Exodus (Lesson 39)

We open Exodus 21 under rolling thunder and talk plainly about justice, love, and order. From the marked servant to murder, kidnapping, and restitution, we weigh hard laws that protect life and point to freedom in Christ.

• servitude as debt restitution, not man-stealing
• the willing servant as a picture of belonging to Christ
• safeguards for women’s provision and dignity
• capital sanctions for murder, kidnapping, and parental assault
• refuge for accidental killing and due process
• restitution for injury and lost wages by the offender
• the limits of human systems without new birth in Christ
• practical contrasts with modern legal norms

Church Website — BibleBaptistDeLand.com

Ministry Website — JamesWKnox.org

YouTube Channel — YouTube.com/JamesWKnoxSermons

Sermon Audio — SermonAudio.com/BibleBaptistDeLand

Web Store — Store.JamesWKnox.org

Chapters

• 0:00 Storms, Sirens, And Setup
• 2:45 Enter Exodus 21
• 6:35 Servitude, Debt, And Justice
• 10:40 The Marked Servant And Christ
• 14:30 Protections For Women In Law
• 18:05 Murder, Mercy, And Due Process
• 21:00 Parents, Children, And Authority
• 24:05 Kidnapping And Public Justice
• 27:10 Injury, Restitution, And Responsibility

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:09

Welcome to the Preaching the Cross Radio Podcast, featuring the radio ministry of Pastor James W. Knox of the Bible Baptist Church of Delane, Florida. Our prayer is that these half-hour Bible study programs will bring the lost to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and enable the saved to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Savior. Now here's your host, Pastor James W. Knox.

