Service out of love

And so we come to the laws of the Israelite society.

I can’t really say I’ve been looking forward to getting to this part of Exodus. I have no desire to give a verse-by-verse commentary on the cultural background to all of these laws, and so I won’t.

Basically, I’ll take the approach of gleaning what I can from these passages.

As always, since this blog has more of a devotional quality to it, I’m more concerned with practical applications we can pull from these passages.

I did find this particular passage interesting, if only for certain parallels to Christ and ourselves.

Back in those days, sometimes Israelites would sell themselves to others as servants to pay off some kind of debt, because of poverty, or because of some crime they committed that they couldn’t pay restitution for.

Generally, this service would last six years.

But if his master gave him a wife (presumably also a servant) and they had children, when his six years were up, he couldn’t just take his wife and children with him. They had to stay with the master.

The laws on this are a bit unclear. I’d like to talk to Moses about it, but that’s not going to happen.

I would assume that eventually the woman and her children would have to be let go, because it seems that usually a woman became a servant with the idea she would marry into the master’s family—either to the master or to the master’s son.

And since the master gave her to this other servant in marriage, I can’t see him doing either of those things. There is no instance of one wife having two husbands in the Bible.

But according to verses 7–11, if a master doesn’t marry her or give her to his son, he had to let her go.

How long a master had to make that decision, however, is not very clear.

I don’t know if it was possible for a woman to sell herself into servanthood, but if that were possible, then she would presumably fall into the same category as the male servants, and she would have to be let go after six years of service.

At any rate, if a servant went free but his wife and children had to stay behind, the servant could make the choice to permanently become the master’s servant.

He would stand at the master’s door, and his ear would be pierced, and from then on, he would serve his master.

Verse 5 is the key passage here, as it expresses the reason for the servant making this choice.

“I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free.” (Exodus 21:5)

In other words, out of his love not only for his wife and children, but for his master as well, he chose to serve.

In Psalm 40, the Messiah (Jesus) is heard saying,

Sacrifice and offering you did not desire—
but my ears you have opened—
burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require.

Then I said, “Here I am, I have come—
it is written about me in the scroll.

I desire to do your will, my God;
your law is within my heart.” (Psalm 40:6–8)

When it says “my ears have been opened,” it’s possible that it’s referring to this practice of piercing the ears of a servant.

In other words, Jesus was saying that because of his love for the Father, he was willing to submit himself to the Father and serve him.

And then there’s us.

Like the Israelites in those times, we came to God because of our need.

We were overloaded by the debt of sin that we were under. Our life was a mess, and we were spiritually needy.

But after coming to God, we soon find that he is a good master, and that he truly loves and cares for us.

Now our debt of sin is paid by the blood of Jesus, and he has made our lives whole. But this doesn’t mean we now want to leave God. Rather, out of our love for him and all he’s done for us, we continue to serve him.

Or do we?

Are you serving him? Or are you still just serving yourself?

And if you are serving him, why are you doing so?

Have you come to the place in your life where you serve him not because you have to, but because you want to?