Leviticus 25:39-55

Mom said she doesn't want France to be broken, huh? Okay. Well, good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to Coffee and Devotions. This is where every day you and I, we get together. We have a little bit of coffee. We get into God's word and we grow in our love for the Lord together. And this year, 2023, Lord willing, we'll make it from Genesis through Leviticus. Let's go ahead and have some coffee or tea in your case. Don't break France. Mom would be mad if you break the mug I bought in France. Have some coffee.
We'll pray and we'll get into God's word. I bet it is, it's fresh out of the kettle. All right, let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for this day, and we thank you for your word. Please, Father, help us today to understand it. We pray that your spirit would please enlighten our eyes, soften our hearts, and teach us how we should live. In Jesus's name, amen.
All right, so we're at Leviticus chapter 25. We're gonna finish up that chapter together today. So Leviticus chapter 25. You know, we're actually going to be at verse 39 and we're going to finish the chapter. You know, we're getting really close to finishing Leviticus. It's just chapter 26 and 27 left. So Leviticus chapter 25, beginning at verse 39. Why don't you read verse 39? Why don't you just read until you're, until you're, uh, tired. You're going to read all of it? Okay. I don't think so. Go ahead. Okay, so hold on, let's stop. We're gonna work through this a little bit, right?
So in Israel, if one of their brethren, what do you think that means, a brethren? a fellow Israelite. So if a fellow Israelite, if what happens to him? If he becomes poor and sells himself to you. Sells himself to you. So it's his own choice. He sells himself to you.
What are the Israelites not allowed to do? Shall not compel him to serve as a slave. All right. So he still has freedom. He's a servant, but he's not a slave. Okay, go ahead and go on with verse 40. Okay, so what is that saying? If somebody becomes poor and they're an Israelite and they want to sell their services to you? They're poor, they say. So then you can say, you're a slave, you're my property.
You can do what he means if he wants to share the gospel, you're not able to. If he wants to do something, like he has a tradition, you're not okay with it, you can't tell him not to because he's not a slave, he's just a servant. Yeah, he's a sojourner, right? So he's able to come and go as he wishes, but is it perpetual slavery?
Nope. Until the year of Jubilee. Until the year of Jubilee, that's right. Would it be possible if, like, if The, let's say the owner of the Shogun said, um, I don't like you doing something. If you don't stop, I'll fire you. Is that allowed? Yeah. Yeah. He can. Yeah. But you have to let him go free. Okay. Let's go ahead and get going. Let's see. Where is it? Verse 41.
And then he shall depart from you, and he and his children with him, and shall return to his own family. He shall return to the possession of his fathers, for they are my servants, who I brought out of the land of Egypt. They shall not be sold as slaves. Okay, so on the year of Jubilee, what's supposed to happen to him in verse 41? Whatever contract he wrote, or it's gone, and he gets to go back to the land of his father's, right? Goes back home. If he was from Asher, he goes back to the land of Asher.
If he's from Dan, he goes up north, he goes to Dan. It kind of sounds like a, like capture the flag when you get tagged. You just do anything, then you have to walk back. Just like, I can't do that. Yeah. And why? Why is all of this? Verse 42. Why is he allowed to go back to his dad's land? Because... Because let's say he has children or something. Nope. Nope. What's the reason he's able to go back? Verse 42. Because they sold him.
Yeah, because ultimately every single Israelite is whose servant? God's servant. God's servant. And who bought them out of the bondage they were in in Egypt? God. God did. And so they shall not be sold as slaves because whose are they? God's. Good. Verse 43. So if you do have this type of servant who lives with you, this is going to talk about how you're supposed to treat him. Verse 43. It's okay. Microphone. It moves my chair, which means what it's sitting. Verse 43. Let's see. You shall not rule over him with rigor. What's rigor? Like, mmm, like, stringently. Okay. Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle.
Why don't you put your finger underneath where you're reading? Oh, there we go. But you shall feel your God. And as for your male and female slaves, whom you, you. Well, let's go. This is going to stop, right? This is a different part. You shall not rule over him with what? Rigor. Rigor. But what? But you shall fear your God.
Okay, so this is all about Israelite servants, right? You're not supposed to rule over them with rigor, right? So you're not supposed to be a cruel taskmaster. And why? Because... But you shall... Fear your God, right? Does God rule over us as a cruel taskmaster? No, don't rule over them like cruel taskmasters. Okay.
So now it changes subject here in verse 44. I think it would actually be better to have a paragraph break here, but that's fine. And as for you, as for your male and female siblings, whom you may have from the nations, they have from the nations that are around you. From them you may buy male and female slaves. Okay, so they were not allowed to buy slaves from the people of Israel, but when the Ishmaelites came through with their slave bans, what were they allowed to do? they were allowed to buy slaves. Right?
