What Does It Mean to Be Slaves of God?

Here, just delightful, very, very special, so appreciate that very, very much.

Well, Mr. Molière is not the only one who can give tests. I'm going to start with a little short test for you. Please don't raise your hands. But a question here. What word or term is most often used in the Bible to describe God's people? Is it Christian or Christians or disciples?

Church of God? Sheep? Ambassadors? Friends? Servants? Or none of the above?

The answer, you might be surprised to learn, is actually none of the above.

None of the above, because all of these terms are used in the Bible to describe God's people, but they're not the term that is used most often. The word that is used most often in the Scripture to describe God's people is slaves. Slaves. We're called slaves of God or God's slaves or slaves of Christ repeatedly in the Bible. But what does that mean?

And that is the title of today's sermon, What Does It Mean to Be Slaves of God? Well, let's first of all ask a question. Why talk about this subject? Why talk about this subject? Well, first one is the point that I just made is that God uses the word slaves to refer to his people more often than any other word, any other term used in the Bible far more than any other descriptor. So we better know and understand what that means. And second, we need to understand slavery as it was practiced in the first century Roman Empire to better understand what these many Bible verses are referring to. And third, we need to understand slavery as it was practiced in the first century Roman Empire if we are to understand what God expects from us, as mentioned in these particular scriptures. Now, about now you're probably scratching your head and thinking, I can't think of a single scripture in the Bible where God refers to us as slaves.

And there's a very good reason for that. And that is that this word, doulos, which means slave, was consistently mistranslated over the centuries as servant. It was mistranslated as servant. So, yeah, now you can think, yeah, there's probably dozens of scriptures that talk about servants. And they are, but it's a mistranslation of the word doulos. It actually means slave.

So why was this done? Let's think back to when the Bible was first translated, the King James Version translated in 1611, more than 400 years ago. And at that time, slavery was viewed as something that was horrible, contemptible, very, very evil.

And it certainly was. And it took several centuries for slavery to be stamped out in the Western world. It took decades for it to be outlawed in the British Empire. And it took a civil war in the United States to eliminate the institution of slavery. And just to be clear, in no way am I advocating or defending slavery. Not at all. Not slavery as it was practiced in the United States or the British colonies, or for that matter, as it's still practiced in some areas of the world today. The Bible does not defend or condone that kind of slavery in any way. The Bible actually dictated the death penalty for kidnapping another human being, which was done in Bible times. You'd kidnap somebody to sell them into slavery. So the Bible dictates the death penalty for that. So it's clearly not condoned in the Bible. I'm just explaining why the concept was buried for so long. So when these early Bible translators came across this word that means slave, what did they do? Because the stigma attached to slavery, they watered it down. You might see it was an early version of political correctness. They chose instead to translate the word as servant or bondservant instead of slave. But as we'll see, there is a big difference between what a servant was and what a slave was. To prove my point, I have a handout here, and Mr. Lupe Gonzalez is going to pass these out. You don't take the time to read it. This is just for your reference to prove the point that I've just made. You'll see in here it's a one-page handout front and back, and just take one and pass it on. But it gives dozens and dozens of scriptures showing, first of all, what several well-known Bible references say about this term doulos and how it actually means slavery. And you'll also find many verses where every New Testament writer uses this term doulos, meaning slaves, in referring to God's people. Some of those writers are Peter, John, Paul, James, Jude, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and even Jesus Christ himself, who use the term slaves and referring to God's people, referring to Christians. So again, this is just a reference for you. We won't be referring back to it later on. It's just a reference for you to keep there. So the big question then is what does it mean to be slaves of God? So again, the title of the sermon here. But what is God telling us by using that term to refer to us? And after seeing how many times the apostles and New Testament writers refer to us as slaves and how Jesus Christ himself calls us his slaves, you might just think they're trying to tell us something.

They're trying to tell us something here. And we are all probably familiar with the common understanding of slavery history 100 years ago of the typical picture of the slaves out in the fields picking cotton from sunup to sundown. And it was a brutal, inhuman system. But is this the kind of slavery that the Bible is referring to in the New Testament writings when it calls us slaves of God? Or is there something else going on here that we just don't understand?

