Servants To Masters
1 Peter 2:18-20 · Andrew Molloy · May 10, 2020
1 & 2 Peter (2020-21), No. 16
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261918434959

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

I want to start this class with going back up to, I think, what Bob covered in verse 11 and 12. It's kind of the blanket command to these believers, these scattered sojourning believers that Peter was writing to. And he says in 11 and 12, Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul. Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing which they slander you as evildoers, they may, because of your good deeds, as they observe your good deeds, glorify God in the day of visitation. And that's the general command That we are in, and I like this summary that Darby points out as he blends 11 and 12 into what we're studying today in 18 and 19. He says, after this, Peter turns to the relative walk of the believers in a world that while God is sovereign, he permits his own to suffer for righteousness sake, for the name of Christ. But they ought never to suffer for having done wrong. And that's what we're covering in verses 13 through 20. We've covered 13 through 17 so far. He says, the path of the Christian is clearly laid out.

He is in an attitude of subjection to human authorities and institutions. He gives honor to all men and to each his own place so that no one will have any reproach to bring against him. And that's what we covered last week with submission or subjection to human authorities and institutions. Darby goes on and he says, he is submissive to his masters if they are bad men and yields to their ill treatment. This is today's lesson that we're going to cover. If he were subject only to the good and gentle, a worldly slave would have done as much.

But if, having done well, he suffers and bears it patiently, this is acceptable to God. This is grace. And this is today's subject matter in verses 18 through 20. And it's how Christ himself suffered and acted. And that's going to be next week's lesson, in the next few weeks, I think, because Peter blends this into the sufferings of Christ. I didn't want to go on to that this morning. I want to leave that for later. But that bullet point up there where it says, if he were subject only to the good and gentle masters, a worldly slave, could do that, like the believing slave.

It makes me think of that Geico commercial with the caveman, where they say there's a caveman at a cocktail party, or like a yacht event. And commercial goes Geico, save 15% or more on your car insurance. It's so easy. A caveman can do it. And the caveman is saying, Hey, that's, and the caveman complains about it, but that's kind of what he's saying.

It's so easy to be subject to a good and gentle master that even a pagan can do it. But how much more should we be subject to our employers and masters and things like that? Keep in mind here that these believers up that are scattered up there in Galatia, they're suffering as they're strangers and aliens in Galatia. And we are suffering too here, you and me and everyone in this class and all the Christians on earth worldwide under our present condition as strangers and aliens on this planet earth.

And it's a double entendre. I don't know if that's the exact the exact illustration of it, but that's how I think of it. He's Peter saying Talking mind us about what a double entendre is. I should know what I oh, yeah It's when one one phrase means two different things Okay, what's it good and and usually they're kind of Usually they're kind of spicy so you don't want to Yeah, yeah, so it's when one thing Means two different things it Any anyone else have a example of a double entendre or think of one and if you do Well, are you saying maybe that that you know, we're strangers here on the earth? and the ones being written to we're suffering and as aliens from their homeland Israel.

Yeah. And here we are in heaven. That's our real home. Yeah. And our temporary home is, we always say, is here on earth. Yeah. Temporary address. And we're suffering here in this. So I'm saying that there's, Peter's actually writing to aliens and strangers who had to leave Jerusalem, but he's also talking to them as strangers and aliens and sojourners on this planet earth as they go about their lives. Because we're truly not supposed to be here. We should be physically, and we will be in heaven with Christ.

J. Verdon McGee outlines the whole book of Peter, 1 Peter as Suffering as a suffering book.

As you can see, his outline is in chapter one. Suffering in the security of the believer produces joy through verse nine. Then he breaks it up. Suffering in the scriptures produces holiness. in chapter one, verses 10 through 25. And then the rest of the book, he says, is suffering in the world and the suffering of Christ.

