Sermon: Leviticus 25:39-55 - Slavery: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

 

Hi everybody! Ben Carpentier here.

I feel like I need to start with an apology for the click-baity title of my talk - Old Testament Slavery: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. I can imagine some people seeing that and saying, “Slavery, good? There’s nothing good about slavery!” And they’re right. The Old Testament law on slavery is one of the areas of the Bible most attacked by non-Christians, because in today’s world slavery is pretty much universally an evil – and yet here in Leviticus we find laws creating a structure for slavery and servitude among God’s people. People ask how we can worship a God who seems to approve of, or at the very least condone and institutionalise, an evil like slavery? Let me say right from the beginning I’m not going to be condoning slavery or defending it; I’m not going to try and explain slavery away, or suggest that it served some necessary purpose in ancient times. I’m not going to make comparisons between Biblical slavery laws and other slavery codes of the ancient world to show that biblical slavery is comparatively better than others.

I don’t need to do any of these things, because my job as a preacher is to put forward what God says through the Bible, and God does not make any of these arguments. Instead, the Bible makes it clear that slavery is a tool of oppressors, and that God stands against oppression. And yet it is true that, when God is formulating the governance and laws for his redeemed people as they move into his promised land, as we have just read in our Bible reading, God includes laws about slavery.

These are not laws outright banning slavery, but laws restricting slavery. And that is pretty confronting. It’s easy to think that if God allows for something in his law, even in a restricted way, he is obviously condoning it or even supporting it. But this is the exact argument that the Pharisees make to Jesus about divorce in Matthew 19:7, when they asked him, ““Why, then, did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”” They are asking, "Why did God put divorce into the law if he does not condone it?" In verse 8 Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard.”

Jesus spends that whole conversation explaining that God’s plan for marriage is that it should be for life – one flesh that should not be separated. But God knew that sin would wreck some marriages. He knew some people would seek to break their marriage vows. It’s a terrible thing that hurts families and put women especially in a very vulnerable position. But it's going to happen, because people's hearts are hard. So God made laws to cover it to ensure that, even in this situation that goes against his will, there will be limits.

And in the laws related to slavery, there is a similar logic at work. God’s plan does not require anyone being a slave. But God knows that sin will wreck some people’s livelihoods. But the fact is wherever there are desperate people capable of being oppressed, slavery lives and thrives. So God set down some hard limits, not just to protect people, but so that we would know that he stands against oppression.

But none of that means there is anything good about slavery. So why is my talk entitled “The good, the bad and the ugly”? Because the picture of God rescuing Israel out of slavery in Egypt is the defining picture of his relationship with his people in the Old Testament – it gets mentioned over and over again in the OT law; twice just in our passage today! And the theme of slavery continues to play a huge role in our understanding of Jesus’ work on the cross for our salvation, and our relationship with God as Christians. Now, I am not at all saying that God’s actual rescue of Israel from slavery, or his use of slavery as a metaphor for our relationship with him, somehow redeems slavery or makes it any less awful than it is. In fact, slavery’s awfulness is the point! There may not be anything more comparable than slavery to describe how oppressive sin is, how it traps us, how helpless we are, and how we need to be rescued from it.

Not only that, but the language of master and slave helps to illustrate the relationship that we have with God. We see that in Leviticus 25:43, “Because the Israelites are my servants, whom I brought out of Egypt, they must not be sold as slaves.” The English translation uses two different words – because they are my servants, they must not be sold as slaves – but in the original Hebrew it’s the same word. God did not rescue the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt to set them free to do whatever they wanted: he redeemed them out of slavery so that they could now serve him only.

And the picture goes even further still. Did you know that slaves could inherit the estate of their masters? Here in Leviticus 25:46, and elsewhere in the OT law, we read about people volunteering to become “slaves for life”. And you might wonder, why would anyone voluntarily become a slave to another person for the rest of their lives? Well, one answer is that if you chose to become a slave for life, you stood in the line of that family’s inheritance if the head of the house had no children. You might recall that Abram complained to God in Genesis 15:3, “You have given me no children; so a slave in my household will be my heir.” This was one of the only ways that a foreigner could inherit a parcel of Israel’s promised land.

And this practice of adopting lifelong slaves into the family as heirs was also popular in the Roman culture of Jesus’ time. The New Testament makes it clear that we are more than merely slaves of God – we have been adopted into the line of inheritance. Romans 8:15 says, “The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship.” The word “adoption to sonship” there refers to this adoption of an adult as the heir. Our story as the people of God is one of redemption out of slavery to the oppression of sin, and into the position of heirs of God.

How does this adoption happen? By God himself humbly taking the place of a slave for us. Jesus told us in Mark 10:43: “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. 45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” As Jesus, God became a slave to each and every one of us; he served us; he gave up his life for us. And he did it voluntarily – as if any of us have the power to force God to do anything, much less to enslave him! So when God calls on us to be his faithful servants, who he adopts as heirs, he is asking nothing more than what he has already done for us first. There may not be anything good about slavery, but the story that it tells about how God relates to us is definitely Good News.

So now let’s move from the good to the bad. You may think I don’t need to explain to you why slavery is bad. But it’s worth looking at what God has to say about slavery in the Law, because it serves to further show us that God understands and does not condone the oppressive nature of slavery. We can start with the first verse of our reading, Leviticus 25:39: “If any of your fellow Israelites become poor and sell themselves to you”.

Let’s just pause there. No-one wants to become a slave. To say that OT slavery was voluntary makes it sound like putting your hand up for a church roster. No, slavery is a last resort: if slavery was one of your options, that’s because your other options were poverty, starvation or death. Straight out of the gate we’re seeing it's desperation and poverty that leads to slavery.

So “If any of your fellow Israelites become poor and sell themselves to you, do not make them work as slaves. 40 They are to be treated as hired workers or temporary residents among you”. The Old Testament laws make it very clear that there is a delineation between “hired workers” and “slaves”.

What were the key differences between a hired worker and a slave? There are two main differences. The first one is the kind of work slaves do. Slaves could be a lot of things in ancient times – nursemaids, doctors, business managers :Joseph was basically the prime minister of Egypt as a slave! – but there were some jobs that only slaves did: chopping wood, carrying water, brick-making, mining, working the oars in large ships. These jobs were menial, back-breaking, often dangerous.

But God understands how bad slavery can be: he has already redeemed his people from such back‑breaking labour in Egypt! Allowing the Israelites to enslave each other in this way goes against that message of redemption. So he commands that when an Israelite sells themselves into slavery to a fellow Israelite, they must not be made to do such work. Instead, they must be given the work of a hired worker. This would most usually be farm work – which is still rigorous, hard work! But it is the work that any Israelite with a plot of land would already be doing. It is work with dignity.

The second difference between a slave and a hired worker is found in Lev 25:44: "Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. 45 You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property." Hired workers can come and go as they please. Slaves are another person's property. And I could talk about all the different things that this means from a legal perspective. But from a slave’s perspective, it really only means one thing: someone can control what you do using violence.

Again, the OT Laws have a whole bunch of limits on the use of this violence - if someone beats a slave to death, they are a murderer; if they cause a serious injury to a slave, the slave automatically gains their freedom; if they treat a slave so badly that they run away, the slave cannot be returned to them. But as a slave, you can still be beaten. Listen to this chilling rule in Exodus 21: "Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property."

As a slave, your physical wellbeing is in someone else's hands. If your whole family is enslaved, that means they can beat your spouse; they can beat your kids. This is what it means to be a slave. Being a slave is terrible. Again, God understands this miserable reality, and so he puts in this clause that the people he has freed from slavery shall not be ruled over so ruthlessly by their own people.

Furthermore, the period of their servitude is limited. In other places in the Law, it talks about becoming a slave for no more than six years, and being released in the Sabbath year – so every seventh year was a Sabbath year where fields were not worked anyway. This kind of slavery is understood to be in repayment of smaller debts that could be worked off in a shorter time.

But here in Leviticus 25 it talks about slaves working “until the year of Jubilee”. The Jubilee happened every 50th year – after the seventh of seven Sabbath years – and brings about a huge resetting of Israel’s economy. In Australia, our economy is heavily reliant on the real estate and construction industries. Since 2010, house sales were three times more likely to be made to someone who already owned more than one home than to a first home buyer. But in Israel, there were no land sales! Every family was assigned a parcel of land when they first moved into the promised land. But fortunes change, harvests are fickle, maybe not everyone is a great farm manager, and so sometimes people got into financial difficulty and were forced to sell their land to someone else.

But that is the land promised to them by God: how can they sell it? And the answer is the year of Jubilee. Whenever an Israelite “sold” their land, the price took into account how many years were left until the next Jubilee, when they or their family would get their land back.

Of course, if you sold all your land, how could you feed your family? The reason most people would sell their land is because some terrible debt had befallen them, in which case they would find their whole family in slavery – but for such a large amount, six years isn’t enough, so they would become slaves up to the next jubilee, when slaves were freed and land was returned to its rightful owners. 