If you think about it, the Bible uses a lot of terms, a lot of phrases, and doesn't really fully explain or define them. The Bible writers didn't see a need to do so because after all the people they were writing to fully understood what those terms meant. They didn't see a need to spell out all of the details. So if we look at certain words, phrases like slaves and slavery and enslavement, and we apply our understanding of it from 2000 years later on the other side of the world, based on our culture and our history and understanding of the word, we may find ourselves way off base because the word had a very different meaning and application in their history and culture 2000 years ago. So to begin with how to properly understand this term and this phrase, let's start with a brief overview of how slavery was practiced in the Roman Empire at that time, 2000 years ago. First thing we need to understand is that about a quarter to a half of the population of the Roman Empire were slaves. About a quarter to a half—that's an astonishing number. Literally millions of people were slaves. So slaves and slavery were well known to the members of the early Church of God. Some members of the early Church were slaves. Some members of the early Church owned slaves. Some members of the early Church owned slaves who were members of the Church.

Think about that for a minute here. There are many references to this, but I'll just quote two verses out of many to make the point, both from the book of Colossians 3, 22 from the NIV.

Paul writes, slaves obey your earthly masters in everything. So this is a letter to the Church in Colossae, which has slaves. Also Colossians 4 in verse 1, masters provide your slaves with what is right and fair because you know that you also have a master in heaven. So when Paul taught and wrote to the Church at Colossae, the Church at Ephesus, Corinth, Galatia, Rome, places like this, he had slaves and slave masters, slave owners, sitting there in the congregation right in front of him. So don't think that when Paul uses this term, he's using it in a theoretical or philosophical way because he's not. He's talking about very real-life facts of that time. They were very real to him. And Paul and the other biblical writers specifically refer to us as slaves to teach us some crucial spiritual truths. Think about that. You may want to write this down. Paul and the other biblical writers specifically refer to us as slaves to teach us crucial spiritual truths. We'll see that as we go on through this message today. And that involves, first of all, again, an understanding of how slavery was practiced and what that meant in the Roman Empire of the first century because it's very different from our concept of slavery based on our national histories today. To illustrate this, let's first ask a question. Where did most of the slaves come from in the Roman Empire? It's really pretty simple. They came from conquest.

The Roman Empire was an expansionist empire. It spread out throughout. You know, my last message, I showed a map of the Roman Empire. It encompassed all the lands around the entire Mediterranean Sea there. So, as Rome defeated these other tribes, other villages, other kingdoms, what did they do with the people that they conquered? Yes, a certain number of them were killed in battle, starvation, famine, things like that. But the Romans would not have killed all the people they conquered because that would be a tremendous waste of resources. And the Romans weren't stupid. They put those people to work improving and building the Empire itself. Yes, you might execute a few hundred or a few thousand. Just to make the example that you don't mess with Rome, that was fairly common. But you didn't waste all of those valuable human resources. You put them to work to strengthen the Roman Empire. So, when the Roman armies conquered a city and took, say, 10,000 people captive and enslaved them, what did they have? Well, many of them were unskilled laborers, farm hens, something like that. And many of these would have been sold as slaves for manual labor. Some of the unskilled workers or captured soldiers, they would become gladiators, be forced to become gladiators and fight each other for the entertainment of the crowds in the Roman Colosseums and theaters and so on. But in a decent-sized city of, say, 20, 30, 40, 50,000 people, there would also be people with all kinds of valuable skills. There would be carpenters. There would be carpenters. There would be metalsmiths, goldsmiths, jewelers. There would be leather workers. There would be teachers. There would be bankers. There would be doctors. There would be skilled city administrators. There would be engineers. There would be people with all kinds of skills. And the Romans weren't stupid. They wouldn't take those skilled people and put them out working in the mines or plowing the fields and gathering the crops and so on. No, they would take those people with those valuable skills and put those skills to work in the service of the Roman Empire. And some Roman households had a few slaves. Some had dozens. Some had literally hundreds on very large estates of thousands of acres. And in the environment of that day, if you had, say, 20-30 slaves, you didn't go down to the local supermarket and buy bread for all of those slaves. No, you had one slave who was a baker.