So we're going to talk about suffering this morning a lot. This is kind of our theme. So here's our verse that we're covering up here, 18 through 20. But I want to give some background on, because it's strange that in 2020, where today we're talking about servitude, or servanthood, or slavery, basically. A lot of these verses from Paul, and this one verse from Peter, Peter addresses servants, Paul addresses slaves, So we go first by saying we have to cover things even though that slavery is a thing anymore. Oh, it is. It's very unusual now. But during the time that Peter was writing this, slavery was an ever-present reality in the Roman world.

Richeson estimates there were 60 million slaves back then. to households, agriculture, mines, military, manufacturing, work, construction, and a wide range of services. In Italy, 33% were slaves. Across the whole Roman Empire, about 20% were slaves. And upon that foundation, you know, the Roman Empire was built on the acts of slave. slaves.

Freedom then was not a general right, but a sacred privilege. The supply of slaves, how did they get slaves back then? They, by war, war conquests, they conquered and then they took slaves from the conquered population. Highway robbery and plunder, which is brigandage.

Muhammad did this, he was in Mecca. When he started Islam, they kicked him out of Mecca. So he had to go north to Medina and he lived there and he attracted followers. And then he said, boy, I need some money. So he and his followers would rob caravans going down to Mecca to worship. And that was his modus operandi of raising funds for his new religion, Islam. Then in the Roman times, use of slaves was by private people or the state in agriculture, grain, vine, and olive sectors. The mines, gold and silver mines, manufacturing, transportation, education.

Some smart servants or slaves were brought in to rich families to teach about their areas of specialty, like philosophy or medicine, or maybe music to these wealthy landowners' kids. And that's why I say in the private home there, that's bolded. In the military, in the service industries, from food to accounting, Construction, road building projects, and public baths, and even the tasks in pagan temples is where slaves were used. I'm going to take a look ahead here to America's situation because, you know, it's always brought up that America is a terrible country because we were founded on the backs of slavery. But let's look at that for, and that's true, but let's look at that a little deeper here. Not all slavery in the New Testament times was chattel slavery as we had in the American South. A lot of it was contracted or voluntary, or the person would offer themselves in exchange for their debts. So it could be semi-voluntary.

The first indentured servants. This is interesting, arrived in 1607. These were skilled and unskilled laborers from Europe. They came to America in 1607, and it represented about half to two-thirds of new immigrants to America. They came as indentured servants.

They would serve, and then after their service, they would get this freedom package, which was typically 25 acres of land, which is a lot. a one year's worth of corn, a musket or two, a cow, and some new clothes. And then they started out their new life in America. So a lot of times they were better off than the non-indentured servants, the ones who just came from Europe as freemen. But then in 1619, the first African slaves arrived in Virginia. Initially, they were also indentured servants, interestingly enough. But as the economy grew, they needed more and more, and the landowner said, well, This is getting too expensive.

So then they worked out, they found a supply line of chattel slavery supply line, which is just kidnapping, taking people and putting them to slavery. Who supplied that chattel slavery? It was the Barbary Coast pirates along the North coast of Africa. The Muslims, you know, conquered that whole area and then they got to be manning ships and they would, they would commandeer other ships and take slaves. And that lasted 1500 to 1800. A lot of Christians were sold into slavery that way. About a million European slaves were sold by these Barbary pirates.

So what they would do too, I think, is they would go, they'd also go into the interior of Africa and take tribal people by force, bring them back up to the coast, and then There were slave markets, they would sell them in slavery. They ended up here in America and that's the chattel slavery.

But God's viewpoint on chattel slavery, he abhors it. As you can see, Exodus 21, 16 says, he who kidnaps a man, whether he sells him or he is found in his possession shall surely be put to death. So there was the death penalty for selling someone into slavery by force, by kidnapping.

His viewpoint, one of his viewpoints on slavery is brought to us in Philemon. You know, Paul says that he changes the slave, master-slave relationship from master-slave to brother-brother, and it should be an equal relationship. And he hints at, You can tell Paul is saying to Philemon kind of under the surface that you really should release Onesimus because he's very valuable as a missionary. And you know, if you can, but if you keep them, you know, make it a brother-brother relationship.

