Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

Exodus 21:1-11. Exodus 21:1-11. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Exodus 21 beginning at verse one.

Now these are the judgments which you shall set before them. If you buy a Hebrew servant, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free and pay nothing. If he comes in by himself, he shall go out by himself. If he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master has given him a wife, and she has borne him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master’s, and he shall go out by himself.

But if the servant plainly says, “I love my master, my wife, and my children. I will not go out free.” Then his master shall bring him to the judges. He shall also bring him to the door or to the doorpost, and his master shall pierce his ear with an awl, and he shall serve him forever. And if a man sells his daughter to be a female slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do. If she does not please her master, who has betrothed her to himself, then he shall let her be redeemed.

He shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has dealt deceitfully with her. And if he has betrothed her to his son, He shall deal with her according to the custom of daughters. If he takes another wife, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, and her marriage rights. And if he does not do these three for her, then she shall go out free without paying money.

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for your Spirit and we pray now, Lord God, that your Spirit would do his work. We know he has come to teach us things of the Savior and to write this law upon our hearts and to change us and transform us, make us go from glory to glory. Help us, Father, then to have our ears opened, circumcised to hear your word, not to have them stopped up. And help us to have open hands this week, that we might do all things in accordance with this your word. Grant us your law graciously, Lord God, and cause us to rejoice in it.

In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

The subject today is the dowry and other joyful obligations of God’s law for us. We are preparing for family camp. I said before that Psalm 119 finds itself at the conclusion of a series of psalms of ascent going up to the mountain of God to receive the law. And so we go up to the festival in a week or so, most of us that is. And we’ll hear the word of God preached to us, taught to us that we might enjoy God’s word and enjoy our joyful obligations presented in it.

And we prepare ourselves today by looking at a particular portion of what some people call case law. I wanted to follow up last week’s sermon. What we’ve done is we moved from the patriarchal period and looked at the fall, creation and fall, looked at that in terms of its relationship to male-female relationships. And then we looked at the patriarchal period looking particularly at again male-female relationships and marriages particularly.

And then we’ve begun a consideration of the laws of God that follow the patriarchal period, now in the book of Exodus relative to marriage. And what I wanted to say was that what we see here today has some significance to the seventh commandment. We dealt with that last week. Thou shalt not commit adultery. And we talked about the fact that adultery really means to add something other to a relationship, to add another party to it in the case of marriage.

And this produces an adulteration of the marriage relationship. And we’ve said that our country has become adulterated and moving away from fidelity, which is probably the summation of the seventh commandment—fidelity to God and not being idolatrous and not being adulterous relative to our relationship to him as his bride, and being faithful as well to our spouses in the context of the marriage relationship.

We said that our country has moved away from fidelity and faithfulness and the resultant duty and honor that those that central tenant of the seventh commandment would dictate. And what I didn’t say last week and what I should have said, and what I would like to say this week, is that it is the church of God that has led the nation in this error. The church has become adulterated. The Christian life, the way that Christians are to walk in, has become adulterated because they’ve moved away from the church—of course, the law of God as a means of understanding God’s will for our lives—to some sort of appreciation of supposedly a spirit-filled walk that is given to us apart from the teaching of God’s word and from his law.

The Spirit ministers to us through words and particularly through the words of the scriptures and particularly in the exhortations of ministers and friends and family relative to that law word, which is a grace word to us as well. The church has sought out in the way the Lord Jesus Christ a way that differs from the law of God. What we’ve seen is that the seventh commandment, and we’ll see today that the case laws as well, reiterate the way, the life that the patriarchs lived.

They knew the law of God. Now, if somebody wants to say today that the Spirit of God is given to us to lead us in the way of the Lord Jesus Christ, that is good and that is fine. I agree with that. But if the patriarchs walked in conformity to what is articulated by way of principles and the case laws, why would the Spirit lead us in a different way? If we have the patriarchs knowing the law of God and then that law becoming codified in the Ten Commandments and then the various laws of the Pentateuch reflecting the spirit-led life of the patriarchs, then why would we see something different reflected in the spirit-led life of the Christian?

I think the answer is we wouldn’t.