And he baked bread for the entire household of the family plus the 20 or 30 slaves.

You didn't go down to the market and buy clothing for all those slaves. No, you bought a slave who could make clothing, who could weave cloth or Turkish carpets or whatever. And you would put that person to work to make the clothing for the household and for its 20 or 30 slaves. So you would put those slaves to work utilizing the skills that they had and developed. So this is why in large estates, wealthy Roman households, many of the slaves had very specialized skills like those that I mentioned. And another factor to consider is that it wasn't all that uncommon for some slaves to be more educated than their masters. Now think about that. Again, let's say you worked in a fairly sizable city and you were the city administrator, a banker, something like that. You might know much more about business and wealth and interest and how to handle money and so on than your master would. So there are a number of cases where slaves actually became business managers or stewards, to use the biblical term. They became stewards, business managers, financial advisors for their master. And the master would turn over running their estate, managing their wealth to a slave. And that slave would administer that. And so also it was considered quite a status symbol in the Roman Empire. If you were a fairly wealthy Roman, to hire a Greek tutor for your children, to teach them, to teach them language, to teach them Greek and Latin and Roman history, Greek history, the mythology and all of that sort of thing. That was very common because that was kind of a status symbol in the Roman world as a sign that as the Greeks were cultured, so you were cultured as well. So the bottom line is then in the Roman Empire, when it came to household slaves, the picture of Roman slavery was actually much more like Downton Abbey than Gone with the Wind. So slaves were viewed as valuable members of the household and sometimes even as members of the family. As evidence of this high value placed on slaves, here's a photo of a tomb, a family tomb. I photographed this in Rome a number of years ago. And what you're looking at here is looking into a tomb. The wall is maybe two-thirds the size of this wall behind me here. And you see these niches in the walls. The Romans did not bury people. They cremated people and then put their ashes in urns. So these niches held the different urns for the family members. So the large niches at the back there would have held the father of the family and his wife.

And we know this from the names and relationships. The people were painted underneath these. So this held the husband, the wife, maybe the first-born son, maybe a couple of aunts, uncles, unmarried sisters, brothers, but also slaves.

And the reason I mention this is this indicates that the slaves were, some of the slaves, were buried in the family tomb because they were viewed as members of the family.

They were and were actually buried there alongside their masters and other family members there.

So again, they were considered part of the family. So the first sense, the concept of slavery in the first century Roman Empire was very different from our concept of slavery based on our history. And we make a very big mistake if we apply our view of slavery to slavery as it's recorded and mentioned in passing there in the verses of the New Testament, especially those verses that talk about us being slaves of God. So getting back to the title of today's sermon, what does it mean to be slaves of God? Let's briefly discuss the differences between a slave and a servant.

And just a couple of quick points to help us understand this because there were slaves and there were servants at that time. Both were common. But what were the differences between the two? Well, first off, a slave is owned by the master. He's exclusively owned. He is the property of the master, whereas a servant was the hired help would be the term we would use today. It's like the person who comes in to mow your lawn, do your landscaping, do your housework, whatever. So they would be the hired help. They could come and go. Whereas the slave is exclusively owned and his services are owned by the master. A second difference is the slave is totally dependent on the master. The master gives him his food, his daily bread, his or her, daily food, clothing, shelter, a place to live, and so on. Whereas the servant is partially dependent on the person who he works for temporarily and he's dependent partly on himself.

A third difference is the slave is often viewed as a member of the family, the household, as illustrated by the tomb photo that I showed there. A servant, however, was simply the hired help, the person who comes and goes on their own schedule, their own timetable. He's not viewed as a member of the family. And finally, well, let's see, also the slave has to show complete, unquestioned submission to his master. Whatever his master says or her master says is law for them.

Whereas the servant chooses who he will submit to. And a last difference here, the slave is totally motivated to serve and please the master. Whereas the servant is partially motivated to please the master, but he also serves himself at the same time.