God also had the commandment of releasing slaves after six years of service. In Exodus 21, one through 11, and they had a lot of rights. He gave them rights. And that's Hebrew slaves. If you come to Christ as a slave, you should remain there though. You shouldn't escape or. try and get out of it. As Paul states in 1 Corinthians 7, 20 through 24, remain as you are. If you come to Christ as free, remain free. If you come to Christ as a servant, then remain a servant. Some examples of godly service as a slave or a servant is Joseph. We're learning about that in Mike's class, Wednesday night class.

He was very patient and very, he exhibited a lot of grace, even though that Potiphar's wife ratted on him and he got sold into, he was put in jail, right? Plus he was kidnapped by his brothers and sent to Egypt. He suffered a whole bunch of wrongs, but he took it all gracefully and he served. He used his talents in jail and then up to Pharaoh to interpret his dreams.

Daniel is also a good example of probably if you happen to be a student back then or a professor, how it should be viewed. He was a great student at Nazareth. Mike covered last week in 1 Corinthians 1 about you see that verse down there, for consider your calling, brethren, that you were not made wise, according to which not many might know. God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. So I think it was, it might have been Macaulay who pointed this verse as a sort of supporting evidence that Peter and Paul of the audience was slaves and servants because the wealthy and the noblemen of the world back then thought that the cross and Christ was foolishness, but simple people and people in slavery or servitude They were much more receptive to the gospel and there's a lot more Christians among the slave population.

So when Peter and Paul talk about slavery and servitude, or they both talk about husbands and wives and fathers and children and these relationships on earth, government to citizens as we looked at last week, and then servants and their relationship to their masters and vice versa. Both of them address these topics.

So one is conducting yourself in your family life, husbands and wives and fathers and children, knowing that your master is in heaven. than conducting yourself in your social life as a citizen of a government or a subject to a king and Then in your I'm titling this this relationship between masters and servants as Conducting yourself in a godly manner in your economic life because Even if you're a slave, it's still your economic life. You know, some of these slaves, as we saw that freedom package after their service, got some land and some other things of value, so it's an economic transaction. So these all things Peter and Paul address, and I just like this this triangular pyramid-shaped graphic that Ron Merriman used to come up with because it's kind of helpful, you know, a picture is worth a thousand words. And here we are again with this pyramid graphic. showing that servants, they're on the bottom of the triangle and their relationship and their responsibilities to their masters or their employers.

And you can substitute employees and employers for masters and servants, especially in today's lesson, because we're dealing with this word servant instead of slave. On the left there is what we're studying today. very simply laid out and I give it to you all in one shot. Servants are to be submissive to their masters with all respect, to not only the gentle ones, but the unreasonable. And that is for your conscious sake and for righteous enduring patience sake under the yoke of suffering is why you should do it. your motivation and the reward and the requirement motivation and reward those three Kind of how it ties those verses together and Chester Macaulay came up with those or he mentioned those in his study that first Peter outlines the requirement and then the motivation for being submissive and then the reward for being submissive to your master. And that's what we'll be studying today. Over on the right, I just have a, this is a lesson I just took from my last lesson on because I was covering the same topic.

And it just goes through what the master's responsibility to their servant is from Colossians 4.1, which you can read. When you have downtime, which is all the time in this world that we're all stuck at home. Okay, so here we are in verse 18. Servants, be submissive to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and gentle, but to those who are unreasonable. For this finds favor, if for the sake of conscience toward God, a person bears up under sorrows when suffering justly. For what credit is there if when you sin and you are treated harshly, You endure it with patience. But if when you do right and suffer for it, you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God. So the requirement is to be submissive to not quite our masters. We don't have masters, but let's say employers with all respect.

