Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3337
“And if the servant shall’plainlysay, Ilove 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 doorpost; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl; and he shall serve him forever” Exodus 21:5, 6.
THE Jewish people had lived in Egypt and had been themselves slaves. They had, doubtless, learned much of art and science in Egypt, but they also learned many sinful manners and customs—and among the rest they learned the habit of slavery. When God found them and led them out into the wilderness to make a nation of them, He did not give them a code of laws such as He would give to us in the light of this dispensation, but He gave them laws as Jesus Christ, Himself, says, “according to the hardness of their heart.” He gave them a law suitable to the state in which they were. Their ceremonial laws, their political and economic laws, were very far from being perfect and were never intended to be regarded as perfect. They were not meant for a nation of men as much as for a nation of children. The nation was then in its infancy and statutes and ordinances were very much in accordance with the infancy of the people. Slavery, for instance, was not forbidden. It was not even forbidden for a Hebrew to hold his brother Hebrew in bondage! But, though it was not forbidden, yet it was so hedged about and limited with many regulations and conditions that it must have become very difficult, if not almost impossible.
In the first place, every Hebrew who held his brother in bondage was compelled to treat him as he treated himself. There was a law that his food and his raiment should be precisely similar to that of his master. Then, again, at the end of six full years, the man must go free, whatever might be the price at which he was purchased for six years. And when he went free, he was not to go out empty, but his master was required to give him something out of his barn, out of the winepress and out of the flock. In fact, it was a sort of apprenticeship of one man to another, with the condition that the servant should be treated as one of the family and was to be set up in business when he left. So much did the Jews feel that this was not a very profitable kind of thing, that it got to be a proverb that, “A Hebrew who buys a Hebrew servant, does not buy a servant, but he buys a master.” So the thing became very seldom practiced at all and this, perhaps, was the best way of dealing with the evil. They would have kicked against a law which forbade slavery altogether, but they submitted to this one which regulated it—and so the thing was kept in such check that it must of necessity fall. That, however, again, was not at all a rule for you or for me. It was like the putting away of a wife with a writing of divorcement, of which the Savior said that “Moses allowed it because of the hardness of their hearts.” It was not right in itself, but it was simply endured because of the low moral state of the people when they came as a herd of slaves from Egypt’s brick kilns, not having been trained and educated to understand the value of liberty as you and I happily have been in these later times for these many years.
But observe that sometimes the Hebrew servant, although free to go where he liked at the end of six years, would not go. He had married one of his master’s female servants. He had children and, besides, was so attached to his master and his family that he preferred to stay with him. Now, as God did not wish the people to love slavery, but would teach them the nobility of liberty, He made this ordinance that a man’s wish to remain in servitude should be attested by a somewhat painful rite—and He made it a law that this rite should be administered to him in public before the judges.
Lest a master should say the servant wished to be with him and then bored his ears by force—and so ensured his perpetual service—it was commanded that this boring of the ears should always be done in public before witnesses and the
judges. An awl was taken and the man’s ears were fastened to the doorpost—and then after he must forever remain, though he might change his mind, since he had once deliberately chosen to serve his master.
Leaving, however, this outline of the meaning of this picturesque ceremony, I now want to use the passage in its spiritual meaning.
First, I shall have to remind you that in Psalm 40 our Savior speaks of Himself as having had His ears bored. Did you notice the expression in the 40th Psalm, “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire: My ears have You opened.” The Hebrew says, “My ears have You dug.” Christ’s ears, then, were pierced so that He might from His own voluntary choice be the Servant of God forevermore. When I have spoken a little upon that, I want to speak of some professed servants of God who have never had their ears bored. And then, in the third place, I want to go into this business of boring some of your ears—and I have no doubt there are many here who have had their ears bored in days gone by and who will be glad to renew the rite afresh tonight by consecrating themselves again unto their Master. First, we have to speak—