So, the church has moved away from the commandments of God and thus has produced an adulterous church, a church that goes after the manipulations and stratagems and principles of men for how they’re to affect the world instead of looking at the word of God and meditating in it. Psalm 1 tells us that the way of the righteous is a meditation in the law of God day and night—ultimately only true of the Lord Jesus Christ but as we are in him we reflect that, we reflect the life of Christ who is the way, the truth, and the life—by a meditation in his word and in his law. And that’s the way society moves forward and advances, not through marketing techniques, not through evangelistic campaigns that are not based solely upon the word of God, etc. So the church has produced the adulteration that we see in our culture today, and it’s done so by means of departure from the law of God and also from a departure from the plain outspoken fact of the New Testament that the Lord Jesus Christ reigns over men and nations now, and all nations will be discipled to know the Savior.

The law is not in opposition to God’s grace. If we as a saved people want to know how God wants us to live, it is gracious of God to tell us statutes, commandments, and judgments to inform us what the spirit-filled walk looks like. He pictures it for us in the lives of the patriarchs. He pictures it for us in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he tells us explicitly by way of the law what the spirit-filled gracious walk is.

It is the grace of God that provides clear direction for our lives. It is man’s desire for autonomy to suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness that leads him away from the law of God. It’s a desire—it’s the desire to figure out for myself the best way to love my wife or my husband, the best way to care for my children, the best way to build a church or a Christian culture—apart from the word of God that produces this departure from God’s law and the adulterating effects on community.

We turn today to a specific portion of, as I said, God’s case law. We turn to Exodus 21. Now in Exodus 20, Moses receives the 10 words or the Ten Commandments from God and then God gives them some instruction about approaching him in worship. And then we have this section, Exodus 21-23, which represents in a compact, boiled-down form the case laws of God that are given to a redeemed people to teach them how to live holy and how to build a Christian culture.

So what we look at today are the first 11 verses of this section of three chapters of Exodus that are the law of the covenant.

Turn if you will to Exodus chapter 24. Let’s look at verse 3 and then verse 6.

Exodus 24:3: “Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord.” That’s a reference to the Ten Commandments, the Ten. “And all the judgments,” that’s a reference to Exodus 21-23. “And all the people answered with one voice and said, ‘All the words which the Lord has said we will do.’”

Now, they say the words, the Ten Commandments, because the judgments, as we said last week, really flow out from the words. They’re attached to it here in terms of this covenant formula, but they can be summed up in the people saying, “We’ll obey all the words.”

And then look at what he does, of course. He takes an altar and there’s sacrificing of whole burnt offerings and peace offerings. And then verse 6: “Moses took half of the blood and put it in the basins. Half the blood he sprinkled on the altar. Then he took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. And they said, ‘All that the Lord has said we will do and be obedient.’” And Moses takes the blood, sprinkles on the people, and says, “This is the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you according to all these words.”

So Moses reads the law of the covenant to the people in this covenant formulation with them, assuming and taking the covenant of God upon themselves. What was the law of the covenant?

Well, what it was: the 10 words of Exodus 20, the Ten Commandments, plus the judgments that are referred to in verse three, which are Exodus 21-23. So, at the heart of covenant renewal under Moses is this law of the covenant that defines their relationship as God’s people. We come together in Christian worship and we don’t offer burnt sacrifices or peace offerings, but we do remember the once-for-all offering of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And we come together as people that are called to give him worship because we’re his people, and he tells us how to live holy lives and he tells us that by means of the law of the covenant. So, it’s instructive for us to look at the law of the covenant. When we sing things like we just sang, those verses of Psalm 119, and we assert these things in formal worship, we better mean it. We better mean that we really do intend to meditate on God’s word and on his law specifically and that we’re thankful for it.

Have you meditated on Exodus 21-23 lately? Say in the abstract we can say we’ll read the Bible. Well, okay. And it’s true that all the Bible is God’s law to us. It’s all his covenant word to us. But there are these symbolized, condensed forms of that law. The Ten Commandments are a condensation. And Exodus 21-23 are important unpacking of what’s in the Ten Commandments. And it behooves us to meditate upon these words frequently because they inform us on what holy living is.

