The Feed Mill

Today’s Bible Reading: Exodus 21-23

Today’s Devotional: Exodus 21:1-6

Exodus 21:2-4 slavery as the children of Israel had learned in Egypt, a life of cruelty and no escape, the law abolishes and institutes a covenant relationship. The law brings honor to those who may find themselves at points of debt. The law restores and allows those who may have lost everything to restore their dignity and standing in the community. God’s redemption of the children of Israel redefined the social system and culture the children of Israel to ensure their cohesiveness of their relationship with God and with one another. Their new social system looked extremely different from where they came from and those they were going to live near and they were not to compromise on this.

Exodus 21:5-6 There was only one exception however that a man could become the servant of another for the remainder of their life. That could not be by the compulsion of the master, but by the deliberate choice of the servant. The individual would yield to claims of love, that they had been benefactor of from their master and for all their master had. The master has earned the servants love. Instead of going into their personal freedom, the choice to remain with his loved ones and those who love him, as well as with their master who they loved. The service of the servant is then noble and is not done out of compulsion or as a hireling. The highest choice of freedom is to choose to serve in love.

Ps34:8 the Psalmist encourages us to personally experience the goodness of God for ourselves.

1 Peter 1:22 – 2:3 Peter encourages the believer to lay aside all of our former character from before we accepted Jesus Christ into our lives. And then connects our spiritual growth, from the values and practices we had before we became Christians need to be grown out of. There is maturing needed in the life of an individual when they accept Jesus as the master of their life. And that maturity doesn’t happen by a list of rules and standards set by the different individuals in a church or a group of believers, it doesn’t come by being insnared to the law but by Grace, Galatians 5:1. Growth happens as you stay in God’s Word and continue to let it wash over you, and that is how you and I grow spiritually. It’s by tasting God’s Grace that the individual is both accepted in Christ and grows spiritually. The law was never intended to save anyone, because it can’t, the law only condemns and shows the individual that you, I, that we all need a savior because we are not able to rescue ourselves from our own destruction, no amount of work can fix anyone, but it’s God’s Grace, the masters love.