So if I wanted to serve this up, to sum this up a little bit here, the slave's approach was every morning to wake up and say, what does my master want, and how can I please him? What does my master want, and how can I please him? Because that was how the servant would be rewarded. That's how they would be rewarded, based on how well they pleased their master. A servant's approach, on the other hand, is passive. He only does what he's told to do. He has no motivation other than to get the job done and to move on to the next person that he's working for. And that's a very different motivation from being totally dedicated to understanding what your master wants and carrying that job out in a way that is pleasing to him. So what are some of the lessons, then, that God wants us to learn from this information, from our being his slaves?

It actually teaches us a very profound story when we understand some different aspects of slavery, as it was practiced during the time in which the New Testament books were written. It's been there for the last 2,000 years, but because of this mistranslation of the word and not understanding the concept of it, we just didn't understand what these concepts meant. So let's go through now, in our remaining time, some of the lessons that God wants us to learn from these passages on slavery.

Let's first of all talk about the master-slave relationship. So we're doing away with the servants. Now we're going to get right down to the nitty-gritty of the master-slave relationship. And what was that relationship? Well, again, the slave was a piece of property.

He or she was owned completely by the master. The slave had no rights, no freedoms other than what the master might grant to the slave in his compassion and mercy. So slaves also had no legal protections whatsoever. So a slave's lot in life depended a great deal on who the master was.

If a slave had a good and kind master who valued and appreciated the slave, life could be pretty good. You could be considered a part of the family, as in that illustration I showed earlier. So a slave in this position with a good and kind master was respected for his or her abilities, talents, desire to serve the master.

They would be taken care of. Their needs would be met. They would have a good diet, a good comfy mattress to sleep on at night. So they could focus on what the master wanted them to do.

On the other hand, if you lived with a master who was cruel, who was abusive, your life could be a living hell. In every way, you might never get enough to fully fill your belly.

You might never get enough sleep. You might never have enough warm clothing or a blanket warm enough to keep you warm on those winter nights. You might have to work literally until your hands and feet bled from over work. You might not be able to get enough sleep or rest to be able to function normally. You might be sick and in bad health for all of your life from being overworked.

You could, in some circumstances, literally be worked to death. That happened with cruel and abusive masters. So what lesson is that hold for us? Who is our master? And what is our master like? And who was our master? Who is our master? Who was our master? What is the difference between the master we used to serve and the master we serve now? And what lesson does that hold for us?

Let's notice what Paul wrote in Romans 6 verses 16 through 18. This is from the New Living Translation. Paul writes, don't you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey?

You can be a slave to sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God, which leads to righteous living. Thank God, once you were slaves to sin, but now you wholeheartedly obey this teaching we have given you. Now you are free from your slavery to sin, and you have become slaves to righteous living. So what is Paul telling us here? He's contrasting what our lives are like under two very completely different masters. Before God's truth, we were slaves to a cruel and harsh master, Satan the devil, and sin, as Paul put it there. This is the first point I want you to note today. I'll give you five different points here. This is the first point I want you to note about the parallels between slavery and our lives today. We were slaves to a cruel and harsh master. Sin and Satan were our master before God called us. We used to be enslaved to the worst master imaginable. A very harsh master, a very cruel master. But a good owner, on the other hand, as I mentioned, who cared about his slaves, provided everything for them, everything they needed so they could serve him with their whole heart and mind and being.

Does that remind you of any scriptures about our master? What about Matthew 6, verses 31 through 33?

And Jesus says here, Therefore do not worry, saying, What shall we eat? Or what shall we drink? Or what shall we wear? For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. So he says here that God knows our needs, so we aren't to be overly concerned about those things. God wants us to focus on something that's much more important than that. Seeking first God's kingdom, but also seeking his righteousness. We tend to focus on the first, but it's two parts.

Seek God's kingdom and seek his righteousness. That means becoming like God in every way. In every aspect of our character, in thinking, in mind. So we make those the highest priority of our lives. Seeking his righteousness. Seeking to become God, like God, and Jesus Christ in every way, by living righteously. Let's look at another point here, point number two.

Because if you lived in the first century and you were a slave of a harsh and cruel master, how could you get out of that horrible situation?