These debts could be paid off earlier - we read about that from verses 47 to the end, where family members or even the slaves themselves can pay a redemption price before the jubilee has come - but in the worst case scenario, you always knew that, come the Sabbath year, or come jubilee, even if you hadn't saved a cent, even if no relatives had come to your rescue, God ensured that your land and your freedom would be returned to you. Can you imagine everyone in Australia losing all their investment properties every 50 years to people who don’t have houses? That’s how revolutionary Jubilee was.

Jubilee shows us that God’s inheritance to us is eternal – it cannot be traded away for a bowl of soup when you are in desperate times. It also shows us that God's provision is full of compassion: he doesn’t want anyone to be trapped in an endless cycle of generational poverty, desperation and oppression, so he designs a model of governance which does not allow wealth to become excessive, and does not allow poverty to remain entrenched. I wish I could do a whole sermon just on the jubilee, because it is a revolutionary way of rethinking how society can value its people above and beyond the bottom line of profit at all costs, and especially at the cost of oppressing the poor and desperate.

Because now we get to the ugly reality of slavery: it exists wherever the poor and desperate can be oppressed - which means that it still exists today.

In modern times we've made slavery illegal, and so we think that we don't have slaves anymore. But making it illegal never made it go away – it just drove it underground, into the hands of organised crime. Now we call it human trafficking. Sometimes people are kidnapped off the street. But it’s far more common that people are put into a cycle of ever-increasing debts they can never repay; or they are tricked into forced labour with the offer of an income to help feed their family; or they lured into remote areas with promises of work, only to find they don’t get paid, but now they are beaten if they try to escape. There are young women and young men who flee abuse at home, only to find themselves seduced by pimps who use coercion and drugs to sell them into prostitution.

Slavery might be illegal in every country on earth, but today it’s bigger than ever: more people are thought to be in modern slavery today than at any time in history. And it doesn’t just exist somewhere else: every single person who is listening to this talk owns things that were made with the profits of slave labour. Cobalt is a key ingredient in the batteries of phones, laptops, electric cars and home storage batteries: the majority of cobalt is mined by slaves. Much of the charcoal used in the forging of steel is made by slaves. The bricks used to build the sweatshop that our cheap clothes are made in were made by slaves. Imported seafood is 17 times more likely to have been caught by slave fishermen. One study estimates that up to 89% of women in prostitution are trafficked. The list goes on, but the truth is always the same: anywhere poor, desperate people are able to be oppressed, slavery lives on.

If you don’t believe me, then go to the website slaveryfootprint.org and take their survey to find out how many slaves work for you. You will be shocked.

This problem is so big. What can we possibly do? Let me break it down into three simple points: Remember, Rethink, Renounce.

It’s easy to feel powerless. Human trafficking is a huge, international problem, and the governments and law enforcement agencies of the world don’t even fully understand it, let alone have the power to swiftly end it. What can one person, one church do? We can remember. Remember that our God is the God who brought his people out of slavery in Egypt – a whole nation of people all at once! Our God is the God who detests oppression, who stands up for the cause of the poor and the desperate. We can remember the work of Christians before us like William Wilberforce, who fought slavery once before, and succeeded in making it illegal. We can remember those who are suffering in our prayers. I can recommend joining the prayer network of International Justice Mission – IJM. They will send you a weekly prayer update about their work in helping free people who have been enslaved across the world.

It’s also easy to feel like nothing will ever change. Our society is built on supplying us with whatever we want, on companies racing to the bottom in terms of prices, on not asking questions about how anyone can afford to produce things so cheaply, on people having the freedom to make as much money as they want and to spend it in any way that they want, so much so that we now have billionaires racing each other to see who can fly into space first. But we can change how we think. We need to rethink how we see the world, and make sure it aligns with God’s principles of Jubilee. How does this plan or policy or practice reflect God’s desire that everyone is given what they need to sustainably provide for their families, and that the sources of wealth should not become excessively stored up with one person or group of people? How might these plans, policies or practices be threatening the welfare of the poor and desperate, and how can they be changed to protect their interests?

A really simple example of how our church is already doing this is our food pantry. It’s only a small thing, but if it allows a family to keep food on their table and removes one element of financial stress, that contributes to reducing that feeling of desperation which can so easily lead to someone being in a position where they can be oppressed. Even just being a member of a church community has been shown to reduce the likelihood of someone becoming a victim of human trafficking.

It’s easy to just keep on living the lives we are, because that’s what we were doing yesterday, and it’s what everyone else is doing, and it’s how our whole society is set up to run. But we actually can’t do that. We are called by God to renounce – to voluntarily give up – those things in our lives and in our society that are contributing to the oppression of the poor and the desperate. And that is not going to be easy, and it’s not going to happen overnight. We can’t just give up electronic devices, especially when doing so would make us unable to work, unable to study, and in the midst of COVID unable to even connect with each other.

But at the same time, when our remembering and rethinking points out to us places in our own lives that are polluted by human trafficking, we must renounce them. And that most usually means making more ethical purchasing choices, buying from those who can guarantee that their supply chains are free of human trafficking and oppression. Which means buying less, and buying things that are more expensive. Which is hard, because it actually means paying the real cost of the products we use, not an artificially low price that is reduced at the expense of other people’s freedom. That is a real, concrete way of ensuring that the poor and desperate have ways of sustainably providing for their families, and reducing the risk of intergenerational poverty preventing their families from ever being able to escape that desperation.

In all the history of humanity, slavery still has not disappeared. Nor will it, because there will always be poor and desperate people, and those willing to oppress them. But at least the Israelites knew that even if they had to sell their house and their land, and even sell themselves, the year of jubilee ensured that their slavery and poverty would come to an end.

These are huge, society-wide, nation-wide, international problems. But the law of jubilee in Leviticus 25 relied on each of God’s people following his laws to make sure that in their homes people were not being oppressed. So let’s start with that. According to my slavery footprint, I have 13 modern day slaves working for me. How many of those can I set free in seven years, by my next Sabbath year? How many can I set free in 50 years, when it is my Jubilee?

CT Studd, who played on the English cricket team in 1882 in the first Ashes match and was also a missionary in China, India and Africa, put it like this: “If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him.” These are sacrifices God calls us to make, not just today, but every day and throughout our lives. Jesus gave up everything to become a slave for us; so no sacrifice can be too great for us to make for Him.

The Starpath Staff - an Artefact game

 The Starpath Staff

I was made from a sapling oak grown in a lonely field, possibly from an acorn buried by a confused squirrel. My wood was stripped, treated and used as a walking staff, passed down from father to son over generations in the Treue clan, worn smooth by the hands of many men of the same blood. I eventually ended up in the hands of the sixth son of six sixth sons, a wizard of remarkable natural ability called Macsech. Once he achieved power as a fully fledged wizard, Macsech decided to imbue me with magical power, since I was already a remarkable object both in history and make.

First, he had me planed into a hexagonal shape, and shod with meteoric iron. Then, taking me to a place of natural leylines, where mages of old had erected a stone circle, Macsech planted me into the centre of the circle on the night of the summer solstice. After ceremonially cutting his palms, he grasped my shaft with both his bloody hands and called out words of power, binding me to the Treue lineage. Once the ritual was complete, the places where Macsech gripped my shaft had dark wood marks of the wizard's fingers and palms; otherwise, the rest of me took on a redwood lustre.

I quickly became known as Macsech's Starpath Staff, because it was obvious where the wizard had walked when one looked on the ground and saw my hexagonal mark left in the ground. I was always said to have a SERIOUS air, as though to say I should not be messed with; I had a kind of WARM pulse, reminiscent of heartblood; and I was known to be incredibly LOYAL to my maker, never leaving his side, even by force.

Eventually I would just become known as the Starpath Staff. But I'll always think of myself as Macsech's: it is his hands that still grip my haft.

One day, the king grew paranoid at the growing power of the Treue family - due to its powerful heritage and large landholdings supporting the large family - so he marched against Macsech and the Treue clan. Standing atop his tower, Macsech called upon the power in me to protect the Treue, and struck my butt down upon the roof of the tower six times. In doing so, he summoned six winds that pushed back the armies of the king, until they were simply unable to enter the Treue lands. The spell burned my butt with scorch marks that could never hence be removed.

As an object of magical power, I have a better sense of the true nature of magic which eluded even Macsech in the heights of his power as an archmage. Because at its heart the essence of magic is chaos which wizards strive to bring into order, I always feared that this chaos, if too deeply tapped, would overcome the Treue and plunge them into chaos, destroying the family. My purpose is to draw together and protect, strengthen and empower the Treue. I am of their blood; I am part of their family. Indeed, aside from their land itself, I am their longest lived member. So they must never discover the inner chaos of the magic they wield.

After many years and more adventures, Macsech finally passed on, and I was passed on to his sixth son, Vol. Like all sixth sons, Vol was quite independent of the family, and also had the natural magical ability of his fathers. Scarred by the attack of the king on their lands as a child, Vol decided that it was time for a change of government; one which would place his family in a position of safety, prosperity, and comfort. He was also an ambitious young man though, and felt himself more intelligent than the average person, and more deserving to rule than the present line of kings. In fairness, they were unhealthily paranoid, and probably slept with their sisters or something.

