Somebody's Servant - Romans 1:1

The apostle Paul teaches an important truth regarding our loyalties when it comes down to it. Our loyalties cannot be divided. He writes for my now seeking the favor of men or of God or my striving to please men. If I were still trying to please men, I would not be up on the servant of Christ and I were due cannot be interested in the pleasure and approval of mankind and also interested in approving and discovering and finding the pleasure of God can't be a bondservant to the world and unto God at the same time, but as the apostle Paul teaches, we can't serve two masters. Pleasing Jesus Christ often means forsaking the things of the world and the opposite is also true. If we want to live to please the world. That often means forsaking the things of Christ. Because of that it's important that our loyalties lie in the right place. That's what Stephen Devi explores today on wisdom for the heart. This lesson is called somebody servant working to serve somebody in today will be challenged to choose wisely. If you are asked to share something about your life that you believe to be significant in less than 15 words, what would you say and then once you thought of something you would want to get up here and say it because it would be hard to appear humble and at the same time deliver to us what you believe to be significant about your life. How would others perceive you.

You would want to exaggerate appear. You might say something is someone out there might burst into laughter that be a dead giveaway. How do people see you, what do you think they would believe is significant.

What would you say I found it interesting of this past week to read the story.

The toward the end of his life. Albert Einstein, the great physicist and mathematician took down off the wall of his home is a picture of Isaac Newton, the great scientist and discover and replaced it with a picture of Albert Schweitzer. The doctor who went to Africa and build the hospital for leopard. He then remarks to a very close friend that he was way overdue in replacing the image of success with the image of service near the end of his life. Albert Einstein the winner of the Nobel prize wanted to be known more for what he did or others than what he got from other was centuries before Einstein ever lived. Another man made a similar yet even more profound self discovery and declaration for the apostle Paul has been living for about 20 years for Christ is an older man. He only has we know about 10 years left before the curtain will close on this man's incredible international ministry. He has been and is called the father of the Gentile church. He was a master theologian and orator.

He was a skillful defender of the Christian faith and he is about to write the most important theological treatise in the history of the church's letter begins with 15 or so words as he introduces himself to us and delivers to us what he believes is the most significant thing about his life.

If you haven't already opened open your Bibles to Romans chapter 1 and verse one in the first few words of this great letter only 10 words in the original, are translated for us here Paul a bond servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God that there are three concepts that came to my mind and heart as I studied and read and reread and then reread again over and over again.

Paul's introduction of himself as he stands on the stage and says, may I introduce myself to you. He says these things. There are three words that came to my mind. I believe that they would revolutionize every believer here. We would truly grasp and embrace them.

The first is the word I've given you in your notes already. It is the word ownership. Paul, a bondservant of Christ Jesus. The most significant thing ladies and gentlemen that Paul wanted everybody to know about his life. At the very beginning of his letter that he belonged to somebody out the impact of Paul's choice of words. Here is is lost on us. It wasn't on them.

The original reader but it is lost on us unless we get a sense of the context of what it meant to be a servant in the Roman Empire were told by historians that nearly half of Rome were slain during the days of Paul.

Let me read you what one man has written, not from a Christian worldview. Some of you asked me about my sources, this one by Richard Alston and title aspects of Roman history, A.D. 14 through 117. Not exactly Beth everything, but it does get across the point. He writes about servant and by the way, as I read this I want you to just think through in your mind. How would relate in the mind of Paul to us being the servants of God.

Alston rights slaves were owned, they had no control over their labor or their bodies. They were property to be disposed of as their master pleased slaves could be both sold and subjected to almost unlimited violence. Slaves were treated as objects they were not regarded as men or women, but as things devoid of soul. They were considered animals with voices.

The Romans were unsentimental about slavery.

Slaves were economic units and were accounted for such a wealthy man invidious polio ordered one of his slaves to be thrown to his collection of carnivorous fish for breaking one glass when some slaves belonging to a particularly brutal master killed him. The Roman Senate ruled according to their law that all the slaves of that household to be executed.

The chance of freedom was slim.

Slaves met even more brutal conditions in the mind where life expectancy must have been very short, though not as short as that for slaves condemned to the gladiatorial games being condemned to the Mayans or the games was recognized by slaves as a death sentence. Slaves working as personal servants had an easier life trusted slaves were often paid.