Well, you could try to run away, but where would you go? Because you're in the Roman Empire, which encompasses thousands of miles. You could run away, but you'd have to run hundreds, maybe a thousand miles or more to escape. But if you were caught, you'd be punished severely, possibly even execution. That was fairly common punishment for runaway slaves. So what would you do? Frankly, your situation is pretty hopeless. You have no choice. You have no rights because you're a slave. You have zero legal rights. The best that you could hope for is that someone else would come along and buy you. That's the only way you could escape a life of misery if you were owned by that harsh and cruel master. And guess what? That's exactly what happened to us.

That's exactly what happened to us. We have been bought by a new master, not the harsh and cruel master that we were formerly enslaved to, but a good master, a kind master, a merciful master, God the Father, who purchased us with the highest price imaginable, which is the blood of his son.

Let's notice 1 Peter 1, verse 18 from the New International Version, which talks about this high price that was paid for us. For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver and gold that you were redeemed, this word means to buy back or to purchase, from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. And slaves were bought and sold every day in the Roman Empire. In a typical year, about a quarter million slaves were bought and sold. Most would serve only that one master for the rest of their lives, good or bad. But we are different. We did nothing to deserve it, but God the Father bought us from our previous master. We were bought by a new and different master who paid a very high price for us, the price of his only son. So a question we need to ask ourselves is, how are we reflecting that investment? How are we reflecting that investment that he made in us?

Since we are owned now by a different master, the ties we had with that previous master are broken. They're no longer in effect. We no longer owe any kind of allegiance to our previous master of Satan and sin. They no longer have any hold over us. They no longer enslave us. We are now slaves to a new master, the master of God the Father, Jesus Christ of righteous living, as we read there in Romans 6 earlier. So what is a slave's highest priority? Again, a slave's foremost thought is, what does my master want and how can I please him? What does my master want and how can I please him? Again, Matthew 6.33, we're to seek first God's kingdom and his righteousness. That's what pleases God. That's what God wants from us and our every waking moment to make that our highest priority in life.

And that leads us to our third point, which is that our new master gives us opportunities to demonstrate whether we will accept his rule over us and serve him with our whole heart.

Fairly long, but two aspects of this. Our new master gives us opportunities to demonstrate whether we will accept his rule over us and serve him with our whole heart.

And here's where I came across a concept in studying this subject of Roman slavery, a concept I'd never heard before, although it's actually spelled out pretty clearly in the Bible. We just didn't understand it because of the mistranslation of this word, doulos, slave, as servant. And if we don't understand that, we miss a big part of the story here. So to understand this concept, we need to go back over some of what we covered here in review briefly. Because, again, when the Romans captured a city, a village, a kingdom, there would be people with all kinds of skills and abilities. And they would put these newly purchased slaves to work utilizing those skills and those abilities to generate a profit for the master, for the new owner.

The Romans had—you need to understand Roman thinking a bit here—the Romans had what you might call a much more enlightened view of slavery. Like everybody throughout human history, virtually everybody, regardless of which ancient kingdom you look at—Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Persia, Hittites, any of those—they believed in slavery. They practiced slavery. They saw nothing at all wrong with slavery. That was just the way things were done. And the Romans carried on that long tradition of humanity. However, the Romans had a unique perspective on slavery, and this is important. Because they believed in the greatness of the Roman Empire, the rightness of the Roman Empire, they wanted that empire to continually grow and expand.

I talked about the Pax Romana and the Peace of Rome that allowed Roman culture to spread throughout the Roman Empire. I talked about that earlier. So the Romans saw it in their national interest, you might say, to grant freedom and citizenship to slaves.

Not to all slaves, because many were unskilled—the farm hens, those working in the mines, that kind of thing. Not every slave, because many would simply not have the intelligence, the culture to be proper Roman citizens. But the best and the brightest, those who were most hard-working, those who could really contribute to the growth of the Roman Empire, had a pathway to freedom.

And not just freedom, but citizenship. Roman citizenship, which was very, very valuable at that time. They didn't hand out citizenship to everybody. In that time, you had either been born a Roman citizen because your parents were Roman citizens, or you had to do something notable in service of the Roman Empire to be granted Roman citizenship.

