Sermon Followup: Servants & Masters (1 Peter 2:18-25)

0:00 hi it's pastor phil and it's thursday and i'm doing a follow-up video from my message last week if you were at life point i preached from the passage first peter chapter 2 verses 13 through 17 which is all about submitting to the authority of human institutions including our government and i hope that was a helpful uh message for you it certainly was helpful for me as i was writing it and sorting through and learning some stuff i learned a bunch of things that were helpful for me as a believer in america but what i pointed out was the the context or the theme of submission isn't just uh focused in those few verses about submitting to the government there's

0:45 actually a section about servants submitting to masters and wives submitting to husbands but since our political um culture is is so chaotic right now i focused most on those first passages but i said i would come back and record a sort of follow-up video so that's what i'm doing this is the second of the three sections this one's talking about submitting servants to their masters let me just read the passage for you this is first peter chapter 2 verses 18 and 19. it says servants be subject to your masters with all respect not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust for this is a gracious thing when

1:30 mindful of god one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly so let me get this out of the way first whenever you're talking about servants and masters it's a really dicey topic and it can be very emotional and potentially divisive because in america when we think of servants and masters we almost automatically associate that with a racial based form of slavery which is a terrible part of our american history however peter is writing this in the mid-60s a.d so the first century and what you need to realize is that slavery and servanthood was a normal part of the

2:18 culture now because he's writing two servants this doesn't mean that he's condoning slavery actually he's just reacting to the reality of this first century world the people that he would have been writing to that are spread all across what is now modern turkey who are part of the roman province many of them might have been servants or slaves and so he has a message for them that's just like the message he had previously when it comes to submitting to the authoritarian government he says servants you should submit to your masters as well now that's a challenge isn't it because we feel like well first of all it's not

3:04 right there shouldn't be you know people who are slaves and i agree with you the one thing to notice here though is most of who he's writing to is most likely a different level of servant he uses a different greek word than is typically used in the bible for servant or excuse me for slave or for bond servant so instead of the word dulas which is the greek word for bond servant he uses the word okay and it's sort of maybe uh one level up most likely the servants he's talking to are getting paid or they're working towards their freedom so rather than you and i picturing sort of a roots situation or a southern racial based version of slavery it's important maybe to visualize something closer to

3:50 downton abbey or something there is a class system here that's happening for sure and again peter writing into this system isn't condoning it or condemning it he's simply acknowledging that some of his readers are very likely servants now remember the point of this whole submission passage the point of the whole thing is that people will see how they live how these christians lived in the first century and when they see christians living these peaceable lives and uh not reacting to their government authorities or trying to overthrow the government or trying to escape the their masters or or um rise up against them they're going to see a christ-like example and that's what peter is really

4:36 most interested in because in the first century here the the romans hated christians and so peter is saying look live this life so that when people see you and revile you they will be put to shame it will be they'll look foolish for thinking that you're anything but a peace loving individual all right so that's important and then he goes on to associate the suffering that the servants may have from an unjust master with the suffering that jesus encountered through his righteousness he writes about it here he says for this for to this you have been called because christ also suffered for you leaving you an example so that you might follow in his in his steps

5:22 he committed no sin neither was deceit found in his mouth when he was reviled he did not revile in return when he suffered he did not threaten so the idea is when jesus suffered for the sake of all of us he could have returned insult for insult he could have at that moment overthrown the government with just you know a snap of his fingers but he didn't because he had a larger purpose and that purpose was to save the world now our purpose then here for the readers of first peter is to understand that when when they suffered unjustly people would see this same christ-like attitude and it would point them to god the father now in terms of applying this to our lives it's actually quite simple to understand but it's difficult to do in

6:09 practice because many people have jobs and many people feel like they're treated unfairly by their bosses or by their co-workers that they're devalued or in some cases even like emotionally or financially abused and that's a difficult position to be in isn't it and what peter is saying is if you get yourself into that position rather than threaten rather than insult rather than revile you should suffer like like jesus suffered because it will be a testimony to those around you now the one difference between the first century world and our world the difference between our the first century world and our world is is simple

6:56 it's this that the servants didn't have a choice they they had to uh obey their masters or it could have been a serious consequence maybe even death but you and i have a choice because we live in a modern culture and so if you don't like your job or if for some reason you feel like your boss is mistreating you um or devaluing you or even asking you to do something that's against the law of god well of course you can leave your job you have that freedom now maybe you're not in a position to do that and if you're not in a position to do that then what he's saying is submit to your boss even if you're mistreated because it may be a way of reaching the people around

7:41 you and by the way a great resource if you are sort of frustrated with your job and your work there's a great book that i can recommend i believe it's called 48 days to the work you love it's by dan miller and highly recommended lots of great five-star reviews but if you're kind of like i need to do something else i think that's an option here okay so in the meantime workers submit to your bosses until you can find something different potentially but most importantly the conduct in the way that you live especially in the workplace reflects on god and it could lead other people to jesus well i hope that helps for this section i'm going to come back hopefully tomorrow and do the third section which

8:27 is you know even more controversial which is wives and husbands and the idea of wives submitting to their husbands that will be a good one uh check that one out tomorrow thanks