March 24, 2026 - Exodus 21 & Psalm 67

Exodus 21 is difficult, so we slow down and read it with the right starting points about God’s holiness, goodness, and wisdom. We sort out what these laws are doing, why biblical servanthood differs from American chattel slavery, and how Psalm 67 reshapes our response into praise. 

For more information about Compass Bible Church South Valley, visit compassbiblesv.org. Keep reading. Keep growing. God’s Word is a lamp to your feet, and a light to your path. 

Transcript

Welcome And Exodus 21 Overview

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Lamp and Light Bibleing Plan, where we are seeking to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength with God's word lighting the way. I'm Josiah Smith, lead pastor of Compass South Valley. Today is Tuesday, March 24th, 2026. Here's a quick summary of Exodus 21. Exodus 21 is, of course, on the heels of the 10 commands or the 10 words that we read about in Exodus 20. And these commands are a little bit more in the nitty-gritty, and they're commands and laws about slaves, and they are commands and laws about restitution. So something even like in verse 33, when a man opens a pit, or when a man digs a pit and does not cover it, and an ox or a donkey falls into it, what are they to do to make that right, to make restitution? So we have laws that are governing slaves and how they are to be treated and what the processes and procedures are for dealing with them in very specific situations. And then we have laws about restitution. It seems in this context to be talking about animals that may or may not be harmed by the negligence of others. Now listen intently to God's written word. Psalm 67. May God be gracious to us and bless us, and make his face to shine upon us, that your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations. Let the peoples praise you, O God, let all the peoples praise you. Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon earth. Let the peoples praise you, O God, let all the peoples praise you. The earth has yielded its increase. God, our God, shall bless us. God shall bless us. Let all the ends of the earth fear him. Now in Exodus 21, we have to wrestle with a chapter that in many ways, of course, is difficult. There are laws, and the majority of the chapter, in fact, are laws about slaves. And there can be a tension in our heart as to how we are to understand this and how we are to navigate through this. So I want to start by kind of asking a series of questions to help us navigate this together. So here's the first question: as we approach a text, a chapter in the Bible like Exodus 21, what must we affirm as we kind of go into it and read it in order to better understand it? In other words, what should we be kind of believing in the background that should shape, and we should be aware of this, of course, but that should shape and in some sense determine the way that we understand and even interpret what it is that we are reading. What must we affirm? Well, the first thing that may seem obvious, but I think it's helpful to say is we must affirm that God is holy and good. God is holy. Now, if you can think back to when we were talking about and reading about Moses going up onto Mount Sinai and all of the warnings that God gave about not getting too close, not touching the mountain. And we, of course, we saw lightning and thunder and smoke and fire and all of these really dramatic, intense things that represented the seriousness and the reality of the separation between sinful man and a holy God. And so God's law, his commands are a reflection of his holiness. God is holy and he is good. We must affirm that when we read every chapter of the Bible. That's something that should be in the background. That's something that we should affirm and kind of take with us, no matter what text we are reading. So that's the first thing for us to kind of think about. God is holy and he is always good. The second thing we must affirm is that God never endorses or commands sin. God does not do what is wrong, he does not do what is evil, he only does what is holy and righteous and just and good. Even think about what we've been talking about on Sundays through the book of Hebrews. God does the right thing in the right way at the right time every single time. So God, of course, never endorses or commands sin. We need to affirm that. We need to believe that. And that flows from the reality that he is holy, he is good, and his laws reflect that that he is holy and he is good. He never endorses or commands sin. That's the second thing we need to affirm. Here's the third thing: these laws, specifically about slavery, that we can wrestle with, they were given to a specific nation during a specific time. So one individual that I was listening kind of to talk about this and wrestle through this, they were saying that not all of the laws at that time are given as timeless ideals for every other time. That may seem somewhat basic and obvious, but it's helpful for us to recognize that when God gives a command in the Old Testament, not every command is given for everyone everywhere. Not all of the laws at that time are given as timeless ideals for every other time. And so that's a helpful thing for us to affirm. These laws were given to a specific nation, the nation of Israel, during a specific time. So that's the third affirmation. The first again is God is holy and good. The second is that God never endorses or commands sin. And then the third is that these laws were given to a specific nation during a specific time. And here's the fourth thing that I think is really helpful to affirm as we go to a text like Exodus 21. God's wisdom and the way that he does things, the way that he orders and governs the world, the way that he chose to command certain things, and uh the things that we're even going to read about, God's wisdom is better than ours. It is better than ours. It is more rich than ours. He has more foresight, more uh everything. He