Personal Rights Under The Law Series

Personal Rights under the Law

In Relation to servants

In Relation to daughters

In Relation to crime against others

DBF Sunday Sermon, Exodus 21:1-32, 12/15/02

We hear so much about personal rights today that they seem to be the overshadowing interest of our time.

Many will go to large extremes to protect the right of killers, rapist, polygamist, and any other criminal.

Yet, within this supposedly enlightened society, Where is the screams for the rights of the unborn child who is murdered within his or her mothers womb???

When I joined the Air Force so many years ago, I remember the sergeants telling us that what we once exercised as right were in large part curtailed when we chose to enlist in the military.

You see the right to free speech was tempered by the rules and regulations that military personnel fall under, with the backing of the United States Constitution.

In any orderly society, the peace and unity of that society is governed by laws, and the people of that society are afforded peace and protection under the laws.

If we look at the various areas where the laws have broken down recently Afghanistan, Bosnia, Somalia it is easy to see why these laws are needed.

In many different groups in our society today the rights and feelings of individuals is paramount. It is OK to feel that away, you can feel angry, you have a right to do so, you can hit him because he deserves it or her because she deserves it…

All of it is a lie, a deception, given by the master of deception and one that many continue to fall prey too.

If you ask the same person if they did something offensive to another would they deserve to be beaten and you would get quite a different response.

You see, half truths are FULL LIES.

Today we will was as the nation of Israel receive instruction for their cultural and life situations around 1447 years before the birth of Christ. If you think the laws are harsh I would refer you to the Code of Hammurabi and the Hittite Codes. Although very similar they do not give the High view of the nature of God and HIS requirements upon HIS “set apart” people.

In Relation to servants

Exodus 21:1-6 (KJV)

Now these are the judgments which thou shalt set before them. [2] If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. [3] If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself: if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him. [4] 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. [5] And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free: [6] 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.

Now these are the judgments (ordinances) which thou shalt set before them…Similarly to what was established as a Democracy some 270+ years ago here in the United States, some would with some validity argue that what might have been meant was a Theocratic democracy, a governing under the sovereign will of God.

Personally, I feel we would be much better off today had we, but that is just my feelings.

This is exactly what was formed at Mount Sinai, a government who’s rulers were directly answerable to God and these rules were given so that they might understand the basis for judging matters that might come before them.

Being in courts and listening to the decisions of man, which gives man every right under the sun was never the intent of the law of God, our Divine Sovereign.

If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing…Every Israelite was free-born; but slavery was permitted under certain restrictions.

An Hebrew might be made a slave through poverty, debt, or crime; but at the end of six years he was entitled to freedom, and his wife, if she had voluntarily shared his state of bondage, also obtained release.

Should he, however, have married a female slave, she and the children, after the husband’s liberation, remained the master’s property; and if, through attachment to his family, the Hebrew chose to forfeit his privilege and abide as he was, a formal process was gone through in a public court, and a brand of servitude stamped on his ear for life, or at least till the Jubilee.