It was in the hands of the wizard Vol that I struck down the king himself. Vol entered the king's presence, and of course was made to relinquish all weapons before entering his court. However, when the king and Vol came to blows when arguing about the king wishing to resume control of the Treue lands, I found my way into Vol's hands, and struck the mighty blow that smote the king in his place, using the fury of the Treue to extinguish not only the king himself, but his entire lineage to the sixth degree of separation. Apparently this was a little bit excessive - there were a few cousins of Vol who had been married into the royal line in generations passed, who suddenly disappeared - but since many of the king's royal guard were also his family members, it placed Vol onto the throne almost immediately and without contest. It seemed efficient at the time.

Vol never really lost me... but I had become FEARED. My power was now considered both legendary and terrible. As a symbol of Vol's power and right to rule, I was mounted above his throne. And there I stayed. Vol never touched me again.

It was 10 years and six days later that I would again feel the ground under my butt, and the touch of Treue fingers around my shaft. This time, the enemy was a foreign power, seeking to invade the country. Of course, now, the whole country was the domain of Treue blood - crown land and all that - so when Vol's sixth son, Riarra, was called to lead the armies of the land into battle to protect its borders, he reached over the throne and took hold of me. He was but a boy when his father became king, but he knew full well my power; he knew that I had made his father king. He did not take me lightly.

Riarra was too much a sixth son, however. Oh yes, we went to war. He still felt loyalty to his family. But he was an independent soul, and he resented having to go into battle when he would have much rathered spending his time in the substantial library of his wizard-king father. He knew that, though he might carry the mystical heritage of his father, his eldest brother would inherit the political rule. And this was what Vol always wanted - he was politician first, wizard second. Riarra, on the other hand, just wanted to lose himself to the magic.

This meant he was also much more discerning in his use of my power. He knew that his own people feared my power. And so, weaving his magic around him, he snuck unseen into the enemy camp, planning to use my power to weaken the entire army. He was successful - of course he was, with my help. From the middle of their camp, I sent the enemy soldiers into a chaotic frenzy. They drew their swords and struck at each other, seeing themselves all as their own worst enemies. The night was one of screaming and blood. The army destroyed itself before the next sunrise.

Unfortunately, I am the Starpath Staff, and although Riarra was invisible to the eye, I continued to leave my stamp upon the ground where he trod. The enemy general - a woman by the name Condur - saw these marks, and struck out wildly towards Riarra. He blocked the blow with my own shaft, and I did my utmost to protect him. He survived, but the sword split me in two. The explosion was devastating. It wasn't my fault: I was not built to be broken! I was attempting to arrest the chaotic power of the magic. But this was too much, and it all came out.

It would be a long time before I was reformed. Riarra dropped me like a piece of garbage - well, two pieces - and ran. I fell into the trampled mud of the enemy camp, and there I stayed. Blood fell about me as the soldiers continued to vent their bezerk rage on one another. Then rain fell, turning the ground to mud. Then snow fell, and remained until the next spring. Finally, after the snow had thawed, I was found again.

The man who found me was Deyflin, leader of a group of bandits who had stumbled across the deserted camp of soldiers and the carnage which had been covered through the winter. As the frost thawed, it revealed bodies to be looted and tents to ransack. I had sat there alone for the winter, but not lonely - my warmth meant there was a little patch of grass around me free of the winter chill, which attracted small animals scavenging for food among the snow and ice. Deyflin also came to me with a hunger - a hunger for wealth and power. In that he reminded me of Macsech's son, Vol. Upon seeing my two halves sitting on the bare ground, where not even snow dared to fall, he felt the same fear that my power had inspired in others. But if you want to lead a group of cut-throats, you quickly learn that you can't show any fear. So with a display of bravado, he called out to his fellow bandits, exclaiming that he had found some obviously powerful item, and then once he had ensured they were all watching, he reached down and grabbed the two pieces of my shaft in each hand.

He awoke a few minutes later in a tree. I had to make sure he took me seriously. The second time there was less bluster, and a bit more respect. After all, I did sense in him a hint of Treue blood - the grandson of an illegitimate union - and since I was getting bored, that was good enough for me. Besides, I needed to be repaired and brought back to my former glory.

Deyflin took me back to his "court". It was a far cry from Vol's actual kingly court - a ramshackle longhouse, a few wattle and daub huts, and now several more tents than they had before looting the decimated soldier camp. Deyflin was no stranger to violence or battle, and upon sensing the power in my halves, he made the decision to have me turned into two fighting shillelagh instead of trying to reform my original staff form. Having my head shod with cold iron - I suppose meteoric iron is hard to come by as a bandit - I now had two heads, and he carried me holstered upon his belt.

Now, I've got to say that before this I had only very rarely been wielded in anger. Macsech was the type to walk softly and carry a big stick. But Deyflin walked softly and carried two big sticks. He was a master at cracking heads. He was ruthless, but not unnecessarily violent. He knew that if you crush the snake's head the body goes limp, and together we travelled the dark paths of the night, finding the dens of thieves, pirates and other low-lives, catching their leaders unawares, and beating seven colours of refuse from them. Some had to die - you know these leader types: they can be very stubborn - but others were willing to cede their groups to Deyflin after a good enough beating. After a few years of consolidation, he had really earned his title King of Bandits, and had groups under his control up and down the countryside.

It was at this time that my name changed, as did my reputation. No longer did I leave my star path in the dirt; now I travelled the paths lit only by stars. And I was no longer one, but two - in the hands of Deyflin, I became the starpath staves.

But alas, all good things come to an end. As Deyflin's power grew and consolidated, he needed my power less and less. We sat atop a makeshift throne more and more. Despite the pivotal role I played in building up his power base, the stories increasingly spoke of Deyflin and his power and his skills, and the starpath staves didn't really factor in. I became just another set of weapons in the arsenal of the bandit king - weapons that were used less and less.

Ten more years! Ten long years went by, ticked by, inched by in the flickering light of a scarcely used armoury, before I saw the sun again, and felt the warm touch of Treue skin upon my hafts once more. Apparently Vol had made numerous promises to his nobles that he would take care of this bandit king menace, and so one day the king's knights came crashing into the longhouse, there was chaos left and right, and I was cofiscated - confiscated, can you believe it?! - and, collected up with all the other weapons, we were assigned to the king's armoury instead, for the use of his fighting men. I dreaded sitting in an armoury for more years, and I very nearly took it out on the knight who grabbed me, but when he touched me I could tell that he was the son of Tezzer, who was the son of Yeltsin, who was the son of Framlin, who was the father of Macsech. So I showed him some mercy.

Of course, knights are not mages, and to them I was just a stick - well, two sticks. They like swords and spears and lances and the like. I was easily the most powerful weapon in the armoury - I had killed a king's whole family in one blow! I had crushed the skulls of some of the biggest badass bandits out there! But no, I wasn't shiny and sharp enough. I wasn't an axe with delusions of grandeur; I wasn't a kitchen knife gone mad. Well, it didn't matter to me anyway. I could bide my time.

Turns out I didn't need to wait that long. It turns out that Tezzer's son - who was named Framlin also, after his great grandfather - was given a quest to go and slay a horde of undead which had been raised by an evil necromancer in the swamps to the west. Apparently these skeletal warriors were unharmed by swords and spears, because their blades simply glanced off their magical bones. Enter the starpath staves. I knew how to crush bones good. I mean, er, well. I spent a long time in the hands of warrior types. They are not known for their good diction. It rubs off.

Framlin the Younger was dispatched as part of a circle of knights to go and face this undead menace. Young Framlin wasn't as confident fighting with two hands as Deyflin had been. Knights are more of a sword and board - that is, shield - type of warrior. At one point, Framlin had even been considering leaving half of me behind, to use me as a club. Can you imagine? A club!? What am I, a slab of wood dragged across the field by a neanderthal to club a woolly mammoth? No thank you. While dual-wielding might seem awkward, when done properly it is a thing of finesse and fury. I made sure that once he had one half in his hand, the warmth of his family blood called to his off hand to take my other half. I gave him a few pointers - just little tips in muscle movement and weight distribution that I had learned from my time with Deyflin - and together, Framlin the Younger and I went out to face the evils of the swamp.

Now this circle of knights were a proud bunch, and they called themselves the Light of Men. They were going to fight supernatural darkness, after all, and they felt they had the blessing of their god on their side. They started off haughty and light-hearted. But once they faced their first platoon of skeletal fiends - warriors who neither tire nor fear, who fight until each bone is broken, whose eyeless sockets and baleful grinning skulls would strike fear into the most hardened heart - after they had lost their first friends to the rusty blades and bony clawing hands, the Light of Men darkened considerably. Simple warriors were no match for the dark mysticism against which they fought, yet fought they did; with Framlin wielding my might, they were eventually victorious, driving back the darkness of the necromancer's foul magics into the foul swamps where they belonged. I protected Framlin every day he was in that awful swamp: not only from skeletal warriors, but from the cold, the damp, the biting flies and the diseases that travelled on the putrid air. I kept his spirits high, allowing him to combat the unholy fear these undead soldiers brought with them. Framlin and five of his fellows returned victorious to the castle, thanks to me.