And that’s what we’re going to do today: look at a portion of this and specifically some stuff that relates to marriage. But we’ll deal with all of the first 11 verses.

Now before the case laws actually begin, there is the introduction to them in verse one.

“Now these are the judgments which you shall set before them.”

Now a couple of things about these judgments. We’ve said that the law of God predates this formalization of the written code in Exodus 20 and 21-23. And indeed we find in Genesis 18:19: God goes and he’s going to talk to Abraham and he says in the council of the Trinity, “I’ve known Abraham in order that he may command the children and his household after him that they keep the way of the Lord to do righteousness and justice.” Abraham will command his family to do justice. That’s the same word for the judgments that are articulated here in Exodus 21.

What we’re going to read in Exodus 21-23, God ahead of time said that Abraham was going to teach those judgments and make sure his children walked in them. Abraham knew these things. See, they were given to Abraham before they were given to Israel at Sinai. Again, in Genesis 26:5, we read God saying about Abraham that “Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.”

Very specific terminology that will later refer to various aspects of the written code that God gives Israel at Sinai and then later. But here it’s referring to what happened to Abraham long before Sinai. So again, the point I’m making here is that these judgments are not new. They were found in the context of God’s people. He had revealed them by a way which we do not know. But he had revealed them to Abraham and to his people prior to codifying them here as Israel is formed into a nation.

And as I said, this word judgment is the same word that’s repeated in Exodus 24:3. So it’s the judgments that articulate the 10 words of God.

So, first of all, this introduction to the case laws uses this terminology of judgments and that is a specific word referring to council wisdom relative to particular cases. Now, some people have referred to these judgments as civil law. Without getting into a big discussion of this, I think that what we can see in the laws of God, including this section, Exodus 21-23, certainly have civil applications to them.

After all, they are judgments. They’re judicial matters. But they also clearly have a moral character. We would agree with that. Yes, the civil magistrate punishes certain things that are immoral. It’s immoral for a man not to do what this law says he should do relative to his slave. And it’s immoral not to do what the scriptures say to do in terms of our wives, as we’ll talk about in a couple of minutes.

So, these scriptures have judicial or civil intent, but they also have a moral, personal intent. And I think we could probably say as well that they have a ceremonial aspect to them. There is the shedding of blood referred to here at the door of the house of the servant by the piercing through of the ear. And as we get to that text, we’ll talk a little bit about other portions of the scriptures that seem to say that it’s Jesus who is the one who is circumcised of ear, and we covenantally in him become circumcised of ear as well.

The circumcision of the ear, I think, is here being spoken of. And the point here is that when we read these judgments, we do not want to simply say that they are civil statutes alone. They have a civil component to them. They have a moral component. And I believe they also have in nearly all of them a ceremonial component. Jesus said that all these things spoke of him and of his ministry.

Now we’re going to talk about the details of these laws, but remember what I just said from Exodus 24. The people in response to these judgments taught to them by Moses said that all the things that God has commanded us to do, we will do. Now, that’s the response that I’m exhorting you to and I’m exhorting myself to today after we’ve looked at these laws in verses 1-11.

And if you think my exposition has been correct, and if not, what your exposition of the text is—in other words, we differ in the meaning of it. But once we get behind that, once you come to an understanding of what verses 1-11 mean to you, the question is: will you say, “All that the Lord has commanded, I will do”? That’s the response when you come forward today with your tithes and offerings. That’s what you’re saying. See, you’re coming before God in reference, in response to the preached word and saying, “All that the Lord has commanded me, I will do.” God is renewing covenant with you, and he calls on you to renew faithfulness to him.

By the assertion of your words: “All that the Lord has commanded, I will do.”

Okay, now on your outline, before we get to point two, I mentioned again by way of review mostly that the laws of slavery we can see reflected in the life of Jacob and Laban. We talked about that before. The laws of seduction we can see reflected in the patriarchal story of Dinah and her brothers. The case laws of seduction were being followed by her brothers and by Shechem.

