Bought With A Price
TCF Sermon
May 1, 2016
This is a dangerous message this morning, for at least two reasons – maybe more. Number 1, the theme of this message goes against the grain not only of our culture, but of our flesh, our selfishness, and of much of the church culture, too.
Until we really understand this and accept this as true, today’s theme makes our flesh squirm. It makes us uncomfortable. Even when we do accept it, it can challenge us, because it doesn’t come naturally. It only comes supernaturally.
It’s not My Body My Choice. It’s not Gay Pride. These are today’s cultural values
Also, it’s not Your Best Life Now. It’s not You Can Have What You Say. It’s not Prosperity: The Choice Is Yours.
Ironically, these are not secular book titles, but they might as well be. This is the idea of having what we want, pseudo-sanctified by segments of the church.
Jim Garrett touched on this last week. The idea in our culture that we can be what we want, do what we want, regardless of the facts, regardless of the impact on other people of what we want, and regardless of what’s right or wrong, what the Word of God tells us about sin and righteousness.
One writer called our current culture one that values, not just doing whatever is right in our own eyes, but “radical autonomy.” This is the source of today’s sharp divide in our culture.
The new immorality is any act of “intolerance” that supposedly interferes with this radical autonomy.
Being intolerant of this radical autonomy is about the worst thing you can do. Autonomy means: self-directing freedom, and especially moral independence.
Our culture values this above all else. Radical autonomy is autonomy on steroids.
However, this morning’s message is the polar opposite of radical autonomy. It’s an idea that, once we grasp this in our spirit, once we accept it as God’s truth, it’s not only not troubling, but very freeing. In fact, one author called it A Better Freedom. It’s one of those things in scripture that’s a paradox.
The 2nd reason today’s message is a dangerous thing is that the theme of this message is the life theme of the guy who literally wrote the book on this – a man who signs his correspondence with “your fellow slave,” who seeks every day to live this out obediently, like a slave, in the mundane things of life, as well as the bigger things in his life.
Of course, I’m speaking of my fellow elder, Jim Garrett, whose book The Doulos Principle, has been very formative in my Christian life, and I know also in the lives of many of us here this morning.
By the way, next week we’ll highlight this more fully, but Jim’s book, The Doulos Principle, is now available as an Amazon Kindle title. And we’re going to have a five-day sale during which the book is free. More details about how that works next week. It’s a book that everybody here should read, and read again if it’s been a while since you last read it.
But, Jim will be the first to deflect credit for any true life changes, any formative influence, and Biblical truth, that has come from his book, because, of course, this is a theme in the Word of God, accessible to all of us, and not just Jim’s idea. In his book, Jim just highlights that fact, calls our attention to, an often-missed truth.
This truth is missed for some of the reasons already mentioned. Like radical autonomy. It’s missed by the world, because they’re slaves to sin. It’s often missed by Christians, too, but it’s right here in your Bibles. Here’s just one of literally hundreds of places we see it:
1 Corinthians 6:19-20: You are not your own, 20 for you were bought with a price.
This morning, I want to spend some time exploring the implications of the reality that you are, we are, I am, not my own. That I am bought with a price. We cannot avoid the clear message here, and as we move along, we’ll see how clearly this is presented in Scripture.
People who are bought with a price are owned. People who are bought with a price are slaves. Yes, this can be a very uncomfortable truth. That’s because, in our minds, we immediately associate slavery with a couple of things.
One is the African American slave trade, a truly evil and sinful part of our American history, and that of Europe, too. We are rightly appalled by this part of our history. It seems clear to me that much of the racial divide that still exists in America today is the long-term fruit of that terrible institution.
But more recently, more and more of us are aware of the reality that
“we don’t have to go back in time to face the brutality of slavery. According to one estimate, there are more slaves today, 27 million, than there were in 400 years of the transatlantic slave trade.” Michael Card – A Better Freedom
Now, when we understand the realities of different times and different forms of slavery, we realize that the Roman institution of being a “bondservant” or slave was different from the institution of slavery in North America during the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries.