Together with all the other weapons and armour of the returning heroes, I was BLESSED by the king's archpriest. It was only at this point, as I was brought into court for the ceremony, that King Vol recognised me! I was returned to my position above the throne, and there I stayed, watching over the king's rule, his good and bad decisions, his victories and defeats. But I played no part in them. I just sat there, back on the wall, and watched.

Tol gave way to Tem, who passed the crown to Sestus, who had only daughters and left the throne to Cyrele, who ruled a long, long time. Cyrele's grandson inherited the throne: his name was Tongor. Then there was Ellin, then Nifal, then Elcede. Centuries of peace and prosperity passed. Not only that, but while the bloodline of Treue grew broad, it seemed to become more shallow. The wealthier and more successful the family became, the fewer children they seemed to have. Several generations passed with no sixth sons, and I feared that magic might forever leave the bloodline.

Eventually, peace becomes the norm and the watchword; the treasure more valuable to the kingdom than gold. Meanwhile, the name of the starpath staves has become a byword for power, violence, infamy and bloodshed. Despite being blessed by the archpriest of old, I was considered an object of a bygone era. Magic was dying, and with it the influence of all things magical. Eventually it was decided that it is unseemly for me to be left above the throne as I symbolised outmoded concepts, and so after hundreds of years I was removed, relocated to the vault of a small church in the outskirts of one of the king's towns.

I suppose my next keeper would be the historian, Balarriel. He was an old man, a priest by trade I believe, though his love was objects of old far more than people of the present. He became the curator of the collection of sacred objects of which I was part, and when he realised that he had me under his care - the actual starpath staff, wielded by the legendary Macsech of the royal family Treue - he became more than a little besotted with me. Of course, he never wielded me - he knew better than to touch the staff of Treue blood when he was of some inferior family - but he treated me with great respect and care. The small rear hall of the chapel that all we holy artefacts called home was hidden away from the public - no pilgrims came to see the relics that time and culture would rather forget - but Balarriel was intrigued with stories of my maker and the magic he wielded. Macsech and I had traversed the length and breadth of this land, after all, and there were scant few square miles which had not at one time felt the imprint of the starpath staff in their soil at one point.

But Balarriel cared less about Macsech than he did about unlocking the secrets of the power of the magic he had wielded. I had been around; I knew the destructive power of the chaos, and I was not going to let this befuddled old historian unleash it on the world. He was not worthy. He was no sixth son. He was not Treue. So I led him astray. I never spoke to him, and he never laid a finger on me, but all it took was a flickering of the candlelight to highlight some passage on a scroll while shadowing another, or a chance gust of wind to flip a page while he was off making his tea, or a warming of the hearth fire to lull him to an early night's rest. I led him down the wondrously ludicrous path of alchemy, and within a few years he had lead on the brain and hemlock under his fingernails. He died of something - I don't even know what, I didn't much care. It was only once he was gone that I realised it was unlikely anyone else was going to come and pay attention to me. I had relegated myself into the past. I had become FORGOTTEN.

It's difficult to know how much time passes inside a room with no windows. After Balarriel died, there was the occasional visitor into our room, but after a few years there wasn't even a light under the door. Time passed. It stayed dark. That didn't bother us too much: it's not like we have eyes; we just know what's going on. The sounds of dereliction and decay were our only companions. We could hear the other sacred items tarnishing, fading, tearing, falling apart. It came to be that whenever something actually broke, it was such a break to the monotony of nothingness that we would actually briefly glow with the dull, red light of our warmth. We started talking to ourselves. Don't call us crazy: it's easy to talk to yourself when you are actually in two parts already. Thankfully, we aren't identical - the break from the wretched sword blow by that enemy soldier woman - what was her name again? - didn't cut us cleanly in half. So now we are the long and short starpath staves. Long staff mostly talks about our time with Vol, with Deyfrin and with young Framlin. Long staff likes to remember the battles, the victories over foes. Short staff is more reflective. Short staff reminisces about the chaos we sewed when Riarra took us into Condur's camp - Condur, that's her name! - or when Balarriel spoke of Macsech. Then we get sad. Both of us miss Macsech. The best times were always with Macsech.

Though we have travelled up and down the land, we began to dream of returning to the ancestral land of our family, the Treue - to the field where our sapling first grew, where Macsech's tower first stood, and where the Treue generations long called home. They probably don't even live there anymore. They made the castle their home. They probably gifted their ancestral lands to some minor nobles by now. By now our brother and sister oak trees in the neighbouring copses are probably gigantic - or they have been turned into houses, or boats, or seige weaponry, or other mundane uses. What was that? Oh, it was the tapestry wearing through and falling to the floor in a cloud of dust. Good guess, short staff! Long staff had predicted the next thing to go would be the collection of religious texts, but those little worms have a few years to go yet.

All of a sudden there is light. And it's not sunlight, nor is it the light of a flame. It is some strange, unearthly light, almost as if lightning had been captured and put inside a flask. It is too white, too clean, piercing among the dust and cobwebs (even that family of spiders had long since passed away, once the other insects had precious little to feast on). And what's that? There is a person! No, wait, two people! A man and a woman, or at least that's what it seems. We can't tell from what they are wearing - so strange! They must be foreign. Both wear their hair long, but only one has a beard. We assume the one with the beard is a man. The other has a slighter build. We assume she is a woman. Although their argot is nothing we have heard before, the manner in which they talk reminds long staff more than a little of Deyfrin. It has that cruder air, that dash of bravado, that hint of desperation. But who cares who they are: it's real live people! Amazing!

He - we're calling him Flin, because he reminds us of Deyflin - is off investigating the tomes. They look more like Swiss cheese than they do books anymore. He doesn't seem impressed. But the girl - we'll just call her Missy for now - she seems more interested in the table upon which we rest. She might see us! She's got to see us: most of the other things here have rotten, decayed, rusted. But not us. No, long staff and short staff have the Treue blood imbuing us with warmth, with energy. She probably would have noticed our faint glow if those awful, garish white lights they carry didn't flood out everything else. Regardless, her eyes are sharp enough, because she does notice us. Missy says something, loud enough that Flin interrupts his endless nattering - probably complaining that everything looks like rubbish here - and he comes over to look. Yes, it's definitely us they have seen. We're the best objects here by far. Missy seems curious; Flin sounds more dismissive. We can just imagine what he's saying: "What, two sticks? Worthless." He probably prefers swords.

But Flin was still the first to pick one of us up - long staff, of course – probably compensating. Missy, not to be left out, picked up short staff. Flin starts swinging long staff about - he's obviously got no idea what he's doing - and long staff remembers young Framlin, remembers helping him out by adjusting the weight a little here, quietly suggesting a direction there. Long staff is enjoying the memories of battle so much, long staff is almost trying to convince Flin of how worthwhile we are. We can't think of anything worse than being left in this sacred crypt, this mausoleum for forgotten holiness. Flin just didn't seem to get it though: it was as though he'd never wielded a weapon in his life. He just couldn't seem to appreciate our fineness.

So when Missy picked up short staff, short staff decided to also go all out, to convince her that the starpath staves were worth rescuing from this dank place. At first, short staff filled her with warmth. She was confused, intrigued, but still not quite coming to terms with our power. So short staff decides to show how serious we are, and levitates her off the ground. It's a relatively low level magic, but Macsech found any number of uses for it back in the beginning. Besides, we don't want to expose the new keepers to too much magic all at once; not with the chaos it so often brings.

Funny, Missy and Flin seem absolutely astonished at the little bit of levitation. Flin is pointing his torch at Missy and making it go click. Strange little box torch. Long staff says it actually shows a picture of Missy floating off the ground on its side. That's a novel magic! Why would they be so impressed with a little levitation when this Flin can control such fine illusions? No matter, short staff did the trick, and certainly got both of their attentions. Missy is now holding short staff in both her hands, her own torch box sitting in our place on the table, and in the light can see the original imprint of Macsech's left hand in the wood of short staff’s shaft.

At the same time, Flin is looking over at Missy, and thoughts are clearly running through his head. He looks down at long staff, gives another experimental swing, and then looks back at Missy, particularly at her head. He takes a few quiet steps forward - very much like Deyflin now, quiet and malevolent - slowly raising long staff up higher. He clearly sees the value of the starpath staves now, and long staff was never against the occasional crushed skull, so why not? We don't want to be split up, after all. Closer and closer Flin stalks, coming within melee distance. And at just the moment the blow is being struck, Missy places her left hand into Macsech's mark on short staff.