And here's the difference between Peter's address. to slaves and Paul's address to slaves. You can see in Ephesians, Colossians, 1 Timothy and Titus, Paul is addressing slaves as doulos, the Greek word, which is more of how you think of being a slave. But the word for servants in verse 18, that Peter uses is oikētēs and oikētēs is a household servant. So he isn't addressing, Peter isn't addressing bond slaves or chattel slaves. Chattel slaves being people who are actually thought of as property, but they're household servants, members of the family or a family household. And a lot of these, I think he was very much addressing Jewish household servants, maidservants, manservants to a more wealthy Jewish family. I say, if you've ever watched Downton Abbey, maybe you could think of it that way.

The command is to be submissive, hupotasso. We saw that in verse 13, being submissive to the government and the Kings. It's arranging yourself under the authority of another and yielding yourself to their control. And it expresses a continuous or a continuous action of submitting to governments or masters.

And with all respect is how you should do it. So it's a, it's a mindset sort of thing. Your mindset should be with respect. That's not optional. Peter up in verse, I think it's 20 has that we should have respect for God. He uses the word fear, but respect and fear is the same Greek word phobos. It can either mean terror or it can mean reverential respect. So we should have respect for God, respect for authorities, and respect for masters or employers in this passage.

And if they are gentle, it's easy to do that. To the equitable and fair and mild masters. I think it's Wiest who said, masters who have the milk of human kindness. So they're easy to serve. There's no, there's no, you don't have to bend over backwards to serve these masters or employers. It's maybe even joyful. And it's easy. It's so easy a caveman can do it.

As I said before, these masters are unduly rigorous. But the unreasonable master is kind of what Peter is getting at here. That's the important thing. Those who, those masters who are unreasonable and that Greek word is skolios or skolios. And that means crooked and curved, the crooked and curved master. Um, I think it's used again. Mentioned they were from word and from word is an anglo-saxon term meaning adverse or I guess if you have a if you have a sailing ship you get a from word wind which is Contrary to you know a nice The wind you want to kind of float your sails. That's a from word wind So it's adverse Unreasonable in the Greek, that scholios term means surly and vindictive.

So that's who we have to, that's the topic of today is bearing up under these unreasonable, surly, vindictive masters. That's verse 18. Verse 19, if we are to do that and serve masters with all respect, Not only to the gentle, but those who are surly and scolios. This finds favor if for the sake of conscience, God, toward God, a person bears up under these sorrows when suffering unjustly. So our motivation is First, it finds favor with God. And you can see how down, and I've highlighted it, in 20, he restates it, recapitulates finding favor with God. Favor is the word for grace.

It's charis in the Greek. And in this context, the meaning is to be thanksworthy. Keres translates also to thanks or thanksgiving. So not only is Keres a gift that you give to someone, when you receive the gift, you offer thanks. So they give you Keres, you respond with Keres by saying thank you.

It's commendable. It's commendable to serve in this way to God. It's a, what did I say here? It's commendable, thankworthy in the Greek translation, referring to an action. And here's the meaning. It's beyond the ordinary course of what might be expected and therefore a commendable. And that's Wyss' definition of this thanksworthy term.

The opposite of that is what is expected, which is if you are, if your master or employer treats you just awfully, he's a bad boss. The natural or the expected way to respond is with anger, malice, and vindictiveness and being a sullen slave or a sullen servant and having, having animosity towards that master. But what is thanks worthy is going beyond that and still being gentle and still offering your respect to that bad master.

It's for conscience sake, a God word, standing before God with a good conscience and not a bad one is your motivation as well. And to please God, right? By doing this, pleases God by submitting to even the bad masters. Bearing up under unjust suffering is the topic of verse 19. It's exhibiting forbearing patience. and forming patience. Patience is a fruit of the Spirit, right? From Galatians 5, 522. So if you can exhibit patience, you're exhibiting some of the fruit of the Spirit.