Some people will actually look at those and they'll say, ah, see, the Bible supports slavery. But if you go and read the book of Philemon, what we find out is, uh, eventually the Christianity actually collapses slavery because we find out that it's not actually the way that it's supposed to be treated. And slavery here isn't the way that we think of slavery. Yeah, slavery here is like, more of like a, like almost like a butler kind of thing. Yeah, we're going to see more when we get into this passage, but we're going to see that it's very different than what we saw with chattel slavery in the American South.
Okay, so now we're at verse 45, so these are non-Israelites. property, and you may take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them as a possession. They shall be your permanent slaves. But regarding your brethren, the children of Israel, you shall not rule over them.
One another was legal. Okay, so it's almost like two standards, right? Israelite and non-Israelite. We need to be very careful here because people will try to say that, oh look, Christians don't know what they're talking about. The Bible actually does say people can be your property. Does the Bible say that? Yes, it does. Yeah, it does. This is one of these accommodations I think God makes to them. They live in a day and age and in the vast majority of human history, this happened.
Now, here's the question I have for you. Do we live in that day and age anymore? Do we live in the day and age in which there's a strict separation between Jew and Gentile? No. No. So, if the wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile has been torn down, should we have slaves? No. No. See, Christianity collapses. Tears down this wall that divided. You have Jewish people and you have non-Jewish people. Christianity, Ephesians chapter 2 and 3, that wall has been torn down, that wall of hostility. And so now we as Christians say, no, we're not going to own slaves.
It's better for us, if you're able to have your freedom, to go get your freedom. And if you did have slaves, even in the first century church, guess what? You weren't allowed to treat them with rigor. Actually, you had to treat them as brothers and sisters in Christ. today, like back then, would it be more like we think of like if mom hired, let's say a maid to clean the house.
So that's what it would be like to hire an Israelite. That'd be like, but she made a contract for, let's say, after two years we'll pay you $20,000 for your services. So that's what it would be like in today's age. But that was only for the Israelite. That was for the Israelite. For the stranger though, if you bought some other person who came from another land, they could be yours permanently.
Right? And so that was according, that was in accordance with the laws of the time. Right? What we say now is hold on. In the Old Testament, this was an accommodation. It was written at that time. And so this was true. Right? But now in the New Testament era, that wall has been torn down. Right? So should you go and buy a slave from another land, even though they might not be from your family? No. Right?
Because that wall's been torn down. We don't treat people like that anymore. We don't rule with rigor. We don't own people for life. We look at that and we say, hold on. That's not how I would want to be loved. That's not how I'm going to treat another person. And so many people will look at a passage like this and they'll say, see, the Bible supports slavery. The Bible is wrong and evil.
And we say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's back this up a little bit. What does the theology of the New Testament teach us? You also have to think what, like back then, what, like there was a difference in culture. In our culture now, you have a bunch of slaves. That's a bad thing. Back then, That wasn't the bad thing, unless the owner treated them bad. It wasn't the worst thing in the world. So it wasn't the worst thing in the world, but we know that many of these laws are accommodations.
Jesus teaches us. Why did God allow Moses to give that law that the men were able to give their wives a certificate of divorce? Was it because divorce is good? No. No, it was because of the hardness of their hearts. God is intervening in this place and he's saying, okay, this exists, this is the culture, this is what's going on, but if this is going to exist, this is how it's going to be treated.
But what we find out is as we go into the New Testament, we find more and more information and we get new revelation from our Lord Jesus Christ and by the Holy Spirit that even to the extent that we realize, hold on, There is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free.
But people get uncomfortable even with the New Testament because the New Testament talks about, you know, masters, right? Here's how you're to treat your slaves. Slaves, be obedient to your masters, right? And people go, oh look, even in the New Testament, supporting slavery.
But in the Roman era, two-thirds of the people during the Apostle Paul and Jesus' lifetime in the Roman Empire, two-thirds, people, scholars think, were slaves or had been slaves of some sort or another. And so to not talk about slaves and not talk about masters, So back then, slave was different than what we think of slave. It was different in some ways and similar in some ways. But the point is, one of the things that happened is, when you went to a church, if you were the slave and I was the master, at church, guess what?
You might be the elder. And I might be the congregant. And you might be the one ruling over the congregation as an elder. And when we saw each other in the hallway at the church, guess what you would call me? Brother. Brother, not master. You know, I had a boss. His name was Dan.
And he's the one that shared the gospel with me when we were both in the Navy, right? He was an E9. He was way up here. And I was an E4 way down here. And I had this experience with him. We were at church and we were going to get some coffee. And he was telling me something. He asked me a question. I said, Yes. I didn't know how to address him because in, in our workplace on the ship, every time I talked to him, I'd say yes, master chief or I I master chief. But when we were in church and I said yes, and he could tell, I didn't know what to call him. You know what he said? Dan. He said on the ship, I'm your superior.