There is a lurch, as though years, decades, centuries flash past. Missy's mother, you see, was a Hastings, but her great great grandmother was a Berdwyn, and her great grand aunt had been a Vauxnell, and her great great grandmother had been a Rombi. A Rombi by blood, but by marriage she was a Treue. Macsech's wife had been a Rombi before he married her. This girl, short staff suddenly realised, is a daughter of their master! She is of Treue blood! She is family! And long staff was now a hair's breadth from her skull.

We dig deep into our memory, and remember the magic that protected the family from those who long ago would harm them. We remember the bad king. We remember Vol. Long staff clatters to the ground, the hand which had been holding him having disappeared into the dusty air. Along with his entire family. And their families. And probably their gardeners and mathematics tutors. No matter: for when Missy Hastings turns around, she will only think that Flin had left, left and dropped long staff at her feet. So she reaches down to pick up long staff. Why shouldn’t she? She has nothing to fear. After all: she is family.

Sermon: Matthew 18:11-20 - dealing with each other's sins

Sermon 2: Matt 18:10-20 – the role of the church in shepherding God’s flock

Good morning, Waitara Gospel Chapel! This is Ben Carpentier speaking to you all the way from the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, Penny and I were forced to leave Namibia, but we arrived here safely and are staying with Penny’s uncle and aunt. Once again, we are thankful to the Lord for his goodness, and it’s such a blessing for me to be able to share with you all again today.

For those of you who watched last week, we were looking at Matthew chapter 18 verses 1-10. We learned that God loves the weak, the vulnerable and the powerless so much that he says in the kingdom of heaven they are the ones who will be considered truly great. And we reflected a little on what that means for us as Christians: it means we have to recognise our own position before God as lowly, vulnerable and powerless; it means our job as Christians is to welcome the weakest and most oppressed into God’s kingdom – women, children, the poor and refugees; that God’s wrath will be upon anyone who causes those who believe in him to stumble in their Christian walk, so we must avoid false teaching and ensure that we are equipping Christians to identify and avoid it; and we also saw that we have an individual responsibility to avoid those things that will make us stumble in our faith ourselves.

The reason I’m giving you a quick reminder of what we learned about last week is because this week we are continuing with the next 10 verses of Matthew 18 – verses 11 to 20 – and this whole section is actually linked together. We shouldn’t look at these passages in isolation, but instead see them in their context, because that really guides our understanding of what is being said, and avoids what some people just read into the passage without it really being there. You might remember last week when I was talking about Jesus saying that we must become like little children, there are a lot of things that we might think about the qualities of little children that we should emulate, but Jesus makes it clear that he is focusing on their low status and vulnerability. Well this week we have another passage that often gets misunderstood and misquoted, and where the context helps enormously in our understanding of the passage. As we learned last week, God takes false teaching seriously. We need to make sure that we are being faithful to God’s message and not misleading people with our own ideas, because the consequences of doing otherwise are serious, and even eternal.

We start with verse 11 which, if you’re reading the new NIV, isn’t there. Instead there’s a little note saying “Some manuscripts include here the words of Luke 19:10”. As we know, Bible translators don’t have the original manuscripts of the gospels to work from, but instead have many copies, and fragments of copies, that were made and distributed in the ancient world. Some later manuscripts have this verse included, but those manuscripts closest to the writing of the actual gospel don’t, so the translators have left it out. In this instance it’s no big thing: the verse is simply a repetition of a verse from the gospel of Luke – “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” - and if you do include it here, it is a lovely bridge between last week’s section about keeping God’s people from stumbling, and this week’s section about what to do when we are confronted with sin within the fellowship of believers. But even if we exclude the verse, the message about God seeking to save the lost is clearly provided to us in verses 12 to 14, where Jesus tells the story of the shepherd who leaves his 99 safe sheep to go and rescue the one sheep who has wandered astray, and rejoices over this one sheep more than the 99 who were never in danger. Verse 14 says it well, “In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.” God cares deeply about keeping his people safely in the boundaries of his heavenly kingdom, and those who wander he wants to see restored to their rightful place in the kingdom.

Now I’m a city boy through and through, so I have only come into contact with sheep a handful of times in my life. But back in Windhoek, many people who live in the capital city still have farms in other parts of the country, and sheep are regularly farmed there. I am told by my sheep farming friends that the loss of a sheep represents a considerable loss of income, but also small scale farmers know their animals individually and care for them. So if one does go missing, you will go looking for it! And here in Namibia, that can be perilous. Not only are there leopards and lions, but there are also sheep rustlers who will come and steal from your flock. So when you do find your lost sheep safe and sound, you celebrate, because the situation could have been much worse.

Jesus here of course is not talking about actual sheep. In fact, in verse 14 he returns to his language of the previous passage talking about “little ones” – the weak, the lowly, the vulnerable who we talked about last week. And before we move on from here, there are two things I would like to remind us all about. Firstly, this is the context in which we read the following verses on what is popularly known as church discipline. The context is that God does not want to see any of his little ones perish. It’s not about punishment for wrongdoing - God wants to see those who are astray return to him.

That’s the first point. The second point that is so easy to miss or forget is that we are a part of this group of weak, lowly and vulnerable children before our God. We have been saved through his grace, not because we have made ourselves special, and we are just as susceptible to stumbling and sin as anyone else. One thing we were taught in our missionary training is to hold off on judgment of our adopted culture for as long as possible, because the truth is that you see lots of things that make it easy to get frustrated and point fingers and judge the culture and how it doesn’t glorify God. But it doesn’t usually take long before you start to reflect on your own western culture and see that actually our culture also does not reflect God’s kingdom values – it’s just that we’re more forgiving of our culture because we’re more used to it, or we simply sin in more sophisticated and culturally acceptable ways.

In God’s eyes both Namibian and Australian cultures are corrupt, even if in one culture people steal money directly, while in the other they funnel it into business or campaign accounts. In God’s eyes both cultures are greedy, even if one is poor and wants handouts while the other is rich and doesn’t want to share. Often western culture simply hides these problems better, and it is the obviousness of the sin that appals us rather than the fact of it; and it is the blankets we use to cover our sin – the thin veneer of politeness or the separations of accountability or the distancing of responsibility – that comforts us, rather than a true repentance and casting away of sin as something which stumbles us and others.

We are sinful. We are lowly little children, undeserving and yet graciously invited into God’s heavenly kingdom. When God talks about not wanting the lost sheep to perish, it is so easy for us to think of ourselves sitting in our churches as the 99 safe sheep who aren’t causing any trouble. And as the Holy Spirit’s sanctifying work takes place in our lives, there is some truth in that. We are becoming more like Christ each day. But this passage is written to Christians – the one lost sheep is not a non-Christian! You can’t use church discipline against people who aren’t members of the church. Let us never forget the words of Isaiah 53: “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way.” We are all lost sheep that need saving, even as we are also called to be shepherds tending to God’s flock.

Now that we have these two truths in our minds – that God’s desire is that none of his lowly, weak and vulnerable children perish, but rather are kept safe from stumbling; and that we are all weak and vulnerable, we are all sinful and we are all in need of God’s grace and protection – we are ready to move on to the second part of our passage today. We’ve already learned last week that we have a personal responsibility to ensure that we ourselves do not stumble. Now we learn how we as a community are to deal with one another when we stumble, and Jesus’ words are wonderfully practical in this regard.

Starting at verse 15: “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over.” The truth is that we are all going to sin. Sometimes that sin is visible; sometimes it will even negatively impact another of our brothers and sisters in Christ. When we see one another sin, or when we are impacted by one another’s sin, Christ’s command is that we go to our brother or sister and point out their fault privately. This is us dealing with sin in community, even though we start with a community of only two. As Christ says, the goal here is to win them over. That’s especially important to remember if the sin has had an impact on you personally. If you have been harmed by another person’s sin, it can be tempting to call them to account so that you get some sort of satisfaction, or revenge, or perhaps even recompense for their wrongdoing against you. But that is not the concern of Christ in this passage: his concern is to see the lost sheep found again. And that should be our concern as well. On the other side, if we have been approached by a brother or sister and find we have been at fault, our reaction should be that of Zacchaeus when he received God’s grace: “If I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

Verse 16, “But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses’.” Now things get more serious. Here we see the community aspect becoming more obvious. The reference to ‘two or three witnesses’ comes from the Old Testament law on evidence for crimes and offences in Deuteronomy 19. Suddenly we have stepped up from a personal conversation to a concern about having witnesses. These witnesses are not necessarily witnesses of the actual sinful event itself though – they are likely just witnesses of the Christian confronting the sinning Christian going through these steps, and not just dragging someone before the whole church unnecessarily.

This is important, because bringing other people into this situation means that the action you are drawing attention to must actually be considered sinful! After all, if the person who is approached doesn’t agree with the person raising the issue, it might be because the thing they are doing actually isn’t sinful! Raising it with a couple of other people from the church community will definitely help to clear this up. It might be that the two witnesses will say, “Actually, I see their point: I don’t think what they did is a problem.” This ensures that someone does not get dragged before the whole church before ensuring that there really is a problem that needs to be addressed. It prevents someone from being unnecessarily shamed – and honour and shame were a big component of the culture at the time, and still are important to many cultures.