SPEAKER_01: 0:54

I'm Brother James, and I greet you one more time in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He is the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world. From time to time, you have heard through the years, 20 plus years, well, I don't know, more than that now, started 1981. What am I talking about? Almost, almost uh 30 years. Plus, plus 30 years. Anyway, over all these years we've been preaching you on the radio. You have heard all kinds of background sounds. You've heard animals, cows, chickens, dogs, as we've recorded from the old home place. And you have heard people running in and out of church buildings and doors slamming and so forth. Today you just might hear some crashing of thunder. We've had uh some electrical storms, uh, very powerful displays of God's might and majesty uh throughout the uh day. And so if you hear some of that in the background, uh just enjoy yourself. I'll tell you my favorite story of all. Our church building here in the land, Florida, the Bible Baptist Church in Land Florida, our church building is located right next door to a firehouse. And many times during our church services, a fire truck will head out responding to a call, and we'll hear the sirens uh uh doing what they do. Well, I got a letter from a man, and thank you for writing to us, all of you. Thank you for writing. We really get a blessing out of those letters. This man wrote, and he said, he was driving down the road in his car, listening to recorded sermons from our church, and he heard sirens. He looked down at the speedometer, realized he was going way too fast, and did what a good boy would do. He pulled over so that the police officer could give him a speeding ticket. Only then did he look back and realize there was no police car behind him. The siren had been on the recording. That's a memorable moment. Exodus 21, our starting place. Exodus chapter 21. Now these are the judgments which thou shalt set before them. God instructing Moses, that Moses might instruct the children of Israel. This is the law, the Ten Commandments, the preface to the bulk, the body of God's law for God's people. Verse 2. If thou buy an Hebrew servant, we covered this in our study on Philemon. We can't go into all of it now. This matter of servants purchasing men for service. If thou buy an Hebrew servant six years he shall serve, and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. You say I'm against slavery, I'm certain the Bible's against slavery in every form and fashion. Well, you'd be certainly wrong. The Bible is against one man owning another man. However, however, if man A is indebted to man B and cannot pay his debts, then that man and his labor belong to man A, belongs to man B until man A's debts are settled. That's the only right way to do it. The way that modern legal systems allow the crook to go free and the honest man to suffer because someone did not pay their debts, that is a perverted form of justice. Verse number three If he came in by himself, he should go out by himself. If he were married, then his wife should go out with him. If his master had given him a wife, and she have borne him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her masters, and he should go out by himself. And if the servant shall plainly say, now all of that's easily understood. Verses 2, 3, and 4. You don't have to like it as an American. You don't have to understand it all, though you should take the time to try to understand it, and not just follow the political propaganda of your day and your age. You should understand that, for example, for example, Country A invades Country B. They wage war. Country A wages war against Country B. Country B not only successfully defends itself, but takes men captive who would have killed them. That's what they came to do. They came to kill them, but they were not able to kill them. They were taken captive instead. So, Company A, Country A, the men from Country A who would have killed the men from Country B are now taken captive by the men of Country B. They have burned farms, houses, villages. They have destroyed towns and cities. They have left destruction in their wake. What is to be done with these men? Well, suppose we put them to work until they repair the damage done, which is not asking a lot, because it sure beats being buried in a cemetery somewhere as a casualty of war. Just pointing out to you, there are some uh some things you haven't thought about with regard to servitude. Verse 5, and if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children, I will not go out free. Then his master shall bring him unto the judges, and he shall also bring him to the door or under the door post, and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, A W L, and he shall serve him forever. Now think with me, please, think with me. I am a servant. I am a servant. I belong to one who has bought me with a price. His name is the Lord Jesus Christ. He ransomed my soul, he redeemed me. I was in a horrible situation. My soul belonged to the devil. My life belonged to sin. In love, in pure love, God purchased me and paid quite a price. The blood of his son Jesus Christ. I was redeemed. I was redeemed with the blood of Jesus Christ, and I became a servant of the living God. I'm his, he bought me. But here's what he did: he bought me, and at the same time, he set me free. Many a godly man, many Christian man down through the centuries has purchased someone at a slave auction only to grant them their freedom. The Lord bought me only to grant me my freedom. Here's what I said. I turned to him and I said to that master, I told him I loved him, I did not want to leave him, that I would rather abide in his house, I would rather dwell in his presence forever than walk away after all he had done for me. And so, and so he marked me as his own. Oh, it it it it changed things. I couldn't just go out in that world anymore and pass myself off as just another worldling. I was marked by God as one of his own. That's okay, I don't mind. I don't mind. People see that that hold of the ear of that uh slave in Exodus 21, they know, they know he voluntarily made himself the property of another man. And I don't mind, I don't mind if people look at me and see that I have voluntarily made myself the property of the Lord Jesus Christ. I couldn't think of a better way to spend my life than serving him. Verse 7 And if a man sell his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the men's servants do. If she please not her master who hath betrothed her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed. To sell her