It's acting towards that pagan, unreasonable master with charis or grace and that's charis Also means undeserved, unmerited favor. And if you exhibit that to a surly, vindictive master or employer, you are doing exactly what Christ did for sinners on the cross. And Christ died for that master on the cross, just as he died for you. And that's grace, undeserved, unmerited favor. Therefore, it could convict this crooked master of his sin. And that's a work of the Holy Spirit, the convicting nature of the convicting ministry of sin in an unbeliever's life.

And it's a soul winning endeavor, isn't it? And if you are able to exhibit Christ and the life of Christ and in your life, that pleases God, right? So, Andrew, we all have a fleshly nature still. So, you know, the idea, this isn't a set of laws for us, right? It's a life. I mean, you battle against someone who's unrighteous, unreasonable, who is paganistic in nature, but yet the flesh, I mean, you have those feelings and desires and wants, but yet it's another life that needs to show up. And I think it's great that you mentioned it's a fruit of the spirit, right?

Yeah. And that's really the only way you can do it. As I mentioned last week, last week's topic of submitting to governments is kind of, that's not very hard. Everyone can do that. But this, if you're in a situation where you have this type of master and you're coming to work every day, this really takes some some superhuman ability and that superhuman ability comes from the Spirit of God and relying on His power and His strength to do that, to get you through the suffering, the trial. Because it can go both ways. You can submit to, you know, you could You can sin in this case. You can act with anger and malice and vindictiveness. Even a Christian can do that. So yes, it's a fruit of the spirit and it's relying on the spirit's power to do this.

Yeah, Andrew, I was thinking that in today's world, at least prior to the coronavirus, with the abundance of jobs, you might many times just bail out. You say, well, I'll find another job with a kind master. Yeah. Times are tough, which are probably coming here. It's not so easy to switch jobs and many times you may have to stay with a cruel master because that's your only source of income. probably the better. To bail out sometimes is not probably really the best. To see what God has for you, even in the difficult situations, many times the better approach.

I was thinking about that a lot, in that in this day and age we have the freedom of movement and the freedom of of a lot of jobs and we are free individuals. So, hey, if we've got an employer that we can't work with, we can... And it's not a sin to say, hey, this company over here treats me much better, offers me higher pay. The employer over here is a nice person, a nice woman, a nice man.

And, you know, I don't have to take this. And so, yeah, you can get out of these situations in this day and age much better than you could in Peter's time. You really couldn't. You were at the mercy of a master, even if you were just an oiketus, a household servant. And you weren't a chattel slave. So it's kind of a praiseworthy situation we're in today.

So that's something to be thankful for, certainly. Verse 20, the reward for bearing up under a surly master is I'll just read the verse here. For what credit is there if when you sin and are harshly treated, you endure it with patience, but when you do what is right and suffer for it, you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God. And there is a second time he mentions that finding favor with God. So that's your reward. You find favor with God.

But skip down two bullet points to the King James version, because it's not clear in the New American Standard version, which I have up top, what this verse is saying. The New American Standard, the meaning isn't too clear, but in the King James, it's very clear. King James reads this way, for what glory is it if when you are buffeted for your faults, you take it patiently. But if when you do well, you suffer for it, you take it patiently.

This is acceptable to God. It's still kind of clunky. But what it's saying is, if you are a, if the suffering is on you, if you're suffering because of your bad behavior, If you're insolent and sullen and disobedient and disrespecting of your employer or master, you have it coming to you, don't you? So you're going to suffer for that. But you should suffer for that because it's your fault.

So there's no credit or there's no glory in that for being buffeted for your faults, as the King James has it. And the word The word in the King James that buffeted is kolaphizo and it means to strike with the fist or to pummel, to pummel someone. So if you're getting pummeled, you're getting whacked and you deserve it, then you should be whacked because you deserve it. You can't, there's no credit and no favor to God if you're being punished for what you do in sin, right? That's what that verse, 20 is getting at and in the King James it's very well stated that way. So Andrew let me bring something up that's very timely right now.