Even in our culture, we know how much damage can be done to someone’s reputation if they are arrested at their workplace, for example, especially if they are arrested for a crime that is particularly shameful. When police just go around arresting people with no reasonable suspicion of a crime being committed, this can cause someone irreparable damage to their reputation even in Australia.

And it is possible that the person bringing the accusation is in the wrong. If we find ourselves in such a situation, we should be gracious. If we made an accusation that others think is not legitimately sinful, it is our thinking that actually needs to be adjusted. If we have an accusation made against us wrongly, we should be able to trust that the accusation, though wrong, was done in a spirit of ensuring our spiritual wellbeing, and not out of spite or revenge. In Deuteronomy 19 - where this rule of two or three witnesses originally comes from - the Old Testament law makes it clear that malicious accusations against another person are a sin and a crime: the malicious accuser is put to death! Obviously in church we don’t put people to death, but it shows us the seriousness of making sure that accusations against one another are not done recklessly. If our heart is really in the right place, and what we are hoping for is to lead a lost sheep back to the fold, then we should be thankful if we discover that - once we seek some advice from one or two others - actually there isn’t any problem. Obviously if the two witnesses agree that there is a sinful problem here, it might be that, when confronted with this by a small group, the sinful person will acknowledge their wrong and seek to repent. Again, they will have been won over, and the process can stop there.

But, moving to verse 17, “If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.” If the steps have been properly followed, then whether the issue at hand is truly sinful has already been raised with two witnesses, and so is likely to be agreed upon to be sinful by the entire church. But it still exists as a failsafe, and I have been in a church where, when an issue got to the stage of being brought before the entire church, a significant number of the church members disagreed with the leadership about whether something was or wasn’t sinful.

The main point in this verse is the consequence or punishment that the church can enforce upon the one found to be sinning and unrepentant. As I said, in churches today we don’t stone people to death. What do we do? The verse itself says “treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.” And some have said that this means we should treat them with love and dignity and seek to persuade them of the truth. This is of course true – we should treat all people with love and dignity and seek to persuade them of the truth of the gospel. But when we read other parts of the New Testament, like Romans 16, or 2 Thessalonians 3, or Paul’s extensive words on this in 1 Corinthians 5, we see that included in this action is an idea of temporary exclusion from the community – sometimes called excommunication. One reason the whole church is involved is so that everyone in the community knows that this decision has taken place, and that they must all abide with it.

Now of course this is challenging, and that’s fair enough. This is, after all, not meant to be an easy situation. It’s perhaps one of the most difficult situations that church leaders can find themselves in today, especially in the modern world. In the early church exclusion was more straightforward – there was no other church in the area! And even throughout the Catholic era of the church, you could not simply be excommunicated from one parish and move to another – there was no other denomination to accept you. But today, especially in places with a long Christian heritage like Australia, being excluded from one Christian community seems like a small consequence: there is probably another church within walking distance. Even in small country towns there will often be more than one church. People move churches all the time, for many different reasons. When we moved to Namibia, it took us 7 months to find a church where we were comfortable enough to settle down and begin serving seriously. How can we meaningfully exclude someone from our church community when they can just up and join any number of other churches with little or no consequence?

I want to put two challenges to us in this regard. The first one is for us as individuals. When you join a church community – that is, when you adopt it as the place where you will fellowship regularly, and contribute meaningfully, and seek the benefit of that community as part of God’s kingdom – to an extent you are putting yourself under the spiritual authority of that community. And this happens any time you join any community really. I’m in the UK at the moment, and as you may know most people in the UK want their country to leave the European Union. But the fact is that decades ago they put themselves under the authority of the EU – they ceded some of their sovereignty to it, they made a commitment to abide by what the EU said. Now that doesn’t mean they can’t leave; but it does mean that it will be painful. And it’s the same when we become true members of a church: yes, we could leave at any time – true churches are not cults, they cannot and should not restrain someone from leaving – but while we are members of a church, we are under that church’s spiritual authority and we should respect that. Penny and I have moved around a lot, and been members of many different churches, and preached in even more, and we can tell you that there is no such thing as the perfect church; they all have flaws, or shortcomings, or things we disagree with. But they still should have that authority in the life of the individual Christian who calls that church home.

That’s the challenge we bear as individuals – to accept an authority that we could just walk away from. But there is another challenge we bear together as the community: our church community should be so authentic, so representative of the gospel truth, so together, so caring and nurturing and important in the lives of its members, so trustworthy in their portrayal of the gospel and the words of scripture, that it is a real tragedy to leave it behind! When Penny and I left Waitara Anglican Church to serve on the mission field, that is how we felt! It is not a perfect church by any means, but we felt we were leaving behind a support network, a circle of brothers and sisters, a place of joy and contentment and service, a place of spiritual refreshment and learning, a place where we were a part of God’s kingdom expressed on earth. It hurt to leave. We cried. I would sincerely hope that Waitara Gospel Chapel is the same for its members. If someone moves away from your area and they are more upset about leaving behind their cycling club than leaving your church, then something is probably wrong.

And so it should be if someone should ever need to be temporary excluded from the church community because they refuse to repent of a certain sin. Yes, they might be able to go to another church. But they should be able to trust the church’s grasp of the Bible so much that they can think “if the church said I am wrong, I might be wrong about this”; they should miss your church so much that the loss of community is deep enough that they say to themselves “maybe I have been mistaken”. When a non-Christian visits your church community they should say “I really wish I had this in my life.” In the same way, a Christian who has gone astray should say “I really wish I had this back in my life”. That is Christ’s purpose in this whole passage: to see that his little children do not stumble, and that they do not perish out in the cold outside the walls of the kingdom.

Now if you’re like me, you will have been asking yourselves, possibly throughout this whole sermon, “That’s all well and good, Ben, but what about those cases where we struggle to determine what is sinful and what isn’t? Or what about those areas where churches disagree – like letting women preach, or baptism of children, or support of a certain political party or doctrine, or use of a certain piece of technology, or participation in a certain cultural activity?” If you weren’t thinking about that, then let’s think about that now, because Jesus actually deals with this issue in the next verse, verse 18: “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” These words are almost exactly repeated from Matthew 16:19, when Jesus gives Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven.

The truth is that although it is very tempting to say something like, “Can’t we just follow what scripture says?” it is rarely that easy to apply when the question of excluding someone from our community falls into our hands. Take the sixth commandment: You shall not murder. You’d think there’s not a lot of wiggle room in that. But what about the person who pulls the switch on those with the death penalty in the USA? What about a police officer who shoots a man armed with a knife? What about the police officer who shoots a child with a water pistol, or shoots a woman running away from him? What about a soldier who is told to drop bombs on a town that has both enemy soldiers and civilians? What about those people on 9/11 who crashed their airline flights, killing everyone aboard to stop the plane crashing into the White House? Christian’s attitudes on what is and isn’t murder differs, and I’m afraid the Bible does not make all of these situations crystal clear. Some churches would exclude someone for all of these actions; other churches would not exclude someone for any of them; some might be in between.

That is why Christ gave us verse 18. We’ve already seen that the inclusion of one or two witnesses, and the need to bring an issue before the whole church, helps to deal with the problem of sin together – if the church agrees that some activity is sinful, then it’s likely there is a problem with the activity.

And yet the church has changed its mind on many practices over the centuries. If I were to express a desire to marry a 13 year old girl, you would be shocked and disgusted and say that is surely sinful: but it was the norm in biblical times; the church would not have even thought to interfere. If I wanted to buy and own a slave, you would think I was a terrible person and say that is definitely sinful: but many Christians owned slaves for hundreds of years after Christ without any church condemnation. Coming a bit closer to modern times, it wasn’t that long ago that musical instruments were banned in most churches in Australia; even more recently watching movies or dancing were considered sinful and were grounds for exclusion by many churches.

And I haven’t even touched on cultural differences! In Namibia I have heard a whole sermon on how failure to greet another person in the street as a sin. One church leader gets caught in adultery, and nothing happens; another church leader gets so angry in a leadership meeting that he takes off his shirt, and his sin is deemed so destructive that he has to leave the country! There are still churches that say a Christian husband can legitimately beat his wife – I’m sure most of us would find that shocking. But then, even in Australia rape inside a marriage only started to be criminalised in 1976 – and churches were one of the groups most against these laws… and other churches were one of the groups most for these laws as well.

The truth is that there are many sins that are invisible: either because we can’t physically see them – like coveting; or we can’t easily measure them – like not honouring your father or mother; or we are culturally blind to them – like greed; or they happen in private – like domestic violence. I was told by a church leader in Namibia that the sin most often punished by church discipline in the Baster community is sex outside marriage, and the people most often punished are pregnant girls – because the evidence is there for all to see. Meanwhile, people who are greedy, people who are idolatrous, who lack generosity, who beat their wives but don’t leave marks – or even the men who get girls pregnant! – are never confronted by the church. This sort of favouritism, even unconscious, is unconscionable. We cannot be a church that picks on little girls while the sins of their fathers go unchecked. Surely that flies in the face of the God who loves the lowly little children.