knows all things. God's wisdom is perfect in every way. There's no flaw in it whatsoever. And so we need to affirm that and hold that truth when we reach a text like Exodus 21, that our hearts again may wrestle with as we read about these laws that are specific to slavery. So that's the the first kind of bucket in this conversation. What must we affirm? First, God is holy and good. Second, God never endorses or commands sin. Third, these laws were given to a specific nation during a specific time. And fourth, God's wisdom and his way of doing things is better than ours. Full stop. We must affirm all of that. So here's the next kind of category that I want to talk about briefly. Was slavery in the Bible the exact same thing as slavery in America, otherwise known as chattel slavery? It's called the transatlantic trade slave or slave trade. Was slavery in the Bible the exact same as slavery in America? Well, we can say unequivocally, the answer is no. In the old testament, slavery was not primarily based on race, and that is exactly what chattel slavery is. That was primarily the big motivator in the slave trade and slavery in America. In the old testament, however, slavery was not primarily based on race, but it was based on economic status. So debt was commonly one of the main reasons for entering into servanthood. And so oftentimes we see the word slavery, and because of our modern context, because of our nation's history, we automatically associate it with the horrors of slavery in America, of chattel slavery, of all of the things that were egregious and sinful and horrid that went with that. When in the Old Testament, which was uh thousands and thousands and thousands of years before that ever happened, before America was even a nation that was founded with all of our laws and ideals and everything that has come since our founding. No, the the the Old Testament slavery was something else entirely. It was perhaps even more akin to a servanthood or kind of a uh almost a working relationship. Not always, uh, but oftentimes there was economic reasons for people to give themselves to a master, uh, and they would be treated with with with dignity. They they would have rights, they would be provided for, they would uh have a home and they would have food, and it was much different than slavery in America. So we so we need to, as hard as it is, we need to separate and and recognize that slavery in the Bible is not the exact same thing as slavery in America. And that is significant because, of course, that's our context, that's what comes to our mind, so that's what's going to shape our interpretation. But the Bible was written thousands and thousands of years before slavery in America. So we need to be able to separate those and recognize that debt and economic security was one of the main motivators and one of the main drivers of slavery during the Bible. It was not race-based, and even it wasn't just uh slaves that were being forced into hard labor while the master sat in his palace with his feet up drinking lemonade. No, the the the master would be working alongside it. It what it was much more akin. Of course, there were differences, but it was a contractual relationship where the the slave or the servant would be taken care of and provided for uh if he had service that he rendered to the master. So very different. Again, there's there's different nuances in that, but generally speaking, slavery in the Bible was very, very different than slavery in America. So that's the the second kind of big bucket. Here's the third, here's another question for us to wrestle with our laws governing slavery, and that's what we're seeing here in Exodus 21, are laws governing slavery an affirmation of slavery? That's what we need to wrestle with. So one of the things, if we go back to what must we affirm? God never endorses or commands sin. So are laws governing slavery and affirmation of slavery, or at least the parts of it that can be gross and sinful and derogatory to human life? Uh, no, they are not. God often in the Bible commanded his people to live in a certain way in a fallen, sinful structure. God was giving commands to his people on the other side of the garden, on the other side of Genesis 3, and the curse of sin and death entering into the world. So you can kind of read Exodus 21 and all the laws that will follow, some of the ones that are really difficult to understand in a very real way, as case law and a sense of precedent. So earlier in Exodus, we saw uh Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, coming to Moses because Moses is mourning tonight, he's sitting there, kind of helping settle disputes in Israel. So there's a lot of things going on. And Jethro says, This is not right. You need help. You need to get some other men, men of character, to help you in this process. And Moses does just that. So you can already kind of tell the structure is in place for people to be judging and to be help, helping clarify or give counsel to all kinds of situations. So a lot of times that the laws that are being given are addressing things that are already happening. There are circumstances and situations that are being brought to Moses and his compatriots, his fellow elders of Israel, and they are a kind of case law that becomes a precedent for them to follow later on. That's the whole idea of case law. So case law is a decision that's made given a circumstance that arises, arises, that then later becomes binding in future decisions that get made and other legal proceedings. So a lot of what's happening in Exodus and in Leviticus and other parts of Deuteronomy that that where laws are given is more akin to case law and precedence, where God is operating within a sinful fallen structure, or at least giving commands for his people to operate rather in a sinful fallen structure. So laws governing slavery is not an affirmation of slavery, and that it's uh something that is the ideal or something that is to be promoted or something that is to be