I'm on the board of 18 members who serve the American Diabetes Association and in that role there's a minority opinion about the direction of the organization. So that minority opinion I favor, not that of the majority. So Ultimately, do we become doormats and not stand for something we believe in, even though it's going against the way the rest of the board and the CEO feels we should be going? I mean, the issue is this becomes very practical at times. Yeah, it does. I mean, we don't need to be doormats either. I think it's not a matter of not having respect for the offices above us.

And here, you know, there's a chairman of the board who I disagree with. And the CEO of the organization, I think, is doing her best under these trying circumstances with an expected 40 to 60 percent deficit over the next year plus. So she's got a big, big, you know, set of tasks before her in terms of personnel cuts, et cetera. But yet there's a principle that relates to the science and medicine that I represent for a large community. of people in that space, but yet it's not consistent with the theme of the board. And there's only about three or four of us that feel strongly about this. There's 14 other members, and yet she is really going along with the board's view of what should be done.

So anyway, that's just a case in point, maybe an item for prayer for this Sunday school group that we are part of. Anyway. Yeah. No, I was thinking about, because you mentioned that several weeks ago, or even months ago to you and you brought that up as a prayer item. And I always thought that I was thinking about you and doing this lesson. I thought, well, what about Bob?

And I don't know if you might even be doing this. You don't have to do this. This is might even be a volunteer. You're doing it as a volunteer board member. Entirely. you know, you, you support the cause. So and a lot of people who are retired serve on these boards. So that's voluntary.

And if you're, if you're having this pressure, and suffering, and you're a volunteer, too, it's kind of an interesting situation. But the same things apply to that, you know, you're suffering, you're being pummeled, not physically, but maybe mentally. But if the, I guess if the mission, because you want to be there, and there's a, Desire to serve. Yeah, desire to serve and the mission of what you're doing is important to you. You know, it has a lot of meaning.

Then you can, you can suffer under these things. And I think this Peter, this passage is really helpful if you want to stay and see it through, you know. Well, the issue is, do you abandon the principle you stand for to make sure you're compliant and having respect for the leadership? Or can you make the point, you know, continue to emphasize the importance of it and just lay back and let the Lord work, right?

I mean, that's- Yeah. Yeah. Bob, I assume that you would vocalize your opinion. That wouldn't be insubordinate. So if you vocalize your opinion and they they choose not to take that, you could, you know, at least you vocalized it and pointed out that what you believe is an error when they're thinking. Right.

And we have and a few other members have, too. But anyway, the Lord's in control. Actually, the CEO claims to know the Lord. And so the idea we have some bond there. And in fact, I've told her several times I'm praying for her and our leadership during these difficult times, which I am. But nevertheless, the principle of what we stand for remains, but I don't think it needs to be confrontational. We just need to respect her leadership. So anyway, it's a real time situation, Andrew, that I don't want to spend any more time on this, but I think it really does apply to what you're teaching today.

Oh, yeah. Good. No, I'm glad you brought that up because I was thinking about that. I didn't have any real-world situations to bring up that are good because in mine, this is my weakness. I kind of go the other route. This has been really helpful to me, bringing this back to work when we go back to work. I can use these passages to better bear under suffering when that comes up. But I'm glad you brought that up because that's a real world example. Can I mention something? Yeah, go ahead, Roy. I'm thinking along the lines of what you mentioned, Bob.

One of the things in Gemini's experience is it's serving under a mission board in a temporary position. There is a, how do you serve as servants in that environment? If there is a doctrinal problem or in a church, you know, we're dealing with the same kind of a, each one of us is God's child born again. And in those situations, it's the fruit of the spirit that causes us to go to him in a communal brother to brother relationship as a family, rather than destroy the unity as is so evident in the denominations and everything around us that has not been, I don't think, according to God's plan. We saw the people that replaced us, this workout with dismissal and degeneration in their lives and real harm to the ministry. And so, you know, this passage really hits home, doesn't it? Even in a Christian environment, there is a servitude of respect that only the Holy Spirit working through us can be revealed. Thanks Rick. Yeah. Katie, did you have something? Yeah.