Although their wages had no legal status, the owner could reclaim the money at any moment without a doubt Paul's reference to himself as a dual us a slave, a bondservant was a description. First of all, of great humility.

He was bought, he was purchased he was owned by another, as he said in one other epistle. Have you forgotten that you as believers have been bought with a price. Your bodies belong to another.

Therefore glorify him with your body. It was a statement of great submission and humility. It's interesting to me that the word dual loss was not only a description of humility. It was also a description of great honor in the Old Testament. All of the Israelites slave owners were required by law to release their servants every seventh year slavery during the days of the Old Testament was not so much an issue of race or class as it is in the world today were even now in Sudan. Slaves are being sold on the open market. It was more an issue of economics here man might sell himself to a master for an indentured service where he might repay a debt, but at the end of seven years. His debt was to be wiped off the books and he was to go free. However, if after the end of seven years.

This man so love that man.

He served that he wished to stay with him. Exodus tells us that if a slave in chapter 21 plainly says I love my master. I will not go out a free man, then his master shall bring him to a judge and peers his ear and he shall serve him for life.

Wherever that man went his ear pierced ear was a silent declaration as it were, to his love for his master, and by the way, it was also a powerful testimony to everybody else about what kind of master he had that he want to do that for the rest of his life now. I found it interesting also to discover that it wasn't uncommon for high classed men and women to call themselves. In Paul's day servants of the Emperor.

In fact, the Greek inscription found where Paul once lived and served had the words Agatha opus, which was this man's name servant of the Lord Emperor was a great statement of loyalty and deference to the Emperor to call yourself a servant and so that title of honor is also used in the Old Testament, as God refers to some of his choice.

Individuals and followers as servant in Genesis 2624 God referred to Abraham as my dual loss in the Septuagint, my servant Abraham in Numbers 12. Seven the Lord said, my servant Moses is faithful in all mine house in Joshua 24, 29, the Bible speaks of Joshua as the son of nun, the servant of the Lord and second Samuel 75 the Lord says go until my servant David, you shall build a house for me to dwell in and then Isaiah chapter 20 verse three the Lord referred to Isaiah as his servant see the readers men and women of Paul's day would have picked up on this designation immediately as one of great humility and submission and also one of great honor because Paul is in effect saying I have no rights of my own. I am owned property. I am the will of my own.

I am here to do the will of my master who bought me and while others in that empire where you are serving and living are impressed that they could ever call themselves servants of the Lord Emperor. I want you to know that I am most impressed Paul says by declaring myself to be a servant of the living God. It is an issue of ownership. Ladies and gentlemen, I believe that if you can settle that issue in your life. The issue of ownership.

It would perhaps settle every other issue in life may go back to what Alston wrote about first century slavery. He said a slave was owned well and ask it is Christ really own. You a slave he wrote had no control over his labor is Christ really control your occupation, your career, a slave he wrote had no control over his body.

Does God really control what you do with your body, a slave he wrote was property to be disposed of as his master pleased does God really have from you the right, as it were, to dispose of your life in whatever way he pleases, or must he give you a reason or explanation. Whenever in the disposal of your life. It is something that does not please you see ownership I believe is probably revealed more in our attitude than anything else.

We are children of God, but are we willing servants of God. I think our attitude probably reveals more than anything else, whether or not that's true.

I remember growing up. I often look at the Scriptures in light of the child or parenting children.

I remember doing things for my parents which I didn't want to do and I made it very clear that I didn't want to do it.

We were the four sons of my father, but we were not his slaves and we thought we were at times, now making my kids do the same thing's and they have to take turns doing one of those menial tasks, called doing dishes, but I want you to know, doing dishes for them is not what doing dishes was for me. We had to get water in the sink in a little tub were bucket you remember and you get the soap in there and he made it off frothy in the get the dishes in there and you took a washcloth and you literally washed the dish and then you moved it over and you rinsed it in hot water and then you handed it to your brothers been snapping in the leg with his dishtowel waiting for to occupy his time and he derided and he put it up on the shelf that was washing dishes today. Washing dishes is putting them in the dishwasher and they want an allowance for.