But even with all these difficulties, Christ has said that, within the revealed will of God in scripture and in the wisdom that the Holy Spirit provides us, God will honour our decisions as we seek to serve him in love, grace and truth. This is the context for those much loved verses 19 and 20: “Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” When we talk about two or three gathering in God’s name and him being with us, we are often talking about a Bible study, a prayer meeting, or even meeting over coffee or for pastoral care. But when Christ says these words, he is talking about church discipline! He is talking about the temporary exclusion of a church member for the purpose of their returning to God’s kingdom! If anything, that gives these words even greater power, because it means when we do come together to make these terribly difficult decisions, we can trust that God is with us, and if we are working within the will of God and for his glory –not to punish, not to make ourselves feel powerful, not to unnecessarily shame people, and not to pick on things that we just don’t like – then he will be with us. And notice also verse 19: whatever we ask for, it will be done by our Father in heaven.

In the context of this passage on church discipline, what do you think we might be asking for? The return of a lost sheep back to the flock, perhaps? Again, that is the central theme of God’s will this passage. And it is absolutely no surprise that just after this Peter asks Jesus, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” And we are given the parable of the unmerciful servant. Because alongside this whole issue of church discipline we must remember that our God is a gracious and merciful God, who says we should forgive seventy-times-seven times. If the central theme of God’s will in this passage is that God wishes to see his people remain in his kingdom and not perish or stumble, then it is clear that God does an awful lot of forgiving to make this happen. And we, as recipients of this incredible mercy, should be the same when we are faced with sin in the church.

Sermon: Matthew 18:1-10 - God's greatest children

Matt 18 sermons – God’s greatest children

Sermon 1: Matt 18:1-11 – the status of the children of God

Question “who is the greatest” is in the context of paying temple taxes. If the rich aren’t the greatest, who are?

The answer is “children” – weak, vulnerable, lowly; and yet still a valuable member of the family

-          We are weak, vulnerable and lowly

-          We are to welcome the weak, vulnerable and lowly

o   Who are the weak, vulnerable and lowly today?

o   Still kids; but also poor, undereducated, disenfranchised and marginalised

-          We should not cause them to stumble!

o   False teaching, being unwelcoming, making it hard for people to come to Christ

o   Preaching is only part of the solution: disadvantage holds people back from Christ

-          We also have responsibility in our own stumbling

o   We need to be ruthless in ensuring we are not stumbling ourselves

-          We are weak, vulnerable and lowly, yet still valuable

o   We cannot despise ourselves or others, because we are all valuable to God

o   Ministries to the despised are central to Christianity

 

Good morning, Waitara Gospel Chapel! This is Ben Carpentier, on our last day in Windhoek, Namibia – for now! As you may have heard, the Namibian government has denied my visa, and now Penny and I must leave the country. We can’t come back to Australia because of the restricted numbers on repatriations, so we are headed to the UK to stay with her aunt and uncle while we try and sort out what to do next.  Penny and I are so thankful for your continued support of our ministry here, and I feel blessed to have the opportunity to preach for you this morning. Perhaps one silver lining in the otherwise cloudy times of our current predicament during this global pandemic is being able to preach for churches back in Australia even while being in Africa. I pray it’s as much a blessing to you as it is to us.

Today’s passage is in Matthew 18, from verses 1 to 10, and it starts with the disciples asking Jesus a question, (reading from the NIV) “At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”” When a passage starts with “at that time” it’s obviously important for us to know what time they’re talking about; what the context is. In this case, this teaching of Jesus comes right after the tax collectors for the temple tax had come and asked if Jesus would pay up. You might remember that Jesus tells Peter to go catch a fish, open its mouth, and there he will find a coin enough to pay both Jesus’ and Peter’s temple tax. Jesus asks Peter in front of his disciples in the end of Matthew 17, “From whom do the kings of the earth collect duty and taxes—from their own children or from others?” And the answer is, of course, that kings do not collect taxes from their own children.

Just in case there is any confusion, the temple tax is not like a tithe to the temple. It is collected by the government through the temple and goes into government coffers. The government back then maintained the temple. You might already know that it was King Herod – made king by the Romans – who rebuilt the temple in this time, and he did it through heavy taxation.

Back in the ancient world, people in power unashamedly used their privileged position to benefit themselves all the time. Kings and governors would charge their subjects tax, but they would not tax their own children, thus providing them an advantage, a privilege of their position as the children of great people, so that they can keep being rich and powerful. Today, it’s mainly multimillion dollar companies and billionaires that don’t pay tax – so perhaps it’s not really that different.

So when the disciples are asking Jesus, “Who, then, is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” it is because they know that in the world they live in the greatest ones are the ones with many privileges, many benefits, who were born into already powerful families. And let’s be honest, not much has changed with the world we live in! The son of a billionaire is the current president of the USA, and he has placed his own family in positions of political power and influence. Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, proclaims himself a self-made billionaire, because he started his business with nothing except an electrical engineering and computer science degree from Princeton University and a US$300,000 loan from his parents. Many Namibians wouldn’t earn that much money in their entire lives. Who your parents are still has a huge influence in what your future will be, what opportunities you will get, how successful you will be, how great you will be.

The disciples are asking, “Will kings still be kings in heaven? Or will the rules be different?” And they are not just asking this out of theological curiosity. We know from other passages in the gospels that these guys were very concerned about their own status! They argued multiple times about which of them was the greatest. Remember the brothers James and John got their mother to ask Jesus if they could sit on his right and his left – the places of status! Remember Peter, when Jesus said that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for rich people to enter the kingdom of heaven, said, “We have left everything to follow you!” Even after Jesus’ resurrection these were the men who asked, “Are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” They wanted to know was their messiah going to become an earthly king, and what would it mean for them.

Jesus’ followers were fishermen, tax collectors, rural bumpkins. Here they were following the true Messiah, and they figured that this was likely to impact their earthly status. So when they are asking, “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” they wanted to know how they can make themselves great. And this makes Jesus’ answer to them really stand out – verse 2: “He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. 3 And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5 And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.””

I’m going to repeat verse 3 again, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Jesus is laying it on the line here. Those who do not become like children will never enter God’s kingdom.  The kings of this world, the rich of this world, the powerful and influential of this world, even the fishermen and tax collectors of the world – Jesus is saying that unless they fundamentally change their attitude to become like that of a child, they will never enter God’s kingdom.

Now there is sometimes a bit of confusion about what Jesus means when he says “become like a little child”. Of course when we think of little children, we think of them through our own cultural lens – we think of little darlings: precious, valuable; or little angels: innocent, maybe even ignorant. But remember that Jesus is talking about status here – about who will be greatest – and so he is focusing on another qualities of children here. The quality we see clearly in verse 4, “whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”

Children might be precious and valuable, but they do not have high status. We do not let children vote, we don’t let them get married, we don’t let them work, we don’t let them make a lot of choices for themselves – children do not have a lot of freedom. Children are weak, vulnerable and powerless. And this was the same back in ancient times. Paul says in Galatians 4 that even the heir of a vast estate, when he is still underage, is no different than a slave. Children are not powerful. They are not influential. Even a rich child is no different than a slave. And this is what we are called to become – to take the weak, vulnerable and powerless position of a child.

Here in Namibia, status is everything. I have seen flashy cars parked next to tin shack kambashus, because it’s all about showing off what you have. In meetings, everyone will have their say, but often it is the elders who have the last word, and that ends up being the decision of the meeting. If you have grey hair you don’t need to wait in line at the bank; you go straight to the front. When I taught a subject at the NETS Bible College here where Penny works, my students called me “Reverend” because they needed to show some kind of respect for my status as a teacher, even though I am not a church leader. I have had black friends here take me shopping with them just so that they get treated with respect and get good service, simply because I am white: even though apartheid ended 30 years ago, there is still status attached to being white. I have seen people put on their business card here “Bachelor of Arts (failed)” to show that they attended university even though they failed, because attendance gives them status! Even when driving, Namibians always need to be in front – they can’t stand being behind someone else, or giving way to others, sometimes turning the streets of Windhoek into a racetrack.

In Australia it may not always be so starkly visible, but the thirst for status is still there. Which means for many of us, Jesus’ call for us to take up the weak, vulnerable and powerless position of children turns the world upside down. The way we become great in the kingdom of heaven is by recognising and accepting that we don’t deserve to be there. We have no claim, we have no status of our own. We are only accepted into the kingdom of heaven because of what God has done for us.

And Jesus made this amazingly clear when he was talking about the temple tax. He said here on earth, the children of kings are exempt from their taxes. But let me show you how it works in the kingdom of heaven – go catch a fish, and inside its mouth God will provide you with a coin; enough to pay your taxes and mine. Because in the kingdom of heaven, the king does not make his children exempt from paying their debts; he pays their debts for them. As God’s children, we can do nothing but accept that incredible payment on our behalf.

Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? Those who are humble enough to recognise that they bring nothing, they can offer nothing, they have nothing, and by themselves they are nothing. We need God; he does not need us. It is God who gives us our value, it is God in whose image we are made, it is God who pays our debts for us, and it is God who makes us great. Again in Galatians, Paul says in chapter 6, “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” God paid the price for us through Christ’s death on the cross to make us the children of his heavenly kingdom.

But this can be difficult for us to accept when we are in positions of authority, power, and status; when we are important people in our jobs, in our social circles, in our families, or even in our churches; when we are born to power, influence and wealth – basically anyone born in a rich country. But we must not take our eyes off the goal: those who will be truly great in God’s kingdom will be those who put God first, not themselves. Even if we do hold those positions of status here on earth, we can use those to give glory to God, to make it clear that it is him who has made us who we are and placed us where we are.

And then Jesus shows us the most excellent way to do that in Matthew 18:5: telling us that by welcoming the little children of God in his name, we welcome God himself. Because it isn’t enough to simply recognise that we are weak, vulnerable and powerless compared to God, and that we don’t control our path to his heavenly kingdom. God has called us to be his hands and his feet: to learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow (Isa 1); to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free (Isa 58); to spend ourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed (Isa 58); to proclaim good news to the poor, bind up the brokenhearted, proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners (Isa 61).

This year I was preparing to join a new ministry that SIM has recently started. It’s called For Freedom, and it is an anti-human trafficking ministry aimed at promoting awareness and prevention of human trafficking in all the different areas across the world where SIM works. Human trafficking preys on the weakest, the most vulnerable and powerless in society. And something I have learned in my training in anti-human trafficking is that the people who were most vulnerable back in ancient times – the fatherless and the widow, the poor and the foreigner – continue to be the most vulnerable people in our societies. Children, especially in state care; women, especially widowed or abandoned by husbands; the poor, especially those where there are no opportunities for education, employment and betterment of their lives; and refugees seeking to escape danger or persecution: these are the people most likely to be targeted for human trafficking because they are the least likely to get help or be able to help themselves. They are the weakest, the powerless, the most vulnerable.

And at this point can I take a moment to encourage you, friends at Waitara Gospel Chapel? Because I know that you are a church that has been welcoming to refugees and migrants to Australia – people who can often find themselves alone, vulnerable, weak and of low status in their new home country. Having lived as a foreigner in Namibia now for three years, I have tasted that loneliness, that weakness and that vulnerability. When I answered the phone a few weeks ago and I was told, “Your work permit has been denied – you are now officially illegally in the country, and you have 14 days to leave”, that made me feel powerless! Tomorrow I have to get on a plane to leave this country, and I can’t even return to Australia, my home country, because of the pandemic restrictions- that makes me feel weak and vulnerable!

But your fellowship at Waitara Gospel chapel, you have shown love and care for the powerless, and I pray that you will continue to do so; that you will continue to uphold the cause of the weak and the oppressed. “You are to love those who are foreigners,” God tells us, “For you yourselves were foreigners.” We were not always citizens of the heavenly kingdom – once we too stood outside, without hope and without God. So now we are called to love and welcome the weak and lowly, the little children of the world, because we too are nothing more than little children whom God loves.

If we are those who do not have high social standing, who are looked down on in this life, who do not have power or money or influence or status, then we can be comforted in knowing that we are the ones whom God truly favours. Again, it might look like we are small, insignificant or forgotten: but God defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing (Deut 10); The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed (Ps 9); he defends the fatherless and the oppressed (Ps 10); he defends the weak and the fatherless, and upholds the cause of the poor and the oppressed (Ps 82); he works righteousness and justice for the oppressed (Ps 103); he upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry (Ps 146); he shows favour to the humble and oppressed (Pr 3); it is better to be lowly in spirit with the oppressed than to share in the plunder of the proud (Pr 16); he will deal with all who oppressed you. He will rescue the lame; he will gather the exiles. he will give them praise and honor in every land where they have suffered shame (Zph 13). Long before Jesus let the little children come to him, God has shown us that his heart is with those of low status.

And Jesus shows us just how seriously he takes the treatment of the weak, the lowly and the vulnerable in Matt 18 verses 6 and 7: ““If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. 7 Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble! Such things must come, but woe to the person through whom they come!”

There is nothing spoken against more strongly in the New Testament than false teaching that leads people astray from the truth of the gospel. Jesus has choice words for it, describing its punishment as the most heinous a Jew could imagine – in ancient Judea, drowning was even more feared than crucifixion. Woe be to the person through whom false teachings come!

I can personally attest to the horrific damage that false teaching can do. The church here in Namibia is desperately, desperately in need of strong theological education. But so many of the churches here are poor, and although many of the people see themselves as Christians and seek to follow God, the only churches they can find are those that are preaching a false gospel – and because many people don’t read the Bible for themselves, and the culture requires them to show respect to those of high status, like a church leader, many people here are sucked in to false teachings, robbed of their incomes, and taught things that are thoroughly against what scripture teaches.

They are taught a prosperity gospel telling them that God will bless them with riches and wealth, but then they lose faith in Christ because the only people they see getting rich are the preachers! Just last month I received from someone a 60 page prophecy from a so-called prophet in the north of Namibia, that said (among other things) any Christian who drinks energy drinks or eats sausages will go to hell! And people listen to him! They don’t know any better! They don’t know their bibles! They don’t know that Jesus said plainly that he has made all food clean. Even in the weekly Bible study I attend, some of the young men were saying that when they are getting married, their parents tell them they must follow the burdensome and even idolatrous pagan ceremonies of their tribes because they must “honour their father and their mother”. When I pointed to Luke 14:26 – “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple” – they were shocked: they had never heard this verse, or at least never heard that they should put Jesus ahead of their family when required! The fifth commandment was being used to uphold the status of the parents, to the point that it held young men and women in spiritual slavery, such that they would put tribal practices ahead of Christ!

And it’s not like this doesn’t happen in Australia too. When we made our decision to come to Namibia, to give up our jobs and our income and our comfortable lives back in Hornsby, there were a number of people – even Christians – who told us we were crazy, that we were being irresponsible, that we were giving up any hope of owning a house, that I was giving up the ability to progress as a lawyer and throwing away my law degree. Maybe they were right: but even if they are, that is what it took for us to be obedient to God’s call.

When we think about it, it’s not just purely spiritual things that cause the weak and the vulnerable to stumble. As I’ve said, many of these people don’t know their bibles, because many struggle to read. They don’t have relationships with strong Christians they can trust, who can answer questions for them and be good models for them. Many churches don’t have trained leaders because they are too poor to support them. Especially now in the midst of Covid-19, many churches are struggling; they definitely can’t afford to send their students to a Bible college like NETS, where Penny works. And NETS simply does not have the funds to pay theological educators. So the provision of a Greek and Hebrew scholar like Penny to come from Australia and teach is a huge blessing to the church here.

My point is that it is not just false teaching by itself that causes these vulnerable people to stumble: it is a lack of education, a lack of opportunities, a lack of good relationships, and overwhelming poverty and powerlessness and desperation that makes them vulnerable. If we want to protect God’s little children from stumbling, if we want them to be able to sort the true teaching from the false, we must help them have the power to stand against these false teachers. We must empower them both spiritually and physically.

But I’m not saying that the weak and vulnerable have no responsibility. Jesus makes it clear in verses 8 and 9 that ultimately when it comes to stumbling, it is up to us to cut ourselves off from those things that might make us stumble: “If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. 9 And if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.”

The responsibility shifts here – yes, false teachers preach a false gospel, but if you listen to them you may well stumble and find yourself out of the kingdom. And yes, Christ says that those who cause his little children to stumble will find themselves in the hands of a very angry God. But ultimately, the responsibility for avoiding those who would seek to stumble us is our own. Other people can’t make our decisions for us. Not even God restrains us and makes us incapable of sin or mistakes. We must seek to equip ourselves with the knowledge, skills and character to recognise these stumbling blocks and overcome them, because when the stumbling block does come – when the false teacher preaches to us, or the pressure comes from our parents or our cultural heritage, or our own difficulties threaten to overwhelm us – we need to decide ourselves to stick with God and his heavenly kingdom, and to trust in Christ and his payment of our debts.

I have more to say on this topic, because the truth is that although we are responsible for our own decisions, we do not make those decisions alone. We are called to be part of a kingdom – that is, a community together. There is no such thing as a kingdom of one. And we will see that in next week’s sermon on the next part of this passage.

So let me end instead with verse 10 of chapter 18: ““See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.” Jesus paints a picture of every little child, every weak and lowly person, having their own angelic advocate in God’s heavenly throne room. And he says that these advocates can always see God’s face – they are always in his presence, they are always right there with God: the circumstances of the weak and the vulnerable are always being brought to God as matters of the utmost importance. If we are members of Christ’s heavenly kingdom, then we must also see the circumstances of the weak, the powerless and the oppressed as our business. We cannot despise those who have no status in this world: because, just like us, they are God’s little children.