When we're here, we know that I'm your brother in Christ, and you're my brother in Christ. Do you see how it pulls down the dividing walls? That's what we see happening here. So, okay, let's keep going. All right, so I'm going to read verse 47 to the end, and we've gone really long over, but this is a good chapter for us to kind of slow down and think over.
Now if a sojourner or stranger close to you becomes rich, and one of your brethren who dwells by him becomes poor and sells himself to the stranger or sojourner close to you, or to a member of the stranger's family, after he is sold, he may be redeemed again.
One of his brothers may redeem him, or his uncle or his uncle's son may redeem him. And anyone who is near of kin to him in his family may redeem him, or if he is able, he may redeem himself. Thus he shall reckon with him who bought him. The price of his relief shall be according to the number of years, from the year that he was sold to him until the year of Jubilee. It shall be according to the time of a hired servant for him."
Alright, so if there's a sojourner or a stranger close to you, becomes rich, right? So there's somebody who becomes rich. You sell yourselves. One of your brethren who dwells by him becomes poor. Right, so the sojourner is in the land. They're not Israelite, but they've become rich and they're living with the Israelites. And an Israelite goes and sells himself because he's poor to that rich person.
What is he or any of his family allowed to do? He's allowed to be redeemed. Buying back out of slavery, that's right. Alright, so what do you think that's talking about? Basically saying like, Would this apply for someone who's the Jew master? Well, yes, but now it's specifically talking about the sojourner who's the master, right?
But the Jewish person, their price of redemption is based on how much time is still left before the Jubilee, right? So if there's lots of years left, it's going to be a high price. If there's only a few years left, what's the redemption price going to be? It's going to be few. It's just like you're going to get out in a few years anyway. That's right. Yeah, it's going to be few. He shall be with him as a yearly hired servant, and he shall not rule with vigor over him in your sight. And if he is not redeemed in these years, then he shall be released in the year of Jubilee.
He and his children with him, for the children of Israel are servants to me. They are my servants whom I brought out of the land of Egypt. I am Jehovah your God. So why does the Israelite get special treatment versus the non-Israelite in this scenario? Because they are God's redeemed people.
Now, here's what I want to ask you. Why do you think in the South, slave masters didn't want their people to hear the gospel and get baptized and take the Lord's Supper. Because one, they, one didn't want them to be a pastor, they wanted a pastor. Okay. And then also they could, they would They could use it in the Bible in any way they want to see. Slaves obey their master, see? You're supposed to obey them. Yeah, but if a slave said, well, I believe in Jesus Christ. I'm one of God's people now. I'm one of the elect. Can the master rule them with rigor?
If he says he's a religious, I understand, but many, many Christians, slave owners in the South did say this. And one of the ways in which this is a wicked sin that happened, one of the ways in which many people who called themselves Christian in the South and America sinned was they purposely kept the gospel from African slaves. Because one of their big things is they're not Christian. They're heathens. And so we don't have to treat them like they're Christian slaves. which means they stripped them of their rights and they kept the gospel. They kept the good news of Jesus Christ from them.
This is one of the most damaging things, right? There's lots of evil things they did with whipping and scourging and beating and separating families and all sorts of stuff like that, right? That was all evil. But to withhold the good news of eternal life because you want to keep people as your property is evil and wrong.
And so many of them knew these words And they knew that if they believed, then they were also their brothers and sisters in Christ. And then they wouldn't have any legal standing before the courts or they were twisting the law to try to justify themselves.
Kind of crazy, huh? So what do you think you're called to do? I think we're called to treat others as ourselves. Yeah. Would you like somebody to strip you of your human rights? Would you like somebody to treat you as property? Would you like somebody to try to keep something from you to keep you in bondage to them? And yet that's exactly what people try to do. So, uh, a lot of people died because of this. A lot of people said, you know what? This isn't right.
And many Christians stood up, especially in our denomination, our forefathers. And they were willing to go to war. They were willing to participate in the Underground Railroad. Did you know Geneva College was a station on the Underground Railroad? Yeah, it was. And so they were willing to risk a lot to say these slaves need to know Jesus Christ and they deserve their freedom and they deserve to be treated like human beings.
You ready to pray? Yep. Alright. Lord, we thank you so much for the joy of freedom that you have given us in Jesus Christ. Lord, we pray that you would teach us to love others. We pray that you would teach us to walk according to the ways in which you have walked. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Well, may God bless you. May you walk in the joy and peace of Jesus Christ and we'll see you next time. Say bye. Bye. Bye.
Thanks for listening to this week's message from God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in rural southeast Iowa. We pray that the message would be used by God to transform your faith in your life this week. If you'd like to get more information about us, feel free to go to the website, SharonRPC.org. We'd love to invite you to worship with us. Our worship time is 10 a.m. every Sunday at 25204 160th Avenue. Morning Sun, Iowa, 52640. May God richly bless you this week.