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I Love My Master
Sunday, February 13, 2022
Pastor Jojo Ma
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Exodus 21:1-11
1 Now these are the rules that you shall set before them. 2 When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing. 3 If he comes in single, he shall go out single; if he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. 4 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. 5 But if the slave plainly says, “I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,” 6 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. 7 When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do. 8 If she does not please her master, who has designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed. He shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has broken faith with her. 9 If he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her as with a daughter. 10 If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights. 11 And if he does not do these three things for her, she shall go out for nothing, without payment of money.
Ex24:7 Then [Moses] took the Book of the Covenant and read it in the hearing of the people.
God was showing Israel how to live and how to deal with problems they would face. The Book of the Covenant dealt with real life.
I. Male Servants [vv2-4]
II. Female Servants [vv7-11]
III. Lifelong Servants [vv5-6]
One could make a good case that racism, or better termed “ethnic partiality” or “ethnic superiority”, is a result of slavery, not so much a cause of it. And remember, for most of human history’s slavery, people have been enslaving their own people.
I. Male Servants [vv2-4]
2 When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing. 3 If he comes in single, he shall go out single; if he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. 4 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.
Ex 21:16 Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death.
The kind of enslavement and slave-trading of the Trans-Atlantic and of the Civil War era have no basis in the servitude of anc Israel. They are worlds apart.
2 When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing.
Deut 15:12-15 12 If your brother, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, is sold to you, he shall serve you six years, and in the seventh year you shall let him go free from you. 13 And when you let him go free from you, you shall not let him go empty-handed. 14 You shall furnish him liberally out of your flock, out of your threshing floor, and out of your winepress. As the LORD your God has blessed you, you shall give to him. 15 You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God redeemed you; therefore I command you this today.
3 If he comes in single, he shall go out single; if he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him.
4 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.
II. Female Servants [vv7-11]
7 When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do. 8 If she does not please her master, who has designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed. He shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has broken faith with her. 9 If he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her as with a daughter. 10 If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights. 11 And if he does not do these three things for her, she shall go out for nothing, without payment of money.
8 If she does not please her master, who has designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed. He shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has broken faith with her.
9 If he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her as with a daughter.
10-11 10 If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights. 11 And if he does not do these three things for her, she shall go out for nothing, without payment of money.
III. Lifelong Servants [vv5-6]
5 But if the slave plainly says, “I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,” 6 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.
In the depths of our hearts, we each say to him, “I love my master. I will not go out free. He has brought me to God. And I am his servant forever.” What a precious, beautiful portrait of our salvation in Christ.