Daily Lesson for December 16, 2020

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Titus chapter 2 verses 9 and 10:

9 Tell slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give satisfaction in every respect; they are not to talk back, 10 not to pilfer, but to show complete and perfect fidelity, so that in everything they may be an ornament to the doctrine of God our Savior.

It is the year 2020 and believe it or not we still have so-called serious theologians of the Southern Baptist variety refusing to outright condemn slavery because slavery is not outlawed in the New Testament. And they actually dare to defend the institution of slavery -- basically promoting the old Lost Cause argument that it was not slavery itself that God chastised in the Civil War but rather only a cruel form of it. This is the justification given for keeping the names of slaveholders on campus buildings throughout the South. So the myth of a kind and decent slavery and a good and decent master are perpetuated.

And who would have to be cruel and mean when one has slave traders and overseers to do the dirty work?

Listen, friends, the slaves have been liberated, but the slaveholder mentality still holds sway for too many. They believe that just because it is in the Bible it is justified. So "slaves obey your masters" and "women be subject to your husbands". And the modern mind is still imprisoned in an ancient cell, and women can't enter the pulpit except to make an announcement, and furtively the theological building blocks of a slave system are being put back in order.

And the whole Gospel is vision lost -- replaced by white men in suits making decrees against "critical race theory" because it upsets the order as they've come to dominated it.

Hear this, beloved, it is for the sake of freedom that Christ has come to set us free; and we must be free indeed. The prison doors have already been opened. But we must walk out the doors. Christ has set us free; but we ourselves must want to be free. We must want to be free, and we must be free -- and never let anybody take us back.

NOTE: We are reading the whole Bible together this year. Tomorrow we will read the book of 1 Peter.

Ryon Price is the Senior Pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, TX.