Roman-era slaves generally were permitted to work for pay and to save enough to buy their freedom. Not that it was a good thing – just different in many ways, which we won’t take the time to go into this morning.
Also, both the OT and the NT assume that trafficking in human beings is a sin. For example, if you look at 1 Tim. 1:10 as one example, we see enslavers, some versions say kidnappers, men-stealers, slave traders, classified as sin with a list of other sins.
So, the image of slavery is a tough one for us to wrap our minds around. It’s harder still to identify with in any kind of positive way. But we must wrestle with this truth, and identify with this image, if we are to rightly divide the Word of truth.
As many of us know, perhaps because we first learned it from Jim’s book, the Greek word for slave is doulos. In scripture, doulos is often translated, according to the context, as servant, or the stronger phrase, bond-servant, or slave. But the literal meaning is slave. One Bible dictionary definition of doulos is:
A slave, one who is in a permanent relation of servitude to another, his will being altogether consumed in the will of the other. Complete Word Study Dictionary
Jim points out in his book The Doulos Principle that the word doulos is used in the New Testament 125 times, and in almost every instance, it refers to the relationship between believers, and God. There’s only one other term used more often to describe believers in the New Testament, and that’s “disciple.”
But here’s another interesting and important fact from scripture. Most of the time, doulos is the term that believers, throughout the New Testament, used to describe themselves.
That’s the important question for us today. Can we see ourselves as owned? Can we accept that we are not our own? That we are bought with a price? We are God’s property – His own possession.
And lest we think this is just a New Testament truth, let’s consider this, written about the Jews in:
Deuteronomy 7:6 (NASB) 6 "For you are a holy people to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.
Can we accept, and even embrace, all that this truth means in our lives as followers, slaves, of Christ?
1 Corinthians 6:19-20: You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.
If we do accept this, if we do embrace this, it becomes one of those paradoxical truths we often find in scripture. To find our lives, we must lose our lives in Him. To be truly free, we must be His slaves.
Another great book on the theme of doulos was written by Michael Card, a Christian singer and writer. He wrote this in his book, titled:
A Better Freedom: Finding Life As Slaves of Christ:
In order to become rich you must become poor (Luke 12:33). In order to become mature you must rediscover your own childlikeness (Mark 9:36). In order to become wise you must embrace the foolishness of the gospel (1 Corinthians 3:18). In Jesus, life comes through death (John 5:24) and the only true freedom comes from slavery to him (1 Corinthians 7:22). He came to turn the world upside down, to shatter all our definitions and images, and to fulfill them. The fundamental mysteries of following Jesus are always rooted in paradox. The freedom of slavery is a paradoxical freedom, just as the crucified life is a paradoxical living. Michael Card, A Better Freedom
The Word of God is filled with this reality of God’s ownership of His people. In Leviticus 25:42, the reason God gives for forbidding that his people be sold as slaves is not that they are supposed to be free, but rather that they are His slaves.
Paul often referred to himself as a “doulos of Christ.” Scholars count between thirty-three and fifty-seven parables in the NT, depending on how a parable is defined. Of those, almost half contain a slave or slave-type character.
Two things we see in Jesus’ parables are applicable to our theme of doulos this morning. The first is identification. When people heard Jesus’ stories told as parables, they would inevitably find themselves identifying with someone in the story. Since we see that slaves are to be obedient to their Lord, and that they lived under his unquestionable authority, the slaves in these stories were living parables of what it means to submit to the Lordship of Christ – His ownership.
The slaves had virtually no rights, no expectations, and could make no demands. They provided the perfect illustration of what a slave of Christ could expect as the practical outworking of acknowledging Jesus is their Lord and Master.
Beyond the parables, we see some of our great figures of the faith who immediately recognized this.
Mary, when the angel told her she would bear the Christ child, conceived by the Holy Spirit, immediately recognized her position, and to whom she belonged:
Luke 1:38 (ESV) And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”
The translation says servant, but the word is doulay – a female slave.
