Exodus 21 God Protects the Vulnerable.

HLBC Youth

Introduce myself and explain how I was in youth a few years ago. Explain how I wish I would have spent more time with the members of my youth group outside of the building. How often are you investing time with the other people here? Week in and week out as you hear God’s word preached and taught, you all are encouraged to live your lives as Christ followers, do this with one another. My biggest regret though is having Christian friends, but not Christian friendships.

We will be covering Exodus 21 today as you all have been going through this book. Before we read let’s put some foundations down on this house we are going to try to build through this lesson.

First, the context of the word slave here is not based on race, these laws are given to the Israelites, they are all the same race. A better translation is an indentured servant. One person going to another and offering their service because of a debt owed, a place to live, a paycheck, etc. Someone poor may go to a wealthy person and ask if they will take them on in a contract. So when I read this passage have that kind of relationship in mind. Not the “I bought you, you are my property”, but “I have taken you in and sacrificed for you, I have provided for you so fulfill your side of our contract”.

In a basketball movie called “Hoosiers”, about a backwoods team from a small town in Indiana. This town loves basketball and the team practices hard. They go on to make it to the state championship where they play somewhere completely unfamiliar to them. It is a an overwhelmingly large championship arena. The players walk in and you would have assumed they were astronauts first landing on Mars. They gaze up at the stadium seating, at the scoreboard, this is an environment they are unfamiliar with.

Friends this is what this passage is to readers of the bible. Exodus 21 and many other parts of the Old Testament are just hard to read. We spend a lot of time in the New testament which is understandable, and then we go to the Old Testament and it feels as if we just walked into the U of L arena after playing in the Hunsinger Gym. In the Old Testament, there are laws about what to do if you find your friend’s donkey going astray? What? How do we understand these types of passages? And more importantly, how do we see the gospel?

Well in the movie, the coach takes his overwhelmed team of good ole Indiana boys to the basketball goal, hands them a tape-measure and asks them how high the rim is. It’s 10 feet just like their gymnasium. Same with the free throw line, it is 15 feet. They then realize, they are playing the same game. Nothing has really changed, it just looks like it has at first. Same with our passage, it is going to seem like we just went from the 10 commandments, the story of Abram, Genesis, and now we are in a place where everything has changed. But it hasn’t. God’s character is still the same, he has still made a covenant with Israel, they are still called to be faithful to him. So as we read this passage, measure this amped up metaphorical stadium with the gospel and realize nothing has changed. The gospel is still our hope in life and death, God is still faithful.

Read Exodus 21

The main point of this passage, which is the main point of this sermon is

God Protects the Vulnerable. Realize we are the vulnerable and allow him to protect us.

In our context, the Israelites have just become a nation. They were a family of about seventy, they multiply while enslaved and then they are released. So God covenants with them and gives them these commandments which are going to turn Israel into a light. Surrounding nations of the ancient near east should be able to look at Israel and see a reflection of God’s character. The only thing with the ten commandments though is they are not super specific. God then gives theses laws so the Israelites know how to specifically live out these ten commandments.

The first specific commands God gives through Moses are regarding to slavery or in their context specifically, indentured servants. Why do you think that is? I assume it is because God is showing a contrast of how the Israelites are going to live and how the pagan worshipping Egyptians live. The Egyptians abused their labor forced and treated them as property. However, Israelites are to protect the vulnerable. They are to show the same love to their servants as God shows to them as God’s servants. God is making it very clear they will not represent him by creating the kind of society they just came from. No person is greater than another, there is no pharoah fake god deity. There are only sinners and a holy God. Sinners should not put themselves above other sinners or worse, above a righteous God. Do not treat slaves as if you are their god, treat them as apart of the covenant community. How is that practically played out?

Read Exodus 21:1-6

Exodus 21:1–6 ESV

“Now these are the rules that you shall set before them. When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing. If he comes in single, he shall go out single; if he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master’s, and he shall go out alone. But if the slave plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,’ then his master shall bring him to God, and he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost. And his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall be his slave forever.

The language “when you buy a Hebrew slave” just so we are all on the same page is not saying he is property, it is more like the Ravens “buying” Lamar Jackson after he graduated U of L. Moses means when you are paying the contract of someone you must release him after six years.