I loved it a couple weeks ago my parents were here. My dad was raised on a farm and we were sitting at the table and he was sharing with me on a couple of our kids life on the farm. It was great. I remember sitting there inside going mad because you know you've had your kids tell you have had mine tell me a dead tell us about the time when you had to walk 2 miles to school in the snow and you were barefoot had a Sheila rabbit for lunch on where well while thing was that my dad was telling us that he actually had to walk to school 2 miles to get 30 minutes in Minnesota, which meant he often walked on and through snow. He said to my kids. He said you know there were times when the weather was so bad if it was really bad. My dad would give me a ride to school on the tractor, but it had to be really bad for me to get that ride and then when I got to school which was a one room schoolhouse with first grade through eighth grade. In one room I would walk up to the front of that room and put on that wood-burning stove. My raw potato so that it would cook throughout the morning and then at the break time. I get that little pat of butter out of my pocket and I eat that potato for lunch.

My kids were. I know they were thinking and did you fight the Civil War to one thing is for sure, every one of us here today have it better, easier than those before us. Some of you had parents or grandparents who immigrated here to this land and lived a very difficult life of some of you have grandparents and great-grandparents.

Perhaps, who were slain. They had terrible lot in life. But just because someone had to do that labor and had to live that hard life or endure that struggle that didn't have anything to do with their attitude. See, it's possible to be a servant, and at the same time have a bitter, dispassionate, apathetic heart. You won't take any of that up in Paul's letter, he is so excited about being the disposable property of God, that in the very first verse. It's as if he says everybody I want you to know that I'm somebody's sermon and that somebody is my Master and Lord Jesus Christ. It comes as no surprise then that following close description of who he was given his chore or were told what he did. The second word that comes from this text is the word assignment. The text goes on and says Paul, a bondservant of Christ Jesus, called an apostle is calling. He was in a pastoral loss that is someone who was commissioned directly from men by the agency of God's credibility for ministry.

Hinged upon his apostleship if he was not a true apostle, then no one would give credibility to his writing. The apostles were told in Ephesians 4 were the foundation of the church were not building the foundation of the church anymore were building the superstructure upon that foundation is no such thing as the succession of apostles and apostle had two qualifications we learned from the Scriptures number one, they first of all, had to have personally seen the resurrected Lord.

That's why the dispute arose to begin with about Paul. In fact, if you could sort of pull back the layers of his heart you would know that he agonized many times over the fact that people didn't respect him as a true apostle of God didn't believe he was a genuine apostle and so in most of his letters he is defending the fact that he has seen the Lord. First Corinthians 9, he says, am I not an apostle.

Have I not seeing Jesus my Lord later in chapter 15. He states that he was even visited by the resurrected Lord. It reads in Christ appeared to James.

Paul wrote then the wall of the apostles and last of all, as if it were to one untimely born, he appeared to me also. For I am the least of the apostles will not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God, but by the grace of God I am what I am. He makes it very clear. I have seen the resurrected Lord second qualification of an apostle is that he must've been a disciple, who was personally commissioned by the Lord.

Personally, Galatians 1 Paul wrote in the first verse, Paul and apostle not sent by means of the agency of men but sent by means of the agency of Jesus Christ saying about apostle, because I woke up one day and I thought that I become an eight is not apostle because somebody thought that that be great for him to do or be. He is an apostle because he saw the resurrected Lord so it was ownership by Jesus Christ and assignment from Jesus Christ. The third word is the word passion ownership assignment passion. He continues with his introduction, Paul, a bondservant of Christ Jesus, called an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God. The word set apart to be translated marked off surrounded by a boundary separated unto and have no doubt that that word offer and so had tremendous impact in the hearts of his readers about his newfound passion.

You see, here's why Paul was a Pharisee of Pharisees, but that means is that he kept the law even just keep the law of Moses.

He kept all of those pharisaical prohibitions. There were 365 of.

He was a man when walk 200 yards past his front door on the Sabbath, he would lift a spoon weighing more than one fig because I would be carrying a burden. He kept the law. He wouldn't do innumerable things. He was separated from all that would defile him in his desire to please a holy God. But now is a new passion. He is not separated from his separated on to the gospel of God is not a negative. It's actually a positive. I am separated unto the gospel and that gospel of God's grace became his chief passion. The word offer and so Lorenzo gives us our word horizon is in effect saying there's something else different that is dominating my view I can see every time I look out there on the horizon I see it time open my eyes I see it, and it is the grace of God's gospel. He had had religion. In fact, he had graduated summa cum laude. This class but it is not satisfied. His passion was now the gospel of God. Paul was a man.