intentionally pursued. And of course, even in Exodus 21, it says, if if he is to take another wife, and there's all of these ifs, right? But if he did not, if he does this, if he does that, you can read, even you can hear it in the language, uh, this idea of case law, where things are being presented to the elders of Israel. And of course, there's these laws and these commands that then become codified. They're case law that then sets a precedent, a precedent for something in the future. So it should be noted that the provisions for slaves or servants in the law of Moses were incredibly radical during this time. You can even read in Exodus 21, actually, in Exodus 21 uh verse uh 16, uh that it says explicitly that whoever steals a man and sells him. So this is how we can separate it uh from slavery in America, which was man stealing and chattel slavery. It says, whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him shall be put to death. So this is something different entirely than slavery in uh America. Uh, and and so we have these laws, and of course, are laws governing slavery, an affirmation of slavery. Uh, no, that is not the case. And Jesus himself in uh the Gospels, I remember reading this in the Gospel of Mark, where the Pharisees come to Jesus and they're asking about divorce and whether or not Moses allowed, Moses, the law of Moses, allowed for a certificate of divorce. And basically, Jesus responds and says, Those laws were given because of your hardness of heart. So we do have categories in scripture of God giving laws within a sinful fallen structure. He's he is addressing things as they are and not necessarily giving commands to abolish them altogether. And again, that can create some tension in our heart, but laws governing something is not an affirmation of that. And of course, we see that in Exodus 21. Okay, that's the the next thing. Here's here's the final question just to kind of help you navigate through a tough section in Exodus 21. Uh why didn't God explicitly outline slavery of any kind? So we've said that it's different in uh kind from American slavery, chattel slavery, the transatlantic slave trade. Okay, it might be different. We could affirm that, and there's maybe some things that were even helpful and beneficial to kind of a servant that had this contractual working relationship with someone and provided a warm uh bed and food to eat and things like that. Uh, but why didn't God explicitly outline slavery of any kind? This is another thing for us to wrestle with, but I would just simply say God's primary focus was not liberation from physical slavery. Even think about the nation of Israel. He rescues the nation of Israel from slavery, he does liberate them from slavery to the Egyptians, but that's not where the story ends. In a lot of ways, that's just where the story begins. And we have uh much more to go. We have the Mosaic covenant, we're already kind of in the midst of something, something else entirely unfolding. God's primary focus was not liberation from physical slavery, but ultimately liberation from spiritual uh slavery. So, why didn't God explicitly uh outlaw slavery uh of any kind? Uh well, I would say that that wasn't his focus in the scriptures. His focus was not physical slavery, being liberated from that, but on spiritual slavery and setting people free uh from the curse that began all the way in Genesis 3. So, in that sense, the Bible and the way that God chose to work both in the Old Testament and in the New was much more incremental. You could sometimes think of it as grassroots. He laid the seeds of things that ultimately would blossom into what I believe led to the abolishment of the kind of slavery that we did see in America. Uh, so incremental. It was incremental. It wasn't, it wasn't this sort of immediate, large-scale revolution that God uh set the nation of Israel on. That was not his primary focus, his primary focus uh was liberation ultimately from spiritual slavery. If we want to use it the language that way. So, why didn't God explicitly outlaw slavery of any kind, right? Whether it was chattel or not? Well, and in a sense, of course, I don't know explicitly the mind of God, but we can see throughout the course of scripture, we see this clear, unwavering focus for God to be true to his promise, uh, to provide an offspring of the woman that would crush the head of the serpent, that would free humanity from the results of the fall. And as a result of that focus, uh, he did not uh create the nation of Israel to be some sort of uh revolution or to be revolutionaries, uh, to to go into the world and to right uh every injustice and to topple every system that was sinful like slavery. No, his his purpose was to bring about things that ultimately uh would lead to the Messiah, Christ being born, him living a perfect life, dying on the cross, securing uh our freedom from the slavery that we experience to our sin. So that was a lot, but I just wanted to kind of walk through some questions to help you navigate something like Exodus 21. I don't know if that's something that you've wrestled with before, but I hope that is encouraging to you. Now, one just quick note here on Psalm 67, another just great psalm to just meditate on today, even beginning in verse one. May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us that your way may be known on the earth, your saving power among all nations. Let the people praise you, oh God, let all the peoples praise you. Now, I believe because we were just talking about how God is holy, he is good, he never endorses or commands sin. God's wisdom is better than ours. Uh, he is so worthy of our praise. And so let's with Psalm 67, let the peoples praise you, oh God. Let all the peoples praise you. Well, thank you so much for joining us today on the Lamp and Light Bible Reading Podcast. For more information about Compass Bible Church South Valley, visit compass bible sv.org. Keep reading, keep growing. God's word is a lamp to your feet and a light to your path.