1. Justice and Grace

Throughout the entire bible, God is revealing himself to us. We read the bible to learn who God is. In verse two we learn to key parts of God’s character. God is both just and gracious. How does justice and grace show itself? Well, this indentured servant must work to pay off his debt. If he is going to gain 5 acres of land from his boss, he has to work to own it. The servant cannot just take the land for free and walk off like a sample from Costco. He has to work to keep it to his name. At the same time though, the servant does not have to work for all of his live just to gain this farm land. The verse specifically states that on the seventh year of his work he will be set free from his servitude and he would be released with the land or whatever he worked for to gain from his master. Just contrast this picture with the American Dream, some people work their entire lives to buy a certain house or their dream car. Here, someone is able to pay off their debt in only six years. The person must still work for the debt to be forgiven, it does not just disappear, but surely six years is better than sixty which is more common for us in modern America. How does we eternally put together God’s character revealed here of being just and gracious. Any bells being rang in your mind right now?

Friends, every single one of us in this room right now is a sinner. God created us and the entire universe with a standard of perfection because God is perfect, without sin. However, because of our sin we break this standard of perfection. We put our own desires before God’s commands for our lives, we love ourselves more than our mothers, we cheat, lie, we have hate in our hearts. All of these things go against God’s intended order for the world. Because God is just, there must be a consequence for us breaking his law. In the same way if a slave or servant has a debt, it cannot just be forgiven without someone paying that debt, our sin cannot be forgiven without someone paying that debt. We have looked at God’s perfect creation and infected it with our sin. Out of God’s character of justice, giving what is due, he punishes us. We pay the debt of sinning against a holy God by being separated from God eternally in hell. Does this sound harsh? Well friends we should not be surprised. In this passage we see God ruling in a just manner. Actions have consequences and are not just forgotten without the debt being paid. What was the other part of God’s character we saw though in the passage? It was grace. The slave was released after six years. God’s character of grace is shown eternally by looking at the debt we are to pay for our sin and taking it upon himself. God sent himself, Jesus Christ as God in the flesh to take on the wrath for our sins. Since God is a just God, our sin deserves wrath and God out of his love for himself and towards us sent his son Jesus Christ to appease his own wrath. Friends you may learn new radical lessons in school or hear cool stories in the news, but what I just explained is the most radical truth in the entire world. That is a bold claim, but consider the stakes. The stakes are eternal and still God showed his grace. If we respond to this gospel, this good news, with belief in Christ’s sacrifice on the cross to appease God’s wrath and repentance towards the sins that originally separated us from God we can experience this grace. If we do not respond in faith and repentance to the gospel though, we are left without God’s grace and have to take on the punishment of sin on our own. If we take God’s wrath upon ourselves without Christ we will be found guilty and eternally punished. So friend, I beg of you to see the gospel in this short verse about the law in Exodus 21 and leave the comfort of your sin behind and cling to the cross. He is just and gracious, let who God is draw us to himself. He protects the vulnerable, we are the vulnerable, so respond with faith and repentance so he can protect us.

2. A Confusing Way of Life

Moving down to verse three and four, if a slave came into his time of serving single, he can go out single, if he comes in married he should go out married. God simply wants what the servant has going to his time serving to still be his after serving. But what about if the master or boss provided a wife for a man while he was under contract. In Ancient Israel, marriages worked a little different. All of them were arranged, and the man had to pay the bride’s family for her. So what is going on in this passage is the master is giving a bride to the servant. Instead of the servant paying for the bride, the servant and the bride had to work off that debt. Also if they had children, the debt would increase so that debt had to be paid as well. This is not to say at all that the wife and children were always servants of their master, but they worked the six years as well. God’s law here is just following his just character that a debt has to be paid off.

In verse six a servant is permitted to stay with his master if he concludes he is the better for it. Instead of going to live on his own small farm, he can stay and live on his masters great estate for the rest of his days. We know from other biblical stories that the servant actually could inherit their masters’ estate too. Does this seem odd? A person would desire to be a servant of another for the rest of his life? Instead of going to start his own estate he works for his masters. If that strikes you as rare and confusing then good. As we discussed in the beginning, God is giving Israel these laws so they would be a light to other nations. Other nations should be able to look at the different way of life Israel lives and see their love for the Lord. Think about how God is glorified if a servant desires to work the rest of his life for his master. Surely the master is one who has great love for his servant. I mean a master could take in a young man, provide him with a small plot of land on his own, give him a wife, then kids, it makes sense why this man would want to stay the rest of his life with his master. Just contrast this with serving in Egypt. Servants or slaves were treated as merely tools of Pharoah. For all their days servants had to submit to every wish of their master good or evil. We see from the slavery of the Israelites that their masters were not any you would want to willingly spend the rest of your lives with. I mean God rescued them out of slavery because of how they were treated.