The law of the levirate is pictured for us in Tamar and Judah. Remember that sermon that I preached on Tamar and Judah. The law of the levirate precedes Levitical law or the giving of the law at Sinai. And also the patriarchs knew the difference between clean and unclean animals before they were designated in the written code. Again, the point is here that what we find in these codes is simply the articulation of what the people of God already knew was their way of life before him.

And the second point of application marked by the asterisk is God’s law for civil magistrates.

Now, we don’t think here that what we can do is just cut these laws out and adopt them into the Oregon Revised Statutes. That’s not the point. But the point is God here addresses a specific situation in the life of his people. And think about that just a little bit. What is going on in the life of his people? We have had a patriarchal period where we’re dealing mostly with families—large families.

Of course, Abraham probably had thousands in his extended household, but still somewhat small. And now the people have been multiplied by God in Egypt and they come out millions strong. Okay. So now we have an entire culture of people, and this is why the codification of law comes at this particular point. Now for such a group of people we need a written code for easy transmission of it, instruction in it, and that the civil magistrates may rule in accordance with it.

So we have these developed particular statutes and they do inform the civil magistrate. But it doesn’t say, as I said, it sort of mingles in together moral instructions, judicial instructions, and ceremonial instructions both in Exodus and then in its retelling or recasting in the book of Deuteronomy.

So what Umberto Cassuto calls these judgments, as quoted by James B. Jordan in his book on the law of the covenant, Exodus 21-23, Cassuto refers to these things that we’ll be reading now in a moment as ethical instruction in judicial matters. Ethical instructions in judicial matters. So that if you’re a judge in Israel or if you’re a civil magistrate in Oregon, you meditate on these particular statutes that are called judgments and have implication for the civil magistrate, and you think about the equity of these particular statutes and how you would apply them today. See, so it’s not a matter of cut and paste. It’s saying: what were the findings of the most wise, the most powerful, and omniscient judge of all the earth? What did he decide to do in a case where a man sold himself into slavery? And then what general truth of the Ten Commandments is reflected in that? What truth of God’s character is reflected in that I should apply in the drafting of laws in Oregon today? That’s the idea. Okay?

And in some cases, it’s quite easy. When theft is punished by restitution, as it is in Exodus 21-23, then that’s a fairly clear call that instead of prisons we should have systems of restitution. Other things it’s not quite so clear. So understand that these are ethical instructions in judicial matters. They take the ethics of God’s way and call the civil magistrate to obey them.

The point here is that, as we said at the beginning of this, the church has said we’ll determine for ourselves what’s good and bad in terms of what we should do relative to our spouses. We’ll take some truths from the New Testament but don’t look at those laws of the Old Testament. They don’t apply to us. And then the civil culture then has followed that and said, “Well, if the church can determine good and evil, certainly the state can by itself, and we’ll decide what laws we should have autonomously, not in submission to God’s word.”

God’s word calls us to evaluate these ethical instructions for civil magistrates and see in them what sort of laws should frame a Christian culture today as well. Okay.

Well, let’s look specifically at these particular instructions and draw some equity out of them in terms of specifically our marriage relationships today. Okay.

There are two sets of cases. Both involve servitude. The first case involves servitude where a man sells himself into indebted servitude or bondage for purposes of labor. Let us put that.

And the main provision is given in verse two. The major provision is a six-year limitation for Christian bondservants. “If you buy a Hebrew servant.” Okay. Designation: a Hebrew servant. This law does not apply to non-Hebrew servants, those outside of the family of faith. So, it applies to Christian bondservants.

First of all, “he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free and pay nothing.”

And also, another thing you need to know here is that the word for buy is not a specific word for buy. It’s a general word for acquire by any means. So, it doesn’t necessarily mean that money has exchanged hands. It means to acquire a servant.

Now, one reason why a person could acquire a Hebrew bondservant is if the bondservant steals something or the man steals something from somebody else and can’t pay restitution and then he is indebted to the person he stole from to pay off the debt. Okay, that’s one way of acquiring the bond servant. Another is for the Hebrew man to be so in debt that to remove himself from debt, he places himself in an indebted servitude to a master for a period of time because he can’t relieve his debts any other way.