We see both those reflected in the pages of the New Testament. You might remember the gateway that we saw yesterday by the Library of Celsus. Our guide, hopefully both guides, talked about this gateway. Who built that gateway? Two former slaves. They became so wealthy, so powerful, so influential, that they built this massive gateway to express their appreciation to Rome for the opportunities they had been given. Former slaves. And they made so much money they could fund the construction of this gate.

Pretty remarkable. Pretty remarkable. So a slave could save up enough money to buy his freedom from his master and also buy Roman citizenship. You could buy citizenship as well during that time. So there was a very strong incentive in the system to work hard for your master because the harder you worked, the more initiative you showed, the more intelligence you showed, the more diligent you were, the more likely you were for your master to give you opportunities to eventually purchase your freedom and purchase Roman citizenship and move from the lowest level of society up to the higher level, the upper crust of society.

So this worked for the benefit of everybody. It worked well for the slave, obviously, but it worked well for the master because he had an industrious, hard-working slave. And it worked well for the empire because the empire got citizens who were industrious, who were builders and doers. And worker bees, you might say, so everybody benefited from that system here. So that's why I say the Roman view of slavery was much more enlightened and progressive than we give them credit for. But an obvious question rises. If you're a slave, how do you earn money to buy your freedom and your citizenship? And here's where it gets really interesting.

As I mentioned before, a lot of these slaves had valuable skills. They were engineers. They were doctors. They were teachers. There were tutors, bookkeepers, accountants, skills like this. And their owners would actually at times set them up in their own private business so that they could utilize those skills, sell those skills to other people to earn money for the master as well as earn money for the slave himself. I want to show you here a photo. This is from Herculaneum in Italy. How many of you have been to Herculaneum before? Okay, a few of you. Yeah, very well-preserved city. Actually better preserved than Pompeii, although not nearly as big.

But what we're looking at here is Herculaneum buried in 79, I believe it was, AD, by the same volcanic eruption that buried Pompeii. And we're looking at the front of a house, the front door of our house in the center. And this tourist is walking toward then-intergue. But you see these openings on either side. Well, what are those?

Today, they're just storerooms there for different things. They have iron bars, gates over them there. But in the first century, the entryway to this house, and they would have an entryway that might go back 20, 30 feet, and then it would open up to a courtyard, similar size to this room here.

And then there would be the bedrooms and kitchen and other rooms off of that. But on the front, facing the street, are these two large openings. What were these? They were shops. And in the first century, here's what that might have looked like. It's a little bit dark up here, but on the shop, over there, a man is selling pottery. And here, a woman is selling fabric and garments.

So this is hypothetical, by the way. Doesn't mean that's literally what was there. But if the wealthy owner of this house had a slave who was a skilled pottery maker, when he wasn't working, making pottery, dishes, jugs, and flora, and so on for the household, he could be making his own wares and selling them to people going by on the streets. And the same thing with the woman who's weaving fabric and making clothing and so on. She could use her skills to sell those garments. Now, I'm not saying this is 100% altruistic, because I'm sure it wasn't, because I'm sure the owner would get a commission of it or a cut of the profits, you know, 50, 80, 90 percent, maybe.

But the key point I'm making is the slave would have the opportunity to earn some money for himself and improve his lot in life, and ultimately repay the owner for what the owner paid to purchase, him or her, and buy his freedom, and ultimately perhaps save up enough money to buy Roman citizenship. So, this again, everybody benefited from this. The slave benefited from earning some money on the side, you might say. The owner benefited because he's getting the money he's invested in the slave paid back to them, and the Roman Empire benefits because they get this skilled labor for use in the empire there. So again, this shows that slavery in the Roman Empire was a very far cry from the kind of historical slavery that we understand from our histories today. We're familiar with it. It was much more enlightened, a much more progressive view of slavery.

So, with this background, a couple of Christ's parables make a lot more sense.

The parables of the talents and the parables of the pounds, talking about units of money. And again, the mistranslation from slaves to servants or bond servants really obscures the meaning.

