone. But the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it. See that? The throne of God and the Lamb. Next phrase, and His servants, Greek word duolos, His slaves shall serve Him. What do you think about that? That's the terminology that God inspired to be in the Bible. God is there, and Christ on their throne, and their slaves shall serve them. Verse 4, and they shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads. Kind of like in the time when the beast is ruling and reigning, and he's got his mark on people's foreheads. Here we have God has put His name on these... He uses the term slaves. These are His people. But there's a little something different here, isn't there? These are sons. And the name isn't just a stamp. It is, as we read in Revelation 3, it's the name of the Father. It's the name of New Jerusalem. It's the name of the Son. It is the family. God still, however, requires their obedience, them to do His will, because, He said, they shall serve Him. In the coming years, we find in Revelation chapter 6, 13, and 19, that slavery will once again abound on the earth. A lot of the Israelite-ish descendants will be taken back into slavery. There will be a lot of slavery on earth. But New Covenant members of the Church of God are not to become entangled in slavery with anybody except God. We are slaves of righteousness. We are called. We are owned. We are to do the will of our Lord and Master. And in 1 Corinthians chapter 7 and verse 22, the Apostle Paul makes it very clear that we are not to be entangled or involved with being anyone else's slaves, other than God the Father and Jesus Christ.

1 Corinthians 7 verse 22, For he who is called in the Lord while a slave is the Lord's freedman. This is referring to within the Church, if you are called and you are someone's Roman slave, in God's eyes you are free in the sense that you are still free from sin.

Notice, likewise, he who is called while free... Anybody here where you called when you were free? Nobody else owned you? Well, here's our definition. If anyone was called while free, he is Christ's slave. We are the slave of Jesus Christ. Verse 23, You were bought at a price. Do not become slaves of men. And by extension, don't become slaves of substances or habits or sins. Don't become slaves of selfishness. Don't go back and start wanting to puff up and have a focus on embellishing me.

Rather, be a slave of Christ.

In conclusion, again, am I a slave? A good slave? How good a slave am I? Every time I look at this bread this week, I need to ask myself, how much into this am I?

This is not what I would choose. This is not who I have chosen in my life to be. This is what represented God and Jesus Christ. And their humility, their perfection. No impurities. Only good things. Humble that one day can be raised up like Jesus is at the right hand of God. Am I doing the will of my master? Or am I kind of the runaway mentality? I'd rather go back and dabble in those things that smell good, look good, feel good, and do something else.

You were once a slave, but you were freed from that master. You were bought, and now you're the slave of the new master. A slave to God, as it says in Romans 6. We're to do His will, as Jesus Christ did on earth. I do the will of my Father. What is the will of God? Do you know the will of God? Jesus said, A new commandment I give you, that you love one another as I have loved you. We need to be a slave of loving each other, of sacrificing our life, sacrificing what would enhance me and my self-image and my selfish pursuits. We need to put that old man or woman to death and instead now serve and love and embellish the lives of others. And don't worry, what goes around comes around. Others will be doing it back to you. It's not that we do this in a vacuum. Even God does it to us. But we should all be doing it to each other. Us to God, us to each other, God to us, God to each other, God and Christ all in one, everybody loving one another. I mean, the heat would get pretty hot if we all had that kind of fiery, passionate love for one another. The lesson of the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread is we need to change owners. That's really what it boils down to. We need to change owners. We need to get a new mentality. We need to get our focus off of the runaway mentality and things that really aren't good for us. Let's close by reading Matthew 20, verses 26-28. Matthew 20, beginning in verse 26. This Unleavened Bread really is good stuff. It's the real deal. It's something that you and I have to develop a taste for. And loving each other is very good. It is really the way to live. But we have to develop a taste for that as well. We need God's help to desire to love and serve others instead of ourselves. Verse 26 of Matthew 20, it's talking about having actual slaves, other people doing work for you, you being the big powwow person in charge and getting others, you know, feeling powerful. It's not really slavery, is it? But it's getting others to enhance your life, to swell you up a little bit. And he says, it shall not be so among you, but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. That Greek word is diaconos. It's synonymous with minister, deacon, serving. So if a person wants to become great in this life, we should be about serving and helping others. But he goes on, verse 27, whoever desires to be first among you, premier the premium. If you want to be the really top, let him be your duolos. Let him be your slave. If we really want to be all that we possibly can be, it would be a slave. A slave in getting mind off self and serving the needs and the will of God and of our fellow man. And to give his life a ransom for many. Because that's what Jesus did.

In verse 28, just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve. God's not asking us anything that he hasn't done himself in triplicate. He's asking us to be like him. His focus is on others. He wants us to be focused on others. So during this Feast of Unleavened Bread, I'll be asking the question, and I hope you'll join me. Am I a slave, a good slave, or am I a runaway?