Those are the two main ways that these sorts of servants, indebted servants, slaves—but don’t think, you know, of the kind of slaves that we’re used to in American history, men that have been kidnapped. That was illegal according to the law of God. Kidnapping was a capital offense. But rather, these were bonded, indebted servants who were serving to work off a debt in terms of restitution or to eliminate the poverty in their complete inability to provide for themselves or their families.

So that’s what’s going on here. These were Christian bondservants. And what the scriptures tell us is that in these cases, the servant can only serve for six years and in the seventh he goes free.

Now clearly there’s a reference to the sabbatical year here—and the sabbatical period of a week of rest: six years and then a year of rest for the land, etc. But it seems to be phrased in such a way as to allow actually a full six years of servanthood and then release in the seventh year from when he began to serve.

Now we won’t take the time to look here, but you’ll see I referenced Deuteronomy 15:12-18 and Jeremiah 34:9-16. Now in Deuteronomy 15 it says: “If your brother, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman is sold to you and served six years. In the seventh year, you shall let him go free from you.”

So, Deuteronomy fleshes this out a bit more. When we get to the next set of servitude relationships involving women in just a bit here in the second part of the sermon, that will involve women who have become bondservants for purposes of marriage. Okay? In the Hebrew Republic, a woman could also be a bondservant for labor. And if she was a bondservant for labor purposes—you know, housemaid, whatever it was—she also had to be let go in the seventh year and released totally from her bondedness or indebtedness.

And the general principle here is one that we should understand: that in the seventh year, the Hebrew person was to be free. They should have learned their lesson for their irresponsibility of debt or their irresponsibility of theft and in the seventh year become a free person in their own right. So the whole purpose of the bonded indebtedness of servants was to move the man or the woman to responsibility and freedom. There was no perpetual indebtedness except for a case which we’ll see in just a moment.

Now, another thing that Deuteronomy 15 tells us is that when the servant is let go in the seventh year, he is to be given a bunch of provisions from the flock, from the grain crops and from the fruit crops. So, he’s to be actually supplied with an initial start for his own household.

Now having learned responsibility through his servitude, he then becomes a responsible man and goes out with gifts from the master. And the master has gotten all this service from him, and the master then loads him down with goods as much as he can carry, seems to be the implication of Deuteronomy 15. So that’s the major provision of this first set of five laws.

Now just a comment about this: these laws can and are frequently ridiculed or derided by people as being some kind of Old Testament pro-slavery anti-humanistic ordinance. Nothing could be further from the truth. Servitude, slavery, has been a fact of man’s existence since the fall. And in most cultures, slavery is treated far more poorly than it was under these gentle, gracious laws of the sovereign who is all wise as well as all powerful and all-loving to his people.

Servitude, slavery of one race to another is frequent, and the races differ. Every race, it seems, thinks that their race is the supreme race on the earth. And in the Adamic nature, every race wants to enslave the other races that don’t look like them. And men are the same way. Men move to domination as we saw in the life of Lamech, and power over other men.

The scriptures, on the other hand, have as the purpose of their indebted servitude laws, as I said, to drive home the twin lessons of responsibility, but then also the need for freedom. You see, it’s an illusion today in America to say we’ve gotten rid of servitude, gotten rid of all these things because we’ve done away with indebted servants at this as this country once had it at its inception.

And what happens today is that people are in tremendous indebtedness and yet have the illusion of not being indebted, have the illusion of prosperity, and so become more and more irresponsible in the context of their lives. And so, as our culture increases in indebtedness and does not have the corrective mechanism of indebted servitude that the scriptures provide or some other alternative to it that is in accordance with biblical law, what we see is an increase in irresponsibility in the culture, an increase in the debt cycle, and eventually collapse.

And so there’s nothing kind to a man who is irresponsible and doesn’t held to some sort of standard to demonstrate to himself his irresponsibility.

Notice also that the servant is not placed in servitude to the civil state. He’s put in the context of a household. Now, it’s probably an extended household. Abraham’s household is an example—thousands probably of people in it. One hundred thirty servants of the house. We’ll talk about that in just a minute. So, lots of servants for Abraham. It’s not typically an isolated little household like we think of, but still it’s put in the context of an environment where hard work will be required.