I was just thinking as Bob was talking that, you know, if you're all on the board, the entire board is the authority. Um, and, and so, yeah, you know, everyone is kind of equal there, um, as far as their opinions. So it's, it's not so much, uh, what would you call it? Insurrection, uh, to, uh, to have a different opinion. That's just my thought.

I was thinking, what if all of us were in a company together, uh, This would be really hard. What if, uh, what if Roy were the boss and he was a little surly and, uh, Roger. You're getting kind of personal here, Andrew. Everyone knew that Roger would, uh, help with the company pen.

How would we deal with that as leaders? So it's actually Mac is siege Macintosh has a Big article that I read and I just thought of this now He says that and the point of the article is that you know the first not do not be unequally yoked and we always think of that as in marriage don't be unequally yoked and His point of this big article is that also applies to your employee-employer relationship. You should always work for believing in employers just to avoid these exact situations.

You know what I do, Andrew? Yeah. I'm Roger to this passage. Okay, Bob. And he has a point because you do have the freedom to do that. You're not stuck as a slave or an indentured servant. So yeah, you can start a company or you can go to a company that has other believers. So that's, I think, the point he was making. Although if you do that, then you don't you don't have this opportunity to suffer and to bring glory to God.

Right. Exactly. Yeah. Right. But as Roy says, even a missionary organization, you would think that that would be smooth sailing all the time, but it isn't. And don't forget Ruthie here, she's laughing with us, okay? Oh yeah, okay, yeah. So, it's not perfect, is it, Ruthie? No. No, it's not. That's amazing. So, here again, these verses apply to that situation as well. I have a couple things from Uist at the end here.

Serving an odious master with meekness and patience and grace, is a powerful testimony for the gospel and may bring the master or the employer under the conviction of sin. We say that this may even irritate the master, even compelling him to more ill treatment of the believing employee or gentle servant. But masters, even if they are irritated, they still don't want to get rid of The good and gentle servant for a pagan one. And he's talking about back then because the good servants would serve them better, more trustworthy service to the master, even though that the master, it just really irked them that they were being convicted of what terrible people they are.

So that's where we'll end it. But I have this, I came up with this little chart. which I think is what we were kind of getting at just a second ago. And that is if you have a crooked, adverse master employer and the input is harsh treatment, vindictiveness, and favoritism, pummeling, that word for pummeling in the Greek, and that's your input and you're the servant or the employer, the believer. What's your output? It can be to sin, to take the bait and sin, and to despise that employer, or to treat him harshly, talk behind his back, or being filled with the Holy Spirit, you display the fruit of the Spirit, which is patience. And you get the other fruits too, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness. goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, if you're under the influence and control of the Holy Spirit. If you do that, you find favor with God.

It's thanksworthy from 1 Peter 2.20. You will develop perseverance and perseverance will lead to proven character. Proven character will lead to hope.

As it says in Romans 5, 3 and 4. And then growing that hope, you see more and more of the glory of God, right? The glory of Christ. And you're transformed into his very image, as it says in 2 Corinthians 3, 18. And I quote that first Romans 5, 2, by whom also we have access by faith into this grace, wherein we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

So going through this situation that Peter has in 18 through 20 can lead to glorious things if you can endure it and not sin. So there you go. Thank you. Yeah. I'll close in prayer. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for the study again and we thank you for what you have in your word in Peter to us and how we can exhibit Christ to the unbelieving world. in our work situations and the boards that we serve on give us wisdom and give us grace as we work and in missionary situations and everything that we may be good and gentle servants who find favor with you.