Ladies and gentlemen who never fully recovered from his conversion. The truth is, men and women. You are somebody's slave I track this word through and came up with some interesting versus a Galatians 110, Paul wrote that we could be slaves to the opinion of men he writes for my now seeking the favor of men or of God or my striving to please men.

If I were still trying to please men, I would not be up bondservant of Christ.

In other words, you cannot be interested in the pleasure and approval of mankind and also interested in approving and discovering and finding the pleasure of God you can't be a bondservant to the world and unto God at the same time that Jesus Christ is the same word in Matthew chapter 6 I believe. Verse 24, where he said no one can serve same word.

No one can be a dual loss of two Masters will either hate the wind and cling to the other oral despise one and hold to the other. You cannot, he goes on to say serve to losses the same route. You cannot be a bondservant of God and Mammon or material things or money or possessions you see summer slaves to possession to career to achievement summer slaves. The popularity summer slaves to immorality, of whom Paul wrote in Philippians 319. There, God is there carnal, lustful appetite.

Some are slaves to past failures. Some are enslaved to the fear of the future. Ladies and gentlemen, I submit to you that everyone in this auditorium this morning is somebody's servant.

The question is who's I believe the answer to that is found in the answer this question if you were brought up here today and you are asked to introduce something about yourself that you considered significant, and you had 15 words or less. But what you say I think of all of the things that Paul could say father of the Gentile invective. He finished none of us whatever approach are father of the Gentile church, an eminent theologian, a member of Israel's Supreme Court and on and on and on and he starts by saying everybody. I want you to know I am a/Jesus Christ see the genius of Paul's life was in the order of those words by which he introduced himself. He was a slave before he was anything out. How would the world remember you there was a man who actually had an opportunity to know how the world would remember him. He woke up one morning that hold a newspaper and to his horror, and Shockey discovered that he was in the obituary column. The editor had believed the rumor that he had died and it actually published his famous man's life and review the headline read, father of dynamite dies, then the article went on to talk about this man's discovery with nitroglycerin.

His patents in both England and America for dynamite. In this phrase caught his eye quote he will be remembered for creating the potential for mass destruction. You might consider reading that that so pained that he immediately took his fortune and develop the trust and he created what would become the Nobel prize for chemistry, science, literature, and most notably the advancement of the world peace and work in a high no work because when ever you are. I hear the name Alfred Nobel. We do not sink of mass destruction.

We think of the Nobel peace prize.

What if you were to wake up tomorrow morning and read your obituary what would it say about you. Pulses listen, I want you to know something about me is the most important thing of all.

My first word to you is I just happen to be somebody serve and I have been called by him and am now passionate above all other things to advance the cause of my master in my world they would be more like him. Yes, we are by the grace of God somebody's servant, servants of the living God mandate we just redo this entry from Jonathan Edwards diary. He wrote this in 1722, January 12. I have been before God and have given myself all that I am and have, to God, so that I am not in any respect my own.

Neither have I any right to this body or any of its members.

No right to this tongue. These hands these feet. No right to the senses. These eyes, these ears, the smell or this taste I have given myself away to him and have not retained anything as mild. The only person who can write something like that is somebody's going to the judge and had his ear pierced and said I want give my life to my kind and loving and gracious master would you pray that today are already his child, you will become his child becoming a servant become his servant, because you are already his child. Perhaps you been his servant in the past. Now you're on the sideline. Maybe disappointment has come.

Maybe you've lost your passion for the gospel. Maybe you desire something he does not.

But today, would you go back to the doorpost with the master and say Lord Bora fresh home in my heart I want to willingly gladly serve you. You are my master, I give myself entirely away. I hold nothing back myself that truth is God's wisdom for your heart today. Let's follow it. I'm so glad you joined us for this broadcast of wisdom for the heart are Bible teacher Stephen Devi is working his way through a series from Romans chapter 1 entitled gospel truth. The lesson you just heard today is entitled somebody's servant as you are listening today. It might be that the Lord brought someone to your mind who could benefit from hearing today's lesson we have it available on a CD. If you've never called us before.

Please introduce yourself to us to thank you for doing that were going to send you a copy of today's lesson as our gift call 86 648 Bible, and of course please join us at the same time tomorrow for more wisdom for the heart