The servant didn’t get paid and he got beaten on his backside, his butt, if he didn’t do his work well, ’cause he needed motivation. The whole point of the servant is most people go into servitude. They don’t have proper motivation for work. They haven’t learned the work ethic. They haven’t learned how to be responsible. And they’re going to be trained in a family just like what? Just like children. That’s right. That’s what we do with children. They’ve rejected maturity. They’ve stayed childlike, and they’re brought back into oversight, covenantal oversight of fathers to train them to maturity to get them in that seventh year out of the house.

One modern day application of this may be indebted servitude to family-run businesses. Remember that these households were extended households. They were big households. Work was going on in the context of them that isn’t just sitting around the house. And if you look at Abraham’s family, as we said, it looks more like indebted bond servitude to a corporation perhaps run by a family or a series of families than it would to what we think of as a family today.

So God’s law is gracious. It provides correction to irresponsible men, and yet it also puts out at the end of that time liberty, and in fact establishment, by the master as he lets his servant go. Okay.

Then we have some minor provisions for this law.

First, if there’s solitary entrance, then solitary exit.

Verse three: “If he comes in by himself, he goes out by himself.” Okay, it’s clear enough. If he’s married beforehand, then he’s married. His wife goes with him when he goes out. The verse goes on to say, “If he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him.” Okay? So, even though he indebts himself and his wife is with him, she doesn’t stay there. She doesn’t become the property of the master in that sense.

Verse four: “If his master has given him a wife, and she has borne him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master’s, and he shall go out by himself.”

Now again, this seems objectionable to our modern ears. But we got to remember this is the most gracious, most wise, most loving God of his covenant people, giving laws by which a godly culture will run itself.

And one of these laws has to do with this man who comes in irresponsible. His master, he sees another servant in the household—of Abraham, one of the other five hundred or so—wants her for a wife. He doesn’t have a dowry. He can’t establish the household himself. He’s a servant after all. But yet, it’s not good for men to be alone. So, the master is to consider that and allow his servants to marry.

If that’s the case, though, and the man goes out, then at the seventh year, his wife can’t go with him. Now, in part, that’s a protection for the wife. After all, we don’t know for sure the man has established himself as a responsible adult male. If he has established himself, if he’s learned the lesson of the indebted servitude and he goes out and establishes himself and becomes a wage earner and produces production for his household, then he can go and redeem the wife, who is in the same position he was in, in need of redemption from the master.

So, so it protects the wife against an irresponsible relationship with a man who has no really viable resources except what his master gives him upon his exit. He has to provide for himself and produce the redemption price, the dowry as it were, for his wife, or she stays there.

Now the other thing is they could certainly have conjugal relationships. They could certainly come and visit or they could spend time together, but he just can’t take her away from the household until her seventh year comes up or until she is redeemed from her contract of indebtedness.

Like I said, Deuteronomy 15 and Jeremiah shows us that these truths were true of female servants as well as male.

Now, I got in the outline here obligations of Christian parents. There’s a sense in which of course through all of this it’s a picture of our relationship to God. We’ll talk more about this as the day progresses, but ultimately we have to say that we—all those who are irresponsible in our Adamic nature—have been brought into service to God. And in that service to God, we have been provided wives and children. And this text reminds us of that. And it should remind us of our stewardship responsibilities to the children God has provided.

Ultimately, they’re the master’s children for us. Yes. In Malachi, why does he seek, why does he have people marry? To seek a godly seed, to seek a seed for himself. Our children are God’s children. Our wives are God’s possessions, ultimately, as are we.

And when we think of our marriages and our families, we should have a renewed sense of responsibility to train them correctly because they are the King’s—rather, God’s—kids.

Another thing that we see here, relative to our household, is that God is gracious towards servants in training them to become responsible and moving them toward maturity. And so we should also be gracious and beneficent in our actions toward our children. They’re in the right way as these indebted servants were. They’re not paid. They’re given beatings if they don’t obey. But just like the servants, we’re supposed to be training them for their release into full free-holding status as citizens of the culture.

We could talk also about the civil implications of this: being that these men who were servants didn’t exercise the franchise to vote for representatives in Israel. You had to be out of servitude. You weren’t a full citizen in these cases. And the implications of that for our culture are great. But let’s go on and we have more things to talk about.