Imagine being a traveler of the ancient near east. One day you walk into Egypt and see that they are a great and powerful nation. They have great buildings and a great economy, but it is all built off of slaves who are treated as if they are simply a tool used by the state. Then you keep going on your voyage and go to Israel. There you find a less impressive economy and it is not as nice looking, but people love one another. I mean masters are so loving towards their servants that the servants want to willingly spend the rest of their lives with their masters. You walk up to a master and servant eating lunch together and ask them how they are able to have this kind of relationship with one another and they point it back to God. Maybe the master says “I know I am not the eternal master of this servant, God has given him to me to be a good steward of so I love him and treat him well. I know God has been faithful and loving to me so I wish to show that love and faithfulness back to someone lower than me”. Friends, if you are a born again believer in the Lord Jesus Christ? If so, what if someone compared your way of life to a metaphorical Egyptian, or an unbeliever? Would they be confused about how you live your life compared to the rest of the world in the same way that someone in the ancient near east would be confused about the relationships between a servant and a master? Would they ask you “how come you love differently? how come you live in a way that sacrifices your own needs for the needs of others?”. Or would they see you as living the same way as an Egyptian, or an unbeliever? Friends what God has done for us in Christ should prompt us to live a different life. Israel was to be a light for other nations to see who God is. Christ came preaching the same message. Turn with me to Matthew 5:14 (Read 14-16).

Friends, we are told live as a light by Jesus just as Israel was supposed to live. If we love God and are grateful for his sacrifice on the cross then we should do good works and give glory to God. We should live our lives in a clearly different way from others. Let me just speak to you all personally for a moment, the older you get the more your choices are going to differ in either glorifying God or yourself. Right now, at least on the outside, there may be a lot of overlap of those in your life. You go to church because your parents make you and you know if you do not you will disappoint your parents or will be in trouble. You work hard on your school because you want to be successful. You try to stay out of trouble because you want to avoid punishment. But as you get older, the opportunities to indulge your flesh or glorify God through your actions are made more clear. You will have the option of either working your entire life for a dollar bill or for the Lord. You can either choose a life of being content in singleness until the Lord brings you a spouse or get with as many guys or girls as you think will fill your desires. Hear from my heart this tonight guys: Do things now in your life for God’s glory. Do not wait until you have to choose between money or God. Right now, choose spending time with God over video games. Put yourself around believers and not friends who will corrupt your morals. It is not going to get easier to follow the Lord. Do not follow him out of some sense of begrudged obligation, but out of a response of his love for us. Remember how he is both just, AND GRACIOUS. Let his grace transform your heart into one that wishes to serve him for the rest of your days so much that people are confused by your way of life.

3. More Justice

The rest of the passage reflects God’s justice. If you murder someone you should be put to death, if you intentionally strike your father or mother you are put to death, if you curse your father or mother you shall be put to death, if you strike your slave and kill them, YOU ARE PUT TO DEATH. Do not let these laws just pass through your mind as ancient and irrelevant. What if I told you the consequences for these actions are the same today? They are. These are all sins and the consequence of sin is eternal death in hell. Do not let your mind trick you into thinking that the punishment for Israel here is greater than our punishment now. Our punishment is eternal, theirs is temporary, of the physical body. See what sin does, it destroys. Run from this sin, and cling to a God who loves you in spite of it.

Conclusion:

The gospel is woven through the entire storyline of the bible. God’s plan of salvation was not something he thought of right as he sent Christ. This is not a time period God is just using to buy himself time to think of a way to redeem the world. He eternally planned to redeem his people, even though time after time they prove their unfaithfulness and God proves his faithfulness.

Christians, live your life in a way that makes clear what God you serve. And unbelievers here in the room, if you want to learn more about what it means to be a Christian, talk to me after our time here tonight.

If you do not hear it from anyone else this week, I love you, and this church loves you, and God loves you. Let’s thank the Lord for his word.

Discussion questions:

How does God protecting the vulnerable servants in the passage connect to us? How does God save us as the vulnerable?

What if God was only just in his character and not gracious? How would this impact us for eternity?

Why should we desire to live a life completely different than the rest of the world as believers? How can we practically live out a life that shows who God is to others? (think routines, things you do often, how you interact with others).

What is an area of your life you are afraid you may not serve the Lord through when you are older? Bad friendships? Chasing after money or other fleshly desires? What can you do not to serve yourself in the future regarding those potential future struggles?