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Slaves and Masters

September 8, 2024 Speaker: Pastor James Wychers Series: All Things United in Christ

Topic: Submission to the Lord Jesus Christ Passage: Ephesians 6:5–9

Slaves and Masters _web

SERMON INTRODUCTION:

“We have been working our way through the New Testament book of Ephesians verse by verse, section by section, understanding what the Lord has for us; understanding the book in context and in making the application that is relevant to us and there's plenty of it.

Today we've gotten to an interesting passage called Slaves and Masters. I had a friend I went to high school with and his family was not part of the faith, the Christian faith that we were a part of, but he was a good friend of a group of ours. He was kind of a strong-headed, very confident guy, and that showed in a lot of things, especially sports. He's really good at sports. And when you met his family, you met his dad, you figured out, okay, this is where he gets it from. So unfortunately, not long after we graduated his dad got cancer and passed away.

And another friend of mine went to the funeral of this man and said that it was interesting because there were two songs this man wanted at his funeral. The first one was Amazing Grace, which is a song that we hear at many funeral memorial services and that kind of thing. The second one was more interesting and he had sung and played at his funeral a song called My Way.

Now, many of you don't know that song, but that's a Frank Sinatra song, I Did It My Way. If you listen to the song, he kind of goes to the end of his life and he reflects upon what he has done in life and how things have gone. And the bottom line in the song is, hey, I did it my way. I did it my way.

Amazing Grace and I Did it My Way kind of negate each other. Now imagine you go and you stand before God in judgment and you come saying it's all about amazing grace and that would be a good, that's the right way to come before God. But imagine you going and saying, but Lord, this is the thing you need to know, I did it my way.

It's not going to go well in that case. These are two very opposite ways of thinking about life.

Proper submission is a big part of how we are to live, and our submission is always first to the Lord Jesus Christ.

We've talked about husbands and wives and children and parents, and they're all called to live out the will of God in the home, and these are called household codes, and we've been in this section of household codes for a little while.

Today we'll see one last household relationship, and that's the relationship of slave or bond servant and master, and the message this morning is this—that from the bottom to the top, all people are accountable to rightly submit to God in accordance with his will.

Submission in our culture is a bad word but, in the Bible, it certainly is not. It's not a bad word, it's not a dark and dangerous concept. It's at the very center of what it means to follow Christ. It's at the very center of what it means to be a Christian, and I'm going to argue that it's at the very center of what it means to be a human being.

Proper submission is a good and a gracious thing that will be and is rewarded by God in the present and in the future. This message today, even though it's addressed to bond service, to slaves and masters, it's really about all of us and has relevant application and implication for everyone here.”

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