Four, if perpetual servanthood is desired by the servant, his ear is pierced.

Verse 5: “If the servant plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children. I will not go out free.’ Then his master shall bring him to the judges. He shall also bring him to the door or to the doorpost and his master shall pierce his ear with an awl and he shall serve him forever.”

Now I have a cross reference here in Deuteronomy 15:12-18. We referred to that earlier in terms of saying that the same law applies to male slaves for labor applies to female slaves for labor, and it talks also about going out being loaded with gifts. And it also refers to this same truth here: that if the servant loves his master, he can assert this solemnly before the judges and then he can have his ear pierced through at the doorpost of the house and be in perpetual service to his master.

Now I bring up the cross reference in Deuteronomy because while this text tells us that one of the motivations may be a love for the wife that his master has provided, that is omitted from the Deuteronomy text. So the point is: if you take these two texts together, the primary motivation for the servant who becomes a perpetual servant is love for his master. That’s what’s going on. And it may have a corollary love for his wife and the children that the master has provided, but ultimately it’s love for his master that moves him toward this position.

What’s going on here?

Well, I’ve given you some references there from the book of Jeremiah, chapter 6, 10. Turn to that if you would.

Jeremiah 6:10: “To whom shall I speak and give warning that they may hear? Indeed, their ear is uncircumcised and they cannot give heed.” You see, people who are not obedient to God are described as having uncircumcised ears. In Jeremiah 10. Turn to Acts 7:51.

Acts 7:51: “You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears. You always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you.” Uncircumcised not just in their hearts but in their ears. You see? And now turn to Psalm 40 verse 6.

Psalm 40 beginning at verse 6: “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire; relatively speaking. My ears you have opened. Burnt offering and sin offering you did not require. Then I said, ‘Behold, I come in the scroll of the book. It is written of me. I delight to do your will, oh my God. Your law is within my heart.’”

You see, the servant of God loves to do his will, loves the master of masters more than anything else. And he is one who moves from having his ear uncircumcised, plugged up, to hearing the word of God and obeying it, to having his ear opened by God and now hearing the will of his master and doing it.

I think that’s what’s going on in the case law application of the servant having his ear pierced through. Now, some speculate that what we could have here is a feminization of the man who rejects freedom. But, you know, I don’t find anywhere in the scriptures where it talks about men being feminized by having their ear pierced through. I think the picture here is the circumcising, the opening up of the ear of the servant, and moving him from a state of not really hearing the master to hearing him instead.

That’s what’s happened to this servant as he’s lived under the context of a loving master. The response back is the desire to serve him perpetually. Now his status changes. Then in the Old Testament you can be just a normal servant, a bonded servant like this guy is. But then the next status up you can have is you can be a servant of the house—a servant of the house, homeborn servant, it’s referred to as in various places in the scriptures. A servant of the house is like a member of the family. He’s like adopted in. He’s like a counselor to the master. He’s the one who says, “It’s better to be a doorkeeper in the house of my master than you know these other great things that can happen to me away from the master.” The homeborn servant, the one who has moved from death to life, circumcision from the closed ear to open ear, from being dead to being alive, the recreation that circumcision is a picture of—who has a circumcised ear—is the one who loves his master and is dedicated to him.

I think that’s what’s going on here. And I think ultimately the picture again is the Lord Jesus Christ who was circumcised, as it were, who through the shedding of his blood obtained our redemption and opened our ears to hear the master of the house in which we have come to dwell. But this is pictured by way of illustration, and this law was to be carried out.

By the way, when the servant makes this assertion that he wants to do this, he has to go before the judges. And the word there is gods. Here and in other places of the scriptures, civil rulers are called gods—a reminder to them that they must indeed take the civil implications of these statutes, judgments, and apply them in their wisdom as judges.

But a reminder to us as well that our resistance to God takes the form of resistance to civil authorities, resistance to parents, resistance to church authorities. In our Sunday school class, our Bible class before church today, we talked about Psalm 1 and 2. The way of the wicked is the way of conspiracy to throw off the constraints of Christ’s government. And when we’re told here that we’re to go to the gods of the land who dwell in Salem, it’s a reminder to us to submit to the authorities that God has established, and it’s a reminder that in our fallen state we tend not to do that.

