Sermon Tone Analysis

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

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.