A Few Thoughts on Leadership and Attitude
Regarding pastors, potential spouses, leaders, friends, bosses, etc.
God’s style of leadership versus the otherwise
Some verses:
B1 Ephesians 6:9 WEL Masters, you must do the same to them, stay away from threatening, knowing that your Master is also in heaven, neither is there any partiality with him.
B2 Romans 8:15 NRSV For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!“
On slaves (actually the word is for servant)
B1 Servants are actually self indentured servants voluntarily placing themselves into servanthood to pay off days, that is, they work their debt off.
C1 Indenture defined: a contract by which one person is bound in service for a specified time as apprentice to another. Example: Leviticus 25:39-41 NIV If any of your fellow Israelites become poor and sell themselves to you, do not make them work as slaves. They are to be treated as hired workers or temporary residents among you; they are to work for you until the Year of Jubilee. Then they and their children are to be released, and they will go back to their own clans and to the property of their ancestors.
C2 Verses:
D1 Exodus 21:20-21 BSB If a man strikes his male or female servant with a rod, and the servant dies by his hand, he shall surely be punished. 21 However, if the slave gets up after a day or two, the owner shall not be punished, since the slave is his property.
E1 If the servant is beat and dies, the man/woman who beat this worker must be punished. Since the worker is a human, the one who beat them must receive the death penalty.
F1 Leviticus 24:17 NIV Anyone who takes the life of a human being is to be put to death.
F2 Numbers 35:16-18 NIV If anyone strikes someone a fatal blow with an iron object, that person is a murderer; the murderer is to be put to death. Or if anyone is holding a stone and strikes someone a fatal blow with it, that person is a murderer; the murderer is to be put to death. Or if anyone is holding a wooden object and strikes someone a fatal blow with it, that person is a murderer; the murderer is to be put to death. (see the entire passage Numbers 35:16-34).
E2 If the servant is injured, then he/she goes free. They are no longer a servant. Exodus 21:26-27 NET If a man strikes the eye of his male servant or his female servant so that he destroys it, he will let the servant go free as compensation for the eye. If he knocks out the tooth of his male servant or his female servant, he will let the servant go free as compensation for the tooth.
E3 When the servant has served his 6 years, he/she MUST be released. They are free, not servants any longer. Not only are they free, but they must NOT be sent out empty handed. They MUST be provided with supplies to make a new start: Deuteronomy 15:12-14 NIV If any of your people—Hebrew men or women—sell themselves to you and serve you six years, in the seventh year you must let them go free. And when you release them, do not send them away empty-handed. Supply them liberally from your flock, your threshing floor and your winepress. Give to them as the LORD your God has blessed you.
E4 In Israel, on the 50th year, all servants must be freed to return to their land (it must be returned to them) whether they had served their 6 years or not. Leviticus 25:10 NIV Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each of you is to return to your family property and to your own clan.
E5 If any person was to kidnap and sell a person to servanthood or slavery, the kidnapper must be put to death. Deuteronomy 24:7 NIV If someone is caught kidnapping a fellow Israelite and treating or selling them as a slave, the kidnapper must die. You must purge the evil from among you.
E7 If they are slaves, they MUST be freed. Jeremiah 34:8-10 NIV The word came to Jeremiah from the LORD after King Zedekiah had made a covenant with all the people in Jerusalem to proclaim freedom for the slaves. Everyone was to free their Hebrew slaves, both male and female; no one was to hold a fellow Hebrew in bondage. So all the officials and people who entered into this covenant agreed that they would free their male and female slaves and no longer hold them in bondage. They agreed, and set them free. Note: these obeyed, then they reneged on their promise to God and retook them and made them slaves again. To those, God said in Jeremiah 34:17 NIV Therefore this is what the LORD says: You have not obeyed me; you have not proclaimed freedom to your own people. So I now proclaim ‘freedom’ for you, declares the LORD—‘freedom’ to fall by the sword, plague and famine. I will make you abhorrent to all the kingdoms of the earth. (Read the whole passage here).
B2 Servants from war which are what we would term minimum wage workers, etc. They would do the work of cooks, janitors, gardeners, wood cutters, etc. They are not slaves as the old Southern people in the USA of the mid19th century and earlier.
A Few Thoughts on Leadership and Attitude
Christian leadership, Christian Attitude