Okay. So love and service is connected here. And as we said, the servant has moved from irresponsibility to responsibility one way or the other. One picture of the moving to responsibilities is in the seventh year he goes free. He establishes his household. The other picture of responsibility is he loves his master so much, his master loves him and accepts him, and he’s adopted into the family of the master.

And now we come to a series of statutes regarding female slaves who are in servitude. They’re in servitude for marriage purposes.

The major provision: no seventh year release for betrothed female servants.

Verse 7: “If a man sells his daughter to be a female slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do.”

Now, as I said at first reading, this looks like the difference between male and female slaves is that one goes out in the seventh year and the other ones don’t. But if we look at Deuteronomy, as we looked earlier, we see that indeed the female slaves went out in the seventh year as well. So what’s this talking about?

Well, it’ll become clear as we go through here, but what’s being talked about is a woman being going into an indebted or bonded servitude to a master for purposes of betrothal and marriage. That’s what’s being talked about here. And the point here is a simple one: that marriage is perpetual. It’s eternal. It doesn’t just last for six years. Not eternal, but it’s lifelong—till death do us part. Okay.

Then the minor provisions come.

If no marriage occurs, then another may provide her dowry, redeeming her.

Verse 8: “If she does not please her master who has betrothed her to himself, then he shall let her be redeemed. He shall have no right to sell her to foreign people since he has dealt deceitfully with her.”

Okay. Now, to understand this correctly, we must look a little bit further down in the case laws. Exodus 22:16 and 17. Look at that, please.

Exodus 22:16-17: “And what we read there is, ‘If a man entices a virgin who is not betrothed and lies with her, he shall surely pay the bride price for her to be his wife. And if her father refuses to give her to him, he shall pay money according to the bride price of virgins.’”

Now, I’ve referenced on your outline Deuteronomy 22:28 and 29. And what we read there involving the same kind of case is that the father has the right to either say yes, this marriage will occur or no, it will not. But either way, the seducer has to pay the bride price to the woman because he’s humbled her—the responsibility of the man.

The point of these two case laws is that dowry was always seen as part of Hebrew marriage, of Israelite, of believing marriages. The bride price indicates that there is always a dowry attached to marriage or should be to have full marriage.

And as we said before when we were preaching through the lives of the patriarchs, there are two kinds of marriage—actually there’s three kinds of marriages. The normal, full-blown marriage that has a dowry attached to it to the wife. And secondly, concubinage marriage that has no dowry attached to it. Or third, this kind of servitude marriage where the dowry does not go to the girl, but the dowry goes to the girl’s father.

He is through whatever reason become so indebted and so wrapped up in financial problems that he contracts out, with his daughter’s permission obviously, that she will marry into this rich man’s family when she becomes of age. So he betroths her as it were to this man, and he takes the dowry instead of the girl getting the dowry. Now obviously that means that normally the girl gets the dowry and she becomes endowed. But in this case the father keeps the dowry.

Turn if you will to Genesis 31:14 and 15. And this will make more sense now hopefully to you. And this is about Rachel and Leah.

They answered and said to him, “Is there still any portion of inheritance for us in our father’s house? Are we not considered strangers by him? For he has sold us and also completely consumed our money.” See, they’re saying that again, they knew the law before it was codified. They’re saying that they have become less than full brides in the sense of becoming endowed brides. Jacob worked seven years for each of them. That money was their dowry. His wages was to be given to them as dowry for them by him. And they were to be full wives.

But Laban in his deception and in his eating up that dowry, he held it for them as a father is supposed to do, as a covenant until the covenantal transfer occurs. He held it, but he didn’t hold it as a good steward. He used all that money himself. And as a result, they were now in the position that the woman finds herself in Exodus 21. They were now sold into that betrothal to Jacob because they had no dowry provided by their father.

So that’s what’s going on here. First, there’s an assumption of dowry in the context of biblical marriage. And secondly, the dowry in the case of the indebted servitude wife…