unto a strange nation he shall have no power, seeing he hath dealt deceitfully with her. And if he hath betrothed her unto his son, he shall deal with her after the manner of daughters. If he take him another wife, her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage shall he not diminish. And if he do not these three unto her, then she shall go out free without money. Now some of you, some of you know so little about the Bible that you criticize it. Some of you have so little knowledge of God's word that you condemn it. It's all right for me to speak to persons like that in such harsh tones. How dare you criticize a book you've never studied? How dare you condemn a text about which you know virtually nothing other than what some idiot friend, some reprobate college professor, or some TV show told you. You've never searched its pages, you couldn't tell me right now the difference between Ezra and Ezekiel. You couldn't do it. Right now, to win a prize on a game show, you couldn't tell me the difference between Mark and Luke. Now you know that, you know that. And yet you criticize the Bible. You say, well, that Bible, I how how can anybody read a book that talks about by uh look whoa, whoa, whoa, just settle down a minute, just settle down. Listen to me. The New Testament, Jesus Christ dies on the cross so that men may have living inside them, God the Holy Spirit, and so that men may be elevated by the indwelling, abiding presence of God Himself, they may be elevated above and beyond what they are by human nature. Nothing else can do that. The Bible says, if any man be in Christ, he's a new creature. Old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new. That's not true. That's not, listen, Judaism can't make a man a new creature, Protestantism can't make a man a new creature, Catholicism, Islam, listen, none of those religions can make a man a new creature. So, so, outside of the new birth that God grants to those who have received his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, outside of that, all that we can hope to do is see man controlled to the greatest extent possible by the commands and dictates of God's word as carried out by society. That's that's the best you can do without a new birth. And that new birth wasn't possible until Jesus had risen from the dead. So, in Old Testament times, you must understand that men of all nations were treating women of all nations like mere pieces of property. And the reason they were doing that is because the women were not strong enough to do anything about it. Now you can talk about equality all you want, but the only way, the only way a woman has any equality in this world is if she has persuaded men to fight for it on her behalf and to grant it to her out of the goodness of their heart. I'm not being hateful. I'm uh we're we're discussing history intelligently. If you don't have the intelligence to stay with the conversation, uh just get mad. That's the truth. That's the facts of the matter. Now, God told his people, I want you to treat women better than the heathen nations round about you. If you pay a dowry to a man and take his daughter to be your wife, you said, well, I don't think that's right, paying money to get a wife. Well, there isn't a married man alive who doesn't know the extreme cost involved in such a process. Anyway, anyway. God said, when a man, when a man pays a dowry to a father, and that father gives the hand of his daughter in marriage to that man, the Bible says God's law to the Jewish people, the Hebrew people, he said, Once you've taken that woman to wife, you are to treat her properly. Not treat her as the heathen do. You are to show her, first of all, first of all, you are not to part with her. You you don't have any power to sell her to another nation. You don't have any power to send her out and put her out. You do not have any power to turn her over to another man, another land. You are to treat her all the days of her life by providing her with food, with raiment, with the privileges of the marriage bed and the marriage relationship. You are not to diminish that whatsoever. And if you're not gonna do that, verse 11 says, you lose that woman. Now that's that's not as good as it's going to be in the New Testament. That's not as good as it's going to be when men become Christians, but it's better than anything the land of Canaan had to offer. Verse number 12. He that smiteth a man so that he die shall be surely put to death. You got that? Liberals, conservatives, you got that? Law enforcement, politicians, media types, educators, you got that? He that smiteth a man so that he dies shall be surely put to death. That's God's law. If man's law differs from God's law, man's wrong. He needs to correct his laws. And if a man lie not in wait, but God deliver him into his hand, then I will appoint thee a place whither he shall flee. Look, what if what if a man takes the life from another man, but it's by accident? Or it's by you said, God, did God do it? Well, that's what your insurance policy says. That's what you say in your law courts. It was not a murder. In fact, it went beyond an accident, it was an act of God. So, where do you get that term? Exodus 21, 13. But if a man come presumptuously upon his neighbor to slay him with guile, thou shalt take him from mine altar that he may die. In a case of plan premeditated, intentional murder. It doesn't matter if that man pleads for mercy in the very house of God, at the very altar of God, you don't spare him. Well, he's been rehabilitated, you don't spare him. He's turned his life around, you don't spare him. The man whose life he took has not been returned to him. So the man who took the life doesn't get his life returned to him. That's I'm just teaching the Bible. That's what it says. Verse 15. He that smiteth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death. I read what these imbeciles say in their conferences and what they say in their speeches, and they get together with other imbeciles and try to figure out what in the world are we going to do about these gangs and this violent crime and uh these young people harming uh their parents and their grandparents. What are we gonna do about it? Well, you're not gonna do what God said to do about it, so you're just gonna Have to live with it. Now, if you want to stop it, if you want to put an end to it, once and for all, decisively, here's what God said you do. When that girl slaps her mother, you execute that girl publicly. That way, every every girl in the nation will feel as she lifts her arm to slap her mother, the restraint of a death sentence, and I guarantee you she'll put that arm back down. Every boy in the land that balls up his fist and strikes his daddy, if you took that boy and publicly executed him, it would be a long time before another kid balled up his fist and punched his daddy. How you like that? That's just what God said. Don't get mad at me. Don't don't don't call some agency on me. I didn't say kill anybody. I said God told you how to handle the juvenile that struck a parent so that it didn't happen again anywhere. 