Of these parables here, it's actually talking about this same process that I've just described. So let's look at one of these parables, Matthew 25 verses 14 through 30, and this is from Greene's literal translation, which is one of the translations that gets it right when it comes to properly translating this. So Christ gives a parable, for it is as if a man, going abroad, called his own slaves and delivered his goods to them. He gives them money. And to one, indeed, he gave five talents into another two and to another one, to each according to his ability, to his skills or her skills and abilities. And he went abroad at once. And going, the one who received the five talents worked with him and made another five talents, doubled his master's investment. In the same way, the one with the two talents also did. He also gained another two talents. But going away, the one who received the one talent dug in the earth and hid his lord's silver. And after much time, the lord of those slaves came and took account with them.

So do you see what's going on here? You know, over all the years, I read this parable, and wondered what nobleman goes away and gives his servant money and leaves the servants unsupervised. I mean, you know, what can possibly go wrong in a scenario like that? And it makes even less sense when you understand it's talking about slaves. Who gives slaves money and goes away out of town? You know, what can go wrong with that? But it's this process that I've just talked about, of a master investing in his slaves, setting them up in business to earn more money for themselves and for the master there, giving them the opportunity. So he's investing in them and expecting a return. So now the master returns and calls the slaves into account. Verse 20. And coming up, the one who received five talents brought another five talents near, saying, Lord, master, you delivered five talents to me. Behold, I gained another five talents above them.

And his Lord said to him, well done, good and faithful slave. You are faithful over a few things. I will set you over many. Enter into the joy of your Lord. And the one who received two talents also coming up. He said, Lord, you delivered two talents to me. Behold, I have gained two other talents above them. His Lord said to him, well done, good and faithful slave. You are faithful over a few things. I will set you over many. Enter into the joy of your Lord.

And the one who had received the one talent also coming up. He said, Lord, I knew you that you were a hard man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you did not scatter. And being afraid going away, I hid your talent in the earth. Behold, you have yours. And answering, his Lord said to him, evil and slothful slave. You knew that I reap where I did not sow and gather where I did not scatter. Then you ought to have put my silver to the bankers and coming I would have received my own with interest. Therefore, take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to each one who has, more will be given and he will abound. But from him who does not have, even that which he has will be taken from him. And throw the worthless slave out into the outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. So who is who in this parable?

Well, who's the master? Jesus Christ. Who are the slaves? That's us.

That's what the parable is all about. What's the lesson?

The lesson is that God has invested a lot in us. He's given us abilities. He's given us capabilities, talents as a gift from him. We didn't do anything for those. He gave them to us and he expects us to use those to profit and to benefit him, to strengthen the body, the household of God. And if we don't use it, if we bury those abilities in the ground and don't use them, what use are we?

What use are we to God or anyone else? Two slaves take their master's investment, go to work with it. They put a lot of effort and diligence into doubling their master's investment. They really want to please their master. They really want to be a good and profitable servant, and they generate a profit. And the third takes his master's investment and generates nothing. Nothing. What does it say about the slave? He lacks initiative. He lacks a sincere desire to please his master. They all knew the master's instruction, take this money, I'm investing you, and generate a profit. Be a profitable servant. And this one utterly fails. He not only lacks confidence in himself, but he lacks confidence that his master has in him. God doesn't choose us to fail.

He chooses us because he knows we can succeed.

But the slave didn't see it that way. He lacked confidence that with God all things are possible, and he ends up losing everything. So God has confidence in us. It's why he chose us to become his slaves in the first place. And he paid a price for us, the highest price, a magical, the life, the blood of his son. And he says he will never leave us nor forsake us.

And with him on our side, who can stand against us? So God expects us to generate a profit with all that he has given us. So God expects us to do something. And again, the point here is our master gives us opportunities to demonstrate whether we will accept his rule over us and serve him with our whole heart. That's what these two parables of the pounds and the talents show. And if we're not willing to do that, not going to put the effort into it, we're not going to receive the gift that he so badly wants to give us. And that leads us to the next parallel with slavery in the Roman Empire is that we are adopted into the family of our new master. We are adopted into the family of our new master. And again, here's the photo I showed earlier of the family tomb. And here, I'll put that back up for those who want to take a photo of it.

So again, this is the photo that I showed earlier of slaves, niches for their burial urn, right alongside the members of the family, the kids, the father, the mother, the aunts, the uncles, the children, and so on there. And the slaves who were considered part of the family household.

