By Reverend David Whitney
November 1, 2015
NewsWithViews.com
Many years ago man who lived on Long Island was able one day to satisfy a lifelong ambition by purchasing for himself a very fine barometer. When the instrument arrived at his home, he was extremely disappointed to find that the indicating needle appeared to be stuck, pointing to the sector marked "HURRICANE." After shaking the barometer very vigorously several times, its new owner sat down and wrote a scorching letter to the store from which he had purchased the instrument.
The following morning on the way to his office in New York, he mailed the letter. That evening he returned to Long Island to find not only the barometer missing, but his house also. The barometer's needle had been right--there was a hurricane; one of the worst to ever devastate Long Island.
When we don’t like the message given to us in God’s Word, we are all to prone to act as that homeowner did, get angry at the Creator of the Book. When we read, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works”[1] we have a decision to make; will we believe all of it or not. It says all Scripture is profitable.
Today we embark on a section of Scripture that is largely ignored our day. For many it seems the Book of Exodus ends at chapter 20 with the Ten Commandments, as if the following 20 chapters are unimportant. In fact, some have adopted a theology that supports that idea, claiming the Old Testament law has no bearing on disciples of Jesus Christ today. This is aberrant theology.
Many preachers will skip over these chapters that contain the book of the Covenant because so much of what we find there flies directly in the face of modern politically correct thinking. Not wanting to offend their congregations, they avoid these verses altogether. There is something desperately wrong with that, because it denies 2 Timothy 3:16 which states, “All scripture is ….profitable.”
Our challenge is to set aside the politically correct lies which have been fed most of our lives and confront what the Word of God actually says and ask the Holy Spirit to apply these truths to our lives. Now these sections of Exodus are called:
The Book of the Covenant - Exodus 24:7 as we have seen it is divided into four parts:
•
The Worship of God - Exodus 20:23-26 which we examined these past
two weeks.
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The Rights of Persons - Exodus 21:1-32
• The Rights of Property - Exodus 21:33-22:15
•
The Organization of Human Civil Government - Exodus 22:16-23:33
The Judgements of God - Exodus 21:1 “Now these are the judgments which thou shalt set before them.” When we hear the word Judgments, we usually think of a courtroom where a decision is rendered which we call a judgment. It is communicating that there is a standard of right and wrong (a standard by the way which is above and beyond mankind, a transcendent standard, God’s Law), that evidence has been examined in the specific case brought before the court, and the application of that divine standard has been made and rendered in the decision coming forth as a judgment.
The Paths to Bondservice - Exodus 21:2-6 “If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself: if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master have given him a wife, and she have born him sons or daughters; the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by himself. 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; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an aul; and he shall serve him for ever.”
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The Requirements of Emancipation - Deuteronomy 15:12-18 “And if thy brother, an Hebrew man, or an Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee, thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy floor, and out of thy winepress: of that wherewith the Lord thy God hath blessed thee thou shalt give unto him….”
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