Before we leave the `minor laws` of Exodus 21… Is Jesus here in this apparently obscure section? If so it’s a picture of how massively He loves us, that can really bless our imaginations…
Immediately after saying `These are the laws you must set before them` (and it’s the first law, so for some reason it’s important), God in Ex 21 declares a rule about how a servant will serve for six years but then must go free. (Servant, not `slave`, see last post about the old testament laws and slavery!) But then it continues like this: `If he comes alone, he is to go free alone; but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free. But if the servant declares, “I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free,” then his master must take him before the judges. He shall take him to the door or the door-post and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life.` (This doorpost would have been marked – each year – with the blood of the passover lamb – the symbol of `Christ our Passover lamb` shedding His blood to open heaven’s door for us, as we’ve seen in an earlier post (Exodus 12 and 1 Cor 5:7).)
Now, some Christians have looked at this and asked: Who is the ultimate Servant? Well, Jesus obviously. (Throughout the last part of Isaiah for example; chapter 42, or 49, or 53.) Jesus took `the very nature of a servant`, says Philippians 2:7. So just as in certain circumstances a Hebrew might sell themselves into servanthood, but come so to love the bride they meet there that they desire to stay in that household forever, and end up carrying scars from that choice — so Jesus took the form of a servant, and He saw and loved a Bride, and was determined not to return to heaven without her. And just as the price for the servant in Ex 21 was to carry the scars from the `passover door` for the rest of their lives — Jesus went further, much, much further, and will carry the scars (see John 20:27) of the unbelievable, unbearable agony of the cross where He bore hell for His Bride, you and me, throughout the whole of eternity. That is how much He loved us!
(And just by the way, we find, twenty-six verses of Exodus later, that the value of such a servant was thirty pieces of silver, the price for which Judas betrayed Jesus. Hmm.)
Well, maybe. (Look at how Psalm 40:6-7 seems to refer to this custom, and then how Hebrews 10 applies those verses to Jesus.) Maybe. I will never, never grasp how much Jesus loved His Bride, me included – nor why He did. So this reading of Exodus helps me worship. Just maybe this is one of the places where, as Jesus said, Moses `wrote about me` (John 5:47; Luke 24:27).
But then here’s one more thought: what might that say to us as servants of Jesus who love our master and so would never wish to `go free`? Would we choose to go into eternity without the scars of service? Amy Carmichael’s famous poem `No Scar?` picked this up, embodying something any serious disciple of Jesus needs to take on board –
As the Master shall the servant be,
And piercèd are the feet that follow Me.
But thine are whole; can he have followed far
Who has no wound or scar?
(The whole poem is on www.crossroad.to/Victory/poems/amy_carmichael/no-scar.htm.)
Can all this help me to worship Jesus more deeply and serve Him more fully? Maybe this `obscure` part of Exodus is a picture to take away, to absorb & to express in worship this week….