There are actual records from the Roman Empire of slaves who were given the opportunity to be freed and chose not to. Why? Because they wanted to stay with the family.

They now had a new family. They had a family that they were part of. They loved the family. They appreciated the opportunity so much that they wanted to stay as part of the master's household. There are records of slaves who were so valued by the family that they were literally adopted into the family as children, right alongside the natural sons and daughters of the family.

They became sons and daughters in every legal sense of the word.

The Apostle Paul talks about adoption five times, mostly in the book of Romans, written in Rome, to the Romans, rather. Let's notice just a few points from that. Romans 8 and verse 15 from the Green's Living Translation. Paul says, For you did not receive a spirit of slavery again to fear, but you received a spirit of adoption, by which we cry, Abba, Father!

The spirit itself witnesses with our spirit that we are children of God. Notice the contrast.

Paul says we don't have a spirit of slavery that brings fear, but instead a spirit of adoption that brings great joy, where we cry out, Abba, Father! A very close term there. He's contrasting this condition of slavery on the one hand with the other of being adopted by a God who loves us and gave everything for us and wants us to be a part of his own children. As proof of that, Paul says he's given us his spirit as a down payment on that. A few verses down, he goes even more into that. Verse 23, We ourselves, having the first fruit of the spirit, also we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly expecting adoption, the redemption of our body.

So here he uses that Greek term adoption in describing our final transformation in the resurrection at Christ's return when we will fully become sons and daughters of God, and never subject to the frailties of the flesh again, will be transformed into spirit.

As God the Father is spirit, and as Jesus Christ is spirit, we will forever be a part of the family of God at that point. So these verses again illustrate this point that we are adopted into the family of our new master. And now we come to the last parallel we'll draw between slavery today and that of the Roman Empire, and that is that as a result of that we receive our inheritance as children of the Father, which is eternal life in the family of God. We receive our inheritance as children of the Father, which is eternal life in the family of God.

So notice Galatians 4 and verse 7. This also is from Green's literal translation.

Paul writes, Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son. And if a son, then an heir of God through Jesus Christ. In the Roman world, not all sons would receive an inheritance. Yeah, if you were the god-son, you might have been a lot. If you were the evil twin, you might not receive much of an inheritance at all or nothing. You might be disowned or disinherited. That was true then and is true today. But Paul's point is we're not a child of God who will be left without an inheritance. God has the greatest gift for us as an inheritance that we can imagine, which is the gift of eternal life in His kingdom. I want to close with one passage written to the Ephesians. We visited Ephesus yesterday. Ephesians 1 verses 3 through 11. This is from the New Living Translation. And I want to close with this because it's written to the church members who lived in Ephesus, but also because it talks about this process that we've covered from slavery to an evil, corrupt master and our ultimate inheritance, the greatest inheritance imaginable. And this is all spelled out in God's holy days. So Paul says here, verse 3, Ephesians 1, all praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ. Even before He made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in His eyes. So He chose us while we were slaves to another master to become His slaves. God decided in advance to adopt us into His own family by bringing us to Himself through Jesus Christ. This is what He wanted to do, and it gave Him great pleasure. So He didn't want us to always be slaves to another master, but He gives us the opportunity to prove ourselves and to ultimately become a part of His own children.

So we praise God for the glorious grace He has poured out on us who belonged to His dear Son.

He is so rich in faithfulness, in kindness, in grace, that He purchased our freedom with the blood of His Son and forgave our sins. So He paid a very high price again to purchase us from an evil master to become His own slaves. He has showered His kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding. God has now revealed to us His mysterious plan regarding Christ, a plan to fulfill His own good pleasure. And this is the plan. At the right time, He will bring everything together under the authority of Christ, everything in heaven and on earth.

Furthermore, because we are united with Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, for He chose us in advance, and He makes everything work out according to His plan.

So what does it mean for you and me to be slaves of God? It means literally everything.

It means everything. It means God has planned for us a future and a gift and an inheritance that is beyond human comprehension. So we should stay humble. We should stay focused. We should stay intent on pleasing our Master, staying a faithful slave of Christ, and waking every morning, every day of our lives, and asking, what does my Master want and how can I please Him?