Simeon, who saw the infant Christ at the temple, said this:
Luke 2:29-32 (ESV) 29 “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word; 30 for my eyes have seen your salvation 31 that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, 32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.”
Again, the word servant there is doulos – literally slave. Think about this:
Simeon served as a bridge between the Old Testament promises and God’s fulfillment of those promises in the New Testament. In his world, having faith was expressed by waiting for God to act on his promises. In the New Testament world, with the coming of Jesus, faith would be expressed by following. And not just by following, but by following as a slave, obediently.
So, this paradoxical truth of scripture is challenging, and it’s more so when we consider what the practical outgrowth of this truth is. For example – as Jim points out in his book – we have to think about what it meant to be a slave – what it meant in daily life.
We’ve already highlighted one of those things. Being a doulos of Christ means our perspective not only questions, but more often actually contradicts contemporary values, not just of our culture, but even of the church.
We’re fish out of water in our world. Or as Scripture describes it, we’re strangers and aliens.
The radical autonomy of our culture, versus the humble, servant spirit of a slave. Slaves work to please their masters, not themselves. Our culture tells us you can have what you want now, and what’s more, you deserve it.
A doulos attitude in the slave of Christ delays, defers, our wants, and sometimes even our needs, for the sake of serving the Master.
Jim wrote:
Once a believer grasps the Doulos Principle he immediately has a whole new perspective on God and life. The Doulos Principle begins to mold his every thought and emotion. Jim Garrett
When we are slaves of Christ, our desire is to do the Master’s will. We learn His will through His Word. When we are slaves of Christ, we readily acknowledge that any talent, any gift, any possession, is not ours, but His. They are provided by Him, and they belong to Him. They are for His use, as He pleases.
Think of that the next time your car breaks down – you might wonder why God would choose to spend His money to fix your car, which actually belongs to Him, because He provided it, when He could just as easily keep it from breaking down. But it’s His money, and He can spend it how He chooses, for His purposes, which we don’t always understand.
Jesus’ slaves accept that life’s experiences are part of the Master’s training program – they are carefully designed to help us learn, to grow. Our master ordains both the circumstances of our lives, and the results of our service to Him.
We have no rights. A slave has no rights in himself. The only rights we have are the ones that our Master has granted us.
That’s why Jim Grinnell has and does the things he has and Dave doesn’t. That’s why Dave has and does things that Steve Sperber doesn’t. That’s why Paul Burgard has and does things that Steve Staub doesn’t.
The Master has planned and purposed different things for different people, by His own sovereign choice.
There’s an essay called “Others May I Cannot” that we’ve looked at before. Too long to read the whole thing this morning, and I can get you a copy of the whole thing if you’ll ask me, but let me read a few paragraphs that reflect the ideas we’re exploring together this morning.
Others will be allowed to succeed in making great sums of money, or having a legacy left to them, or in having luxuries, but God may supply you only on a day-to-day basis, because He wants you to have something far better than gold, a helpless dependence on Him and His unseen treasury. The Lord may let others be honored and put forward while keeping you hidden in obscurity because He wants to produce some choice, fragrant fruit for His coming glory, which can only be produced in the shade.
If you absolutely sell yourself to be His slave, He will wrap you up in a jealous love and let other people say and do many things that you cannot. Settle it forever; you are to deal directly with the Holy Spirit, He is to have the privilege of tying your tongue or chaining your hand or closing your eyes in ways which others are not dealt with. However, know this great secret of the Kingdom: When you are so completely possessed with the Living God that you are, in your secret heart, pleased and delighted over this peculiar, personal, private, jealous guardianship and management of the Holy Spirit over your life, you will have found the vestibule of heaven, the high calling of God. G.D. Watson
This reality of the Master’s control of the slave’s life impacts everything. Our sphere of service or ministry. The results of our service. Our provision – our possessions – our health – our strength – all of our abilities.