16. He that stealeth a man, we call it kidnapping, man stealing, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand. See, it doesn't matter. If you keep him for your own use or sell him for money, if you keep her for your own use or sell her for money, it doesn't matter. He shall surely be put to death. How about that? Now, can I help you? I'm trying to help you. I'm trying to help a nation that's just completely out of control. It's just drowning, it's drowning in the sea of its own depravity. And I'm trying to help you out here. So listen carefully. The next time some pervert pulls up in front of a schoolhouse and grabs a child and drives away with that child the back of his van. The next time that happens, if you would take that man and execute him publicly, you say, What about this court, that court, this trial, that trial? Look, he's got the kid. You caught the man with the child in his vehicle that he abducted from the schoolhouse. You take that man, you take that child, and you you go to the child's father. Is this your child? Yes. You go to the child's mother, is that your child? Yes. Did you tell this man to grab your child from the schoolhouse and drive away with your child in his van? No, says the father. No, says the mother. Then you kill that guy right there on the spot. Now, do you know it it wouldn't take it wouldn't take a week to stop the abduction of children in your land if you would kill these wicked, vile, depraved individuals, you could put a stop to it. You say, well, they just they just they're sick and they can't help it. Oh, they could help it. I can tell you how to keep them from ever doing it again. Put them six feet under. How's that? I guarantee you, if you executed a child molester who took a child to his apartment, I guarantee you he'd never do it again. That'd be the last time that man would ever lay his hands on a child. Now that'd cut down the recruitment practices of sodomites, but that'd be a good thing too. How are we doing so far? You like the Bible? Anyone out there, raise your hand if you like the Bible. All right, 17, and he that curseth his father or his mother shall surely be put to death. You want to clear up the disrespect, crime, violence, sabotage, iniquity, home invasion, petty theft, felony, you want you want to clean it up? That's how you clean it up right there. And if a man, if men, if men strive together, and one smite another with a stone, or with his fist, and he die not but keep of his bed, if he rise again and walk abroad upon his staff, then shall he that smote him be quit only. He shall pay for the loss of his time and shall cause him to be thoroughly healed. Now do you see where you get your system of laws in the United States of America? If one man injures another man, it is not the responsibility of the government to pay for that man's medical treatment or his lost wages. It is not the responsibility of the society to pay for that man's medical treatment or his lost wages. It is the responsibility of the man who caused the injury to pay for his complete medical expenses and his lost wages. That's only right. It's only fair. God is right, God is fair, and that's what God told his people to do. Now, do you know what would happen to the cost of your medicine and health in a land if that law was obeyed? Do you know how much your rates on just about everything would go down? If that law was obeyed, you wouldn't have all this all this uh uh need for tort reform and uh legal reform and uh medical this and malpractice that, and look, just this how it goes. This is how it goes. You, you break a man's arm, you pay the doctor bills. If that man's out of work for six weeks because you broke his arm, you pay him six weeks' wages. It's so simple. It's so simple. These, listen, people are spending billions of dollars trying to figure out how to solve a society's problems and never come to the knowledge of the truth, ever learning, never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. You know why? They won't believe the Bible. It's all right there in the Bible. God's got all the answers. Well, I wish we could go on with this. Many of you do. Some of you are about to call the station manager and uh tell him I'm crazy. Uh I didn't come up with any of these ideas. I'm just I'm just here teaching you the Bible. That's all I'm doing. Hope you enjoy it. Hope it's a blessing. We'll never know if you don't tell us. Would you tell us? Would you take the time to write so that the people who sponsor these programs can know that their labor and sacrifice is not in vain? Would you do that? Our mailing address is 872 Glenwood Road. 872 Glenwood Road. That's in D-Land, D-E-L-A-N-D, D-Land, Florida. Zip code number 32720, 32720. And that mailing address is in the United States of America. When you write, we'll send you our catalog listing thousands of hours of available uh materials, sermons, Bible studies, teaching on just about every topic you can think of, and uh books, dozens of books in there, and they'll all help you. Also, you may visit us online, our website address, jamesnox.com. You just type in the name. I don't know how it works, but it does. Jamesennox.com, and that will take you to a place where there's all kinds of help for those wanting to live the Christian life. All right, by the grace of God and through your help, this program is heard at many different times over many different radio stations. We'll trust the announcer to come on now in just a moment and let you know when the preaching of the cross radio broadcast will be heard again over this particular station. We hope at that time that you and a friend that you invite to listen with you will join us. Until then, I'm Brother James. May the Lord richly bless you and good day.

SPEAKER_00: 29:08

Join us every weekday for another episode of the Preaching of the Cross Radio Podcast. For hundreds of hours of in-depth expository Bible teaching, please visit our YouTube channel, James W. Knox Sermons, our sermon audio page, Bible Baptist Land, or our website, Bible Baptistoland.com. Until next time and throughout eternity, may Jesus Christ be praised.