Exodus 2 1:1-6
BESIDES the ten main commandments which God gave Moses, 5e gave them many other statutes, or laws, which would affect the smaller things in their lives. There were laws which showed His tender care for His people. Some of these had to do with their servants and with their animals. God said they should be kind to widows and little children who had lost their father and mothers, and to strangers, for they themselves had once been strangers in Egypt.
In the type of the Hebrew servant, we have a most striking illustration of the truth that Christ is continually the object before the Spirit of God in the writing of the Holy Scriptures. Slavery was in itself anything but a condition suitable to the mind of God, yet even in this God has Christ before Him.
When a Hebrew servant had word his appointed time, six years, in the seventh he was to go out free. “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 borne 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 awl, and he shall serve him forever.”
How precious a picture we have here of the blessed Lord Jesus. It was His choice not to be merely a servant here on earth for a time, but He has chosen of His own gracious will to be a servant forever. Though he cannot be but a divine person, the Son of God Himself and Lord of all, yet is He nevertheless by His own grace the Servant forever. Even in glory we, as the redeemed, shall know Him thus.
In His own right and title, He could have gone back to heaven alone, without the death of the cross. But love made Him serve and He will serve us throughout eternity, even as He gave a sample, before He went up on high, of what He, our Great High Priest and Advocate, is doing now, when He took a basin of water and a towel, and washed His disciples feet (John 13). He loved His master, His wife, and His children. His “Master,” God His Father, had the supreme place in His heart, and it was His holy desire to glorify Him on this earth, to finish the work which He gave Him to do. He loved His wife, the Church, and gave Himself for her. And His children are His own, looked at individually. Therefore, He would not go out free, but He presented Himself to His Master that He might serve Him forever. The Hebrew servant’s ear was to be bored through with an awl, so the Lord Jesus could say, “Mine ears hast Thou opened [digged].” Psa. 40:66Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears hast thou opened: burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required. (Psalm 40:6). How wonderful, beyond all thought, that the Lord Jesus, the blessed Son of God, through love which no tongue can tell, became a man, and will remain a man that we might enjoy Him for all eternity.
O magnify the Lord with me. Psalm 34, 3
Wide, wide as the ocean,
High as the heaven above,
Deep, deep as the deepest sea,
Is my Saviour’s love.
I, though so unworthy,
Still am a child of His care;
For His Word teaches me
That His love reaches me
Everywhere!
ML-02/01/1970