And our attitude in response is to be a servant – a slave. We’re to serve Him diligently. We’re to serve Him without seeking approval from others, only seeking the approval we’ll get from Him, when we meet Him face to face, and He says, “well done, good and faithful slave.”
The truth is, we often run from this reality. We’re like slaves who escaped the Master. But the Master keeps pursuing us. There’s some archaeological evidence that some slaves in Roman times wore collars with an inscription. That inscription read “Capture me, for I am fleeing.” In both Rome and early America slaves were forced to wear such collars.
Let’s be honest with ourselves. Could words like that be part of our experience as slaves of Christ? Always fleeing. Always rebelling in our flesh against the practical realities of our slavery to Christ – what He asks of us – how hard it seems sometimes.
We flee His compassion. We flee what we see as His unreasonable demands. We flee his commandments, His ownership of us.
Someone or something has to keep sending us back to our Master, to keep recapturing our imaginations so that we can appreciate the paradoxical freedom of slavery. Michael Card
But the reality is that we are all slaves. The only question is whose slave will you be?
Either we are slaves of sin, slaves of this world, slaves of our own selfish desires, or we are slaves of Christ, and thus slaves of righteousness.
We read in Joshua about that choice we all have. Choose this day whom you will serve.
Joshua 24:14-15 (ESV) 14 “Now therefore fear the LORD and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. 15 And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”
So, thinking again about the two reasons that this morning’s message is a dangerous message.
It goes against the standards of, not just our secular culture, but some segments of our Christian culture. But isn’t that what the Word of God so often does? It’s living and active, sharper than a double-edged sword. It penetrates. It convicts. It changes. It molds us and shapes us. It shapes us into the image and likeness of God.
And Jesus was the Word made flesh. God in the flesh. And He became a slave – to serve God’s purposes of redemption. To save us. To redeem us from the curse of slavery to sin and death. He was purchased, too, like a slave, for 30 pieces of silver. And He went to the cross, a slave’s death, willingly.
So, yes, it’s not a popular message. It’s not an easy message. It’s not the kind of thing you’ll see on church billboards: Come be a slave.
Also, I thought this might be a dangerous message because I’m preaching the message contained in the book of a guy who’s sitting here with us. But this is not Jim’s message. This is the Word of God – which I hope we’ve demonstrated here this morning. This is our relationship with the One who bought us with a price – the price of His own blood.
So, while I may have first learned this from Jim, I was also a Berean – I searched the scriptures, seeing if what Jim said in The Doulos Principle was true. And it is.
I am not my own. I am bought with a price. I am a slave of Christ. And I’ve found that enslavement to Him brings a better freedom.
I want to be like a slave named in Roman times. Ancient inscriptions reveal that two of the most popular slave names were Philodespotes and Philokyrios. Both could be translated “master lover,” or “lover of the Master.”
Clearly, they were popular names, because they were given by the masters to the slaves when they were newly purchased. And those slaves didn’t get to choose their name, or their identity.
I do. But, there are days when I still struggle with my identity as a slave of Christ. Even though that struggle exists, I want to be known as Philokyrios, the Lover of the Master. My Master, Jesus Christ.
Imagine the disturbing clarity that would fall on the church if the question “Do I like it?” or “Do I feel like doing it?” simply disappeared. What would the church look like if we returned to the “lowliness of mind” of the slave? Not what does the world desire or need, not what would attract the most people, but only, “What does the Master command?” The slave parables of Jesus teach us that, beyond all doubt, the Master is not a “hard man,” but rather one of immeasurable mercy, someone who cancels million-dollar debts with the wave of his hand. He is the Master who dresses himself to serve and wash the feet of his slaves. He is the One who is willing to suffer and die with and for his servants. But finally, and it must be said, he is a Lord who expects simple, trusting obedience, not based on wage or reward, but simply on the knowledge of who our Master is. Who does not long to be in the service of such a Lord? Michael Card
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